Offshore Islands
Page 45
Angel Montero arrived in Paris together with Ernesto Chibas on the first day of May, ostensibly for the Utel conference, a hotel and tourist industry event. Angel was a smart young Cuban of about twenty-five years old, his only apparent fault, that Arrowsmith quickly remarked, was the tendency for his face to become very red when he drank alcohol. He was the youngest of Carlos Montero’s children and the only son, amongst four daughters.
Arrowsmith picked them up at the Grande Hotel on rue Scribe and they dinned nearby in a small traditional French restaurant, Chez Pauline, on rue Villedo. The dinner was nothing special, but the restaurant was discrete. Sipping their coffee and cognac, Ernesto produced a couple of photocopied pages from his inside pocket. The first had the letterhead Ministerio del Desorollo and was written in Spanish. A second photocopy was the last page of the Concession Agreement.
The letter of the Ministry for Investment was a simple letter of transmittal for the signed agreement. The signatures of the ministers and the official seals of the Ministry of Investment and the Ministry of Tourism endorsed the last page.
“Wonderful news Ernesto, let us drink to this,” Arrowsmith made a sign to the garçon and ordered a bottle of Champagne.
“Tony, is everything ready for Zurich?”
“No problem, we will meet my friend there exactly as planned, together with your man from the embassy and we shall hand you what is due against the original documents.”
“Excellent, let us toast to our success!”
In an almost euphoric mood they exchanged anecdotes and experiences whilst toasting to the glory of Cuba, Ireland, France and Ciscap.
Ernesto, who had arrived via Milan, where they were making marketing arrangements for the Ciscap, told Arrowsmith that Cuba was investing heavily in advertising in Italy and had been encouraged by the success of the campaign.
The pair planned to continue to Berlin the next day and finish their trip in Zurich on the Friday, where they would be met by Arrowsmith together with Xavier de Montfort, who would hand them the I£1,000,000 against the signed documents for the fifty year concession at Cayo Saetia.
A month earlier they had initialled the papers in Havana, against the promise of one million pounds in cash for the final signature, to be handed over to the designated representatives of the minister in Zurich.
They saw it as a business transaction, necessary for the development of the project, ostensibly for ‘consultancy services’, as such arrangements were frequently attributed. Arrowsmith considered the deal perfectly normal; to him business functioned like any well tuned motor providing it was correctly oiled.
After dinner they drove to the foot of the Sacre Coeur and took the funicular to the summit and after a quick tour ended up in the ‘Grenier’, where though the atmosphere was rather touristy they enjoyed the Karaoke.
At midnight Angel suddenly departed in the direction of a fashionable discotheque to Ernesto’s relief, who confided to Arrowsmith, as they drank a nightcap, the difficulties of travelling with Gabriel Montero’s son.
Following a clumsy arrangement of Erikkson’s to offload counterfeit currency, two men were arrested as they tried to leave Pointe-à-Pitre airport for Cuba. They were carrying a large quantity of French currency and counterfeit US$100 bills after arriving the previous day from Baranquilla in Columbia according to police.
James Gurton, a Londoner, and Seamus Delaney, an Irish citizen, were arrested after being stopped by French customs authorities at the airport. Police found 4,495 fake $100 notes in the men’s suitcases and almost 500,000 French francs in large bills.
The pair had been followed in Point-à-Pitre, on the Tuesday by plain-clothes police officers who had observed them in discussions with locals suspected by the police to be involved in drug trafficking and illegal currency activities. They were said to have offered to sell the fake bills for 200 French Francs each.
The suspects had agreed with the locals to bring the money to a hotel in Point-à-Pitre where they would exchange it against Francs. The pair then travelled to Baranquilla on the Wednesday and returned with counterfeit currency that was exchanged for French francs.
Barton was lucky and not for the first time in his life, he had used an assumed name in dealing with the two middlemen who had been introduced by Erikkson’s Russian friends and there was no way they could identify him unless by a direct confrontation, which was unlikely as they were quickly shipped off to Paris pending further investigation.
He would have to rein in Erikkson’s enthusiasm or they would themselves soon end up in jail.
Chapter 46
Ortega