The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  We entered the hotel as easily as could be. There were no bad guys running around the lobby to ambush us. The morning staff was still on duty, and there were no incidents on our way up to the room.

  In the elevator on the way up Godsen pulled out her earpiece and pin mic, sticking it on the inside of her jacket lapel. When we got off on our floor, she established a comm link with Westwood, who met us at the door, and we slipped inside, no knocking, no standing around the hallway unlocking the door. Nice touch.

  Therese had gone to bed for a nap, after they’d ordered a lunch that had turned out to be excellent. There was a pot of hot coffee on the table in the sitting room. I was hungry, but I just poured a coffee and doubled up on the sugar. Now it was time to get down to business. We each found a comfortable seat in the living room area and settled in. First things first.

  “Evie, could you order something to eat for Ronnie and I, and we might as well let Therese sleep a bit while she can. When her part comes up, we’ll wake her, if necessary. In the meantime, I’m going to hand control back to you Ronnie. I think we’ve proved that we can work as a team, and we have to maintain that throughout the mission.” I turned to Godsen, noticing that she seemed to be following all of this quite well. A big change from this morning. “Take it away, Colonel.”

  Evie was sitting next to a side table with a telephone, but got up to use the bedside one in the other room to order our late lunch. I put my feet up on the coffee table, laid my head back and closed my eyes taking advantage of the brief interlude while Godsen went to get her file folders in preparation for a point by point brief of our plans, and the tasks that were to be assigned to each of us. She had just gotten herself settled again when Evie came back and took her seat as well.

  I sighed and put my feet back on the floor, then addressed the both of them. “Is it just me, or are you guys really tired too?”

  Evie gave a strained laugh, and said, “If I were you, I’d be a hell of a lot more than tired. You’ve had a pretty big day so far, Jeffry and it isn’t over yet.”

  Godsen took over then and started laying out the situation as it seemed to be developing. Basically, it was an updated rehash of the original plan, starting with her meeting at the bank with Herr Schnorrer, and the insertion of Evie in an undercover position, with Therese and I doing spotter duty. Then she surprised me by turning the floor over to me and requesting that I disseminate the information that I had referred to earlier, and then we could reshape the basic structure of the plan accordingly. This was where it was going to take a twist like the Möbius strip.

  Leaning to one side in my seat, I pulled the four pages of printed download from Walter out of my back pocket, and unfolded it. I put my feet firmly on the floor and rested my forearms on my knees holding the papers in my hands. I didn’t know of any nice way to say the bad part, so I’d get that over with first, in a direct manner. Then we’d still have the good part to cheer us up, because by then I was sure we’d need it. First, I took a few minutes to read over the synopsis section again. Both Godsen and Westwood waited patiently for me to start showing the change in our inter-connected status since the day before. When I’d finished, I just dived in.

  “Ronnie, I have a ‘source’, as they say, and he’s always come through for me in the past, every time. When he can’t get at the information I want, it’s because it’s not on a computer network, or mainframe system with modem access, anywhere in the world. I know that sounds extreme, but I hope that you’ll trust me on this, because it’s true. I’ve known the man for thirty-six years.”

  Taking the time to do it right, I stared into Godsen’s eyes, and then Westwood’s. I could tell that they were ready to accept what I had to say. Things had changed a lot since yesterday, but maybe when they heard the news, they’d decide to disbelieve. I had no way of telling for sure how it would go down in the final analysis. I started at the beginning.

  “This thing spreads like a spiders’ web, across four continents, and one Island nation, and the main nexus is right here in Switzerland. Well, Geneva, to be exact.

  Someone in the Geneva offices of the Crassberg Group AG is right in the middle of a link to the company from each of the banks affected by these international thieves. It’s all encrypted, which will take forever and a day to break, or maybe just a day or two if they were really overconfident. Somehow, I doubt it.

  What we were able to trace was an e-mail trail from France to Ottawa and back.” Godsen’s ears perked right up at the mention of ‘Ottawa’, the Sacred Place of Power.

  “The link there is from the home numbers of one employee of each of two organizations. The import/export firm, Mondelle Et Fils Ltée., on the French end, and…” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “your very own Data Acquisition Section on the Ottawa side, Colonel.” I used the formal term of address to let her know I wasn’t kidding around.

  “Mondelle Et Fils Limitée is a wholly owned subsidiary of,” I looked at the paper in my hand. “Adventure Developments Inc., which is creating a franchised operation based on the All-In-One Resort Village concept. Like Jack Tarr Villages, for example. They have five Adventure Villages built already, but they haven’t sold the franchises as of yet, or put them on the market.

  One is for high rollers, set on the French Riviera, close to the Casinos of Monaco. That must have taken some cash. One is in the Swiss Alps, close to, but not as expensive as, Gstaad. One step beyond Robin Leach and his Lives of the Rich and Famous. Instead of showing you the glitz on your television, you get to take the trip yourself, even if you’re not part of the ‘Jet Set’.

  The other three are in South America, two in Brazil, and one in Venezuela. All private beach resorts. Plans for more are in the works, one to be located in Japan, centred around the ‘Cherry Blossom Festival’. Another is planned for the tiny Gulf of Aqaba, at the top of the Red Sea, a short swim from the Saudi border. The idea is to dive the Red Sea coral reefs.

  The strange part is that none of these places are open for business, yet five of them are supposed to be fully built and staffed by at least skeleton crews. In other words, ready for customers, but they don’t have any, and they’re not actively seeking them right now, either. The first meeting to offer these on the Franchise Market is set for about two months from now, in Manama, Bahrain.” Godsen wanted badly to ask a question, so I nodded encouraging her.

  “You’re saying that one of the people from my Data Acquisition Section is sending e-mail to a French company that’s owned by a firm that builds vacation getaway resorts. What’s the relevance here? They could be soliciting Franchisees.”

  “Bear with me. Adventure Villages Inc. is in turn owned by a holding company, based in the Bahamas. This holding company, which has only a number, so far as we know, is owned in turn by a Bahamian bank, The Banco Minaros. They hold the papers, anyway. The Crassberg Group AG owns fifty-one percent of that bank. Sort of. I’ll clear that up in a second.

  So in other words, the e-mail trail from France to Ottawa can be linked from Data Acquisition to Crassberg.” I let that hang in the air between the three of us, and no one said anything for a few moments. I took that opportunity to add the kicker.

  “Now, this becomes a bit speculative here, but it looks like Crassberg Group AG has no direct knowledge of this ownership vote in the Banco Minaros. That’s because the company openly owns just thirty percent, but the additional twenty-one percent required to have a controlling interest was recently purchased by the company executive invested with the task of keeping tabs on the operation of the bank, and submitting quarterly reports, and so on.

  The purchase of the shares was begun the day after the last quarterly report, and two weeks after the last bank job, and was completed one week later, giving the Crassberg executive in question the controlling vote when these shares are voted with the Crassberg shares. The shares are not in her name, by the way. They’re in the name of one of the members of Brazilian government. That name is still being traced and verified.


  On the first day of that week, the Director of Foreign Trade, who had been one of the founding members of the bank, and held a position on the board, died in an apparent attempt to do a good deed. He stopped by the side of the road in broad daylight to help a fellow motorist in distress. He was stabbed and robbed. Only passing witnesses, like, ‘I saw two cars parked there with their hoods up. One was red, and one was… hmm, blue?’ No direct witnesses, no leads. Unsolved.

  His shares came to thirty percent. Immediately after his death, an emergency session of the board of directors was convened, and those shares were put on the table for purchase. Exactly thirty percent was purchased by the Crassberg executive in charge of the Crassberg vote and the Crassberg interests. Then, nine percent went to the Chairman of the Board, a Mr. Charles Knightley. Apparently, this was from the Crassberg executive’s purchase of the thirty percent. ‘For Services Rendered’. The shares were traded at a fair market value, maybe a bit on the low side, but fair. The family of the Director of Foreign Trade, recently deceased, probably signed with no complete understanding of what they were giving up. That would be easy, as they were all still in shock over the murder of the family patriarch.

  The five founding members of the Banco Minaros had, over the last seventeen years, brought their then fledgling financial ‘Personal and Vacation Loan’ operation from an office suite over the jewelry and fashion boutiques of Rue du Rhone to a full-fledged bank, with a certified government charter and all.

  As for our Crassberg lady, her name is Heidi Meir. She works out of the Geneva office, but travels extensively. She maintains a small flat near her office, about a twenty-minute drive away. Across the border into France. All of the e-mail from France to Ottawa originates from a flat across the street from the one owned by this Heidi Meir. A flat occupied by a person named…” I checked the paper in my hands again. “Louise Contreville, the employee of Mondelle Et Fils Ltée. She covered her tracks well, using an alias, and rerouting through three countries, and three universities, each one of which she had hacked into, creating a false account and different name. She works out of her apartment, a virtual office setup, she doesn’t show up at the offices of Mondelle etc. She was hired more than a year ago, to do marketing research. Her ‘reports’, only go back as far as the leasing of the apartment, which is paid for by Mondelle. That was leased exactly six months ago. From the evidence, and, I have to admit, from an instinctual feeling, I believe this person Contreville reports not to Mondelle, but to Crassberg, through Heidi Meir.

  She’s our key. Obviously, there’s more than one individual behind this whole thing, but we have a starting point now. Two, actually. There’s also Sandra ‘Sandy’ Elisabeth Robinson, Supervisor of Middle Eastern Affairs, Data Acquisition Section. The same sort of trail-dodging was used from her end, finally going out from McGill University in Montreal, under the alias ‘Grizzly’. I believe she reports to one of your five Area Managers.” This last was aimed at Godsen directly. “The trail was difficult to trace, but my source, luckily for us, happens to be a genius.” I paused there, for them to understand that I wasn’t making any jokes, or doing any embellishment of the facts. I eyed each of them separately, then picked up where I’d left off.

  “There are also listings of access times from Contreville to the banks that were hit. Each access was in the twenty-four-hour period preceding a successful hit.

  That’s after Ms. Meir had concluded some sort of business deal with the very same target within the preceding week. Although the Brazilian deal was the biggest one she was handling by far, none of the banks that were hit were offered a piece of the action. At least, not on record.” I leaned back and let all of this information sit with us, being digested bit by bit.

  Godsen was the first to snap back from the smack this data had given us all.

  “Do you have any proof of Sandy’s involvement other than what your ‘source’ has given you?”

  “Yes, in a sense. Data that can be easily verified, anyway. There was a substantial deposit to a named account in Geneva, about one month after you said you got onto this case. All aboveboard, nice and clean. It appeared that there was an insurance settlement pending in her name, one she may not have known about, maybe. The payout, though, that’s another story altogether. One point six million dollars. Canadian dollars of course, but still… that was after taxes.”

  We all pondered that for a while. The sandwiches and coffee came and Godsen and I ate, Westwood sat by the window and made notes to herself in a small Hilroy flip-up notebook, the kind you can stick in your back pocket. Therese was still sleeping.

  Godsen ate, but I swear she didn’t notice the food or the coffee. She was thinking of the possible betrayal, well, ‘likely’ betrayal was a better descriptive.

  While I was still sipping my second cup of coffee, she asked Westwood to send a priority one message to the office. She wanted her own leak plugged. Whether it was true or not, the risk was too high to ignore.

  Due to our ‘Deep Cover’ status the communique went out over cellular, posted to the Acting Managers’ Inbox on the main intranet back at the office in Ottawa. ‘Sandy’ was to be in Paris in twenty-four hours. With an honour guard. The hotel and plane reservations were made and transmitted. Until that time, she was to bunk down in the apartment suite at the office, with ‘round the clock protection. Also, any casework she was handling was to be suspended. It was posted as an order, not a request. At the same time, the full file set for ‘Sandy’ was pulled from Godsen’s archive system. Everything took about ten minutes.

  Westwood handed her notebook to Godsen after that, and she read the whole file over at least twice while I finished my coffee. She didn’t find any irregularities, anything that shouldn’t be there wasn’t, and anything that should be there was. We’d see in Paris, I supposed.

  During the rest of the afternoon, we went over the case data again and again, gleaning every last inference that might show through the straight facts. In the end, we did what I had been doing all along, since the fiasco of the mornings abduction attempt.

  We trusted no one. We would contain the mission within the direct members of the ‘team’. Westwood contacted Paris early-on during the meeting, and stayed on-line with the demand for a call-back, in order to relay the new Mission-Specific Rules of Engagement.

  This was basically an ECT, Emergency Command Transmission. That meant that after being decoded, a response was mandatory and immediate. Paris must have received the notification that an urgent call had been initiated at our end, from the Colonel, within thirty seconds of Westwood sending it, because within less than fifteen minutes, Paris was on-line with her.

  The first message was simple, a variation on the old ‘E.T. Call Home’ routine. Once the Paris team had been contacted, a verbal code system was used to switch to a completely new encryption algorithm. Then the code sets were changed, and that meant going off-line for about two minutes, in order to pull and replace a single, one hundred and twenty-eight Megabyte Read-Only C-MOS chip, from a random selection of a base inventory of thirty-two chips.

  Godsen chose the chip number to use, based on nothing at all. At least that’s what she said. We couldn’t guarantee the loyalty of anyone at this point. We were ‘Flying Solo’, as the saying goes. The second call was much longer, and much more secure. Paris was in the loop after that communique. They were instructed to change residence and identity, making sure that nobody could track the change, and to check back with the Colonel after that. Suspend all but passive surveillance activities until further notice.

  Now there was just George.

  He was hanging out there all on his own, doing a job that he had no training for, in a town where he didn’t speak the language, and was just as likely to get in trouble with the local guys as well as the man he was looking for.

  Over there it was hard to tell the white hats from the black ones. In fact, everyone is one or more shades of grey on a bad day, but bad days in Beirut were, thankfully, muc
h less common than they’d been even as recently as two years ago.

  Less common, but still what is referred to sometimes as ‘A Clear and Present Danger’ by the United States of America. Not in, for example, the United Nations Security Council Sessions or anything as ‘out of the closet’ as that.

  It was used by a popular writer of the time, whose novel was then turned into a tense and dramatic ‘Hollywood Production’ number. ‘Allstar cast’, the whole deal. And picked up on by the people. That by itself was enough to earn it an entry in the various ‘Books of Phrases of Quotations’ making the rounds for that year.

  There were also some government organizations who understood all too well what that meant, and probably used the same concept in their discussions, but used more vehement and enemy-oriented language to describe it.

  I would see what George had to say when he checked in with me later on. Then we’d get him out to Paris, to meet up with the team in place. If he was more than fifty-nine minutes late calling, I was going in to get him. It was as simple as that. I sure as hell wasn’t going to try sitting down with Sarah to explain how and why I happened to come back alive from a mission when George didn’t.

  Godsen checked her watch, and saw that it was time to get rolling. Her meeting with Herr Schnorrer was in an hour, and maybe that would get us underway to finding Ted, ostensibly, the reason we were here in the first place. I went to wake up Therese.

  I found her sitting up in bed, with the top quilt pulled around her. She was hugging her knees and softly crying. We didn’t have much time so I thought I’d see if I could get her back without trying to order her around. I sat on the edge of the bed, close enough for us to touch, but distant enough to let her retain her disassociation if she wanted to.

  She was staring off into nothing, in the direction of the wall directly in front of the bed. I stared off into nothing at the floor next to her. I didn’t say a word. After about two or three minutes of that, I got her curious. A tiny voice came out of her lips, like a little girl who’s had her first real denial from life, and is trying to overcome the shock.