Siege at the Villa Lipp (15 page)

‘Advise him to give them all to me, so that I can take care of them for him.’

He himself obviously found nothing strange about what he was saying. It called, consequently, for a careful reply.

‘Carlo, you are, as I have reason to know, a trustworthy man. But, with respect, I don’t see how you are going to persuade a man who has made thirty thousand dollars by cheating to believe that you, to say nothing of the rest of his fellow men, aren’t just as crooked as he is. Isn’t that the way the crook’s mind works?’

‘Certainly, it is. For that precise reason he must be sold new ideas. First, if he is an American, he must be made aware of the various hostile moves that can be made against his thirty thousand by the United States Government and its Internal Revenue Service. For instance, that part of his nest egg which is in occupation money will be made worthless after a certain date unless it is declared beforehand. In order to declare large sums he must be able satisfactorily to explain them. That part of the whole which is in Italian currency cannot be converted outside the country except by payment through his own home bank. Once more he must explain. In the same way if he remits dollars in amounts which exceed his accumulated base pay, he will also be required to explain. In other words, he must either lose all or he must trust,
and
pay, someone else to do what he cannot do for himself; that is, convert that portion of his equity which is not in dollars into currencies which will remain negotiable. Then, the whole of it must be kept safe until such time as he can reclaim it without ever having had to account to anyone for his possession of one cent. How will we perform these unique and quite invaluable services for him? My dear Paul, I will tell you.’

Thirty years were to go by before the Watergate investigation brought the word ‘laundering’ into metaphorical association with the word ‘money’. In 1945 we did not use that particular figure of speech; but in fact ‘laundering money’, the process of giving large sums which have been criminally acquired the appearance of having been come by legally was what Carlo then began to describe.

Mr Q, the quartermaster, would hear, as if by accident, not only of the obstacle courses in preparation but also about an Italian lawyer of the highest repute who specialized in foreign tax law and was an expert on international currency dealings. How did Mr Q imagine that all those rich Italian industrialists had managed to get the hell out and stay rich when all the rest of Italy was on the bread line? Obviously, they had switched all their loose cash to currencies and places in which it was safe, and it was this wonderful little lawyer who had made it possible for them to get away with it.

Once Mr Q’s agile mind had grasped the fact that here might be a way of concealing his own ill-gotten gains until the heat was off, an introduction would be arranged and Carlo would go to work.

Of course, Mr Q, your problems can be very simply solved. No trouble at all. I will arrange to have your money converted into gold-backed bonds and deposited in my Lugano bank. As soon as you wish to reconvert and receive the money, you write from America and tell me so. In reply you will hear news of the sad death in Europe of a distant relative of yours. Your family emigrated originally from where, Mr Q? Denmark? Then the relative will die in Copenhagen and the money that this so-generous cousin bequeathed to you will be paid in Danish kroner. Any questions?

‘Yes, Dottore Lech. How do I know that I can trust you?’

‘A sound question, Mr Q. I
like hard-headed clients who take nothing for granted. You trust me initially because I am trustworthy and of good reputation. You sit here in my office confident that nothing which is said here will go any farther. You entrust your money to me because I shall give you, first, a notarized receipt for it and, second, the name of the bank in Lugano where it will be held to your credit in an anonymous numbered account. Do you know about anonymous numbered accounts, Mr Q?’

Naturally, he didn’t. In 1945 the numbered Swiss bank account was not the hocus-pocus cliché beloved of knowing crime-reporters that it was to become in later years. Refugees from the Nazis had used it, as the Swiss had intended it to be used, as a defence against Gestapo enquiries and Gestapo reprisals. Subsequently, top Nazis and Fascisti, having second thoughts and wanting to hedge their bets, had used it as a defence against the dark suspicions of diehard comrades and the awful penalties that awaited defeatists.

To Mr Q the concept was new and immediately reassuring. He hung upon the Dottore’s words; and if he never quite got around to asking how it was possible for a numbered account to be opened for him in a Lugano bank without anyone
at all
in the bank knowing his identity, it was understandable. In Italy and sitting on thirty thousand hot bucks it all sounded just great.

Now, of course, it all sounds so wide-eyed and artless that just recalling it makes me smile. Nevertheless, it worked. Parts of the set-up still work. When we started, it worked in all its parts because Carlo had thought everything through carefully and realistically down to the smallest detail. Not even Mat Williamson denies that Carlo was a superbly imaginative planner.

His choice of me as the contact man, the intermediary who knows how one can get in touch with the legendary Dottore Lech and what miracles the great man can perform is an example.

‘Why me?’ I had asked.

‘Because a man like Q would automatically suspect a fellow-American who dangled information like that before his eyes of being an agent-provocateur; and he could very well be right. You, a British non-com, one those upper-crust limeys whose voices make them sound as if they’re pederasts even when they’re not, could never be suspect.

And what more natural than that someone in your line of work should hear about someone like me? From our own point of view, you have freedom to move about and make new contacts. With the cessation of actual hostilities, that freedom will tend to increase, and so will your freedom to invent reasons for extending your liaison with the Americans.’

‘What about the British Mr Q’s?’

He raised his right hand as if he were about to swear an oath or deliver a blessing, and then said very sharply: ‘No!’ After a pause he went on slowly: ‘Never, Paul, as long as we are associated, will you ever approach any of your own people, no matter what you may suspect or know about them. Remember this. Nothing we ever do will ever be illegal with our own, our respective, national authorities. In your case, talking about currency transactions to an American soldier, or a Polish or a French one, you would be taking negligible risks. Talking to a British soldier of the same things, you risk being charged with an infinite variety of military offences. If we trifle a little with the law, it must always be the law of others, never of cur own. Besides, most of the marketable commodities are now supplied by the Americans, who also control the main storage and distribution facilities. I expect that state of affairs to continue. Oh yes, there will be, as there are now, British, French and Polish fingers in the black-market pie. I
have no doubt of that. But most of the fingers will belong, apart from those of my own countrymen, to Americans. That is where the serious money will end up.’

‘But what happens to the money, Carlo? I mean, if it’s left with us for safe-keeping.’

He was surprised that I should find it necessary to ask. ‘Naturally, it remains the property of our client. That we will have the use of it to finance our own market operations will be none of his business, any more than it is the business of the man who banks his money in the conventional way to oversee the banks’ investment policies. In many ways we shall, indeed, operate exactly like a bank, but a bank unfettered by petty rules and restrictions.’

‘At most ordinary banks the client can go and withdraw his money if he wants. Will he be able to do that with ours?’

‘Certainly he will! He can have his money any time he wishes, plus a generous share of its earnings during the time we have managed it. Our own charges will seem modest when we are found to have doubled his money for him. The fact that we may have quadrupled it for our own account need not concern him. Of course,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘complications are bound to arise. They always do when laws are broken.’

I waited. Carlo was thinking how best to enlighten the innocent without seeming to condescend or over-simplify. He was a courteous man.

‘Consider,’ he said at last, ‘the position of a client of ours once he is back in his home town, a civilian again with perhaps a job and even a wife and family. How different it will all seem. And how unreal this faraway treasure of his will soon become!’

He contemplated that agreeable vision for a moment before sighing his way back into the real world. ‘But let us assume a bolder spirit, or one who cannot bear the thought of money lying, as he thinks, idle in a Lugano bank. There are such men, Paul.’

‘Yes, Carlo, there are, especially among those who have made killings as black marketeers.’

‘Especially, you think? Among those who were always pilferers, thieves, even before they went into the army, stupidity is to be expected, I agree. But from those late development delinquents who will use our services we can count upon more sense, I believe. Take our prototypical Mr Q for example. Longing for, or possibly needing, money, he decides to send for his nest-egg in the prescribed manner.’

‘You mean he chooses to inherit? Yes? Well, we then have to find the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars in

Danish kroner and remit from Copenhagen. Or do we just ignore him?’

The smile blossomed. ‘Ignore him? That is the last thing we do. On the contrary, we at once arrange to have sent from Copenhagen direct to his local home town paper the magnificent news of this remarkable legacy and of the romantic story which lies behind it.’ He looked at me expectantly.

‘What romantic story?’

‘What does it matter? You are being obtuse, Paul. Think of Mr Q and the strange position in which he would find himself. Think of questions that would be put to him. Who is this mysterious relative? Why has nobody ever heard of him or her before? And it would not be only the local newspaper reporter who wanted answers. His friends and, above all, his family would want answers, too, and they would examine them somewhat more critically. Almost as critically as the Internal Revenue people. How quick they would be to note the source of Mr Q’s surprising windfall and to request a copy of the probated Will when one became available! Do you know, Paul, I believe that Mr Q would very soon be countermanding his instructions to us and telling his local paper that the whole thing had been a case of mistaken identity. Same name, wrong man.’

‘What about his notarized receipt! He could come here and collect.’

‘He could, but would he? Have you thought of all the anxieties, the heartaches, that receipt must already have caused him? He will have realized, remember, almost as he saw me signing it, that to be found with that piece of paper in his possession could be as damning as to be found counting the money itself, perhaps more so. There could be no plea for leniency on the score of ignorance. Al Capone went to prison for income-tax evasion, not for the way he had made the income. No need to remind Mr Q of that. How he must, in the end, have hated that beautiful receipt!

Where did he hide it when he left for home? In the lining of his tunic? In one of his shoes?’

‘Supposing he went to Lugano?’

‘They have never heard of him or his numbered account. He would have to come to us, where he would at once learn that, for security reasons, we had some months earlier transferred the money to a different bank. All is perfectly safe. What currency would he like it in? Or would he prefer to have it transferred to his domestic account? You see? He is back with his original dilemma, only now, from the tax-evasion standpoint, the offence is even more serious. He had an illicit hoard of dollars. Now, it has made a profit on which he ought to pay capital-gains tax if he were an upright, God-fearing citizen. But he is no longer that, and he knows it. Perhaps, if he has confided in his wife and she is a woman of courage the pair of them will risk all and smuggle it back to the United States. Or try to do so. We would be failing in our duty, I think, if we did not warn them most seriously of the nature of the risks they would run. At the same time we might remind them that, if they leave the money with us to increase and multiply, there is nothing to prevent their using it later. They might eventually decide to buy a
rèsidence secondaire
in Italy, or somewhere on the Côte d’Azur, which they could rent when they weren’t luxuriating in it themselves. Then, no one ever need know anything.’ He paused, closed his eyes and breathed in deeply as if he were already enjoying on Mr Q’s behalf the cool evening breeze scented by pine trees. Then he opened his eyes again before narrowing them slightly. ‘You see, Paul? There would never be, there
could
never be, a run on
our bank.’

Does that sound like an anarchist speaking, Professor Krom? - a man against all settled order and systems of law?

I don’t think it does. To me it sounds like a man who enjoyed making money not by breaking laws but by circumventing them, not by destroying order but by utilizing it in unorthodox ways.

Yes, Carlo was vain; indeed he revelled in his own cleverness; but the respect that he professed for the law was absolutely genuine. He was, too, something of a moralist and strongly disapproved of black marketeers.

He disapproved because he considered them parasites. He would have been affronted, though, by any suggestion that the same word could, with equal justice, have been applied to us. I only know of one person who had the temerity even to hint at the suggestion, and the consequences for that person were unpleasant. Carlo could, when angered, become quite vindictive.

In that respect he was different from Mat Williamson. Mat does not have to be in the least angry with a man before deciding that he must be destroyed.

The years immediately following VE day were great ones for parasites. Allied aid supplies, mostly American but some British, poured into Italy and West Germany at a prodigious rate.