The Spy I Loved (25 page)

They were
always trying to outdo each other, always trying to stump one
another.

Recognition words were still used in making rendezvous with
strange faces. This was just plain fun, something overlooked in
more typical corporate environments.

“
Smegma, trudfunctate. What’s up, Little F?”

“
It worked like a charm.”

“
Thank you, sir. Any idea who that belongs to?”

“
Does the name Speck ring any bells?”

“
Ah. Yes, it does.”

“
Okay. He has an associate. This man. Jackson. The listed name
is theoretically a tenant in an apartment building owned by a
holding company held in turn by another shell company. It goes on
and on,
but.
He
runs a little tech company, more than one actually. The signal is
encrypted, and we’re working on cracking that as well, but Mister
Jackson, according to phone records, calls Mister Speck at least
once a day and sometimes fifteen or twenty. Speck owns Jackson.
They go way back to his boxing days.”

A trusted
associate, in other words; one who had survived long enough to
prosper. Liam studied the pictures.

“
How did we get all that?”

“
Money talks and bullshit walks, Liam.”

In other
words, he didn’t need to know. Suffice it to say, that it had
probably cost the taxpayers some money.

Speck had
a long, lined, lean face with cold hard eyes. Jackson had a round
face, seamless, even friendly-looking in what was a publicity shot
for one of his companies.

“
Ah.” This was another suggestive bit of information.
“Business as usual then.”

“
Arguably.”

Liam
stood there thinking for a moment.

“
Can you give us the full dossier on both men?”

Ian was
watching from the couch. Not a smoker, he idly picked at the bridge
mixture set out in a bowl from the snack compartment in the
well-stock minibar. There were corn-chips and dips and things like
that.

Liam
winked and continued listening.

“
We’re sending that now.”

The machine gave its cartoon little
bonk
sound and then Liam was opening
the first attachment.

Chapter Seventeen

They sat
at their respective locations and read the file.

Ronnie
Speck was born in East London, August 9, 1963. His father Reginald
was a dealer in scrap gold. This neatly tied in with his pawn shop
and a reputation as a fence. The father had done time in his youth
but somehow steered clear of jail in later years. This was
reputedly due to his acquaintance with criminal types including
known enforcers, knee-cappers and other assorted thugs. His best
friend was a lawyer. It was at about this time that he began
cultivating city politicians and greasing palms among the more
corrupt police officials.

Speck’s
older brother Charles had died in his twenties. It was a robbery
attempt gone wrong. Two civilians and a Bobbie had died along with
Charlie Speck. Surrounded and besieged with a couple of mates in a
secluded farmhouse in Devon, Charlie went down with gun blazing. In
their youth, they had taken up boxing. An uncle on their mother
Isobel’s side had a private boxing club. As young men, their gang
was notorious for violence in a neighborhood that was tough to
begin with. When one of their victims was blinded due to a head
injury, Ronnie went into hiding for five years. All of his
accomplices were picked up within months. Not Ronnie. They never
got a sniff of his whereabouts after the first six months. After a
while, he must have tired of the fugitive life—he had also learned
much. He had obviously done a cost-benefit analysis and come to the
conclusion that if he got straight with the law, new opportunities
would arise and he would soon recoup the loss of time. This implied
a strong business head. After some negotiation via his mouthpiece,
Ronnie Speck had surrendered to police. He was very well dressed in
the press photos, nicely posed pictures, with smiling, cooperative
officers and the man himself. Ronnie obviously liked to cut a
certain style. He went on to plead guilty to aggravated assault and
got eighteen months. The rather large fine, part of a plea
agreement, was paid in full. It was paid on time. He was out in
fourteen months. No parole violations. Considering the subject’s
prior history, this was relatively mild punishment. Pleading guilty
as an accessory, his bodyguard and lifelong confidante Dugald
Moffat, since deceased, had gone in with him just to keep him
safe.

This was
in the opinion of the Organized Crime Intelligence Unit of the
Metropolitan Police.

This was
where his penchant for operating things at a distance first
manifested itself. Ronnie started small and worked his way up
methodically. He was just like any other executive, any other
businessman with a dream. Working from jail, it was hard to pin
anything on him. One or two of Ronnie’s smaller fry had been
intercepted bringing drugs in and cash out. He could have made a
real stake inside and probably had. Until the death of his brother,
he had always been a follower. In order to hold the gang together
and be the boss of it, he had little choice but to go bigger, get
smarter, and increase profits. He’d even reduced the level of
violence. This was only after a particularly vicious turf war with
the Freddie Boys in the early nineties. Ronnie Speck and another
gang, the Tigers, had banded together to wipe them out.

Decimated, the rival groups had held a conference in
Brussels, each gang sending three trusted men. Surrounded by a
larger circle of not-too-subtle gang members situated in other
hotels, (no doubt armed to the teeth) they had,
apparently,
settled their
differences. The one non-negotiable condition, according to a
source whose name had been redacted from this particular document,
was that Ronnie Speck was to be top dog. A truce ensued.

There was
relative peace for three months, and then a fresh massacre of the
remaining Freddie Boys. Those who survived this new purge of the
syndicated gang of Ronnie Speck either left the country or went
into permanent hiding. After a time, the Tigers were no longer
referred to. They had been absorbed, happily enough as it turned
out.

Late in
the eighties, Ronnie Speck, who already owned a small pub and other
properties, investments of ill-gotten gains but a valuable front,
had made a kind of bid for respectability. Like father, like son.
It was about this time when the old man died. His mother Isobel was
quickly placed in an old-age home, where she was clearly bound
anyways. She had Alzheimer’s. Until then care had been in the home.
Care was provided by an expensive little firm that might very well
have been owned by Speck or an associate through intermediaries.
Security for the home of his aging parents had been provided by a
similarly little-known firm, Stilton and Associates. The firm had
been closed out shortly thereafter. This had the look of a standard
tax dodge, paying yourself for services rendered by yourself and to
yourself (or other gang members) and then taking the expense as a
tax write-off for medical care. These expenses were usually well
above the going rate as quoted by legitimate firms. The expenses of
the shell companies would be wildly exaggerated as well for their
own money-laundering purposes. You couldn’t be accused of having
too much money if you could show where it was spent and that you
had earned it through legitimate enterprise. Ronnie had been
growing in sophistication as he went. He was also getting some very
good financial advice. The list of bankers and stockbrokers seen in
his increasingly-jovial company was fairly long, rather impressive
in the case of certain names. Some of the costs were covered by
private insurance and government benefits. The whole thing smelled
of a carefully-managed, very professional but low-level scam. As
for the mother’s property, it was extensive, with many holdings in
her portfolio. This was estimated at about ninety thousand pounds
that was traceable. Ronnie was trustee and the executor when her
time came. There was a lawyer of doubtful reputation, Nigel
Simmonds, listed on the file as well. There was much speculation as
to what Ronnie might have inherited from his mother and father and
how much of that was hidden from the revenue people.

Taking his best building, or rather his best location, he had
renovated it into a chic little watering hole. The place soon
attracted politicians, pop singers, sports figures and stars of
telly and cinema. The prices were outrageous and the entertainment
scandalous but sophisticated according to reports. He became a
celebrity in his own right, magazines eager to photograph him and
his friends. Their glossy promotional photos soon lined the walls
of his club,
Ronnie’s Place.

Ronnie
was getting older and had retired to the Costa del Sol. His wealth
was estimated in the millions, possibly hundreds of millions. It
was said Speck or enterprises controlled by him held stocks in
dozens of major companies ranging from film production, hotels,
candy stores and casinos. They seemed to like any type of operation
where there was either creative accounting, an international market
to play, (always with a high cash flow), or both. Guys like Ronnie
liked a big markup, and a captive audience. Most such information
was gossip. Ronnie himself didn’t talk too much about
it.

Ronnie
Speck wasn’t above the rackets, but he had gotten smart. Now he
merely franchised them to lesser men, including blackmailers, drug
pushers, pimps, prostitutes, the usual enablers and perverts. It
gave him money, power and in some of the more political cases,
control. He’d always had an eye for building a network, the
commentary summarized. It was believed a certain cabinet minister
had committed suicide, unable to pay and unwilling to be exposed.
Going by reputation, it had something to do with child brothels,
although Ronnie himself would have bristled with indignation at the
mere mention of it.

“
No, not me, I’m an honest criminal—”
The sort of crap the press lapped up from certain types in a
kind of Robin Hood mentality.

They
really did love their bad boys.

Ronnie
had generated reams of lurid copy over the years.

This gave
rise to certain other speculations, none of which seemed very
relevant to EMERALD.

There was
more, plenty more on Ronnie Speck and the criminal syndicate that
he had painstakingly built up over more than forty
years.

Ronnie
Speck was very well connected in the arms industry, although
nothing had been proven. The intelligence had paid off in some
smaller seizures of illegal arms shipments, always going through
intermediaries. Watch Ronnie’s friends long enough and sooner or
later, something turned up. The real problem had always been
nabbing the big one.

When one
of their informants got cold feet and tried to bolt, Ronnie’s boys
or someone very much like them had slit his throat and tossed him
into a drainage canal.

His body
was found after an estimated three weeks in the Rhine. The chain of
logic was simple. It was also sheer speculation, but the reasoning
was good. Sixty crates of FN rifles and other light military
equipment slated for shipment to a troubled state in central Africa
had been recovered on that occasion. Ronnie or one of his
subordinates must have gotten wise and started watching the
employees a little more closely. A tramp steamer of Liberian
registry had been forfeited as well. Small potatoes, and yet there
was Speck’s name and face hovering in the background.

Jackson’s
file was similar and just as extensive. They’d done hard time
together, the last big stretch Ronnie did in the eighties. That
often formed a lifetime bond if one didn’t exist before.

The word was that a bruiser named Lenny Wickham had attacked
Speck in the shower with a sharpened toothbrush. Everyone in there
must have seen Jackson grab him from behind. No one could remember
a thing when questioned by investigators. When asked if they were
too frightened to testify, a tactic that sometimes elicited
additional intelligence, (totally off the record of course) the
other prisoners mostly shrugged and said no. All that really meant
was that they were
good
with Ronnie Speck.

They didn’t have a
problem,
with Ronnie Speck.

Jackson,
or somebody else in there that day, had broken Wickham’s neck with
one good twist.

It was an
old and familiar story.

***

The
operation had entered a new phase. They were still being discreet.
The local people were still asking questions and not getting too
many answers. Once the news conferences regarding the satellite
downing were over, the radio stations, regional and national TV had
quickly forgotten all about it. With no fresh news coming out of
the area, it had dropped off the media radar scope.

Ab Jones
had stopped in to see Dale, which he did every so often. They’d
been friends for a lot of years. They were both avid fishermen.
They’d even partnered up a time or two back in their younger days,
following the regional tournament trail. Dale hardly got out
anymore, knowing the local waters so well that he rarely came home
empty-handed. Once he’d had a few beers and caught enough to eat
for a couple of days; that was usually enough for Uncle
Dale.