Cashback

by Duncan James

  ***

  Will Bartlett wasn't too happy about meeting the British Defence Attache in Harare.

  It was a bit too close to home, so to speak, and he was never sure, these days, who could be trusted and who couldn't. Anybody might see him at the Embassy. For all he knew, the police might already be tailing him for some reason or other.

  He knew he had fallen foul of the law by getting cash out of the country for his father, although he was pretty sure he had managed to do it without arousing too much suspicion. However, it had been a terrible struggle, and with the Zimbabwean Dollar devaluing so fast, his father's wealth had also dwindled to a shadow of its former worth. He knew that the few thousand US Dollars he had managed to get to South Africa had been very welcome, especially in the early days, but now it was getting more and more difficult to raise the cash, and his father had insisted that he should take no further risks.

  But although he had reluctantly agreed to call it a day, he was still not sure of his own safety - and that in his own country, too. He realised that if he was picked up on some pretext or other, the Group Captain friend of Robin Hood was in no position to do anything to help, since Will wasn't a British subject. He had been so keen, though, to hear more about what Will knew of recent developments, that the young Zimbabwean had readily agreed to meet him, if only to return a favour to Robin. But he was not happy about meeting him in Harare, and had said so.

  "No problem," Charles Bowman had responded. "I can travel if you can. I'm accredited to Mozambique as well, if that's any use."

  "Never been to Maputo," replied Will.

  "How about Malawi, then? Do you know Lilongwe, or perhaps Zambia, if Lusaka isn't too close to home for you," suggested the Group Captain.

  "Lusaka would be fine," replied Will. "I know that quite well, and can get there easily from here."

  "When could you get there?" asked Bowman.

  "Tomorrow," replied Will. "If I stay at the Holiday Inn, that's not too far from where all the embassies are, so we could meet there. There's a decent bar and a couple of restaurants."

  "I know it well," replied the Group Captain. "I'll buy you lunch."

  It was a pleasant meal, and the two men got on well together, considering they had never met before. But they had common ground in that Bowman knew Robin and his parents.

  "I met Robin in Nairobi," explained Will, "when he was lecturing about computers during his gap year. A great friend on mine, who was the son of my father's farm manager before we were evicted, was going to the lectures."

  "The Hoods are a nice family," said Bowman, "but I haven't seen Robin since he graduated. Why were you in Nairobi, anyway?"

  "Trying to scratch together some of my father's assets, and get the cash to him in South Africa. He's helping to run a friend's vineyard in the Western Cape, but had to leave almost everything behind when they were thrown off the farm," explained Will.

  "You are lucky not to have been caught," commented Charles Bowman. "You must know the penalty for breaching the country's finance rules. Did you get much out?"

  "Not a lot, really," he admitted, "and I've given up trying now. It's become far too difficult and too risky, as you suggest. But you wanted to know about the breakdown in the banking system," said Will. "What can I tell you that you don't already know?"

  "First of all, I'd like to hear exactly what you've heard about the situation, and how you got to hear about it. All I know so far, apart from what I've picked up on my network, is a report from Robin after you'd rung him."

  Will started off by telling the attache about the informal network of disillusioned citizens which had developed in Zimbabwe, and how they were scattered throughout almost every aspect of the country's activities, from top to bottom of society.

  "What sort of people are these," asked Bowman.

  "For a start," replied Will, "we are all totally fed up with the present corrupt regime, and most of us, but not all, have suffered in some way at their hands. I refuse to give you names, but I can tell you that we have contacts in the police, the civil service, even in the President's office, and, of course, in banking. Between us, we have a pretty good idea about what's going on, and that's how I was able to tell Robin about the banking scare."

  "Why did you ring him to tell him specially, as a matter of interest," probed the diplomat.

  Will had been expecting that question, and knew he had to answer carefully.

  "Simply because the whole affair was causing such excitement over here, privately if not publicly, and I knew Robin had such a keen interest in and knowledge about computers. I'd met him, after all, while he was lecturing about them, and I was sure he'd like to hear the gossip."

  "So what exactly had you heard about the banking computers?"

  Will repeated what he had told Robin, although going into more detail than he could over the phone to Oxford. It was his contacts in the banking world and at the Finance Ministry who had broken the news, so to speak, and others working in Government who had been able to put together a picture of the panic among senior members of the hierarchy who had lost their money.

  "Our friend in the President's office said that he went absolutely ballistic when he discovered that his own accounts had been wiped clean!" explained Will. "Of course, although there was nothing on the state-controlled TV and radio or in the press, rumours started flying about almost immediately, once news of the meltdown spread. I'm sure you must have heard them - talk of it being the UK's responsibility in some way, talk of the opposition party having a hand in it, rumours about the banks running out of money, all that. As you know, one result was even longer queues at the cash machines."

  "It has certainly been causing a good deal of agro," agreed the Group Captain. "Has anyone, so far as you know, attempted any rational explanation for what has happened?"

  "None that I've heard," replied Will. "There seems to be no way of telling what has happened to all the cash on deposit - where it's gone to or how. But everyone seems to be blaming everyone else at the moment."

  "I heard that many senior people were running around like scalded cats," agreed the attache.

  "Several things have happened since I spoke to Robin," said Will, "which I may as well tell you about in case you haven't heard yet."

  "Yes, please do," asked Charles Bowman. "You seem to have a pretty good network of contacts feeding you with information, and judging from what you say, they should have a good feel for what is going on."

  "They certainly do," said Will. "But they are not just briefing me - we all exchange information all the time between one another. It's not a formal structure at all; just like minded individuals who like to keep in touch with what's going on."

  "So what's the most recent news?" asked Bowman, pouring another glass of wine.

  "Heads are starting to roll, it seems," replied Will. "Everyone is blaming everyone else at the moment, as you know, and no-one is yet accepting that it could simply be a massive failure of the computer systems. The favourite whipping boy seems to be the UK Government, and many Ministers are convinced that London is trying either to destabilise the country, or to bring down the present regime, or simply take revenge for what has happened to the white farmers. There are others, though, who think it's a simple cock-up, and I heard just as I left that the Chairmen of both the Standard Chartered Bank and Barclays Bank had been arrested by the police, and that papers had been taken from their offices and their homes. So far, Zimbank seems to have escaped attention."

  "Well, that is news indeed," said Bowman. "I don't fancy the chances of those poor chaps banged up in one of Harare's appalling jails."

  "They may not be there long," suggested Will. "It seems that one, if not both, has also lost their savings as well, so they are in the same boat as everyone else."

  "Not quite everybody," corrected the Group Captain.

  "Well no, I suppose not," replied Will thoughtfully. "It seems it's only top people, including judges and the military who have been affected, while
the 'man in the street', so to speak, still has his savings intact. Certainly, my account looked OK when I checked."

  "Odd that, isn't it?" commented the attache. "It almost looks too selective to be a computer crash of some sort."

  "I suppose it does," agreed Will.

  "Tell me, has your network heard anything about what the opposition political party is making of all this?" asked Bowman.

  "I haven't asked," replied Will.

  "Any chance of finding out?" enquired Bowman.

  "There might be," replied Will, looking perturbed, "but I'm not at all sure I want to be caught spying for you, with all due respect. Smuggling money out for my father was risky enough. And in any case, how would I get the information to you - I can't spend my life and my savings flying round Africa to meet you every time I pick up a bit of gossip."

  "Of course not, and I'm not trying to recruit you either," Bowman reassured him. "But you obviously have excellent sources of accurate information, and with the UK being the prime suspect for all this at the moment, I'm sure you can understand why I'm keen to keep up to speed with events."

  "Of course I can," said Will, "but I hope equally that you understand why I don't want to get caught up in supplying you with information. I'm a Zimbabwean, after all, not a Brit."

  "I do understand that, of course," said Bowman. "But there's no reason why you should be put at any risk. I can easily set up a secure communications link between us, which nobody would be able to trace."

  "How?" asked Will.

  "Do you have a mobile phone?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Well, I can easily and quickly adapt it to provide a secure one-to-one satellite link between us, without in any way affecting the present operation of the phone," explained the Group Captain. "In fact, I'll do it now, if you like. No commitment - you don't have to use it if you prefer not."

  Will thought hard for a moment. He was sure Robin would want him to help out if he could, and if Charles Bowman says there is no risk attached, then ?. He took his phone from the pocket of his jeans, and put it on the table, without saying anything.

  The Group Captain smiled, and slid it across towards him.

  "I'll just nip off to the loo, if you don't mind. I shall only be a minute."

  When he returned, he put the phone on the table between them.

  "I've simply added a small computer chip ? "

  "Which you just happened to have with you," interrupted Will.

  "Which I just happened to have with me, as you say, into the existing circuit," explained the Group Captain. "Your SIM card is unaffected, but I have added my name - Charles Bowman - to your address book. When - or should I say 'if' - you call me, the call will be routed via a secure satellite link direct to my mobile, wherever I am. All your other calls will be connected exactly as they are now."

  Will picked up his phone, and looked at it. There was no sign from the outside that anything had been done with it. He switched it on, and thumbed through the address book until he came to 'Charles Bowman'. He pressed the call button, and, within a few seconds, there was the muffled sound of a phone ringing nearby. The Defence Attache reached for his pocket.

  "It's only me," said Will, and ended the call. The hidden phone stopped ringing.

  "Are you sure it's totally secure?" asked Will.

  "Totally," the Group Captain replied. "Many of us have the same facility, but they are all discrete frequencies. The one in your phone is unique to you."

  Will returned the phone to his pocket. "Thanks for that," he said. "I'll let you know if I hear anything. Now I really must make a move and get back to Bulawayo. Thanks for lunch."

  "There's one more thing before you go," said the diplomat.

  Will sat down again. What now, he wondered.

  "I'd like to give you something towards your expenses, if I may - air ticket, hotel, that sort of thing," said Bowman. "It's been very good of you to come all this way to meet me, and I really appreciate that, but you shouldn't be out of pocket in any way."

  "I'd rather not be paid anything, if you don't mind." Will didn't mention Robin's adapted cash card. "I'm doing this in case it helps, in some way, all the people who have suffered so much in my country. I'll settle for the modernised phone!"

  "There's a new battery in it, too, by the way," said Bowman, with a grin. "Satellite calls take a bit more power, and this one should last longer than the old one."

  The two men stood, and made towards the restaurant door.

  "There's just one thing that's bothering me," said Will. "Can you make sure my name is not attached to any information you might pass on to others? It's not really coming from me, but from a network of people. I'm simply the messenger."

  "I can promise it, if that's what you want," replied Charles Bowman. As they shook hands, he added, "I've enjoyed your company, Will. It would be nice to meet you again, socially next time. If ever you're in Harare and fancy coming to the house, for supper or something, just say the word."

  "That's very kind of you," said Will. "I'd like that, but I must warn you that I normally go everywhere with a very dear friend of mine, the son of my father's farm manager. So there could be two for tea!"