One Step to Danger Read online

  JOHN GUBERT

  ONE STEP TO

  DANGER

  Copyright © 2007 John Gubert

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

  publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

  the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Enquiries

  concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador

  9 De Montfort Mews

  Leicester LE1 7FW, UK

  Tel: (+44) 116 255 9311 / 9312

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  ISBN 978 1906221 355

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, companies and locations are either the product

  of the author’s imagination or, in the case of locations, if real, used fictitiously

  without any intent to describe their actual environment.

  Typeset in 11pt Bembo by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

  Printed in the UK by The Cromwell Press Ltd,Trowbridge,Wilts, UK

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  To Anne and Charles

  Contents

  JUST A BILLION DOLLARS

  RE-UNITED

  MEETING THE MAFIA

  THE ROAD TO MONTE CARLO

  THE HOTEL

  GENEVA

  A NIGHT IN CANNES

  LAUNDRY TIME

  THE HANDOVER

  THE ROAD FROM FRANCE

  THE ROAD TO RIO

  PLANNING FOR A FORTUNE

  CALIFORNIA

  ASIA BREAKS

  SOJOURN IN HONG KONG

  HONG KONG STRIKES

  SEARCHING FOR JACQUI

  THE BATTLE STARTS

  RETURN TO FREEDOM

  WAITING FOR THE STORM

  THE DEATH OF A BANK

  THE FINAL ROUND

  JUST A BILLION DOLLARS

  Friday September 15. It was late afternoon. And the scam was about to begin.

  John Ryder held his breath, looking intently at the screen. This was going to change their lives. The screen read a billion dollars. The cursor blinked on the “confirm” box. He swallowed nervously. His heart was pounding. He hesitated. This was the point of no return. Then it was done.

  The PC was already powering down. He was moving out of the office – his box with a view of a wall. Gone forever! Not that he would miss it. As he moved down to ground level, the glass-backed lift gave him a full view of the bank lobby. Buzzing as the business day came to a close. Outside, he walked to a waiting car, and said curtly, “Let’s go.”

  The timing had been intentional. They needed to miss the worst of the weekend traffic. Time was of the essence. Nothing must go wrong.

  An hour later, they were at the airport. But the hour felt like an age. Each time they heard a siren, they froze. Each time they saw a police car they held their breath. Every policeman appeared to look at them with suspicion. The traffic slowed down and they looked at each other in near panic. A car hooting, someone shouting or people pointing all made them start. They were new to this fear. They did not know yet that it was just a passing phase. Tomorrow it would be gone, if they were still free.

  As planned they had cut it fine. Each waiting minute added to the danger. And the stakes were high. They walked quickly through the airport. They passed the rows of shops without a flicker of interest. Each announcement made them start. The official at passport control waved them through, but in their nervous state they thought he had stopped them. They almost panicked and ran. At the desk, the stewardess asked them to wait a moment and fear struck them again. “I hope you have a nice flight to Paris,” she said a moment later as she let them through to the plane.

  On board, they waited as the moments ticked by. They wondered why they had not left on time. Then the motors purred as the plane taxied away. A quarter of an hour later, the plane was on its way to France.

  She turned to him. “Will it work? Will it really work?”

  He sounded more confident than he was. But he had to re-assure her. “Of course it will work. We have planned every possible move.”

  It was simple. Simple because he was not concerned that they would know he had done it.

  “They will know who it was. They will seek us out. But they cannot follow the trail. And they will try to play it down as it will be a huge embarrassment. That will help us disappear.”

  Once he had pressed the return key, the billion dollars had left the bank’s account. He had toyed with the idea of making it more than a billion, but that would have raised too many queries. A billion was a good round sum. It was material enough, but not that noteworthy in the world of high finance. And that was his world.

  The money had moved through a series of fictitious company accounts. It had been changed into Euros, into the Japanese Yen, into Euros again and finally back to dollars. Eventually, the money had ended up in a dollar account in the Cayman Islands. The introduction of real time settlement systems by the banks meant that the dollars were all on the account during the same day in the Caymans. And time zones meant that it was just after lunch there although it was the end of the working day in London.

  He laughed to himself. They would only discover something was wrong after the weekend. After the weekend he would not be there and his trail would be cold. His phone number would ring but there would be no answer. They would initially be concerned about him but not suspicious. His house would be unoccupied but it would be there. All the contents would be there. His bank accounts and other assets would be there. He had had no scruples about leaving them behind. A couple of million jettisoned to ensure they gained a billion. That was the sort of return people dreamt of. This would puzzle them. In time, when they discovered the loss, it might make them wonder if he was the perpetrator or a victim.

  It was only when they could not balance their books that they would start to worry. But that would be Tuesday at the earliest. The banks had built systems that allowed one to move money globally in a few seconds. They had introduced services that allowed you to swap any major currency into dollars on the same day. But they still used lowly paid clerks to see that it all went well. And in reality, the clerks only looked for errors. Not for fraud.

  The system had to be built on trust. But trust depended on fear. Fear of being caught. If you overcame that fear, as long as you weren’t too greedy, you could get away with murder. And unfortunately, he thought ruefully, we’ll have to get away with that as well.

  At that moment, Charles was at the First International Bank in Cayman. He wished to withdraw a hundred million dollars in cash from his account. Ample cover should have come that day from London. The bank was willing to comply for a commission of a million dollars and the pleasure of earning another few million or so a year on the remainder of the money. They treated Charles respectfully, pleased that he was so casual with his funds and feeling no scruples that this must mean this was illegal money. Charles had explained that Global Financial Enterprises Inc, the account holder, wanted the money to be available at all times and would therefore prefer it to be on a cashing account.

  Thus motivated by greed, First International Bank willingly complied. It suspected that Charles, the grandly named President and Chief Executive Officer of Global, was involved in the drugs trade or money laundering. It realised that he was opera
ting under a false name. It most likely even saw through the heavy disguise he was wearing. But they did not even give it a thought.

  Drugs and money laundering were both illegal, but then First International Bank was known for its flexibility rather than its integrity. And, as Charles had appreciated when selecting it, intentional stupidity and greed rather than high principles drove its officers to success.

  Charles soon left the bank with the cash – he would move most of the rest of the money electronically through another myriad of accounts the next day. The last hundred million would remain with First International, if only to ensure their continued silence, however suspicious they might become.

  He drove to the airport and within the hour was heading by an ageing charter prop jet to Panama, although the flight plan stated otherwise and he was not on any passenger manifest. Once the plane had landed and Charles was on a scheduled Air France service to Paris, the pilot took off again in accordance with his instructions. As he sent out his Mayday message, he parachuted out at the agreed location. If his parachute had opened and had not been switched by Charles, he would have been in a bar as planned some half hour later, waiting for a bus to take him to Mexico City.

  So he never collected his five million dollars fee although he did have the half million advance in an account somewhere. He never realised that the plan was strange. That he should have been wary about the need for total silence. That he should have questioned the need to get rid of the plane. And that the promise of a regular role in Global with another passport, another location and another name was just too good to be true when you are on the most wanted list of a series of drug agencies across the world. But then, the pilot had been willing to believe anything for he needed to get away from an ex-wife, from a pregnant mistress and most of all an angry loan shark.

  Coast guards never worked out why he was so far off course. They could not understand where he was during the missing hours. Customs never knew Charles was a passenger. In fact nobody even knew who Charles really was. And they did not even know if the man in the bank had actually left the Islands.

  For Charles was no longer Charles Ryder according to the Air France passenger list. He had used a false name and appeared to be a French student on the return leg from an exchange visit to South America. Indeed, on our flight from London to France, Anne-Marie and I had also used false names.

  Anne-Marie had dyed her hair. She had cut it short. She wore oversized glasses and carried a novel by an unknown avant garde writer nobody had ever understood. Her clothes were baggy and she looked a good stone heavier than she really was. Nobody would have thought she looked like the photo they circulated when the search started. Long dark hair, a great figure and always elegantly dressed in one or another designer label.

  I had put on a straggly wig, coloured contact lenses and a long brown tweed coat of the type that went out of fashion in the early sixties. I was the personification of an ageing hippy. Not the conservative banker whose only concession to personal taste was slightly long hair, nestling just over his ears.

  It had all been so easy.

  The bank trusted me. I was authorised to make large payments but had needed a second person to approve the one for a billion dollars. That had been simple for I often needed to make large value payments on a rushed basis. Jim was heading out to a meeting. He did not realise that the agreement he gave was for a series of dubious transfers to unusual locations. He would be fired for negligence. He would be unemployable for a long time. Serve the bastard right! I had picked him intentionally. He had already been the end of many good peoples’ careers. Their only crime was that they had stood in his way. Now he would know how it felt to be on the receiving end. It was tough luck, Jim. You never got to taste life at the top despite your ambition!

  First International Bank never got to earn much interest on the dollars they retained. They were traced and had to be returned. Unfortunately the other nine hundred million dollars brought more trouble than they had bargained for. Regulators thought they were implicated in the transfers. Nobody believed that they could be so stupid even in a business where clean fingernails rate higher than IQ points. The major banks shunned them. Clients started to move to other banks. Most of the clients and their new chosen banks were as bad as First International, but they had the advantage of not having been caught. Hot money does not like high profiles. It attracts the wrong sort of attention. So it’s Adios First International. You did not deserve to survive.

  Do I regret my actions for my old employers lost close to a billion dollars? Not really for they could afford it. Better to lose it, if they had to lose it, to us than in lending to property sharks or corrupt regimes. They were dumb to trust me. They were dumb to give me the authority. They were dumb to leave me in a role where I was bored. But then that gave me the time to work out the plans, even while they paid me.

  They will not trace the De Roches, as we were then known, or the other alibis we had to adopt on our road back to legitimacy. We look different from the old days when we were the Ryder family. In France we changed identities again. And since then, we have changed further. Plastic surgery, a healthier lifestyle, a good tan and hair dye has seen to that. And once again that was achieved by way of a trail through many countries. We spent time in Latin America, Switzerland and the USA. They all validated our forged papers with their visas and entry stamps, and helped change our appearances and our identity pictures with the rare abandon that is normal with a million dollar spend.

  Once Charles had arrived from Latin America, we got down to business. Laundering the money would be easy. We needed to allow time for the trail to get cold. So we drove from Paris to the South of France and rented a place in the holiday resort of La Croix Valmer. It was smart but not ostentatious. It was discreet.

  We headed along the coast to Cannes and walked into the imposing branch of one of the large French banks, putting the rest of the cash into a safe deposit box and keeping back only a sum for our expenses.

  Our plan was simple. We would lay low for a year or so. We now had two things to do. Change our appearances and let the trail go cold. That would take three to six months and take us through to spring

  The first challenge was to move the cash into a legal bank account and establish a track record. And then we had to do the same with the rest of the money we had moved from Cayman. Once we were legal, we could move out of the shadows. Charles would be fine as the front man, but I had got to keep low for the rest of my life. You don’t suddenly burst onto the scene at my age. And Ryder would always be taboo as a name. And, in any event, we liked La Croix Valmer and that region of France. This would be our long term base.

  My story would be both simple and credible. I would have taken early retirement to the South of France after a fairly successful business career. I would be well off but not flash. We would be unmemorable. I could take that for a year or so before we set off anew. I would tell my new friends that I got bored in retirement. I would want to join in the rough and tumble of the financial markets again. And indeed I would, not full time and not as the front man, but definitely in the swing of the money game.

  We would say that Charles had got bored with working for others and was setting up a hedge fund with some of his and my former major clients. We would say that he was drawing up his plans and would often be visiting us. In reality his and my prime role was to launder the money we had stashed away in cash in Cannes and round the world in a myriad of bank accounts.

  “Dad, you never explained why you chose that bank in Cannes,” commented Charles. “After all it’s hardly a top rate bank, even by French standards”

  He was right. It was a prime example of a bank with ambitions to be a leading player on the world stage. And it had fallen on hard times. I smiled as I thought through the falls so many big names had taken.

  Midland Bank had been ruined by paying through the nose for Crocker National in California; and then being forced to sell that out for a song to the hard me
n of Wells Fargo. Wells’ background pitted them against armed robbery. In the deal with Midland they showed they could make more money than the robbers without even getting their pens dirty!

  A trader with unlimited authority had destroyed Barings. He had taken them for nearly a billion. Did they know about it? Perhaps they did, perhaps not. Typically they did not feel the need to ask questions when the going was good. Typically they cried foul when the chips were down. Typically, they were horrified when they learnt that all their friends elsewhere in the City of London, who would have bailed them out in the old days, had been sent into early retirement to their country estates. And poor Barings, they ended up in the arms of a Dutch savings bank that still yearned for global fame.

  The ups and downs of the banking world had caused many to go down or go near the brink. Continental Illinois of Chicago, Bank of Credit and Commerce International of Luxembourg, Herstatt of Germany and Ambrosiana of Italy were just a few of the famous names that over-stretched themselves and were allowed to fall. Many others did the same but were deemed too big to fail. However, many people never knew how close they came to opening a paper and seeing their bank was bust.

  My chosen French bank was one of the banks that had been near the brink. It was dependent on state handouts. It was forced to sell off assets. I felt its staff had to be demoralised as they read, day after day, of its problems. I doubted that they would question too much. They would surely be only too pleased to get the rental of their vault. They would not see any of the money for I had no interest in their type of banking.

  I had established a series of accounts at discrete banks and most of our cash would end up there. They were Banque Fucquet in Geneva; Bankhaus Hochzeit in Zurich; the Monte Carlo branch of United Bank of Europe. Finally, I had a further but small account at the Jersey offices of my former employer. The last was from a sense of duty, or perhaps a well developed taste for irony.