Octopus

by Guy Lawson

  So it went for Marino. Vectrix was a company with an electric scooter capable of zooming along at sixty miles an hour. FCV was a French cable television start-up. To John Ellis, Marino came across as a sad !gure, socially awkward, hard of hearing, exuding an air of disappointment. By contrast, Ellis and his colleagues were graduates of Ivy League schools, world travelers, con!dent athletes. Sam worried that Marino was out of his league and too impressed by his new associates—a group Sam called the “Mayflower people.” But there was nothing he could do to stop Marino from making investments in projects that Sam thought were foolish. Israel and Marino were at each other’s mercy, each able to indulge their deepest desires as they attempted to solve the Problem by increasingly unlikely means.

  BACK IN LONDON, following his own path toward salvation, Sam tried to solve the mystery of the shadow market with the shadowy Robert Booth Nichols. Keeping Sam’s attention proved to be a full-time occupation for his handler. Ducking in and out of taxis, Nichols showed Sam how to check the re#ection in his sunglasses to see if he was being followed. The paranoia Nichols engendered in Sam created a sense of adventure —but also dependence. Nichols was Sam’s bodyguard. He was also inside Sam’s head, monitoring his every hope and fear. Mind control was part of the lore of the cold war. It was also a tool of the trade for a con!dence man. The long con essentially consisted of taking possession of the senses of the Babbitt for as long as was needed to make him part with his fortune.

  Thus Sam immediately agreed when Nichols announced that they had to travel to Switzerland to resolve the di$culties with the trade. Sam decided to invite Debra Ryan along. He’d grown much closer with her in recent months. It was her birthday and it would be a romantic holiday.

  As they checked into the !ve-star Hotel zum Storchen on the River Limmat in late May, it was evident to Ryan that Sam had fallen completely under the spell of Nichols.

  The power Nichols exercised over Sam scared her. So did everything about the supremely creepy couple.

  “It was like a movie,” Ryan recalled. “Bob was in their room sitting by an open window smoking a cigarette. He was tall, with dark hair, looking like John Wayne. He was a smooth talker, with a raspy voice. Old Hollywood was how he looked to me. Sam had told me how movies had been written about Bob—how the character in The Bourne Identity was based on Bob’s life. I didn’t know what was true or not. Bob was like God to Sam. When he was around Bob, Sam would suddenly !nd energy. He would overcome his back pain.”

  Sam had told Ryan that Ellen Nichols was expert at handling weapons and that she was Bob’s partner in their life of intrigue. But Mrs. Nichols was nothing like the Angelina Jolie–esque operative Ryan had imagined. Ellen was in her !fties, with long blond hair and a pretty face. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, she had a high-pitched voice, cooing obediently to her husband, and she appeared to be like any middle-aged, middle-class American woman somehow swept up in an international thriller. But if Nichols was drinking too much, or talking too much, it was Ellen who kept him in line, in the manner of an ultraefficient executive secretary.

  “Ellen was sitting at the desk typing on her computer,” Ryan said. “She was a cold !sh. Focused but cold. They all started talking about the secret deal. I hate smoke and Bob was chain-smoking, so I was about to leave. Then all of sudden Ellen’s computer crashed. She got very upset.”

  “Someone has penetrated our system,” Ellen cried in alarm. “They’ve shut us down.

  We’ve been infiltrated.”

  “Sam, what did you discuss in the cab on the way here?” Nichols asked Israel.

  “Nothing,” Israel said. “I swear we didn’t talk about the business.”

  “All the cab drivers in Switzerland work for the CIA,” Nichols said. “They’re all informants.”

  “We didn’t talk about anything,” Israel said.

  “Try to remember everything that you said,” Nichols said.

  Ryan looked on, bewildered. Israel and the Nicholses worked on the computer trying to get the Internet connection back. Ryan excused herself and went to their suite, terrified.

  “That was when Bob told me it was time for me to start carrying a gun,” Sam recalled. “He asked if I knew how to use a weapon. I didn’t want to look like a pussy, so I said yes. It had been a long time since I’d held a gun. We had guns when I was a kid in New Orleans, but I hadn’t touched one since then. Bob gave me a 9 mm Beretta with a silencer. He showed me how to carry it in the small of my back. He said the cardinal rule was to have the gun in a place where it was easy to reach. It had to be ready to !re —otherwise it was like having an empty canteen when you’re dying of thirst in the desert.”

  The next morning was Debra’s birthday. She and Sam woke and made love—passionate, frantic, intense love. But as soon as they joined up with the Nicholses the atmosphere turned claustrophobic once again. Debra wanted time alone with Sam. But the Nicholses wouldn’t leave them be for even a moment. Left with no choice, the two couples went for a stroll through the historic section of Zurich. As they walked the cobblestone streets, Sam stopped at an electronics store to buy a new cell phone. The electronic signal of SIM cards in mobile phones was one way that rival factions tracked his location, Nichols had told him, so Sam was vigilant about changing cells whenever he traveled. But wandering the old city was pleasant and exciting for Ryan.

  “I was starting to have a nice time,” Ryan recalled. “Sam always wanted to spend money on me but I wouldn’t let him. But this time he took me to a nice clothing store and bought me a bunch of new clothes. He was a great shopper—he could pick out clothes from the rack and they’d !t me perfectly. As we walked in one store, Sam turned me around and grabbed my face and kissed me with so much passion. We started to make out in the store, on the spur of the moment. I had never done that before, and I have never done it since. It was the best kiss ever. I told him that.”

  But the whirlwind romance was quickly replaced by Sam’s default position under the sway of Bob Nichols: paranoia. Sam didn’t tell Debra about the weapon he had hidden in the small of his back; the gun fueled Sam’s fears, even as it gave him a secret sense of power. Nichols stoked Sam’s anxieties relentlessly. The most mundane tasks—going for a walk, checking into a hotel, buying batteries for a camera—were infused with a sense of imminent peril. While Sam loved the drama, the stress wore on Ryan’s nerves. Food could be poisoned, Sam told her. Assassins could stab him with umbrella tips !lled with lethal doses of drugs. Every word was being listened to. Ryan began to wonder if people were following her. Were the bad guys coming to kill her? There were hundreds of operatives protecting Nichols at all times, Sam told Ryan. They were enveloped in a cordon of security be!tting the president of the United States—or so Nichols had convinced Sam.

  “Don’t worry,” Sam said to her. “Bob’s guys are always watching him.”

  “So where are they then?” Ryan asked. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “That’s the point,” said Sam. “You can’t see them. You’re not supposed to be able to see them. They’re covert. They’re blending in.”

  “Then why is Bob always standing by a window smoking a cigarette?” Ryan asked.

  “Any sniper could hit him.”

  Sam had an explanation for that too—he had an explanation for everything related to Bob. “Because he’s protected,” Sam said. “Because he’s surrounded.”

  Ryan was unimpressed, but deeply concerned for Sam’s safety—not because Nichols was necessarily telling the truth but because there were just too many warning signs, all of which Sam was ignoring.

  “I told Sam he was either going to wind up dead or in prison if he continued dealing with the Nicholses,” Ryan said. “I had an intuition about them. Dead or in prison—it was that simple.”

  DEBRA RYAN FLEW HOME, while Sam went o" with the Nicholses for a luxury weekend on the Côte d’Azur. When Sam returned to New York he was followed a few days later by the Nicholses. Sam told Ryan that they were going to stay at his
house for an unspeci!ed period of time. Ryan wasn’t happy with the presence of the interlopers.

  Nor were they pleased to have her around, especially with her dislike of cigarette smoke.

  Once again Nichols wasn’t going to let his Babbitt out of his sight—not until Sam had wired Bayou’s money back to Europe. But it turned out that he had another motive for coming to New York. Nichols confessed that he had an eye condition that was causing his sight to fail. Nichols wept as he told Sam about his a%iction. He was in desperate trouble, he said. His life would be in danger if his enemies discovered that his eyesight was going. Any sign of weakness would be fatal.

  Ever eager to please his handler, Sam had Nichols put on Bayou’s sta" in order to provide him medical insurance. The pair traveled to New Orleans, where Sam arranged for Nichols to have an operation. But the doctor said that Nichols didn’t need surgery; a course of medicine was all that was necessary. Yet Nichols remained terri!ed—at least, that was what he told Sam. It didn’t occur to Sam that such a needy person might not be all that he claimed to be. Sam wanted to believe, so he did believe. It was as if he had found a new religion, and he’d taken up the faith with the fervor of a convert. The Problem was going to be solved and Sam would be absolved of his sins, if only he chased nagging doubts from his heart and helped the CIA asset mend his eyes.

  In fact, religion was an explicit part of Bob Nichols’s appeal to Sam. Ethnically Jewish but raised in a nonobservant family, Sam had attended Episcopal schools, and Christianity was the only religion he’d experienced. It was the faith he had carried into his adult life, to the extent that he had religious beliefs. But Sam discovered that Nichols practiced a very speci!c and extreme form of evangelical Christianity. It was part of the worldview of the Upperworld. There was an invisible war between good and evil raging all over the planet, Nichols told Sam. Nichols said he had been forced to do terrible things in the service of God and the United States. He broke down sobbing as he talked about his own faith and the importance of being born again.

  “Bob was the single most knowledgeable person about religion I ever met,” Israel said. “He had studied religion after he got out of the CIA’s MK Ultra mind control program. He’d been so depressed he didn’t leave his couch for three years. Bob said he was suicidal and searching for the true meaning of life. He had found it in ‘teleo,’ the word of Christ meaning ‘It is over.’ He told me he believed I had been sent to him by God. I was from the tribe of Benjamin and I was meant to be with him. Most people would sound crazy or like a zealot saying that, but Bob was completely sincere.”

  For weeks on end, the Nicholses dominated Sam’s every act and thought. There were constant calls to London and Switzerland and the Netherlands. E-mails #ew back and forth. Bob managed Sam’s expectations, always at the ready with an explanation of why they were still delayed. As long as the $150 million remained in Bayou’s account at Citibank, Nichols stayed at Sam’s side in his role as the inside man, reminding him of what was at stake—!nancially, personally, religiously. All the while, Ellen Nichols fawned over Israel, calling him “my Sam” and laughing at his jokes and gazing in wonder at his powers as a trader.

  “Most of the time, Sam and Bob were like two little boys playing together,” Debra Ryan said. “They were always joking, being silly, doing stupid shit. Bob was a drinker, and Ellen didn’t like it when he was drinking because he would start talking too much.

  She would get upset because she was so strict about not letting their secrets out. But Bob would get drunk and tell stories.

  “Like the one he told us about a team of assassins that had come to kill him when he was doing business in a castle in the South of France. He said he heard the killers come into the castle, and instead of going towards the sound he stayed still to wait them out.

  He said he sat perfectly still for two days until the killers gave up and left. We were in the kitchen eating Chinese takeout at the time, supposedly having a normal conversation. But not Bob. He said to me, ‘Debra, never go where the sound is when someone comes to kill you.’ Like I was supposed to be getting ready for a team of assassins. I’m a painter, not a spy. He told me, ‘They want you to go to the sound. That is how they will kill you. Stay still. Never move.’ ”

  To pass time while the high-yield trade was being prepared, Sam had started to trade in the “real” market again. The volumes weren’t large, as the bulk of Bayou’s money was sitting in an account in Citibank. But even with small sums, Sam went on a tear.

  “Bob watched me trade,” Israel said. “He saw my daily pro!t-and-loss statements and he couldn’t believe how well I was doing. One time I overheard him talking to a buddy of mine, a former Wall Street broker. I was up in the band room, which was on the balcony of the chapel. They didn’t know I could hear. Bob told him that he thought I was a wizard who could make money out of nothing. Like a magic trick. My friend said I was right up there with the best traders on Wall Street. Bob thought I was a guru.”

  At the close of trading each day, Nichols tutored Sam in martial arts.

  “Do you have any kill moves?” Nichols asked.

  “In theory, not practice, obviously,” Sam said.

  “What good is theory going to do in a life-and-death situation?” Nichols asked. “Now that you’re in the big time, you better prepare yourself.”

  “So Bob showed me how to rip a man’s throat out with my bare hands,” Sam recalled. “He showed me how to gouge out eyes. How to push the nose bone into the brain. How to break a man’s neck from di"erent angles. We practiced for an hour every day. He taught me how to use a rolled-up magazine to choke a man. I learned how to use a pen in the eye or the ear. Bob treated martial arts like a tool. For a guy in his sixties he was lightning fast.”

  Over time the Nicholses staked out space on the second-#oor landing of the Trump house, an area with a couple of stu"ed chairs, a television set, a desk, and an ashtray. It was where Sam kept a computer—where he’d !rst read The Last Circle. One evening, Sam o"ered to show Nichols around on the Internet. Always eager to impress his older mentor, Sam proudly began the tutorial by googling Nichols’s name. At the top of the search results was the link to The Last Circle. Nichols began to read the unpublished manuscript. He claimed never to have seen it before, a ridiculous-seeming claim.

  Nichols feigned being unnerved by his online infamy.

  “Bob never sought notoriety,” Israel recalls. “The opposite. He talked a lot about how to make yourself vanish. He taught me how to create a new identity. You go to a cemetery and !nd someone around your age who is dead and both parents dead, too.

  Then you pick up his identity from the time he died. He showed me how to forge Social Security cards perfectly. He showed me how to forge a passport. He showed me how to fake all kinds of things.”

  “Can you make it look like I’m dead?” Nichols asked Sam, looking up from The Last Circle.

  “What do you mean?” Israel asked.

  “Can you trick up an article on the Internet to say that I’ve died?” Nichols said.

  “I can try,” Israel said.

  ON JUNE 7, 2004, the broker from the Netherlands e-mailed to say the day for the trading to commence had !nally arrived. But the next day the broker suddenly announced he wouldn’t be able to complete the deal. He didn’t explain why. Nichols said it was because he was afraid. He hadn’t been seized by fear of getting caught committing a fraud, though that was the obvious answer. Nichols said the broker was terri!ed of rival factions and getting murdered for assisting with their trade. Violence was endemic in the shadow market. Homicides were routinely carried out by the Octopus and the bodies secretly disposed of to ensure there was no investigation. Such was the price of admission to the shadow market—a price the broker was too terri!ed to risk, according to Nichols.

  Sam was outraged at the cowardice of the broker. The pair needed to partner with people who were not so easily spooked. Nichols agreed. To calm Sam down, he contacted his mentor, a forme
r Reagan White House Treasury o$cial named Phil Severt. Headquartered in Miami, Severt was able to act as a conduit to the shadow market, Nichols explained. Sam wasn’t allowed to talk to Severt himself; Sam didn’t have the national security clearances to move that high in the hierarchy. Only Nichols could talk to Severt.

  Nichols reported that Severt had a solution at the ready. He told Nichols that the !nal settlement for the trade would be handled by a trader called Charles Jones.

  According to Severt, Jones was attached to the NSA. For the purposes of due diligence and money-laundering laws, Jones faxed Sam an electricity bill from his house and a copy of his driver’s license—not the kind of documentation usually associated with transactions involving more than $100 million. There was one tiny detail left. Jones had to be authorized as a signatory on the Citibank account in order for the trade to go through. Sam agreed to the change. It was just a formality, Nichols assured him.

  Nothing important. A perfect stranger was about to be made signatory for an account with $138 million of Bayou’s investors’ money. The long con was nearing its climax; in the language of the trade, it was time to “take off the touch.”

  “All is set to go,” Jones wrote to Sam. “We’re going to be doing big things together.

  Roll up your sleeves.”

  * Extensive court testimony that remains under seal in federal court was obtained in the reporting of this book. A Freedom of Information search led to the release of formerly secret FBI reports on Nichols, though many pages were redacted. Scores of interviews with Nichols’s associates were conducted. Law enforcement and federal prosecutors refused to comment on Nichols—refusing to even confirm his name or any association with the U.S. government.