Monday 25th January 2016
London
When Ricky Al-Shawabi is in London, he is fussy about where he eats. A luxury hotel such as the Savoy or Claridges is his preference for a power breakfast. When it comes to dinner Ricky likes to dine with the rich, powerful and famous: usually at one of the small handful of private members’ dining clubs dotted around the capital. It is as much about recognition as belonging. He has nothing against restaurants such as Wiltons, where private equity portfolio directors sit cheek by jowl with their investors. He actually enjoys the fish at Scott’s, where actresses and film stars come to see and be seen. Occasionally, if he is hankering for somewhere with more of a buzz, he might head to Cecconi’s. However, when UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Stephen Russell calls late on a Sunday evening and asks whether Ricky is free for an urgent private dinner the following night, there is only one place to take him: Harry’s Bar.
Part of the same group as a well-known nightclub in Berkeley Square and several other top-end restaurants in and around Mayfair, Harry’s Bar in London is very different from its Venetian or Parisian cousins that go under the same name. Here the Italian food and service are at the very pinnacle of the London experience, with prices that some might think make Monte Carlo seem cheap. Only members can book one of their tables, ensuring that the guest list is exclusive and the dining experience discreet. The moment Ricky sees the doorman in his thick winter cape, standing in the cold to greet guests outside the non-descript looking white front door, and the telltale green and white awning hanging over the property’s windows, he feels he is returning home.
“Good evening, Mr Al-Shawabi, it’s nice to see you again, sir. Let me get the door,” the doorman says, ringing the buzzer, alerting the next tier of the meet and greet team to get prepared for yet another arrival.
“Good evening, Mr Al-Shawabi, it’s so nice to have you back with us.” It’s the turn of the lady on reception. “Let me take your coat.”
“Mr Al-Shawabi, good evening. Welcome back.”
Now it is the maître d’, dressed in a dinner suit and clutching menus and a wine list under his left arm.
“How have you been keeping? Are you in London for long? Your guest has arrived. May I show you to your table?”
Then a volley of familiar greetings and handshakes en route to where Stephen Russell is sitting at the back of the restaurant, close to a window and nursing a glass of Prosecco. With the curtains drawn, from the outside no one can ever tell who is dining at Harry’s Bar. Inside, an unwritten code dictates behaviour: acknowledge fellow diners if you know them, just don’t interrupt whilst they are either eating or talking. The use of mobile phones and the taking of photographs are strictly unacceptable.
“Stephen, sorry to keep you,” Ricky says, sitting down and ordering a glass of Prosecco for himself.
“I hope you didn’t mind my suggesting we meet here? It’s so much more private than a restaurant.”
“Not at all. You must feel at home! Most of the patrons here are probably clients of yours anyway, isn’t that right?”
Russell is nearer the mark than he might realise. Ricky looks around and spots a Spanish lawyer client and his wife in the corner – they make eye contact and Ricky gives a polite wave. Then there is a party of six: the host, his back to them, is a wealthy Italian racehorse owner and long-term client. Finally, two American men, also both clients, are in deep conversation on the far side of the room, one a senator from Illinois and the other an oil billionaire, neither of whom have yet spotted Ricky. A waiter arrives bearing a cut-glass flute of Prosecco on a small silver tray. After raising a silent toast, Ricky takes a much-anticipated sip from the fine crystal.
“Party off-site at the weekend a success?”
“Who knows, Ricky. The PM seems to think so. When are you back to Monaco?”
“In the morning. First thing.”
The maître d’ interrupts them to take their order. No appetisers, just two entrées and a bottle of dry white wine.
“So, what’s bugging you, Stephen? That little pile of hidden gold burning a hole in your conscience all of a sudden, is it?”
“Partly, I won’t lie. I’ve been wondering what to do about it all, to be honest, Ricky.”
“You need to relax a bit more! Your secrets are completely safe, Stephen. Remember, secrecy and discretion are the Al-Shawabi watchwords. You don’t have to do anything until you feel the time is right.”
“I’ve been racking my brains. Short of giving it away, I don’t think there is an easy way to make everything squeaky clean and above board.”
“Not without a lot of questions being asked, probably not. Why not wait until you’re prime minister? Complete your stint at Number 10 then go out and legitimately earn your zillions once you leave office. No one will notice a little undeclared income by that stage, trust me.”
“What I worry about is waking up one morning and learning that the great Ricky Al-Shawabi has a whistle-blower in his business hell bent on spilling the beans. Someone who’s been sniffing around and has dug up piles of dirt on all of your clients. After what happened in Panama, it has to be a possibility.”
“Is that what this is all about, Stephen?”
Ricky laughs and it is at this point that the wine arrives. Ricky checks the bottle, tastes it and pronounces it delicious, the waiter filling both their glasses before disappearing.
“I think you should relax a bit, my friend. I want to remind you about the Al-Shawabi business model.” They clink glasses and try their wine.
“Not bad, eh? No, when clients ask us to keep things off the books, that’s what we do. Off the books. Compartmentalised and non-attributable. Some of the details I keep in my head. Quite a lot, actually. Your option to purchase forty million dollars of our assets for one pound, for example: that agreement doesn’t sit on a computer hard drive in Panama or in some fancy electronic filing cabinet up in the Cloud for anyone to hack into. You, Stephen Russell, gave us your twenty million to keep safe and out of sight from the prying eyes of the authorities. We invested the money in assets held offshore in our name, not yours. Today those same assets are worth forty million, not twenty. As part of the deal, you have a piece of paper hidden away – somewhere very secret and very safe I imagine – that we both have had signed, witnessed and sealed: we also have a copy similarly locked away. End of story. You sleep easy at night. We, meanwhile, happily keep managing your forty million, held in our name in trust for an unspecified beneficiary, each year taking our very reasonable management fee. You have a unique client number and passcode. None of our employees know to whom it belongs. Identified solely by this unique client number, we give you electronic access to periodic statements showing the underlying performance and latest asset values. You can exercise your option to buy at any time you choose. Does Stephen Russell’s name appear anywhere? Of course not. Is there some top secret client list that some whistle-blower can reveal in shock and awe to the world? Not for the special kind of deals that we do for folks like you. We’d be dead in the water as a business if there was.”
“There must be some paper record somewhere? At the very least a little black book of some description. A record of all your clients’ dark secrets, tucked away in some safe, hopefully out range of prying eyes?”
“I do encourage people to think so, I have to admit. Hypothetically, it’s always been my insurance policy, keeping everyone well-behaved and me able to sleep at night. The fact is, and kindly keep this entre nous: it is mostly a figment of my – and their – imagination. The Al-Shawabi way is to keep things simple and very confidential. The day you turn up with your copy of our agreement, we allow you to exercise your option: you pay us one pound, we pay you back the value of your accumulated wealth. Thereafter the slate is clean – until the next time of course. So, you just need to relax a little, drink your lovely wine and cease being so concerned. Life is good. What do you make of your chances in succeeding Ingleby, by the way?”
Their food arrives. It is presented with panache and looks elegant, a side order of freshly cooked zucchini fritti appearing at the same time.
“Buon appetito,” their young waitress says, withdrawing to leave them in peace.
“Of making it to Number 10?” Russell says, eyeing his food whilst Ricky tucks into his risotto.
“Pretty fair. The economy is more or less on track, which is the biggest boost to my candidacy. Better than Jeremy Seymour, perhaps neck and neck with Geraldine Macauley.”
He takes a mouthful of fish and thinks some more.
“I should be able to beat Seymour. He comes across as a pompous ass, not that well-liked by the people.”
“I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but neither Seymour nor Macauley is a client – certainly not at the moment.”
“Ricky, is it true that you have connections with just about everybody on the planet?”
Ricky laughs and drinks more wine.
“Only those that are useful. That’s the name of the game though, isn’t it? To be brutally frank, I sense it’s what you feel least comfortable doing. Networking, making and using contacts to your advantage. Despite what you say, by the way, Seymour seems good at getting things done. He, too, is not the world’s best networker from what I can gather, but he does have one positive advantage. He’s undeniably shrewd. Very canny. What about Macauley?”
“Geraldine’s the one I’ve got to watch out for. She has shades of Maggie T about her that I suspect might appeal to a certain group of voters.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Anyway it’s none of my business, but in your shoes I would be putting as many of the resources I had at my disposal to try and work things in my favour.”
“For instance?”
“Aren’t the tax men and women of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs part of your portfolio responsibility as chancellor? I mean they report to you, don’t they?”
Stephen nods as he takes a mouthful of fish.
“So why not ask for them to do a trawl through all current Cabinet ministers’ tax affairs? You could position it as your attempt to maximise transparency, requiring all government ministers to lead by example and all that baloney. You said as much on the radio this morning!”
“With any particular objective here, Ricky? Apart from pissing off everyone big time.”
“Well, you never know what you might unearth about your fellow MPs, in particular those who might be jostling with you for the keys to Number 10. Especially if one of them – and I am not talking about yourself, you understand – was found to have been less than transparent about their tax affairs. Perhaps Seymour or Macauley, for example: it would be massively unhelpful to their campaign if they were found to be tax dodgers, don’t you think?”
Ricky finishes the last of his risotto and puts his fork down.
“That was delicious. Yours all right?”
“Great thanks. Actually, Ricky, Geraldine Macauley was partly the reason I suggested we have this little private get together. I want to tell you something but first you need to promise me something?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“You can’t repeat what I am about to tell you, not to anybody. You never heard this from me or anybody else, is that clear? It’s not even for discussing with your chum, the prime minister. In fact, especially not with him, do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” Ricky says, curious now, elbows on the table and holding his wine glass in both hands. “Loud and clear. Fire away. I’m all ears.”
“Someone within your business is an informant,” Russell says, his voice lowered, the words barely a whisper.
“For the British authorities, I can’t tell you who. For some time, it would seem, this person – he or she, I don’t even know who it is – has been passing information about you directly back to London.”
“Bloody hell, Stephen! That’s preposterous. How can you be sure?”
He puts down his wineglass, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.
“Because the PM has had it confirmed to him categorically. One hundred per cent. Justin Ingleby is worried, not least about what it might mean if you were to become a major donor. I am much more worried for selfish reasons. If there’s an insider in your operation spilling the beans, I’ve got a career to lose if the shit starts hitting the fan.”
“I’m stunned, Stephen. How long’s this been going on?”
“Apparently quite some time. Months at least, maybe longer – who can say?”
Ricky’s mind is spinning, working through the angles and possibilities. Who could it be? Xandra, Ozzie or Fergus? Not Vladek, of that he can be certain. What about Gemma or Tash – Shetty even? Adam Fraser, the new boy? No, Fraser had to be ruled out, he’d only just come on board. In point of fact, if what Russell is saying is true, then of them all, Adam Fraser and Vladek were probably the only ones who could really be trusted.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m in shock. What am I expected to do with this information?”
“There is nothing you can do, Ricky, other than be aware of it. To reflect that I have gone out on a limb in speaking with you. Way above and beyond what I should have done as a Cabinet minister for sure. You never heard it from me, you have to promise?”
Ricky nods but is hardly listening. A red line has been crossed. No one does this kind of thing to Ricky Al-Shawabi and gets away with it. He can feel the inner demons stirring, an anger building. One of his team a traitor, dipping into his state secrets and sneaking about them to the authorities? Spying on him and his business? It’s outrageous. Totally and utterly preposterous. What conniving duplicitous son of a bitch would do this to him? Whoever it is deserves to be lynched: beaten to a pulp and left to rot in hell. How dare they? Monstrous, completely out of order. Given the years of hard work, sweat and time that he, personally, has invested? If people wanted to play these sorts of stupid, high-stakes games, Ricky would just have to show them how much of an evil cunning bastard he could really be. See how they liked that. Ricky was going to find the vile, scheming rat who was betraying him. He was going to hunt him or her down, tie them in chains and beat the living crap out them. He might even enjoy this foreplay. Because once he has their confession, heard their pitiful pleas for mercy and forgiveness, seen them beg for their life, then a slow and painful death would be the least they would deserve.