The Clayton Account (43 page)

Speer had gone to Munich in November and met with high-ranking officers of Dresdner Bank. After many years overseas, during which time he had built a substantial asset base in the Americas, he told them, he was now selling up and coming home. He had some 50 million cash at his disposal – dollars, he clarified – for a good solid investment, long-term. Speer asked Dresdner to look for such an opportunity, preferably in insurance, shipping or finance. Within thirty days they had come back to him, offering a once-in-a-lifetime possibility that would suit a diligent and capable gentleman like himself.

Now he had come home to complete the purchase. He paused by the Neues Rathaus and looked up at the high Gothic tower. Two minutes to eleven; he would wait. On the hour, the sound of a glockenspiel filled the square and Speer derived personal joy from the admiring foreign faces paying tribute. He resumed his stroll down Burgenstrasse towards the Alter Hof. The old castle’s courtyard was an
island
of serenity punctuated by the sound of splashing fountains. For an instant Speer felt as if the thirteenth-century Wittelsbacher Dukes were still at home. Through the archway, past the Mint, he reached busy Maximilianstrasse and turned right, his thoughts turning for a moment to distant Costa Rica.

He had left his junior partner to look after the practice. The junior was competent and hard-working; the law office would prosper under his charge. His brief would be to continue courting South American big money, but well clear of Colombia. Smuggled currency, negociados, anything marginally legal, but no more drugs. In time Speer would visit, to enjoy life in the sun, and cavort awhile with the good-time girls – perhaps when he tired of long winters, but not now. Now a new life, a life his own father would have been proud of, awaited Heinrich Speer in Bavaria.

He passed the imposing Corinthian columns of the Opera House and turned left into a white-shrouded Marstallplatz, then walked on to number 7, his heartbeat rising with each step. He stood outside and stared at the facade for a delicious moment, the small, immaculate, elegant entrance to the Huber Bank.

Old Huber sat at the head of the table and rose to greet Doktor Speer. The others, three directors – like Huber, of advanced age – and legal advisors for both parties, greeted him effusively. Today’s meeting was a mere formality.

Joachim Huber had established the private bank in 1622. Over the centuries his descendants had managed it with care, financing merchants in Bruges and Venice, raising funds to fight the many wars and in the process acquiring a respectable clientele. These days, however, the bank was no more than a repository for the Bavarian titled classes,
a
mere shadow of its past. The last war had seen many of Huber’s clients disappear through the gates of Dachau.

Friedrich Huber had remained a bachelor to the autumn of his life and had only recently married a younger wife, an impoverished sixty-year-old lady of unquestionable pedigree. Baron Freddy wished to spend what time was left him in savouring his belated taste of love, free of duties, in the sun, at the house on the Riviera that had been his wedding present to his wife. The bank’s asset value was at best 35 million but its good name had a price too. Dr Speer had offered 50 million and Baron Freddy had accepted gratefully as he thought of Cap Ferrat.

The papers were signed and the glasses of sekt were poured. Each man took a polite sip. As he wet his lips, Speer shaped a spurious word of thanks to Carlos Alberto Morales, the fool who thought one could deal in drugs respectably and discovered his mistake too late to keep even his own life.

The advisors soon departed, their fees earned, in pursuit of new opportunities, and Freddy Huber took Speer up the marble staircase to his office. Politely he pointed at the chair behind the Louis XIII desk but Speer shook his head and smiled. Tomorrow would do fine. Now he just wanted to look out of the window, at the ode to life that was the Hofgarten, soul of Munich, nature’s banquet for Speer’s senses for the rest of his working life.

An ocean away, in New York City, accountants and fraud experts from the FBI and SEC sifted through the Banker’s records. In time they would recover data from hard disks and work their way back to Salazar’s customers.

But one thing they would never find would be the forty-three accounts that ghosts had opened in as many branches of Swiss banks, from the shores of Lake Geneva to the
heights
of St Gothard. All in all they contained over $120 million dollars, which their rightful owners would never claim back.

By the time the investigators finished searching Salazar & Co’s premises, it was two in the morning in Switzerland and the Gnomes of Zurich were asleep.

Business on the last Monday in February opened with the Swiss franc at 2.19 to the pound. Director Doktor Ulm had earned his bank almost $200 million in sixteen days. His colleagues in the supervisory board applauded themselves for having chosen him, and as Ulm later sat in his own office, a few highly placed officials in the know passed by and proffered congratulations. UCB did of course take the profits and rid itself of all the contracts. It surprised Ulm to see that Clayton, though indisputably $40 million richer, did not call to cash his. Ulm told Ackermann to remain alert. The same rules still applied but, his own mind now released from pressures, Ulm decided that he might treat himself and Frau Ulm to a week in Saint Moritz.

Tom Clayton too was quite ecstatic, but remained unmesmerized by his success. He did not join the others in profit-taking; he would wait until the end. He had six days left to March. On Tuesday sterling rallied and closed at 2.21. The mistake cost his bank $10 million and Tom personally nearly three.

On Wednesday, before the markets shut down in Zurich, Thomas Clayton closed both books. His employers had made a profit of $153 million in three months. Tom’s benefit from his own transactions stood at $39,726,027, which, when added to his other account balances, totalled in excess of $82 million.

He called Ackermann with a new instruction, to be confirmed later in the day by fax: he was to make an immediate payment of exactly $43 million to a numbered
account
held in Geneva at the Allied Irish Bank. Four days early, and in breach of Clayton’s Fourth Rule of Banking:
Never pay a bill too soon; between now and its due date, you could die
.

The remaining $39 million were, as always, to be retained by the United Credit Bank. The interest rate of 4.25 per cent was renewed. That would yield 1.3 million a year: Grinholm’s kind of money.

Tom typed out his resignation letter – subject to payment of last year’s bonus – and delivered it to his ex-employers by hand.

Later that evening, alone again in Derivatives, Grinholm dropped Tom’s letter in a filing tray and looked at his PC monitor with satisfaction. He removed Tom Clayton’s name from the half-billion trade and substituted his own. While the files were updated automatically he called up Taurus and closed their account. In the morning a cheque for their remaining balance would be sent to their address in Liechtenstein.

Grinholm walked over to his fridge and selected a vintage Krug. As the bubbles soared in his glass he elaborately prepared his best Havana and lit it slowly with an extra-long match. After savouring a few puffs he called up Clayton’s personnel file. He approved an electronic transfer for $650,000, value-date yesterday, and then, under today’s date, entered ‘Resigned’.

The computer did the rest.

System access passwords were cancelled, termination papers – earnings statement, IRS, pension fund – would be dealt with automatically. By the time the champagne was finished and Hal Grinholm left the august temple of Mammon for the night, Thomas Clayton was a fading shadow in its history.

* * *

Earlier, Hector Perez had watched Tom leave the bank. This was just after he handed in his resignation. For a week the Cuban had been trailing Clayton, but so far had been frustrated by his target’s habits. Tom moved around the West End mostly by taxi. Invariably he would be collected from his doorstep by a black cab and be dropped at his destination – a shop, a restaurant – leaving Perez no room to act. The killer wanted either total seclusion or some very crowded place. So far Tom had offered him no chance.

On those days when Tom went to the City, he travelled by Underground. Perez concluded that would afford the best opportunity – especially at rush hour, when the crowds were thick and the trains packed.

Upon arriving in London, Perez had gone shopping and soon found what he wanted in a shop near Piccadilly Circus that sold all kinds of so-called sporting weapons: air pistols, rifles, crossbows, and an unbelievable assortment of hunting knives. Perez picked a 7-inch stiletto, Toledo steel, strong and light. Elsewhere he purchased an industrial blade sharpener and in the evenings, sitting in his hotel and dreaming of getting back to Cuba, he patiently sharpened both sides of the blade until he could shave with it and thread its point through a needle’s eye. He then filed two exact grooves around the thin waist, where the handle joined the blade. Each day, as he sought his opportunity, he carried the stiletto in his pocket, in a sheath he had fashioned from newspaper and Scotch tape. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the week had passed without joy; each day Clayton dashed in and out of his Kensington house and Perez followed him patiently. But today the timing was just right. Tom came out of the bank at five-twenty and joined the City crowds.

Perez walked down into Bank station just a few steps behind. He had observed that Clayton always stood back
as
the train came. He would let others go in first, then board, preferably last. Perez had also noted that people leaving the train made straight for the escalators. No one ever looked back. He would drive the knife straight through the man’s back, right of the spinal column, at an angle, through the lung and into the heart, then push him into the train and snap the handle off the blade, let the doors begin to close and step back. They would be halfway to the next stop, packed like sardines, before anyone noticed a dead man.

The platform was suitably crowded as Perez stood behind Clayton waiting for the train to come. As it pulled into the station, the doors hissed open and the waiting crowd grudgingly allowed arriving passengers to disembark. Perez put himself into position, extracted the stiletto and held the handle and sheath with both hands behind his back. As the man in front of Clayton stepped on to the train, Perez pulled the paper sheath free and let it drop to the ground, then placed himself almost touching Clayton and drew his right arm, blade pointing forward, slightly back. He pushed a bit with his right shoulder, as was normal at peak travel time, then picked the precise entry point and tensed himself to shove.

But his arm would not move. He looked at it in disbelief and was struggling to order it forward as the poison overcame him and his vision clouded. Perez thought he saw a figure jump past him into the train – just before he died.

Riordan Murphy thrust himself into the carriage as the door closed. He carefully slipped the vial of curare, needle first, into his right pocket, which was aluminium-lined. Then he stood there quietly, his face a few inches from Clayton, who was unaware that Murphy had just saved his life.

For nearly three months he had been following Clayton; Murphy and a team of five.

‘Shield him until March 2nd,’ Sean had said. ‘Then you will either come home or kill him. You’ll be told at the time.’

With only three days remaining, Murphy braced himself for action. Then on the penultimate day the message came from Dublin:

All is well. Come home. He is one of us
.

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Copyright © Bill Vidal 2008

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