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that Lock had set up almost fifteen years earlier. A finial, of sorts.
    Kesler and Lock went over every company in the scheme. Griffin had eventually counted and announced that there were eighty-three of them. (These were just the live ones—they ignored for now the dozens that had done their job and been discarded.) Each had a bank account, which Lock, with help, had set up. Each had its directors, whom Lock had had to find. Each required that its fees be paid every year to the local company register; Lock estimated that the annual expense was well over a million dollars. Most had a story that Kesler was determined to know.
    On it went. When they had systematically worked their way from the middle of the hourglass to the top and then back to the bottom, Kesler again relieved his colleagues and came to settle on the three questions that seemed to exercise him most of all.
    “So, Richard, where does Malin get his money?” he asked when Griffin and the junior had left the room.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, in the ministry he earns what, a thousand dollars a month? But that’s not how he lives. How does he get cash?”
    Lock looked down at his hands and then back at Kesler. “There are two Russian consulting companies that provide services to companies in the group. They lend money to him sometimes.”
    “Is that all?”
    “The companies I look after don’t pay for anything. He’s very careful about that. If money is made in Russia and comes to him in Russia, I wouldn’t know about it. I don’t see it. I only know about everything outside Russia. That’s my job.”
    Then Kesler wanted to know who owned Longway. Lock told him that he, Lock, owned it.
    “You mean that you own Faringdon?”
    “All of it,” said Lock.
    “You’re rich.”
    “I am. I sometimes wonder why I don’t feel better about it.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, it’s not always the most comfortable place to sit.”
    “No. No. Why do it that way?”
    “Why did we do it that way? We changed it three years ago. Think about it. If anyone ever sees the deeds of that trust and Malin’s name is on them he has nowhere to fall back to. Everything is clearly his. There’s nothing left to deny. My name on it creates an extra layer. And you have to prove a negative—that I don’t own it. That’s not easy.”
    “He must trust you.”
    Lock laughed grimly. “It’s not like I can run off with it all.” More to the point, he thought, Malin knows that I’m a coward. The whole scheme depends on it.
    But for the rest of that day, most of an afternoon and into the evening, Kesler grilled Lock on what he called “the real crux”: how the money was made. Where did it come from? What of value was exchanged for it? Could it be shown that it was made honestly? More to the point, could it be shown that it wasn’t? Over and over, Lock said that he really didn’t know.
    “I’m not holding out on you, Skip. Really. I take the money offshore, bring it back again, and then make sure it’s invested where Konstantin wants it. That’s it. I may have been in Moscow for fifteen years but I’m not an honorary Russian. There’s a lot they don’t tell me.”
    “OK.” Kesler thought for a moment. “Tell me this. If you wanted to prove that Malin was defrauding the Russian state, where would you look?”
    “I wouldn’t begin to.”
    “Of course not.” Kesler betrayed a touch of impatience, then collected himself. “Let me tell you why this is important. Tourna says that Faringdon exists only to process money. That you are a money-launderer. Now, to prove that, he needs to show—with evidence—that the money flowing through Faringdon is dirty. And there has to be a crime that creates the money in the first place—in the jargon, a predicate crime. Without it, all you have is something that looks like a money-laundering scheme, and that’s not enough. So if anyone is going to destroy Malin—or you for that matter—they have to show an offense. No way