In the Evil Day (35 page)
‘It’s not simple,’ said Anselm. ‘Money in the Antilles bank goes into Falcontor. Money goes from there to the account of something called Raceberg Credit. Raceberg lends the money moved from Falcontor to five accounts. One is a Dr C.W. Lourens, one account in Johannesburg, one in Jersey.’
Anselm waited. O’Malley blinked, didn’t comment.
‘This is the Lourens of whom Serrano and Kael speak so warmly,’ said Anselm. ‘I presume that. Dangerous drug fiend. Now departed.’
O’Malley looked away, at the window, at the street beyond, at nothing. He had a half-smile, like someone hearing music he liked.
‘Presume away,’ he said.
‘Then there’s a South African company called Ashken Research, also a big receiver, Johannesburg bank account. And a Bruynzeel account in a Brussels bank. Plus a Swiss account, which could belong to anyone.’
Their drinks came, delivered by a dark woman, slim, swift, wearing a waistcoat over a white shirt. Beer from Dresden, pils. They drank.
‘Cowbarn?’ said O’Malley.
He forgot nothing.
Anselm shook his head in pity. ‘This is civilised beer, northern beer.’
‘These banks, they offer much resistance?’
‘Only the Swiss. Total resistance.’
‘Secretive bastards.’
O’Malley drank again, a good inch, and wiped his lips with a paper napkin. ‘A little mannered for me, this drop. But otherwise you’re cooking with gas.’
‘Not all good news. The Johannesburg accounts, no electronic records before 1992. Jersey and Brussels, scanned all paper accounts still active. So we have those Lourens and Bruynzeel transactions.’
‘Yes?’
‘Lourens. Twelve million through the Jersey account. Most of it spent on properties. Four in England, one in France.’
O’Malley held up his right hand. ‘In what name?’
‘In the name of Johanna Lourens.’
O’Malley closed his eyes and smiled, a look of bliss. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘He has two English accounts, that’s been shopping money. About a million, it’s in the report.’
‘The properties. Currently held?’
‘Unless she’s sold and parked the money somewhere else.’
‘What’s the detail?’
‘Enough for you to drive by and see what the doctor’s money bought.’
O’Malley put his head back and made a humming sound through his nose. He brought his chin down and said, ‘No doubt this little tavern would run to a decent bottle of champagne.’
‘Who paid Lourens this kind of money?’
‘Ours not to wonder,’ said O’Malley. ‘I feel the lovely chill of frozen assets coming on. And I taste Krug. Krugish, I feel Krugish. Join me?’
Anselm wasn’t sure how to go on. He looked out of the window, he could see a piece of sky, nicotine-tinted grey. Across the street, a silversmith’s display window glowed like a square-cut jewel. There was a burst of sound and the street was full of brightly coloured children tethered to young women: a nearby kindergarten had released the inmates into the custody of their mothers.
‘I’ll pass for the moment,’ said Anselm. ‘The film Serrano and Kael talk about, the one Lourens found…’
‘Pass? I say again, Krug.’
‘The man who’s got the film, he’s in England. People are trying to kill him.’
O’Malley tilted his head, his poet’s head, ran a hand over the poodle curls. ‘You learned this in your professional capacity, did you?’
He was saying: Do you tell other people about my business?
Anselm said, ‘Do you know what Eleven Seventy means?’
‘Eleven Seventy.’ Not a question, just a repetition.
‘Serrano said Lourens told him someone came to him with a film. Dynamite, he said. He said, tell them it’s Eleven Seventy, they’ll fucking understand. And then Serrano said, that was when he wanted us to go to the Americans.’
‘I thought you had memory problems?’ said O’Malley. He finished his beer, looked into the glass. ‘Sure about the Krug?’
‘A village in Angola. Wiped out. Does that have meaning?’
O’Malley looked up and sighed. ‘Boyo, villages get the chop all the time. Afghanistan, Burundi, Macedonia, Iraq, a man can’t keep track. They go, villages, that is the historical fate of villages. Across the centuries, they go more than they come.’
‘This particular one.’
‘No. It has no meaning.’
Anselm looked into the pale blue eyes and he thought, I don’t know what this answer means. I don’t know what he thinks about anything.
I’ve never seen beyond his eyes.
‘I’ve got to get back,’ Anselm said. ‘Instructions?’
O’Malley tapped the envelope. ‘When I’ve read it. Tell your crack team I’ll be sending around a little something of appreciation if this bears fruit.’
Anselm was getting up.
‘Sit for a moment.’
He sat.
‘I say this
en passant
,’ said O’Malley. He was inserting his car key into the envelope, concentrating.
‘Yes?’
‘Lourens is messy. Even after death.’
He didn’t look up, ran the key through the yellow paper, slowly.
‘These smart boys,’ said O’Malley. ‘They had a lot of money lying around doing nothing, this is pre-Mandela South Africa. So they lent some to Lourens. Well, not to him personally, to a company owned by his wife, it’s registered in the UK. Lourens is a chemist by training and he promised them big returns. Some story about a breakthrough drug delivery system. Well, they got bugger all, then the big white dream-time ended. These boys waited till the new mob, bribed to the earlobes, let them shift their ill-gotten out of the country and they were gone. They’re in Australia now, big in bio-tech, cutting edge in the fight against snoring, hot flushes, jock itch. Also manufacturing, they’re applying the old South African talents to a new labour force, chaining the Asian poor to the wheel.’
‘They sold you the debt.’
‘A fully documented debt. My point is, the Süd-Afs were scared of Lourens. One of the charmers said, this is after we’ve done the deal, bought the debt, he says, good luck and sooner you than me, pal, they call you pal this lot, he says Lourens is poison himself and he’s been in bed with even more dangerous people.’
O’Malley had the report out, looking at the first page. ‘That’s it,’ he said.
‘Thanks for the background.’
Without looking up, O’Malley said, ‘You aren’t a journalist anymore, John. That part of your life is over.’
Anselm walked down fume-acrid Sierichstrasse, thinking about what had been. Once his trade had been going to sad and violent places and telling their stories, telling stories of death and barbarism, selling the stories.
The occupation seemed to have chosen him and it was without glamour or reward. Still, there was a certain dirty-faced dignity and pride in being the person who went where other people didn’t want to go, asked questions they wouldn’t ask, saw things they would rather not see.
But that was gone forever. He didn’t need O’Malley to tell him what he wasn’t.
Kaskis once said of a famous
New York Times
reporter, ‘Covers wars from his hotel room. The dog’s gun-shy.’
Gun-shy, that’s what he was. He should leave Lourens and Niemand and films of Angolan villages alone.
As he walked down the howling street, he rubbed his useless fingers. My dead bits, he thought, the bits visibly and tangibly dead.
INSKIP saw him coming in and raised an arm, the wrist cocked, a pale and bony index finger pointing. Anselm went to his side.
‘I have entered the temple wherein all men’s secrets are known,’ said Inskip. ‘It was a fucking doddle. But Joseph Elias Diab’s file is marked ‘Out to Agency’. Permanently removed.’
‘What agency?’
‘Defense Intelligence Agency.’
‘There endeth the lesson,’ said Anselm.
‘Tilders wants you to call. Soonest. That’s about ten minutes ago. Beate put him through to me, why I cannot think. Carla’s here, she’s the logical person to take your calls. The senior person.’
‘Perhaps Beate favours you, dreams of the touch of your nicotine-scented fingers.’
He went to his office and rang Tilders. The line was strange, an echo, as if Tilders were in a tunnel.
Tilders said, ‘The present matter, there is something…’
‘Yes?’
‘Brussels?’
‘Yes?’
‘That person is dead, a suicide, in his office. A gun. Our party called him, they told him that.’
Bruynzeel dead. Anselm remembered the man’s voice, his wry, weary tone.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Bruynzeel, the account in Serrano’s Credit Raceberg, recipient of large loans.
A suicide.
He got up and found Tilders’ audiotape, DT/HH /31/02, put it in the machine.
Serrano at his hotel, talking to the Bruynzeel of Bruynzeel & Speelman Chemicals in Brussels.
Bruynzeel:
They want what?
Serrano:
Records. Anything. Everything.
Bruynzeel:
You have records?
Serrano:
No.
Bruynzeel:
Well, just shut up. It’s all bluff. These things pass. Just keep your
mouth shut. Trilling’s connections, there’s no problem.
Serrano:
You can talk to him?
Bruynzeel:
I’ll see. Things in the past, no one wants to talk about the past.
Anselm sat, touching the lost fingers, the Beirut fingers. Cold, they were always cold, like Fräulein Einspenner’s fingers when he held them.
Trilling’s connections.
Trilling. Who was Trilling?
Anselm called up the search engine and typed in
trilling
.
There was no shortage of Trillings. The search engine found 21,700 references.
Bruynzeel & Speelman Chemicals.
Lourens is a chemist by training…
O’Malley said that. Perhaps Trilling was in the same line… A long shot. Anselm added
chemicals
to the search
.
Too many.
Try
drugs
.
The first reference said:
Pharmentis Corporation president Donald Trilling tonight defended his
company’s record on the pricing of drugs sold to the third world.
The phone.
Beate, sandpaper voice. ‘A Dr Koenig for you.’
‘Thank you.’
Alex.
‘Is this a bad time?’
‘How can that be?’
‘Can I say…what can I say?’
‘Say I could come around and see you. Or the reverse. Or anything.’
‘Come around and see me, I’ll say that?’
Anselm’s heart lifted and he closed his eyes.
‘That’s fine,’ he said, ‘that’s very good. About when would that be? The time doesn’t matter much to me.’
‘Whenever your work is, well, after work, whenever. I’m at home, I’m here. So. Any time. From now.’
‘From now is fine. I’ll see you soon.’
‘Yes. That’s good.’
‘I’ll just settle the bill here, get going. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
A moment.
‘I could pick you up,’ she said.
‘No, I’ll get a cab, it’s easy.’
‘Fine. See you soon.’
‘Soon.’
He put the phone down.
This elation was stupid, he knew that. He saw her face. The phone rang again. Tilders, the dry voice:
‘Our friends are meeting again. The same place. In an hour.’
Kael and Serrano.
‘I have something new,’ Tilders said. ‘Worth trying perhaps.’
‘Two minutes,’ said Anselm. He rang O’Malley.
‘The person in Brussels is dead,’ Anselm said. ‘Apparent suicide by gunshot. Our friends here are meeting again. We can try.’
There was a pause. Anselm could hear background noises. Perhaps O’Malley was drinking Krug alone. A voice said, ‘British Airways flight 643 to London…’ ‘Sad news,’ said O’Malley. ‘But no thanks. I’m happy to stick with what I’ve got.’
Anselm said goodbye, sat for a moment. The light was going. He rang Tilders.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Go ahead.’
‘It is the same as the first time. I’ll call you.’
‘I’d rather not wait.’
‘Otto will pick you up outside in twenty minutes.’
THEY SAT in the Mercedes, parked at almost exactly the same place as the first time.
‘When?’ said Anselm.
‘Four forty-five,’ said Fat Otto. ‘A few minutes.’
Otto liked to speak English. He had once worked in England, in restaurants.