A Calculated Risk, Katherine Neville [english novels for students txt] 📗

I felt his hands moving over my hair. Then he grasped it and pulled me up, his mouth over mine, crushing me to him ferociously. When I pulled away, his eyes burned darkly as he lay among the pillows. He was very pale in the fog-filtered light from the windows.

“How can one want someone so much that it actually hurts?” he asked.

“Perhaps this will hurt me more than it hurts you,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.”

I pressed my lips to his stomach, and he shuddered. And then I moved over him as if he were a piece of sculpture I was learning by rote. I felt him stir and move beneath my hands and my lips as I memorized the hard, taut muscles that lay beneath the sheets. And at last, he moaned and cried out, and clutched at me again as his body stiffened and trembled and convulsed, and he lay still.

I moved beside him and looked at him as he lay there with eyes closed, his strong, angular face, the ringlets of coppery hair on the pillow. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

“What on earth did you do? That was magnificent,” he whispered, without moving.

“Nasturtiums,” I said. When he looked confused, I added, “You taste like nasturtiums.”

“A flower?” he smiled.

“In Monet’s garden at Giverny,” I agreed, with a laugh.

But he looked suddenly worried, and I wasn’t sure why.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“There’s something I suppose I should tell you,” he said, looking up at me and studying my face. “I’m afraid it’s rather worse than the problem of Lelia and the bonds—certainly not part of my initial plan. Though I’ve known about it for quite some time, I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”

“Is it something potentially dangerous?” I asked, sitting up, somewhat alarmed.

“Very,” he admitted. “My dear, I love you.”

MOVING MONEY

No where so well developed as in the pants of the people, wealth ain’t.

—Ezra Pound,

THE CANTOS

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25

Said al-Arabi was not going to Mecca this year.

He was the wire transfer operator for National Commercial Bank in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. On the afternoon of December 25, he was locked alone in the telex room of the bank, sending wires to banks in the United States to settle mortgage payments on Saudi real estate holdings there.

Said al-Arabi sat before the telex machine and typed in the test key, which was masked—blacked out—by the machine as he entered it so no one looking over his shoulder might see the secret code.

Then he entered the rest of the information needed to send the wire:

From: National Commercial Bank, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Account Number: XXX

To: Bank of the World, San Francisco, California, USA

Pay To The Order Of: Escrow Account Number XXXX

Amount: $50,000 and no/100

Date: December 25, 19xx

Message: For payment of commercial property, Lake

Tahoe California

End.

Said al-Arabi hit the “send” button on his telex, releasing the wire into the network. Then he picked up the next wire transfer to enter from his stack.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 28

At eight-thirty Monday morning, Susan Aldridge arrived at the wire room of the Bank of the World. She was the first operator to come in after Christmas, and the room was still locked. Cursing her boss and colleagues for coming in late, and realizing that she would have to pick up the bulk of the heavy holiday volume, she went downstairs to the security desk and signed out for the key. They were probably recovering from too much Christmas cheer, she thought sullenly as she returned to open up the room for business.

Susan powered up her terminal and checked her lipstick in a pocket mirror as she waited for the signal that it was ready to go. In a few minutes, she was able to pull up the first wire of the day:

From: National Commercial Bank, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Account Number: XXXX

To: Bank of the World, San Francisco, California, USA

Pay To The Order Of: Frederick Fillmore, Account Number XXXX

Amount: $800 and no/100

Date: December 25, 19xx

Message: None

End.

That was strange, thought Susan. This was about the time of month the Saudi bank settled all its real estate mortgage payments in California, but they were for amounts far larger than eight hundred dollars. It hardly seemed worth sending a nine-dollar wire for so small an amount. But who knew with those Arabs? They were rolling in so much dough.

The test key had been approved by the system, so she knew the transfer was legit. Susan typed in the data to prepare the debit and credit tickets, printed out the tickets, stamped them approved, clipped them together, and put them in her security envelope for the ten o’clock pickup.

“Mine not to reason why,” she said aloud as she pulled up the next wire on her screen.

By ten o’clock, the wire room was about half-full of operators who’d straggled in. The messenger arrived with her cart at the Dutch door.

“Anything to pick up?” she asked.

Susan collected the packets of wire transfer slips, sealed and stamped the envelopes, and brought them to the door.

“Not many,” she apologized. “It’s hard getting folks in after Christmas.”

“Yeah,” the messenger agreed. “We have to work, but the supervisors can’t get out of the sack.”

She signed for the envelopes, tossed them in her basket, and pushed the cart to the elevator bays.

In cash clearings, Johnny Hanks, the debit clerk, slashed open the envelopes containing the ten o’clock wire transfers. It took less than half an hour to post all the debits and credits on his proof-and-posting machine. He wore earphones connected to the Sony Walkman strapped at his waist, listening to Guns ’N Roses to shut out the noise of the heavy machine with its rows of stacker pockets.

He cleared the wire transfers from the pocket and slapped on a batch-total header, winding a rubber band around the stack. Then he dropped it into a nearby pickup cart.

Those girls up in the wire room must still be asleep, he thought