Beck interrupted, “So did you get everything done you wanted?”

“Close enough. Hard to tell when you don’t know everything he has in that apartment.”

“What happened with his computer?”

“After I disabled and rerouted all his alarm shit with some routing boxes Ricky lent me, which are tricky because you have to get all the interfaces wired in before you reroute…”

“Uh-huh.”

Alex could tell Beck was being patient, so he tipped forward in the chair and tried to be more specific, but he just couldn’t avoid talking about relays, codes, information packets, Internet protocol, radio frequencies, access controls, identity management, and alarm systems.

Beck gave it a minute, then carefully interrupted and said, “So, Alex, did you get what we needed to find out about what Crane is doing and where he has the hedge fund money?”

“Yeah. As far as it goes.”

“What do you mean, as far as it goes?”

Liebowitz talked to Beck while glancing intermittently at the images on the computer screen.

“Like I said, after I overrode all the alarms and security, I went up into the apartment. His computer was on, but of course access had shut down and I didn’t have time to get through his pass code. I suspect he has at least two layers. Long story short, I just bypassed everything and copied the entire hard drive.”

“And?”

“And I’ve been spending the last six hours unbundling everything, while I’m key-tracking everything he’s doing when he’s online. I’ve got just about everything opened. But, it’s only current from the time he shut down last night. He started up again about a half-hour ago. I’m still catching up.”

“And you can do that how? The short version, Alex.”

“Short version, I loaded a sniffer program into his computer. Routed it through his T-1 line to a VPN connection that is hooked into this computer which is maybe an hour from being a full twin of the one in his apartment. Mostly. Whatever he does on that computer, he does it on this computer.”

“Okay.”

“Thing is, I can see what he’s doing, but that doesn’t mean I completely understand what I see. He places his trades through a very high-end platform. It’s been customized a hell of a lot.

“From what I’ve tracked so far, he has four or five different accounts in his fund that he trades through leased servers. Those servers connect to six or seven electronic exchanges. He routes every trade into the exchange that gives him the best price, so it’s a lot to keep track of.”

Beck nodded. Alex had spoken rapidly, but he still thought he had absorbed the gist of it. “Okay, so how long before you see everything?”

“About an hour to get one hundred percent tracking. But it’s like he’s fluent in a language that I only know the basics of. I guess I can just follow along with his trades until the money starts getting assembled. But I’d like to know exactly what he’s doing, you know, what trading strategy he’s executing so I can get out far enough ahead of him to set up a snatch.”

Beck nodded. “You really think you’re going to figure out his strategy?”

“Not completely. Unless we can get somebody who knows how he operates. At the very least I’d like to be able to predict a little bit when he’s ready to finish up.”

“Okay, I’m figuring Olivia should get on this with you. She’ll know more about his trading methods than any of us. And what he has to do to get Markov’s positions closed out.”

“That would definitely help.”

“I’ll get her down here, but where is he right now in the process? As much as you can tell.”

Alex leaned forward and grabbed his wireless mouse. After some sliding and clicking and typing, screens of financial data bloomed on yet a third monitor. A desktop trading platform filled the central twenty-seven-inch monitor with a set of preconfigured screens.

Beck leaned forward to watch the blur of action in cyberspace that moved tens of millions of dollars. He saw columns of numbers and currency amounts and symbols. The numbers changed continuously in color-coded columns. It all seemed totally disconnected to the world around him.

Alex answered Beck as he squinted through his black-framed glasses at the screens. He pointed to images on his monitors.

“Okay, Summit Investing runs the fund. Or Crane does. The fund has several brokerage accounts for Markov. All the investment vehicles are in these accounts. As Crane closes out trades the cash goes into various sweep accounts.”

Alex pointed to different segments on the third monitor, pointing out the separate trading accounts.

“But there are also bank accounts, aside from the brokerage accounts. Summit isn’t a chartered bank so there’s tons of money in accounts scattered around in different banks. Some U.S. banks: JPMorgan, Wells, B of A. Also, a handful of offshore accounts. Four of them in Nevis. Two in Isle of Man. Two in Geneva, Switzerland. And four in Grand Cayman. There are probably more. But I only see these accounts when Crane transfers cash into them.”

“How much has he assembled?”

“In cash?”

“Yes.”

Alex leaned closer to the monitor. Moving his mouse. Clicking his keyboard.

“I count just over thirty million. But he’s only closed about twenty-five percent of his positions.”

Beck thought about the amount. Crane had been at this less than a day. If there was another hundred million or so, the pace would have to accelerate very soon.

“Okay, Alex, can you keep going for a couple more hours?”

Alex’s long arm reached amidst the clutter on his desk and rummaged around until he found a small energy drink bottle. Liebowitz gulped it down in one swallow.

“Of course.”

“Good. I’ll have Olivia walk you through all the separate accounts and look over the assets. I suspect she’ll know how he’ll sequence his trades to close things out. At least some of it.”

“Okay. But I’ll tell you, from the looks of it, a lot of his trades are automated. Running on bracketed conditional orders.”

Alex clicked through more screens and pulled up a tool that looked like a spreadsheet.

“His trading platform has a function that pulls in algorithms right off Excel. My hope is that even if he’s not running it himself, there’s a bunch of trades that will cycle through and he’ll just sit and oversee it so he can pull out the cash as it comes in. Or bust a trade if he doesn’t like it.”

Beck nodded. “He may have his conditional orders in, but if the numbers don’t hit fast enough, he’ll have to step in and override the orders. He’s got to. I don’t think Markov is going to wait around for his money.”

“Why doesn’t he just move the assets as is?”

“Because Markov can’t manage those investments. He has a very complicated, volatile portfolio.”

“Makes sense,” said Alex. “But remember, once Crane’s got everything assembled, there’s no guarantee I can hack into the bank accounts it ends up in, and take it out. That’s movie stuff. It doesn’t work that way in the real world. The banks will shut down access to accounts if anything starts tickling that money.”

“I know. We’ll do that another way.”

“Really? How?”

“Don’t worry about that now. You just let me know where it is as soon as you can.”

“When he starts to run out of time and starts pulling the plug, James, there’s going to be big tranches of cash flowing in. If I’m fast enough I can see where it goes. But I won’t know what happens to the cash after that. Once it’s all assembled, I won’t be able to track it unless Crane moves it.”

Beck stared at the screen and nodded. “Understood. Just try to get a sense from Olivia when he’s approaching the finish.”

Beck patted Alex on the shoulder and headed up to the third floor.

The knife wound in his left leg twinged with each step up. He emerged on the third floor and walked to the east end of the building. He found her room. The door stood open; she sat on the end of the bed combing her thick black hair. She looked like she had just showered.