I couldn’t be bothered to ask why. I followed him, pausing as he dropped a word into the ear of the hostess, and a fifty-euro note into her hand. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘I told her that we were breaking the journey and that we’d be taking a later train.’
‘And are we?’
‘No. We’ll stay here overnight.’
We climbed the stairs that led from the platform and walked the short distance to the station concourse. Happily, I saw a row of shops. ‘How much cash do you have?’ I asked him. ‘Those train tickets used up most of mine, and I need to buy some clothes.’
‘I’m flush.’ He delved into the magic rucksack, peeled off six fifties from a roll, and handed them to me.
‘I take it you’re okay.’
He nodded. ‘Mostly I buy cheap basics from street markets and dispose of them as I use them.’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘You were brought up that badly?’
The shops took care of my needs. I was able to buy three pairs of sensible knickers, another pair of shorts, two tops and a light, non-crushable skirt with Frank’s cash, plus a small, cheap roller case.
‘Why did you need that?’ he asked when he saw it.
‘I’m not sleeping rough, boy,’ I advised him. ‘We’re finding a hotel, and not the kind that’s used to guests arriving with their clothes in shopping bags.’
‘In that case . . .’
There were plenty of taxis at the rank, as nobody else had got off our train. The driver of the first looked pleased to see us. When Frank told him, ‘Mezquita,’ he nodded, as if that was where everyone wanted to go. As it happens, that’s probably true. The twelve-hundred-year-old mosque that became a cathedral is Córdoba’s only serious tourist attraction. Our taxi dropped us near the entrance, outside a hotel called the Conquistador.
‘This looks okay,’ I declared, and marched up to Reception.
They had two rooms available, doubles for single use. ‘How will you be paying?’ the clerk asked.
‘Credit card,’ said Frank, and slapped a piece of plastic on the desk.
‘Hey,’ I whispered, as the man took it across to his terminal, ‘how come I can’t but you can?’
‘I have resources they can’t trace,’ he told me.
I stared at him hard. ‘The time has come, cousin,’ I said, a little harshly perhaps, considering that he’d saved my skin, ‘for you to tell me the whole story. Now, or we stay here and max out that card until you do.’
Twenty
‘You’re not going to believe this.’ Whenever somebody’s said that to me in the past, my instant, if unuttered, response has always been, ‘You’re right about that.’
But when Frank said it, somehow I knew that I would, however strange the yarn he was about to spin me. We were sitting on the terrace off my room, under an awning, with a bottle of Pinot Grigio by our side, standing in a bucket of rapidly melting ice. I had showered and changed into one of the tops and the cool skirt I had bought. I took a sip from my glass and challenged him: ‘Try me.’
‘Okay.’ He took a sip from his, then drained it, refilled it, and looked me in the eye. ‘I’m a secret agent.’
I gasped, then laughed. ‘You’re a what?’
His face took on an expression that might have fitted the barely three year old I had taken to the toilet in St Andrews. ‘See?’ he grumbled.
I mollified him: ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. Go on, but warn me properly next time you’re going to say something like that.’
‘Then be warned: I’m going to say it again. I’m a secret agent. I work for Interpol, but my parent organisation, if you care to put it that way, is the security service.’
‘Whose security service?’
‘Ours. Her Majesty’s. Britain’s.’
‘MI5?’
‘That’s not our official title, but we answer to it these days.’
‘Frank, you’ve got a criminal record.’
He winked at me. ‘Chas and Dave have hundreds but they’re respectable.’
‘Cut the bad old gags and get on with it.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He tugged his forelock. ‘They approached me when I was inside. I found out later that my mum was the indirect cause. At first I thought it must have been Arnold Thomas, the guy I worked for in Westminster, who put them on to me. He’s on the Commons’ defence intelligence committee. But it wasn’t. Mum was punting a book around by a retired senior spook; she’d mentioned my predicament to him, and he had a word with the people in Millbank. I’d been in for three years, then one day at Ford prison . . . I was in open conditions for most of my sentence . . . I had a visitor, a smart-suited lady, about my age; not a glamour girl, very business-like. We had a roundabout discussion, and she asked me about my plans, post-nick. I said I didn’t have any. She said that her company . . . that was how she put it . . . had an interest in people like me, guys with financial acumen who’d screwed up big-time and were looking for a way back. I said I’d be interested in hearing more, and she went away.’
‘And you did hear more.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, but not until they’d made me sit a series of tests; IQ, isometric, physical. I was interviewed by a psychologist too. When all that was done, the woman came back, all business, and told me who she represented. She also promised that if I breathed a word, I’d do my full stretch and never work again when I got out, or get anywhere near the money I’d stashed in Switzerland. She told me they were involved, with colleagues in other countries, in the detection, infiltration and subversion of major international fraud. This would involve the use of what she described as sleeper agents, with no official status, ready to be drawn into scams as they developed, to gather intelligence from the inside on them and on the people involved and, when the time came, to pull them down. She admitted that it would be risky, and that I’d be largely on my own. I told her that I’d been largely on my own all my life.’
‘That’s not fair. You mum loves you.’
‘I know, and I love her; but I had a solitary upbringing, Prim. I was a loner as a kid, and I stayed that way. Other than Mum, you and Dawn are my closest family, and I’ve spent no more than few weeks with you in my entire life.’
‘You must have friends, surely.’
He gnawed awkwardly at his bottom lip. ‘Nobody close. Girlfriends, sure . . . I’m straight . . . but I’ve never had any boy buddies, not even at university.’
‘What about Justin Mayfield?’
He frowned. ‘Yes, there was him, I suppose, but like all the rest of my little circle, he cut me loose when I got banged up. That was the way it was.’
‘So you took the Queen’s shilling?’
‘Yes. The deal was that I was transferred from Ford to another place. I was still a prisoner, in that I couldn’t leave, but I wasn’t in jail. I was in a training college, learning all the stuff that spooks need to know: intelligence gathering, surveillance, counter-surveillance, communications, and combat, armed and unarmed. I was there for over a year, save for a few weekend visits home to Mum, who thought I was still in Ford but preferred not to go there anyway. When I was ready, they paroled me. I did an induction course at Millbank, then I was transferred to Interpol headquarters in Lyon to be integrated into the international operation. After three months there, they sent me back to the British bureau, where they told me to go out and get myself a job, establish myself in the real world, and wait for an assignment.’
‘You were on their payroll, though?’
‘Yes. I was on what I suppose you’d call a retainer. And part of the deal was that I’d get to access the funds I’d stashed away from my private enterprise at the bank, without hindrance.’
‘So the application to Cinq Pistes, that was for real?’
‘Oh, yes, entirely.’
‘And Madame Gilpin, she was for real too?’
‘Susannah? You’ve spoken to her? Yes, she’s the genuine article, in more than one way, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Did you
really want her to come with you, or did you just say that to get back into her underwear in Paris?’
‘I wanted her to leave her husband, still do. Not to come here, though: I’d have set her up somewhere, Madrid, maybe, or London, until the d’Amuseo business had run its course.’
‘The d’Amuseo business. What’s it really about?’
‘You’ve been digging. What do you think?’
I told him that I thought it was an elaborate fraud, that the intention was to raise finance for the project and then, when there was enough in the kitty, to bugger off into the wide blue yonder with the funds, never to be seen again.
‘Spot on,’ said Frank. ‘I reckon I could get you a job as an analyst with my outfit. Fancy it?’
‘Not in a million years. How did you get involved?’
‘Through Hermann Gresch. He was in the same boat as me; his criminal record was a hell of a lot longer and more distinguished than mine but, like mine, it was for real. He was recruited in a German prison, in the same way that I was, but instead of creating a new, respectable front for him, they let him carry on as a fraudster, making sure he was never caught.’
‘What about the people he conned?’
‘He focused on government agencies; they were always reimbursed on the quiet and Hermann never got to keep all the money. Interpol hung him out there as a human lure.’
‘Did they know who they were after?’
‘No, but they did know what. This type of hustle has been pulled before, in St Lucia in the Caribbean and in the Far East, in Thailand. In the second one, an American politician was done for four million dollars, and some very loud noises were made. The minor people involved in each case were caught and put away, but there were others who weren’t and none of the money was ever recovered. The Interpol operation had several targets but the people who had pulled off those two were very high on the list. And then it fell into our hands.’
‘How?’
‘Hermann Gresch was approached in Lithuania, by a woman calling herself Lidia Bromberg. She told him she was putting together a team for an operation, built around a hotel casino complex in Spain. She said that the seed capital, twenty million euros, was already in place, and she needed salespeople to raise more.’
‘Did she say where the seed capital had come from?’
‘No, but I’ll get to that. She told Gresch that she had vacancies for two people, who would be presented as board members and whose brief would be to sell the project to investors.’
‘Did she say what was in it for Gresch and his eventual associate?’
‘Ten per cent each of the money they raised. The target was . . .’
‘One hundred million euros: I know. So potentially you and Gresch stood to pocket eight million each.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘Basic company research,’ I said glibly. I hadn’t told him about Kravitz; Mark prefers to operate discreetly.
He swallowed that without a sign of doubt. ‘Of course. The project had to appear legitimate, since we were dealing with legitimate people, mostly. Pintore, the law firm that registered it, is absolutely kosher. Anyway, Gresch agreed to go along with it, and said he could find the second man. He contacted his handler, and I was told to go to Kaunas to meet up with him, and eventually to meet Lidia Bromberg.’
‘I know you went there; Susannah told me. So you did meet Bromberg? Why didn’t you recognise her this afternoon?’
‘Ah, but I didn’t. Somebody else showed up in her place, a Canadian guy Gresch said he’d never met before.’
‘How did you know he was Canadian, not American?’
‘One, there’s a slight thing about the Canadian accent: there’s a bit of Scots in it, as in the way they say “house”. Two, he wore a maple-leaf badge in his lapel. Honest to God, it was like a bloody job interview. He asked us about our backgrounds, and we told him. He asked how I swung so much remission, and I said that was how it worked in England . . . plus when I was in I’d given the prison governor stock-market tips that had done very nicely for him. He laughed at that.’
‘Was it true?’
‘Of course not. Those people are incorruptible.’
‘I take it you passed.’
‘Not there and then. The Canadian . . .’
‘Rowland?’
‘Eh?’
‘Was he Alastair Rowland, the chairman of the board, according to the website?’
‘Maybe. I’ve never met Rowland, not to my knowledge at any rate. Anyway, as I was saying, the Canadian guy, who never did give us his name, told us that they had some further checking to do on us. He told me to go back to Switzerland and wait for word. But he also made it clear that if the two of us didn’t check out okay, that would be very bad news. In fact it would be hazardous to our health.’
‘But you did, obviously.’
‘Yes. A couple of weeks later, Gresch turned up in Davos, only he checked himself in as George Macela. He told me we were on board, and that we were moving to Seville. He gave me paper identifying me as Roy Urquhart. He said our new team would not be expecting me to serve any formal notice period in Switzerland, and that when I left, they’d expect me to trawl the Cinq Pistes records for potential contacts . . . as I did, but I imagine Susannah told you that.’
‘Yes. So you and “Macela” changed identities and you started your new job.’ Frank nodded. ‘Did he ever describe Lidia Bromberg to you?’
‘No, but it’s a pretty fair bet that she’s stocky, with dark hair, big bazookas and currently sporting a superficial stab wound in her arse.’
The thought amused me, I’m afraid. ‘And Caballero, when did you meet him?’
‘As soon as we got there. Gresch told me to report to Calle Alvarez Quintero forty-seven, and when I did, the council-man turned up. His mother owns the place, but she’s in a care home, so he told us we could stop there.’
‘Shouldn’t this super-complex have had an office?’
‘There wasn’t any need. Hardly any of our punters ever wanted to come to Seville. When someone did, we met them in Hotel Alfonso Thirteen, and pitched the project to them in a meeting room there, videos, literature, the lot, then took them to see the site. They all went away happy, and we banked their cheques shortly afterwards.’
‘Who controlled the money?’
‘Ultimately? That’s what Gresch and I were supposed to find out, but we never did.’
‘Caballero?’
‘Maybe, but I doubt it. At first I thought that he was a mug, the owner of the land and our fixer with local and national government, and no more than that.’
‘I can tell you different.’
‘Sure, but I found that out for myself a while back.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll get to that too. Let me fill you in on the rest. For a start, I never trusted Gresch.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I was told not to by my controller in London: she thought the Germans were taking a huge chance, thinking they could bring a recidivist criminal on to their side.’
‘Hell’s teeth, Frank, what are you?’
‘I’m not a career crook. I’m a guy who chanced his arm and got caught, but unlike others I didn’t rob anyone . . . okay, technically I did, but ultimately I didn’t cost anyone any money. I was convinced that if this thing had played out, Gresch would have taken his cash and run with the rest of them. We were supposed to have three objectives, right: find the source of the so-called seed capital, find the person or people behind the scam, and pull it down before the innocent investors lost all their money. We didn’t achieve any of those objectives. I found that I was having no contact with anyone in the organisation, other than Gresch, and I suspected the guy had been keeping secrets from me.’ He drained his glass again, and refilled it.
‘I was supposed to be the sales director,’ he continued, ‘and he, the older man, was supposed to be the CEO; that meant that he, rather than I, received funds from investors, eith
er by cheque or transfer. When I asked him what he was doing with it, he said that I didn’t need to know that. I told him that I damn well did, but he said something about having orders from above to share only necessary information as a basic security measure.’
‘You didn’t believe him?’
‘No. I checked with my controller, and she said it was crap. So, next time we received a payment I followed Gresch and, blow me, didn’t he go straight to Caballero.’
‘What did you do? Confront him? Is that when it all got rough?’
‘No, not then.’ He grinned. ‘I broke into Caballero’s house, didn’t I? There was a civic do one night and I knew that he and his wife would be there, so I let myself in, as I’d been taught to do . . . imagine, recruiting a guy from prison, then having to train him in burglary . . . and I went through his desk, and his safe. In there I found a file, detailing the money Gresch had passed on, and containing bank slips showing that it had been transferred to a bank in Luxembourg, into the project’s company account. I also found a list of the investors, and saw where the seed capital had come from, a French company called Energi, on behalf of something called the Banovsky Corporation.’
‘Good for you. Then did you confront Gresch?’
‘No. I was due to go to Brussels to meet a potential investor. I left a day early and went to London first, to see my controller. I told her what I’d found and we did some very quick digging into the Banovsky Corporation. We found that it’s a dormant company, based in Slovakia. Energi is a coal-mining operation, working in the north of France. A very quick look into it told us nothing about its ultimate owners, the people behind Banovsky, but did reveal that one of its minor shareholders is Emil Caballero.’
‘Wow!’ That may sound trite, but I really did say it at the time. ‘You clever lad! So why’s he still walking about?’
‘Because I was told to go on to my meeting in Brussels as if nothing had happened, then head on back to Seville and carry on business as usual until I was contacted. My controller said that the piece of the jigsaw they needed was Lidia Bromberg. They’d been trying to find her since that initial contact with Gresch, but with no joy. Hopefully a few days’ digging into Energi, and the Banovsky Corporation, would lead us to her, and to the mysterious Canadian.’
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