by Terry Morgan
CHAPTER 31
Jan Kerkman was pressing the button for the lift when he felt the hand on his shoulder. He turned. It was Dirk Eischmann, "One minute, Jan. Come."
A fear erupted inside Jan's stomach.
"Uh, the EAWA Steering Group is in five minutes, will it take........" he offered.
It was Thursday, 1.50 pm and a meeting of the "EAWA Steering Group" - a group of middle-ranking officers who reviewed funding applications for West Africa - was due to meet at 2pm. Jan's mind, as he felt the hand, had been on what Jonathan had told him the night before. Jonathan's Sierra Leone funding bid for the Nigerian Mr Johnson might soon come the way of the EAWA group and Jan was already pondering on how to use it.
"One minute only," Eischmann said and walked towards an open office door just a few paces away. He beckoned with an impatient nod of his head once more. "Come."
Jan followed him into the committee room, empty except for the usual meetings table and chairs. Eischmann closed the door. "Expect a call," he muttered. "Our Italian friend wants to meet you again. He has an office somewhere that you know about - apparently you've been there. I know nothing about this but he left a message saying that more tuition has been organised. Do you understand?"
There was a brief pause before Eischmann continued. He was looking at Jan from the corner of his eye. "Our Italian friend will have warned you about confidentiality," he said. "He may well have spelled it out very clearly in his usual style. You will be well advised to heed the warning. OK, you can go." Then he opened the door once more.
Jan, who had said nothing, returned to the lift and was sat in the EAWA Steering Group meeting room before the clock showed 2pm.
He assumed the call from the Italian would come on his private mobile phone - the one known also to Eischmann. He did not expect the summons to come the way it did.
It was 6.30pm and almost dark outside. Jan, with his mobile phone in a back pocket, was on his usual jogging route through the Warandepark, the Parc de Bruxelles, close to the Royal Palace when, in the light from a path-side lamp, he spotted a man on a wooden bench with a dog on a leash.
Seeing a man wearing a white prayer cap and a large, brown Labrador dog on a lead in this park was unusual enough but as Jan got closer, the man suddenly stood up. The dog ran across the track. But the man stood still and the leash stretched right across the track like a finishing line. Unable to go further without either jumping the lead or ducking beneath it, Jan stopped running. The man in poor fitting jeans, a long, dark anorak and curly black hair showing beneath the prayer cap walked up to him. "Pardon, monsieur......mon chien......crazy. This for you, monsieur." And with that he pushed a slip of paper into Jan's hand and walked after the dog.
Jan stood, staring after the man as he walked quickly across the grass behind the dog towards the park gates and the brightly lit road. Then he unfolded the slip of paper and read, "Delft 1pm, Domenica." Domenica being Italian for Sunday, Jan was in no doubt that this was the message he had been told to expect. He started walking, the motivation to continue his jog gone, replaced by a feeling of nervous apprehension. More than anything he wanted to talk to Jonathan.
In London, Jonathan also wanted to talk to Jan about Jacob Johnson but they had both agreed at the last meeting with Jim that they needed to be increasingly careful and that included communications with one another. Both used separate mobiles to their normal day to day phones. As Jim had re-enforced during their last meeting in Amsterdam: "Make no mistake, these are powerful people. They already have money and resources but they are out to make even more. Security is what keeps them out of sight. Politics and bribery is what shuts mouths. Threats and fear of repercussions are what keeps people in their place. That is the power they think they have over you."
And then Jim had gone on to explain how they had dealt with him when they felt he was on the verge of blowing the top off of their lucrative business.
"Don't think they are all criminals in the usual sense of the word. Oh no. They depend on ordinary people only interested in holding onto their ordinary jobs by doing ordinary things - things they are told to do day to day. But they'll use anyone - politicians, big and small businesses, the press, PR consultants, magazine and newspaper editors, TV, the radio - they'll pay anyone for a story or a piece of news or a comment to counter suggestions that things are not as clean as they appear. They'll tap phones, they'll record conversations. And if all that doesn't work then they'll bring in the really nasty elements - underworld characters who know nothing of what is going on but who'll do anything for the promise of big money. I know because it happened to me and if they think I'll come back and start again then they'll target me all over again. That's why I'm staying out of sight for the present. But I'll be back."
Jan had driven back to Brussels from his first meeting with Guido with Jim's words echoing in his ears and Jonathan had lain in bed next to Claire remembering them after his meeting with Jacob Johnson. Now, Jan was remembering the words once again as he walked back to his apartment thinking about another meeting with Guido on Sunday.
"I think we will find they are a sort of modern mafia who have learned to specialise in this form of crime," Jim had said. "There are probably just one or two sat at the top with a structure of lesser fraudsters beneath them, all kept in order by threats, blackmail, bribes and promises of money."
Had he, Jan Kerkman, become one of those lesser fraudsters? Definitely, Jan decided, but in his case it was deliberate. He'd become a whistleblower when the time was right.
"Finding those at the top might not be as difficult as we think," Jim had continued, "But they will be protected by a reputation of dignity, professionalism and status that has been deliberately constructed to make any accusations from outside look absurd and totally inconceivable. I tried that accusations route and I failed.
"And I also suspect they are using technology, software, the internet - anything to conceal what they are doing. As for the lesser fraudsters, they want to keep them in charge of the day to day operations because they still need them. They need all the systems to appear to be working normally and efficiently, because they might one day need to explain away the bureaucratic weaknesses they have been ruling over for years, and they'll need plausible excuses for losing vast sums of tax payers money. That is when the complete innocents and the lesser fraudsters will suddenly find fingers being pointed directly at them. They will become the dispensable, sacrificial offerings to muddy the waters and divert attention.
"So be aware, those fraudsters sitting at the top will not look like fraudsters. As they go about their day to day lives, they will look and appear calm and normal because they feel totally untouchable.
"And even if massive fraud was proven, would they automatically lose their jobs, status, pensions? No, not necessarily. Because the entire system is designed to automatically cover up such activity and if it ever came to public enquiries - which is unlikely - they would point fingers at each other and then hide without fear of prosecution behind the complexity of the organisation. Things like that can take years, if ever, to come to Court.
"So, in a way, we will probably show that the whole system is at fault here. Whether we can do anything about it in our own small way I really don't know, but I'm damned sure the millions of hard-working, honest, tax payers out there would support us in anything we do. That is where our strength lies."
After Jim had finished, both Jan and Jonathan understood exactly why Jim had gone into politics after a career in business and for Jonathan, who, until then, was still feeling slightly reluctant to get involved, it had been the turning point. He was in it, up to his neck in it and determined to see it through to whatever conclusion.
In Brussels, still clutching the piece of paper, Jan gave up on his evening jog and walked back to his apartment.