A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

“Actually, it’s each day,” he told me, checking his notes as if he had our conversation all outlined there on crib sheets.

“So they sock it to us every day, do they?”

“We probably shouldn’t scoff,” Lee told me seriously. “After all, the Federal Reserve provides many services and protective features that banks would otherwise have to provide on their own. Remember how difficult banking was before the system was established!”

“I’m afraid that was before my time,” I said. “But I understand it was pretty rocky turf. Now, what can I do for you today?”

“Probably very little. It’s just that we’re missing some of our reserve for the end of January, and we’re not sure where it went.”

“Well, I haven’t got it,” I said, looking up my sleeve with a laugh.

“No, I’m sure not. The thing is, we do know where it went, but we can’t explain it. It seems it went right into our own bank—here in San Francisco.”

“Then what’s the problem? Can’t you just put it back where it belongs?”

“It isn’t as simple as all that,” he said—though he hardly needed to explain all this to me, since I was the one who’d cooked it up. “You see, the money we should have sent to the Federal Reserve seems to have been sold off to other banks, which we frequently do when we need to reduce our reserve and another bank needs to increase their own. In this case, however, that wasn’t the situation—so it’s quite unclear how the money ended up moving around that way.”

He pushed a paper across the desk showing multiple transactions that had posted in various banks: Chase Manhattan, Banque Agricole, Crédit Suisse, First of Tulsa, and a few random money market accounts. I looked up from the paper and smiled.

“That’s just one Fed deposit transaction,” said Lee. “It took me a week to run it to earth, and when I did, it was back in the Fed. We believe there are many more such discrepancies—and it seems they’re being caused by one of our systems here.”

“Which one?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

“The interface to the Fedwire system—a part of wire transfers.”

“I see. Unfortunately, I’m no longer in charge of those systems, Lee,” I told him. “I left that department months ago.”

“Yes, we know,” he said, then looked at his hands in his lap. “But we understand you’ve just completed a study of security on all major systems. I thought … we thought you might have some findings that could help us out.”

I’ll just bet the subject of my study had been bandied about in the audit department. Not to mention the fact that the report had been suppressed.

“I’m afraid I’m not yet empowered to release that information, Lee,” I told him. “Have you a clue how much money we’re talking about?”

“For the last week of January alone, about sixty million so far. Of course, that’s peanuts compared with our reserve balance, but there may be even more. Those correspondent accounts through which the money was moved have thousands of transactions a day, and we have to go through all that by hand.”

“Wow, I had no idea! No computer aids for audit,” I said. Better and better. “My sympathies are really with you. I’ll tell you what—though I’m not supposed to share my findings with anyone yet, no one said I couldn’t personally look over those findings myself, in private, with your specific problem in mind. After all, it might be the Fedwire system that screwed up, and not our interface—then we wouldn’t be involved at all.”

“Gee, that would be great,” Lee assured me. “It would save us loads of time in audit, if we could just pinpoint how the money could get scattered like that.” He stood up and gave me his hand.

“Oh—and Lee,” I said when he reached the door, “you haven’t discussed this problem with Kislick Willingly—have you?”

“Not yet,” he said, looking wary. “You were the first one we’ve come to.”

“That’s okay. I know they’re his systems now, so he should be informed—but perhaps it’s best not to alarm anyone just yet, until we’ve learned what the problem is.”

This tiny seed of doubt about Kiwi would surely grow like wildfire in the fertile neuroses of the audit department. Auditors were by nature suspicious—or they wouldn’t be auditors.

I had a lot to tell Lee Jay Strauss when I was ready. But auditors always worked best when you gave their natural mistrust of humanity time to propagate on its own—like mushrooms—in the dark.

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

A dime for the bank, a penny to spend.

—John D. Rockefeller

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3

Pearl was going for her morning constitutional along the quay at Omphalos. Across the sea lay the sunny coast of Turkey. She was glad this island they’d bought looked better than it had in the catalog photo. The sea glittered turquoise in the sun, little brightly colored caïques bobbed in the water, and healthy-looking young Greek boys cleaned their nets over big wooden racks down at the wharves.

Until six weeks ago, when she arrived here with Lelia, Pearl hadn’t been involved in this caper at all—not really—except to give moral support and warn her friends of impending trouble. But now that she’d let herself be bulldozed into coming to the island—now that she was a full participant—she saw things differently. And what she saw, amazingly enough, was that most of this so-called caper wasn’t even illegal!

Okay, it was against the law to counterfeit securities. But neither those counterfeits nor the real securities they’d exchanged them for had ever been turned into cash! In essence, using them as collateral was no different from using the title of your car to secure a loan—when you knew you’d driven it off a cliff the night before! You still had a valid piece of paper that said you owned the car. And if you paid off the loan with interest, no one would be the wiser and everyone might