While he drowsed against the doorjamb, the aroma of fresh Greek coffee began filling the room. Sarakin. That was the Japanese name for their homegrown loan sharks, the so-called salary-men financiers. He knew that the Yakuza's four largest sarakin operations gave out more consumer loans than all of Japan's banks combined. If you added to that the profits in illegal amphetamines, prostitution, bars, shakedowns of businesses, protection rackets . . . the usual list, and you were talking multi multibillions. The major problem was washing all that dirty money. They routinely invested in respectable but losing propositions abroad, on the sound theory that one dollar cleaned was worth two unlaundered.
Was that what the Soviet scam was all about? Money from the Japanese mob being laundered through loans to the USSR? What better way to wash it? Nobody would ever bother asking where it came from.
But there was one major problem with that neat scenario. Politically the Yakuza were ultra-rightist hardliners. So why would they expose their money with the Soviets, laundered or not? Particularly now, with so much political instability there—hardliners, reformers, nationalists. Somehow it didn't compute.
"Michael, come here a second." The voice had an edge of triumph.
"What?" He glanced around groggily.
"Just come here and take a look at this." She was staring at the screen.
He turned and walked over, still entranced by the heady, pungent essence of fresh Greek coffee now flooding the room. "Is it anything—?"
"Just look at it and tell me what you think." She leaned back from the screen and shifted the Zenith toward him. The ice-blue letters cast an eerie glow through the dull morning light. The color reflected off his eyes, matching them.
"You did it already?"
"I started with a one-to-one replacement of numbers with letters. But it's sequence-inverted, which means I had to . . . anyway, what do think so far? Am I a genius or what?"