by Jack Dylan
Chapter 45
Lunch
Tony Ambrose sat in the ‘honoured guest’ seat, to the left of the senior officer commanding Regional Special Services along the south-west coast of Turkey. It was a rare occasion of quietly smug satisfaction at a job that had worked out better than they had dared hope.
Unseen by the privileged lunch party in the officers' mess was a group of four bemused English holidaymakers in a little hotel dining room in Gocek. Just as they were about to sit down to lunch an official car had drawn up at the hotel entrance. The group was summoned to the foyer to hear a formal greeting delivered by a young lieutenant chosen for his facility with languages. In perfect English he conveyed the greetings of the regional commander of joint naval and coastguard operations, and hoped they would accept the commander's gift of two bottles of the officers' mess special reserve champagne. He asked them to please make use of the champagne to raise a toast over lunch to the commander's special guests, Captain and Mrs Fox, who were engaged with meeting some very important officials over a formal lunch at the Coastguard base.
"I told you so," whispered Patricia to the bemused party. "I knew things weren't as they seemed. Oh I'm so glad I left that note for Maggie. I do hope they know we didn't think they were in the wrong."
Meanwhile back in the officers' mess, the putting-together of all the pieces of the puzzle was progressing apace. Tony Ambrose was able to give some explanation but he also wanted some from Alex.
"What I can't understand is how you got the whole show started in the first place. How on earth did you manage to convince someone senior enough to listen to the story without throwing the book at you right at the outset?"
Alex laughed.
"Well believe it or not, that is down to the most unlikely group of people I have ever met, who I would never have guessed could help me find a way out of the mess I was in."
"I think you'd better explain," said a puzzled Ambrose.
"Not Lavinia?" guessed the shrewd Maggie.
"Well actually Lavinia and her book group. If you met them on the street you'd think they were the most ineffectual group of upper-class twits that you could possibly imagine. But yes, it is Lavinia's book group that deserve the thanks for getting this started. And believe me they're going to get a big thank you from me as soon as I can get there."
Alex had the attention of the whole table. It was outside the experience of the naval and coastguard officers, never mind Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, to imagine how a book group could start a process that led to one of the most significant seizures in a smuggling operation for years.
"I think it might be to do with the fact that it was Dublin," started Alex. "There is something about the Irish mentality that makes things possible. It was a very strange experience to be quizzed by that group and to find that they could take on board the most outlandish story as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and then go on to assume that they could help find a way out of it."
Alex took them back to the night when Lavinia had found him amateurishly extracting the negative from her dark-room. He described the scene later in Delaney's restaurant when they questioned and probed him. They didn't disapprove, and they seemed to be able to identify with the way life could work out. 'Once one thing goes wrong, everything starts to go wrong ' wasn't a far-fetched idea to them.
He described how Lavinia subtly created the atmosphere of shared problem-solving, and he had found that almost effortlessly the mood shifted from blame to communal solution-seeking. Perhaps because they were used to reading a great variety of fiction and exploring far-fetched plots, they didn't find his story to be shameful or unbelievable. Like reading a complex book, they all focused on understanding the issues and the characters, not on reacting with blame or judgement.
He related how William, exuding empathy for someone whose business had gone wrong, had helped him explain the sequence of events that took him from safe and humdrum management consultancy to involvement with frightening criminality. He remembered how it felt to be able to explain and share that feeling of falling uncontrollably down a helter-skelter of increasing complexity and irretrievable implication in criminality. And they nodded, sympathised, and helped him explain it all.
Sinead, who he thought wouldn't say boo to a goose, had paper and pencil on the table between the wine glasses, and had deftly drawn diagrams showing the key players and their relationships - highlighting the steps along the way and annotating the diagrams and names with notes about dates and involvements. Steve had treated the whole story as if it happened every day - it was just another example of the ways of the world, no more remarkable than the way restaurants charged excessive mark-ups on the wine they drank that night. The atmosphere of 'So what?' had enabled Alex to calmly sort out in his own mind more clearly than ever before just how he had been manipulated.
He still couldn't quite get over the way in which the book group didn't just take on board the story, but the way in which they assumed they could help him find a way out of it. The blind optimistic faith in being able to sort things out was not an Anglo-Saxon characteristic. Something of the Celtic suspension of disbelief was necessary to avoid being defeated by the enormity of the problem, and to sustain the belief that it was solvable.
Add to that the assumption that it was possible to make contacts at the highest level, and the totally un-English process started to make sense. Once they had set out on Sinead's pages the outline of the story and the seriousness of the league they were involved with, they made the easy leap to the conclusion that only someone at the highest level could make the right people listen and create an escape route for Alex.
He hadn't quite believed it when James asked to borrow a mobile phone so that he could ring a friend in the Irish prime-minister's office in order to get the name of the right person to talk to. Here was a guy who was unemployed, couldn't afford his own mobile phone, but could call up people in the corridors of power and chat to them as if they were old friends. Alex had quickly realised that this was just what they were. James had old friends from school days, and from his bank job, who had fingers on all the buttons they needed.
The rest fell into place with remarkable ease. William made sure that Alex received the guarantee of immunity before implicating himself with HMRC, and accompanied him when a three-way meeting was quickly arranged between Alex and the UK and Irish officials. Hours rather than days seemed to be needed to get the right people together.
Once the Customs people had checked out the story, and made the connections with the longstanding but unprovable suspicions they harboured about Katharos, the operational officers began to get excited about the prospect they had on their hands.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Alex addressed Tony Ambrose, “is why such a relatively minor player prompted such a high level of response. Katharos had been an illegal for years, but by all accounts he was a minor player in the great scheme of things.”
“Ah,” said Ambrose. “This is where the other key to the mystery lies.”
“Go on then,” Maggie was impatient now to know it all.
“It really goes back to human nature really,” Ambrose was enjoying himself. “Picture the two young men in the story. You have Iannis Junior, all his life playing second fiddle to his father, and desperately needing to impress both his father and his Turkish friend Arif. Then you have Arif, who was making a good enough living, but was really competing with Iannis to be the big guy. Arif was desperate to break out from the small-time smuggling and crime that he was involved in. So you have two dangerous factors in the same scenario – each amplifying the other’s bravado and willingness to take risks, and neither willing to admit fear or caution. Then their need to prove themselves meant that they weren’t as discreet as they should have been.
“There had been rumours on the international scene of a really big operation that was going to involve Turkey and London. Informants on the ground had been feeding in snippits for almost a year abo
ut the hints that these two young players were incautiously dropping when they wanted to impress people – usually girls they never suspected were informers.”
“Good old human nature!” agreed Alex. “But we were still talking about small packages that I transferred – so why so much attention?”
“You really don’t know what you were dealing with this time do you?” Ambrose looked sympathetically at him. “Probably just as well.”
The Turkish officers were as satisfied looking as Tony Ambrose. The whole bi-national group of officers looked like proud parents about to spring a birthday surprise on an excited child. The look of unsupressibly smug delight was injecting an air of carnival gaiety that needed all the formality of the surroundings and the uniforms to keep in check.
“The way these things work you can’t infallibly join all the dots at the outset. It takes an experienced pair of eyes to sift the rubbish from the worthwhile bits of intelligence, and then something of an imaginative leap to see how it all might fit together. We end up with a long series of ‘if’s, and most of the time they don’t come to anything, but this time they really did.”
“So for goodness’ sake tell us!” erupted Alex.
“Sorry. Of course. We knew that Iannis Junior was crowing about a big operation that was a once-in-a-lifetime. We knew about his link with Arif, who was making similar hints in Olu Deniz. Quite separately there was an operation ongoing for years trying to crack down on the trade from the Congo. You’ve heard of “blood diamonds?”
Alex and Maggie nodded silently.
“Well, there had been a few quite successful operations run through South Africa and Zambia that had disrupted some long-standing supply routes. The section in Interpol that co-ordinates intelligence about diamond smuggling reported that new routes were being sought after the successful disruption of routes through Angola, Zambia, and Sierra Leone. You might remember the fuss about UN vehicles being implicated in the smuggling?”
Alex and Maggie shook their heads.
“That’s by-the-by. The key point is that everyone was on the lookout for indications of a new route, and there were obvious suspicions that a route up through Sudan to the Eastern Mediterranean should be guarded against. There were enough snippits of information to make a viable scenario, and the Arif to Iannis link completed the possible picture. You happened to provide a hugely tempting key to the operation to all the right people at just the right time. It was fantastically lucky that you made the right contacts and that the right people joined the dots as they did. We couldn’t believe our luck, and didn’t want you to know just how much was riding on your operation.”
“I’m rather glad I didn’t,” breathed Alex. “But what value are you talking about?”
“Oh the value of that specific shipment isn’t the main issue. It was substantial no doubt, but the key thing was predicting and disrupting a new route. It enabled us to trace back at least a few steps down the chain, and while the big players are still sitting safely in DRC, they will have been shocked at the loss of a route, and hopefully driven to try other methods that we’ll also be able to identify and block. It also means that a substantial amount of money is not available for the purchase of yet more weapons for the DRC warlords.”
“I really would like to know how much I’ve been carrying in my anchor locker,” begged Alex.
“I’m afraid you’ll just have to guess that until my masters decide what if anything they are going to say in a press release. Sometimes these things are the material for boasting and publicising, other times they are kept very quiet. It’s up to the politicos to decide what’s to happen this time. The key thing is that the funds for buying more weapons have been denied to the bad guys, and we have continued to make clear that we are on their case. They have to work harder to find routes for their disgusting merchandise and that takes time.”
“Oh Tony, that’s not fair,” groaned Maggie. “I’ve got to know what we’ve just carried.”
“And I’m not allowed to tell you,” parried Tony. But relenting when he saw Maggie’s face he said, “Work it out for yourself. Alex can guess the weight of the package, probably 4 or 5 kilos, and it is public knowledge that uncut diamonds of basic quality fetch at least $2000 per carat on the market. These are likely to have been high quality uncut, so the value might be many, many times that. A carat, before you ask, is about 0.2 of a gram.”
Maggie’s eyes focused on a distant point on the ceiling as she worked out how many 0.2 grams were in a gram, and how many grams in 5 kilos.
“Gosh.” Was all she managed to say.
Chapter 46
Dublin: November 2006
The book group
Lavinia sat watching the faces of the others in the book group as they struggled to keep a coherent critical discussion flowing. Her own distraction was probably affecting all the others and legitimising the uncharacteristic lack of focus and energy that was dragging the process down.
“I’m not at all convinced by the denouement,” ventured Steve, passing judgement on the final resolution of the latest LeCarré novel.
“Oh I don’t know,” mused William. “I rather like it when the loose ends aren’t all tied up and the good guy doesn’t necessarily come out well at the end.”
“I hate that,” declared Sinead, surprising herself with the vehemence of her assertion.
“Perhaps it depends on one’s view of life,” suggested James bravely.
“Go on James,” prompted Lavinia, tuning in to the conversation again.
“Well it seems to me that some of us are better than others at organising things and putting life into a structured system.” He smiled privately at Sinead as he said it. “People who are good at that probably also like books to be orderly, and don’t like loose ends left hanging about. Others of us are less structured and more able to live with a bit of a mess in life, so we are more accepting of a book that reflects that imperfect and messy state. A neat and tidy ending would seem a bit unrealistic to us.”
They continued to debate the extent to which their personal characteristics determined their reaction to Salvo’s uncertain fate at the end of the book. They disliked the easy categorisation but had to agree that there was at least an element of truth in it. The good-natured challenging and analysis left them in a reflective and introspective mood as Lavinia poured the teas and coffees that wrapped up the evening.
William was watching Lavinia with a distant, wary, longing. He wondered if his caution at actually declaring and resolving his feelings was based on the need to avoid exposing himself to fresh hurt and disappointment. Was it more comfortable to live with his enjoyably proprietorial fantasy about Lavinia, rather than to risk translating it into an imperfect reality? He suspected that the answer was ‘yes’, it was much more comfortable and less threatening, for now at least. But what, he wondered, would happen to that comfortable state if Lavinia found a lover? Was it better to live with that unresolved risk than to take a chance with reality? His inaction seemed to be the mute answer, unsatisfactory though it would be to a different personality.
James and Sinead exchanged eye-contact meaningfully. James had come to value the drive for order and resolution that Sinead brought to their relationship. His own nature allowed him to wallow in unresolved and unsatisfactory possibilities without ever precipitating the simple actions necessary to achieve clarity and definite answers. His ability to avoid issues had been thoroughly demonstrated in his working and private lives, leading to disaster and frustration in each. He was unspeakably grateful for the sublime counter-balance to his ineffectual nature that Sinead injected into their joint existence.
Sinead for her part loved James for the very characteristics that he found weak and even despicable in himself. She had spent her entire life experiencing the inner existence of an ordered person: one who could analyse, categorise, and organise the details into solid, dependable ways of looking at the world. There wasn’t much room left for the dreamy uncertainties that seeme
d to be so enjoyable to others. The book group had answered that quest for the different side of life in more ways than she had expected. The enjoyment of fiction, and a consciousness of the rich variety of approaches to conveying stories, provided a positive emotional bonus for her. It was quite different from the logical, analytical dissection of literature that she had previously experienced. She had gradually come to value the way in which fictional accounts could usefully deepen her own insights and understanding in the real world – a world where the complexity of human emotion and motivation led to a messiness and apparent irrationality that usually disturbed her. The stories in themselves weren’t the answers, but the thought processes that they prompted helped create analogies and insights that had their parallels in her experience of the world. It was complex, but more satisfactory than her old ‘cut and dried’ viewpoint.
But it was James, or perhaps Sinead’s acceptance of her feelings for James, that had been the real revelation. How strange that the simple steps she had taken to do something about her dissatisfaction with her ordered and predictable life as one of ‘the girls’ could have led to such a reward. There was an amplification of possibilities, a terrifying and exhilarating multiplication of avenues that led not only to potential pain and anguish, but equally to possibilities of pleasure, excitement and comfort in the confusing cocktail of a relationship. Where was it going to lead? She put off resolving that issue. Her structured mind came to her rescue with the highly rational escape route that required the completion of her accountancy studies before addressing the long-term issues with James.