The Bankster (Ravi Subramanian) (2 page)

Joseph stepped out of the car. His whole body was aching on account of sitting in a car for eight continuous hours. He stretched, while the ambassador of Zaire and his security guards got out of their respective cars and surrounded Joseph. He started walking towards the entrance of the cottage.

‘Good evening. Welcome to the UNITA camp. My name is Colonel Gato.’ Joseph looked at him and felt tiny. Colonel Gato stood at an imposing six foot seven inches. Joseph had already been briefed on Colonel Gato and his allegiance to the Americans.

‘Thank you,’ said Joseph, extending his hand towards Gato. No one asked him his name and he didn’t volunteer it either.

‘If you are fine with it gentlemen, my men can go and inspect your vehicles while you come inside with me.’ Both Joseph and the ambassador nodded.

‘General Antonio Swabimbi would like to meet you,’ said Gato as he walked them past the hallway to another heavily guarded part of the cottage. They crossed a large room with a posse of military guards—Joseph counted seventeen—into a small tunnel, which led them to an enclosure that had no exit door. Joseph was wondering where they were heading, when Gato bent and moved the carpet covering the floor, exposing a small latch. He tugged at it, revealing a secret passageway. A flight of stairs went into the earth and the three of them climbed down carefully.

For a moment, Joseph was awestruck. In front of him lay an exact replica of the cottage above, almost entirely below the ground, but far more robust than the one above. This was built to withstand attack from heavy artillery. The exquisite furniture and the glitzy fittings made it look almost like a five-star hotel.

‘I will let the General know that you are here,’ Gato said and walked away. He was back in no time and smiled at them. ‘He will be here in a couple of minutes.’ They settled down on one of the many comfortable couches in that room.

‘Hello young man,’ a voice boomed in the underground cottage.

Joseph turned, and found himself face-to-face with a tall man with dark curly hair, in military fatigue sans the cap. Instinctively, Joseph stood up.

‘General Antonio Swabimbi,’ introduced Col Gato. ‘The leader of UNITA.’

Joseph fumbled for words and could only extend his hand. Words deserted him. He had visited this camp many times, but never met the big man himself.

‘Words can’t describe my gratitude for the service you and your great coalition is rendering towards us. The arms and ammunition you have brought for us all the way from Zaire will help us combat the government, which is hell-bent on selling out the nation to tyrants. They have become pawns in the hands of the Russians and the communists.’ The General’s eyes became red as he spoke passionately against the Russians. Joseph Braganza was a bit worried. Whenever passion overtook reason, he was uncomfortable. But he didn’t say anything. A job had to be done. He was the best man for this errand, and his unit trusted no one else for this job.

General Swabimbi went on and on, only to be interrupted by a knock on the secret door. Col Gato nodded at a commando standing nearby, who climbed the flight of stairs and opened the door. Some words were exchanged and he immediately came down and whispered something in Col Gato’s ears.

‘What is it?’ thundered Swabimbi.

‘They have unloaded everything and it is in order. The payment can be made General.’

When Swabimbi heard this, he just waved his hand nonchalantly and Gato disappeared behind the curtains only to reappear within three minutes with a small box in his hand, which he handed over to the General.

The General looked at the ambassador of Zaire who stepped ahead, extended his arms and collected the box. Joseph, who was next to the General, took a step towards the ambassador and glanced into the box as the ambassador opened the lid. The ambassador let Joseph examine and evaluate the contents while he held the box in his hands.

Joseph dug into the box and pulled out a large stone.

‘One of the largest and the finest that you will ever find,’ said General Swabimbi.

‘Hmm. . .’ muttered Joseph, bringing the stone to eye level. He pulled out what looked like a magnifying glass from his cargo pants and examined it much more closely. He turned it upside down a few more times and put it back into the box. He repeated the same process for every stone in the box. In ten minutes he was done. The ambassador waited patiently all this while. The moment he was done, Joseph looked up and nodded. The ambassador accepted the box and headed towards the stairs leading up. General Swabimbi gave Joseph a warm hug even as he rushed to catch up with the ambassador.

Once outside, the ambassador walked up to his car and waited. Joseph caught up with him in no time.

‘Let’s go in my car. My driver knows his way around. It’ll be safer.’

‘Alright.’

The ambassador got into Joseph’s Range Rover, while the armoured vehicles and the security guards followed them. Once safely out of the UNITA camp, Joseph looked at the ambassador and pointed towards the box.

‘You know how much that would be worth?’

‘All I know is that we have supplied the arms worth four and a quarter million dollars and that money needs to be paid to our supplier in the Middle East. Hope you won’t forget the payment for our services.’

‘I remember, ambassador, as always.’

Joseph took the box from the ambassador and pressed a button discreetly placed on the armrest of his seat. A small door slid open in the back of the seat ahead of him. He dropped the box inside the secret compartment.

‘Is it safe there?’ the ambassador asked.

‘Hmm. . .’ said Joseph, thinking of his near-miss brush-in with the immigration officials. What if they had figured out that he was travelling on a fake passport?

Early next morning, Joseph Braganza flew out of Luanda to Namibia and from there to an unknown destination in Europe.

The same evening, four and a quarter million dollars were transferred to Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) in Zurich, into the account of an arms dealer. When the person authorizing the account credit pulled up the account on screen, the only information he could see was that the country of origin was Zaire.

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars were transferred to another account in the same bank, an account in the name of Sese Mutombu, the Ambassador of Zaire—his commission for seeing the arms deal through.

The uncut diamonds, sent from an unidentifiable temporary address in Switzerland, were FedExed to an office in Luxemburg. The packet was handed over to David Kosinski, the Chief of Staff of the CEO.

David walked into the CEO’s office, opened the safe with a code only he knew and dumped the box into the safe. Before closing the safe, he picked up a post-it from the table, flipped open his pen, and wrote a figure on the post-it before taping it on to the box.

‘Diamonds worth nine million dollars,’ he whispered to himself. ‘That’s a lot of money,’ he said as he shut the door to the CEO’s office silently behind his back and walked towards his own office. Just as the door was about to shut, he glanced back to see the photograph of the CEO’s family kept on the table, facing the door. He noted how his CEO stood out in the family, and not just because of the large gash on his forehead. The door banged shut and David walked to his cabin.

‘Where does Joseph Braganza get these diamonds from? Last time the diamonds were worth five million and this time it’s nine million.’ As he lowered himself into his chair, he said to himself, ‘Not for me to ask. Not for me to know’. The only thing he knew was that on his next visit to Central Europe, a week from now, he would personally carry these diamonds to a safe hideout to be stored, till the time was appropriate for Joseph Braganza to dispose of them.

***

Interior Kerala

July 1979

It rained incessantly in the neighbourhood of the Periyar Tiger reserve in Kerala. The reserve and the adjoining areas of Ranni, Konni, Tenmala and parts of Punalur forests, all large elephant habitats, were reeling under the onslaught of rain and thunderstorm. Sparse in terms of human population, this area, better known for the Thekkady Elephant sanctuary, was the most compact of all the elephant habitats in South India.

It was amidst these jungles, two kilometres off the main road connecting Thekkady to Devikulam that Krishna and Sulochana Menon ran their home stay resort—a small quaint cottage set in a three-acre plantation was replete with all the luxuries money could buy.

Initially, post their return from the Middle East, where Krishna spent most of his life working with gold traders, the Menons made Thiruvananthapuram their home. But after their son, Arvind moved out to a boarding school in Ooty, the Menons felt lonely. They converted their large plantation into a resort and moved to Devikulam to manage it themselves. Over the years, the resort had come to have a sizable following and was quite popular, particularly with foreign tourists.

The three-acre plantation was also home to four captive elephants, which the Menons had acquired when they converted their plantation into a resort. Rides and a photo-op with the elephants were a big hit, especially with the foreign tourists.

One day, Appachen, the trained Mahout, caretaker of the four elephants in the Menons’ resort, had come across a sick 65-year-old pachyderm, trapped under the fallen tree trunk. Appachen, being passionate about elephants took it upon himself to nurse him back to health; he even gave him the name ‘Gopi’.

‘Good job’, Krishna said when Appachen told him about it. After giving him some money, Krishna and his wife left for Ooty to visit their son. It soon started to rain torrentially, trapping Appachen in his house for a week. The moment the rains stopped and the sky cleared up, Appachen rushed to Gopi’s resting place, only to find that Gopi had passed away during that time. Appachen was a shattered man.

Two weeks later, on a Friday night, Arvind was woken up by a knock on his hostel room. It was a call from his mother.

‘Amma, what happened?’

‘I don’t know what to do Arvind, please come home.’

‘What’s wrong Amma?’ He could hear his mother crying at the other end as she answered.

‘Don’t worry, I’m coming there right now,’ were his last words before he hung up.

The first bus out of Ooty was at 4.45 a.m. and it was noon before the bus stopped at a decrepit bus shelter on its way to Thekkady. Arvind was relieved to see a familiar Ambassador car standing there, waiting for him. The ride thereon was only two kilometres long, though it took close to fifteen minutes, given the slippery state of the muddy roads.

Sulochana was waiting for him when he reached the resort. Next to her was a smart, middle-aged man in black coat—their family lawyer.

‘We were just leaving. Come let’s go,’ said Sulochana, and they got into the car. It took them thirty-five minutes to reach their destination, during which Sulochana briefed Arvind on what had happened.

On reaching a red brick building, the car stopped. They got out and rushed towards the entrance, where they were stopped by a man in uniform.

‘Let them in,’ boomed a voice from inside. As they entered, they saw a middle-aged pot-bellied man with a handle bar moustache seated behind a table. The top three buttons of his shirt were open, revealing a cleft of greying chest hair. The nameplate on his table read ‘Shri K Moinuddin (Sub Inspector)’. Judging by the way the others were rallying around him, it didn’t take Arvind long to figure out he was in charge of that police station. From his demeanour, it looked like he was waiting for them.

Seated next to him in a veshti and white shirt was a sinister-looking sidekick. ‘Chief Wild Life Warden,’ whispered Sulochana. Arvind knew that the chief warden was responsible for protection of the flora and the fauna in the forestland and yielded an enormous amount of authority. The chief warden looked at the three of them and nonchalantly lifted his right leg and kept it on the seat in front of him, his foot pointing in Arvind’s direction. Arvind grimaced as he walked up to the Sub-Inspector.

‘Why have you arrested my father? He hasn’t done anything wrong.’ ‘Ask your mother. She knows everything.’ Moinuddin was at his arrogant best. ‘She was there when we picked him up.’ ‘Every single guy my father has worked with all these years knows how clean he is,’ Arvind said, between clenched teeth.

‘Hahahaha!’ The inspector’s laugh, accompanied by an unmistakable stench of liquor irritated Arvind even more. ‘Pious man, your father,’ he ridiculed, laughing even harder.

Then, as abruptly as he had started laughing, he stopped. There was a sudden silence. He glared at Arvind, got up from his chair and walked towards him, the inadvertent stumble confirming to Arvind that he was drunk. When he was close enough, he extended his left hand, caught Arvind by his collar, raised his right hand, pointed a finger towards him and screamed, ‘He’s not a good man. Your father is a smuggler. A rogue. Do you get it? That’s why he is in jail now.’

‘What nonsense!’ Arvind was not one to be cowed down.

‘Ask your mother, son,’ the chief warden stood up this time. ‘After killing an elephant, he has cut off the tusks and hidden them. And now he is refusing to tell us where he has kept them.’

‘The elephant was old and sick. Our staff tried to revive it. They couldn’t.’

‘What about the tusks?’ demanded the chief warden, ‘Where has he hidden them? Or have you guys sold it and pocketed OUR money?’ The stress on ‘our’ was not lost on Arvind.

‘Appachen tells us the elephant’s tusks were already cut off when it strayed into our neighbourhood. He gave it medication and tried to revive it, but the elephant didn’t recover and died,’ Arvind argued.

‘Hmm. . . Isn’t that what everyone says sir?’ The chief warden said, looking at the Sub Inspector. Turning towards Arvind, he added, ‘Look son. Just in case you are not aware, under Section 39 of the Wild Life Protection Act of 1972, any elephant captured or killed without approval of the competent authority or killed by mistake or found dead, or any animal article or ivory obtained from an elephant is deemed to be government property. Any person who comes in possession of such government property is under the legal obligation to inform the nearest police station within forty-eight hours.’