All this technology meant that there existed, within the borders of Pakistan, a rich broth of electronic information for Turbee and Blue Gene to sample and tease. As was often the case with Turbee, once he was able to focus his formidable intellectual resources, he lost track of time and place. It had taken only a brief, highly productive tutorial session with Rhodes, Lance, and Khasha to get him on the right track. Even Rahlson had chipped in once he saw where it was going. Turbee had needed to learn about the chemistry and economics of the drug trade.
“OK. OK. Where is this stuff grown?” Turbee had asked Lance and Khasha. “Where are these poppy fields?”
“Mostly in the high desert of Afghanistan. Some in Pakistan, but the local police seem to have done a good job of controlling it on that side of the border,” said Khasha.
“How do you make opium from poppy plants?” he continued.
Lance explained to him the process of scoring the bulbs of the plants during the harvest season, and the collection of the brown resin a few days later. He described the cooking and refining process in more detail.
“Fine, OK. But no one talks about smuggling opium. Everyone talks about smuggling heroin. How much more valuable is heroin than opium?”
Lance saw this as an open invitation. He had a captive audience, even if it was only Turbee, Rhodes, and Khasha. “Depends on where it is, Turbee,” he said. “Heroin is one of those commodities whose price varies profoundly depending on its location. A kilogram of heroin in Peshawar can be purchased for under $2,000. By the time it reaches Karachi, its value has quintupled to $10,000. Once it reaches a major marketplace, like Los Angeles, London, or New York, its wholesale value is over $100,000 a kilo, with a retail value three or four times that. It’s a remarkable industry, really. The value is added, once it’s refined, simply by transporting it.”
“You guys said to me yesterday,” responded Turbee, “that this is a cash business. No visa. No debit cards. No checks. All cash. So what happens to all that cash?”
“That,” said Rhodes, “is the central, number one problem the drug industry faces. What to do with all that cash. The Colombian drug lords, in the ’90s, made regular visits to the Caribbean banks with planeloads of cash. Huge suitcases and duffle bags full of cash. The USA has put a lot of pressure on the offshore banking community to halt that practice. But it’s still going on.”
“How much money are we looking at?” asked Turbee.
“No one is really sure, but the order of magnitude, worldwide, is in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” answered Rhodes.
“Are you telling me that every year hundreds of billions of dollars of cash circulates through the world’s financial systems illegally?”
“Yup,” said Lance and Rhodes as one.
“So if someone in Pakistan is involved in the heroin trade in a large way, he has a problem dealing with large amounts of illegal cash, right?”
“Yes,” said Rhodes. “Especially in Pakistan. We believe that most of the heroin shipped out through Pakistan eventually ends up in the United States. Hence, most of the money would be in American dollars, rather than something like Euros or pounds.”
“How do you hide large amounts of cash?” Turbee mused aloud.
“Well,” said Rhodes, “there are a lot of ways to do it. You can hide it in the balance sheets of companies. Take a simple example. You own a little taxi company. It takes in $300 in a night. But you’re selling some dope on the side. Making the odd trip to the odd client. You just add it to the take. You’re now making $600 a night. All you say, if anyone asks, is that you believe in work ethic. You work twice as hard as anyone else, or much more efficiently, or something. Or you can send out armies of smurfs…”
Lance and Rhodes spent an hour educating Turbee on the various ways to hide, place, layer, and reintegrate illegal cash. By the end of the discussion, he had a good idea which digital seas he and Blue Gene would be sailing.
“What about the chemicals that are used to turn opium into heroin?” he asked, seeking to explore another vein.
“We call those precursor chemicals,” explained Lance. “Ammonium chloride, Lysol, calcium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, and acetic anhydride, plus a few others. Some of these precursor chemicals are quite valuable, and there’s an underground trade of sorts for them too.”
“Hold on a bit,” said Turbee, struggling to keep up with Lance’s rapid speech. “Have to get all this straight in my head.” He was furiously clicking away on his keyboard.
By the time they were through, Turbee had the ABC’s of the drug trade down pat, and had a plan set out for where to go with his research. That had been almost 12 hours ago. Now his mind was working at a fever pitch. Precursor chemicals. Foreign exchange accounts. Balance sheets of import/ export firms. Police records. Felons. Neighbors of felons. Smurfs. Precursor smurfs. Foreign exchange accounts of precursor smurfs…
Khasha had been tapping on his shoulder for a good 30 seconds by the time he finally noticed. He gave her a long, uncomprehending stare. Consecutively opened accounts at successive banks of…
“Turbee. You get that crazy look in your eye, don’t you know?” she said. “It’s me. Khasha.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, eventually.
“I live ten blocks away. I couldn’t sleep. I saw the fourth-floor lights on in the building, so I walked over. Crazy thing to do in DC at this time of night. But here you are. What on earth are you doing here?”
“I’m working, Khasha. I’m trying to help Lance and Rhodes. I think I’m onto something. A few more hours, and I may have it.”
“Turbee, in a few more hours it’ll be dawn.”
“So?” he responded. Khasha didn’t know his habits. She didn’t understand how his condition, and the many drugs he was taking for it, played havoc with his behavior. His mind would race and focus, and then fragment and turn sluggish. When he was racing, as he was now, it was almost impossible for him to stop. In elementary school, before he had been properly diagnosed, he would literally bounce off the walls of the classroom in the morning and, in the afternoon, stick his head inside his oversized sweater and fall asleep. There was one famous story of him falling asleep inside the large lower drawer of his Second Grade teacher’s desk.
He explained a bit of it to her. “Khasha, I’m not completely comfortable talking about it, but I’m autistic. I can’t control these things sometimes. You are very pretty and I want to talk, but I can’t right now. I have to do this. I have to do it now, or it will escape. I would be very poor company — I can’t sit still and I would end up embarrassing myself. I need to finish this.”
“That’s OK, Turbee. I understand. I have a cousin who has Asperger syndrome. It’s pretty much the same. I brought you some coffee, although in hindsight, maybe water would have been better.”
“I’ll take the coffee, thanks. Thanks for dropping by. Really. Thanks.” He dropped his eyes and went back to his small armada of screens. He felt himself flushing; he wanted badly to talk to her, but he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he concentrated on the foreign exchange account of a particular shipping company that he’d hacked into. He didn’t hear her leave.