‘Well, what was the scoop? Why else would you bring it up? There must be a point to this announcement.’
It depressed him that they had so quickly descended into yet another argument.
‘There’s no point to it,’ she said. ‘You’re making too much of a harmless piece of information. I just thought that you’d be interested.’
‘Well, I am.’
‘Well, good.’ Alice sighed theatrically and let the newspaper flap on to the bed. ‘We talked about your father, actually. Then we talked about Seb’s new restaurant…’
‘Seb?‘ Ben said sarcastically. ‘You call him “Seb“?’ Alice ignored this.
‘He wants me to do a feature,’ she said. ‘A big interview for the paper.’
‘I didn’t know Libra were opening a restaurant.’
‘Well, there you go. That’s why we need journalists in the world, Ben, to keep people like you informed. Anyway, it’s not Libra officially. It’s just him and his lawyer.’
‘Tom Macklin?’
‘Right.’
‘How come Mark never said anything?’
‘Well, maybe because he doesn’t know anything about it.’ Alice threw backthe duvet. Her legs looked supple and warm and Ben suddenly wanted to touch them. Her pale naked body breezed past him as she said, ‘Maybe he would have said something if you two ever spoke,’ and went into the bathroom.
‘Did you mention anything to Roth about Bone’s letter?’
‘Christ no.’ She was coming backinto the room. ‘You told me to keep quiet about that. I haven’t told a soul.’
He scanned her face for the lie as he said, ‘Good.’ For all Ben knew, Alice and Roth could have skipped lunch, booked themselves into the Charlotte Street Hotel and fucked from noon till six. That was the extent of the trust he held for his wife. He heard the lock click on the bathroom door and sat down on the bed. There were shards of satsuma skin hidden in the white folds of the duvet.
‘Well, I’ll be off then,’ he said, shouting through the door.
‘Fine,’ Alice called back.
And then he heard the hot blast of water pouring into the bath and assumed that the conversation was over.
33
For Mark, this was the spy’s life. Secret codes, surreptitious phone calls, meetings in underground car parks, the total concealment of everyday life. Joking with Macklin, smiling at Seb, and nobody at work with the slightest idea that genial, approachable Keeno was a source feeding privileged information to an officer in MI5. It was just as he had imagined it. Just as his father had described. Mark had an aptitude for spying, a talent for secrecy and sleight of hand. It ran in the family. The Keen inheritance.
And now safe houses. Randall had made contact via email insisting on a meeting on Saturday morning. Something important had come up, something vital to the operation. Mark was given exact directions from Kentish Town to an MI5 property west of the Kilburn High Road and set out shortly after breakfast. For security, Watchers posted along the route tracked him all the way to the front door. He arrived at 10 a.m.
The flat was located on the first floor of a converted, semi-detached house in Priory ParkRoad. When Mark rang the bell, Ian Boyle opened the door and smiled warmly. Only twice before in his career had Ian had the opportunity to meet the target of his own surveillance at first hand, and he was intrigued to witness Mark close-up, the full weight and presence of the man unseparated by lens or windscreen.
‘All right there?’ he said, waving him inside. ‘You find us OK?’
‘No problem,’ Mark replied.
There were flyers littering the narrow hall and a citrus smell of carpet cleaner and detergents. Directly ahead, a steep staircase led up to the flat with a bicycle partly blocking the way. Ian had to push it to one side and said ‘Sorry’ as oil from the chain rubbed up against the wall.
‘Bloody thing’s always getting in the way,’ he said. ‘Good for exercise, though. Keeps me in trim.’
To illustrate his point more vividly, he patted his stomach, leading Mark upstairs past bedrooms with closed doors and a bathroom in the process of being redecorated. Taploe was waiting for them in a bright, yellow-painted sitting room off the top landing, standing by a window which overlooked the street. Dark blue velvet curtains were drawn against the light and he appeared to be chewing gum.
‘Mark.’ Taploe turned quickly, moving forward with his hand outstretched, like an edgy host at a cocktail party. ‘How have you been?’
‘Fine,’ Mark told him. ‘Fine.’
‘Good. Great. Thanks, Ian.’ Taploe’s thin, nasal voice was unusually rushed. ‘We’ll be fine if you just leave us in here.’
‘Right, guv.’
The source of his nervousness, perhaps, was a bulky, shaven-headed man hunched forward uncomfortably in an armchair on the opposite side of the room. Younger than Mark by perhaps five years, he had the look of an electrician or plumber, wearing a green Fred Perry T-shirt, scuffed cream trainers - the laces slackly tied - and dark denim trousers swollen with fat at the thigh. Mark did not recognize him, but assumed he was one of the plumbers who had helped strip the hard drives at Libra.
‘This is a colleague of mine. Paul Quinn. A legal financial expert,’ Taploe explained, speaking in short, abrupt sentences. ‘He’s going to be helping us today. Paul this is Mark Keen.’
Fifteen stone of concentrated indifference half-rose from the armchair to shake Mark’s hand.
‘All right, mate?’ A London accent, low and nebulous. Mark wondered how such a person could know anything at all about the complexities of the financial markets.
‘The journey was no problem?’ Taploe’s head bobbed up and down as if to encourage a positive response from the question. ‘You found us OK?’
‘No problem,’ Mark said. The room was very small and a wide coffee table threatened to strike his shins at any moment. He sat down on a low, two-seater sofa with coathanger springs and said: ‘The journey was fine. No trouble.’
Above Quinn’s head, not incongruously given his youth and appearance, hung a worn, faded poster of Enter the Dragon: Bruce Lee stripped to the waist, three fresh scars torn like cat’s claws across his chest. The bright yellow room was otherwise bare. A row of bookshelves on the facing wall contained nothing but outdated telephone directories and a small vase of dried heather. A 100-watt bulb burning in a lampshade overhead left a blob of blinding colour on the backs of Mark’s eyes whenever he closed them.
‘First things first,’ Taploe said, sitting down and jerking his knee away when it accidentally brushed against Mark’s thigh. ‘The Soho operation was a big success. Really first-rate. Enough information to convict Macklin and put him away for a very long time.’ There was a slight shaving cut on the underside of his chin and he touched it. ‘I wanted to thank you in person for all your help so far. You’ve been invaluable to the operation as a whole. Really turned it around.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Which brings me to explain why Paul is here. I thought it would be better if what has become a somewhat complicated situation was explained to you by somebody with an expert’s grasp of finance. A specialist, so to speak.’
Across the room, Quinn inhaled briskly through his nose, a sound like a rhino bathing. Mark smiled at him, trying to establish a connection, and was met by a look of intense, intelligent concentration that did not preclude the later possibility of empathy or rapport.
‘Paul is a lawyer by trade.’ He was also Taploe’s closest colleague on Kukushkin, the engine of the case. ‘He helps us out from time to time with complex financial cases. When we can’t see the wood for the trees.’
‘I see.’ Mark suspected that this last remark had cost Randall something in terms of his own pride and smiled at Quinn to flatter him.
‘What we’ve been able to establish from the hard drives and safe is a highly sophisticated money-laundering operation with Thomas Macklin at its core.’
‘Seb’s not involved?’ Mark asked i
mmediately, a question that caused Taploe to grimace nervously.
‘Not in the first instance, no,’ he replied, and then passed the buck. ‘I’m going to let Paul take it from here. Otherwise there’s a danger we could repeat ourselves.’
‘Sure,’ Mark said.
They were down to business now. Quinn, who was focused and alert right from the start, moved forward to retrieve a thickred folder from the floor beside his chair. Loose papers bulged from within, secured uncertainly by strained elastic bands. The history of the case, all the raked-up dirt and bad news. Laying the file on the coffee table in front of him, he coughed damply and said, ‘Right. Let’s kick this thing off.’ There were no preliminaries, no small talk. ‘Tell me what you know about the way Libra is set up, your actual holding companies and so on.’
Mark put his elbows on his knees.
‘London Libra is owned by an offshore company registered in Cyprus, to limit tax liability. Same thing goes for New Yorkand Paris, two separate holding companies in Jersey controlling all the money from both clubs.’
‘And what else?’ Quinn was confident and eager for information in a way that encouraged Mark. There was an idealistic quality to him, a young man’s zeal. ‘What do you know about private investors, Macklin’s role in all of this, the structure of the new Russian operation? How much do you know about that side of things?’
‘The Russian club is going through Cyprus and our regular bankin Geneva. Same with the money from Ibiza in the summer and the cash from merchandising. France and Manhattan are two separate entities. Otherwise everything gets paid out of Switzerland. Staff, ground rent, booze, DJs, hardware. Everything.’ He felt like a corporate whistleblower, spilling all the secrets. The feeling of this was intoxicating. ‘As for private investors, Seb still owns about sixty-five per cent of the stock. Tom just looks after him, signs the cheques and all that. Probably has a bit of equity, too. I don’t know. Those two are like brothers.’
Taploe stood up from the sofa and moved towards the window.
‘Brothers,’ Quinn muttered. ‘But Macklin has power of attorney over Roth’s affairs, is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So in theory he can do whatever he likes?’
‘In theory,’ Mark said. ‘But I’m not a lawyer, so I wouldn’t know.’
‘Well, I am a lawyer and I’m telling you that’s the situation.’ For the first time Quinn grinned, a crease at the edge of fat lips. Mark liked him. ‘When it comes to his relationship with Roth, Macklin is the main man, the consigliere, if you like. We reckon he’s been buying up chunks of London real estate on behalf of the Russian mob, small businesses too. As of this moment I have him as the main signatory on two hotels in Paddington, an entire residential blocknorth of Marble Arch, a couple of bureaux de change out at City Airport, a minicab operation based not too far from here, even a chain of laundrettes in fucking Manchester. He’s also looking into buying out a majority share in a Bayswater casino. Might have even done so by now. In other words, operations with a high-volume cash element which can be used to facilitate money laundering on a massive scale.’
Suddenly Mark felt heavy in the stomach. He leaned backon the sofa so that his head was resting against the wall.
‘Where’s he getting the cash from?’ he asked. ‘The Russians?’
‘Exactly.’ Taploe had interrupted, frustrated at having remained silent for so long. In Quinn’s company he often felt second-rate, shamed by the younger man’s greater self-confidence and expertise. ‘We think Macklin is operating as one of several frontmen for the Kukushkin syndicate, buying up properties on their behalf and helping to clean illegal money.’
‘Which is what you suspected he was up to all along.’
‘Yes it is.’ Taploe’s eyes softened, as if he had been paid an unexpected compliment. ‘But now I have proof.’
‘Still,’ Quinn said, rubbing his scalp, ‘that’s just one side of a more complicated situation.’ He began removing rubber bands from the red folder and placing them at the edge of the coffee table. ‘Do you know what I mean by the term “double dip”?’
‘No idea,’ Mark said.
‘Well…’
Taploe cut him off in mid-sentence.
‘In the model double-dip operation an individual - or group of individuals - pretends to be depositing cash sums in a legitimate bank account while in reality he - or, of course, it could be she - is making payments into a separately located dummy account of exactly the same name.’
Mark, confused, instinctively looked to Quinn for confirmation of this.
‘That’s actually right,’ he said, deferring uneasily to the boss. ‘Now, London Libra is owned by a single asset offshore based in Cyprus?’
‘Right.’
‘Only when it came to your new venture in Moscow, Macklin devised what you might call a new strategy.’ Quinn moved forward heavily in his chair, to the point where Mark began to worry that it might actually topple over. ‘He seems to have convinced Roth not to own the club in his own name and not to be a signatory on any of the accounts.’
‘Why?’ Mark asked.
‘Simple. Same as what you were saying before. Because it would limit Roth’s liability for creditors if Moscow went tits up. At the same time he reduces his capital gains bill in Russia. Roth apparently agreed - makes sense, after all - so Macklin went ahead and set up a second separate holding company in Cyprus. Called it Pentagon Investments, just so no one would pay much attention. He then appointed a small number of nominee directors - under his own control - and got his hands on a couple of bent accountants to cookthe books.’
Mark was struggling to keep up. His brain was a mulch of facts and theories, a puzzle he could not solve. He thought backto all the days and nights he had spent with Macklin, the restaurants and nightclubs in Moscow and St Petersburg, all those endless plane journeys out of Heathrow with nothing to do but listen to Tom’s stories. When had it all started? Macklin had led a double life wildly more dangerous and clandestine than his own, right under the noses of men who trusted him like a brother. All of us are spies, his father had once told him: all of us inhabit a private world, a place of secrecies and evasion.
‘I’m not getting this,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Where does the double dip come in?’
Quinn scraped his trainers against the carpet and coughed, folding bulky arms across his chest.
‘Basically,’ he said, ‘like this. The main Libra holding company in Cyprus - the one you’ve all been told about - is still operational for London, Ibiza, T-shirts, compact discs.’ He pronounced ‘Ibiza’ as ‘Eye Beetha’, an affectation for which Mark had always lacked the courage. ‘Then there’s Pentagon Investments, which is used for Moscow. But Macklin has been playing both ends. Unknown to the Russians he’s also set up an identically named dummy Pentagon account in the Cayman Islands. Every now and again, when he thinks no one’s looking, Macklin has been redirecting some of the Russian cash into that account for his own personal enrichment.’
‘That’s the double dip,’ Taploe said, stating the obvious.
Quinn ignored him.
‘At a guess,’ he said, ‘there’s now something in the region of one point eight million buried away out there. Give or take.’
‘Holy fuck,’ Mark said, language Quinn seemed to enjoy. ‘And the Russians have got enough money they don’t notice that’s gone missing? How’s this all getting generated?’
‘Lot of ways.’ The room was now very warm and Quinn’s face looked cooked beside the bright yellow walls. He was flying. ‘Narcotics, prostitution, arms deals, precious metals, oil, timber, stolen cars, icon smuggling, you name it. He’s entrepreneurial, your average Russian mafioso, and he robs people for a living. About thirty per cent of the capital flight out of Russia these days is illegally earned. Thirty per cent. And it has to get washed. Now and again a man like Viktor Kukushkin will try and improve his public image by donating a couple of million dollars to local charity
. Generally speaking, though, he wants to hold on to his cash. And that’s where blokes like Macklin come in. He’s been cleaning Kukushkin’s money through the hotels, through the cab company, through the bureaux de change. There’s lots of it and it’s moving all the time. You’d need a hundred officers working round the clock just to keep track of half of it.’
‘And Libra is a part of this?’ There was resignation in Mark’s voice, still a sickening loom in the stomach. ‘Tom’s been laundering through the club, hasn’t he?’
”Fraid so.’ Quinn lifted several pages from the file and scratched at his left ear. ‘Nightclubs make ideal cover. Again the high cash element, again the rapid turnover. You charge punters sixteen quid for a couple of gin and tonics with ice and lemon, you’re gonna make a lot of money very fast. Those invoices you’ve been signing off - most probably faked. Macklin has been doubling your weekly turnover for more than eighteen months, drawing up fake balance sheets, inventing staff and security personnel, saying he sold a hundred crates of Bacardi when he only sold fifty. That kind of thing.’
‘But I saw all of those,’ Mark insisted. ‘I see it all the time. Everything goes across my desk.’
‘You’ve been away a lot,’ Taploe said quickly, as if there were a way of letting Mark down gently. ‘Travelling overseas, delegating responsibility, seeing to your father’s probate…’
‘We also suspect that Macklin has other people working for him on the inside,’ Quinn continued. ‘But it’s too early to tell.’
‘Inside Libra?’ Mark stood up out of the sofa. The room was so small he barely had space to move. So much of his anger at Macklin and Roth had grown out of a conviction that they were in some way responsible for his father’s death. And yet the scale of the deception purely within Libra, the liberties Macklin had taken with Mark’s friendship and trust, momentarily seemed worse even than any involvement he or Roth might have had in the murder.
‘One of these is a former employee of yours,’ Taploe said. ‘Left the company some time ago. A Mr Philippe d’Erlanger.’
Mark looked up.
The Hidden Man (2003) Page 18