Currency

by L. Todd Wood

  And then there was Kate. His stomach turned in knots as he thought of her. He could do nothing and felt helpless. She needed him. He could feel it. He gulped the wine. The next plane out was the next day, mid-morning. Connor’s personal assistant had arranged that. The trip to D.C. would have to wait. Tomorrow was another day. His thoughts turned to more global matters.

  So if China, Russia, and Iran were in on the scheme, hence the reason for the recent hostilities in the Persian Gulf. They must have known they could not stand up to the American Navy? Connor stewed on this fact for a while and took another sip of wine. His food arrived.

  The answer came to him in a flash of insight. They did not need to win the conflict. They just needed to tie down the American military and make them spend resources they did not have. Ingenious, he thought.

  And the bond market was going crazy. Their plan was working. Interest rates were through the roof, and the cost for the United States was unsustainable. The war was forcing them to borrow even more money. It was maddening.

  He needed to get to Washington and find out what the government knew, but he could do nothing now.

  He also needed to tell the president and his staff his insights into what was going on. His country was in danger and the clock was ticking. Connor hardly slept during the ensuing night.

  Washington, D.C.

  He reached Reagan National early afternoon the next day, having taken the mid-morning flight from Nassau through Atlanta. Connor was consumed with worry on the plane for Kate. The feeling of helplessness brought back memories. It reminded him of Emily. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Not now, he told himself.

  He was told that he would be met, and he indeed he was. He exited the jetway and was immediately greeted by two anonymous security personnel in gray suits, who then asked him to follow. He did as he was instructed.

  Secret Service, he mused.

  They led him to a waiting black Suburban, which had the official prerogative to wait at curbside outside the arrival terminal as opposed to the average, ordinary citizen who was shooed away by the police if they stopped for ten seconds. He felt privileged. The men inside said not a word. He helped himself to the bottled water that was chilled in the backseat.

  The trip to the White House was quick and painless. It tended to be that way because they didn’t have to obey traffic laws and could turn on the flashing red and blue lights at their convenience. They flew at a high rate of speed down the highway into the city. Soon they were at the White House gate and showing their identification.

  The vehicle was searched and then allowed through to the entrance gate of the iconic structure. It was Connor’s second time, and he had to admit he was still awed. The building was majestic.

  The door to the SUV was opened for him by a marine guard in a painfully starched uniform. Connor quickly exited the vehicle and walked the short distance to enter the president’s home as the same marine opened the front door.

  He was at the White House years before for a fund raiser, but this time the access was much more informal. After passing through security, he was led down a long corridor into a briefing room and seated alone at a large conference table. Slowly the president’s staff came in. The introductions were short and sweet. Then everyone stood as the president himself walked into the boardroom.

  He was a handsome, confident, and impressive man. He exuded an aura of command. Halfway through his first term, the man had settled into the office. The president shook Connor’s hand vigorously.

  “Connor,” the president said after the introductions, “Thank you for coming on such short notice. Kate contacted me a few days ago and wanted me to meet with you. This was prior to her disappearance. She seemed to think you had information and had experienced some things that might be of help in our analysis of this situation. Please tell my people here everything you can think of.”

  “Of course Mr. President.”

  The president’s chief of staff then asked Connor several specific questions to divulge what he knew about Kate and what could have happened to her. Connor quickly revealed all he could remember, including the details about what had been transpiring over the last few weeks and what had been happening with Kate and Alex. He made special mention of his last conversation with Alex and Kate’s suspicions of him.

  He noticed eyes go up and acknowledging looks across the table when he mentioned the Iran War and the alliance goals.

  “Alex has been working for this alliance of nations attempting to hurt us economically,” the national security advisor stated. “The alliance is after Hamilton’s gold. So was the Bahamian prime minister. It was his men who shot Alex. They feared losing the gold to the Chinese.”

  Connor mentioned he had feared as much.

  When he was done, the president stood and shook his hand.

  “Thank you for coming in, Connor,” he stated. “I will do everything I can to get Kate home. These people are going to further debrief you now. You have my staff’s number if you think of anything else. Again thank you for the service to your country, and I will be in touch.”

  Connor spent the next two hours answering questions with lower-ranked personnel and then was free to leave. He left the White House in a worried mood and with a sick feeling in his stomach.

  Oval Office

  President Walker stared out the window behind his desk towards the Rose Garden. The grounds were spectacular. It always amazed him how the staff kept flowers in bloom almost year-round, constantly rotating plants as their flowers died off to different species. His mind drifted back to the problems at hand, and he turned back to his desk.

  The Resolute Desk in the Oval Office was a beautiful, ornate piece. It was a gift from Queen Victoria in 1880 to the United States, built from the timbers of the British Arctic explorer HMS Resolute. It was used by many presidents before him. That thought gave him comfort during these trying times. He hoped it would impart wisdom to him in some way.

  He was very concerned about Kate and feared the worst. He wondered how he would tell his daughter. She would be beside herself if Kate was harmed. They were so close.

  He was also very concerned about another woman. She was a mole deep in the Kremlin who was feeding U.S. intelligence information for some time now about the alliance’s intentions. Besides the president, only the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and her handlers knew of her existence. She was very deep.

  The president was forewarned in a vague way by her as to what forces were arrayed against the United States across the world, but he had not expected the hostilities in the Gulf.

  The world was getting very dangerous.

  Code name Incredible was also in grave danger. All the president knew was that she was female. He also knew she was invaluable to the United States. However, sources were informing her CIA handlers that she was close to being discovered. The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, was aware there was a mole in their midst. They were actively searching for the source of leaks to Western intelligence.

  President Walker made the decision. It was time to get her out as his advisor had suggested. He turned around to his desk and picked up the phone.

  “Get me the Director of the CIA,” he said to his assistant.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Washington, D.C.

  The president sat with his national security staff in the Situation Room at the White House. The mood was tense. The Strait of Hormuz had been closed in the Persian Gulf. Energy prices were skyrocketing. It would take time for the military to get naval and air assets in place to deal with the situation.

  The Situation Room was built by President Kennedy to provide a secure place for the president to control United States forces around the world with real-time information. Located under the West Wing, the facility was staffed by over thirty agency representatives twenty-four hours a day to provide the most up-to-date in
formation anywhere in the world to enable the president to make informed decisions.

  And today there were decisions to be made.

  “Mr. President,” the national security advisor started the conversation, “we have evidence the Russians have been supplying weapons to the Iranians in the Gulf. We have evidence the Chinese and the Russians have been buying gold reserves worldwide. We have known for years they both have been active off our shores in the Caribbean as well as globally buying economic and political influence. We also have strong communications intelligence there has been active coordination in multiple areas among Russia, China, and Iran prior to the attack in the Gulf. There have also been coordinated attempts to drive up our interest rates to harm the economy. They are using their substantial ownership of U.S. debt as a weapon.”

  “Obviously we have a multilateral effort here, as we suspected,” the president concluded. “They are attempting to weaken this country where she is most vulnerable, our economy. If they can drive up our rates and make our debt unsustainable while concurrently driving us deeper into debt with military spending, eventually we will become less of a power militarily and politically as well. What I want now is options! We have a coordinated attack against the economic viability of the United States. From this point on I consider us on a war footing.”

  “We should respond in kind, Mr. President,” the secretary of defense noted. “Iran should be dealt with militarily. Russia and China, economically.”

  “I agree,” the president responded. “I have been thinking the same thing.”

  The United States was going to war again.

  “We have to be strong here, people. Weakness is what got us into this situation. I hate to say it, but people need to be scared of the United States, of her power and her will to use it. I want options on destroying the military capability of Iran. I don’t care what it costs. We will get this economy going again and deal with the expenses. It’s the most resilient economy in the world. I want my people to be safe.”

  The staff was furiously taking notes.

  “I also want economic options to deal with Russia and China. I have ideas in mind myself,” he added.

  A curious system developed in international finance over the last several decades. As the wealthy were asked to pay more and more of the tax burden in the developed and developing markets, they naturally gravitated towards finding solutions to avoid paying these higher taxes and preserve their wealth. This happened in the corporate world as well. This circumstance was the catalyst behind the development of a plethora of offshore financial jurisdictions that operated as tax havens and, among other purposes, confidentiality and asset protection.

  These typically were established on islands in warm climates. This made the board of directors meetings so much more pleasurable. The quintessential offshore tax haven was the Caribbean with its many remote and almost isolated islands. One of the sleepiest of these was Nevis, located down the Western Indies chain towards South America.

  The main town of Charleston was established right on the edge of the water towards its sister island of St. Kitts. The infrastructure of the port consisted of a concrete pier jutting out into the ocean and a crumbling seawall protecting the ramshackle buildings up against the sea. The caldera of the long dormant volcano rose behind the town. It was the perfect scene for a thriller novel.

  The SEAL team was most concerned with one of these buildings. The small submarine drifted slowly towards the harbor in the middle of the night, coming within 250 yards of the seawall while stealthily traveling fifty feet under the surface. The dredged harbor provided the depth needed to operate the vessel. The crew skillfully navigated as close to the target as possible.

  The hatch on top of the submarine opened, and five SEALs exited in scuba gear and motored underwater with small propellant devices towards the water barrier in the harbor. They covered the small distance in a short period of time.

  Their target was one of the nondescript office buildings located across the road from the edge of the land facing the water. There were tourist shops on the street level with office space located above. T-shirts and small trinkets adorned the windows below. There was a bar on the end of the small commercial building, but at this late hour it was empty. Advertisements for the local brewery fluttered in the night wind off the ocean. Broken glass littered the parking lot next door, evidence of the prior night’s activities.

  The frogmen arrived at the base of the pier and stowed their craft for later use, hiding them under the waterline. They then removed their gear, stowed it as well, and silently made their way towards the office building. Under cover of darkness, they slowly and stealthily climbed up the stairs to the outside hallway facing the ocean. No one was in sight.

  One of the classic offshore schemes to provide confidentiality and asset protection was to set up a corporation in a jurisdiction that would only conduct business outside of its geographic location. These typically were called international business corporations, or IBCs. They usually paid no tax to their domicile and were legally protected by the jurisdiction’s legislative code. Most of the jurisdictions were forced to share tax data with the U.S. and other countries, but that did not hinder their privacy or confidentiality capabilities. Many governments resented this competition for their tax dollars. It was not so easy to strip mine the residents of a country to feed the government when there was an outlet for the person or corporation to move and reduce its tax load. There was a concerted effort by international regimes to rein in this competition, and it had worked to some extent, but the tax havens still existed and even thrived.

  The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, was a group of thirty-four developed economies, whose principal aim was to foster sound economic policies among its members. It was created after WWII to administer the Marshall Plan in Europe. In the past decade this organization had maintained a “blacklist” of jurisdictions that did not provide tax transparency and exchange of tax information with member countries. They had threatened to cut off access to the international banking system if their targets did not conform to their demands. However, many new havens sprang up over the years in this never ending battle.

  Each of these financial domiciles could had hundreds or even thousands of companies operating inside their borders. They typically were run by a staff consisting of hired management and a mercenary board of directors. Some of these individuals sat on the boards of hundreds of companies. It was a shell game of course, but it worked for the purposes of the underlying beneficiary.

  The building that the SEALs targeted housed one of these management companies. The offices of not less than forty-six IBCs made their home in this building at the West Indies Management Company, Inc. One of their companies was sending orders via West Indies personnel in Nevis to sell large amounts of United States treasury bonds to their bond traders in New York and other places. The traders knew it was a shell company but didn’t ask questions. As far as they were concerned, they were making too much money. Besides, their firm had done their due diligence; they were protected legally. Or at least they hoped.

  The commandos made their way silently down the outdoor corridor to the upstairs office entrance quickly and quietly. Forcefully they entered the office. The team began thoroughly searching the premises and confiscated several hard drives, thumb drives, and reams of paper from the location. The operation took less than thirty minutes and was unobserved by anyone on the island. The precious cargo, or PC, was then protected in waterproof containers. As silently as they came, they made their way back to their equipment and walked into the ocean.

  Midtown Manhattan

  Keshwar Rajim was happy. He sat as his terminal, looking over his previous day’s commissions. He had become a very wealthy man. In the last twenty-four hours, he had padded that wealth by five hundred thousand dollars. Life was good. He thought of the new Ferrari he had just ordered. He
had just walked into the showroom on Park Avenue and paid cash, three hundred thousand dollars. He couldn’t wait for it to be delivered.

  How many other thirty-year-olds could do that? he asked himself. The funny thing was the salesman was not surprised. Such was life on Wall Street, Keshwar reasoned.

  His big client in Nevis had been extremely busy. There were repeated orders to sell U.S. treasuries and he had done a good job of getting his client the best price possible. Success brought more success. He was a master of the universe. In other Wall Street jargon, a big swinging dick! He noticed the respect his superiors were showing him. He had arrived. The only thing they respected was money.

  He was on top of the world.

  What he did not realize was that from there, he could only look into the abyss.

  It was ten o’clock in the morning when they strode onto the trading floor. The floor was busy and loud with shouting, but it quickly muted as everyone saw them enter. The CEO of the firm escorted them in and led them to Keshwar’s seat.

  The floor was now silent. Ten men clothed in FBI jackets tended to do that.

  “Keshwar Rajim?” one of the agents asked.

  “Yes,” said Keshwar, initially shocked and now frightened.

  “FBI, you are under arrest. Put your hands above your head!”