Sohlberg and the White Death (41 page)

“This is a very
very
good system,” said Pasquale De Stefano with immense satisfaction. “Domenico invented it. It’s much better than what we used to do.”

“Thank you,” said Pelle in amazement at the first compliment that he had ever heard from the capo’s mouth. “In the end the piggy banks wire their money to other companies that we own in Cayman Islands and Switzerland and Luxembourg.”

~ ~ ~

Fabrizio Morabito rubbed his hands. “Where do the Swiss banks fit into all of this?”

The
consigliere
gladly expounded on many wonderful and precious truths:

“Switzerland is the prettiest country with the whitest people and the dirtiest money. Money laundering is the Number One industry. Dirty money in the billions of dollars arrive every day from dictators and tax cheats and corrupt government officials and assorted criminals throughout the planet. We are the dirty and dark and ignorant people who bring our dirty money to be washed clean of our sins by the almighty and holy and blessed Swiss. Their sinless and perfect purity absolves us and our soiled money and we and our money are therefore saved and reborn to a new life in the eternal covenant between the Swiss banks and the money of dirty people.

“Swiss banks take the dirty money as interest-free deposits. Most of that money comes from Swiss bank branches in Cayman Islands or Luxembourg. In our case we send all our profits from our piggy banks to the Swiss banks here in Switzerland or to their branches in the Cayman Islands or Luxembourg or Liechtenstein or Guernsey Islands.

“The Swiss bankers mix their clients’ money and then wire billions of it as loans to other giant banks around the globe where the Swiss banks earn interest on that money. The Swiss bankers keep that risk-free profit which adds up
every week
to at least $ 10 billion U.S. dollars.

“If interest rates are in the low single digits—like 3%—then Swiss bankers make $ 520 billion a year. And that doesn’t include all the fees that they charge their clients. Nor does it include the interest income they earn when they loan out their $ 520 billion in profits from wiring and parking dirty money worldwide with a few keystrokes of a computer. Meanwhile the Swiss bankers allow their dirty foreign clients to start withdrawing their much cleaner money through another group of anonymous corporations and strawmen such that the money is sanctified and certified to be sparkling clean.

“At this point in the money cycle we and our money have been redeemed by our Swiss saviors.

“After another wash cycle through more shell companies and strawmen the dirty money’s true sources and true owners are finally 100% untraceable. The spotless money without stain or blemish is then invested in and with legitimate businesses and the dirty can therefore sleep soundly at night . . . knowing that their once dirty money is now perfectly legal and working hard for them thanks to the greatest church and biggest laundry shop that have ever existed in the history of mankind.”

~ ~ ~

The mobsters’ cavalcade entered Lucerne—a sleepy Christmas toy village on the northwest shores of a mountain-ringed lake that bears the city’s name.

De Stefano scrutinized the newest # 3 Man. “Are you ready for this?”

“Absolutely,” said Fabrizio Morabito. “Everything is in order.”

The convoy snaked its way east to the low-key suburb of Meggen. Marc Rich and other criminal billionaires found shelter inside enormous lakeshore villas behind stone walls in the Canton of Lucerne. Their newly-washed lucre protects them from prosecution in Switzerland. Laundered billions can also buy presidential pardons through bribes and campaign donations such as in the case of New York City’s Marc Rich and Pincus Green.

The Calabrian caravan stopped in front of the lake at the intersection of Seewarte and Seeacherstrasse. Pasquale De Stefano placed a cell phone call and issued the password. Black metal gates swung open to admit the travelers into the sumptuous manicured grounds. The Italian bodyguards remained in the driveway which was surrounded by a platoon of heavily-armed Russian bodyguards.

The three mobsters went inside the cream-colored 4-floor villa with twelve bedrooms.

Yuri Timchenko—a gap-toothed bear of a man—greeted his Calabrian guests at the grand vestibule. He yelled in a heavily accented English:

“Welcome!”

The Italians answered with uncomfortable faces.

“What do you think about this house? . . . I bought it from Mogilevich for thirty-eight million dollars. It’s fabulous . . . no?”

Domenico Pelle translated for Pasquale De Stefano: “It’s okay.”

“Come in. Let’s go to the library.”

In addition to eye-popping views of Lake Lucerne the 3,000 square foot library came equipped with a second and third floor mezzanine packed with old and beautifully bound leather books. None of the Italians were impressed. Their own interior decorators in Milan had also bought antique books and great works of art by the yard—or the pound—for decoration.

“Gentlemen. Say hello to Arkady.”

An acne-scarred scarecrow with deep-set blue eyes stood up. He grudgingly shook hands with the Italians. Arkady Kovalchuk had risen in Semion Mogilevich’s organization until he went out on his own as a bagman in shadowy deals. His sour disposition was positively acidic at that moment.

The men sat down in Louis Quinze chairs arranged in a circle.

Yuri Timchenko wasted no time offering food or drinks. The Italians never ate or drank anything. He knew that they had a well-grounded fear of poisoning based on their country’s rich history of powerful bigwigs like the Borgias who used Renaissance poisons to eliminate secular enemies, cardinals, and popes. The Italians were also aware that the Russians had their own history of modern poisons with clever delivery systems such as the KGB umbrella that shot a fatal ricin pellet into a Russian dissident in London.

Yuri Timchenko also wasted no time in small talk with his guests. “This kidnaping thing with the chemist Edvard Csáky is not good. It’s bad for business.”

“Very bad,” said Pelle in translation for De Stefano.

 “It was not our doing,” said Yuri Timchenko with the straight face of a sincere liar. “Putin and the rest of us did not know about this. We did not authorize it.”

“This kidnaping went on under your noses?”

“Some greedy men in high circles of Moscow police and F.S.B. ran their own operation . . . to line their own pockets and sell the chemist to the Columbians who are
your
partners. No?”

“No what?”

“They are your partners. Not ours. They wanted him.”

“You sold Edvard Csáky without asking our permission. We put the money down for Ultra. A lot of money. You put no money down. We also paid your boss in Moscow one billion euros . . . cash.”

“Our contribution was the Bulgarian government which approved the drugs.”

“That’s not a big deal. We have politicians and government people that we own in Spain . . . Italy . . . France . . . Germany . . . they would have obliged us.”

“But they are too slow in approving drugs. We gave you fast . . . very fast approval. And no questions asked when you turned in clinical studies.”

“That’s no big deal. In U.S.A. the American drug companies turn in their own scientific studies on humans. They too can lie all they want in their reports. So it’s no big deal if you do that for us.”

“Okay,” said Yuri Timchenko. “You want Bulgaria to cancel the approval? . . . We will arrange for that immediately. The Bulgarians might even say the Ultra drugs are dangerous. Same with Russia and Poland. There are rumors. Bad talk about bad drugs from this chemist Edvard Csáky.”

“We picked you and your people because you made it faster. We didn’t pick you to kidnap and sell the chemist to the jungle monkeys in Columbia.”

“It’s out of our hands. What can we do? . . . It’s not our fault that a crazy and greedy gang in Moscow took him. Edvard Csáky is gone. He’s as good as dead with the Columbians. No one survives with the Columbians. They are a kiss of death. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing.”

“There is something.”

“What something?”

“Rearrange the percentages in Ultra. You take less because you got careless with our chemist.”

“Maybe. I will tell my bosses. How much?”

“We take ninety-eight percent. You and your people in Moscow take two percent and that is too much . . . too generous.”

“Two is not good. We had a deal for fifty percent.”

“Two is better than nothing.”

Yuri Timchenko pointed at the repulsive ogre of Arkady Kovalchuk. “What about his boss? . . . What about Semion Mogilevich? . . . He demands shares in Ultra. He wants to be a stockholder.”

“He gets his commission from you. Not from us.”

“That is not the arrangement. You promised Semion Mogilevich a finder’s fee of five percent for introducing us.”

“Finder’s fee for what? . . . For you losing our chemist to the Columbians?”

Yuri Timchenko laughed loudly. “That is good point.”

The escalating tension in the room slowly faded away. It was for nothing that Yuri Timchenko had once been President Putin’s popular and affable Deputy Minister of Finance.

“Okay,” said the congenial Russian host. “Arkady will tell my friends in Moscow about your proposal. He goes back today. He will also tell Semion Mogilevich about this meeting.”

“We need answers soon.”

“No problem. Arkady flies back to Moscow today in my jet.”

~ ~ ~

The Italians left Timchenko’s library without shaking hands to show their continuing displeasure over the stolen chemist.

Timchenko sat down by his desk. He pushed a button on a sleek laptop and said:

“Did you hear everything?”

“Yes,” said the scratchy voice from Moscow. “The situation is unacceptable.”

“What do you want to do?”

A soft hiss came out of the speaker.

Timchenko waited for an answer. He pictured the deadly frown on his boss. The deputy prime minister also got purple-faced whenever he failed to get his way. Nikolai Bashilova was not known for suffering fools or for acting the part of a gracious loser.

“Listen to me. I want all of my money up here . . . send me all of the cash . . . including the one billion that the Italians paid us for their half of the chemist and Ultra.”

Timchenko’s jaw dropped.

How was he to ship the equivalent of $ 27 billion U.S. dollars in cash to Moscow?

“Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Timchenko. “But it’s going to take time.”

Timchenko thought about the nightmare logistics of shipping a cargo of 20 billion euros. That meant 200 wooden pallets. Each pallet would carry 100 million shrink-wrapped euros. Nikolai Bashilova had made this fortune by turning over state-owned companies to grateful friends. The deputy prime minister received his friends’ appreciation in the form of “
commissions
” on billions of dollars of export sales of oil, natural gas, chemicals, diamonds, minerals, and metals.

“We’re running out of time,” said Nikolai Bashilova. “You yourself told me someone’s been snooping around.”

“It’s someone from FINMA. . . . That’s all that the secretary at U.B.S. would say.”

“You told me that we’d be left in peace after the Italians killed the Interpol translator.”

Timchencko shook his head and said:

“It’s complicated. . . .”

“No,” said Nikolai Bashilova. “It’s insane. . . . Who would’ve thought that those crazy Italians would go after our plant? . . . They must’ve put two and two together and figured out that she knew too much about them. Obviously they’re not that stupid.”

“But they are . . . because she worked with these two cops at Interpol. The two cops are far smarter than the idiot Italians. One cop is from Norway. The other is French. These guys are very
very
clever . . .
sneaky
is the word. And they’re either very lucky or well-connected with some intelligence service . . . or both.”

“Why do you say that?” said Nikolai Bashilova.

“Because they have a knack for knowing the unknowable.”

After a long pause Nikolai Bashilova said:

“I don’t want anyone getting near my money. I want it up here at Sheremetyevo Airport no later than two days from now. Arkady will pick it up on August the seventh.”

“Sir. If I may . . . it would be madness to ship the cash directly from Switzerland to Moscow. A cargo flight from Zurich is always bound to attract attention. You never know if there’s another crooked Colonel Zubkov ready to pilfer your money.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I have someone at Deutsche Bank who’s willing to help me take it out of the vaults at U.B.S. and Credit Suisse . . . they can load it on four trucks tomorrow. . . . I’m sure that Arkady can put together a heavily-armed team that will escort the trucks to Frankfurt Airport.