[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan

by Christopher Lowery

  Just after nine, a smug smile on his face, Gomez bustled ahead of the soldiers up to the reception counter and asked the Angolan girl to call down Sr. Bettencourt. Olivier came out of the elevator and after a brief discussion he left with two soldiers on either side of him. He wasn’t permitted to make any phone calls but was taken off to the COPCON barracks for questioning, then to Lisbon prison and no one could contact him.

  His wife, Cristina, called Ellen. She was crying and distraught. “Olivier’s brothers have been arrested as well,” she sobbed.

  The two younger brothers, Ruiz and Andrès, ran a property development business, also started by their father. They owned hundreds of hectares of beach front land and properties in the Algarve.

  “It’s all been confiscated by the government. We’re losing everything. I took my father-in-law to the airport yesterday and put him on a plane to Geneva. He’s seventy years old, he can’t take this kind of thing. What’s happening Ellen? Why won’t they let me see them?”

  Ellen was shaken. “I’ll call Charlie. I’m sure he can fix things. Try not to worry. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything.”

  Charlie was visiting a bank in Milan. She called him at his hotel. “I’m not sure that you should come back here. You were right about Jorge Gomez.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Cristina called me. It seems that Gomez has talked COPCON into putting Olivier and his brothers in prison and the government has confiscated their properties.

  Charlie was dumbfounded. Olivier’s father was the Duque de Santiago de Compostela, and Olivier would inherit the title, although it had long since lost any significance. He couldn’t believe that the Junta was starting to imprison the aristocracy of Portugal. “Ellen, just stay calm. Call Cristina back and tell her not to worry.” he said. “Let me make a couple of calls and I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve sorted something out.”

  He called Nick, at the office. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you,” the South African was speaking quietly and quickly. “Apparently that bastard Gomez walked in this morning with COPCON officers and they took Olivier away. We can’t contact him. I even sent Isabel to the barracks and to the prison and they just sent her away. No comment.”

  “What about the rest of the staff?” Charlie tried to organise his mind. He was being worn out by the continual confrontations in their lives but he was now the most senior executive in the business and he had to take charge.

  “Couple of account managers and admin guys stayed away, but so far the fall out is minimal. Even some of Jorge’s gang are still here. I don’t think they’re very happy with this turn of events. Some people want to keep their jobs. They need the pay.”

  “OK. It’s Saturday tomorrow. Get Bill to send everyone home early for the weekend and tell them I’ll talk to them on Monday morning. Go back to Cascais and expect me home tonight about eight thirty. Look after Ellen and Ronnie until I get there, Nick. We’ll sort this out.”

  Charlie thought for a while then took his address book from his briefcase. He looked up a name and number, picked up the hotel phone and dialled the operator.

  “Yes, Mr. Bishop, what can I do for you?”

  He hesitated for a moment. What the hell, he thought. He asked her to call the number.

  Sitting in the army truck Olivier was trembling with reaction. Nothing could have prepared him for being betrayed by one of his most senior executives, then arrested by soldiers of his own country. He was guilty of nothing, but he was being treated like a criminal, as if he was a danger to his nation. Now he was being taken to the army barracks and God alone knew what awaited him there.

  “What’s going on, Jorge?” Gomez was sitting opposite him in the truck, the smug smile now a wide grin. Neither he nor the officers spoke and they drove in silence to the barracks.

  He was bundled out of the truck and pushed into a small office furnished with a metal filing cabinet, a desk and three chairs. A young lieutenant told him to sit down and pulled up a side table with a battered Underwood typewriter on it. Taking from the drawer three identical forms, he placed carbon sheets between them and inserted them into the machine. He asked Olivier for his personal details, laboriously typing out his answers onto the triplicate forms.

  The soldier left with the forms and after ten minutes, he returned to escort Olivier into a larger office with a conference table and six chairs. Five minutes later, Gomez came into the room with another officer that he hadn’t seen before. He introduced himself as Major Eduardo Tavares, Director of the Bank Fraud Investigation Committee. Gomez opened up the cardboard file. It was full of notes and lists, a few typed pages. He pulled out a page and showed it to Tavares. Then the questions started.

  “On November 6th, at four o’clock, you called the Banque Privée de Genève and spoke to M. Guigneaux, the assistant manager. Is that right?”

  “I don’t remember the date, but it’s probably right. Why?”

  “We’re asking the fucking questions here.” Gomez snarled, banging his fist on the desk. “Why did you call the bank?”

  “We’ve been doing business with them for twenty years. We call them all the time about transfers or transactions we’re doing. I can’t remember every call I make, that’s ridiculous.”

  “You were recorded as saying,” Gomez read out from the page, “my father will be there on the 21st November. Please arrange to have him picked up and put the funds at his disposal.”

  Olivier suddenly felt sick. “Why the hell have you been monitoring my phone calls?”

  “I told you we’re asking the questions. But for your information, we’ve been listening to your calls for the last month. Very interesting. Very incriminating. That right Major?”

  “What was the call about, Sr. Bettencourt?” The officer was more circumspect than Gomez, he wasn’t sure of the facts. Most of it was hearsay, there were very few recordings that could be considered incriminating. Gomez had wanted Olivier’s home phone tapped, but they’d drawn the line at that, so they didn’t have much to go on.

  “My father has gone to live in Geneva. He’s too old to put up with the situation here. I was arranging for his trip, that’s all.”

  “So, what funds were to be put at his disposal, eh?”

  “He’s had an account there forever. It’s nothing criminal, it’s been on his tax returns every year. Have you looked at them?”

  Major Tavares glanced uncomfortably at Gomez. “We haven’t had a chance to check everything. Sr. Gomez has been investigating this matter. We’ve got his reports, that’s all. He believes you’ve been transferring funds illegally.”

  “I run a bank, Major. It’s my business to transfer funds, but not to break the law. And I’m not stupid enough to do it under the nose of the general manager. The whole story is a load of rubbish, nothing more or less.”

  For the next half hour, Olivier was shown transcripts of telephone calls, lists of numbers, details of meetings he’d never been in and names of bankers and clients, mostly in Switzerland. Gomez had prepared his attack cleverly. It was totally unfounded, but the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming. He controlled himself, replying to the questions quietly and respectfully, determined not to buckle under the pressure. If he did, he knew he was lost.

  Suddenly, Gomez leaned across the desk and grabbed Olivier by the lapels. He shouted into his face, “Bettencourt, you’re a crooked capitalist bastard! You’ve been stealing from the Portuguese people for years and you’re going to pay for it.”

  “You lying little shit! I should have fired you years ago for your incompetence. The only thing you’re good at is screwing things up and lying to cover it up.” Olivier had boxed for Christ Church College and now his reflexes took over. He stood up, pushed Gomez away and hit him with a right cross to the cheekbone, knocking him back over the desk onto the floor, where he lay still, his head touching the major’s boot, blood running from his nose.

  Tavares jumped quickly to his feet, moving
away to avoid ruining his gleaming boots. He pulled out his firearm. “That’s enough, Sr. Bettencourt. Step back and sit down again.”

  Olivier slowly sat down, looking at the inert figure on the floor and cursing his reaction.

  The major called the other three officers into the room and told them that Bettencourt was arrested for illegal money transfers and fraud. They left Gomez on the floor and Olivier was frogmarched out to the truck and driven across Lisbon, to be imprisoned in the city jail. When he resisted being pushed into the dank cell he was struck on the head with the stock of a gun. Then another soldier smashed his rifle barrel into his back and legs and he was pushed headlong onto the floor, the sound of the cell door clanging shut behind him. He lay there all day and night in the pitch black, desperate with fear and anxiety for his wife and children, wondering what was going to happen next. He had no food nor drink. He was left alone, lying frightened like a little child in the dark, and after many hours, he finally fell into a troubled sleep.

  He was woken by the sound of the cell door swinging open and the footsteps of two men at the entrance. He peered through the gloom, trying to make out who was there. He didn’t know if it was night or day. Then he heard, “Bom dia, Olivier. How are you feeling?”

  “Alberto? What are you doing here?”

  “Get up. We’re going to talk in the warder’s office. Come on.” He turned and waited outside with the other man.

  Olivier struggled to his feet and followed the bodyguard to an office near the entrance. Once in the morning light he saw that the other man was one of the soldiers who had arrested him the previous day. The officer who had not spoken a single word.

  Alberto was wearing his major’s uniform with COPCON badges and had the cardboard file with him. “I just want to ask you a few questions,” he said. Olivier looked nervously at the Angolan. He was frowning, avoiding the other man’s gaze. He looked like a man on a mission. A mission he wasn’t enjoying.

  On Monday morning, Charlie and Nick were standing in front of the APA employees in the staff canteen, the only place big enough to house everyone. There was an uneasy atmosphere in the room. Most of the staff were standing silent, waiting apprehensively for news of their boss. Others whispered together, swapping the many rumours which were doing the rounds. Everyone knew of Olivier’s arrest and imprisonment. Gomez had made sure of that.

  Charlie was rehearsing a plausible story to calm them down and avoid too many leading questions. As he was about to step up on the small platform to speak, Olivier entered the room. He was wearing a silky grey suit with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket. He looked in much better shape than Charlie felt. They shook hands and he climbed onto the platform. The mood in the room immediately lightened. People began to talk together, there were one or two cheers and a round of applause. Olivier started speaking, sounding confident and convincing. “Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming to this meeting, there are some things I need to tell you. I’ll be very brief. “First, I was unfortunately obliged to fire Jorge Gomez last week, he was causing us problems and neglecting his responsibilities. I’ll take over his tasks pending a replacement.

  “Second, I had a long meeting with COPCON when I went over there on Friday and we are now back on their ‘Be good to them’ list. So I don’t expect any further mishaps.

  “Third, I’m pleased to announce that business has never been better. You will all be receiving a bonus at the end of next week. That’ll give you time to spend it before Christmas.” He paused, waiting until the cheering and laughter died down. “That’s all for now. Let’s get back to more productive matters and thanks again to everyone.”

  He stepped down from the platform and several employees and executives came forward to thank him and confirm their commitment to APA.

  “Bloody hell, that was a close call!” Nick shook Olivier’s hand. “Well done.”

  The Portuguese winced and withdrew his hand, bruised and cut from the cell floor. They could now also see that he had a nasty cut along the hairline. He’d hidden it by combing his hair forward. “Thanks, but you’ve got the wrong man. That genius standing behind you fixed things, otherwise I was a goner. How did you manage it, Charlie?”

  “You were right. Alberto loves you like a brother. Five minutes on the phone and he agreed to pull rank on the prison service. He’s got a lot of experience in that department.”

  “Well, at least I didn’t have to escape in a Russian sub.” The three men laughed, not so much at the feeble joke, but more from the sense of relief.

  Sitting back at his desk, Olivier relived the weekend’s events. Shivering at the memory of the stink and filth of the prison, the noises of the suffering of unseen people, the tiny barred cell with no toilet facilities where he had been locked up for two days. The feeling of helplessness, in the hands of a communist-led army that preferred to believe a corrupt little Marxist spy like Jorge Gomez rather than an innocent man. Alberto had told him his brothers had been arrested and were in the same prison, but he hadn’t been allowed to see them. If it hadn’t been for the Angolan’s intervention they would still all be lying in the filthy confines of a Portuguese prison.

  After examination of Gomez’s file, Alberto and the army major had agreed there was no case to answer. Olivier and his brothers could be released as soon as they got the paperwork organised. But it was Sunday morning before he got home to his wife and family. And it was Monday morning before he pulled himself together enough to face the outside world again.

  What was happening to his country? His father had been forced to flee his own homeland. The country in which he had strived for over forty years to make a better place for his fellow citizens, by creating businesses and jobs to support the economy. And now this! What would be next? In his confused mind he couldn’t work out whether his release was an act of friendship and justice, or the next step in a plan to trap him, his friends and family in an even greater fabrication. He felt physically sick at the thought.

  Back in Cascais, Ellen and the two men once again discussed the worsening situation. It was becoming more dangerous every day and no one knew how it would end. Pragmatically, Ellen pointed out that it was getting near to Christmas, and after the awful year they’d had she wasn’t going to let anything spoil the plans they’d made to make the holiday a special one with Ronnie and Alan. There was nothing they could do but wait to see what the New Year held for them.

  Who knows?” She told them. “There could be good surprises in store. Maybe the communists will run out of steam. There are lots of decent, sensible people in Portugal. They just need to organise themselves as well as the communists. Then we’ll see what happens.”

  It was impossible to argue with Ellen’s common sense, so they decided to prepare for the holiday and ensure that the kids had a Christmas to remember.

  On December 4th, Jorge Gomez was appointed Deputy Director of the Bank Fraud Investigation Committee and given a small office in the building next to the COPCON headquarters. His first action was to apply for permission to tap over fifty private telephone lines, including Olivier’s and Charlie’s. Afterwards, he went home, had dinner with his wife, kissed her goodnight and left the apartment, “for an important meeting.” Then he went out on the town, with the APA Angolan receptionist.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  December, 1974

  Lisbon, Portugal

  The week after his release from prison, Olivier visited Alberto to thank him again for his help. His mind was working clearly now and he knew the Angolan had acted out of fairness and friendship. But nothing in Portugal was as simple as that any more.

  He greeted Inês, Alberto’s wife, then the two men went into the study.

  “What the hell’s going on, Alberto? It wasn’t an accident, me being arrested, it was a frame up. And if you hadn’t come along I’d still be rotting in jail along with my brothers.”

  Alberto took a drag on his cigarette, considering how much to tell the banker. Finally, he said, “There’s
been a lot of activity around the colonies. You already know about Mozambique and it looks like there will be some more announcements soon. This is causing a lot of tension in Portugal and the left-wing extremists are taking advantage of it. You were a victim of this because Gomez is a troublemaker and for some reason he’s out to get you.”

  “So, what’s your advice?”

  “Olivier, I’ll let you into a secret. I’ve never mentioned this before, but I know a lot about your family. They’ve been in Portugal forever. Your ancestors were of the aristocracy, which I despise, but your father was one of the greatest businessmen we’ve ever seen. I used to hear his name when I was a kid. He was a hero to us, even in Angola. One of the few capitalists who worked for the good of the Portuguese and Angolan people, not just for himself. I didn’t go to the school he built in Luanda but I knew kids who did. They were lucky. It was the best school around and they were able to go because of your father. He’s a fine man.

  “He’s old and tired now, but you’re not and you’ve got to follow in his footsteps. Believe me, Portugal is not going to erupt into civil war. The political changes will sort themselves out and we’ll find a new equilibrium. It will take some more time but it will get done in the end. There are difficult times ahead but they won’t last forever. Nothing in life ever does.

  “So, if you stick it out, toe the line for a while and get through this period, then Portugal will need you like never before. I know you’re a clever and honest man like your father was and I’ll support you as best I can. I have a little influence and if I can help, I’ll try. And if I see things change for the worse, I’ll let you know. That’s all I can promise.”

  Olivier thanked him and left the apartment. Alberto watched from the window as he went to his car then he picked up the phone. “Bom dia, Alvaro. Bettencourt was just here.” He listenened for a moment then replied, “I don’t anticipate any more problems with him.”