The Wreckage: A Thriller (48 page)

“You’l each have a mobile phone that has been programmed with the number. The explosions must be synchronized. Two early. One later. The vest on the ground floor must be detonated after the police and fire brigade arrive.” The Courier points at Taj. “You wil detonate the last one.”

“Why me?”

“Because God is giving you an opportunity to prove yourself.”

Taj puts out his cigarette in an ashtray, mashing it methodical y. His eyes go to the open box.

“What about the passports and tickets?”

“You’l have them.”

“And the money?”

“Tomorrow.”

The two men size each other up, their eyes like sharpened sticks. Taj is talking before he thinks. “What if the vests go off accidental y?” The Courier drops a vest at Taj’s feet and stamps down on it with his heel. Once… twice… three times. Then he picks it up and throws it to Taj, who catches it cautiously.

“If you are caught you must detonate the vests. I don’t care if you’re wearing them or not—it’s better to die than rot inside a British prison for the rest of your lives. It wil be fast. You wil not feel a thing.”

25

LONDON

Daniela and Luca have been up al night, fueled by machine coffee and the scent of something big. Both of them feel like colege kids puling an al-nighter, their heads tipped tensely forward, checking facts, comparing figures, picking apart the details of hundreds of transactions.

Often the numbers pose more questions than they answer. Luca has to console and cajole Daniela, pushing her to keep going. She circles the desk, scribbling numbers and tapping a calculator. Luca stares at her in awe. “Whoever said accountants were boring?”

“Are you saying I’m boring?”

“No…”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you’re bril iant, beautiful, intel igent, resourceful and amazing.”

“And boring?”

“You are the sexiest actuary to ever run a ruler over the numbers and I would happily look at your spreadsheet every day.”

“Was that so difficult?” she says.

They’re working at Keith Gooding’s desk while Ruiz dozes between two chairs. Hol y and Joe are sleeping on sofas in the editor’s office. The night sky is giving way to a yel ow glow, and shadows lengthen across rooftops. Ruiz groans and arches his back, swinging his feet to the floor. He rubs his eyes, adjusts his crotch and looks out at the dawn.

Daniela lets out a soft yelp of triumph. Another number has fal en into place. Ruiz glances at the Moleskine notebook in her hands and wonders how something so smal and ordinary and seemingly innocuous could have caused such mayhem—the deaths, the violence, the secrecy.

Keith Gooding has arrived with decent coffee, pastries and juice. Shortly after nine, Daniela and Luca emerge from their huddle. They eat a little and freshen up, before pul ing chairs into a rough circle.

Daniela begins. “You’re probably wondering about the notebook,” she says, holding up a double page. “These are codes.”

“Like account numbers?” asks Ruiz.

“Similar, but not quite the same,” she says. “See this one here: No. 2075. That code belongs to Banco Internacional de Nassau Ltd in the Bahamas. No. 20966 is an account opened by the Banque Assandra in the Cayman Islands.”

“So the codes are given to foreign banks?”

“Banks, companies, corporations, private individuals… They’re non-published.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re secret, off the books. In essence they are ghost accounts with no paperwork, just a number. Clients can transfer funds or buy stock or swap derivatives, but nobody knows who they are and Mersey Fidelity keeps no central record of the trades. Only the number is ever mentioned in the transaction.” Daniela turns her laptop to show Gooding. “Some of the biggest corporations in the UK have taken advantage of the scheme. Look at these names.” The journalist whistles through his teeth. “How many accounts?”

“Thousands.”

“What did Mersey Fidelity get out of it?”

“Handling fees. It used a debit and credit system. Often the actual funds never left Syria or Jordan or Lebanon—they were just credited to the client’s account as a paper transaction.” Daniela taps on the mouse. “With me so far?”

Everybody nods. She points and clicks. A new landscape of information unfolds before them.

“It’s a bril iant system for doing dubious deals. It launders money. Avoids tax. It hides income or the ownership of assets…” Daniela points to a page of the notebook. “Look at this.

There are twenty-three Colombian accounts, thirty-two from Syria, eighteen from Afghanistan and more than a hundred from Russia, but there are just as many from the US, Germany, France, Britain… Anybody could use the system, from legitimate corporations to crime gangs or drug cartels—there’s no way of knowing who owns the accounts.” Daniela cal s up another list of accounts. “We looked at Syria and found twenty-eight ghost accounts linked to the same banks that secretly channeled money to Saddam Hussein. This time the transfers went the other way. Forty-six in the past three years.”

“Going where?” Ruiz asks.

“Into Mersey Fidelity and then out again.”

“How much?”

“Close to three bil ion dol ars.”

Gooding: “How could they keep amounts like that off the books? Surely it has to show up somewhere.”

Daniela points to another note she’s made. “Here is where it gets even more interesting. Most of these non-published accounts were opened in the morning, used for a transaction and closed in the afternoon. The only person who would know about that transaction is the guy who gave the order. The auditor won’t see the account because it existed for less than twenty-four hours.

“Look at this unpublished account, No. 3625. The bank that opened it is in Lugarno, Switzerland, but the final destination of the funds was a company registered in the Bahamas.

See the name: Bel wether Construction. It was the company that won a contract to rebuild Jawad Stadium in Baghdad. The work was never done.”

“Where does Richard North come into this?” asks Ruiz.

“He was the compliance officer,” says Luca. “It was his job to report any suspicious transactions, no matter how smal .”

“Why would he risk keeping a notebook?”

“Someone had to have the codes. My guess is they weren’t digitalized because that creates a record that is difficult to wipe from a computer hard drive.” Ruiz wants to be clear. “So this is money-laundering?”

“Money-laundering, tax evasion, insider trading… on a massive scale,” says Daniela. “The notebook reveals more than two thousand ghost accounts in fifty countries.”

“Can we see where the money was going?” asks Gooding.

Luca takes over. “We can trace the transfers to offshore banks, but we need more time to locate the end-user. I think Richard North was researching some of the transactions.

Elizabeth North found a file that her husband had hidden. We’ve been matching some of the account numbers to the transactions he circled and grouped together. Once money has entered the European banking system it can be wired and withdrawn anywhere without any controls. Members of terrorist groups can be using ATM machines to access cash, just like the 9/11 hijackers did. It was the same in Bali and Madrid before the bombings.

“Look at this,” Luca points to the computer screen. “North identified a bank in Madrid and another in Bali. They’re the same banks the bombers withdrew funds from.”

“Are they the same accounts?” asks Gooding.

“That’s what we need to find out. We have to trace each transaction.”

“Which could take us months.”

Hol y has woken and come looking for food. Ignoring the conversation, she picks up a croissant and pul s it apart with her fingers. Pastry sticks to her nails and she sucks them clean, almost purring like a cat.

She’s watching the TV above her head, Sky News, a Bambi-eyed newsreader sternly reading an autocue. The headlines are running as a banner across the bottom of the screen.

“This is huge,” says Gooding. “Money-laundering. Tax avoidance. Terrorism. Mersey Fidelity was being touted as the beacon of the new banking system. It’s supposed to provide the Bank of England with a blueprint for new banking laws.” He looks at Luca. “Who knew at the bank?”

“It could go right to the top.”

“They’l deny it.”

“Or destroy any incriminating evidence.”

“We can’t publish this without independent verification. We need someone from Mersey Fidelity to go on the record.”

“Someone senior.”

Ruiz marvels at the strange light in both the journalists’ eyes, like they’ve discovered the Holy Grail or stumbled upon a fortune in gold.

“Maybe we should think about this more careful y,” he says, letting his fingertips rest lightly on the pages of the notebook. “You don’t have the resources to investigate something like this properly. The police can get warrants, tap phones and seize documents. SOCA specializes in this sort of thing.” Gooding scoffs. “We’re not just handing this over to the police.”

“Why not?”

“Because our exclusive won’t be exclusive anymore.”

“You’re worried about a story.”

“In case you haven’t noticed—this is a newspaper office.”

“This isn’t just about the bank or a few big corporations,” says Ruiz. “This notebook could expose organized crime gangs, terror groups, drug cartels… It’s about terrorist funding. It’s about the end-user. It’s about thousands of transactions, every one of them a possible prosecution.”

Gooding throws up his hands. “You know it doesn’t work like that. The CPS wil be happy with a handful of convictions. I say we publish first and then hand the dossier to police.

Scotland Yard can share it with Interpol, the Iraqis, the Americans—it won’t matter by then.”

“It wil matter if the money disappears,” says Ruiz. “It wil matter if Yahya Maluk and Mohammed Ibrahim flee the country and can’t be extradited back here. Ibrahim is a wanted war criminal. He should be arrested. Prosecuted.”

Daniela looks at Luca. “He’s got a point. If you report this now they’l go to ground. Cover their tracks. Remember how this started. You were fol owing the money.” She’s talking about Baghdad. The insurgency. Someone is funding them.

Luca has been silent through the argument. It can’t be a choice of one thing or the other. There has to be common ground.

“We make copies of everything. We hand everything to SOCA, but we keep investigating.”

Gooding wants to continue arguing. Hol y interrupts him. She’s pointing at the TV screen, which has footage of police divers tumbling backwards from Zodiacs. A photograph appears of Richard North. A banner headline runs across the bottom of the screen. Some stories don’t need sound.

26

LUTON

Taj is sitting at the smal kitchen table pushing scrambled eggs around a plate. He looks at Aisha’s hips moving beneath her long skirt as she goes about her chores. She put on weight during her pregnancy; hasn’t lost it al , but he rarely sees her eat anything.

Barefoot and bare-chested, his jeans hang low on his hips.

“You should put on a shirt before you eat,” she says.

Taj sniffs and says, “Fine,” meaning something else. He fiddles with his watchband, opening and closing the clasp.

“You’re very quiet. Is everything OK?” she asks.

He inhales. Exhales. “I have to go away for a while.”

“Is it about that job? Why won’t you tel me what it is?”

“It’s in Pakistan.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to Pakistan for a few months.”

She looks at him incredulously. “Why?”

“Work.”

“What work?”

He makes a line on the tablecloth with a butter knife and wets his lips with his tongue.

“First I got to do something in London, then I fly out.”

“When?”

“I’m leaving tonight.”

“You can’t just leave, Taj. Not without tel ing me.”

“I
am
tel ing you.”

“But we haven’t talked about it. What am I supposed to do?”

Taj drives the handle of the knife into the center of the plate with his fist. It smashes, spraying eggs and baked beans on the wal .

“This is
my
business,” he yel s. “This is
me
looking after
my
family. You never stop wanting stuff. That baby never stops wanting stuff.”

“I never ask you for anything, Taj.”

“I babysit, don’t I? A grown man shouldn’t have to do that shit.”

She can see he’s angry. Hurt. She knows not to test his temper, but she wants to understand. For months he has been like this. Bitter. Resentful. Distant. Ever since his father died, ever since he lost his job. Mr. Farouk at the Laundromat said that Taj has stopped going to the mosque on Fridays.

The baked beans are leaking down the wal and on to the skirting board.

“This has something to do with that man, doesn’t it?”

Taj doesn’t answer. Aisha looks at the floor.

“What about Syd and Rafiq?”

“They are coming too. We’l be together. In a few months I’l send word to you. Money. Passports. You can join us.”

“In Pakistan?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to live in Pakistan. I want to live here.”

Taj pushes back his chair and goes to the bedroom where he takes an old suitcase from the top of a wardrobe and begins packing.

“What is it, Taj? We have to talk about this.”

“You’l do as I say because I’m your husband.”

“Why can’t you get a job here?”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’m sick of this country, sick of begging, sick of being made to feel like a scrounger or a criminal.”

“Most people don’t treat us like that.”

“We’re discriminated against.”

“We’re just poor.”

“What about my father, eh? He died because they discriminated against him.”

“He died of heart disease.”

“He was more than a year on that waiting list. He could have had a new heart, but they gave it to some white woman.”

“She had three young children.”

“She wasn’t on the list as long as he was.”

Taj is throwing socks and underwear into the bag, T-shirts, an extra pair of jeans. Aisha is standing in the doorway, her apron bunched in her fists. She can see his muscles flexing on either side of his spine.