Borderless Deceit by Adrian de Hoog

analysis of the financial system of thatsad country, answering practical questions about the former communist party apparatchiks who had grabbed ownership of the banks and were advancing the interests of the post-Soviet mafiosi. There was a planning meeting for a delegation going to Moscow. Rachel would be a junior member. The meeting was long. My turn came. I delivered facts. I mentioned names, described secret loans and kick-back schemes, produced statistics on illegal international financial flows, and set out reasons why nothing in Russia would work, how all money – ours too – would get siphoned off, or be otherwise appropriated.
    â€œWrite all that down in a brief, won’t you, Carson,” said Yablonski. He was running the meeting. He would be responsible for negotiating an assistance package for the Russians. “I’ll review it on the plane.” I said I couldn’t do that and he ought to know that. Highly classified information can’t just be taken anywhere, most certainly not to Russia. I was unable to keep my voice from being prickly. Yablonski responded. “For crying out loud. You guys in Analysis, always thinking you’ve got the inside dope when the stuff’s in all the papers anyway.” I stuck to my guns. Yablonski complained he’d be prevented from doing his job. The standoff didn’t last.
    â€œThat’s the way it is,” I ruled. “All I can do is give you a more detailed verbal briefing.” Yablonski snarled that he’d see about that and moved on. Rachel was keeping the notes. When the meeting ended the participants scattered, but she remained. She was interested to know more about Russia-behind-the-scenes.
    I knew her slightly. A year earlier when she had just joined the Service she had been a trainee observer in another meeting. Heywood had chaired that one and there had been a terrific standoff then too, between him and me. It got so bad that he had asked me to leave. I hadn’t run into him since. Rachel’s friendliness now, her fascination with my work, her bright mind and convivial presence affected me. In the deserted meeting room my explanations flowed, but bit by bit the conversation moved beyond the hopelessness of Russia. We reached another level, unusual for me; Rachel and I began to talk as easily as backpackers out on the trail. Rachel was from Oak Lake.
Wherever is that?
It turned out to be a hamlet in southern Manitoba. It had a farm machinery dealership whose owner had three sons and one daughter, and the daughter decided when she was young that she would grow upto be a diplomat and live in the great capitals of the world.
    That was the first time Rachel sent me
her
invitation to complicity,
her
fleeting smile,
her
deep comprehension of what I was thinking. It set my pulse racing. Some days that look is all that is in my brain.
    Well, why not?
was my reply to Rachel’s desire to live on a vast scale. She then said that when she was little she used to turn the Oak Lake house into a continent, each room was a different country, and she went from room to room giving speeches to local audiences about Canada’s greatness.
    Once more that look of intimate alliance. It made her more beautiful still. I desired to say nothing, to study the fine proportions of her face for an hour, but all I dared was to send her a few furtive glances.
    The conversation wandered. No, she didn’t think the Ottawa winter was that cold; relative to Oak Lake it was balmy. And Rachel liked the canal where she could be found on the weekends skating. And she loved cross-country skiing too, the colder the better. It wasn’t the talk of winter that warmed me; it was her openness to ideas and to doing things. As we parted – she going back to a bureaucratic cubicle to render service to Yablonski, and I, beguiled, to a world behind sliding doors devoid of passion – I felt light and buoyant.
    Back at my desk I stared at the