Avenger

by Frederick Forsyth

  He had first been brought to, and lodged in, a precinct house in midtown. When a sufficient number of miscreants were gracing the cells of the precinct house, they were brought down to the Criminal Courts Building and relodged there on the timeless and unvarying diet of baloney and cheese sandwiches.

  Then the wheels had ground their remorseless course. The rap sheet showed a short litany of minor street crime: hubcaps, vending machines, shoplifting. With that formality complete, Washington Lee was ready for arraignment. That was when Judge Hasselblad demanded that the youth be represented.

  On the face of it, this was a youth born to nothing and with nothing, who would graduate from truancy to pilfering and thence a life of crime and frequent periods as a guest of the citizens of New York State somewhere ‘up the river’. So how on earth had he sweet-talked the East River Bank, which did not even have a branch in Bedford Stuyvesant, out of $10,000? No answer. Not in the file. Just a bare-bones charge and an angry and vengeful Manhattan-based bank. Grand Larceny in the 3rd Degree. Seven years’ hard time.

  Dexter grabbed three hours’ sleep, saw Amanda Jane off to school, kissed Angela goodbye and came back to Center Street. It was in an interview room in the Tombs that he was able to drag his story out of the black kid.

  At school he had shone at nothing. His grades were a disaster. The future offered nothing but the road to dereliction, crime and jail. And then one of the school teachers, maybe smarter than the others or just kinder, had allowed the graceless boy access to his Hewlett Packard computer. (Here, Dexter was reading between the lines of the halting narrative.)

  It was like offering the boy Yehudi Menuhin a chance to hold a violin. He stared at the keys, he stared at the screen, and he began to make music. The teacher, clearly a computer buff when personal machines were the exception rather than the norm, was intrigued. That was five years earlier.

  Washington Lee began to study. He also began to save. When he opened and gutted vending machines, he did not smoke the proceeds, or drink them, or shoot them into his arm, or wear them as clothes. He saved them until he could buy a cheap bankrupt-stock computer in a closing-down sale.

  ‘So how did you swindle the East River Bank?’

  ‘I broke into their mainframe,’ said the kid.

  For a moment Cal Dexter thought a jemmy might have been involved so he asked his client to explain. For the first time the boy became animated. He was talking about the only thing he knew.

  ‘Man, have you any idea how weak some of the defensive systems created to protect databases really are?’

  Dexter conceded it was not a query that had ever detained him. Like most non-experts, he knew that computer-system designers created ‘firewalls’ to prevent unauthorized access to hyper-sensitive databases. How they did it, let alone how to outwit them, had never occurred to him. He teased the story out of Washington Lee.

  The East River Bank had stored every detail of every account holder in a huge database. As clients’ financial situations are regarded by most clients as very private, access to those details involved bank officers punching in an elaborate system of coded signals. Unless these were absolutely correct, the computer screen would simply flash the message ‘Access Denied’. A third erroneous attempt to break in would start alarm signals flashing at head office.

  Washington Lee had broken the codes without triggering the alarms, to the point where the main computer buried below the bank’s HQ in Manhattan would obey his instructions. In short, he had performed coitus non-interruptus on a very expensive piece of technology.

  His instructions were simple. He ordered the computer to identify every savings and deposit account held by clients of the bank and the monthly interest paid into those accounts. Then he ordered it to deduct one quarter from each interest payment and transfer that quarter into his own account.

  As he did not have one, he opened one at the local Chase Manhattan. Had he known enough to transfer the money to the Bahamas, he would probably have got away with it.

  It is quite a calculation to ascertain interest due on one’s deposit account because it will depend on the ambient interest rate over the earning period, and that will fluctuate, and to get it to the nearest quarter takes time. Most people do not have that time. They trust the bank to do the maths and get it right.

  Not Mr Tolstoy. He may have been eighty but his mind was still sharp as a pin. His problem was boredom, whiling away his hours in his tiny apartment on West 108th Street. Having spent his life as an actuary for a major insurance company, he was convinced that even nickels and dimes count, if multiplied enough times. He spent his time trying to catch the bank out in error. One day, he did.

  He became convinced his interest due for the month of April was a quarter short. He checked the figures for March. Same thing. He went back two more months. Then he complained.

  The local manager would have given him the missing dollar, but rules are rules. He filed the complaint. Head office thought it was a single glitch in a single account, but ran random checks on half a dozen other accounts. Same thing. Then the computer people were called in.

  They established that the master computer had done this to every checking account in the bank and had been doing so for twenty months. They asked it why.

  ‘Because you told me to,’ said the computer.

  ‘No, we didn’t,’ said the boffins.

  ‘Well someone did,’ said the computer.

  That was when they called in Dan Witkowski. It did not take very long. The transfers of all these nickels were to an account at the Chase Manhattan over in Brooklyn. Client name: Washington Lee.

  ‘Tell me, how much did all this net you?’ asked Dexter.

  ‘Just shy of a million dollars.’

  The lawyer bit the end off his pencil. No wonder the charge was so vague. ‘In excess of ten thousand dollars’ indeed. The very size of the theft gave him an idea.

  Mr Lou Ackerman enjoyed his breakfast. For him it was the best meal of the day; never hurried like lunch, never over-rich like banquet dinners. He enjoyed the shock of the icy juice, the crunch of the cereal flakes, the fluffiness of well-scrambled eggs, the aroma of the freshly perked Blue Mountain coffee. On his balcony above Central Park West, in the cool of a summer morning before the real heat came upon the day, it was a joy. And it was a shame of Mr Calvin Dexter to spoil it.

  When his Filipino manservant brought the pasteboard card to his terrace, he glanced at the words ‘attorney-at-law’, frowned and wondered who his visitor might be. The name rang a bell. He was about to tell his manservant to ask the visitor to come to the bank later in the morning, when a voice behind the Filipino said:

  ‘I know it’s impertinence, Mr Ackerman, and for that I apologize. But if you will give me ten minutes I suggest you will be glad we did not meet in the glare of attention at your office.’

  He shrugged and gestured to a chair across the table.

  ‘Tell Mrs Ackerman I’m in conference at the breakfast table,’ he instructed the Filipino. Then to Dexter, ‘Keep it short, Mr Dexter.’

  ‘I will. You are pressing for the prosecution of my client, Mr Washington Lee, for having allegedly skimmed almost a million dollars from your clients’ accounts. I think it would be wise to drop the charges.’

  The CEO of the East River Bank could have kicked himself. You show a little kindness and what do you get? A ball-breaker ruining your breakfast.

  ‘Forget it, Mr Dexter. Conversation over. No way. The boy goes down. There must be deterrence to this sort of thing. Company policy. Good day.’

  ‘Pity. You see, the way he did it was fascinating. He broke into your computer mainframe. He waltzed through all your firewalls, your security guards. No one is supposed to be able to do that.’

  ‘Your time is up, Mr Dexter.’

  ‘A few seconds more. There will be other breakfasts. You have about a million clients, checking account and deposit account. They think their funds are safe with you. Later this week a skinny black kid fr
om the ghetto is going to stand up in court and say that if he did it, any half-assed amateur could empty any of your clients’ accounts after a few hours of electronic probing. How do you think your clients are going to like that?’

  Ackerman put down his coffee and stared across the park.

  ‘It’s not true, and why should they believe it?’

  ‘Because the Press benches will be packed and the TV and radio media will be outside. I think up to a quarter of your clients could decide to move bank.’

  ‘We’ll announce we are installing a whole new safeguard system. The best on the market.’

  ‘But that’s what you were supposed to have had before. And a Bedford Stuyvesant kid with no school grades broke it. You were lucky. You got the whole million dollars back. Supposing it happened again, for tens of millions in one awful weekend, and it went to the Caymans. The bank would have to reinstate. Would your board appreciate the humiliation?’

  Lou Ackerman thought of his board. Some of the institutional shareholders were people like Pearson-Lehman, Morgan Stanley. The sort of people who hated to be humiliated. The sort who might have a man’s job.

  ‘It’s that bad, uh?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘All right. I’ll call the DA’s office and say we have no further interest in proceeding, since we all have our money back. Mind you, the DA can still proceed if he wants to.’

  ‘Then you’ll be very persuasive, Mr Ackerman. All you have to say is: “Scam, what scam?” After that, mum is the word, wouldn’t you say?’

  He rose and turned to leave. Ackerman was a good loser.

  ‘We could always do with a good lawyer, Mr Dexter.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea. Take Washington Lee on the payroll. I’d have thought fifty thousand dollars a year is about right.’

  Ackerman was on his feet, Blue Mountain brown-staining the napery.

  ‘What the hell should I want that lowlife on the payroll for?’

  ‘Because when it comes to computers, he’s the best. He’s proved it. He sliced through a security system that cost you a mint to install, and he did it with a fifty-dollar sardine can. He could install for you a totally impenetrable system. You could make a sales point out of it: the safest database west of the Atlantic. He’s much safer inside the tent pissing out.’

  Washington Lee was released twenty-four hours later. He was not quite sure why. Neither was the ADA. But the bank had had a bout of corporate amnesia and the District Attorney’s office had its usual backlog. Why insist?

  The bank sent a stretch limo to the Tombs to pick up their new staffer. He had never been in one before. He sat in the back and looked at the head of his lawyer poking in the window.

  ‘Man, I don’t know what you did or how you did it. One day maybe I can pay you back.’

  ‘OK, Washington, maybe one day you will.’

  It was 20 July 1988.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Killer

  When Yugoslavia was ruled by Marshal Tito it was virtually a crime-free society. Molesting a tourist was unthinkable, women safely walked the streets and racketeering was non-existent.

  This was odd, considering that the seven provinces that made up Yugoslavia, cobbled together by the Western Allies in 1918, had traditionally produced some of the most vicious and violent gangsters in Europe.

  The reason was that post-1948 the Yugoslav government established a compact with the Yugoslav underworld. The deal was simple: you can do whatever you like and we will turn a blind eye under one condition – you do it abroad. Belgrade simply exported its entire crime world.

  The speciality targets for the Yugoslav crime bosses were Italy, Austria, Germany and Sweden. The reason was simple. By the mid-1960s the Turks and the Yugoslavs had become the first wave of ‘guest workers’ in richer countries to the north, meaning that they were encouraged to come and do the mucky jobs that the over-indulged indigenes no longer wanted to do.

  Every large ethnic movement brings its own crime world with it. The Italian Mafia arrived in New York with the Italian immigrants; Turkish criminals soon joined the Turkish ‘guest worker’ communities across Europe. The Yugoslavs were the same, but here the agreement was more structured.

  Belgrade got it both ways. Its thousands of Yugoslavs working abroad sent their hard currency home each week; as a communist state Yugoslavia was always an economic mess but the regular inflow of hard currency hid the fact.

  So long as Tito repudiated Moscow, the USA and NATO remained pretty relaxed about what else he did. Indeed, he ranked as one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned countries right through the Cold War. The beautiful Dalmatian coast along the Adriatic became a tourist Mecca, bringing in even more foreign exchange, and the sun shone.

  Internally, Tito ran a brutal regime where dissidents or opponents were concerned, but kept it quiet and discreet. The compact with the gangsters was run and supervised not so much by the civil police but by the secret police, known as State Security or UDBA.

  It was the UDBA that laid down the terms. The gangsters preying on the Yugoslav communities abroad could return home for R and R with impunity, and did. They built themselves villas on the coast and mansions in the capital. They made their donations to the pension funds of the chiefs of the UDBA, and occasionally they were required to carry out a ‘wet job’ with no invoice and no traceback. The mastermind of this cosy arrangement was the longtime intelligence boss, the fat and fearsome Slovenian Stane Dolanc.

  Inside Yugoslavia there was a little prostitution, but well under local police control, and some lucrative smuggling which, again, helped official pension funds. But violence, other than the state kind, was forbidden. Young tearaways reached the level of running rival district street gangs, stealing cars (not belonging to tourists) and brawling. If they wanted to get more serious than that they had to leave. Those hard of hearing on this issue could find themselves in a remote prison camp with the cell key dropped down a deep well.

  Marshal Tito was no fool, but he was mortal. He died in 1980 and things began to fall apart.

  In the blue-collar Belgrade district of Zemun a garage mechanic called Zilic had a son in 1956 and named him Zoran. From an early age it became plain his nature was vicious and deeply violent. By the age of ten, his teachers shuddered at the mention of him.

  But he had one thing that would later set him apart from other Belgrade gangsters like Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan. He was smart.

  Skipping school from fourteen onwards, he became leader of a teenage gang involved in the usual pleasures of stealing cars, brawling, drinking and ogling the local girls. After one particular ‘rumble’ between two gangs, three members of the opposing team had been so badly beaten with bicycle chains that they hovered between life and death for several days. The local police chief decided that enough was enough.

  Zilic was hauled in, taken to the basement by two stalwarts with lengths of rubber hose, and beaten till he could not stand. There was no ill-will involved; the police felt they needed him to concentrate on what they were saying.

  The police chief then gave the youth a word of advice, or several. It was 1972, the boy was sixteen and a week later he left the country. But he already had an introduction to take up. In Germany, he joined the gang of Ljuba Zemunac – his surname was adopted, taken from the suburb of his birth. He also came from Zemun.

  Zemunac was an impressively vicious mobster who would later be shot to death in the lobby of a German courthouse, but Zoran Zilic stayed with him for ten years, earning the older man’s admiration as the most sadistic enforcer he had ever employed. In protection racketeering, the ability to inspire terror is vital. Zilic could do that and enjoy every moment.

  In 1982 Zilic left and formed his own gang at the age of twenty-six. This might have caused a turf war with his old employer, but Zemunac shuffled off the mortal coil soon afterwards. Zilic remained at the head of his gang in Germany and Austria for the next five years. He had long mastered German and English
. But back home, things were changing.

  There was no one to replace Marshal Tito, whose war record as a partisan against the Germans and sheer force of personality had kept together this unnatural six-province federation for so long.

  The decade of the Eighties was marked by a series of coalition governments that rose and fell, but the spirit of secession and separate independence was raging through Slovenia and Croatia in the north, and Macedonia in the south.

  In 1987, Zilic cast in his lot with a shabby little excommunist party hack whom others had overlooked or underestimated. He sported two qualities he liked: an absolute ruthlessness in the pursuit of power, and a level of cunning and deviousness that would disarm rivals until it was too late. He had spotted the coming man. From 1987 he offered to ‘take care’ of the opponents of Slobodan Milosevic. There was no refusal and no charge.

  By 1989 Milosevic had realized that communism was dead in the water; the horse to mount was that of extreme Serb nationalism. In fact, he brought not one but four horsemen to his country, those of the Apocalypse. Zilic served him almost to the end.

  Yugoslavia was breaking up. Milosevic posed as the man to save the union, but made no mention that he intended to do this through genocide, known as ethnic cleansing. Inside Serbia, the province around Belgrade, his popularity stemmed from the belief that he would save Serbs everywhere from non-Serb persecution.

  To do this, they had first to be persecuted. If the Croatians or Bosnians were slow on the uptake, this had to be arranged. A small local massacre would normally provoke the resident majority to turn on the Serbs among them. Then Milosevic could send in the army to save the Serbs. It was the gangsters, turned paramilitary ‘patriots’, who acted as his agents provocateurs.

  Where up until 1989 the Yugoslav state had kept its gangster underworld at arm’s length and abroad, Milosevic took them into full partnership at home.

  Like so many second-raters elevated to state power, Milosevic became fascinated by money. The sheer size of the sums involved acted on him like a snake-charmer’s pipe to a cobra. It was not, for him, the luxury that money could buy. He remained personally frugal to the end. It was money as another form of power that hypnotized him. By the time he fell, it was estimated by the successor Yugoslavian government that he and his cronies had embezzled and diverted to their own foreign accounts about twenty billion dollars.