Money Farm

by Clif Miller

  Chapter 12

  By the time Harry left Peter and Angelique’s apartment the bottle of whisky was low and Peter had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What Harry had outlined seemed the stuff of an incredible and sinister mind.

  Peter had already thought of the possibility of calling a halt. He could, for example, turn state’s evidence against Harry. But what did he have on the man? And how long was the reach of George Rosenthahl and his associates? His thoughts had even turned to murder but he did not think he had what it took to take someone else’s life. Peter longed for the opportunity to just sit down and talk it over with Jim, but he did not want Jim to have the worry. He knew also that merely talking it over with Jim would not solve his dilemma.

  In essence, the consortium’s plan was to take on one of the major supermarket chains by creating mayhem with their food safety and security through direct sabotage in the retail outlets. Harry had spelled out to Peter that he was to start by taking advantage of the new screw tops on liquor bottles at liquor outlets. He would discreetly open bottles and add a capsule containing a very active anaerobic bacterium that would turn the liquor sour, make it stink like a sewer and result in product recalls. The screw top lids would be replaced by a clever metal overlay that only a trained eye could detect. In the rush of traffic in the major liquor stores the vast majority of the tampered bottles would be sold before the problem alert caused the stores to be vigilant for possible tampering. Peter would need first to develop a good eye for the range and view of security cameras. They then discussed a sequence of targets for attack that would reach a point where shoppers lost trust in the particular supermarket chain and as soon as this happened the company would be ripe for the plucking, so to speak.

  “I don’t believe it will work” Peter had said.

  “It’s not your call Peter” Harry replied. “When George makes up his mind there’s no changing it.”

  Peter suggested that if George was so sure it would work he should trial it in the States where there was much greater number of supermarkets.

  “You’re losing the plot Peter” Harry replied. “Nowhere else in the world is there such a duopoly in food retailing as in Australia and certainly these companies have a nice big spread to their shareholder registers. Retail investors are the ones we are going to panic into selling their shares. ‘Mum and Dad’ shareholders will drop their bundle in a trice if they think there’s a concerted attack underway, and there’s plenty of them. That’s what George has had me researching here for six months now.”

  “What about the fact that these companies have insurance for such eventualities?” asked Peter.

  “We don’t have all the facts but it might come down to whether the tampering can be regarded as ‘terrorism’ or not, in which case they are not covered. In any event, people don’t stop to consider these issues, and the companies are not going to come out and say ‘Oh, it’s alright, we’ve got insurance cover’ now are they?” Harry explained.

  “I guess not” said Peter, feeling once again just how trapped he was.

  The final nail was driven home when Harry told Peter that he would be taking his holidays and shadowing Peter as an observer during the forthcoming operation.

  “I thought you were keen to keep your hands clean?” said Peter wondering why the change.

  “I am” said Harry. “I’ll be on hand to offer any advice and render assistance from the consortium, that’s all” he said. “We’ve spent a great deal of time preparing the plan and we want it carried out efficiently with no slip ups. If it comes to anything that looks like they might be on to you I may have to cause a diversion to allow you to escape. Under no circumstances are you to speak with me or acknowledge that you know me during the fieldwork. Understood?”

  “Yes” said Peter, knowing that Harry was in deadly earnest.

  Harry said that he would be back the following Monday with details of targets, times, travel arrangements and the necessary materials to fix up the attack.

  Peter contemplated his odds should he decide to ‘blow the whistle’ and have Harry arrested, particularly while carrying some extremely suspect items. In the end however, reality prevailed; his own past deeds would still lead to at least a considerable stint at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

  When Harry arrived on the following Monday he had a hired vehicle and he entered the apartment bringing a satchel and a small cardboard package. The trio spent the next hour and a half going over the details of a plan that had all the signs of meticulous preparation.

  Peter was given an unopened but empty screw top wine bottle. He looked at Harry and realized that this was the first exercise.

  “Open the bottle Peter” Harry said.

  Peter twisted the seal and the screw cap separated from the metal foil surrounding the neck of the bottle.

  “Now replace the cap tightly Peter” said Harry.

  Peter complied.

  “What do you notice now?” Harry said.

  “It’s all crinkled and broken around the cap” said Peter.

  Harry then opened the cardboard box he had brought with him and produced a plastic sleeve-like apparatus that Peter noticed he palmed so that it was not visible, and a pre-folded and tapered tube of metal foil matching the torn metal foil of the bottle top. Inside the metal tube was a thin circular cap that would act as a stopper when the tube was placed over the neck of a bottle. Inserting the foil into the plastic device he now handed the loaded sealing tool to Peter and said:

  “Replace the cap on the bottle.”

  Peter took the old cap and torn foil off the bottle and then pushed the plastic holder over the neck of the bottle, felt the stopper end engage the top of the neck and then by twisting the tool produced a sealed metal cap that was in all respects indistinguishable from the original.

  “Four seconds Peter” said Harry. “Practice on this bottle until you get it right.”

  Harry had a seemingly endless supply of the foil sleeves and caps, and Peter wrecked a good many until he had the method as good as needed to do the task in about the required time.

  “The security cameras will pick it up” said Peter, trying to think ahead.

  “Not when you reach inside a carton to take the cap and foil off a bottle. Then again reach in and replace that cap and foil. The cameras are not that good” replied Harry.

  Peter knew that it could be done. In fact he knew of other ways to do it. There were places he could simply bend down behind pallet loads of beer slabs and change a bottle over in five seconds while he was doing up a shoe lace. Cameras would not pick it up he was sure.

  “So how do we deliver the bacterium capsule?” he asked.

  “I’ve had our mutual friend make up some capsules. Here” said Harry, placing two white cardboard packets in front of Peter. “Each capsule will be enough to make a standard bottle of liquor turn putrid in about an hour.”

  “What if someone drinks the wine before then?” asked Peter.

  “They’ll get a stomach ache, nothing more” said Harry, although he was not entirely certain.

  Peter then asked about the plan of attack and Harry said that they would start in Melbourne and move across to Adelaide with the liquor project then switch to the food project.

  “Food project?” winced Peter, dreading what was to come.

  “Oh, we’re very serious about this Peter. We have to upset the company from one end of the country to the other. We also have to keep on the move and not visit the same pace twice. In fact, because they might try tracing every store visitor from security cameras you will be changing your appearance each time you visit a store. That’s why you’ll be driving a motor home. You’ll be a casual visitor of the type known as ‘gray nomad’. You’ll have all you need on board” Harry explained.

  “A hired motor home?” asked Peter.

  “No, you’d be too easy to trace from rental company records. We’ll supply a vehicle. You will be the owner and driver at all times. You and your wife are
going on holidays. Just think, you’ll be able to see parts of the country you probably haven’t visited before” Harry explained.

  “And you’ll be not far away at all times?” said Peter.

  “Yes” said Harry “but you won’t acknowledge or recognize me. If you need to consult with me in the evenings you will be able to call me and I’ll be there within the hour. Equally, if I wish to communicate I’ll bump into you somewhere and start by apologizing then we’ll all get along happily until we decide where to meet.”

  “Couldn’t they trace the vehicle as featuring on security cameras of all the affected stores at about the time each contamination thing happened?” asked Peter, knowing that Harry would have thought of that as well.

  “Yes” said Harry. “That’s why you are to park in places away from car park security cameras that relate to the stores in question.”

  “Well you seem to have anticipated almost everything Harry. What about stage two? When does that start?” Peter asked.

  “When the liquor side of the business is having its little publicity problems we’ll move back to Sydney then go north to Brisbane, then back down through the inland highways to the nation’s capital. By that time we should really have sent the share price into a tailspin” said Harry.

  “So first we drive down to Melbourne?” said Peter.

  “Right” said Harry. “Then you work through the city visiting twelve liquor stores and planting at least one little capsule at each. You’ll need to get all twelve done in no more than two days as there’ll be a general alert by that time. Wait a couple of days, drive to Adelaide then move again on six stores there. Any change of plans and I’ll contact you as we decided” replied Harry.

  “Is there a Plan B if I’m caught doing the deed?” asked Peter.

  “Not one that will work very well” said Harry. “You’re on your own with this one.”

  Peter was already working on a Plan B. He knew that the essence of a good bluff was to buy enough time to make an escape so he went into his study and set up his printer for business cards, making out two sets of official looking cards with the designation of State Liquor Inspectorate in large print at the top and his false identity name underneath, together with his own mobile telephone number, again a prepaid non-traceable phone. On each card he embossed the respective state logos to give them the appearance of authenticity. When he looked dispassionately at the cards he felt that they were sufficiently plausible to make most liquor store employees baulk at any attempt to arrest him even if he had been found tampering with a bottle of liquor.

  The following afternoon Harry turned up with a new campervan replete with all mod cons, and registered in Peter’s name. Less than a day later he and Angelique were on their way to Melbourne. Peter noted before they left that the share price of the target company had been holding up very well during the current turmoil on global share markets; turmoil in which he rightly felt he had had no little part over the last two years of so. He also knew that the consortium was selling down on the target food and liquor retailer as heavily as they could without spooking the market.

  “Do you know what the worst thing is in all his?” Peter said to Angelique as they drove towards Melbourne.

  “No” replied Angelique, “I’ve really left you and Harry to sort out this one.”

  “The worst thing is that the consortium is ripping us off and there’s nothing we can do about it” said Peter.

  “How are they ripping us off?” Angelique asked.

  “That whole equine influenza thing. I calculate that they made at least three times what they said they did from that effort” he said.

  “Really? Over seventy-five million?” replied Angelique. “I find that incredible.”

  “I’ve studied the share trades in the respective entities since we got back from Japan and if only fifty percent of the short selling was down to the consortium then they made at least forty million dollars, but I think almost all the short selling was theirs.”

  “So they could have reaped up to eighty million?” replied Angelique.

  “Yes” said Peter, “that’s about the strength of it.”

  “Well I don’t suppose we can take them to court can we?” joked Angelique. “Well Your Honour it’s like this: the issue is not about criminal activity it’s about honesty and integrity between business partners.”

  Peter saw the wry side of his wife’s humour and grinned despite himself.

  “Yes, were the tables reversed I might do something similar, I expect” he said.

  “Just keep on the right side of Harry, Peter. I don’t like the man further than I could kick him” she murmured, and put her head on Peter’s shoulder as the vehicle sat at a sedate 95 kilometers an hour in the slow lane with typical Hume Highway truck and vehicle traffic thundering past in the overtaking lane.

  By travelling late into the evening and stopping only at a roadside lay-by they were within about an hour of the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis of Melbourne by 8am the following day.

  “There’s no rush now” said Peter. “Liquor stores don’t open until at least 9 am, so we’ll get some breakfast and a coffee and freshen up before we reach the first target outlet.”

  When the time came they followed Harry’s instructions and found a side street to park the vehicle within easy walking distance of the target store. The vehicle would not be recorded on the security camera of the store.

  Sitting in the vehicle dinette that was directly accessible from the driving seats Peter pulled out a bag of tricks that Harry had given him and selected a pair of tinted eye glasses and for the benefit of the security camera he slicked his hair and parted it carefully along the centerline of his skull, a trick he had learned years ago that changed his appearance very markedly.

  Angelique said she would reconnoiter the store to see how many people worked there and to locate the security cameras for him. The pretext would be that she was looking for a certain bottle of whisky but she did not know its name; just what it looked like. She would, of course, not find it there but she would come back to the vehicle with all the needed information.

  It took Angelique about ten minutes. She went into the store and found that this early in the day they had just one employee and there was just one other customer. So she slipped along beside the whisky shelves and surreptitiously studied the store layout. There was a security camera facing the till and another covering the store from high up on the far end. When she walked around that end of the store she found that there were vertical racks of red wine underneath each bottle on the upper shelf display. They had the necessary integrated black foil screw cap and foil seals. She studied on for a while and realized that if she stood with her back to the camera there was no way her hands could be seen holding the wine bottle in front of her body, yet she was almost entirely hidden from the sales and dispatching area at the front of the store.

  After again checking the row of whisky bottles, she ambled out of the store and crossed through the car park then turned up the street to where the campervan was parked.

  “The main security camera for the inner part of the store will not pick you as doing anything in particular if you stand with your back to it and fix up one of the bottles of merlot in the racks on the end of the row” she said.

  Peter said he was ready for the first attempt and Angelique said she’d come in soon after he entered and try to distract the attention of the retail assistant. They moved into action with Peter about fifty metres ahead of Angelique and when she came in she said to the clerk that she was still sure the whisky she was after had come from this store and she was going to have another look for it. So the clerk delved under the counter and pulled out some thick files and said that she could go through them as they depicted labels attached to respective bottles and she was sure to find what she wanted.

  Peter seemed to be taking quite a while at the end of the wine rack so Angelique felt she should keep the young man busy. It seemed an age to her and she f
umbled around with the files then thought of a clever ruse:

  “It was a rye whisky” she said. The young man walked over to the racks and came back with a tall bottle of Canadian rye.

  “This is the only rye we stock” he said.

  “No, it doesn’t look right” she responded “the bottle was short and squat-looking.”

  By the time the verbal exchange was over, Peter was on the move and sideling casually along the opposite side of the store.

  “I’ll come back later” she heard him say to the clerk as he went out without making a purchase.

  The clerk nodded to Peter, then turned back to Angelique who had declined this bottle of rye and was looking a little disappointed.

  “Perhaps I was at another store” she said. “Maybe I’ll recollect when I get home where it came from. Thanks anyway” she said, and departed as casually as she could manage.

  Back inside the van Peter was unwinding with a coffee when Angelique said:

  “It seemed to go awfully slowly. Was there a problem?”

  “Yes” said Peter. “The door to the storage area behind the far end racks was open and there was another employee there. He wasn’t watching me as such but every few seconds he’d turn in my direction as he was lifting slabs of beer off a pallet. I had to be very very interested in the label of that very ordinary little merlot. Eventually I got the job done but the camera might find an inexplicably long shot of a customer slowly reading everything on a single label. We’ll have to find a better way, Angie, or this’ll be the end.”

  “Why don’t we work in tandem?” said Angelique.

  “How?” said Peter.

  “Well, what about if I went in and located a suitable bottle then took it to a blind spot out of the camera’s view, removed the cap and stuck it in my side pocket whereby the neck is just poking out. I’ll keep my arm over the neck until you come along ready to drop in the medicine and replace the cap, so I sidle up to you, or better still you work your way up to where I’m looking at labels, you take advantage of the dead spot between us and drop in your capsule and replace the cap all with your right hand while I reach into my jacket and hold the bottle so you can twist your little plastic sealer thing?”

  “Then you take the bottle back to its home and carefully place it back on the shelf?” Peter continued, thinking they might have found a method that would work.

  “Wouldn’t the security footage examination turn up the strange association between two different customers?” Peter continued, trying to find a weakness.

  “Well how about we both go in together and have a consultation over the right wine” proposed Angelique. “That way we could be obviously a related couple who pick up and put down many different wines. There’d be no need to check us; we’d just be a couple who were merely taking a while to make our selection. We could still do the change over of the cap and the pill popping in between us in two distinct stages. Say, do part one then separate and move around then come back together and do part two, then gradually work our way to the conclusion that the store didn’t really have what we were looking for and leave empty handed, having of course replaced the subject bottle.”

  “I think it’s worth trying” said Peter. “By the way, there aren’t very many bottles without an additional security wrap around the neck of the bottle. We need to tackle just those that have the plain metal foil. I found once the cap was off we do not have to worry about the foil part because our foil will reach down over the underlying one and you’ll never see what’s underneath.”

  “What about when the bottle is opened? Won’t the two layers of foil look rather strange?” she asked.

  “Perhaps” said Peter “but if you were opening a bottle of wine would it worry you?” he said.

  “It would after the first public notice that tampering was going on.”

  “That’s a good point” he said. “We’d better go for getting all the foil off first, eh?”

  “Just like Harry said” replied Angelique, as if Peter needed any reminder of why they were there.

  The second store worked much better. There were three security cameras but still a blind spot if you put your back to the camera on the far wall and kept your activity low down towards hip height and in between two people who were standing close together.

  Angelique located a suitable wine with plain black metal foil and no additional paper label at the base of it around the neck of the bottle. She took a bottle, tucked it under her arm then moved to the side wall, turning her body to hide the quick movement as she slipped the bottle into the side jacket pocket, neck protruding. Then grasping the bottle firmly under her free right arm she got her left onto the neck of the bottle and while noise and clatter of one sort or another muffled the sound of the twist she unsealed the bottle and lifted the entire foil section clear. Slipping this into her left pocket, she caught Peter’s eye across the store and with an almost imperceptible lift of her chin signaled that he should join her.

  Peter sidled up towards Angelique, slipped the capsule down the neck of the now protruding bottle, and then followed in a single movement with the recapping tool. The job was done in less than five seconds. Careful to pull the sealed bottle out while they were still together she spent a moment studying it then ambled back to the place she had picked it up, slipping it back onto its indistinguishable fellows.

  Peter made a purchase of a bottle of wine for their evening meal and they were gone. They worked the same routine with minor variations for the rest of the day but by day’s end had completed just six stores.

  “I thought Harry was too conservative when he said we’d have two days to get twelve stores done. It’s amazing how the time flies when you have to move from one location to another and plan each job as a failsafe thing” said Peter at about six that evening.

  The problem with working stores in the evenings was that there were just too many people milling about. There were additional staff on roster and patrons were not likely to be patient with a couple in such obvious difficulty over choosing their tipple that they had to stand in front of what was perhaps their preferred drop. Peter decided that at about 4:30 pm they would stop for the day.

  That night they debriefed each other, parking the van for the night adjacent a toilet and washroom facility in Albert Park. Police cruised by at times but nobody moved them on and in the morning they promised each other the next night would be spent in a decent bed in a motel.

  The following day they again waited until liquor store opening hour and descended on stores in the southeast of the City at Brighton and Seaford and other beachside localities. They also listened for any news item concerning their nefarious activity but there was none.

  Their routine improved; by early afternoon they had completed five more infections and the last was at Altona on the outskirts of the city as they headed towards Adelaide via Geelong. That night found them in the coastal city of Warrnambool with Adelaide within reach the following day. They found a comfortable motel on the ocean side of the town and after enjoying the bathroom facilities were heading for a local restaurant when they heard a radio news broadcast that covered Victoria. There was no mention of any liquor contamination.

  “Well, the longer they take to discover it the better for us” said Peter.

  “Perhaps they’ll know about it and just pass the word quietly along to watch out for two suspicious people standing next to each other in a bottle shop” said Angelique.

  “No, once they realize it’s really sabotage they’ll have no choice but to go public with it” replied Peter. “They can’t afford the risk of not warning people. We’ll know within a few hours of their first discovery.”

  “Well it’s nice not to be still in the area” said Angelique.

  “Yes, even when the story breaks in one place they’re less likely to be on alert in another city so far away. I think Harry really knows his stuff” Peter replied.

  “What was it I heard him say, ‘maximum dispersion maximum impact’ or
something like that? Angelique said.

  Their restaurant meal was a welcome change from the van and they made the most of the ambience. What they had forgotten to do however was to have a consistent story about what they were doing on the road, where they were going and whether it was holidays or business. Suddenly, a gentleman at a neighbouring table just struck up a one-sided conversation and started off with:

  “I saw you two come out of that camper over the way. Where’re you headed?”

  Peter opened his mouth to say something when Angelique got in first:

  “Oh we just go where the mood suits us.”

  “Where’s that at present?” the fellow persisted.

  “We’re not even sure” said Peter.

  “So you just get in the van and go where it takes you?” he said.

  “A bit like that” said Angelique and tried turning half away from him.

  What they did not know was that this fellow was a retired police officer who loved to look for suspicious characters and spent his days just randomly trying to ferret out the ones who’d make a mistake. As Angelique and Peter’s options narrowed he became even more persistent.

  “So where’d you come from today?” he said, almost as a police interview, and for some reason Peter suddenly heard the timbre of the voice and recognized that this was not a situation to be trifled with.

  Fortunately he got in before Angelique and became most helpful, saying that they had been driving for some days and had come down through the Murray Valley and places like Echuca and Bendigo before arriving at Warrnambool and that they were going on to Geelong and back to Melbourne then Sydney via the Pacific Highway along the east coast.

  “Oh, you’ll enjoy the drive, it’s beautiful along that way” said the fellow. “Fred Bailey” and he held out his hand to Peter.

  Peter was too stunned to respond for a moment then introduced himself as Jim Archer, realizing instantly that that could have been a mistake.

  “This is my wife, Sandra” he thought to say.

  “Hi Fred” said Angie, with as much warmth as she could muster.

  “Well we’re going to turn in early tonight Fred” said Peter.

  “It was nice meeting you Fred” said Peter.

  Peter stood with the intention of paying at the check-out, and Angelique followed. Fred noticed the part finished coffee and made a point of being outside and following discreetly the path of the van towards the Best Western motel near the waterfront. By morning Fred had two suspicious characters who were not who they said they were, but that was all. He also watched from a distance as the van left town the following morning and headed towards Adelaide along the coast road.

  Fred Bailey was a thorough man. He followed up the registration of the van, found it was carrying erroneous plates and at first thought it probable that as a retiree Jim Archer was trying to evade his motor registration taxes. Then he concluded that the licence plate was probably correct but that Jim Archer was not the guy’s real name. It all went into a notebook that he carried for just such fishing expeditions.

  Peter and Angelique reached the city of Adelaide via the hills to the east from which they emerged onto a broad flat plain with the ocean shimmering in the distance. They spent two days carefully carrying out the contamination exercise and Peter could not escape the irony of having driven past many of the most well known vineyards in Australia on the way to do their dirty work.

  Once finished, they again had a night in a local motel but this time resorted to take-away food and a bottle of wine purchased at their last stopping point rather than risk another Fred Bailey encounter. They ate their evening meal in the van and were nearly finished when Harry Goldsmid knocked on the van door.

  “I wondered whether we’d see you Harry” said Peter.

  Harry climbed into the van and sat down on the side settee.

  “You’ve done well” he said. “Piece of cake?”

  “I don’t know who makes your cake” said Peter “but no, it had a few little issues we needed to attend to.”

  Harry listened while they told him of the likelihood that they were recorded as standing together in peculiar ways for extended periods of time in several localities.

  “It could be that they’ll circulate our pictures nationwide and then there’ll be a manhunt” said Peter, none too certain that he wasn’t telling the truth.

  “Or a woman hunt” said Angelique. “Fortunately, Peter’s disguise was hilarious and even a close-up mug shot would be unlikely to reveal his true identity.”

  “And what about Fred Bailey?” said Harry, watching Peter.

  Peter was stunned “What about him?” he said.

  Mr Bailey followed you to the motel on Wednesday night then he followed you half way to Mount Gambier before he turned back” said Harry.

  “I thought he was just a curious old guy” said Peter.

  “No” said Harry. “He was a retired policeman.”

  “Was?” said Peter.

  “Yes” said Harry.

  Angelique poured Harry a coffee and then Harry said that he’d be on the road that night. He was returning to Sydney via Mildura, Hay and Wagga Wagga and he’d see them in a couple of days. Peter and Angelique set out in the slower vehicle and took almost the two days to follow the secondary roads across country and arrive back at the Point Piper apartment by late on the Monday night.