Tuesday 26th January 2016
Monte Carlo, Monaco
The Bell 429 helicopter has a capacity for seven passengers; today, excluding Shetty who is driving back later with the mountain of luggage, there are just the five of them. The flight from Courchevel’s Altiport has been nothing short of stunning. The bright sunshine was glistening off the frosty white snowy mountains. Then there was the dramatic drop-off from the Alps down to the rolling plains beyond the Rhône valley. Finally, the Mediterranean Sea itself: azure blue, inviting, the small wave peaks reflecting the sun. As the pilot brings the aircraft through its final banked turn, flaring at the last moment in readiness for landing, even the high-rise, over-populated principality of Monaco looks uncharacteristically beautiful in the winter sunshine. Not far from the individually marked landing pads that comprise Monaco’s heliport, a small minivan and driver are waiting. Minutes later, after wriggling through the narrow streets and underground tunnels, all five are deposited by the entrance of an unremarkable high-rise block that is the nerve centre of the Al-Shawabi global operation.
Little has been said on the journey from Courchevel. Heads have been hunched over mobile phones, fingers and thumbs scrolling through emails. All except Vladek, who has been sitting motionless, observing, keeping the peace, as Xandra calls it. Threatening with menace as Adam prefers to think of it. In the cramped space of the lift taking them to the fifth-floor reception, there is no avoiding a moment of brief physical contact. Finding Vladek uncomfortably close, Adam distracts himself by remembering another confined lift ride the previous afternoon.
There is a reception committee of one by the glass-fronted Al-Shawabi front desk, a pretty young woman responsible for meeting and greeting and answering the telephones.
“Bonjour!” she says, standing in welcome as her visitors emerge one by one from the lift.
Ozzie, despite his wife’s ever-watchful eye, can’t resist giving her his warmest, most flirtatious smile.
“Bonjour, Natalia. Ça va?”
“Oui, Monsieur Gerhard, ça va, ça va! Monsieur Fraser, Monsieur Al-Shawabi asks please that you go directly to his office. He is expecting you.”
Xandra, Ozzie and Adam exchange looks.
“Have fun,” Xandra says to him.
Ricky’s office is predictably vast. An expanse of floor to ceiling windows provide panoramic views over Port Hercules and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Ricky sits at a modernistic glass desk, positioned at an angle to afford him both the external view and a clear line of sight over all who enter his domain. His personal assistant, a fierce-looking woman in her fifties, allows Adam to venture in only after first checking with Ricky to see whether he is ready.
The Great Man is staring at his computer as Adam enters, his face partially obscured from view. The clock on the wall behind him indicates the time: just after twelve-thirty in the afternoon.
“Come in,” Ricky booms when he sees Adam, bounding to his feet and swiftly moving around the desk to the seating area in the middle of the room. Bright red leather sofas and armchairs are positioned around a glass coffee table allowing first-time visitors to wallow in the soft leather and be not a little intimidated by the view.
“You made good time. How was the snow?”
“Excellent, thanks. Skiing not your bag or did you simply run out of time?”
“Oh, the latter. I love to ski but I was just too busy. Had to go to Bahrain to meet some important new contacts. People who, if we all play our cards right, Adam, are going to make us an obscene amount of money.”
“Presumably the same ones we’re going to be bringing to Monaco sometime soon?”
“Ah, change of plan on that front. The Saudis now want to meet in Dubai. Hence the call to bring everyone back sharpish. I need Xandra to go to Panama to sort some things out for me whilst you and I head off to the Gulf. Anyway, I stopped off in London for the weekend on the way back. I had to meet some friends, catch up on the gossip, do a spot of networking at the highest levels, that sort of thing.”
He smiles, the self-effacing Ricky Al-Shawabi trying to be only a trifle modest in front of the new boy. Despite the bonhomie, Adam senses an underlying anger, something new that hasn’t surfaced in his dealings with Ricky thus far.
“I learnt something in London.” Ricky is back on his feet, pretending to admire the view whilst in reality he is pacing back and forth.
“It’s got me rather rattled, actually.”
He turns to face Adam now, his hands on the back of one of the red leather chairs as if to steady himself.
“What I’d really like is some advice. You’re one of the very few I feel able to trust with what I am about to tell you.”
Adam’s stomach begins to churn. A washing machine within has come to life: the power switched on, the revolutions slow but the stress-activated motor nonetheless operational.
“You’ve only been with us a short while but I guess you know a little of what we get up to by now. It’s time to take Adam Fraser deeper into Ricky’s confidence.”
He turns mid-pace and gives Adam one of his school boy ‘not guilty, m’lud’ smiles.
“I want you to become a fully paid-up member of the Ricky Al-Shawabi inner sanctum. Before we embark on that particular voyage of no return, I need to feel reassured about your commitment. Fair do’s?”
He is leaning forward over the back of the chair once more, bent at the waist, eyes probing. Adam nods his head and says that it is fair, the cue for Ricky to continue.
“Because whilst the Al-Shawabi journey is most definitely paved with gold, the substantial rewards that will undoubtedly come your way do not materialise without a modicum of risk. When we start out together on this adventure, I would like you to have your eyes wide open, not blindly following perhaps somewhat lustfully, in Xandra’s wake. Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly, Ricky.” Adam has finally found his voice, which arrives in time to drown out the sounds of washing machine-like noises emanating from his stomach. “Just for the record and to put your mind at rest Ricky, I am thrilled to be here, to be working with you and the team. It’s daunting but very exciting. If anything, I’m just a tad anxious about whether I’ll be able to make a big enough contribution for you to want to keep me on the team permanently.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Adam. I have the perfect role for you. However, thank you, I am pleased you want to be here. You see the thing is, Al-Shawabi has many strands to its business but they all have one thing in common: they all make money. A lot of money. Success brings its own rewards and, as you can see touch and feel,” he says, waving his arm around the room, “we have, over the years, been pretty successful – and for two reasons. Firstly, we go out of our way to help people who want us to help solve their problems. Secondly, and most critically, we try not to be judgemental about who these people are or what the nature of any underlying problems they are dealing with might be. Bureaucrats, business leaders, world and political leaders, they all have their own populist mantras but these are often at odds with their private personal aims and ambitions. So what we do so well at Al-Shawabi is to allow these people to fulfil their private aims and ambitions whilst providing a cloak of invisibility and anonymity for their more public positioning in life. These people find our methods, our solutions, our discretion and the trust we engender beyond valuable. Which is why they pay us so generously. Some hate paying taxes and choose us to help find ways to avoid doing so; others may have acquired wealth in ways they’d rather not have discussed – and want to keep it that way; and there are those eager to use their position of power to enrich their short time on this planet. We have written the book about how best to help people to manage their wealth, however acquired: discreetly, professionally and anonymously.”
“That sounds like skating perilously close to what some might label tax evasion and bribery. Possibly even money laundering.”
“Adam, Adam, Adam,” Ricky says shaking his head, once again on the move, this time towards a small corner bar at the far side of the room.
“How can you think like that? Al-Shawabi is a globally accredited business.” He looks across at his guest. “Water, coffee, tea, that sort of thing?”
“Water would be fine. Sparkling if you’ve got it.”
It might short-circuit the electric motor currently grinding inside my stomach.
“A number of less successful organisations,” he says, returning with a large bottle and two glasses, “are weighed down with armies of tax planners hiding behind complex structures and a veritable maze of compliance protocols and ‘know your client’ procedures. Many of them do indeed fly too close to the wind, becoming targets of law enforcement officials. These poor second-rate competitors tie themselves in knots trying to duck and dive out of the clutches of various authorities. What a hell of a way to run a business! We run Al-Shawabi differently. Our client acceptance criteria are very straightforward. We only ever take on clients who are recommended to us through our network of well-established personal connections and contacts. Some like to pay extra to remain anonymous. That’s fine by us. So they give us their assets, we look after them and put them in our name, allowing these clients to buy them back at a point in time in the future. No computer records, no tiresome audit trails, no vulnerability to whistle-blowers.
“So, let’s take the case of a Pakistani government minister. One day this hapless individual discovers that he is the key decision maker in a tendering process for a multi-billion-dollar contract that a German multinational is desperate to win. As part of their efforts to win the contract, the Germans wisely employ Al-Shawabi as their internationally accredited intermediary. Our expertise and connections allow us to position the German business to be the favoured bidder. We soothe and nurture the Pakistani, he feels favourably disposed to the Germans. Everyone is happy. The Germans win a contract worth billions; they pay us a substantial multimillion-dollar sum as a consultancy fee; and out of that money, we use a nominee company in a well-chosen location to invest part of that fee in assets such as real estate or tradable securities. Then when we next meet this Pakistani government minister, we might say to him, by way of a discreet conversation: ‘We would like to present you with a gift: why not allow us to grant you an option to buy this property or these securities at a time of your choosing – and at a ludicrously discounted price of course? For argument’s sake, one dollar.’ We make it all legally binding, execute a simple memorandum that is signed and witnessed and we each keep a copy locked away somewhere. Nothing is recorded in any ledgers or computer systems. Our clients are very happy. The Pakistani minister is very happy. Everybody else is none the wiser.”
“Okay, Ricky,” Adam says, taking a swig of water in the hope that it will drown out the growling in his stomach.
“I think I get the picture. Where exactly do I fit in?”
Ricky stares at Adam. Neither says a word. An unspoken line is about to be crossed, a disclosure soon to be made that cannot be retracted. It is decision time and Ricky needs to decide.
Heads he’s in; tails he’s out.
Adam’s insides are churning: the washing machine is on its rinse cycle.
Thank you, Miss Bateson, for being so kind as to make my life so complicated.
“The thing is, Adam, I have a small but urgent matter that I need your help in resolving.”
The coin seems to be landing on heads.
“How I can help?”
“Despite everything, despite all the money I pay people, all the trust I put in my team and all the accumulated riches that my Al-Shawabi colleagues now have at their disposal. . . Despite all of that, I have learned in the last twenty-four hours from the most impeccable source that someone in my inner circle has been revealing some or all of my state secrets to the British authorities.”
Adam’s face remains a picture of composure even though he feels a sudden icy blast of freezing water rapidly pumping in and around his bowels.
Bloody hell, Emms, that was quick! I’ve only been a signed up and trusted member of the Miss Bateson spying fraternity less than eighteen hours and here we are, already seeing our duplicitous acts laid bare.
“Who is it?” Adam asks with more composure than he would normally credit himself with.
“That’s the problem,” says Ricky slowly, his tone chilling. “I simply don’t know. Apparently he or she has been at it for some time. Exactly how long is anyone’s guess. Which is precisely why, Adam dear boy, you are one of only two people I can trust to help me.”
“The other being?”
“The other being Vladek. He and I go back a long way and I would trust him with my life. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea but he owes me for everything he now has and he wouldn’t betray me, of that I’m totally confident.”
Ricky looks at Adam and smiles thinly.
“I need your help to find this duplicitous bastard, Adam. Whoever it is has got to be found. I promise you, when I know who it is, things are going to get very, very ugly.”
Adam’s bowels are turning to liquid.
“Any ideas?” Adam finds his first steps as a duplicitous bastard quite difficult.
How did they find out so soon, Emms?
“I’ve been racking my brains. It could be anyone. I doubt that it’s Xandra. I hope it’s not Ozzie, he frankly knows too much. As does Fergus for that matter. It could be Gemma. I can’t believe it would be Shetty, but who knows?”
“What about someone in Fergus’s team?”
“All possible, but remember, this is a lean business. We’re talking less than a handful of employees. What little they know is not going to be of much help to anyone: they can’t be ruled out but it’s unlikely.”
“How about Tash? Or Natalia on reception?”
“Both possible. In fact, I am glad you mentioned Tash. I’ve been wondering about her all the way back from London. I found her rummaging around inside the safe in our bedroom the other day. Said she had lost one of her earrings. Didn’t think anything of it at the time but in light of this, it raises question marks.”
Adam feels emboldened.
“To the extent you have secrets to hide, things you wouldn’t want competitors – or the British for that matter – to learn, where exactly might you be keeping those, Ricky?”
Miss Bateson wherever you are, I hope you are proud of the way I deliver my Oscar-winning lines?
“Other than in my head, you mean? Every ‘option to purchase’ agreement has to be signed by me. Once it has been witnessed, I retain one copy, the client takes away the other. Mine is kept in a special safe here in my office.”
“Are they scanned or photocopied at all?”
“Never.”
Steely eyes are penetrating Adam’s inner soul as Ricky speaks his lines.
Adam takes courage in his hands and ploughs on. “And if anyone was interested in either stealing from you or finding out things you didn’t want them to know, it would be those documents they would be after, is that right?”
“Most definitely, yes.”
“So, the million-dollar question, Ricky, is who else besides you can access the safe?”
“No one.”
“I thought you said Tash had been looking inside it?”
“That was the safe in our bedroom. Not the one here in my office.”
He points to a cabinet in one corner of the room. It doesn’t look out of the ordinary but perhaps that is the point.
“Only I can get into that one. It’s special and cost me a fortune. When I’m dead and gone my lawyer has instructions. Until then its secrets are for my eyes only.”
“So what are you worried about? If there’s either a mole or a whistle-blower on the prowl, what damage can be done?”
“Because we can’t run our business like a leaky sieve. If clients knew that the things they were telling us in confidence were at risk of being disclosed to the authorities or the wider world, they would run a mile. I certainly would.”
He looks at Adam, sipping water from his glass, his eyes cold and penetrating.
“I’d like to hear your views. How should we catch this person? As the new boy on the block you are the one person who can’t have been spying on me. How are we going to flush out this double-crossing traitor, do you think?”
Confusion in the brain. Just checking we are not at cross purposes: are we flushing out this British mole or perhaps A N Other? The possibility that there might be more than one you see Ricky is genuinely scary.
“Stealth and vigilance is my immediate reaction. Unless you want to create an unhealthy cloud of suspicion ever more to hang over the business. Maybe limit the people who have access to certain things, be it work or information? Possibly lay a few false trails, though I’d need to think about that.”
The washing machine is no longer spinning. It does, though, continue to make random flushing noises.
Ricky smiles.
“I like that last idea, Adam. I’m not sure how it would work, but think about it some more and let’s talk again. I agree, by the way, on your other two points. It is why I want you alone to work with me on this new Saudi project. Adam Fraser, the new rising star of the latest and most lucrative Al-Shawabi production of all time.”
“What sort of show are we talking about exactly, Ricky?”
Ricky, once more back on his feet, is pacing. This time he stops by the windows and stares out whilst continuing to talk.
“Let’s just say that sometimes the way we are obliged to work is necessarily quite complicated. Our Saudi friends have, for reasons it would be imprudent to enquire too much about, a burning need for a lot of physical cash. We know them as friends of friends, they know us – are we able to help? Of course we can but it will be expensive. Our terms? We require a ten per cent mark-up – and we are happy by the way, to take some of this money as crude oil in lieu of cash. Enter Adam Fraser, our oil trading supremo, the man who will eventually trade out the physical crude and in the process, make us a generous profit. Meanwhile Ricky just happens to have a Latin American client keen to offload a ton of used notes in bulk. Our terms? This time, Ricky requires a thirty-three per cent profit margin for his time and trouble in dry cleaning their dirty money. We take the Latino cash and deliver it to the Saudis in a location of their choosing. Bottom line, we earn a profit from the Saudis, yet more profit from the Latinos and yet further profit still from the turn you will be making from trading out the light Arabian crude at a substantial mark-up. As a gesture of goodwill you personally are going to earn ten per cent of that particular trading profit as a personal thank you from your kind Uncle Ricky. How does that sound?”
“Pretty amazing, Ricky, to tell the truth. Un-bloody-believable actually.”
“This arrangement is strictly between the two of us. Not a word to Xandra or anybody else or else the whole profit-sharing arrangement’s off? Do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal.”
The two of them shake hands.
“Go and pack some clothes. We’ll take the chopper to Nice airport as soon as you’re ready. The jet is fuelled and ready to go.”
“Who’s coming besides you and me?”
“Vladek. I was going to ask Tash but now I’m having second thoughts.”
“Why not invite her and Gemma together? That way we can keep them both under observation, see if they do anything strange or unusual?”
“That’s an excellent idea. I am sure Ozzie won’t mind a few days without his wife. He usually seems more than capable of coping on his own.” Ricky gives Adam a knowing look.
“Fine, then I’ll go and tell the others and get packed.”
“If you see Xandra, send her in, will you?”
Adam turns to leave but Ricky interrupts him.
“One other thing, Adam. Just for the record, I am so pleased you decided to join us. I am going to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, you know that don’t you?”
“I’m pleased to be here too, Ricky.”