“You must meet Gretchen. Play around-the-world with Gretchen, I guarantee you’ll rack up frequent flier miles on your back. Or hers. Gretchen is friend of Grigori. Friend of all weary travelers. Out calls only, but very reasonable prices. You tell her you are friend of Grigori. I give you her number. Easier to remember than wire transfer codes to ING. Ha!”

“I’m not convinced we’ve hit a wall here. If you can identify the bank, can’t you narrow it even further?”

“Very difficult,” said Grigori, biting cautiously into his scone, as if it might bite back. In a tone of troubled confession, he said, “Cook not really make scones. Cook say she makes scones. I know she buy pre-made from Sainsbury’s. One day I saw plastic shrink-wrap in the bin, so, so. So bag is out of cat. I not say anything. Everyone must feel they have victory, or nobody happy.”

“Let’s focus on making me happy. You said getting account info would be difficult. ‘Difficult’ doesn’t mean impossible. Or is there somebody else you’d recommend for the job?”

His bearlike host looked injured. “Nothing impossible for Grigori Berman.” He glanced warily around him, then spooned a generous amount of strawberry jam into his cup of tea and stirred. “Must not let butler see,” he said in a low voice. “This Russian way. Mr. French would not understand. It would shock him.”

Janson rolled his eyes. Poor Grigori Berman: a prisoner of his household staff. “I’m running out of time, I’m afraid,” he said.

With a hangdog look, Berman stood and padded heavily back to the RS/6000 workstation. “This very boring,” he said, like an overgrown child dragged away from his toys and forced to work on his multiplication tables. Meanwhile, Janson established a direct connection with the Bank of Mont Verde via his triband PDA.

Fifteen minutes later, Berman, sweating with concentration, suddenly looked up and turned around. “All done.” He saw the device in Janson’s hand. “You change private key now?”

Janson pressed a button and did precisely that.

“Thank God!” He sprang to his feet. “Otherwise I break down and do the bad, bad thing—today, tomorrow, next month, in middle of night while sleepwalking! Who can say when? To have private key and not put to personal use would be like …” He adjusted his trousers.

“Yes, Grigori,” Janson interjected smoothly, “I’ve got the general idea. Now talk to me. What have we found out about the payer?”

“Is great joke,” Berman said, smiling.

“How do you mean?” Janson demanded, suddenly alert.