“If I am,” Rafe pointed out, “I’m definitely in no position to launder money.” Which was a good logical point—an anti-money-laundering federal agent shouldn’t be laundering money. It was the opposite of the job description. Rafe tried to remember everything he had said to Majid and if it could all be reconciled.

“If you are?” said Majid, probing the weak spot.

“Look,” Rafe said, “all that matters is that Catherine needs help, and I’m not in a position to help her, and you are.”

Actually, Rafe had realized when he’d heard Catherine’s problem that there might be a way he could help. There was enough on Pleski to bust him now. All Rafe had to do was make the call. True, his bosses in Washington wanted to get more from Pleski, to get leads on more of Pleski’s clients, so busting him now would be premature. But Rafe could justify it, and nabbing him before Friday would moot the problem of laundering this cash. The government would seize it. Treasury agents somewhere would get a nice new surveillance van.

But Pleski could point a finger at Catherine. And the Holborn Bank, to save itself, would be only too happy to sacrifice her—“one bad apple.”

So no.

“Six hundred seventy-five k,” Rafe said, pointing to the bag. “It’s not even that much.”

Majid nodded. “Does she know you were coming to me?”

“No. She already thinks I’m shady. Do you want her to think you’re shady, too?”

Good question, but Majid would have to put answering it on his to-do list. First, if he decided to launder this cash (and he would—for Catherine), he had to do it by Friday. Meanwhile, he would have to see what Stavro wanted and deal with that. And then there was the Nigerian cop who wanted money for his corrupt boss in Africa. On the plus side, so far next week was wide open. Maybe he could take a vacation, if he wasn’t under investigation, or under arrest, or dead.

He got up from behind his desk and picked up the bag.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

Superhighway

SUPERHIGHWAY

“Who is he?” Rafe asked. “What did you do with him? Where is he?”

In a secret sub-basement, bleeding?

They were in Sykes’s office again. He’d come straight from Majid’s.

“We had a chat,” Frank said.

A chat? Rafe didn’t think that word was in Frank’s vocabulary.

“He’s a cop,” Frank said. “From Nigeria. You were right about the Nigeria part.”

“A Jewish cop from Nigeria?” Rafe turned to Sykes. “He said he was Jewish.”