The Clayton Account (10 page)

But the memories of youth refused to fade. New England summers, wind on canvas in Nantucket Bay, art collections in Manhattan brownstones; waking up each morning with not a care in the world. So he leaned on Tom. His friend became his crutch and Jeff drew comfort from Tom’s wisdom. Tom Clayton, close buddy, financial whiz. When Tom gambled, Jeff joined him, certain that the outcome would provide him with the means to regain his rightful place in American society.

But then things turned sour and Jeff started to crack. Tom felt sorry for him – he had, after all, lost all his savings – but angry at the same time. Jeff was supposed to be a banker. He had known the risks all along. Tom had no option, for his own sake, than to make good Taurus’ losses, but one way or another Jeff would have to pay. Three and a half million is not chicken feed. That’s the way it goes.

Before leaving the bank, Tom put a call through to Dick Sweeney. He was told that the lawyer was out of the country, expected back on Monday.

‘Nothing urgent,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll call him then.’ Then he phoned Caroline, told her he would be leaving shortly and how about drinks, dinner and then a review of her earlier promises?

Le Caprice at eight, they agreed. Caroline would book the table.

When Tom got to St James, his wife was already there, sitting at the crowded bar sipping vintage Veuve Clicquot. She smiled radiantly and he kissed her cheek.

‘Did you really get the money?’ she murmured eagerly, leaning towards her husband as he edged for space along the crowded bar.

‘Hello, Mr Clayton.’ The manager approached them. ‘Sorry about the delay. As I told Mrs Clayton, we’ll find you a table shortly. Please let me offer you a drink.’

Tom smiled gratefully and nodded towards Caroline’s glass: ‘Same, please.’

Tom and Caroline loved Le Caprice. It had been the venue of their first night out after that fateful evening at Annabel’s. There was a certain buzz about the place that embodied the excitement of London life.

‘Well?’ persisted Caroline, above the din of the crowded restaurant.

People kept coming in adding to the bustle of the bar area. Waiters rushed in and out of the main restaurant as one by one the tables filled.

‘I have the cash in Zurich right now.’

‘How much?’

‘Enough to buy the house, for openers,’ he replied smiling.

‘I love your grandad!’ she exclaimed, unabashedly putting her arms around his neck and kissing him hard on the lips. Over her shoulder he could see the wandering eyes of some of the patrons. Caroline was stunning by any standards, but sitting on a bar stool with an already short dress riding higher as she raised her arms to hug him, the sight was attention-grabbing. Tom returned the stares, amiably enough but the message was clear:
Mind your own business
.

Which they did, reluctantly.

‘There’s more, in fact,’ Tom told her with feigned seriousness.

‘More what? Money?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘More to it all … than I thought. But,’ he smiled at her again and took her hand firmly, ‘let’s talk about that later. First tell me about the house. Did you call them?’

She did not require much prompting on that subject. Yes, she had indeed telephoned the agents and they had arranged a viewing for late Saturday morning. Perhaps they could go with the children? Give nanny the day off and have lunch in a Cotswolds inn? By the time Caroline finished describing the day she had planned, the champagne bottle was empty and, on cue, their table materialized.

Tom was starving. He had been so tense earlier in the day that he had turned down the airline lunch tray. His last meal had been breakfast; since then he had nothing but the Savoy bourbon and two more on the plane. He commented on the menu but Caroline smiled and said, ‘Light food, no garlic,’ without looking up from hers.

So he ordered a mozzarella and tomato salad, poached Dover sole – he emphasized ‘poached’ for her benefit as the unsuspecting waiter took the order – and a bottle of ’85 Caillou.

‘Me too,’ she said, then grinned. They spoke about the house, and the children, and the ways they would divide their time between London and the country. They ate with joy and anticipation. As their bill was prepared and settled, Tom ordered a large cognac while Caroline finished the wine. The high alcohol intake had no effect on him. Tom Clayton was riding high.

Outside the restaurant they glided, through a moment of wind and cold rain, into a waiting taxi.

Caroline cuddled up to her husband.

‘Cold?’ he asked.

‘My bum is cold,’ she grunted into his lapel.

‘That’s because you’re English,’ he joked.

‘No, it’s because I’m not wearing tights, like any sensible woman would.’ She looked at him wickedly. ‘Stockings,’ she said.

‘Ah, yes. Well …’ He automatically glanced towards the driver.

‘To please a certain American pervert I could name.’

The house was quiet as they entered. Only the hallway light was on. Caroline started up the stairs but before she had a chance to start her kicking-off-the-shoes ritual Tom caught up with her, unzipped her dress and let it fall on the stairs. Then put his arms around her and cupped her breasts, pulling her tight towards him and kissing the side of her neck.

‘Hi, Mum.’

They both looked up and saw their elder son standing at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas.

‘What are you doing up at this hour, Patrick?’ his mother asked sternly.

‘I heard you come in.’

‘Get back to bed right now, young man,’ said Tom, then added soothingly: ‘I’ll come and tuck you in later.’

Patrick went back to his room and waited until he had heard his parents door close before waking up his brother.

‘What is it?’ asked the younger boy.

‘I just caught Mum and Dad
doing
it,’ said Patrick conspiratorially.

‘
Doing
it? How? Where?’

‘On the staircase!’

‘Wow. But you said they did it in
bed
.’

‘Yes, well,’ reflected Patrick, ‘I’ll have to look into this.’

Friday at the office was particularly uneventful except that Tom could not take his mind off the Zurich bank account. The previous night he and Caroline had made love and forgotten about the children and the money, then fallen asleep in each other’s arms – content, at peace, and slightly numbed by the alcohol. He had never got round to
mentioning
the extent of his windfall or to voicing his anxieties.

It had all been too easy.

While at UCB he had concentrated his effort on getting his grandfather’s funds. When the figure was announced, he took his good fortune at face value and left as soon as prudently possible. Now, in the cold light of day a thousand miles away, the doubts started gnawing at him again. He was puzzled on three counts. The amount was far too much, and no degree of bank investment could have produced forty-three million out of a mere half. Then there was Ackermann. Throughout the meeting he had talked as if he was dealing with an active account, not a dormant one. Could his father have continued with his own father’s investments? It was too late to ask him now. And finally, the Irish connection. What were the regular remittances that his grandfather’s diary recorded?

Was the money someone else’s?

He would have to think some more and then decide. But first the Taurus business. The five million should turn up at any moment and that in itself would be a good indication that no problems had cropped up in Zurich.

At 11.28 the inward payment records lifted Tom’s heart:
Credit USD 5,000,000, Taurus AG
.

The hole was covered. From now on the sun wouldn’t stop shining. That single fact, a five-million-dollar payment, on Tom’s instructions and from his own account, crystallized in his mind the irrefutable reality that he was indeed a wealthy man. He decided to take the rest of the day off. He left the bank at 2 p.m., London time, forty minutes before the reversal of the transfer showed on screen. Had he moved the money into the Taurus account, the reversal would not have been possible. But he did not. He wished
to
keep it at arm’s length: let some clerk make the payment in due course.

At that point it would also have been sensible for Tom to telephone Langland and put him out of his misery. But Clayton was too immersed in his affairs to make the call. That was a mistake, for at that very moment Jeff was close to the end of his tether, trying desperately to rationalize what had happened and somehow to divorce himself from the consequences. By the time his working day was over, Langland had succumbed to wishful thinking. He had only been an unwitting pawn in Clayton’s game, he felt, and as he made his way home he resolved to come clean with the bank. They would have to believe he had no part of the second deal, the one that needed settling, and he would at least be able to keep his job. He was sure of that. In fact, his superiors might even thank him.

Jeremiah ‘Red’ Harper pulled the top off a Labatts Ice and drank from the bottle. From his south-facing twenty-third-floor window he had a magnificent view of Biscayne Bay, but his eyes habitually focused on the horizon. Somewhere out there, he knew, was Cuba. And beyond it, Colombia. Along the 900 or so miles between the two subcontinents lay myriad staging points, constantly altered to minimize the chances of detection, as the enemy moved their produce. Sometimes it followed tortuous routes. Four thousand miles south to Buenos Aires, six thousand miles north-east to Madrid, then transported back across the Atlantic by a fresh set of mules. All to get a kilo here, ten kilos there, past US Customs. Other times it went through Mexico, then across to Texas or California. The Caribbean islands were the worst, like a sieve letting all the cocaine through. They would sail it out of Cartagena on small boats, take it up to the Bahamas, Virgins, Turks & Caicos,
wherever
. Then on to another boat, and another at sea, linking up with fishing boats out of US waters for the day, until eventually it made it to Florida.

The Coast Guard scored its successes.

They monitored air and ocean movements, their aircraft swooping down to snoop on any suspect deep-sea rendezvous. But it was no more than a war of attrition, a hassling action. Complete victory was not possible over a million square miles of immediate ocean, dotted with thousands of islands and scores of jurisdictions.

Harper knew.

He had been out there, posted to the islands a few months at a time. Kissing up to local officials who assured him of all the help he should ever want and who then covered their eyes and ears. Wise monkeys to a man. Back home he could put the IRS on them, get them to account for their lifestyle. Abroad, they knew he knew, and vice versa. And nothing ever happened. When he intercepted a load, they congratulated him, then asked Uncle Sam for more aid. And when the shipments got through, they sympathized and got richer.

Big money bought acquiescence.

The only real strides were made elsewhere, when Harper’s people were able to intercept the money trail, confiscate a few million dollars in one go, or put the middlemen in situations where they could not pay their bills. Then the system took care of them: one link removed as rough justice did its job. And yet, each time the sword came down, the hydra grew another head. Sometimes Harper felt the only way out was to legalize narcotics. At least the crime would stop. And at all levels. From the big drug lords in South America to the downtown mugger in LA.

In Washington, Harper’s chiefs tried to shake the
government
into action. To a degree something had been done but the results fell short of expectations. They put pressure on Colombia, impeded exports, and denied visas to its people. But Latin American governments argued back. Sanctions only punished the innocent, they reasoned, and created economic crises that hurt the currency and gave credence to left-wing extremists. They maintained, not without reason, that the drug barons of Colombia were only half the problem. The importers, distributors and consumers Stateside were most definitely the other half. Hit
them
, they pleaded, and Washington had been forced to change tack. So America helped with money and the Latins assisted, sometimes with information, other times with troops, as best they could.

Harper’s operation was small by DEA standards and run on a limited budget with just half a dozen men. Medellín was no longer a prime target. Years ago, when the Escobars and Gaviria had been supremos in the Cartel, the industrial town on the River Porce had been the focus of US attention. When the thugs ran riot in the city, the Colombians had been forced to act. Perhaps if the drug barons had run their business with some order they would still be there today. At one point Medellín’s cocaine exports were equivalent, in dollar value, to twice Colombia’s other exports combined. But it had been the domestic lawlessness that finished Medellín’s hegemony.

Now history was repeating itself: two hundred miles further south, three thousand feet up the Cauca Valley, along the banks of the Cali River. The old colonial city, with a pedigree that went back to 1536, had been one of Colombia’s most important cultural and commercial centres until the cocaine merchants moved in. They took over the drug business with a gusto that made Medellín’s recent history seem pale by comparison. No longer
bothering
with surreptitious little shipments, they flew their own freighters, Boeing 727s, loaded to the gunwales with cocaine. Up they went into the night. North to Mexicali, just outside US radar range. Then they transloaded the cargo to smaller fleets for northern Mexican destinations.

Finally the mules, human mules, moved the cargo across the border.

The authorities, Colombian and American, turned their attention to Cali, but Harper kept his eyes fixed on Medellín. Morales was clever, educated, discreet. He controlled his men with an iron fist and dealt with affronts to the community in a way the courts would not have dared. He was a populist criminal and ten times more dangerous because of it, for his activities disturbed no one locally, just added prosperity to the region. His kind, to Harper, was the most menacing of all.