The Clayton Account

by Bill Vidal

  Le Caprice at eight, they agreed. Caroline would book the table.

  When Tom got to St James, his wife was already there, sitting at the crowded bar sipping vintage Veuve Clicquot. She smiled radiantly and he kissed her cheek.

  ‘Did you really get the money?’ she murmured eagerly, leaning towards her husband as he edged for space along the crowded bar.

  ‘Hello, Mr Clayton.’ The manager approached them. ‘Sorry about the delay. As I told Mrs Clayton, we’ll find you a table shortly. Please let me offer you a drink.’

  Tom smiled gratefully and nodded towards Caroline’s glass: ‘Same, please.’

  Tom and Caroline loved Le Caprice. It had been the venue of their first night out after that fateful evening at Annabel’s. There was a certain buzz about the place that embodied the excitement of London life.

  ‘Well?’ persisted Caroline, above the din of the crowded restaurant.

  People kept coming in adding to the bustle of the bar area. Waiters rushed in and out of the main restaurant as one by one the tables filled.

  ‘I have the cash in Zurich right now.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Enough to buy the house, for openers,’ he replied smiling.

  ‘I love your grandad!’ she exclaimed, unabashedly putting her arms around his neck and kissing him hard on the lips. Over her shoulder he could see the wandering eyes of some of the patrons. Caroline was stunning by any standards, but sitting on a bar stool with an already short dress riding higher as she raised her arms to hug him, the sight was attention-grabbing. Tom returned the stares, amiably enough but the message was clear: Mind your own business.

  Which they did, reluctantly.

  ‘There’s more, in fact,’ Tom told her with feigned seriousness.

  ‘More what? Money?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘More to it all … than I thought. But,’ he smiled at her again and took her hand firmly, ‘let’s talk about that later. First tell me about the house. Did you call them?’

  She did not require much prompting on that subject. Yes, she had indeed telephoned the agents and they had arranged a viewing for late Saturday morning. Perhaps they could go with the children? Give nanny the day off and have lunch in a Cotswolds inn? By the time Caroline finished describing the day she had planned, the champagne bottle was empty and, on cue, their table materialized.

  Tom was starving. He had been so tense earlier in the day that he had turned down the airline lunch tray. His last meal had been breakfast; since then he had nothing but the Savoy bourbon and two more on the plane. He commented on the menu but Caroline smiled and said, ‘Light food, no garlic,’ without looking up from hers.

  So he ordered a mozzarella and tomato salad, poached Dover sole – he emphasized ‘poached’ for her benefit as the unsuspecting waiter took the order – and a bottle of ’85 Caillou.

  ‘Me too,’ she said, then grinned. They spoke about the house, and the children, and the ways they would divide their time between London and the country. They ate with joy and anticipation. As their bill was prepared and settled, Tom ordered a large cognac while Caroline finished the wine. The high alcohol intake had no effect on him. Tom Clayton was riding high.

  Outside the restaurant they glided, through a moment of wind and cold rain, into a waiting taxi.

  Caroline cuddled up to her husband.

  ‘Cold?’ he asked.

  ‘My bum is cold,’ she grunted into his lapel.

  ‘That’s because you’re English,’ he joked.

  ‘No, it’s because I’m not wearing tights, like any sensible woman would.’ She looked at him wickedly. ‘Stockings,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, yes. Well …’ He automatically glanced towards the driver.

  ‘To please a certain American pervert I could name.’

  The house was quiet as they entered. Only the hallway light was on. Caroline started up the stairs but before she had a chance to start her kicking-off-the-shoes ritual Tom caught up with her, unzipped her dress and let it fall on the stairs. Then put his arms around her and cupped her breasts, pulling her tight towards him and kissing the side of her neck.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  They both looked up and saw their elder son standing at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas.

  ‘What are you doing up at this hour, Patrick?’ his mother asked sternly.

  ‘I heard you come in.’

  ‘Get back to bed right now, young man,’ said Tom, then added soothingly: ‘I’ll come and tuck you in later.’

  Patrick went back to his room and waited until he had heard his parents door close before waking up his brother.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the younger boy.

  ‘I just caught Mum and Dad doing it,’ said Patrick conspiratorially.

  ‘Doing it? How? Where?’

  ‘On the staircase!’

  ‘Wow. But you said they did it in bed.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ reflected Patrick, ‘I’ll have to look into this.’

  Friday at the office was particularly uneventful except that Tom could not take his mind off the Zurich bank account. The previous night he and Caroline had made love and forgotten about the children and the money, then fallen asleep in each other’s arms – content, at peace, and slightly numbed by the alcohol. He had never got round to mentioning the extent of his windfall or to voicing his anxieties.

  It had all been too easy.

  While at UCB he had concentrated his effort on getting his grandfather’s funds. When the figure was announced, he took his good fortune at face value and left as soon as prudently possible. Now, in the cold light of day a thousand miles away, the doubts started gnawing at him again. He was puzzled on three counts. The amount was far too much, and no degree of bank investment could have produced forty-three million out of a mere half. Then there was Ackermann. Throughout the meeting he had talked as if he was dealing with an active account, not a dormant one. Could his father have continued with his own father’s investments? It was too late to ask him now. And finally, the Irish connection. What were the regular remittances that his grandfather’s diary recorded?

  Was the money someone else’s?

  He would have to think some more and then decide. But first the Taurus business. The five million should turn up at any moment and that in itself would be a good indication that no problems had cropped up in Zurich.

  At 11.28 the inward payment records lifted Tom’s heart: Credit USD 5,000,000, Taurus AG.

  The hole was covered. From now on the sun wouldn’t stop shining. That single fact, a five-million-dollar payment, on Tom’s instructions and from his own account, crystallized in his mind the irrefutable reality that he was indeed a wealthy man. He decided to take the rest of the day off. He left the bank at 2 p.m., London time, forty minutes before the reversal of the transfer showed on screen. Had he moved the money into the Taurus account, the reversal would not have been possible. But he did not. He wished to keep it at arm’s length: let some clerk make the payment in due course.

  At that point it would also have been sensible for Tom to telephone Langland and put him out of his misery. But Clayton was too immersed in his affairs to make the call. That was a mistake, for at that very moment Jeff was close to the end of his tether, trying desperately to rationalize what had happened and somehow to divorce himself from the consequences. By the time his working day was over, Langland had succumbed to wishful thinking. He had only been an unwitting pawn in Clayton’s game, he felt, and as he made his way home he resolved to come clean with the bank. They would have to believe he had no part of the second deal, the one that needed settling, and he would at least be able to keep his job. He was sure of that. In fact, his superiors might even thank him.

  Jeremiah ‘Red’ Harper pulled the top off a Labatts Ice and drank from the bottle. From his south-facing twenty-third-floor window he had a magnificent view of Biscayne Bay, but his eyes habitually focused on the horizon. Somewhere out there, he knew, was Cuba. And beyond it, Colombia.
Along the 900 or so miles between the two subcontinents lay myriad staging points, constantly altered to minimize the chances of detection, as the enemy moved their produce. Sometimes it followed tortuous routes. Four thousand miles south to Buenos Aires, six thousand miles north-east to Madrid, then transported back across the Atlantic by a fresh set of mules. All to get a kilo here, ten kilos there, past US Customs. Other times it went through Mexico, then across to Texas or California. The Caribbean islands were the worst, like a sieve letting all the cocaine through. They would sail it out of Cartagena on small boats, take it up to the Bahamas, Virgins, Turks & Caicos, wherever. Then on to another boat, and another at sea, linking up with fishing boats out of US waters for the day, until eventually it made it to Florida.

  The Coast Guard scored its successes.

  They monitored air and ocean movements, their aircraft swooping down to snoop on any suspect deep-sea rendezvous. But it was no more than a war of attrition, a hassling action. Complete victory was not possible over a million square miles of immediate ocean, dotted with thousands of islands and scores of jurisdictions.

  Harper knew.

  He had been out there, posted to the islands a few months at a time. Kissing up to local officials who assured him of all the help he should ever want and who then covered their eyes and ears. Wise monkeys to a man. Back home he could put the IRS on them, get them to account for their lifestyle. Abroad, they knew he knew, and vice versa. And nothing ever happened. When he intercepted a load, they congratulated him, then asked Uncle Sam for more aid. And when the shipments got through, they sympathized and got richer.

  Big money bought acquiescence.

  The only real strides were made elsewhere, when Harper’s people were able to intercept the money trail, confiscate a few million dollars in one go, or put the middlemen in situations where they could not pay their bills. Then the system took care of them: one link removed as rough justice did its job. And yet, each time the sword came down, the hydra grew another head. Sometimes Harper felt the only way out was to legalize narcotics. At least the crime would stop. And at all levels. From the big drug lords in South America to the downtown mugger in LA.

  In Washington, Harper’s chiefs tried to shake the government into action. To a degree something had been done but the results fell short of expectations. They put pressure on Colombia, impeded exports, and denied visas to its people. But Latin American governments argued back. Sanctions only punished the innocent, they reasoned, and created economic crises that hurt the currency and gave credence to left-wing extremists. They maintained, not without reason, that the drug barons of Colombia were only half the problem. The importers, distributors and consumers Stateside were most definitely the other half. Hit them, they pleaded, and Washington had been forced to change tack. So America helped with money and the Latins assisted, sometimes with information, other times with troops, as best they could.

  Harper’s operation was small by DEA standards and run on a limited budget with just half a dozen men. Medellín was no longer a prime target. Years ago, when the Escobars and Gaviria had been supremos in the Cartel, the industrial town on the River Porce had been the focus of US attention. When the thugs ran riot in the city, the Colombians had been forced to act. Perhaps if the drug barons had run their business with some order they would still be there today. At one point Medellín’s cocaine exports were equivalent, in dollar value, to twice Colombia’s other exports combined. But it had been the domestic lawlessness that finished Medellín’s hegemony.

  Now history was repeating itself: two hundred miles further south, three thousand feet up the Cauca Valley, along the banks of the Cali River. The old colonial city, with a pedigree that went back to 1536, had been one of Colombia’s most important cultural and commercial centres until the cocaine merchants moved in. They took over the drug business with a gusto that made Medellín’s recent history seem pale by comparison. No longer bothering with surreptitious little shipments, they flew their own freighters, Boeing 727s, loaded to the gunwales with cocaine. Up they went into the night. North to Mexicali, just outside US radar range. Then they transloaded the cargo to smaller fleets for northern Mexican destinations.

  Finally the mules, human mules, moved the cargo across the border.

  The authorities, Colombian and American, turned their attention to Cali, but Harper kept his eyes fixed on Medellín. Morales was clever, educated, discreet. He controlled his men with an iron fist and dealt with affronts to the community in a way the courts would not have dared. He was a populist criminal and ten times more dangerous because of it, for his activities disturbed no one locally, just added prosperity to the region. His kind, to Harper, was the most menacing of all.

  From his window – with the radiant bay, boats coming and going, their slipstreams like white lines on an Impressionist’s canvas – the southern Florida paradise looked truly idyllic. Yet from the Everglades to Daytona Beach deals were constantly being made. Goods would arrive and reach the customer and bags full of cash would find their way to the offshore banks. Harper caught sight of his reflection on the smoked curtain walling and ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. The sight of drooping eye-bags above his freckled cheekbones made him wonder: when next could he hope for a decent rest?

  He shook his head in resignation, took another pull at his beer, and turned to Cardenas’ fax once more. Morales was up to something that required spending lots of money. That was a good lead. If Harper’s team could intercept the money, Morales would hurt. They might also be able to chart some of the money trail, maybe link a few new names to the laundry chain.

  So it was time to go to work.

  Salazar in New York would be a good start. The DEA knew he handled Medellín money, though proving it was something else. His New York office was already watched twenty-four hours a day. Red would ask for more men to be put on the job. Log all visitors and follow them. He would need approval for that, for a few weeks at least, or until something tangible came up. He had tapped their phones before but in three months got nothing, and the federal judge had rescinded the authority. His agents had searched rubbish bins, but returned empty-handed. They had placed a constant tail on the son, Antonio, but all they had to show for their expensive efforts were the names of a dozen floozies.

  Zilch.

  But you never gave up. So Harper sent a fax to Julio: ‘Good work. Dig deeper. Report as it happens. And sorry to tell you, your sister unwell.’

  Just a code for the activation, on call, of a pre-defined escape plan. We are ready to pull you out at short notice, it meant. Just shout.

  Red Harper did not like losing men.

  5

  WALTER LAFORGE TOOK an early afternoon train from Zurich Central to Geneva. From the station he hailed a taxi for the short ride to the Hotel d’Angleterre. Avoiding the hotel’s main entrance, he went down the steps that led directly into the Leopard Lounge. The sumptuous bar was an ideal meeting place: dimly lit, with the tables sufficiently apart to keep conversations private, clear of prying eyes in hotel lobbies, yet a perfectly acceptable venue for business meetings.

  Laforge paused, his eyes adjusting to the penumbra, and spotted Martelli’s dapper figure, habitually gauging the bar’s clientele from a sofa along the left-hand side, with a commanding view of the entrance.

  ‘Walter!’ The Credit Suisse man stood up, his hand extended. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he added, casually moving towards one end of the settee, inviting his colleague to sit alongside.

  ‘My pleasure, Guido,’ answered Laforge sincerely. In their world there were few with whom they could afford the luxury of a personal rapport. Earlier in the day, over the telephone, Laforge had not revealed too much, merely hinted that something not entirely acceptable might be in the air. He had given Martelli the name of the Credit Suisse customer and agreed to meet that evening. Security chiefs, even in Switzerland, were not nine-to-five men.

  ‘The party in question,’ opened Martelli, ‘is well known to us.
Lawyers, New York based, longstanding account. Their complete details are listed in the State Bar directory. They are perfectly genuine.’ Neither man had brought along any papers; their exchanges of information would be purely verbal.

  Laforge nodded his understanding and offered something in return. A letter had been received at UCB requesting a large transfer to CS. Laforge believed the letter to be a forgery. Would large transactions be the norm for CS’s client? Martelli had raised his shoulders in a noncommittal way. Ten, twenty million US, would not be uncommon. But it was almost always clients’ money, and did not stay at CS very long. A percentage was retained at times, the rest moved on to other parties. Not an unusual pattern for a law firm.

  ‘Thank you, Guido,’ said Laforge sincerely. ‘You should know that for the moment we are not going to act on the instruction received.’

  It was Martelli’s turn to nod.

  Laforge continued: ‘So it is possible that your customer might enquire from you whether or not the funds in question have arrived.’

  ‘You would like me to let you know if that happens, right?’

  ‘I would be grateful.’

  ‘Are you involving the police?’

  ‘Not at this stage.’

  ‘Should you decide to do so, will you let me know in advance?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Good. I’ll keep you posted. Anything else I should know?’

  ‘Merely a suspicion, you understand? Your customer, the law firm? They may be doing something, hmm … improper.’

  ‘Thank you, Walter.’

  ‘Thank you, Guido.’

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries, enquired about each other’s families, and then parted. Walter Laforge went straight back to the railway station. Dr Ulm had been very clear in stating their bank’s position: in his view, the letter was a forgery. Maybe the lawyers were behind this. Perhaps they thought the younger Clayton did not know about the funds in Zurich. After all, he did not seem to have all the information when he first spoke to Ackermann and Alicona. But Clayton’s documents were in order. His claim to the account was unchallengeable.