by J C Ryan
While Rex was on a mission in Afghanistan, Usama (the Lion), an Afghani drug lord, arranged an ambush that killed Rex’s entire team, except Digger, the military dog trained and owned by the former Australian SAS operative, Trevor Madigan, Rex’s good friend. Digger was now Rex’s trusted companion because of a promise Trevor extracted as he lay dying.
Rex and Digger teamed up in the aftermath of the ambush and went in pursuit of those responsible. They soon caught up with them, and from the interrogation of Usama and his cohorts, Rex gathered enough information to conclude that the strings were pulled from America to get Usama to arrange the ambush. Rex also extracted from them the confession that the ambush was set up with the sole purpose to kill him and that he was presumed dead in the attack. Therefore, he’d elected to stay ‘dead’, take an extended vacation, and eventually determine who did it and why. He’d take care of that grudge later, when he knew more, and that was where Rehka’s computer skills and Usama’s money came in.
Soon after walking off the reservation and starting a new life in India, another bad guy, Prince Mutaib bin Faisal bin Saud, had offended Rex’s sensibilities by buying pleasure wives on the human trafficking market. Rehka, in fact, was one of the victims. Rex had learned of her possible fate from her father, whom Rex had met by chance. Rex had investigated, found her, and taken her out of Saudi Arabia after dispatching Mutaib, who was not only into human trafficking but also an unscrupulous international weapons dealer.
During her rescue, Rex learned that Rehka was an IT specialist, and after he’d returned her to her family, he proposed to hire her to break into the hard drives, locate and secure the cash hidden in secure accounts all over the world, and help him administer it for the benefit of the victims of both bad guys.
Some of the hard drives he acquired from Usama and Mutaib contained the information about their business dealings including the names and details of their contacts. Those hard drives he’d placed in safe deposit boxes in a few banks in Mumbai.
Rehka had contacted him just as his previous adventure in Thailand was winding down and reported that she’d found and secured all the ill-gotten money from both Usama’s and Mutaib’s records. Now, what did he want her to do with it?
From Usama, Rex had liberated cash, gold, gemstones, and computer hard drives containing the whereabouts and keys to retrieving secure bank accounts. He had no idea how much money was in Usama’s or Mutaib’s accounts.
Tonight, after depositing his luggage and Digger’s gear at the studio apartment where he stayed, he intended to lay in some food and other supplies, take Rehka out to a nice dinner, and then get down to business the next day.
***
A FEW HOURS later, Rex and Rehka were enjoying the planned dinner, while Digger had been left at the apartment with his favorite toy, a Kong. The Kong was a hard-rubber item shaped a little like a snowman, with a hole running from the top of the snowman’s head to the bottom. The hole could be stuffed with treats, and when Digger had finished teasing those out, he would pick the Kong up with his mouth and toss it. Because of its unusual shape, it bounced unpredictably, which delighted Digger as he chased and pounced on it. It would be good enough to keep him occupied until Rex had returned Rehka to her apartment after their dinner and gone back to his own in time for Digger’s last walk of the night.
At dinner, Rex and Rehka caught up with the minutia of their lives. Rehka asked how he’d enjoyed Thailand, and Rex asked after their mutual friend, Aarav Patel, a Mumbai policeman who’d helped him while he was searching for Rehka’s whereabouts. Rex watched her closely as she gave an animated anecdote about Aarav’s children. She and Aarav’s wife had become fast friends on her return to Mumbai, and the couple frequently had her over for dinner. He was happy to see how well she was doing emotionally after her ordeal in Saudi Arabia.
Rehka explained that she hadn’t felt competent to advise Rex on the investment and distribution of his newly-gained wealth. She knew a little of what he wanted to do with it, because they’d discussed it before. But, acting independently as he expected her to, she’d researched until she found a discreet attorney who was also a financial planner.
“I haven’t contacted him yet. I’ve been waiting for your arrival so that I can show you what I’ve found, and after that, if you want to talk to him, I’ll set up a meeting.”
Rex appreciated her initiative and told her so. She was shaping up to be one of the best support assets he’d ever had, and that included the members of the CRC team that had backed him up on missions. When he’d ‘gone rogue’, his intention was to leave his profession behind, and he hadn’t anticipated the need for his own team ever again.
Later, when he got back to his apartment and went walking with Digger along the dark streets to a nearby park where he could let his buddy off leash to run and do his thing, Rex reflected on the events of the past year. Nothing could have prepared him for the life he had now. He’d been afraid of dogs—a closely-held secret rooted in his childhood. He’d been a highly-efficient black ops operator for CRC. Then he’d become a vagrant, but as much as he was not looking for it, it seems as if trouble had a habit of finding him.
He was enjoying his newfound freedom and his friendship with Digger. But in the back of his mind he knew at some stage he would have to leave his new life behind. He was not in a hurry to do it, but finally he would have to contact the Old Man and admit he was alive. If he did that, did it mean he’d go back to doing what he was best at in behalf of a country that might have betrayed him?
Digger interrupted his thoughts by returning from his own mission and leading Rex to the evidence, which Rex picked up in a plastic bag and deposited in the nearest waste receptacle on the way back to his apartment.
Well, I guess I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Chapter 3
Mumbai, India
THE NEXT MORNING, he prepared a simple breakfast for himself, fed Digger his kibble mixed with some boiled eggs and a small tin of tuna in olive oil, and showed up at Rehka’s apartment with Digger shortly after nine a.m.
He kissed her lightly on the cheek then unleashed Digger who immediately went over to Rehka to greet her with a wagging tail and a soft yelp as she scratched his ears. With a beaming smile, she said, “Welcome Digger. You can sit and lie anywhere you want.”
She made a cup of tea for Rex and herself before they sat down, and she showed him how she used Usama and Mutaib’s little notebooks in which they kept their encryption keys and pass phrases to access the hard drives and the various secret numbered offshore accounts.
She explained how, once she’d gotten access to the hard drives, it was not too difficult to get to the various secret bank accounts. Obviously, Usama and Mutaib had not been entirely paranoid about security. Maybe it was because they thought they were untouchable.
Rehka began by summarizing. There were three types of accounts.
First, money in bank accounts in their names in their own countries, i.e. Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. That money was untouchable. There’d be tracers on the accounts against someone trying to access them, and in any case, the accounts would’ve been frozen while their owners’ estates were being wound up.
Second, as Rex had presumed, there was money in nameless but numbered accounts in tax havens. Rehka had discovered secret accounts in financial institutions from Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, none of which surprised Rex. However, there were others in such widely scattered areas as Hong Kong, Dubai, and Singapore. It seemed the demand for places where one could hide money from one’s government, thanks to the globalization of economy and finance, had proliferated to include nations that weren’t even dreamed of in the 1930s, when the Swiss had pioneered the strictest banking secrecy act in the world at that time.
As it turned out, from Mutaib Rex had liberated about fifty million US, which was deposited in numbered accounts to which no one without the number and security pass-phrases could get access. This was apart from the million and half US worth
of gold coins and cash he took when he’d killed Mutaib.
Among Mutaib’s assets were a handful of warehouses, spread across the world, packed with the stock of his trade—bullets and guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and such. These Rex would leave in place until he could go around and blow them all up. For now, leaving them to corrode away in leak-prone buildings was probably the safest option for the people living in those areas where their devious leaders, Mutaib’s clients, had cornered the market on war, strife, senseless violence, drug smuggling, ethnic cleansing, and other ‘peace-loving’ activities.
Mutaib also had a luxury, mega-yacht cruising around the Mediterranean. This yacht, they discovered, was registered in the name of a shell company, and it took a bit of hacking and online detective work to discover that Mutaib actually owned the shell company. The company was registered in Luxembourg.
Rex was quite interested in this asset—in the back of his mind he had the idea that it would be nice to have it to cruise around Europe, off the grid. But for now, he didn’t have a clue how to go about getting the ownership transferred. However, there was no urgency to get it done as it seemed Mutaib had arrangements in place with a timeshare company who had been managing and maintaining it while using it to cart people around European port cities on luxury holidays. The proceeds after costs were deposited into a secret numbered account in the Caymans.
There were also other tangible assets, some of which were inaccessible because they were publicly known, like homes and furnishings, vehicles, jewelry, and art works—all the trappings of a wealthy lifestyle.
“There might be others,” Rehka said, “with possibilities for liquidation, since they’d been carefully hidden in similar fashion as the ownership of the yacht.”
Rex asked her to investigate those, and unravel the complicated trail of ownership when she had some spare time. She’d discovered the assets through notes on the hard-drive records, references to this building or that warehouse full of goods. Knowing what to look for would make it easier.
As for Usama’s wealth, it was mindboggling to learn that the man held in excess of forty-five million US in numbered offshore accounts. His net worth was somewhere north of seventy million, depending on how the non-cash assets were to be liquidated.
All these financial matters were a novel experience for Rex, and to be honest, utterly bewildering.
Rex had never had any other job than being a soldier, a Special Forces operator and assassin. He’d never had to worry about money. What he inherited from his parents he’d liquidated into cash and left in the bank. Most of the time, he didn’t even have an idea how much money he had. He never had a need for a lot of money. The military had paid him, housed, and fed him. Later, CRC paid him, and they, too, provided food, shelter, and everything else he needed.
Save for the few thousand dollars per year he spent when he was on R and R, all of what he earned from CRC, which were not insignificant amounts, went into his savings accounts. A large part of the money he earned from CRC was placed in untraceable offshore accounts with the purpose to secure for an abundant retirement fund—if he survived the hazards of his profession for long enough to retire and enjoy it.
In short, Rex’s financial experience was limited to checking his bank accounts online and withdrawing small amounts every now and then. But for security reasons, even that he hadn’t done since he went rogue. By now, he had no idea exactly how much money of his own he had—by his rough calculations it could’ve been somewhere in the order of four million.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t touch that money. Doing so would’ve immediately set off alarms and alerted the CIA and CRC FININT staff. Besides, there was a very good chance that all that money would have been frozen while his estate was being wound up. Having no will and no family, that money would probably end up in government’s coffers once Rex had been missing long enough to be declared dead. Seven years, he thought. On more than one occasion he wanted to kick himself for not making a last will and testament when he had the chance to do so.
Damn, I could’ve made it plain and simple; distribute my estate in equal shares to the families of those who were killed while on missions with me. That money could’ve gone to the families of Frank Millard, Trevor Madigan, and the others who were slaughtered in that ambush.
Well, the US government can shove that four million into a dark place. With Usama’s thirty million at my disposal I’ll rectify my mistake. I’d only have to figure out how to get the money to their relatives without blowing my own cover.
He’d heard about rich people’s worries being different from ordinary people’s—their biggest worry being how to best use and invest their money, to make more, and to safeguard it. With all this acquired money and not knowing what to do with it, he was beginning to understand what the ‘unfortunate’ rich people had to go through.
After a few days of going through all this stuff, Rex had made up his mind. For now, there was no need to move the money out of the secured accounts. He and Rehka were the only people on the planet who would be able to get access to it.
Mutaib’s money would be transferred to different banks in India and held in trust for the seven escapees, to be distributed as needed by Rehka. Her share would be handed to her in a lump sum, so she could invest it as she chose. The rest would be divided equally between the trust accounts of the remaining six women who he rescued with Rehka. The money would keep them in adequate funds for the rest of their lives.
When it came to Usama’s money, Rex would take out four million and transfer it to the various accounts he’d already set up in various banks in India. This sum represented the amount he, at last check, thought he had in his American and offshore accounts. The rest he intended to distribute among the teammates who’d perished in Usama’s ambush, once he could figure out how to do it without drawing any attention to himself.
Four days of studying the financial wheeling and dealing of bad guys was utterly tiring. There were times during all of it when he would have been happy to be dropped off with a fifty-pound backpack and bottle of water in the Arizona desert thirty miles from base and told to walk back, rather than sit through this. Even a few skirmishes with a bunch of terrorists had more allure than this stuff.
How the hell can any person do this stuff day in and day out and remain sane?
But, finally, he was free to continue his history tour of the world. He had to admit, it was nice to be able to spend what he wanted and not worry about where the next dollar was coming from.
After saying goodbye to Rehka while having lunch at a street café, Rex looked down at Digger and said, “My friend, you and I are going to Peru. We’re going to have a look at the land of the Incas.”
Digger looked at him as if to say, “Where is that?”
“Yeah, I guess you didn’t pay attention in dog school during the geography lesson. But don’t you worry, I’ll get us there. I can promise you it’s going to be much better than what you went through the last two weeks. Well, to be honest, actually anything would be better than the last two weeks.”
Digger took the last piece of chicken Rex offered him, sat down, and looked down the street and back at Rex while licking his lips as if to say, “Ready when you are, buddy.”
Chapter 4
Vanuatu, South Pacific
ALTHOUGH HIS SOJOURN in Peru was quite educational, it had turned out not to be as relaxing as Rex would have liked. Also, there was an encounter with a very beautiful Peruvian girl whom he wouldn’t have minded spending more time with. But she was wise enough to show him the door once she got to know him better. Not that he did anything unseemly, but because she could see he was a restless soul who was not ready to settle down yet. Admittedly, he couldn’t fault her on that. She was right—he wasn’t ready to settle down yet. Not until he had dealt with those who betrayed him and his men.
In a bid to get away from anywhere that might have a potential for trouble and stress, Rex decided to stay in the southern hemisphere and v
isit a place that didn’t even have much history to collect. A resort island, or to be exact, an island country whose only industry was tourism. From Lima, he and Digger flew to Sydney, Australia, about six hundred miles south of Brisbane, Digger’s birthplace and where he’d been reared and trained, and from there to Vanuatu.
Rex had heard of the place, knew more or less where it was, but nothing more. During his final days in Peru, while contemplating where to go next, he’d read an article online about the Vanuatu Islands and what an idyllic place it was. Swayed by the pictures and videos online, on a whim, Rex decided that’s exactly what he and Digger needed—a lazy holiday on a subtropical island in the South Pacific. He did a bit of online research and learned that Vanuatu was a mostly French-speaking range of islands off the east coast of Australia, almost close enough to Digger’s first home and if the wind came from the right direction, for the dog to have smelled it from there.
In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom each claimed parts of the archipelago, resulting in some contention that was finally settled in 1906, when the two nations agreed on a framework for jointly managing the group of islands as the New Hebrides. An independence movement arose in the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980. The South Pacific Ocean nation was made up of roughly eighty islands stretching a little over eight-hundred miles in length.
The history of Vanuatu wasn’t as interesting to Rex as his usual fare, but he’d been disappointed in previous trips as to their rest and relaxation, since everywhere he’d gone since the ambush in Afghanistan had presented him with crimes and injustices he’d felt compelled to sort out. So, he thought, what better place to find peace than a resort destination with no reason to be of interest to terrorists and crime bosses?
There were, however, indigenous tribes to visit and the Melanesian culture to observe. There were also opportunities to enjoy scuba diving at coral reefs, underwater caverns, and wrecks such as the WWII-era troopship SS President Coolidge. The latter was a piece of history Rex hadn’t previously known of, supporting his contention that the study of history in American was sorely lacking.