Whistle Blower (22 page)

JAN WAS EARLY into the office he normally shared with two others. He logged into the system as he did every morning and then, one by one, followed the precise order he had learned in Delft.

The first one, Fund EAWA, covering Economic Aid to West Africa. The Reference Number given on the slip of paper was RSFF 312A. Jan typed it slowly to ensure he got it right. Yes, there it was exactly as in Delft. A Tourism project. Total value 3,450,000 Euros. But nothing especially secret there.

Now the section showing who had been awarded the funding. He clicked. And yes, just as in Delft, the perfectly legitimate page came up indicating the bidder—Republic of Cameroon, Delegation of Tourism.

And the section for the name of the bank? There it was, Bank de Littoral. "Never heard of it," thought Jan. Then the request for the code. He checked the typed code on the paper and carefully typed it in. Then he pressed Enter and up came a new page: Amount. Jan checked the paper again and typed in 35,000 US dollars and pressed Enter again. The page went blank. He waited, watching. The screen flickered and up came the original front page again as if waiting for him to restart.

"Jesus," said Jan to himself, looking around. He was still alone. "Job done, I suppose. No sign of where it went or who it went to."

He sat back, nervous, sweating. But at 35,000 dollars, that was the small one. The next transfer was for 260,175 Euros. He started again.

“Fund: CAHA—Central Asia Humanitarian Aid. Reference No: CAHA 418F."

There it was. Funding to help build and equip a huge refugee or natural disaster support facility in Pakistan. All the equipment to be stored waiting for the next humanitarian crisis whenever and whatever came—earthquake, political strife, floods. Jan remembered it well. He'd sat on committees discussing it. It was for the purpose built building, tents, blankets, water purification equipment, portable toilets, enough to support a large town. 260,000 Euros was perhaps 10 percent of the total cost but a nice pay off for somebody. Did that person then pay others?

He repeated the process of the last case, each time double checking what he had typed. He typed in the special code and the amount page came up. Then he typed in Euros 260,175 and pressed Enter. There was absolutely no sign of where the money had gone or, indeed, if it had. Again, the recipient, whoever it was, was just a numbered account. Jan sat back once more and stared at the familiar log in front page that appeared on his screen every morning. It was clever, there was no doubting that.

"You're in early, Jan." Jan jumped. It was Hans, who he shared an office with.

"I couldn't sleep," Jan said honestly. "Want a coffee?" Then he stuffed the slip of paper with its instructions into his pocket.

He was in the office and alone again at 5:30 p.m. For a reason he couldn't explain, Katrine was on his mind and he was tempted go and see her, chat generally, perhaps ask if she'd fancy another drink one evening. But was it wise with someone, somewhere watching everything he did in the office and out of it? He was sitting at his desk, the computer was still on. Suddenly it bleeped—an internal email to him, personally. No sender's name just "Admin."

"City 2 Shopping Mall, basement, car park, 6:30 p.m."

Jan stared at it.

Someone must have known he was still there. Was it Eischmann, whom he had seen earlier that afternoon? He deleted it, switched off the computer, got up and walked out. Then he walked the mile or so to the Shopping Mall, took the car park lift to the lowest floor and stood, leaning against a concrete pillar. At just after 6:30 a shiny, new, black BMW came silently down the ramp from the floor above, circled the car park once and then reversed into a space. Thinking it might be Eischmann, Jan wandered over, expecting him to get out or perhaps even open a door for him to get in. But with heavily tinted windows, Jan could not see who was driving it. He walked on past the car, turned right by the lift shaft, circled it and returned once more to stand against the concrete pillar next to an Audi TT sports car.

It was not Eischmann who emerged from the BMW but a tall woman in a dark trouser suit, white blouse and shoes that clicked as she walked on the concrete floor. Her hair, partly hidden inside a beige head scarf, was long and jet black and her eyes, as she quickly glanced at Jan, were big and dark. In just the few seconds Jan had, she looked Arab, perhaps Indian, and she carried a small brown envelope. She clearly saw Jan but passed by and went to the other side of the Audi, put the envelope on its soft roof and walked back towards the BMW. The next minute, Jan heard the BMW starting up again. It went back up the ramp and disappeared. Jan looked at the envelope. Assuming it was meant for him he picked it up and walked the mile or so back to his apartment. When he got there, he opened it. Inside was a simple, typed note on a sheet of A5-sized plain white paper. In capitals it read:

"CONGRATULATIONS—YOU PASSED THE FIRST TEST. EXPECT A MESSAGE REGARDING FURTHER TRAINING."

There were no other words and no signature. Jan stared at it just as he had stared at the email earlier.

In the evening, Jan checked his bank account. At 12:28 p.m. a sum of 2,250 Euros had been credited to his account. But there was no reference attached to it to say where it had come from. It just said "JK Credit."

"GO THROUGH THESE bags and boxes, Tom. Check what there is. Those that you think are of a quality worthy of public exhibition, please put them into this empty bag. But we will take only thirty."

"Are you not going to help, Jim? Surely the artist himself should decide."

"No, the decision is yours. I have something else to do. I will be gone for about an hour. When I return we will drive to the town."

In the bright, warm, morning sun, Tom took Jim's dusty boxes and bags outside to sit and sort them. Bearing in mind that Jim had sat under a mango tree to create them, they were all, in Tom's unprofessional opinion, masterpieces. And each had a certain unique touch—two birds, two flowers, two trees, an old lady and an old man, a cockerel and hen, a hen and a chicken, a snake coiled around eggs with a small snake emerging, And there were abstracts, too—sunrises and sunsets—colorful bands of pink, purple, orange, blue and gray, some with a black silhouette of a single coconut palm or banana tree leaf intruding into the picture. Selecting just thirty was hard.

Jim had been gone an hour. Tom had watched him walk off, leaving the motorcycle propped beneath the house. He had disappeared between the trees behind the house where the hill started and rose gradually to somewhere out of sight.

For Jim, the track was well-worn by his own feet. He now knew every bend, every rock, every tree, every fallen branch. At the top, it ended in a small clearing, dominated by a single, high rock that looked over the treetops to the east on one side and to the west on the other. To the south flowed the River Kwai that, during the rainy season, was high and wide. At other times, as now, it was barely visible through the trees. It was the view of sunsets and sunrises from here that had inspired Jim's abstract paintings. The rock itself was difficult to access. After rain it was wet, slippery, dangerous. This morning it was dry and easy going, but he still had to scramble, almost crawl to the very top. Once there it was bare and flat, with just a few wide cracks giving root holds for shrubs and grass. He was out of breath when he arrived. His heart pounded and he knew he was pushing himself too hard. But he made it, staggered the few final yards to the pinnacle and slumped down.

He may have sat there for an hour or more, but time on that rock meant nothing. He sat cross-legged, his thin, brown legs drawn underneath him, his hands in his lap and his gray hair blowing in the cool breeze from the west. He closed his eyes, smelled the air, listened to the wind and the sounds of small birds in the treetops and felt the soft breeze on his skin.

"This is my place, Margaret. This is where I come to find peace and tranquillity. It is like nowhere else I have ever been and no one comes here except me. Perhaps others found it once but they have never returned. But do you see the wildness below? This is how it has been for thousands of years. It is untouched by humans. It is as it always was—untainted by money, by selfish greed, by hypocrisy, by jealousy or by any other human weakness. There is no anger here, Margaret. There is no pushing or shoving, no envy, no fighting over land or space. Instead it is a place of utter peace.

"Sometimes, I find it difficult to tear myself away, even to return to my house down below. It is timeless here. I hear the wind in the trees and the birds. I smell the air, the ground, the damp leaves, the dryness, the rain, the scent of flowers in the treetops. It is a strange but a most exhilarating experience because, with my eyes closed, I feel as if I am traveling somewhere, though I know not where or how.

"And sometimes I feel I am about to fall, to crash. And when that happens I open my eyes and look up into the sky where I have been flying and what do I see? I see endless time. I see me. I see myself as an insignificant part of everything else that is around me, like a tiny fragment of cosmic dust. And I find that so comforting. I am, you see, made up of small particles of matter, organized into a single living unit. And that unit, my body and my mind, is merely obeying basic laws of chemistry and physics. The simplicity is what matters because it explains everything.

"But sometimes, Margaret, my thoughts lead me into areas where I still struggle for explanations. What puzzles me most is the working of my own mind. I know my mind is what dictates opinion, belief, anger and affection, and I know that this is just an evolutionary advance on what dictates the migration of birds, the movement of animals and shoals of fish and the chemical intelligence of ants, but I still struggle with explanations of anger and revenge. Are they just human characteristics? Are they strengths for which we should be proud, or are they weaknesses for which we should feel ashamed? Unfortunately I suspect they are merely characteristics that have enabled the human species to dominate over others. But it is still pretty shameful, don't you think?

"And there is another feeling that is very personal. For a while, I did not understand the suggestion that I was incompetent and had failed because I had not thought of myself as a failure. But I am a sensitive and thoughtful man who listens to the opinions of others. That stigma of failure and incompetence has stalked me like a dark shadow for too long and I have to address it before it is too late. The time to act is now."

Jim's eyes were still firmly shut. He stretched his arms above his head, moved them in circles behind his back with his hands and fingers held taut. He drew his legs out from under him and one by one stretched and moved them in a circle upwards and outwards from his hips, feeling the pain in every muscle, every tendon and every fiber. Finally, he settled again with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap. Then he opened his eyes, looked around and smiled.

"It's a bit like a church here, Mother—like the village church where you used to drag me as a boy to arrange the flowers around the pulpit. But it is also like a temple in that when I'm here I feel vulnerable and insignificant with an overwhelming feeling of total loneliness as if I've been carried to a world devoid of other men. It is a very peaceful world, Mother. I like it. I admit I have whimpered a little here, because I felt so alone, but I have also felt strong and totally content because I was alone. And I am at my most content when my mood allows me to see my own body and my life as just one small fragment. Death seems so insignificant when viewed like that. This is a much more dangerous place than the village church, though, Mother, because sometimes I feel I want to jump from this rock. It would be so simple, one day, to lean forward and topple."

Then he stood up, rubbed his aching legs and started the easier and quicker walk back down to the house where Tom was already waiting.

"We must go, Tom. You are leaving for London and Dublin tomorrow?"

"Yes, I must return to Bangkok tonight."

"Then I will meet you in London. If you are willing to help, then I guarantee you a story."

"JAN, I'M WORRIED about something. I really didn't know who else to call. Can we meet? Now?" It was Katrine.

Jan had just returned from his routine evening jog when there was a call on his mobile phone—the one he used for what little social life he had and for his mother's regular calls. Within the hour they were sitting in the same corner seat of the same tapas bar as before. Jan put two glasses of white wine on the table and sat down. "Sorry I've not phoned you, Kat, but I've been busy. What's bothering you?"

Katrine took a sip of the wine but didn't smile. "There's something going on, Jan. Something to do with the Humanitarian Aid and Economic Development funding that we all sit around discussing nearly every day. Do you know that millions are going astray?"

"Well known, isn't it?" said Jan, smiling. "Once the money is handed over there has to be a certain amount of trust that recipients use it for what it's intended. But we all know a lot doesn't. It just goes. Somewhere, somehow. They keep saying they'll tighten up the accountability…"

Katrine nodded. "Yes, but…"

"What's up Kat? Why ask me to join you tonight?"

"I've got a friend in Treasury," she said. "I'd better not name her. But she thinks someone is hacking the finance system. Everything stopped working—it crashed—and someone was called to look at it, but by the time they arrived, everything was normal. It has happened several times in the last few weeks. The IT people have checked, but they say they can't find a problem. It's like it crashes due to an overload of people going online. But that's impossible and there are only a few security-checked staff with permissions to access certain data."

Jan, feeling the heat building, sniffed.

"And my friend in Treasury," Katrine continued. "She thinks something happens during the short time the system goes down."

"Like what?" Jan loosened his collar.

"That money goes out—big amounts—but then it comes back in again. But on one occasion last week, she actually watched something happen. It lasted just a few seconds. 900,000 Euros suddenly went out of an Aid to Bangladesh fund. The point is, it wasn't due to go out. It was already ring-fenced but there were still some remaining issues with the bid. The system seemed to crash for no more than a few seconds before coming back on again. Then the 900,000 Euros came back in but she is convinced something happened during those few seconds."

"Did she report it?"

"Yes, to senior management. But she is already very senior, Jan."

"And what did they do?"

"Nothing—she's been told there was a glitch and it's sorted. But it happened again today. This morning. Another 480,000 Euros, one minute gone, next minute replaced. But, again, it went before the final approvals and checks are complete, sometimes at the meetings that you and I attend. It went—somewhere—but then came back almost instantly. It doesn't make sense. If I was in charge I'd want to know more—a complete investigation, top to bottom. But no one seems bothered. It's as if there's a cover up."

"Does Dirk Eischmann know?" Jan asked, deliberately bringing him into the equation.

"Yes, I mentioned it after yesterday's Environmental Policy meeting."

"And?"

"He didn't seem concerned. He just said there must have been a computer error somewhere."

"So, not interested?"

"Like others, he shrugged it off as if it was nothing. He just didn't want to talk about it. He told me it was not my department anyway and so I should not get involved. But surely we are allowed to express concerns."

"You say the money goes out and then comes back in within seconds?"  

"Yes, but you know what it's like, Jan. We work for a huge organization that deals in billions. We take it in and we hand it out. Half a million here and half a million there is nothing. If the sums don't add up at the end of the year, they'll just write it off as they always do. There are bound to be a few anomalies, they say. But if there were anomalies then, according to my logic, some years you'd end up with more than you started with rather than less."

"My logic would say exactly the same," said Jan. "But it's electronic money, Kat. They move these sums around and only at a certain point might it become hard cash. At other times, well…accounts on that scale are complicated, Kat. I understand a bit about how the financial markets operate but I really don't profess to know much about the system here." Then, in nervous desperation, he added. "I wish I did."

He thought for a moment about what Guido had said. Explaining Puff Guido had said:

"Your job, Mr. Kerkman, is to make friends with Puff. We can turn Puff on and we can turn Puff off—on and off—just as we wish." And then: "We have another new system called 'Slush.’ Slush replaces what has been taken out to make it appear nothing has happened. It is not your job to understand the workings of Slush. Neither will I explain how the accounts finally get cooked to avoid having to explain mysterious losses and discrepancies which amount to millions of Dollars or Euros."

"Maybe," Jan said aloud to Katrine, "what goes out is turned straight into hard cash, but what goes back in is electronic money just to balance books.
Electronic money is a digital equivalent of cash, stored on an electronic device or remotely at a server. One common type of e-money is the 'electronic purse,’ where users store relatively small amounts of money on their payment card or other smart card, to use for making small payments. I've often thought it was open to all types of fraud if you can hack servers. And if we're saying this looks to you and me like some sort of crime then I suppose it could easily be laundered money, proceeds of crime. The amount of money laundered each year runs to billions of dollars."

Jan was unsure if what he'd just said made much sense. The fact was he didn't understand how Puff and Slush worked, but it didn't matter. Katrine looked at him.

"I hadn't thought of it like that," she said. "If it's true then it's scandalous. It needs exposing. We could be watching massive fraud in action—fraud using technology."

"Yes, and the fact that you get nowhere when you and your friend in Treasury ask questions and when you ask Eischmann might prove the point—a massive cover up."

"You mean it's not just one or two people involved but many?"

"Remember, you've had suspicions about Dirk Eishmann for a long time—how he keeps his job, how he networks, how he rubs shoulders. Maybe the ones he rubs shoulders with are fraudsters and Eischmann is pure and innocent."

"I can't see Eischmann being that naïve, can you?"

"No," Jan said and shook his head.

Katrine stared at him. "So what do we do?"

"Find the evidence and expose it. But without firm evidence it'll go nowhere. If we're right then we need to go public. Whistle-blow as it's called. But that's very, very risky."

They talked on for a while until Jan said, "Let's meet again, Kat. Decide what to do. If you are as sure as I am that there is something fraudulent going on, it's not just a matter of going carefully but deciding what to do about it. But don't do what you were once tempted to do—move on and find another job. That's defeatism. Stay inside, at least for the time being. Keep an eye on things." Then he added, "I'm off to London on Saturday—a weekend break to see some friends—let's chat next week."