One Last Time

by James Hampson

  'You can keep that, and I will destroy this one' he said holding the envelope up, that he had in his hand.

  James opened his manila envelope from Sharif and emptied two bricks of one hundred US dollar bills onto his desk, each brick contained ten thousand dollars. Shaw exhaled and shook his head in disbelief.

  Surely all of this is a dream he said in his head.

  Lawrence sensed what he was thinking and said to him.

  'It's all yours, do with it what you wish, there is plenty more where that came from, if you would like to continue working with us.’

  James stepped over to the filing cabinet and opened the second draw down, he placed the two bricks of cash in to the open drawer, he then closed it again with a thud and sat back down at his desk and looked at Lawrence and asked.

  'You want me to kill people for you on a regular basis?'

  'No not always, sometimes when necessary we will ask you to terminate targets and you will be compensated each time you help us out.’

  James looked into Lawrence's brown eyes and said.

  'OK, I will help you out I suppose it will be easier to do what I did last night again after the first time.'

  Lawrence didn't answer.

  Shaw added jokingly.

  'When do I get my Aston Martin and watch?'

  Lawrence scowled not seeing the funny side and said to James.

  'It’s ninety per cent watching people and sitting around and ten percent action, last night you were thrown in at the deep end and performed well.’

  The two men sat there looking at each other when Shaw held out his hand and said.

  'I look forward to working with you and I won't let you down but I will need guidance along the way.'

  Lawrence shook his hand and smiled.

  'I look forward to it also, you’re a good man James. I will help you whenever you need it and I will never be too far away from you.'

  ‘Thanks’ James said.

  Lawrence got up from his seat ready to leave.

  'I have to leave now but I will be back tomorrow for our daily briefing.'

  Lawrence Sharif then left the inner office and picked up his cleaning cart with Shaw following out of the door behind him, both men stepped out into the searing heat and blinding sun with the sound of helicopters overhead and on the ground. The two men shook hands and Lawrence walked away with his cleaning cart towards another portacabin. James turned back into the air conditioned cool of the office.

  TWO

  Liverpool, UK. May (Twelve years later)

  Lyndon John Powell was standing with his arms behind his back looking out of the floor to ceiling window of his apartment, at the grey sky outside deep in thought. Lyndon Powell stood at six feet four inches tall, forty years of age and the years had been kind to him, he was dressed in a tailored navy-blue suit with grey pinstripes, a perfectly pressed white shirt with a pink tie and a pair of black brogues, being well dressed and presented was to him half of the battle.

  If you look professional, people will think you are professional was a phrase he often used. Lyndon Powell was a charming man, he had an aura about him that made people trust him and be totally convinced by whatever it was they were being told, this is what made him so successful in his line of business.

  The apartment was in a high rise that had been purpose built a few years earlier, it overlooked the River Mersey and came with a concierge service. Some of the city's elite were resident in the building and Lyndon classed himself as part of that elite group.

  To his neighbours, Lyndon Powell was a successful property investor. The reality is that Lyndon Powell is a very sophisticated conman, who sells land and properties for development in Britain and Asia that do not exist or are not his to sell, then disappearing before the victim could do anything about it, once they realised that they had been duped. The victims could not go to the police either because in the process they believed certain palms had been greased to make the deals happen and nobody would want a bribery charge on their record, which could result in a stint behind bars in a Chinese or Thai prison.

  He grew up in a wealthy suburb of Liverpool to well off parents, he had been a good student in school especially at maths. During his time in high school he also sold confectionary and cigarettes to the other pupils at over inflated prices, the proceeds from which he had never spent and over the years had amassed just under five thousand pounds.

  His parents believed that he would go onto university and then into a career to do with maths, such as accountancy or even teaching. Instead Lyndon decided to invest his money on the stock market and more specifically into commodities such as oil and gold making a small fortune by the age of Twenty.

  Lyndon had wanted to work in the City from the age of sixteen, after he was told in school that it would be a good career for him, as he was so good at numbers and he had the ability to convince anybody that he was in the right, as he had on more than one occasion when he found himself in trouble at school, which was a rare occurrence.

  Two years after finishing high school, he had completed his A-levels and had met with various representatives from Universities and due to the prestige of his School this included Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Lyndon had been impressed by what they had to say and what they had on offer. He may well have chosen to go to Cambridge, he had always preferred Cambridge. As it was, he could not be persuaded to change his mind, which was to make it alone without spending a number of years studying, then trying to find employment competing with people who all had the same qualifications and skills that he had.

  After getting his A-level results he decided to take the train to London and get himself a job in the City. He had worked on a pitch for himself to present to potential employers and had made a PowerPoint presentation which he had stored on a floppy disc to show them.

  One evening at the dinner table he had announced to his parents what his intentions were. His father Richard, who is originally from South Africa and moved to Britain two years before Lyndon was born, was impressed by his son’s attitude and determination. He agreed with his son but his mother was a little apprehensive at first but agreed that it would be good for her son to try and make his own way in life and she believed he would succeed. His father previously owned half of a large and lucrative diamond mine in the old Transvaal Province now known as Gauteng, it was there where he had met Lyndon's mother Anne who at the time was working as a sales assistant in a jewellery store and was training to become a jeweller herself.

  Anne had been sent to South Africa by her boss as part of her training and more importantly to save the business money, the owner wanted to source diamonds direct from the mine, instead of paying higher prices for cut and polished diamonds from Antwerp or Amsterdam. During her time in South Africa she had met Richard and they had both fallen in love after spending time together. Richard made the decision to sell his share in the diamond mine and move to Liverpool to be with Anne, he opened a jewellery shop and ran it with Anne who was now a fully qualified jeweller. A year later they were married and a year after that their only child was born and they named him Lyndon. Richard’s connections in the mining industry helped the shop to flourish and after a few years he had three stores. Today he has sixty-seven shops across the UK and South Africa and has recently opened a shop on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

  After packing a suitcase with suits that he had recently purchased, a map of London and the name of the hotel he had called to book a room on a slip of paper in his pocket, Lyndon Powell boarded a train at Liverpool Lime Street and set off for London.

  When he arrived at the hotel after a short tube journey he had not expected the hotel to be as bad as it was, it had been listed as four star in the Yellow Pages and he had paid a four star price for a room that was so cramped he had to put his suitcase in the bathroom which was bigger than the bedroom, the room had a queen bed which was springy, a wardrobe and a desk all squeezed in to such a small space, he looked at the brown curtains and wonde
red if they had ever been cleaned in the thirty years that he assumed they had been hanging there. There was no such thing as Booking.com or TripAdvisor twenty-one years ago. This did not discourage him, as the next morning he woke up early and got dressed in to a light grey suit with a white shirt and a patterned tie, he had some breakfast then walked to the underground station around the corner from the hotel and got himself on to the tube which took him into the City.

  After emerging from the underground station, he walked into the foyer of a multi-national bank and asked at the reception desk if he could speak to whoever was in charge of the trading department, he was asked if he had an appointment, he said no then he was told that the person in charge was too busy, the next two places he walked into told him the same thing.

  Undeterred he decided the next place he went to he would change his approach. The next building that he decided to try was an all glass affair as far as he could see from the ground and the inside was the same, all glass partitions a very sterile place, it was home to a well-known Merchant Bank. Lyndon John Powell walked in to the glass building and across the large glass foyer as if he belonged there, his highly polished shoes made a tapping noise on the highly polished tile floor, he smiled as he walked past people it was a busy place even though it was only eight thirty. He walked towards the lifts and looked at the floor directory for the trading department and found it on the twenty eighth floor, he got in to the lift followed by a few others who he smiled at and after stopping four times the lift arrived on the twenty eighth floor, a man stepped out first and Lyndon followed. He stepped into a corridor just a little bit wider than the space the three lifts took up it was painted white with a set of double doors on the left wall and two sets of double doors on the right and up ahead was the end of the corridor which was floor to ceiling glass, the ground floor was the only one that was all glass, cheaper that way.

  Lyndon opted for the double doors on the left, he pushed one of the doors open and stepped into a room he assumed was taking up half of the floor he was on, it was huge, on three sides it was all glass and the wall behind him was the same white as the corridor but had black screens on with letters and numbers going along like a ticker tape, some were green and some were red, the stock ticker he assumed, he noticed as well that there were stock tickers hanging from the ceiling at various places around the office, so everybody could see them he thought to himself, the wall also had three clocks on, which had London, New York and Tokyo on signs underneath, the London clock was in the middle of them and read eight forty-three.

  The office was full of desks with computers and phones, which were separated by sound proof partitions, there was already a handful of people in the office and he noticed two of them having a chat together so he decided to go and ask who he should speak to about a job. They directed him to the head of trading who had his own corner office.

  Lyndon spoke to the head of trading and after convincing him to give him a chance he was offered a month's trial which he gladly accepted and began work that day, the boss was impressed by the way he had just walked in and thought he was worth giving a chance to. Lyndon quickly found his feet and after a few days was outperforming people that had years of experience in trading. It was also where he started trading with his own money using the knowledge, that he had learnt on the trading floor, but using different merchant banks to buy his stocks and shares. He would meet and become friends with Mike Williams, Chris Hampshire and IT engineer Jack Reuben, who he met in the office where he was given his big break.

  It was during the Asian financial crisis of 1997 that Lyndon had read in the business pages about an upcoming property boom once the crisis had subsided, which gave him the idea of selling plots of land and potential developments whilst prices were at rock bottom to wealthy investors both in Asia and the West. What the investors didn’t know was that Lyndon Johnson, as he called himself to investors, never owned any of the land or developments and that they had been sold multiple times to other people and groups looking to make a fast buck in a region that was ripe for investment, hoping to maximise returns on moderate sized investments ranging from twenty-five thousand pounds to half a million pounds.

  This was when the group started to make big money and they quickly realised how good they were at it and it continued for years, they were always one step ahead of the next boom or crash to make sure they made as much money as possible. The group had one rule, which was only con people that could afford to lose the money. They never cheated anybody out of life savings, only people that were already rich and wanted to get richer at somebody else's expense. After about a year of pulling off these scams the four of them decided to leave the merchant bank and would go it alone as people in the bank had started to become suspicious of them. After they completed their working notice of a month, they took numerous business cards with them when they left and they still had many contacts in the city which they would use down the years and would make sure that they were compensated for their time. The four men had been investigated many times by the City of London Police but nothing had ever come of it as there was a lack of evidence and very rarely was the crime committed in the UK. This was one of many reasons why they were so successful and had made so much money, yet they always payed income tax on their earnings because the last thing they wanted was to get caught and jailed by the taxman for tax evasion.

  As Lyndon Powell looked out of the window of his apartment, he was playing over and over in his head how his latest planned scheme would pan out, for this was the biggest job he had ever planned and the rewards would be so great that it would be his last job before he retired, even though he hadn't yet informed his crew members of his plans. Everything had been planned to the last detail for it to work. He could afford no mistakes. There were three other members of his crew, Chris Hampshire a tall and wiry man he was six-foot-tall with brown hair, brown eyes and he was permanently tanned, he thought it made him look Spanish much to the ridicule of the others in the group, Jack Reuben five foot eight inches tall and very overweight he had grey eyes and grey skin from years of being indoors in front of a computer screen very rarely venturing outside into the sun and Mike Williams six foot two inches tall in good shape he worked out a lot, he had dyed blonde hair, hazel eyes and was naturally tanned he also ate whenever he could, yet didn’t ever seem to gain any weight. The four of them had worked with each other for over 20 years and all were involved from the beginning of the Asia property scams. Lyndon sent a group text from his mobile phone saying meet in an hour, in the Hilton lobby, try and see if we can get in to the room early. They had hired a conference room to go over the plans for the next job.

  Just under an hour later the four of them arrived at the hotel lobby.

  Lyndon said to Chris Hampshire ‘Go and check us in.’

  Which he did and a concierge led them to the conference room that was set up with a projector and refreshments, a long dark wood table filled the centre of the room, faux leather chairs were placed all around the table, six on each side and one at each end. The four men filed into the room and Jack who was the tech wizard pulled a laptop out of his bag and began to connect it up to the projector. Mike set about pouring some coffee for everybody and helping himself to the pastries that had been provided by the hotel.

  Lyndon Powell took a sip of coffee and placed his cup on the table in front of him, he stood up and walked towards the front of the room.

  ‘Right gentlemen let’s get started.’

  On the projector screen at the front of the room was the logo of Spanish Oil Company ESPoil, the logo was a droplet of oil with a flame above in red and yellow just like the Spanish flag and underneath in navy blue writing were the words ESPoil.

  ‘This is our next target and our biggest, this will make us, but be warned we cannot afford any mistakes!’

  Jack added ‘What happens if we do make a mistake? not that we will, this plan has been perfected to the last detail. I have been over and over it many times, I just ask
out of curiosity.’

  ‘We go to prison for the rest of our days or end up dead’ laughed Mike.

  ‘No seriously what will happen’ added Chris.

  Lyndon replied ‘Mike is most likely right; however, we won’t make any mistakes as we all know what we are doing and have never messed up before and we are not going to this time. Now can I please get on with this presentation we haven’t got all day, feel free to ask any relevant questions as we go along though.’

  ‘ESPoil is Spain’s biggest oil and petroleum company with revenues of around thirty billion euros a year’ continued Lyndon as he pointed at the screen like a keynote speaker at a business conference.

  ‘With profits of around seven billion euros a year’ added Chris.

  Lyndon then clicked his handheld remote to move the slideshow along. A well-dressed man with jet black styled hair, olive skin and a look of someone who was used to the finer things in life appeared on screen.

  ‘This is Javier Ramos, the head of oil and gas exploration for ESPoil, and who Chris and Mike have been in contact with to get us started on this, what can you tell us about him Chris?’ Asked Lyndon.

  ‘Javier Ramos, 52 years old, Argentinian, born in Buenos Aires to rich parents, his father used to own and run a meat processing company, when he was twenty, he then moved to Saudi Arabia to study Petro-chemistry for five years. After that he went to work for ESPoil working in the field and labs before he was made head of exploration fifteen years ago. We believe he is looking to be in charge of the whole company and will do anything to achieve it apparently, he was arrested for murdering the previous incumbent of his current job whose name was Vicente Garcia this was never proven and the authorities and ESPoil put it down as an accident.

  ‘So, he could potentially be dangerous’ Mike added

  ‘When we presented our plans to him his eyes lit up because he knew this would be the biggest coup for the company and would see him rewarded by the board of ESPoil by making him chairman’ said Chris.