“That? Is karaoke machine. Computer system in basement.” Berman took him down a curved flight of stairs, to a carpeted room that contained several computer workstations; the heat they threw off made the windowless room uncomfortably warm. Two small electric fans stirred the air. The butler arrived with tea and scones, arrayed on Bristol delft plates. He laid them out on a small corner table, along with small ceramic pots filled with clotted cream and jam. Then he glided off.

After glancing longingly at the scones, Berman sat down at a keyboard and started to activate a series of firewall-penetration programs. He studied the results for a few minutes and then turned to Janson. “In cone of silence, tell Grigori what you get me into.”

Janson was silent for a while, thinking long and hard before he disclosed the essential elements of his predicament. Garrulous creatures like Berman, he knew, could sometimes be the most discreet of all, depending on the structure of motivation. Grigori listened without comment or any evident reaction, and then, shrugging, typed the values of an algebraic matrix into the program he was running.

Another minute passed. He turned to Janson. “Grigori not encouraged. We let these programs run, then maybe get results in time.”

“How much time?”

“Run machine twenty-four hours, coordinate with global parallel-processing network of other computers, then maybe …” Berman looked off. “Eight months? No, I think closer nine months. Like make baby.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You want Grigori to do what others can’t do? Must supply Grigori with numbers others don’t have. You have public-key sequence to account, da? We use this, we have special advantage. Otherwise, back to making baby—nine months.”

Reluctantly, Janson supplied him with the public-key sequence for his bank account—the codes that the bank transmitted upon receipt of information. The public-key sequence was known to both the bank and the account holder.

Within ten seconds after he typed in the public-key sequence, Berman’s screen filled with jumbled digits, scrolling down his monitor like the closing credits of a film. “Numbers meaningless,” he said. “Now we must do pattern recognition. Look for butterfly.”

“Find butterfly,” Janson stressed.

“Pah!” Berman said. “You, moy droog, are like baked Alaska: sweet and soft outside, hard and cold inside. Brrr! Brrr!” He clasped his arms around, pantomiming an arctic chill. But for the next five minutes, Berman studied sequences of confirmation codes with an intensity that shut out everything else.

At last, he read a series of digits out loud. “Butterfly here—5467-001-0087. That is butterfly.”

“The numbers mean nothing to me.”

“Same numbers mean everything to me,” said Berman. “Numbers say beautiful blond women and filthy canals and brown café where you smoke hashish and then more women, from Eastern Europe, sitting in storefront window like mannequin wearing pasties.”

Janson blinked. “Amsterdam. You’re saying you’re looking at a transfer code from Amsterdam.”