Borderless Deceit (39 page)

“Yeah, read it,” the Czar confirmed gruffly. “Could see that one coming, Jaime. The bribes will filter through some bogus Abou-Ghazi Foundation project and we'll see them reappear in Krause's bank as an above board fee. Mark my words.”

Irving liked this testosterone-driven way of talking with Jaime. Like in spy serials on TV. His ceremonial huffing and puffing over with, they sat down to go over his problem. “So now, Jaime, you know about the Service database containing every intelligence assessment done since Adam bit into the apple. No probs getting in 'cause I've got
access. But hell, what good is that? It's like getting dunked into a big aquarium. Everything swims around in four dimensions, I mean three times space and one times time. Nothing's pinned down. No order. I looked for bankers and out came thirty-five years' worth of Bank of Canada annual reports. Maybe I'm overestimating the moral rectitude of them comics across town, but I doubt they're promoting the looney as the currency of choice for the purification of Krause's unclean money.”

“You never know,” was Jaime's breezy reply, as if she had developed insight into the true nature of central bankers ages ago. “That type can do a lot of fast shuffling.” She then showed him how to put together efficient strings of search commands, following which the Czar wheezed his way up the back stairs to his office.

The red folder expanded steadily. Like an infinite accordion, thought Heywood, using an analogy Hannah had inspired. She was as umbilically linked to the computer in her sewing room as he was to the one in his office. Using tips from Jaime, Irving had shown Hannah a foolproof method to download great music. He had also wired up speakers throughout their house. “Here's how, sweet,” he said with authority, punching in commands. Pointing at a horizontal bar racing forwards, he muttered, “This'll take no more than a minute.” When all was done his descending finger signalled victory. More tips for Hannah. “Here's your music folder, sweet. Click on it…like this…to confirm that what we wanted we got.” A few further magisterial clicks and the Heywood household on Ivy Crescent transformed into an awesome concert hall. A Gregorian chant, hauntingly beautiful sacred music from the amplified vocal chords of three dozen Irish holy men, filled every room. No sound in the Heywood home had ever been so pure. Nor loud. Irving had to click the mouse to adjust the volume down.

Hannah was transfixed. “How stunning,” she said. “Quite overwhelmingly arresting. All that from this sliver of technology. Irving, darling, you are terribly clever. You are. You should know I think that.”

“Let's do Kabalevsky next,” he said curtly, ears pink with pride. “You like his piano concertos.”

“Yes!” Hannah cried. “And then Piazolla. I admire his tango rhythms when they come from the accordion. Oh, this is quite, quite… wonderful. How this machine expands and expands. It's like…” Hannah
laughed her throaty laugh, “an accordion!”

Word spread on Ivy Crescent that one of its own home-grown had blossomed into a computer guru. Neighbours waved at Heywood as he entered and left his driveway; he responded in a princely manner, a hand held up and shaking slightly.

Beyond Jaime's clever interceptions, the accordionic folder of the devil also swelled with excerpts of data stashed away in the Service's historical records. Reports, analyses, memos, letters – all old Carson stuff which the Czar revived. He found minutes of meetings where Carson had spoken. He consulted attendance records. He searched employee expense claims pertaining to international travel. The information heap became immense.

One weekend at home – it was late spring, early summer – Hannah, remarking at breakfast that the fine weather stirred her, added she thought they should make good use of the afternoon. “We ought to do some work in the garden, darling.” But Heywood had decided the time had come.

“Sorry, sweet. Can't. Not right away. You won't believe how much I've got on the go. Have to do some penance in the office. I'll help later when I get home.”

“Penance, darling? Have you been disingenuous again? Are you now?”

“Sweet, you know me. Never less than forthright. All the time and absolutely.”

Hannah clucked her tongue with mock severity, but sent Irving on his way.

Departing Ivy Crescent, he was overwhelmed by rapture. Had the world ever looked this good? He at his peak; Hannah fully supportive; the spring already like summer. The temperature! Perfect for serene, ongoing biological evolution. The fittest of the species everywhere were in peak form. Flowering fruit trees down every street dazzled with their blood-red purple and pink-white blossoms. Like a gazillion fresh labia, thought Irving. So fertile, so ready to conceive and bear fruit. Crossing the river on his favourite bridges, he saw the canoes were out, lazy as in August's dog-days, with the couples in them – why not think it? – yes, pretty as flowers. He grinned. The stamens and pistils there would be hot and ready to perform too. Amidst the
glorious reproductive forces evident all through his neighbourhood, the Czar's heart beat proudly. It beat more proudly still when the Service complex came into view. How eclipsing it looked. Like an elevated citadel. His citadel. One could claim, he rhapsodized, that on any good day of any working week the rhythms inside were no less fecund than what surrounded it today. But with one twist. Inside he, not nature, called the shots. Inside he was the prime mover, the evolutionary force, the agent, you might say, that kept the cogs of progress oiled.

The garage door rumbled up; the guard waved him through with a salute. Inside, wheeling to a reserved spot at the front, Heywood's rapture grew to bursting point. His intuition was telling him this was the day Zadokite Port would gel. Switching the ignition off, he sensed a victory force. And hauling himself out the car, he made a vow: at this day's end Carson would stand exposed. A conspirator bereft of shame had taunted him and today would bring the reckoning. As Irving trudged in, the momentum of his billowing torso was matched by a certainty swelling in his mind.

On the way up he snapped hellos to this Sunday's army of young bloods. As usual they were out in force ministering to the eternal miseries of the world. Bright kids, he thought. Good workers. Global crises don't slip into a weekend slumber on Friday night. Someone's got to come to work to tend to the emergencies. Over the years he'd stabilised more than his share. A role model, that's what he had become. The way the young ones studied him, they obviously knew his exploits. He assumed his presence – them seeing a living legend – helped them carry on.

Settled into his chair he fired up the computer, closed his eyes as it loaded and rubbed thumbs against fingertips to warm them up. Next, punch in Zadokite Port's PINS. Having entered, inhaling deeply, loving the moment, he allowed Zadokite Port to vitalise his neurons. A mystical union became established between the circuitry of the computer and the networks in his brain. The moment brought pure ecstasy; he could feel the metaphysics of millennia come alive. No time for much of that today though, nor for snuffling through a clutch of folders. Today he went directly to the one he loved and hated most, the red one, the one devoted to the devil. Ah, new stuff in it. From
Jaime. Damn. Another report on Rachel. Not again. Especially not today. He'd have to remind Jaime once more that stuff on Rachel was to be left out. Because it was fabricated. Obviously so. All that kind of material proved that a refined but heinous feint continued to be developed by Carson. Today he'd brook no distractions. So click here, on this cross, this useful little cross, click Jaime's latest message away. Think Carson, the Czar urged himself, think only Carson. Think never-ending deviousness. Think limitless deceit.

For an hour the Czar scrolled through the devil's file. Sometimes he clicked “print” because when all was said and done he still found it easier to compare texts if they lay juxtaposed before him. And thus it was that two piles grew. One on Nikko Krause, world-renowned financier (look him up in the
Who's Who
of bankers), and the other containing the details of Morsi Abou-Ghazi's global armageddonic emporium. The Foundation for the world's poverty-stricken children figured too, but only as an empty shell, because Jaime had proven conclusively that even the few, scattered, genuine projects that really existed had basically been no more than theatre.

Outside the office window, the world teemed with carefree, sun-seeking hedonists. Inside, Heywood sat immune. Hour by hour he sank deeper into another world which had no resemblance to the utopia that was his neighbourhood. This world wasn't orderly and splendid. It was chaotic. But the Czar knew all chaos is otherwise if only you delve deep enough. Whatever the appearances, somewhere below the surface causation awaits discovery. All that's needed to get at it is a good dose of genius.

He wasn't sparing his. He studied and thought, and slowly, various elemental theorems emerged from the mist, each one a building block, each one contributing to a logical construct. Heywood loved these fertile hours. Deep contemplation, he considered, had always been one of his great strengths.

Nikko Krause and Morsi Abou-Ghazi. A Junker and a Caliph. The more he came to understand them, the less he held them in contempt. Yes, their souls were barren, grotesquely barren, as barren as the Foundation they had contrived. Yet, as Irving studied the secret reports and reflected on what they did, he sensed a growing empathy with them, as if he could enter their minds, and could track their thinking. How was
this possible? he asked himself. How did he manage it?

Because, bizarre as it might seem, he believed he had lived in their world. He had lived in their countries of business. And if he hadn't actually lived in some, he was present there all the same, in all of them, all the time, through the resident embassies he tended to. He, the Czar, like the Junker and the Caliph, also masterminded a global operation. There was a difference, naturally. It was in approach. He pursued enlightenment, while they operated in the shadows. You could argue, Heywood reasoned, that globally he was propelled by virtue, whereas the roads they travelled were paved with depravity. But if you looked from higher up, took a cosmic view, you could plausibly conclude that he and they were symbiotic. Their existence provided a counterweight to his, as in nature. Where would carnivores be without herbivores, and vice-versa? How could he excel at seeking justice if the world was entirely devoid of crime? Yes, Irving developed such an affinity for Morsi and Nikko that a tingle went up his spine.

A clever duo, Kraut Nikko and Moor Morsi. You could tell they were smart by the way they kept their names off the public lists of billionaires. Heywood studied their business. Simple and straightforward. Buy arms, narcotics, nuclear materials, items of that kind. Disguise, hide, or substitute them in international shipments of generators, cables, pumps, bearings, filters, or any of the other humdrum products crisscrossing the oceans. Ensure the paperwork for the products is flawless and carries the names of companies reputed to be principled, of gold-plated insurance agents, and of houses of finance with excellent pedigrees. Keep all routine and all smooth as clockwork. Because discord is a perturbation and perturbations draw attention. Discord causes bells to ring in faraway places.

In a typical transaction the Caliph acquires, say, user-friendly, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles from a French manufacturer. On paper the buyer might be a parastatal company in South-East Asia, in Thailand, for example, a country which, it could be argued, has a reasonable need for such weapons. The missiles are sent, but upon arrival in Bangkok get re-crated, made to appear on the outside as a Thai export of automotive parts to be sent to a car assembly plant in Brazil. Next stop for the missiles, now labelled as drive shafts, is a transshipment complex in the United Arab Emirates. Simple planning
ensures that a consignment of drilling pipes from Germany destined for Iran arrived there a day or two before. The switch is child's play. The anti-air missiles, now encased in fine German drill-pipe mouldings, cross the Persian Gulf into Iran and from there spread effortlessly west into Iraq and east into Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the German pipes, now in crates which claim the contents are automotive, move on too because car parts ought to be seen to be arriving in Brazil. Yet another switch, in Port Elizabeth, where real drive shafts wait. Once the pipes are out and the car parts are in, the shipment continues its journey and arrives in Brazil right on time. Everywhere the transactions, suitably greased, are effortless and silent.

What works for missiles does for hand guns (disguise them as computer drives), heroine (spices), enriched uranium (watch batteries), or anything else for which there's an illicit market. Countries of origin and transshipment may differ, but the process is the same. No supplier is ever connected with a buyer. Transactions occur inside a fog that conceals.

If contraband wormed its way to the destinations in complex ways, the accompanying financial flows were still more elegant. Irving whistled through his teeth. Good thing I grew up poor, he thought. He had always been convinced that lifting yourself from poverty is a pre-cursor for extra-sensory perception; poor kids can see into life's shrouded dimensions, whereas the coddled ones are blind. Yes, he could appreciate the Junker's use of financial smoke and mirrors.

Take the user-friendly anti-aircraft missiles now resting on the shoulders of the nimble Taliban. The French seller is paid from an account in a subsidiary of a German bank in Zurich. That account is replenished by transfers from a Bangkok financial house closely linked to the parastatal company which on paper bought the missiles. The Bangkok bank is a correspondent with one in Singapore, which in turns owns part of a trade-financing outfit headquartered in Dubai. The Dubai bankers are close associates of business favourites of the mullahs in Iran. Once the missiles are delivered an electronic money flow winds its way from account to account, bank to bank, country to country, each transaction de-linked from the others. The flow lessens as it goes, for everywhere there are fees – fees for banks maintaining the accounts, fees for bank managers to de-link outflows from inflows, fees
for re-crating, fees for doctoring papers. The fees are significant, but the profits are immense, too large to come from trading in car parts, so most of the profits get hidden, by vanishing into all manner of nameless offshore accounts.