Yakov’s indulgent smile said he couldn’t care less, his eyes said he might tear my head off my neck. He snatched my Moscow Mule mug and two thick fingers scooped out the lime and cucumber, tore the cucumber into two strips and bit into the lime wedge before ripping it apart. He arranged the fruit and my drink across the table; cucumber, lime, mug, lime, cucumber. The barman looked the other way. This was Yakov pushing the boundaries, flaunting his power, making it easier to insult and control me in future. The burn started its coil around my throat but I would keep my cool this time, no matter how far he pushed.

‘Virtual banking,’ he said, ‘on the dark market.’

I loosened my collar, suddenly too hot in here.

‘Say you want to move cash without moving cash, say you value your privacy,’ he said. ‘This cucumber is a bank, okay, just a normal bank like normal people put their little money in.’

He fingered the sliver of cucumber closest to him and performed a tight circle on the table like he was driving a Ouija board.

‘I walk into this bank, say it is in New York, and direct the nice people in there to wire my money to this particular place, okay?’

The particular place was now the wedge of lime on his side of the table.

‘It’s your money, they wire it anywhere you say, yes? So, they wire it here to this money exchanger, real money in the normal system.’

The lime oozed its pungent juice under the fat fingers.

‘Let’s say this exchanger is sitting somewhere beautiful, like Cayman Islands, okay?’

Now he tapped his oversized gold sovereign ring against the copper mug.

‘Pay attention! This is where it becomes interesting. Now say you have the virtual bank, the dark bank that serves its customer market without the attention of Big Brother and the government tax robbers.’

He swilled a long swallow from the mug and slapped it down on the table.

‘This dark bank is maybe sitting in Nauru or Niue or some other fucking rock in the ocean that no-one has ever heard of. The exchanger in Cayman, our lime friend here, is instructed to wire virtual currency to the virtual bank in Nauru, understand? That is one half of the deal. Then the virtual bank in Nauru wires virtual cash to a different exchanger,’ he bent forward to squeeze the second lime wedge, on my side of the table. ‘This exchanger is maybe somewhere like Switzerland or Austria, say maybe Vienna, you see? Then the exchanger in Vienna receives the virtual currency and converts it into real hard currency and then wires the real hard currency to an account in a real, normal bank in Vienna, get it?’

He scooped the second strip of cucumber up and dunked it into my drink before throwing it back on to his dirty yellow tongue.

I didn’t get it. Didn’t the real currency stick at the first exchanger in the Cayman Islands? How did the virtual bank in Nauru wire anything at all to the second exchanger in Vienna?

‘Fuck!’ Yakov exploded. ‘The first exchanger takes a cut from the hard currency, right? They all take a cut, maybe 10%, maybe more depending on how dark the deal has to be. The first exchanger keeps all the hard cash, okay, but these guys do business together all the time. The next time the transfer could be coming in the other direction, maybe the second exchanger is the one wiring virtual cash to the first one, it all evens out over time, it is a two way street!’

‘Okay, okay,’ I said, ‘I get you now, but when you say maybe Vienna, you’re telling me the second exchanger was in Vienna, aren’t you?’

‘Let’s just say some people are very interested to know what happened to a certain Viennese finance operation that was doing good business close to the Prater in Leopoldstadt. It started small about five years ago and then suddenly became a big time dealer, and taking only a little cut compared to the others.’

Yakov plucked the Viennese exchanger lime into his bear paw and squeezed it to pulp, squirting the juice into my face and all over the table top.

‘All of a sudden it disappeared,’ he said, ‘about the time your priest turned up in Rome with bags of dirty cash.’

‘He turned up with some of it,’ I said, ‘another $30 million is still out there somewhere, and I’m talking about real folding money, not that virtual crap.’

‘I know, I know,’ Yakov said, ’and thirty million must sound like a lot of money to you, Maknazpy my friend, but believe me, there is a lot more at risk here than your $30 million. My colleagues who are interested to find our Viennese lime sent the dogs after him, top people, ex-special forces and police insiders, no money spared. No ordinary person could stay free for long but two Polish manhunters were found floating in the Danube, a German ex-detective choked in a British police cell, and two others have disappeared. The trail stopped in London. I say our Viennese lime has friends, ass licking hypocrites rewarded with immunity and entitlement. There is much more than your $30 million to worry about.’

He didn’t say how much more and I figured that was good and bad; good for the obvious greedy reason, bad because I wasn’t the only one on Hamilton’s tail and maybe Yakov’s colleagues would be more persuasive this time when they told him I was a risk.

‘I know what you are thinking, Maknazpy,’ he said it in a low, laughing growl. ‘You think I came here to fuck you over and take all the cash for myself, isn’t that so?’

Yeah, that was exactly so.

‘Don’t worry about it!’ he said. ‘Some things are more important than money, like trust and like confidence in the economic system. Our businesses can’t function efficiently if the system is broken, if it isn’t honest.’ We both grinned. ‘These government desperados and bank robber barons aren’t honest but their system works for them because that’s the only way it can work – the more dishonest they are the better they are rewarded – but it doesn’t work like that in our world, my friend. A bad apple will turn the whole barrel bad. Bankers on the dark market must be honest, they must be kept honest, or else the whole financial model breaks down.’

Yakov wouldn’t let me leave until he bear hugged me, smearing lime and cucumber juice over the back of my neck and all down my jacket. I knew he had only told me as much as he wanted me to know, and I could work around that just fine. Artie also knew more than he had told but that was just another piece of fruit to be juggled.

I paused at the top of the sweeping entrance steps and let the damp Belfast air rinse over me. The game had started for real now, and the buzz was a reason to be alive.

A London-style black taxi choked into life and limped off in a cloud of fumes, turning down the lane of cobblestones before I could see the driver. That’s the way it was going to be, and I was ready.