Storm Front

Strike paused, studying him. Storm sometimes felt like she could read the fine print on the inside of his skull casing. “You’re not messing with me right now? You’re really not working this case?”

“It depends,” Storm said, feeling that sense of bewilderment that only Clara Strike could engender in him. “What case are you talking about?”

“You first.”

“No, you first,” Storm said. “Let’s start with this: Those bugs I found at Cracker’s place. I should have known the moment I saw them. Those were yours, not Volkov’s.”

“Volkov? As in Gregor Volkov? What the hell does he have to do with this? He’s dead.”

Now it was Storm’s turn to study her. He couldn’t pretend to know all her tells, but he could detect no guile in her. “Okay, what the hell is going on?” Storm said. “You’re really not in on this?”

“I think when we say ‘this’ we’re talking about two different things,” Strike said. “Simply to mitigate the confusion: Yes, we’ve had heavy surveillance on Whitely Cracker for two months now.”

“Two months? But that appropriations rider wasn’t even passed until three weeks ago. That was the trigger for the whole thing.”

“Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about right now.”

He could see she was telling the truth. “So why have you been watching Cracker?”

“Because of Prince Hashem,” she said.

It was again Storm’s turn to wear a blank look. He shook his head to emphasize his ignorance.

Strike lectured: “Prince Hashem. Crown prince of Jordan. Next in line to the throne of one of the most strategically important countries in the Middle East. A man the United States of America seriously cannot afford to piss off if it wants to continue happy relations with Jordan. Any of this ringing any bells?”

“Not one.”

Strike sighed, then laid it out for Storm: “Prince Hashem is one of Whitely Cracker’s biggest investors. He’s got seven hundred million dollars plowed into Prime Resource Investment Group. Even for the prince of Jordan, that’s real money. Most of his fortune, actually. Surely by now you’ve figured out that Prime Resource Investment Group is in serious danger of going bankrupt.”

“Actually, that’s news to me. Whitely Cracker didn’t get on my radar screen until earlier today,” he said. What he didn’t add was that he hadn’t wanted to breathe a word about Cracker to Jones, and therefore Storm hadn’t asked the nerds to do the usual financial workup that would have revealed Cracker’s apparent distress.

“Yeah, well, trust me. Whitely has it bad. We’re talking Bernie Madoff stuff here. He is in a huge, huge hole. Like billions. With a capital ‘B.’ He keeps borrowing, and of course everyone gives it to him because he’s Whitely Cracker. But it’s only getting him deeper in trouble. We’re trying to figure out a way to move in and save the prince’s money, but of course the CIA can’t make a move against an American citizen. We have to wait for him to do something illegal and then send in the appropriate domestic authority. Unfortunately for us, losing billions of dollars isn’t illegal. So all we can do is watch and wait and hope.”

“And then you swoop in, save the day, and make sure Prince Hashem knows Uncle Sam had his back the whole way, gently reminding him that Iran or Hamas wouldn’t be able to do the same.”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” Strike said.

“Now, what does Volkov have to do with this?”

Storm told her as much as he dared without over-sharing, reminding himself she still worked for Jones. Storm trusted Clara Strike more than he did Jedediah Jones, but that was like saying he trusted a three-card monte dealer more than a snake-oil salesman. Still, he gave her a basic outline of the Click Theory and how Cracker played into it. He could tell from her reactions that it was genuinely news to her. For once, it seemed Clara Strike wasn’t playing a shell game on him.

“If it helps you, we haven’t seen any sign of Volkov or his men,” she said. “And, believe me, we’ve been watching. You know Volkov’s patterns better than anyone. He’s a look-before-you-leap type. He’d never go after Cracker without having done his homework. So I’d say he hasn’t gotten here yet.”

“More likely, Click’s model is just wrong,” Storm said. “The sixth banker isn’t Cracker. You still have people on his house?”

Strike nodded.

“Good. If Volkov does come slinking around, we’ll know. But I’m starting to think that I need to ask Dr. Click to go back to the drawing board. It doesn’t look like Cracker will be victim number six.”

Storm felt some sense of ease knowing Cracker and his family were safe. But, at the same time, it meant there was some other banker — perhaps with some other spouse and some other children — who was still in danger. And Storm didn’t have any idea who it was. The powerlessness was frustrating.