The Rwandan Hostage

by Christopher Lowery

  Espinoza’s ears pricked up at this snippet. “He told you they called the organiser the ‘Voice’? Why did they call him that?”

  “He said he talked like William Shakespeare. Very good English but old fashioned words and phrases. He sounded like a school teacher or a lecturer, but he never told them what the plan was. Just that they had to abduct me and look after me. That’s why Marius kept asking me questions about my family, so he could work out the reason for the plan. But I don’t have a clue what they wanted so I couldn’t tell him anything.”

  Filing this away in his memory, the detective asked, “Why do you think they took you away from Johannesburg?”

  “I have no idea. They injected me again and the next thing I knew we were in the car on the way to Zimbabwe. But at the first chance Marius took me away from the others and looked after me.”

  “And he told you that he tried to get money from your mother to return you?”

  “He said he’d asked for a reward and I told him we were skint. My Mum spent all her money on the trip down here, so I know she’s broke right now.”

  “And did he tell you why he thought he could get a reward?”

  “He said my father must have money, but I don’t know where he got that from. I’ve never even seen my father and I told him I didn’t think he’d be keen to throw money around for a kid he doesn’t even know.”

  “But then he let you go without asking for a ransom. Why do you think that was?”

  “It’s obvious. It was because of Karen and Abby, when he phoned her before we drove down. Once he started thinking about getting his family back, he just dropped the whole idea of the ransom and took me down to meet them. I could have walked out in Phalaborwa if I’d wanted to, but I knew Mom would be worried if I was on my own so I waited until we got nearer to Joburg and then called her straight away. In the end he’s brought me to safety and he’s asked for no money, so I think we’re quits. Don’t you?”

  Although they were still a lot of unanswered questions in Espinoza’s mind, he was reaching some conclusions. It seems Coetzee didn’t know about Leo’s birth or Jenny’s wealth. He wasn’t a key person in the conspiracy, he just happened to have the security of the stadium under his control and had financial problems. When he saw the danger Leo was in, he pulled the plug on the operation and thanks to him, the boy is safe. “I think I agree with you,” he said. “No more questions for now, I promise.”

  “Can I ask one? Do you have any idea who came up with the abduction plan and why they picked on me?”

  “I have some preliminary thoughts, but there’s still a lot of detective work to be done, so there’s no point in speculating for the moment. The main thing is that you’re safely back. That was my promise to your mother. If I can follow the trail up to the real culprits all the better, but it won’t affect you or her anymore and that’s always been my main objective.”

  “I never said thank you, sorry. Thank you for all you’ve done for me and my mom. She must be so relieved that this is over, I know I am.” Leo settled back in his seat, his mind at ease, although he suspected that Espinoza was not a man to leave any stone unturned. But as long as he stuck to his story he should be OK. He couldn’t afford to tell the truth about Constance’s death, nor about the gorillas from Zimbabwe. Anyway, he thought, that’s all behind me in South Africa and I’m going to leave it there.

  Espinoza was now thinking about the mysterious ‘Voice’. Was he the key to the conspiracy? He went back over Leo’s words, ‘He sounded like a school teacher or a lecturer.’ Or, he thought to himself, perhaps Lord Arthur Dudley who was tracing their phones all over South Africa? He took out his jigsaw puzzle and added a new box. The picture was starting to become clearer.

  Marbella, Spain

  “I’ve just checked and the flight’s on time. It’s landing in forty minutes.” Jenny and Emma were still out on the terrace. Leticia and Emilio were up at the lake at the top of the garden.

  “I’d better get moving. Does Juan know we’re going to the airport?”

  “He knows, but don’t worry. I managed to find enough Spanish to tell him to say nothing to the others. He’ll go straight home when he’s brought you back. He usually doesn’t work on a Saturday and by Monday everyone will have forgotten about it.”

  “Listen, Jenny. I have to tell Leo about his birth, about Rwanda and about Mutesi. I was summoning up the courage to do it one day, but after what’s happened I have to do it now. It’s going to be a big shock to him but if I explain it properly I’m sure he’ll understand. The main thing is that he’s always been loved and cherished and he knows that. But I can’t tell him about Galaganza. He can’t be told that his biological father was one of the organisers of the greatest human catastrophe since the second world war. It’s too much for anyone to cope with. So it has to be kept secret and never disclosed to anyone. After Tony and Dr Constance’s deaths, no one except you and Pedro and I know this and you must promise never to divulge it. Never.”

  After promising that the subject would never be discussed again by her with anyone and that Pedro would abide by the same promise, Jenny saw her sister off then went up to find Leticia at the lake. Emilio was throwing handfuls of fish food and the carp were threshing about, thrusting up their open jaws to grab the food from the surface. There must have been fifty of the enormous creatures, of every hue imaginable, creating what looked like an underwater rainbow as their scales flashed in the sunlight. It was an impressive sight, reminding her of what may lie just beneath an apparently calm surface.

  They walked back down the steps to the house, listening to the little boy’s chatter about les poissons, the fish. He had evidently decided to speak French that day, so his mother obligingly helped him with his vocabulary. Jenny was increasingly impressed by Leticia’s ability to pick up languages. As well as Portuguese, her mother tongue, she was fluent in Spanish and English and now she was mastering French. That’s thanks to Patrice. Lovers and languages, it’s a good formula for fluency.

  “Emma’s gone off to get Leo, so she’ll be a little while,” she said to Leticia. “Come and sit with me and I’ll explain about your accounts. I checked them over last night and I think I know what’s happened.”

  “Is it something bad?” Leticia looked fearful. She couldn’t face a rift with her fiancé.

  “It’s not as bad as we may have imagined, but let’s look at the statements and you can see for yourself.”

  Jenny opened up the file and pointed out the transactions involving the Asian Atlantic Investment Funds. Then she went online to the newspaper articles and explained to Leticia what a Ponzi scheme was and where her million Euros had gone.

  “Meu Deus! My God. I can’t believe people can do such things. These people just took the money and disappeared. So there was nothing Patrice could have done.”

  “That’s right. In fact, apart from that crooked scheme, Patrice hasn’t done a bad job. Ignoring the lost million, after your living costs he’s actually produced a profit of almost ten per cent so it’s not such a terrible result.”

  “But I’ll never get back the money from this Ponzi scheme?”

  “No. I’m sure it’s gone forever, unless there are other assets that the SEC discovers. But I wouldn’t hold out any hope for that, they sound like a really callous bunch of criminals. The money will be hidden away in offshore accounts all over the world.” She had a fleeting vision of d’Almeida in the kitchen just behind them, two years ago, boasting about transferring twelve million dollars on a Sunday night. She shivered and said, “Did you notice that there were a lot of pension funds that had invested? Stealing people’s pensions, it makes you want to throttle the lot of them.”

  “Patrice said it was just temporary, that he would make the money back by September.”

  “If he said so, he must have something up his sleeve, I suppose.” Jenny tried to sound confident, hoping against hope that her suspicions were unfounded. Despite having Leo back, they still hadn’t uncovere
d the identity of the conspirators and she was afraid of what might be found. She was especially afraid of what Leticia might learn.

  London, England

  Lord Arthur Dudley was working on his laptop. Although he liked to give the appearance of total incompetence in all things computer and Internet related, he was quite skilled at most tasks. After a number of false starts, partly because his written French wasn’t equal to his conversational ability, he found the correct website and printed out the details he was looking for.

  Then with the help of the online translation programme, he prepared a short email and practised reading it out loud until he was confident of the result. Ready, he called a number in Montreuil, Seine-Saint Denis, a Commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris. He used the French mobile phone with the Bouygues SIM. The number rang out and he switched on the voice distortion system, just enough to disguise the distinctive tone of his voice but not enough to sound like a robot. After several rings, a recorded message advised him that the office was closed on Saturday and gave him another number for emergency calls. He went through the same procedure again and this time a bored-sounding woman answered the number. He assumed that like most civil servants, especially in France, she objected to working on the weekend, but she deigned to listen to his well-rehearsed reading of the message.

  As he had expected, she then asked for his name, address and other particulars, all of which he answered with convincing, but incorrect details. Finally, she told him she’d forward the information to the appropriate office but he had to confirm the details in writing. Dudley noted down the email address, thanked the woman and rang off. He went back to his laptop and completed the message with the email address and the name of the person she’d given him. After rereading it one last time he sent it to IPsend in the Philippines from where it was automatically forwarded to Montreuil. Dudley waited to ensure that the message had been sent then went back online. He was in a cleaning up mood and there was more to do.

  Heathrow Airport, England

  The Internet banking system asked for the amount of the transaction. Esther took a deep breath and entered two, five, zero, zero, zero, full-stop, zero, zero, then pressed Submit. A moment later the confirmation came onto the screen. She gave a gasp of relief then looked around the departure lounge self-consciously. No one had witnessed the transfer of twenty-five thousand dollars from Arthur Dudley’s Joburg account with the Private Bank of Panama to her own account at the Credit Bank of Guadeloupe. That was the daily limit of the authorisation given to her by him to operate the account in the event of an urgent payment if he was indisposed. She knew he would cancel the authorisation when he thought about it, but he hadn’t yet done so. There was more than two hundred thousand dollars in the account, but she couldn’t get more today. She could try again tomorrow, but it would probably be too late.

  The Guadeloupe account was in the name of Esther Bonnard, her maiden name, which she had used since fleeing Switzerland after d’Almeida’s death. She had renewed both her passports, in that name and her married name, Rousseau. By using the passports alternately she was able to move between countries without leaving a complete trail. Although she had no information on the police enquiry after the Klein Fellay robbery she assumed she had become a suspect, so she was taking no chances of being found by Interpol, nor of the little money she had managed to accumulate being taken away from her. No one, including Dudley and Slater knew her married name.

  The balance on her account was now close to fifty thousand dollars, nothing like what she’d hoped for with the ransom plan, but better than nothing. And she wasn’t yet finished. She was sure she could extract more cash if she handled the next step well. Her mobile had rung five times on the train and as she waited for her Belfast flight. Now that she’d kept him waiting and had made the first successful transfer, it was time to call Slater back. She had rehearsed her story and was ready. She called his number.

  “Sorry, chéri, I was rushing for the train and then going through security so I didn’t manage to phone you back earlier.”

  “You mean you’re on your way back?”

  “No, not yet. I’m leaving in an hour for Geneva.” For the moment she had to keep the door open, although she was going to slam it shut fairly soon.

  “Why Geneva? Have you spoken to Dudley? I’ve been trying to get him all morning but he isn’t answering. I don’t know what in hell’s going on.”

  “I went to his apartment this morning, as I promised. That’s why I’m on my way to Switzerland. To get the transaction back on track”

  “So the deal is still alive? Are you sure? Have they got the boy in Zimbabwe?”

  “Apparently so,” she lied convincingly and heard a deep sigh of relief at the other end. “But it seems Arthur’s connections are not what he led us to believe. The Harare people are actually managed out of Geneva and with all the recent activity they’ve realised that they’ve been underselling their assistance. I’m going over to sweet talk the boss into clearing the way for the transaction to continue. It’s going to cost us some money, but Arthur has dropped the ball and I’m going to pick it up again.”

  “I don’t fucking believe it! You know how difficult it is for me to get money from my partner. It’s like blood from a stone. How much is it this time?”

  Esther quickly weighed up the odds of getting a small amount easily or missing out by asking for too much. “I think I can resolve it with twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and some feminine persuasion, but I’d need it in my account immediately so that I can settle the matter on the spot.”

  “What do you mean, ‘feminine persuasion’? You mean sex, don’t you?”

  “Chéri, we’re talking about you and me and the rest of our lives together, nothing is more important than that. And if I have to be a little generous with my attentions to arrange that, I’ll do it willingly, as long as I know it will work. But for that I need to have the cash available.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “He’s called Sébastien. Sébastien du Pasquier. He’s apparently half Swiss, half French and he’s an ex-banker. Arthur told me he’s now the Zimbabwean money manager in Geneva.” Esther skilfully embroidered her story with more details. She knew that the more elaborate the lie the more easily it was believed.

  “When are you meeting him?”

  “Tomorrow night for dinner, so I should to be able to get it agreed by Monday morning. That’s when I’ll need to make the payment.”

  “And you’ll come straight back here to be with me?”

  “You know I will, I can’t wait. As soon as I can get a flight, I promise.”

  There was a long moment of silence, then, “Are you sure this will fix the problem and we can finish the transaction?”

  “I can’t promise until I meet the man concerned, but I’d be astonished if I failed to get him to do what I want. Don’t you agree?”

  He knew her powers of persuasion better than anyone. But was she using them on him? And what about this man she was proposing to seduce? Another thought came to him. “What if I could find the twenty-five thousand myself? We might be able to rearrange the participations. If we save the situation we have every right to demand a larger slice. What do you think?”

  “It’s a brilliant idea. I should have thought of that. If you can convince your partner, I can certainly persuade Arthur. They’re both desperate to produce some real money from all the work that’s gone into the plan. We could do very well out of this setback if we handle it properly.” Esther couldn’t believe how naïve this man was, but she wasn’t about to argue.

  “Right, I’ll do it. Send me the account details and the funds will be there by Monday first thing.”

  Esther walked to the departure gate for her flight to Belfast, congratulating herself on the conversation. I haven’t lost my touch, she told herself. That’s fifty thousand dollars recovered from a dead deal. And I still haven’t finished.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Malaga Airport, Spain<
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  Espinoza stood aside as Emma hugged and kissed her son for a long moment. Leo looked around the crowded arrivals hall in an embarrassed fashion and pulled away from his mother as soon as he reasonably could. “I’m fine, Mom. Don’t worry, I’m really fine.”

  Reluctantly she released him and turned to embrace the Spaniard. “You must be exhausted, Pedro. You’ve been travelling non-stop for days and you’ve kept your promise to me. I’ll never forget it. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “I was rather lucky, Emma, but I’m happy that everything has ended this way. Now you’d better get Leo home. It’s lunch time and he’s probably hungry. He seems to be hungry all the time.” He tried to lighten the emotionally charged atmosphere.

  “Actually, the food on both flights was really good. Nothing like the plastic stuff in economy. How did you manage to wangle business seats?” Leo grabbed his bag and started off towards the exit doors.

  “I’ll explain it all to you in the car. It’s a very long story.”

  They walked along to the parking area where Juan was waiting for them in the Jaguar. “Are you coming back with us, Pedro?”

  “I’ll take a taxi home and relax with my family if you don’t mind. I’ve actually only been away for two days, but it seems a lot longer. And,” he continued thoughtfully, “I don’t want to cause any unnecessary speculation in Leticia’s mind. I’ll call later this afternoon.” He shook them both by the hand. “By the way, have you got a photograph of Tony Forrester?”

  Emma looked a little embarrassed. “Actually, I’ve got one here. I keep it just for old time’s sake.” She opened her purse and handed him a small plastic case with a well preserved colour photo inside. It was of a good looking, fair haired man with an appealing smile, in his late twenties. She made sure that Leo didn’t see it.