Actually, Rafe said, during his years on Wall Street after business school he’d kind of cut a corner or two here and there, not really his fault, not really that bad, except the government became aware and didn’t see it that way, and it could have gone hard on him, but he’d had a good lawyer who argued that Rafe, with his special expertise in finance, and in cutting corners, could maybe help out the government from time to time. The government had gone for that, on a provisional basis anyway, so he was here in Geneva to get his own venture up and running, really, but also the government did call on him for favors now and then, and this thing had come up with Majid’s name on it (and by Majid he meant Sterling Wealth Management), and, since he knew Majid, his dropping by today was one of those favors. For the government.

What thing was that? Majid had wondered.

Well, it seemed that that bank in Turkish Cyprus had been the vehicle, via a fairly circuitous route, for the short sale of a French dairy stock for the benefit of Sterling Wealth Management—whose tasteful offices Rafe made a point of admiring, by the way—and, the thing was, a similar trade routed through that same bank via the same circuitous route a couple of weeks ago involving another short sale was of interest to the government because it was linked to some bad people the government had a special interest in.

Well then, Majid had logically suggested, the government should go talk to those bad people and not send Rafe to question Majid about some kind of connection that was obviously a total coincidence, although Majid was always happy to see an old friend.

Well, Rafe had said, he was sure that the government (its official representatives, not him) would love to do that, talk to those bad people, but the trade had been made in the name of an untraceable LLC—actually, come to think of it, the kind of blind entity a firm like Sterling Wealth Management might set up for a client who wanted to be untraceable— and, since the peculiar routes of the two trades were so idiosyncratic, and so identical, and one trade was made by Sterling, it was just possible that Sterling had made the other trade, too. And by Sterling he meant Majid.

The two trades were identical, Majid had pointed out, except that they weren’t. They differed in one very significant aspect—one was blind, and one led to Sterling Wealth Management. If Sterling Wealth Management had something to hide about the first trade, and the two trades were somehow linked, why would Sterling Wealth Management make the second trade openly traceable? That made no sense. It would be stupid.