“You will give her the bag, and she will walk away.”
“Just like that? We give half a million dollars to some kid we never met? Jesus!” Nick wasn’t used to financial transactions of this kind, nor to trusting people he didn’t know.
To defuse the situation, Charlie asked “Which way will she go?”
“Again, it’s very simple. There’s no point going north, because the French have had exchange controls since 1945, so we’d be swapping a Spanish Prison for a French one.”
“Well, you can’t go west to Portugal, so I guess that leaves you with one or two options.”
“Our best route is through some part of North Africa, but that’s all I’m going to tell you. It’s better for you not to know.”
Charlie laughed. “It’s amazing how many times we’ve been told that lately. OK, Laurent, last question. What’s your commission?”
“Ten per cent.”
The Frenchman lit a cigarette while the other two conversed quietly on the other bench. Finally, Nick said to him, “It’s a deal. We’ll do it this afternoon.”
“Good. As you can imagine, I don’t make contracts or agreements, so my word is my bond.”
This sounded so old fashioned that Nick almost laughed out loud, but instead he asked, “So what guarantee do we have, once we turn the cash over to you?”
“None at all.” The Frenchman turned his steely blue eyes on Nick and said nothing more.
The young woman looked as if she was only about nineteen years old. She was slim and tiny, coming only up to Charlie’s shoulder. Good looking, in a handsome Spanish way. Her hair was jet black, very thick and long, hanging loose down to her shoulder blades. She pronounced the “G” in her name with an “H”, sounding like Anghela. She took the carrier bag, gave them a shy smile and disappeared into the crowd.
THIRTH-NINE
July 14th-18th, 1975
Malaga, Spain; Geneva, Switzerland
On Monday, Charlie received two messages. The first was a telegram telling him the person he was expecting was at the Hotel Les Ambassadors in Geneva.
He called Ellen. “Good news, darling. You and Ronnie can plan to come back to Spain in a week or so.”
She sounded happy and relieved at the news. It was pouring with rain in Middlesbrough.
He had hardly put down the phone when it rang again. It was Ruiz Bettencourt. Charlie had called him the previous week to convey his sadness at his brother’s death. He’d told him that he had some important news that he couldn’t discuss on the telephone. Now it seemed that Olivier’s body had arrived in Geneva and the funeral would be held on Thursday morning. They would be pleased if Charlie, Nick and Alberto were able to attend.
He called Alberto to thank him for arranging the transport of the body and to give him the news. The Angolan apologised that he couldn’t come to the funeral. He said, “It would be difficult for me to travel to Geneva at the moment. Things are becoming very complicated here. Please let the family know how sorry I am. Olivier was a good friend. I’ll miss him.”
He also told Charlie that Henriques’ and Manuela’s remains had been properly buried in the graveyard of a catholic church in Leopoldville. Charlie reflected that Alberto had turned out to be a true and loyal friend.
The two men flew up to Geneva on Wednesday afternoon and booked into the Hotel d’ Auteuil. They couldn’t know that Jorge Gomez had stayed there just six months before in his relentless attempt to find the information he needed to destroy them.
Charlie told the Bettencourt family nothing about the reason for Olivier’s trip, only that he was tying up some loose ends with Angolan trading partners. He gave the insurance documents to Ruiz, who immediately contacted the Lloyds’ brokers. They advised him that there were no exclusions on the policy. Ruiz would obtain a death certificate from the Portuguese embassy in Leopoldville. Olivier had thought of every eventuality.
The funeral the next morning was a tragic affair. Cristina was still in a complete state of shock. Surrounded by her family, she looked small and vulnerable, with her children weeping and miserable about her, not understanding why their daddy wasn’t there. Olivier’s father sat on a bench in the churchyard between his two remaining sons. He seemed lost and detached from the reality of his bereavement. The ceremony was short and Charlie left the family with fond words and hugs but he knew that Ellen had been right. There was no longer any place for him in their future plans.
That afternoon, Charlie visited several banks in Geneva. He didn’t want to use any of the banks which he knew through APA. It was better to start a new relationship. He had obtained a list of the members of the Private Bankers Association and had selected five of them. He went into each bank in turn, asking if they would accept a substantial deposit in one thousand dollar notes to open a banking relationship for current, deposit and portfolio banking. They all offered him coffee and assured him that their services were the best in town.
He chose Klein, Fellay SA, whose offices were near the railway station, because they spoke perfect English, they were conveniently situated for trains and for the airport and because the young lady who interviewed him was clever, an absolutely stunning brunette and had a great sense of humour.
Afterwards, he and Nick went along to Les Ambassadors. Laurent was there with the parcel, unopened. The funds were safely in Geneva, another step accomplished. They had dinner together. Laurent was also a wine connoisseur.
At Klein, Fellay the next morning, they sat in the conference room adjoining the young woman’s office. Her name was Miriam Constance and she was a fondé de pouvoir, a senior customer relations officer. Charlie and Nick opened a joint account, just until they decided how to set up the accounts and structure for the new business. The young woman asked for their personal details.
When she asked, “And what’s your home address, Mr. Bishop?” he couldn’t help laughing. Since he was presently homeless, he gave a temporary address at Ellen’s sister’s house in Middlesbrough. He would fix it later.
He handed Miriam the five packs of thousand dollar bills and she looked at them in astonishment. “I’ve never even seen one of these bills before, never mind five hundred. You should frame them, not change them. They’ll be collector’s items one day, worth a fortune.”
Charlie took her advice and kept back one of the notes, “for sentimental reasons.” He replaced it with hundred dollar bills. She sent the notes to be counted and checked by a counter-forgery specialist before giving him a receipt for the cash. He placed four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a thirty days deposit and asked for a cheque, made out to bearer, for fifty thousand.
He said quietly to the Frenchman, “That’s for your commission, Laurent, with sincere thanks from Nick and me.”
Laurent called the young woman back. “Don’t bother with the cheque, I’d like to open an account with you as well. You can transfer the funds directly when the accounts are in place. Merci d’avance, Mademoiselle.”
Charlie and Nick agreed to meet Laurent for lunch, then they walked back to their hotel to discuss the structure of the business and the reward for each of the ‘partners’ involved.
As usual, Charlie tried to bring a logical approach to working out how to slice up the cake. “First off, we know that however much we would like to, we can’t include Olivier, or his family. He didn’t want them to know about the real reason for his trip to Angola, so we can’t reveal it. In any event, thanks to his incredible foresight, they’re all in good shape and they don’t need our help. And, of course, we did provide a lot of the profits that have gone into the new business. So in all honesty I don’t feel that we have any obligation there.”
Nick nodded his agreement.
“Now we come to Henriques and Manuela. They are both gone, God rest their souls. They have no surviving parents or children, and as far as we know, the only people in Angola who depended upon them were Sergio and his family. The problem is we don’t have a clue where they are. I’ve now called the
mine several times, no reply. I’m sure they must have got out when they didn’t hear from Henriques. It must be anarchy down there since he disappeared.
“As far as finding them goes, you remember how many refugees there were at the airport last month? There’s probably ten times more by now, and that’s just one departure point. They could be anywhere in Angola, lost amongst hundreds of thousands of stranded people. Or they could already be out, in some safe place or, God forbid, they could be dead, just like our friends. This morning I read in the Herald Tribune that the whole country’s now in a state of all-out civil war. Mario’s already gone back to Lisbon and we don’t know anyone else down there, so I wouldn’t know how or where to start to look for them.”
“It’s a crap situation,” agreed Nick. “If the Russians and the Cubans are in there, it’s not going to be tea at the Ritz. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of going back there and finding them.” Charlie had long ago noticed that his friend was not one to use a single cliché when he could squeeze in two or more.
“I suppose we could make some kind of a reserve in case we ever hear anything in the future, but apart from that, I don’t see any solution. Let’s put that one aside for the minute.”
Charlie continued his analysis. “Now it’s clear we have a big obligation to Alberto. He’s turned out to be an honest, decent Marxist, which in my book is an oxymoron. That’s a contradiction in terms,” he added, before Nick could ask.
“I know that! You shouldn’t assume that all South Africans finish school at age ten.”
Charlie continued. “I have another suggestion. It turns out that Laurent is also the real deal. We’re going to have more shipments to make if we do this. We have to get the diamonds to Geneva and then you’ll regularly have to send stuff around for processing or for selling and then the proceeds have to be repatriated. His contacts are great for this.
“We’re both going to have our hands full with setting up and managing the business and we’ll need some help. In addition, I have to say that Laurent is the best sales guy I’ve ever met. When he hits you with those steely blue eyes, all you want to do is sign. So I think we should ask him to work with us, if he’s willing. How do you feel about bringing him in as a partner?”
“If he’ll join us, I think it’s a great idea.”
“Good, then that’s settled. Is there anyone I’ve forgotten about?”
“I can only think of two more. You and me.”
“Right, let’s take you first. Assuming we can get the stones here without problems, can you have them cut and polished and market them at anything like finished prices?”
Nick sat forward in his chair and cleared his throat. “I’ve given a lot of thought to this. We’re going to have to be really careful how we operate, or else we’ll find ourselves in deep shit. When we were going to do it through a public company, it was easy. Nobody asks too many questions if you’re worth forty million quid on the stock market. But now we’re not. We’ll be just a pipsqueak, tiny little company, selling fabulous diamonds from Angola and making an awful lot of money. See what I mean?”
“You mean that if anyone sees all these diamonds, they’re going to assume we stole them, or smuggled them out of Angola, and we’ll get done?”
“Stands to reason. Angola’s already going down the pan. Nobody’s going to believe that we were handed these stones as a going away gift by the owner of the mine, just before he disappeared. They know exactly what’s happening down there and they’ll be on our tails like a shot. If we start to flash thousands of Angolan diamonds around, the big guys are going to get wind of it and they’ll find a way of screwing us. They didn’t become monopolistic monsters by being nice guys, believe me. In South Africa, we saw some very nasty incidents when the smuggling rings were discovered. Literally hundreds imprisoned or killed, and they were the lucky ones.”
“So, what’s your plan?”
“Well, I’ve never tried to sell high quality loose stones on the market. But the way I think we have to do this is to start with maybe fifty rough stones and gradually increase to a few hundred every year. That’s my gut feeling. Start very small, feel our way and see how it goes. I already have two cutters and polishers that I know, up in New York and Montreal. I don’t want to go anywhere near the big boys in Belgium, London or Joburg.”
“So the answer is yes, you can do it, but it’ll take forty years?”
“Charlie, the honest answer is that I haven’t a bloody clue. I’ve never done it. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done, and we probably stand as much chance as anyone else. Once we actually get started we’ll learn fast. Maybe I’m being conservative and we can run the numbers up when we get the processes sorted and efficient, time will tell. Anyway, unless something happens to change the status quo, I’m all systems go.”
“What kind of prices are we talking about?”
“Good question. Look at it this way, these diamonds need a lot of work to get them into finished form. African diamonds are very hard and it’s not an easy process. And we want them to be perfect, high quality. These are not industrial diamonds, they’re “Oh my God. I have to have that” diamonds.” He said this latter in a posh English lady’s accent.
Charlie laughed, Nick knew his stuff. “Get on with it, you idiot.”
“Selling rough stones through Henriques’s wholesale channel, they’re worth maybe four hundred dollars per carat. That was his low estimate, eight million for twenty thousand carats. But we don’t want to go that route. We want to cut and polish these diamonds and sell them higher up the food chain. We’ll lose on average about fifty percent on processing, but that’s why it’s great to have two to four carat sizes. That means an average of one to two carats net after processing, so we can cut one large, high value piece, or split them into two or three lower value pieces. Not too big, not too small. It’s easier to market them, because we can adapt our product to current demand and to the quality of the stones. And we’ll get better prices, because bigger stones are valued higher than smaller ones, even if the quality is the same.
“As far as costs are concerned, doing anything on a small scale is always more costly than in big quantities, plus we want to keep a low profile. So our processing is going to be more expensive and slower than the big houses. If we estimate total costs and expenses really high, say a thousand dollars per rough stone, we can produce diamonds that are worth five thousand dollars per carat. But that’s a top-end price, with visibility. If we market them like that, we’ll get caught, just like if we flashed thousands. So we need marketing without visibility.”
“You mean small dealers and jewellery manufacturers, that kind of thing?”
“And don’t forget about the auction houses. Christies, Sotheby’s, Phillips, etc. They’re great places for anonymous sales and good cash prices. Laurent would be perfect for this type of business. A suave, elegant Frenchman who speaks a dozen languages, what could be better?
“But we still have to sell under the market, because we can’t give any kind of certification and we want to stay invisible. So, let’s take a really serious discount of fifty per cent. I think that we should be able to achieve two thousand five hundred dollars per carat.”
“So, let’s see.” Charlie did the maths in his head. He jumped up from his chair. “Bloody hell. We could make a lot of money from this deal!” He stopped and thought for a second. “And that’s exactly why we can’t make a song and dance about it, we’ve got too much to lose.”
“You’re dead right. So I’ll need, say a hundred thousand dollars to get things going, then I’m prepared to take responsibility to turn those little rocks into gems worth a fortune. You have my solemn promise, partners for life.”
Nick’s assessment of the risks and potential was probably the longest speech that he’d ever made. He sat back again, glad to have got it off his chest. “How do you see it?”
Charlie had digested Nick’s concerns about avoiding high profile activities, and his
technical and marketing analysis. Now, he was thinking about the timing, psychological and valuation aspects of the project.
“I agree with you, we have to look at this as a long term business. We have to start slowly, and if necessary, stay slow, so that we don’t blow the opportunity. That means that we have to build a business that makes enough each year for us all to be motivated to stay involved, until we can see an end game or an exit strategy.”
“The thing is this. Suppose we were to set up a kind of pension fund. We couldn’t have a better investment base than in a precious commodity, and diamonds are a perfect example. I’m sure that diamond prices will match or even beat inflation and will increase in value year over year. So we’d be pretty stupid to sell too quickly if we can sell later at a better price. Cash devalues, but good assets don’t. For all of these reasons, low profile processing and marketing, value protection and a regular revenue stream, my vote is a slow, steady business, until we’re ready to exit at some future date.”
Nick nodded his agreement with this analysis.
“I’ll give some thought to the structure, but I think it has to be a partnership of some kind, or an offshore, private company. You and I have to be fifty-fifty majority partners so that whatever happens we are running the show. I’ll manage the corporate, banking and investment side of things. You manage the product development and processing and Laurent will look after marketing, delivery and repatriation. What do you say?”
“Agreed. And what about Alberto?”
“Alberto won’t be involved in the business, it’s not his thing and we don’t know when he’ll get out of Portugal. But he has to be in for a good share. He took terrific risks on our behalf and without him we’d have nothing. And remember how he looked after our friends.”
Relieved that they had agreed on the nucleus of a partnership plan, the two men shook hands and went off to join Laurent for lunch.
Bonneville ordered a Pinot Noir from the Valais. Nick thought he was showing off, but the wine was delicious. After they toasted the success of the transfer of the dollars, he said, “Interesting wrappers on the bills, Portuguese Angolan Bank. I used to know them well, once upon a time.”
[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan Page 27
