After the meeting with the Assistant Vice President he’d have some idea of the scale of the problem. On the surface the thing looked so good there were moments when he couldn’t believe it.
And it had looked good two weeks ago and three thousand miles away. Cousin Michael had called him, and he’d gone to New York. Michael, an extremely distant cousin from some almost forgotten link on Purcell’s father’s side, did a lot of things for his living and nothing legal. He was twenty-four and was into a number of causes besides financial self improvement. One of those causes was fund raising in New York for the IRA. Cousin Michael had been born in Dublin, Ireland, although his parents had emigrated to the US when he was four. He had discovered Irish Nationalism at the age of twenty-two.
Cousin Michael had a few grey hairs from knocking over a bank on his own, aged nineteen. The grey hairs now had a black rinse. Purcell reckoned that Cousin Michael was surely the only New York IRA fund raiser who was a practising homosexual.
The meeting had taken place in the black leather apartment of a reconstituted duplex in Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village. Cousin Michael knew that cousin James had done stir on a drafting job, in a Memphis jail, when he’d never been within a hundred miles of the raided bank. ‘My friends need help,’ Cousin Michael had said. ‘What makes them my friends, is ‘they pay.’
The first things Michael’s friends had paid for were some air line tickets.
They had flown to San Francisco, Purcell, Michael, and two large guys who had talked little and had given out only their Christian names. In a small neat house in a Frisco suburb they had met a small neat Pole called Karminski.
Karminski was fifty years of age, broody and bitter. He had just been fired after twenty years with a leading West Coast Bank Security Installation company. Purcell and Michael had to sit through two hours of loud emotional recrimination. Purcell couldn’t work out whether the guy had been fired because he was untrustworthy or whether he was honest up to the second he was fired, and then had grabbed for anything he could get.
What the Pole had got was a lot of information about security devices in a lot of banks in the US and elsewhere. He was selling, and had already sold, bits of this information to various interested parties in the Underworld. Cousin Michael wanted to know about the London banks — the Pole had gone to London at some point and installed American security devices in some American banks in London.
The Pole had two items for sale. One was the master list of main safe combinations for these various London banks he had worked on. When a security device installation man works on a safe the first thing he has to know is the combination of the safe. The Pole had kept a record of these combinations.
Cousin Michael told the Pole that he wasn’t interested in acquiring the combinations of some London bank safes. Combinations of bank safes are usually useless because most modern bank safes have a time lock. They can be opened only at preset times and always during the regular day trading hours of the bank. A combination is only useful if a gang is going to do a daylight raid. It was not Cousin Michael’s or Purcell’s intention to do a daylight raid.
The Pole kept returning to the subject of his instant dismissal from the company he had served so faithfully for so many years. Michael cut straight across the tirade. ‘How much d’you want for the complete security installation plan of the New York Bank & Trust Company, 300 Eastcheap, London?’
At first the little Pole wouldn’t put a price on it. Then he said fifty thousand dollars, and Cousin Michael laughed — a hollow, nervous, dangerous sound.
The Pole said quickly that he was open to discussion about it. So the three of them went out and had a long drunken dinner, followed by an hour in a hostess club, with the little guy getting more emotional and maudlin and finally breaking down in tears in the men’s room.
Meanwhile the two guys with Christian names only, who had flown with Purcell and Michael from New York, were burgling the little wall safe behind the refrigerator in the Pole’s house. They got the safe open. They packed all the papers in it into a briefcase and took a cab downtown to an outfit called Multicopy All Nite Xerox. Within quarter of an hour they had a Xerox of the entire paperwork in the safe including the bank safe combinations and floor plans of the security installations at New York Bank & Trust Company, Eastcheap, London. They took the Pole’s papers back to the safe, locked them up again, and left the little house as scrupulously neat and clean as they had found it. The Pole would never know he had been burgled.
At 2 am Michael and Purcell had delivered the man back to his home. The little guy was besotted with drink and woe, and about to pass out. He mumbled and burbled his final decision. For the floor plans and the safe combination of the London bank he would not take less than twenty-five thousand dollars.
‘Fuck off,’ Cousin Michael had said gently, as he turned and hailed a passing cab. He and Purcell got into the cab. They did not look back.
The little Pole sat down on the pavement outside his house and tried to staunch the flood of tears that came, with his two hands pressed into his eyes.
Purcell had started the job in New York. Michael had siphoned enough cash through from his sources to finance the setting up of an office, installing a telex, printing and forgery of essential papers. For several weeks Purcell had worked on the drafting, writing his notes, redrawing the wiring diagrams, making discreet calls to fellow experts in circuitry, walking the wind-sharp streets of springtime New York, puzzling over the plan again and again — was it just stupidly ambitious, or was it possible, a raid of these dimensions, a heist of historic proportions? He knew that no one in history had ever tried anything as complex as this before. For three weeks he puzzled and worried and wrote and drew and then he made his decision; it was possible. The concept could work. It would now be down to assembling the right personnel to pull it off.
‘Mr. Kreinhof will now see you, sir.’ Mr. Kreinhof’s secretary, a tall woman with a Brooklyn accent as stiff as the Bridge, gestured Purcell towards the Assistant Vice President’s office.
Mr Kreinhof turned out to be a small man with a serious look. He extended a dumpy hand. ‘Of course, I’ve heard all about you from Head Office, Mr Karolyi.’
Mr Kreinhof had not heard all about Purcell, now Karolyi, from Head Office at Number 17, Wall Street, New York. He had received a letter with a forged signature purporting to come from Head Office, New York. ‘What can I do for you?’ Mr. Kreinhof sat down behind a desk too large for him, and spread his hands as if he could offer Purcell the world for the asking.
‘The letter from your Head Office presumably explained that I am Vice President of Security Aid Corporation of New York, and your company has suggested that I come here and discuss with you the subject of increasing your security situation in this bank. How it can be done. And why it should be done.’ Immediately Purcell produced from a bulging briefcase a large bunch of expensive leather-bound sales aids. Purcell bundled them on to Kreinhof’s desk, knowing Kreinhof would be too busy to read and assimilate them all. Therefore, psychologically, he’d want the thing explained. It was just from talking to him that Purcell would get the answers he needed. Purcell started the patter. What Security Aids was selling was a complete new look at the phrase ‘security in depth’. Two minutes into the chat Kreinhof was out of his depth.
‘Mr Kreinhof, there is a new kind of criminal about us. We’ve seen ‘em back home, the Germans have them in Germany — the Bader Meinhofs — the French have them in France, the Ulster Government in Ireland. We call them political criminals. They’re young men and women, vicious thugs, some with PhD’s in physics or chemistry or philosophy, who have rejected our social system and are out to destroy it. And they rob banks, Mr Kreinhof. And they rob them cleverly. That is one of the things these people do...’
Kreinhof nodding, but very vaguely. ‘One of the problems in detecting these people and bringing them to justice is they are frequently many more times intelligent than the forces of law and order whom we entrust to hunt
them.’ Kreinhof nodding.
He’s not a stupid man. He looks bright. He’s just a little slow, Purcell decided. ‘Now, they know how to rob banks because essentially all bank security is minor variations on the same theme. Touch-pads, photo-electric systems, electrically timed openings of safes, carbon steel fittings, security patrols, etcetera. These people can look at a bank and guess exactly where a touch-pad is, where, in a floor or ceiling, the cables for re-circuiting alarm systems are likely to be hidden. These people are bright. Our company, Security Aid Corporation, takes their knowledge away from them. Every bank premises where we have remade the security system is unique and different from any other bank. And the bonus of our system is you retain your original security system. Our system is overlaid, a completely separate double check on your system. That is why your Wall Street office has sent me to see you. I think they believe the next place for politically motivated bank robberies is London.’ Kreinhof now surprised and concerned.
‘Yes, Mr Kreinhof. That’s what your Head Office believes.’ Purcell lit a cigarette. ‘First off I have to say that my presence here, sent by your Head Office, is obviously a matter of secrecy and security. You’ll note the letter I bring from your Vice President Mr Goldberg gives you a special telex number for all communications between yourself and Mr Goldberg about my work here. When you check the telex number you’ll find it belongs to a new subsidiary of New York Bank and Trust Company, namely New York Trust Security Incorporated, Suite 505, Number 197 Wall Street. You should write or telex any queries about my activities to Goldberg at that address, and not to Head Office. In this day and age, the enemy has so often proved to be within...’
He talked on with Mr Kreinhof for another half an hour. At the end of it he had quite enough information to rob the New York Bank and Trust Company. He had in fact, enough information to rob a dozen banks in London.
They picked Purcell up in the Roof Top Bar of the Hilton Hotel — Paddy, the Curzon House Hotel waiter, and the thick-necked hard case who had chauffeured them on the previous occasion. Paddy had an altercation with the maitre d’ entering the Roof Top Bar, probably the last bar in England where a tie is required to drink scotch. The maitre d’ came into the bar to select Purcell from Paddy’s description. Purcell came out. Paddy said one obscene word to the maitre d’. The maitre d’ said nothing.
They drove straight to the Broker’s house in Brent.
As soon as the bell was touched, the Broker opened the door. He ushered them into the hall. Paddy and the hard case disappeared off into a side room. The Broker conducted Purcell through the dark house to the comfortably furnished room at the back.
‘I didn’t introduce myself last time. My name is James Kavanagh.’ He did not extend his hand, but gestured Purcell to a seat. ‘Also I didn’t tell you why they call me the Broker.’
Purcell said nothing. He was aware of movement, and low voices, towards the front of the house. The doorbell rang. More soft voices. The sound of the front door closing,
‘I’m Irish but I wasn’t involved, until recently, in Irish politics. I was a “broker”. That’s the name over here for a person who finds, or puts up the money, to finance a particular crime. I’m a professional, unlike these patriots.’ He thumbed towards the front of the house. ‘It’s worth bearing in mind, Mr Purcell, that I am a professional.’
Purcell didn’t understand if the man was trying to convey some unmentionable subtlety in the explanation. He’d think about that later.
Purcell wondered about the other people in the house, the doorbell ringing again, more voices, other doors opening and closing.
‘How did it go at the bank?’ Kavanagh asked.
‘I’ll give you some points. It would take hours to explain everything...’
‘The salient points, Mr. Purcell...’
‘I guessed right, no London clearing banks have preset time controls on the opening of their safes. It’s expensive equipment. London banks have limited robbery insurance. I think they take the risk.’
The Broker was nodding, as if all this was news to him, which it probably wasn’t.
‘The set-up for American banks in London is totally different. The reason is that the safes of American banks in London are repositories of stock certificates, mainly convertible, held by US citizens and firms in this country. These stocks are worth millions. It’s these stocks, and cash in sterling and dollars, we’re going to steal.’
Purcell talked on as if he had given this lecture several times. ‘Because of the large amounts in these safes, and because English insurance companies require special precautions to protect these safes, the London American banks have imported American-manufactured safe-security equipment. I’ve seen the New York Bank and Trust Company’s safe. My assay of the situation is it’s like stealing candy from a kid.’
The Broker sat back and looked thoughtful.
‘The timing mechanism on the safe. I met this guy in San Francisco who had worked on the installation of safes in London. The safes have a time-clock on them where, even if you know their combinations, they cannot be opened except between the hours of, say, nine am to five pm on five week-days, when there are people constantly in the bank.’
The Broker was slowly nodding.
‘That’s why they have this crazy night and week-end security patrol, by this firm based in South Audley Street.’
‘But you’re saying the combinations are useless unless we make it an office-hour daylight raid, we wouldn’t be interested in that.’
‘I’m not saying that. On the side of these safes is the Bulova electric clock that times the opening and closing. This is a complicated business to explain, but the principle is simple. We’re going to get a Bulova clock to open the safe in the middle of the night. There’s a fail-safe device in America where if you tamper with this clock, the safe jams up permanently until Bulova come and sort it out.’
‘I see,’ the Broker said. He didn’t.
‘However, in installing this equipment in England, and in adapting it from 120 volts AC to 230 volts AC and inserting a step-up transformer, they have had to cut this fail-safe device out. D’you know how an electric clock is powered by the AC cycle?’
The Broker shrugged. ‘No.’
‘Suffice it to say, I’ve been down the Tottenham Court Road, bought a soldering iron, solder, bits and pieces of electrical equipment and I’ve made a box of tricks which I will cut into the Bulova clock circuit. Then it’ll take a minute for the hands on that clock to spin round an hour. And that safe will be ready to be opened not at nine am but at three am or any other time we decide.’
There was a long pause while the Broker studied him. Then he stood up. ‘Come with me.’ Formal now, alert. It was an order.
He led Purcell out of the room and down the corridor, and left, into the front room of the house. In the front room there were fifteen men sitting in chairs around the walls deep in some discussion. The Broker led Purcell to the middle of the room. All eyes were on him. Purcell had an uncomfortable feeling, a prize bull in the auction ring, these farmers, calculating his worth at stud, or slaughter.
‘Our new draftsman. He calls himself a number of names — Kalman, Purcell, Christopher, Thompson…’ the Broker said flatly.
Purcell wondered about how much power the Broker wielded with these people. Would the Broker end up one day like their last draftsman — would he, Purcell, end up like their last draftsman?
The Broker was introducing the fifteen people. ‘Parrish, McEvoy, Declan Murray, Murphy, Traynor, Martin,’ rolled off in an anti-clockwise direction — all big men. They were the bulls. Purcell had his first inkling of the real possibility of danger developing on what he’d assumed would be a down-the-line operation. He nodded, and the names nodded to him. But at the end of the circle of introductions his eyes came back to meet the eyes of the only man that the Broker had given a Christian name to — Declan Murray. There was something about Declan Murray that would worry anyone, including Purcell. His
height, the granite cold quality of his eyes. He was the only one who had not nodded, or acknowledged, the Broker’s introduction.
It was just that. A circle of introductions then the Broker was leading him out of the room and opening the front door. He pointed to Paddy the waiter, and the silent chauffeur in the car at the kerb. ‘Paddy will take you back to the hotel.’
Purcell faced the Broker. ‘I don’t think that was a good idea security-wise. Introductions, exchanges of names. The less we know about each other the better.’
The Broker pursed his lips, calculating the simplest way to express it. ‘I wasn’t introducing them to you. I was showing you to them. For the purposes of identification, do you see? If you ever play games with us, Mr Purcell, there are fifteen men who know exactly what you look like, when they come to kill you.’
Noon. Regan got into the car and Len drove to the East End. Carter had, as usual, not only done his routine research last night and this morning, but had come up with other things besides. Carlyle Buildings, Jamaica Road, SE1 like many other slum blocks of flats in London, was owned by the Commissioners of the Church of England. The lease for Number 14 was in the name George Smith — so obviously a pseudonym for some villain that Carter had checked at Tower Bridge, the local nick. The CID there had never heard of a George Smith of Carlyle Buildings. While he was about it, Carter asked the nick if they knew of any honest citizens in Carlyle Buildings who might give the Sweeney a lift up and advice. It took Tower Bridge CID two hours to come up with one name. There was a bloke worked nights on the Corporation road-washers — he’d been helpful with some honest news on a villain some time back. He might be bent now, but he was straight nine months ago. His name was Davies, address, 31 Carlyle Buildings.
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