“A good beating,” said Albert. It seemed easier to say the words in a foreign language.
“OK.”
“But no broken bones. Only a stiff beating.”
The man started to laugh noiselessly, his shoulders shuddering up and down. In the blink of an eye, he conjured something metallic from his pocket and violently swiped the air around him muttering: “Yo… Yo.”
Albert was shocked. The man had a telescopic truncheon, one of the most efficient combat weapons on the market.
“I said no broken bones,” he repeated.
“Yes, sir. Aga Ramiz gave me orders…”
Albert was pleased to hear it, and his use of Shehu’s first name came as an agreeable surprise.
He wanted to ask where the man was parked but held his tongue just in time.
“When do?” asked the man.
“I’ll contact Mr Shehu about that,” said Albert.
“OK.”
The man telescoped the truncheon against his chest, slipped it into his pocket, turned, and disappeared without a word.
Albert returned to his car. Not a single vehicle had passed while they were talking. The only sound was that of a dog barking somewhere on a nearby farm. He needed to urinate badly. It took a long time, with long interruptions. Although his bladder still seemed half-full, the flow had stopped for the time being.
He looked at his watch. Twenty past one. He decided to set off for Geneva. Amandine had grown used to his occasional unannounced absences. Maria Landowska, on the other hand, knew all about it. She had kissed him and said she would miss him. “Not another night without you, Mr Albert,” she had said.
Just as he was getting into the car, a heavy motorcycle raced through the centre of Overbroek at high speed.
19
On Thursday morning around six thirty, Albert wolfed down coffee and brioche at a Restoroute near Bourg-en-Bresse and continued on the last leg of his journey, maintaining the local speed limit of eighty miles per hour. He arrived in Geneva at eight forty-five, just in time for the beginning of the working day. He knew that the Crédit Suisse was somewhere in the city centre, close to the lake. He asked a policeman to direct him to Place Bel-Air. The man looked at his number plates, shared nothing of his thoughts on the matter, and then explained in peculiar French how to get to his destination. Shortly after nine o’clock, he drove into the bank’s underground car park. When he got out of the car, he was immediately struck by the cleanliness of the polished, billiard-green concrete floor, which had caused his tyres to squeak like someone removing a pair of rubber gloves. The ceiling was dotted with cameras that moved almost imperceptibly back and forth. He took the elevator to the hall: lofty, impressive, Carrara marble from floor to ceiling. He informed the blond, chubby, friendly girl with flushed cheeks at the reception that he had an appointment with Monsieur Rossy. She checked her appointments list, nodded enthusiastically and called an inside line.
“They’ll be delighted to welcome you on the first floor,” she said cryptically, revealing her petite yet level teeth. “Present yourself at the reception, s’il vous plaît.”
Albert took the elevator, which opened on the first floor into a stately corridor lined on either side with paintings of important bankers, the floor bedecked with oriental carpets. The air was discreetly scented.
A grey gentleman in dress suit manned the reception, his hands folded, his gaze penetrating. “Beaver?” he asked. Albert nodded, slightly taken aback.
The gentleman scribbled something on a scrap of paper, stood, and accompanied Albert to his appointment as if he were a royal courtier. He opened a door and ushered Albert into a small windowless room with only a table, four chairs, a computer and a cube-shaped object he had never seen before. A metal tube, similar to a gas pipe, protruded from the ceiling.
The man closed the door behind him. It felt as if he had been locked up in a radio studio.
The door suddenly flew open and a short, portly fifty-year-old man in a three-piece grey suit and a dark-blue tie burst into the room. He bowed discreetly and introduced himself: “Jean Rossy, responsable du compte.” He had lank blond hair and shiny skin. He smiled cheerfully, invited Albert to take a seat, folded his hands and looked at him with an honest, upright expression.
“I am Beaver,” said Albert for the lack of something better. His first impression of the man was not good. “I would like to withdraw two hundred thousand Swiss francs from my account.”
Mr Rossy raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Monsieur, the new regulations oblige us to ask for evidence of your identity,” he said, with evident reluctance.
Unruffled, Albert took out his passport and placed it on the table.
Rossy opened it, glanced at the photo and the name, excused himself with a beaming smile and returned the passport. He started to type nervously at the computer, keeping his eye on the screen, and pressed a button attached to the table that looked like a bell. The sound of compressed air hissed from the pipe above their heads followed by a dull thud. Rossy opened a clip and removed a cylindrical plastic container, which he proceeded to open. He hurriedly placed a bundle of banknotes into the unfamiliar cube, which Albert now realized was a money counter. In the space of a few seconds it whirred through the 1,000 Swiss franc notes. A total of two hundred thousand.
“Would you like to check it for yourself?” he asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” Albert replied, overwhelmed by the speed of the service, which was even faster than the average Singapore Bureau de Change.
He signed a receipt. Rossy quickly compared it with the model signature of the Beneficial Owner - Wirtschaftlich Berechtigter on the computer screen - and slipped the money into an unmarked envelope.
Albert stuffed the envelope in his pocket and thanked Jean Rossy, who finally offered his client a friendly handshake.
They walked together to the elevator, passing the grey gentleman on the way. Rossy bowed with military formality, turned on his heels and disappeared.
“Dirty kraut,” Albert mumbled, in spite of the fact that they had spoken nothing but French.
He took the elevator to the underground car park and headed towards his car. But he changed his mind halfway. He was hungry. He made his way to the exit, found himself on the busy Place Bel-Air and looked around for a place to eat. He crossed the square and sat down at a table in a café-restaurant where he ordered an omelette with bacon and a large espresso.
He called home while he was waiting. Amandine answered with her affected “Oui!” He hung up immediately and blurted: “Stupid bitch!” The words lightened his humour to a degree. After spending the entire night behind the wheel, reality around him had evolved into a Magritte painting, a vacuum divided into compartments with surreal objects floating in the air.
By the time the delicious-smelling omelette had arrived, presented in a copper frying pan with what looked like genuine home-made bread, Albert was verging on the euphoric.
The first thing Jean Rossy did after taking leave of Albert was carry out the orders given him by Ernst Jacobi, who had been warned the day before by Hervé van Reyn to keep an eye on Albert’s account. Rossy called Jacobi’s inside line without going through the switchboard. Jacobi grumbled approvingly when he heard the news. Uncharacteristically, he showered the responsable du compte of one of the bank’s most important affiliates with praise, so much so that the man could hardly believe his ears.
The conversation had lasted twenty-four seconds. The international call Jacobi then made to Hervé van Reyn lasted a little longer. Van Reyn was delighted at the good news and during the small talk that followed he promised he would pay a visit to Zurich a week later on his way to Rome, where he had an appointment with procurator Pla y Daniel and his good friend Navarro Valls.
Jacobi insisted he join him for dinner at restaurant Kunsttuben in Küsnacht, where they served the best foie gras de canard aux queues de bœuf he had ever eaten. Hervé van Reyn, who was something of a connoisseur in matters
of gastronomy, found the combination a little strange (he had his doubts about Swiss cuisine), but he crooned an elongated Mmmm nevertheless, a typical quirk of Belgian aristocratic style when conversing about good food.
When Jacobi concluded their otherwise mundane conversation with a formal “Pax”, Hervé van Reyn raised his eyebrows and slowly returned the receiver to its cradle. Although he prided himself in his knowledge of the Swiss character, this unusual form of forced politeness surprised him time after time. He put it down to the peasant origins of the entire Swiss population.
He was so optimistic about the way things were going, he decided to dispense with the services of Marlowe & Co. The fact that the target had visited a friend after the encounter in Kortenberg seemed irrelevant to the situation and its investigation a waste of money.
He called Paul Hersch and told him the news. He insisted that Hersch arrange a rendezvous with the target as soon as possible.
20
On Friday 4 June, beginning at ten past eleven, Albert chaired a meeting of the college of public prosecutors, which took place in a room on the second floor of the Ministry of Justice, decorated with imitation Louis XV furniture. The respected college, which had been established the year before to introduce a degree of uniformity into Belgian penal policy, had evolved in practice into a sort of committee of arbitrators, charged with coordinating the tug of war between the five Belgian Public Prosecutor’s Offices, each with its political bias towards Flanders, Wallonia or Brussels. Their job, in fact, was to limit hostilities where possible. The installation of a federal prosecutor’s office in 1999, with a sixth public prosecutor at its helm responsible for serious crime and its international expansion, had done nothing to settle Belgian communitarian rivalries.
Albert adjourned the meeting at one thirty, realizing that they were still dealing with point one on the agenda: a precise description of the concept “criminal organization”. The actual discussion had turned around the amount of power to be given to the federal police chief, which would have to work closely with the new federal public prosecutor in the reformed structure. As often happened, the meeting had degenerated into a futile hair-splitting session, the representatives of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels each refusing to give an inch on the matter.
The meeting’s actual agenda had been interrupted to such a degree that the assembled college decided to vote on whether to continue after lunch or to schedule another meeting at a later date. The vote favoured another meeting.
In line with tradition, lunch was taken in Chez Duparc, a restaurant still considered by many Belgians to be among the best in Western Europe, probably because the menu, which had remained unchanged for years, was determined by certain prescriptions of classical nineteenth-century gastronomy and, with equal probability, because the place was so expensive only an elite few could afford to set foot inside.
By the time dessert arrived (crêpes suzette with ice cream and a sauce of Pernod and pepper, one of the house’s secret and more daring combinations) together with a glass of Château d’Yquem 1964, the eight invitees at table were in a particularly jovial mood (the minister of justice’s private secretary, a French-speaking aristocrat who had attended the last half-hour of the meeting, had joined the college for lunch). The problems raised during the meeting had been set aside (it was the weekend after all), and should similar teething trouble be encountered in the future, a typically Belgian compromise was sure to be reached after joint consultation, with a view to the maintenance of existing power structures, which the upcoming elections - the following week - were likely to leave untouched, thanks to an atrociously expensive disinformation campaign organized by the ruling party and the population’s short memory. Only those with half a brain remained convinced that the elections would lead to an unashamed and unsubtle restoration of the ancien régime.
The bill (46,768 francs, including service and VAT) was paid by Albert with a special credit card he reserved for the purpose.
The Opel Omega slowed to a halt in the weekend rush hour as it entered the Leopold II tunnel, only to find that the tunnel’s ventilators were out of order yet again and the exhaust fumes were percolating into the car. Albert started to agonize over the only real problem on his mind: his appointment with the unknown man on Monday 7 June in front of the church in Overbroek, the man who was intent on blackmailing him for five million francs. He had made the appointment when the man phoned him at ten o’clock sharp that morning. He had detected a degree of enthusiasm in his voice. Something new, he thought. He had toyed with the idea of installing a tracking device for incoming calls, but he feared it might raise suspicions among his own staff and was not convinced such gadgets would work with a mobile phone.
He called Walter de Ceuleneer, who was on his way to his villa in Knokke in the back of his Rolls Royce. He was also stuck in traffic between Drongen and Nevele due to an accident.
Albert informed him of the day, place and time of the appointment. “We’ll take care of it,” he replied. “If there’s a hitch I’ll be in touch. By the way, will Louise be joining us in Scotland?”
“I think so,” Albert replied.
“The horsies are ready and waiting!”
“I’ll have a word with her,” said Albert and he hung up.
“Bloody traffic’s a pain in the arse,” he said to his chauffeur.
“It’s the same every Friday, Public Prosecutor.”
“I suppose so,” Albert answered, bereft of inspiration.
The pain in his lower belly had stopped and he had been able to urinate normally, but he had other worries. How long before Amandine smells a rat, he fretted. The very idea of a weekend in her clawing presence, with Maria hovering in the background radiant with desire for him, made him question his savoir-vivre, the virtù of the Renaissance man, a much cherished narcissism in which he had believed unconditionally until that moment.
21
After a couple of days of “Belgian weather”, the first weekend in June 1999 turned out to be warm and sunny, with temperatures reaching into the eighties. A stiff east wind blustered along the coast. Surprisingly enough, the ever optimistic nit-pickers at the meteorological office hadn’t declared it a “catering industry weekend”, as they were often inclined to do, which meant that the exodus of apartment dwellers - with surrogate outdoor lives - to the traditional coastal resorts got off to a slow start. But it wasn’t long before the motorway police were obliged to introduce traffic controls, although their efforts were not enough to prevent a pile-up between Nevele and Aalter, which created a twenty-five-mile tailback. As a result, many day trippers only reached the coast in the early afternoon, with the cheerful task of finding a parking space waiting to greet them on arrival.
The Belgian, Italian and Swiss protagonists involved in the affair surrounding Public Prosecutor Savelkoul were, for the most part, unaware of one another’s existence. As such, their behaviour during this unexpectedly pleasant weekend was what one might be inclined to call normal, that is, they continued to be convinced that what they were doing or planning to do was in complete harmony with Christian ethics.
As was his custom in the summer, Walter de Ceuleneer spent every weekend in his “cottage by the sea”, as he liked to call it, in leafy Knokke-het Zoute. It was in fact a pretentious replica of a Victorian country house with an ivy-covered façade, rejoicing in the equally pretentious name “Manderley”. His wife’s continued absence, trying to lose a pound or two at her favourite Californian fat farm, allowed him to invite a lady friend for the weekend. Mouche was a forty-something divorcee who lived close to his home in Brasschaat. He referred to her as “my regular”. While he played golf in the company of the cheats and swindlers surrounding the local mayor, she relaxed in the sun by the pool drinking gin and tonics, to which she had developed a remarkable immunity over the years. She was blond, slender and, thanks to a couple of costly facelifts in Davos, Switzerland, more or less wrinkle-free. She lived for her body, and enjoyed flaunting it in
the company of “our Walter”, whose excessive generosity towards her could not be said of every man. His slightly ridiculous obsession with parading her in public - in spite of his age and excess weight - was the result of certain symptoms of the penopause, for which he tried to compensate with an exaggerated passion for her husky bedroom voice and regular use of the American wonder drug Viagra.
“I can still manage a second round,” he would bluff in male company, “and with live ammunition!”
His wife was aware of his relationship with Mouche, but she preferred to make the most of a less-than-ideal situation, primarily because of her determination to protect her status as well-to-do married woman whatever the cost, and turning a blind eye was a tried and tested face-saving technique.
That Saturday evening, de Ceuleneer was planning to take Mouche to a restaurant in Sluis specializing in mussels. After dinner they would have a drink at home - she in her negligee, he in his bathrobe - until the moment arrived when he would trumpet: “Time for me to give you a good seeing to!”
Notary Vromen had maintained the same Friday evening ritual for more than fifty years: mass at St Lambert’s followed by a glass of port with the parish priest - Karel Jacobs-aformer classmate at the junior seminary in Hoogstraten. They would talk about the good old days when they were children, an innocent form of regression they both enjoyed immensely. At seven o’clock sharp, the notary said goodnight and made his way to his “castle” a couple of hundred yards along the street, taking his time on account of his stroke. Elza, the seventy-year-old maid, would serve him buttermilk porridge with brown sugar in a gloomy dining room full of nineteenth-century furniture illuminated by a single forty-watt bulb. She would place his medication in a plastic pot next to the plate and leave the room without saying a word. She refused to wear a hearing aid, in spite of her chronic deafness, and her bad back made it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, but she continued in service nonetheless. She saw herself as one of the Vromen family heirlooms, an important part of her psychological identity that would be irretrievably lost if she were to be dismissed for reasons of old age or sickness. Notary Vromen seldom spoke to her, partly because he was taciturn by nature and partly because she rarely understood a word he said. She had carte blanche when it came to the housekeeping, although he checked every bill and invoice to the last franc, and left them unpaid for at least a month (cash in a used envelope). She also had the key to the wine cellar, where hundreds of bottles from the Twenties and Thirties awaited consumption, something the notary was unlikely to achieve in his lifetime.
The Public Prosecutor Page 21