DARKNET CORPORATION (23 page)

However, the watcher from the ground floor was experienced and had left a
substantial gap. He had watched his target walk along the road through the
eight-foot high iron railings that protected Legoland and only emerged onto the
street after observing Curry stop at the bus stop and walk back again to pick
up the handset of the payphone four metres back the way he had just come.

This move had been one of several that had been anticipated and the
watcher movements had all been choreographed in advance. The watcher knew that
several others were on their way behind him and his primary job was simply to
detain the target, when instructed, until the others arrived.

Curry knew, from the Dinner-Jacket database, that the landline had been
blown. Curry dialled a different number knowing he would meet with outrage at
using it from the other end. The circumstances required that he get word to his
associates as soon as possible. Time was of the essence. The number rang out.
Then a voice came on and said, “Hello.” It was Phillip.

Curry, confused, his face contorted, said, “Who is this?” He hung up
jamming the phone down violently and dialled again, thinking he had misdialled.
The same voice came on and said, “Hello.” As the moments dragged on in silence,
Phillip said, “Who was it you wanted?”

Curry, now totally nonplussed, put the phone down, wide-eyed as the first
watcher arrived and grabbed his right wrist twisting it up his back. As he
tried to react another watcher grabbed him from the left and he was wrestled to
the ground as he struggled and was handcuffed. The first watcher said, “Please
come with us, sir,” as he was marched back up Albert Embankment.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Fenton Curry, while sitting in a secure area at Legoland between
interviews, was not cooperating, but he knew he had been found out and was
simply using time to work out how much they knew and his best strategy from
here.

Phillip had traced the number that Curry had called and gave the details
to Bill Hodge asking to be kept in the loop in case any of the unfolding
information was useful in interrogating Curry.

Bill called DCS Cullen to give him the details of the organisation that
were registered against the phone number that Curry dialled from the payphone,
but was interrupted by Cullen who said, “Bill, excellent! Just the man we need.
Bill, we’re planning our next move on the Darknet Corporation; it’s Trading
Advisory Partners, and given the shenanigans we’ve had with these guys I’d
really like your assistance. Can you come to Scotland Yard and help the
planning team here?”

“Sure.” Bill was stunned that he already knew the identity he had just
been given.

When he arrived at Scotland Yard there was a large room with pictures and
maps and lines drawn between different areas of the whiteboard and a buzz of
activity. Cullen came over and shook his hand and introduced him around to the
senior members of his team. Bill was gobsmacked to see River Banks. Cullen
said, “And you know Ms Banks?”

“The unforgettable Ms Banks, of course.
What on earth are you doing here?”
Bill wasn’t sure if he should be suspicious or grateful.

“This is my speciality, Bill; financial systems, money laundering. I had
identified TAP from the transactions in the server databases as the Darknet
Corporation and contacted DCS Cullen with that information right away. He asked
me to join the planning team for the raid,” she said.

Bill felt his jaw was a little slack and said, “Well bugger me! How did
you
get the server databases?”

“
Errr
.
We’re all on the same team here Bill
and the Company
are
running this operation. We work on most things
together. Anyway, this is my thing and being focused on the City I already knew
of TAP.

They’re a big player in international finance deals so I had them on my
radar as a mover of money. But it’s still a big surprise that they are this ‘
darknet
corporation’. They’re well-respected in the City
and amazingly well connected. But there’s no doubt it’s them.”

Gower led the group over to a table and they sat down.

Cullen took charge and said, “Perhaps you could summarise the evidence Ms
Banks?”

“Well I’ve been tracking the money laundering operation through various
Kosovo and Montenegro Euro currency accounts and we got stuck when the consolidated
money that was transferred around various currencies and international
transfers was switched out into commodities.

Once they did that we found it hard to track who the commodities were
sold to. They used various commodities; gold, other precious metals, shiploads
of grain, all sorts of stuff. But since they could do all these online it all
happened quicker than we could follow. But once we got the server database we
could see the whole ball of wax,” she explained.

“How did it lead you to TAP? Cullen asked. Bill was equally curious how
all this fell into place.

“Well, once they switched back from commodities the money went into new
front company accounts for one final layering. The money was all traded in the
derivatives market. It all looks genuine. What they do is place a ‘put’ on a
commodity or currency and mirror it with an identical ‘call’ on the other side
with a different front company.”

Bill interrupted asking, “I’ve heard of a ‘put’ and a ‘call’ in the money
market, but I’ve no idea what they are?”

“Right.
Well. Let me give you a condensed education on derivatives.
When you buy or sell anything, currencies, commodities, interest, bonds,
whatever, you generally have a contract. It’s called a forward contract because
it is set to apply on a particular date in the future. You can take out Options
on the contract and you also have Swaps, but let’s ignore them; it’ll just get
too complicated.

A forward contract defines a deal for a particular thing on a particular
date for a particular price.

Say you need to pay for an overseas shipment at the end of the month in
US dollars and you think the exchange rate will be more expensive by then; so
you take out a forward contract to buy USD at the date you need them and you
pay a premium to the supplier of the dollars for the risk of the currency
moving by the end of the month.

The buyer and the seller are happy with the price. You’re happy because
you have hedged against the exchange rate going up; and the seller has charged
a premium to cover what he thinks the exchange rate will do. They are
essentially both betting on the price going up or down. It’s insurance to some
extent.

An Option is the opportunity for a third party to get involved in the
rights to the ‘buy’ side or the ‘sell’ side of the forward contract, at a fixed
price. The rights to the buy side are called a ‘call’ and the rights to sell
side are called a ‘put’.

It’s called an option because you get the option to execute the contract
or you just flag it away, at the cost of your option price, if exercising your
option means you make a loss. Again, it’s insurance-like, but in this case it’s
‘leveraged’; you only pay for the rights, you don’t have to put up the full
contract price unless you know you will make a profit on the day. And because
it’s leveraged, the transactions can be for staggering sums.”

Bill jumped in and said, “OK. I’ve lost the plot now. How does mirroring
launder the money?”

“Well. All they need to do is engage in both sides at the same time. Normally
two completely independent brokers are involved and the Options are matched by
the market, but here they collude. The broker for one company places a ‘put’
and another supposedly independent broker
places
an
identical ‘call’. But of course they are engineering both of them and they’ve
mirrored them so that, in the seemingly free market, they will be matched
against each other. One will lose and one will win.”

“OK……and?” Bill still wasn’t clear.

“The money is sucked out of one company into another and it’s suddenly
kosher, genuine and traceable back to open market trading, just like gambling,
and it’s ‘clean’. The money launderer just collects the clean money from
whichever side of the deal gained in the market.”

Cullen was following and asked, “And there’s enough money moving around
to make it invisible?”

“Yes.
Trillions of dollars a day in millions of deals,
derivatives and transactions.
During the global financial crisis money
being laundered through the banking and financial markets around the world kept
the global financial system afloat. What can I say?”

“So how could you trace this back to TAP?” Cullen had stopped following.

“AH!
Right.
Well the server database showed all
the puts and calls on all the companies and you can see the money being siphoned
from one to the other as clean money. Since this is what I do every day, it
wasn’t difficult to realise that the common denominator was that the companies
involved were all TAP clients.

These companies make payments to TAP as fees, commissions, profit shares,
and capital gains, all kinds of things, as legitimate clients of TAP. The gains
in derivatives trading spread across all their clients would not raise even a
slight eyebrow. It’s all above board and fully documented. The City thinks TAP
management are financial magicians. Now we know why.”

“So they basically look like an ordinary corporate entity, but it’s all
criminal?” Gower chipped in.

“NO! That’s the beauty of it. They undoubtedly do lots of financial advisory
and international finance work which
is
perfectly legitimate, but now we
know that there’s also a large fraction which is drug money and God knows what
else,” River explained. “Without the server database it would be impossible to
distinguish one from the other.”

Cullen took up the lead again, “OK. We need to find a way to separate out
the legitimate from the illegitimate.

TAP employ 135 people in their London office on the 14
^th
Floor
of the Victoria Building in Canary Wharf and another 53 in their Frankfurt
office. How do we know which of the staff are involved in the crime?”

Bill thought he knew. “The server database listed them. There’s an
identity for every user in the email systems and Instant Messaging system.
There are 37 separate user keys.”

Gower didn’t understand. “But how do we know which 37 of their people to
arrest when we get there?”

Bill replied, “Make sure you identify each person’s personal car keys and
house keys. Those with a ‘dongle’ on their keyring are the criminals. They’ll
have a private key in the USB that matches one of these 37 user keys.

Not only can we identify who is guilty, we can trace exactly who is who
and what they are guilty of, through the server database and logs; we’ve got
them chapter and verse.”

Cullen said, “Well we’ll need to coordinate with the German police and
have enough officers to lock the place down all at once so they don’t toss
their keys and make it difficult for us to sift through them all. We should
start with the partners first. It won’t be the clerks and minions running
this.”

As an afterthought he said, “How many do you think will be armed?”

“Based on the fact that there are twelve user keys associated with
‘security’ you’d think probably not more than that, surely? But remember,
George Wood doesn’t have his dongle. We’ve already got his, so make sure you
particularly identify him visually,” said Bill.

“Given the violence we’ve seen from this group before, every officer will
need to be armed,” asserted Cullen.

They got up and moved over to a large set of tables where the floor plans
of the Victoria building was laid out and a started planning for the raid.
Gower got on the phone to Max Brandt, who, being part of the Hess state police
was responsible for crime in Frankfurt.

Brandt was already heavily involved in the crime activities originated by
TAP and Gower was able to give him the information to arrange a simultaneous
raid on TAP offices in Frankfurt that would conclude his investigation.

Chapter Twenty Eight

A long line of unmarked black police vans pulled up alongside the
Victoria Building in Canary wharf at 9:30 a.m. the following day. This was the
time that it was estimated everyone employed at TAP would have arrived and
started work and agreed with the
Hesse
police for
their simultaneous raid in Frankfurt.

The building administration was taken over first, with a police officer
taking up position in the control room to issue instructions to the building
supervisor for controlling lifts and other services.

All four lifts were brought to the ground floor and all four were packed
with police officers and allowed to ascend directly to the 14
^th
floor.

Forty armed police burst onto the TAP floor and forced their way into the
open plan office space beyond the reception and fanned out to take control of
everyone on the floor, weapons drawn.

There was a great deal of shouting and anxiety and a group of nominated
officers went straight for the partners in the hard walled offices around the
outside of the open plan area. Those with dongles on their keyring were marched
out in handcuffs to the black vans below, their keyrings in plastic evidence
bags held by the officers accompanying them.

Each prisoner was to be separated as best they could from the others to
prevent collusion and would be taken to a number of different police stations
for that purpose.

Gower had been delegated as the scene officer and was administering the
count of arrests and identification of persons detained. He was frowning. They
had identified only eighteen people with USB stick keys and only had found a
total of 118 people on the floor. “Where are the rest?” he was thinking.

Bill Hodge and River Banks walked in after the swoop to observe the
operation. Seeing them arrive, DCS Cullen got up from observing one of the
interviews and came over.
“Looks like we hit the jackpot.
We’ve got all the partners with USB keys and several other senior people, but
of course they are saying nothing. That’s an admission of guilt in my book. So
you were right on the money, Ms Banks.”

Bill asked, “Did you get George Wood?”

Gower said “No.” He looked down his list and said “We’ve found eighteen
people with dongles. Max Brandt called to say he had found five dongles in
Frankfurt. With the three we have already identified that leaves eleven dongles
unaccounted for.”

“Well it’s clear that some of them are dormant or out in the field so
maybe there are only eighteen to be found here?” said Bill.

“We’re also short 17 employees that we expected to be here. Even if we
take into account sick leave, holidays and so forth we’re still quite a few
less than we expected. I’m not sure what the story is,” said Gower.

Cullen said, “Hold on,” and walked back to the knot of people being
interviewed. After a few moments he came back and announced, “Yes. There are
several others who seem to come and go from time to time. They don’t have
workstations here. They just come in and talk to the partners and leave again.
Apparently everyone just knows not to ask questions.”

Bill said, “Ask the building supervisor if TAP has another office in this
building or close by.”

Gower clicked his radio button and asked the question of the officer
sitting in the control room. The officer responded that they didn’t, but over
the open connection they all heard the building supervisor correct
himself
and say, “But they might have something to do with
the people on the 13
^th
.”

“How so?” said Bill and Gower relayed the question.

The police officer responded, “He says the 13
^th
is locked off all
the time but everyone on the 13
^th
also
have
access to the 14
^th
.

“Bingo!” said Cullen and immediately started to pull officers off
interviews to form a team to go to the 13
^th
floor. He spent only a
few moments explaining to the knot of fifteen officers what they were going to
do and filed out and went down the fire escape stairs to the floor below.

When the group of officers emerged out onto the lift area of the 13
^th
floor they were confronted by a steel door on either side of the lifts with a
prominent lock and no windows. The doors opened inwards which meant that the
hinges were on the other side of the door and could not be broken off or
removed to gain entry. Cullen was on the point of ordering a battering ram to
be brought up when Bill, who had just arrived at the back of the pack stopped
him.

“If you bash the door down you’ll give them time to destroy evidence.
What’s the betting that the key on the dongle opens these doors?” he said,
eyebrows raised in questioning.

An officer was dispatched to obtain one of the keyrings from the
prisoners being processed. While they waited, Cullen said jocularly, “We could
always just knock?”

Bill was less humorous and said, “I doubt anybody ever knocks on these
doors. They can’t even get onto this floor with the lifts being locked off.”

The officer came rushing back holding the key and the officers crowded
round him as he pushed it into the lock and turned, opening the door and once
again the officers rushed forward shouting “Stand still, police officers, don’t
move, stay where you are.”

Inside, a group of workstations was arranged in a circle in the middle of
the floor. The space occupied was a small fraction of the floor’s 28,000 square
feet. Partitions were placed around the outside of the room several feet back
from the windows allowing light into the floor but obscuring any view from
outside.

There were eight people; five men and three women sitting at the
workstations, working. They all put up their hands; two stood up in fright.
There were several filing cabinets and tables with printouts and what looked
like a cricket pitch with wickets made out of cardboard tubes. There was
certainly enough spare room for recreation.

Each of the workstations had the now familiar dongles, although the
screens were on a mixture of
darknet
applications
that they had been shown by GCHQ as well as banking websites, and money market
systems.

“I think we can say we are in the heart of the evil empire,” said Cullen.

Bill walked quickly around the floor. None of the eight operators they had
just uncovered was Wood. “Where was he?” he thought “if not here?” Just then he
reached one of the four corners of the floor and noticed the partitions were
arranged into a square compartment; a room. Looking over a partition he saw a
mattress and a clutter of personal belongings. Someone was sleeping here.

River Banks was flipping through binders of printouts on a table. “Even
though they’ve run their entire operation online, they still kept hardcopy of
key information like account numbers, bank logins and passwords, safe deposit
boxes, credit card numbers for immediate use in case they had an outage or
whatever. I think we can be sure we’ve got everything.”

“The one thing we haven’t got is the one thing I really wanted, George
Woods,” said Bill clenching his fists unconsciously at the thought.

He walked purposefully over to the middle of the floor where the eight
were being read their rights and handcuffed. Bill interjected, “Who is sleeping
in that room over there?”

One of the women looked up and said “George.”

Bill clarified,” …Woods?”
She nodded. “Where’s he gone?”

“He went out about half an hour ago. He said he was going for breakfast.”

“Damn!” said Bill. We’ve missed him. If he comes back and sees the circus
at the front door he’ll be gone, for good.”

The police contingent continued processing their prisoners and bagging up
the dongles as evidence.

Bill brooded, sitting at one of the now unoccupied workstations. “What
would he do?” Bill was asking himself. His expression changed as the obvious
answer dawned on him and he jumped up.

River Banks was watching him closely and saw the change.

Bill checked his weapon and made for the door.

Banks stepped into his path and stopped him. “Whatever you’re going to
do, make sure you’ve thought it through and have backup.”

Turning to the senior policeman Bill stated, “Cullen, I think Wood will
go to his place in Clapham to retrieve his getaway stash. I’m going after him,”
not seeking permission or support.

DCS Cullen immediately cried out to one of the officers dealing with the
prisoners, “Sergeant
Denholm
! Go with Mr Hodge and
keep him from getting into any trouble. If you find Wood, arrest him.”

Bill and Sergeant
Denholm
disappeared through
the door. Outside the Victoria building there was a crowd forming to watch the
comings and goings and a news camera and reporter pulled up to get whatever
live images they could.

Denholm
commandeered one of the Metropolitan Police cars that had
gathered since the raid began. It had an orange dash along the side and the
word ‘police’ written large below it. Bill Hodge jumped into the passenger side
seat as they roared off, lights flashing.