The Financial Terrorist

by John Gubert

  Giovanni continued, “We tell them we wish to finalise the deal promptly. We say we will do the due diligence quickly with a target for completion by the end of next month. The good thing about that is that the auditors will have to admit that they rushed the whole process. That is why they will have overlooked a series of missing records in the books of the two largest banks outside New York.”

  “Those will be the ones in Texas and California. Why outside of New York? And what missing records?” Charles queried.

  “The auditors are hotter on the east coast. We’re more likely to have an easy ride with their provincial branches. In reality, they won’t have missed anything, because the true records are there. I will ensure, though, that they disappear after their inspection. That way there will be a gap in both banks’ records.

  There will also be a series of loans written between those dates. The loans will be to non-existent companies and the funds will have been transferred to them. The companies will all be located in tax havens and we will salt the money away from them. That will imply that there was systematic fraud before the take-over as well after it. Nobody will be able to trace things back to the date when you took on the business; it will all have started before then and, in all likelihood, the regulators will insist that the auditors pay for the error and compensate IBE. It will muddy waters and should make us an extra billion. I felt I should pay my way.”

  “Giovanni, you’re a genius. I like the idea. Go ahead with it. My father will help to make the money disappear into the ether of the banking system. He’s an expert at that.”

  Giovanni was pleased by this compliment. He went on, “In so far as the regulators are concerned, we will say that we would like approval to complete the deal by next month. That gives us plenty of time to fix the books, produce a good set of results and an even better forecast when we later announce the public offering. That’s the real reason for the timing; you need time to maximise the returns we will make. But we’ll tell the regulators we wish to complete promptly to ensure that there is not too big a vacuum. We can mutter about the risks of delay. That stuff usually works with the Fed.”

  He drew breath, “I have also sorted out the Chief Executive. He is with one of the big banks, Eastern General Holdings or something, and really hasn’t got a job. You know the role. He’s a token presence on their management as a result of their acquisition of that New Hampshire outfit. He’ll come over for a big office, a secretary with big boobs and a big salary. I guess we’ll have to pay him a few million. You can get him to sign all the compromising papers you want when he joins. It saves you later. The Honourable James will love him. He’s an old New England family, fortunately the slightly dimmer side of the dumber end of a long line of in-breeding.”

  “Should we tell that to the regulators?”

  “We can in confidence. At least we tell them his name. Not about his intelligence. I’d prefer to tell his name just to the Fed in New York. That’s his local and in reality they are the leader of the pack.”

  “That’s excellent. I suppose we should leave in about an hour to be at the Fed here in Washington at nine. That gives us time for the difficult one, Giovanni. This Rastinov affair is very strange.”

  “Charles. You and I have worked together for a few years now. We work well together and we like each other. More importantly, we respect each other. I am a businessman, not a traditional Mafia man. Di Maglio is a Mafia man through and through. He will always live in an unbelievable world. He will always do everything to get his own way. He will stop at nothing. You are wary of him and you are right to be so, but you are too arrogant. You believe you can outplay him. Beware. That arrogance may make you blind.”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Giovanni. Say what you mean.”

  “Charles. You are not listening. Have you seen Rastinov? Then you would recognise him, wouldn’t you? Is he subtle? Why is he playing this game? Is this his normal style? Or has Rastinov changed?”

  “Giovanni, can you assure me that Di Maglio is not behind the scares?”

  “He definitely would not be. He wouldn’t do that, especially to Juliet. That’s the only person he will stop being Mafia for. He’d do it if it was just you and Jacqui, but Juliet was with you on all but one of the attacks.”

  “So you believe Rastinov may not be alive. You think the approach is too subtle for him. You think that there may be someone masquerading as Rastinov. I assume his aim is to get the Di Maglio Empire. But if it is someone else, then we need still to get to him and destroy him.”

  “That’s right. Either you or Di Maglio, or both, have to destroy Rastinov or whoever it is and buy your freedom. Now I have said enough. But be careful. The phoney war could end and it could all get bloody.”

  Charles tried to continue the discussion but to no avail, Giovanni was tight lipped. Charles then explained to him the events at the airport. He was not over surprised. He promised that ammunition for the gun would be in the car when they left the regulators. They agreed to bring down their luggage and head straight for the airport once the meeting ended. As they were travelling together again, they had use of the Di Maglio executive cars and jet.

  “And I will take you back to Kennedy after the New York meetings to see that you have no problems on the road,” said Giovanni. “I have to look after you. You control my pension fund!”

  And with that half-joke about the promised pay off, he got up. In the car to the regulators, he said nothing more about the earlier discussion. They arrived at the Federal Reserve. Once through the usual bureaucratic checks, they were quickly ushered into their meeting. As usual, they were seen as manna from heaven. The known Mafia involvement in the banks had caused serious concern. They were too small to be a national problem, but big enough to make the conservative guardians of the nation’s banking service extremely nervous and, consequently, blind to the new risks they could face with the new owners.

  They agreed that matters should be progressed quickly and that too many things could go wrong if there were a lengthy vacuum. Official approvals should not be hard. They would talk to their counterparts in other states to ensure that they moved smartly. Charles, now he was part of IBE, had not yet been tarnished. Anything had to be better than being owned by Di Maglio. Little did they realise that they would regret that naive approach. The IBE reputation would be in tatters within the year, and the authorities would discover that, in matters financial, there were many worse things than a Mafia connection.

  The journey to the airport and into New York was uneventful. In the US the only comfortable way to fly is by private jet. The journey into New York itself was fast. The car whisked them through the grim indifference of outlying New York into the towering gullies of Manhattan and they headed south to Wall Street itself.

  They stopped in Giovanni’s office just off Broadway. It was near the soul-less headquarters of several of the US’s most prestigious banks. Some were modern blocks of glass, with the odd ray of sunlight allowing them to catch a reflection of the ill planned styles of the neighbouring buildings, others were greyish mounds of ageing stone.

  Wall Street itself is depressing. It is no wonder that many of the investment banks have moved to mid-town Manhattan. The downtown area is not conducive to original thought; the area is a mess of the old, the new and the ugly separated by fume filled arteries, the side streets overwhelmed by tired people, belching delivery vans and slow moving cars.

  They had a pleasant meeting with the New York authorities. They must have had a good report on them from London for they had talked to the people there. The Honourable James had obviously blown his role and importance out of all proportion. The idea of a distinguished banker heading up the US businesses from New York enthralled. When they heard the name of the man in the frame, they smiled contentedly. Charles suspected they had a vision of gargantuan monthly lunches flashing in front of their eyes as they recognised the epicurean perfection of the provisional choice.

 
They ran them through the plans and agreed the consents that were needed. The authorities would work with them and their advisers to help in any way they could. It was staggering how gullible they were. The dream merger was perfect. Ownership by men of integrity and conservatism was better than those linked to corruption and crime. In reality, the poor fools again hadn’t realised that corruption, fraud and embezzlement were replacing crime.

  And Charles felt rather proud to be, alongside Jacqui, the main architect of that plan. Their wealth originated from his father’s ingenuity. This, though, was their game. Jack Ryder had an important role in the whole matter, just as Jacqui and Charles had had in his original scheme. But it was a reversal of roles. This time, they called the shots.

  Once they left the New York regulators, it was approaching four p.m. That left them three and a half hours till Charles’ plane. They drove to mid-town and stopped off at the Pierre to allow Charles time for a snack so he could skip the food on the plane and try to snatch some sleep. He really needed to be in the office for all Friday, or he would have to go in for another weekend. And he had agreed with Jacqui that they would head into the country. They had a small cottage, buried in the heart of rural Sussex, between London and the sea. And they’d decided to try to have as many weekends as possible off before the game really started. Then, they would have little time for pleasure.

  Giovanni again was silent on the whole issue of Di Maglio and Rastinov. Charles pumped him a few times but to no avail. In the end they just went through their different plans one after the other, fine tuning them here or there.

  The auditors had finally drawn up an action plan. There were teams in each of the banks. They had top lawyers in London and New York working on the take-over itself.

  They had employed a public relations firm with offices in all the major centres to produce good news about them. It was pushing their prowess as fund managers especially. And Jack Ryder was already buying into the investment funds of the US banks, to make it look as if the public were already responding to the take-over news and looking forward to even stronger performance from them.

  The loans to the phoney companies were being set up. Giovanni was also organising, through long established and carefully placed officials in the main banking offices, the future disappearance of records and the generation of the non-existent loans. And Jack Ryder and Stephens were putting together the complex deals that would lose the unsuspecting banks further billions. Jack was also organising the companies and instruments for investment and building up stakes to sell on at a profit to the investment funds.

  Charles was busy arranging a top-secret team to prepare the combined bank for its public flotation, where investors would buy the bulk of the shares from them just before the crash. And the dirty tricks department was already at work, ensuring that their so-called clean directors in London signed as many compromising papers as possible. They would all come in useful in good time.

  They had also stolen some more papers from Associated with its chairman Sir Piers’ signature on some of them. They had the dirt on him already from a previous incident, but you never knew whether you needed more. And Charles had an urge to engineer a link between Associated and the death of their Head of Security. He could not think of one immediately, and needed something that was foolproof. If he found anything more, then he could increase the pressure on Associated to ensure they did what he wanted. If they acquired IBE after its problems, that would make life easier for him and Jacqui. It could even pave their path back to the golden world of high finance.

  A takeover would solve the problems caused by the bad debts and fraudulent trading. It would not sort out the investment fund scam and the resultant losses incurred by many of PAF’s clients. If they had enough dirt on Associated and Sir Piers, perhaps they could do something there.

  As for the shareholders, they would get something back from the takeover but they mattered less. They had less clout. Bad investment in shares, rather than through regulated investment funds, was a risk that would not get the sympathy vote if it went badly wrong.

  Charles had a couple of other ideas on improving the profits from the scams but he did not feel like sharing them with Giovanni. Despite his warnings, they involved double crossing Di Maglio. And that was dangerous. Charles knew that Di Maglio would have him killed if he had the slightest inkling of his plans.

  They checked and double checked their action plan. It all seemed to fit in well. The next month or two would be dedicated to the merger. Following that, they would put their plans into full swing, culminating with the sale of the bank to the public and its subsequent demise.

  Charles felt good, “Within twelve months, we could have pulled it off and the follow through will be incredible. We could even cause a crash in markets. My father would enjoy that. Mind you, with our new wealth, I suspect that we’ll be able to manipulate a few more in the future.”

  Giovanni shook his head. “Don’t be too impetuous. Wait for the right opportunity and then strike. Learn to live the quiet periods as well as the exciting ones. Eliminate the risk of things going wrong. Otherwise, you’ll lose as quickly as you win.”He saw Charles smile. “Do take heed, Charles. That is sound advice.”

  Charles gently slapped him on the back. “Giovanni, I agree with you. I’m not laughing at you. Once this is all over, I’m going to retire for a year or so. And I’ll keep myself occupied. But as a long term investor and not a financial terrorist, as that cretin Sir Piers once called me.”

  Giovanni looked at his watch. “It’s time to take you to the airport. We want to see you through to the lounge. There you should be safe.”

  And he was right. Charles felt safe for the first time for a long time as he sat down in the lounge with half an hour to boarding. He disobeyed all advice and had a glass of claret. That was his alternative to a sleeping pill. As they raised the temperature in the cabin, the combination of the heat and the wine always made him sleepy. And he could think of no better way to spend a flight than asleep.

  The air hostess asking if he would like some breakfast woke him up. She was a pleasant looking girl and she smiled genuinely as she remarked, “You slept like a baby. You must have been a good boy in New York. You had a clear conscience.”

  That sounded like an invitation to him. In any event he ignored it. He was no great supporter of unfettered promiscuity. Soon though were swooping down on Heathrow. It looked an uninviting place, as indeed any airport on a wet and windy morning tends to look. Charles had shaved and changed back into a suit. He’d shower at the office.

  He moved along the interminable walkways and passport control. Then he went through customs and into the waiting area. He saw the bank driver at once, he was a security guard from the office. He recognised him immediately, alerted to the upgrade in security. Maria had done well. She’d been through everything. London felt much safer than California or New York, but that didn’t mean that he should relax.

  He had a shower in the private bathroom next to his office. With eyes shut, he felt the warm water refresh him as it splashed over him. It was the cold draught that alerted him to the fact that someone had come into the bathroom. Opening his eyes and blinking away the water, he peered through the steam. It was Maria.

  “Maria, you are silly coming in here. Anyone could see you.”

  “No they couldn’t. I went into your office and shut the door behind me. That’s normal for a personal assistant. Anyway, I had no thought of stripping off and joining you. At least,” she added with a mischievous grin, “not until you put the idea in my mind and showed you were in favour of it.”

  “Impossible girl,” he shook his head at her suggestion. “I’ll join you in the office. Now bugger off.”

  “Actually, I wanted to brief you on the problems we had here the other weekend. I prefer to do it here with the water running. That will prevent any bugs or listening devices picking up what we say.

  “Dunkillin told the police about his af
fair. They accept he had nothing to do with the murder. In fact, they have a good description of two black youths who were seen running down the road in some panic at around half past midnight. The pathologist put the time of death at between twelve and three in the morning. As we know, we killed her at ten, it just proves you can’t trust the experts. So far nothing has been found. The police are publicly continuing with their investigation, but I suspect they are pulling resources from it. They just keep hitting dead ends.”

  “Excellent. What about the security man?”

  “The information we put out about drugs and things started to take hold and they made a connection between our late lamented head of security at Associated and the two detectives. Our friend was not too good at secret recruitment. He was recorded on their phone asking for the meeting at Waterloo. The idiot hadn’t realised their office would record all calls and called them on its landline.

  “The police believe the detectives killed him, although they haven’t found the weapon and are struggling to establish a reason. That’s not surprising as I disposed of the knife myself and the detectives had no cause to kill him. They regard it as murder but it’s not a high priority for them. They think it has to be drugs related and they believe a pusher less is a good thing. The only thing they can’t understand is why he had so much cash on him. Normally, if you kill someone, you would take their money. But they’ll have to fathom a reason for that.”

  Charles interrupted, “I would suspect that Associated is also working hard to quieten things down. It can hardly do any good for their snowy white reputation. The thought of it,” he added maliciously, “the old school tie linked with the criminal classes.”

  She thought that ironic, too, “Yes and especially as it appears our two detectives were hardly whiter than white. One had served time for assault. And the drugs they found on them didn’t help. So the police are reacting similarly on their deaths. They are just open about them and say that it appears the two were caught up in drugs related gang warfare.”