The reporter looked up from a script he was writing on his laptop, smiled broadly, and stood to shake her hand. “Well, hello, again. I don’t think I would have recognized you if I hadn’t been warned you were coming,” he said, still not releasing her hand. “You’ve certainly changed from the skinny, eleven-year-old cello player.” Diamond was tall, with graying hair and dark, brown eyes. He moved with the assurance of someone used to being recognized anywhere he went in the United States. His walls and bookcases were filled with awards and trophies and pictures of him with the last five presidents.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me so quickly,” Sarah said, taking a seat across from him.
“It was Jake Pearlstein’s fault,” said Ed. “He told me I’d be getting a call from someone about what could be the major scoop of my career. Hard to resist.”
She looked around, “Is your office secure?”
“Very. For the last two years, things being what they are, our offices are swept every week.”
“What about the windows?”
“The windows?”
“Listening devices could pick up on those.”
“I could lower the blinds and close the curtains,” he said, half in jest.
“That would help,” she said. “What about your mobile?”
“You mean this?” Now, obviously becoming annoyed, he picked up the iPhone on his desk.
“Right, would you mind removing the battery while we’re talking, and then put it in that small fridge you’ve got in the corner? You should also not just unplug your laptop, but put some tape over its camera? That’s right. And disconnect your TV monitors.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he glared.
“Not at all.” She smiled sweetly and waited until he’d complied before continuing.
“If you didn’t have such a pretty smile, I’d have already tossed you out,” said Ed.
“And, if you make a remark like that again,” she said gently, “I’ll be out of here in a flash.”
He raised both hands in surrender.
“Now before we proceed,” she leaned forward, “these are the ground rules. You take no notes. You tell no one on your staff – no one – about what I am about to tell you. And you tell absolutely no one where you’re going. You’ll be gone for a few days.”
At 9:30 a.m. in London the next morning, a black BMW driven by Charlie Doyle, another member of Deep Strike, pulled up in front of the mansion at 51 Belgrave Place. Ed Diamond emerged from the back seat and Doyle escorted him to the front door. Mike Rourke let them in and then retrieved Ed’s bag and laptop from the car.
Steve was waiting in the front hall. He shook hands with the reporter.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” said Diamond.
“I know,” said Steve.
“In fact, you don’t sound at all like the man I spoke with by phone after you quit the agency.”
“That’s the whole idea. I had my vocal cords modified.”
“So how do I know for sure you really are Steve Penn?”
“For starters, when you phoned me at my home in Falls Church you apologized for calling so late. You also refused to tell me how you got my number. You said someone on your staff had found it. You argued I could be doing a service to my country by talking. And then you gave me your private number.”
“All true.”
“Also I imagine that Sarah Levin when she spoke with you must have vouched for me.”
“She did.”
“Charlie Doyle here also worked with me in the agency.”
“That’s what he told me on the way in,” said Diamond.
“I didn’t recognize Steve at first either after his makeover,” said Charlie, “But, yeah, this is the real article.”
Charlie pulled out his wallet and extracted an old picture. “Here’s the two of us together in Red Square a couple of years ago.”
Diamond pointed to Steve, “And this is the same man?”
“It is.”
Diamond shrugged, “OK, just had to ask.”
“Now that’s out of the way,” said Steve, “why don’t we all have some breakfast?”
While they were eating, Diamond probed Steve about his decision to quit the agency and go rogue. Steve talked for about twenty minutes, then looked squarely at Ed. “The bottom line is I’m determined to finish the investigation we started.” he said. “I hope you’re interested. If not, there are plenty other news broadcasts.”
Diamond furrowed his brow. “Why do you think I dropped everything to come?” He put down his fork and stared back at Steve. “I’ve taken all the security precautions Sarah demanded. So far, I’m the only one at Focus who knows about this meeting. Everyone thinks I left to do a crash story on a scandal involving the U.S. ambassador. No one knows where I’m staying, and certainly no one knows anything at all about you. And, yes, I also took the battery out of my goddamned iPhone when I left Heathrow.” He was still looking directly at Steve. “I assume this will all be worth it.”
“It will,” said Steve. “Now, you must be jet-lagged. We’ve got a room here for you.”
“Yes, Sarah informed me,” said Ed grimly. “No one leaves this place until the broadcast is done.”
“Those are the ground rules,” said Steve. “We have to assume that everyone is looking for us.”
“So let’s get it done,” said Ed. “I slept for a couple of hours on the plane. Let me just grab a shower first.”
Over the next few hours in the basement bunker, Steve laid out the case he’d amassed on Stokes’s illicit financial dealings with Kozlov and the Russian oligarchs. It was mindboggling in scope: the emphasis not so much on influencing American foreign policy, as enriching Stokes and Kozlov and their billionaire cronies.
First, aided by additional research of his colleagues, Steve went through an itemized run-down of purchases of Stokes’s properties by Kozlov and several of the Russian nomenklatura. There were fourteen major properties in all, totaling more than two billion dollars. Checking the records, Charlie and Sarah had found that in every case the properties were purchased by the Russians for multiples of the price that Stokes had originally paid, at times just one or two years before.
“The Russians wanted to transform as many of their ill-gotten Russian rubles into U.S. dollar assets as fast as they could,” said Steve. “They didn’t care about the price. Dirty money like that is pouring out of Russia.”
“For instance, in one deal,” said Charlie, “this guy Alexei Petreykin, who took over the Russian cement industry, bought a share in a new housing development in Dallas from Stokes for three hundred million. Stokes bought the same property for a hundred fifty million just a year earlier. Doubled his profits in a year.”
“And that help from Stokes” Charlie added, “enabled Petreykin and his family to convert three hundred million dollars’ worth of grotty rubles into bright shiny U.S. currency, with no one checking where it came from.”
“Which brings up another interesting question,” said Steve. “Why didn’t the American bankers who handled those transactions make a thorough check on the source of that money? They’re supposed to know their client, according to U.S. Treasury rules. But when Sarah Levin asked the manager of the Republic Bank of Dallas what kind of background check he had done, all he had was a letter from Stokes vouching for this slime-ball Petreykin: ‘I have been doing business with Vasily for years. Wonderful guy! Honorable man – without question, the greatest!’
“The U.S. would never let a foreign bank get away with such bullshit,” said Steve. “But this one note from Stokes was enough to convince the folks at the Republic Bank. Stokes, after all, was its major customer. Apparently, no one from Treasury ever asked any questions.”