by Terry Morgan
CHAPTER 39
It was Jan Kerkman's second encounter with the man and the dog. This time the man stayed sitting down, but the big Labrador stood up, and plodded towards Jan wagging its tail. There was no leash.
Jan stopped running and stood still as the dog sat down at his feet, barked up at him and then continued to sit with its tongue hanging out. It was then that Jan saw the piece of paper under the dog's leather collar. As if to say, "Go ahead, it's for you," the dog barked once more. Jan glanced at his owner with the white prayer cap. He was staring ahead as if nothing was happening. Jan bent down, patted the dog's head, pulled out the paper and watched the dog walk away to sit once again by the man on the bench. Had anyone been watching what happened, they would have assumed it was just a friendly dog and that the jogger liked dogs.
Jan pushed the paper into the back pocket of his track suit and started to run again. But with the pressure of wanting to read the note getting the better of him, he turned and ran back to his flat, past where the man and dog had been sitting. They were both gone.
"Fund: EAWA. Ref No: RSFF 312A. Code: rs$5198701@rs1 Transfer USD 35,000.
"Fund. CAHA. Ref No: CAHA 418F. Code mx$5198701@kp9. Transfer Euros 260,175.
Jan lay back in his chair, stretched his legs out in front of him and stared at the paper. It was so simple. Was that all he had to do? But by doing it, he knew he would be party to fraud. There was no way he could do this. Could he? Transferring money to his own account was bad enough. But over a quarter of a million Euros to someone else? Who was it? Would he find out if he went through the process that Guido had demonstrated.
This entire, massive, fraudulent scheme needed to be exposed but to whom? But Guido had said, with some justification, that not only was he undetectable but so was the fraud itself. And Guido had known about Jan's private life - about the one night with Katrine who he had not seen, even socially, for three weeks because he felt it was too risky. Was he being watched? Followed? Bugged even?
He picked up his spare mobile phone, the one he used to speak to Jonathan, left the apartment still in his track suit and tee shirt and started on another long jog, this time through Grande Place, towards Rue Neuve and the vast City 2 Shopping Mall. He walked fast in through and around the Mall, then exited and, feeling like a fugitive on the run, turned into a side street. Here, still in his track suit, he found a bar, ordered himself a beer and sat watching other customers come and go. Satisfied at last, he phoned Jonathan to report.
"And I had an interesting meeting last night as well," Jonathan said. "It seems my new Nigerian friend, Jacob Johnson, has friends who have friends who have recently met Guido. Seems they ran scared of him. But if Guido ever finds out he's lost a client to Walton Associates then I'm also worried."
"And what about Jim?" asked Jan. "Where is he? It's now urgent. What do I do, Jon? Do I log on tomorrow morning and transfer over a quarter of a million Euros to the bank accounts of people I don't know? What should we do? Go to the police? The press? But if we did, then I'm not going to hang around here waiting for them to decide I'm not a whistleblower at all but a total crank - just like Jim."