The Athenaeum Club. A gathering spot for members of the political and cultural elite.

And the unlikely rendezvous for a most unlikely man.

Gregori Berman was someone who, if he had developed a nodding acquaintance with morality, preferred to keep the relationship at arm’s length. Trained as an accountant in the former Soviet Union, he had made his fortune working for the Russian mafiya, specializing in the complex architecture of money laundering. Over the years, he had set up a thicket of IBCs—international business corporations—through which the ill-gotten gains of his mafiya partners could be cycled, and thus hidden from the authorities. Several years earlier, Janson had deliberately let him slip through a dragnet that Consular Operations had run. Dozens of international criminals had been apprehended, but Janson—to the annoyance of some of his colleagues—let their financial whiz kid go free.

In fact, the decision represented reason, not whim. Berman’s knowledge that the Cons Op officer had decided to let him escape meant that he’d be in Janson’s debt: the Russian could be converted from adversary to asset. And having someone who understood the intricacies of international money laundering represented a very significant asset indeed. Moreover, Berman was clever in his manipulations: it would be difficult for the authorities to build a case against him. If he was likely to get off anyway, why not let him off with a debt on which Janson could collect?

There was something else, too. Janson had reviewed hundreds of pages of intercepts, had come to know the principals of the scheme. Many were cold-blooded, thuggish, menacing figures. Berman, for his part, deliberately insulated himself from the details; he was cheerfully amoral, but he wasn’t unkind. He was perfectly happy to cheat people out of their funds but could be quite generous with his own. And somewhere along the line, Janson acquired a trace of sympathy for the high-living rogue.

“Paulie!” the bearlike man boomed, opening his arms wide. Janson stood and allowed himself to be enveloped in the Russian’s embrace. Berman fit none of the stereotypes of a numbers man; he was all emotional effusion, mixing a passion for things with a passion for life.

“I hug you and I kiss you,” Berman told Janson, pressing his lips to both his cheeks. Classic Berman: whatever the circumstances, he would display not the wariness of a man under pressure but the swagger of a larger-than-life bon vivant.

The fabric of Berman’s pinstriped bespoke suit was a feltlike cashmere, and he smelled faintly of Geo. F. Trumpers extract of limes, the scent said to be favored by the Prince of Wales. In his caricatured way, Berman sought to be every inch the English gentleman, and there were many inches of him at that. His conversation was a cataract of Britishisms, malapropisms, and what Janson thought of as Bermanisms. As absurd as he was, though, Janson could not help feel a certain affection for him. There was even something winning about his contradictions, the way he managed to be at once devious and ingenuous—he always had an eye for the next scam, and he was always delighted to tell you about it.