"No," I said. "But read this."

I pulled up another e-mail from Alex's Gibraltar folder, this one to Jackson Warren, sent on the same day as the previous one.

"Jackson. I have issued the instruction to SB (and his mother-in-law), and the funds should be available in your usual account later today for further transfer. AR."

"What's all that mother-in-law business about?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "But it appears in all the e-mails sent to SB, that's Sigurd Bellido, the chief cashier who makes the transfers in Gibraltar. Funny thing is, he doesn't ever mention her in his replies."

Toleron thought for a moment. "Perhaps it's a code to prove that the transfer request really is from this AR person."

"Alex Reece," I said.

"Didn't I meet him at that dinner party? Ginger-haired fellow?"

"That's him," I said. "Slightly odd sort of person. He's Jackson Warren's accountant, but he's up to his neck in the fraud."

"But Warren must surely know that I would suspect him if the fund went bust and I lost all my money."

"But he would simply apologize for the bad investment advice and say that he'd also lost a packet and, if the newspaper reports of your company sale are to be believed, you would have been able to afford the loss more than he would. In fact, I bet you would have ended up feeling sorry for him, rather than accusing him of stealing from you."

"Don't ever believe what you read in the papers," he said. "But I get your point. The very fact that it was a relatively small investment is why I did it in the first place. I can afford to lose it. Not, of course, that I want to."

How lovely it must be for him, I thought, to be so rich that two million dollars was a relatively small investment, and one that he could afford to lose.

"So all we need to do now is to get this Alex Reece chappy to e-mail SB in Gibraltar and get him to return the money whence it came." Martin Toleron smiled at me. "Then I'll have my money back. Shouldn't be too difficult to arrange, surely?"

He certainly made it sound easy, but I'm not sure that Alex Reece would play ball. He might be more afraid of Jackson Warren and Peter Garraway than he was of Martin Toleron, or even of me and my syringes.

"I have a better idea," I said. "We could send an e-mail to SB, pretending to be Alex Reece."

"But that's not as easy as you think," Martin said. "Not without his e-mail account password."

Now it was my turn to smile at him. "And what makes you think I don't already have it?"

The e-mail to Sigurd Bellido was ready to go by half past eleven. Sigurd.There has been a mix-up at our end, and I need to transfer back to the UK the last two payments that were made into the Rock Bank Ltd account on Thursday and Friday of last week. Please transfer, as soon as possible, from the Rock Bank Ltd account (number 01201030866) at your bank:

(1) U. S. $2,000,000 (two million U. S. dollars) to Barclays Bank plc, SWIFT code BARCGB2LBGA, Belgravia branch, for further credit to Mr. Martin Toleron, sort code 20-62-18, account number 81634587

(2) U. S. $1,000,000 (one million U. S. dollars) to HSBC bank plc, SWIFT code HSBCGB6174A, Hungerford Branch, for further credit to Mrs. Josephine Kauri, sort code 40-28-73, account number 15638409

Please carry out these transfers as soon as possible, preferably immediately. I trust your mother-in-law continues to make a sound recovery. Many thanks. AR.

Martin Toleron and I had looked through all the transfer requests in Alex Reece's Gibraltar folder, and we had studied closely the language and layout he had used in the past.

"Are you happy with it?" Martin asked.

"As happy as I can be," I said.

"Do you think it will work?"

"Maybe," I said. "But we have nothing to lose by trying."

"I have," he said. "I stand to lose two million dollars."

I decided against saying that he'd told me he could afford it. "You've already lost it, but this might just get it back. It's worth a try, but it's a hell of a lot of money for a bank to transfer without making any other checks."

"They'll e-mail him back, though," Martin said.

"Oh, for sure."

By looking at all the e-mails to and from SB and AR we had discovered a pattern. Alex would e-mail the request always at about midday or five minutes either side, UK time. Sigurd would then e-mail straight back, acknowledging receipt and requesting confirmation. Alex would then instantly respond to that with a note that contained some comment, not now about Sigurd's mother-in-law but about the weather in the UK.

The Taliban would have had a field day with this pathetic level of security. I only hoped that Alex hadn't realized that I had copied his messages and compromised his defenses.

"Are you ready to intercept SB's reply?" Martin asked.

"As ready as I can be," I said. "I'm logged on to Alex Reece's e-mail account via the mail2web webmail service, but it will all go wrong if Alex downloads the reply straight to his computer from the server. We'll just have to take the chance that he doesn't click on send/receive at that precise moment."

"Do you have the reply ready?" He was hopping from foot to foot with his nervousness as he stood behind me at his desk.

"Calm down, Martin," I said. "Let's just hope that the real Alex Reece isn't sending his own transfer e-mail to SB today."

"Oh my God," said Martin. "That would really confuse things."

"The shortest time that money has spent in the account before being moved on is six days. It is now five days since the first one arrived and four since the second. So I don't expect a real transfer request from Alex today."

"How about if SB knows that it has to be a minimum of six days or it's a fake request?"

"We'll know that soon enough," I said. "It's two minutes to twelve."

I pushed the send button, and the message disappeared from the screen. It was on its way, and we were left holding our breaths.

We both waited in silence as I continually refreshed the webmail page. The clock on the computer moved past twelve o'clock to twelve oh-one. I refreshed the page once more. Nothing. I forced myself to be calm and wait for a count of ten before I clicked on the refresh button again. Still nothing. I counted again, slowly, this time to fifteen, but still nothing came.

The reply arrived at nine minutes past twelve, by which time I had all but given up hope. Alex. I acknowledge receipt of your instructions. To which party do I charge the transfer costs? SB.

I had the reply ready to send, but I quickly pulled it up to make the changes. I typed in the new information. Sigurd, I confirm receipt of your acknowledgment and I endorse the instructions. Please charge the transfer costs to the recipients.Thank goodness spring is nearly here in the UK and the temperature has begun to rise. AR.

I pushed the send button, and again the message disappeared from the screen. Next, I used the mail2web tools to delete SB's reply from the server so that it would not appear on Alex's computer when he downloaded his mail.

"Now we wait and see," I said. But I went on monitoring the webmail page for another forty minutes before I was happy that SB wasn't going to ask another question.

"Do you think it will work?" he said.

"Do you?" I asked in reply.

"Not really," he said. "It was much too easy."

"Yes," I said. "Almost as easy as getting you to part with the two million dollars in the first place!"

Martin called his bank and asked them to inform him by telephone immediately if a large deposit arrived. My mother, meanwhile, might simply have to wait to see if it appeared on her bank statement.

"Call me if you hear anything," I said, shaking his hand in the driveway.