Gatecrasher

by Robert Young

  Before boarding the train he made the call to Gresham from a public phone in a noisy pub near the station. 'Now you listen to me you fat vicious cunt, if I hear that you've even dialled a single number in that book I'll duplicate the information that you are so eager to get your hands on and send it to every single newspaper in the country. I'll post it on the internet. I'll go to the police and tell them all about what you and your pet gorilla did to me and the guy that bled all over my kitchen floor the other night. I don't care anymore, do you hear me? You just try it, you just try and fucking bully me. I dare you.'

  Just thinking about it he could feel his scalp tighten and his skin prickle with the fear and excitement of what he had done. He may yet pay for talking to Gresham that way but at the same time he felt confident that the other man would not call his bluff. Not yet at least.

  Now finally the train was slowing as it neared its destination and she would meet him here and they would talk.

  He tossed his jacket over his shoulders and shuffled along the aisle to the door of the train as it crawled to a halt. Campbell felt the pinch of anticipation and tried to calm himself as he strolled through the ticket hall and out onto the broad pavement at the front of the station.

  Waving off the attentions of the first of the queue of taxis lining up in front of him, Campbell scanned the area. There were a few more cars idling at the kerbside and he looked out for the one she had described but couldn't see it. Then from across the car park headlights flashed and he noticed that it was the one he was looking for.

  He moved gingerly across the tarmac, the stiffness from his ordeal was clear to see and as he drew nearer, the driver side door opened and Sarah stood up and peered at him. He saw her expression change as she noticed his swollen eye and fat lip, the dark cuts on both.

  'What the hell??' she began and he tried to smile as if it were nothing but she looked visibly shocked at the sight of him.

  She came around the car and looked more closely at him. She studied the puffy eye that he could barely see through and the colourful bruise blooming across his cheek, the thin dark scab across his plump lower lip.

  'What the hell happened to you? You look like you've been hit by a bus.'

  He smiled at the description. 'Feels like it too.'

  'Daniel Campbell I suppose? Not quite the same man I remember meeting.'

  'Well I was Owen Michaels then, local hack,' he said and swung his bag from his shoulder with a wince that she noticed.

  'Want to tell me what happened?'

  'All in good time Sarah. Can I dump this in the boot?'

  She nodded and then took the bag from him, swatting away his protestations.

  Climbing into the car was a slow and clumsy process as he tried to avoid further aggravating any of his injuries. Sarah watched him intently, frowning.

  'Seriously Daniel. What happened?'

  'You remember I said that I thought this could be valuable? Well, let's just say I found out first hand how valuable.'

  Sarah stared at him, examining his battered face for signs that he may be lying. She was clearly still less than convinced about the whole thing, despite this latest shock. Highly suspicious and alert that this was some sort of sting or set up. But seeing the state of Campbell, and having heard the pleading desperation in his voice that morning, she must have concluded that he might well be telling the truth.

  Campbell turned to her as he clipped in his seatbelt. 'Someone really wants it back.'

  Without a word she started the car and pulled out of the train station car park, past the taxi rank that was still doing a brisk trade in collecting some of the other passengers of Daniel's train.

 

  *

 

  'So, you a local girl then?' Campbell asked breezily, trying to chase away the tense silence that had descended.

  'No. Born and raised in Muswell Hill actually. Parents moved down here when they retired. Dad has a few properties here and there and used to rent some out down here as holiday cottages and stuff. They decided to move out of London and live in their favourite one.'

  'Very nice too. So, uh, how come you work down there in Hammersmith?'

  'Not really my choice where they have the offices,' she replied, slightly puzzled.

  'No, I mean it's a bit of a way from Muswell Hill.'

  'Oh right. No I live down in Chiswick now. Moved down there with the boyfriend. Then got the job.'

  'Oh I see.'

  'Stayed in the area after we split up.'

  'Oh.'

  They fell silent again. As they drove through the town and out into the countryside beyond, the light of the afternoon dimmed and heavy clouds drew in overhead. The first fat spots of rain hit the windscreen as Sarah swung the car off the road and eased it slowly along a bumpy lane toward a small whitewashed cottage beyond.

  'Are your parents going to be in then?' he asked, suddenly feeling nervous that she was going to walk him into a room full of people. Campbell wanted to avoid meeting anyone new just then.

  'Not my parents place. One of their holiday cottages. Very quiet at this time of year. Private. I borrowed the keys and told them I'm off with some friends.'

  He nodded, relieved and more than a little surprised at the trust she was showing.

  'Sarah,' he said looking at her across the roof of the car as they stepped out into a light drizzle. 'You seem - this is by no means a complaint - but you seem very trusting. How do you know I'm not some nutjob?'

  'I could ask you the same question Daniel. Why do you trust me? I mean, how do you know I haven't called the police? How do you know I haven't got this place wired with CCTV? Or told twenty different people exactly where I am and exactly what time I'll be back?'

  Campbell was silent and he stared back at her, waiting for her to reassure him that none of what she said was in fact true.

  'Look at you. For a start, I think I could beat you up if you did try something, the state you're in. Secondly, the things you've told me just sound too weird for you to have made them all up. And thirdly, you have no reason to trust me either, as far as I can see and that makes us evens,' she said, walking to the boot of the car and pulling out his bag. 'But I do think you're a nutjob.'

  He smiled at her, unwilling to argue and then followed her as she started up the path to the front door.

  'Come on then. Start talking.'

 

  *

 

  She put the mug on the table in front of him and then sat in the chair opposite.

  'From the start then. Who are you? What's going on?'

  'Like I said before, I work for an investment analyst in the City. Mainly I just do research on investment companies, funds, fund managers. I read prospectuses every day, examine portfolio construction?' he let the sentence trail off and shrugged at her. 'Nothing of earth shattering significance. And I have nothing to do with Griffin at all. I am nobody!'

  'And yet you called me the other day pretending to be a local journalist.'

  Campbell pulled a business card from his wallet and slid it across the table. Then he pulled out his credit cards, driving licence and tube pass so she could see that the name was the same on all of them. 'See. Nobody. Says it right there.'

  She nodded and said nothing.

  Campbell recounted the story of his party that Saturday night and the uninvited guest on his kitchen floor. He told her about the phone call from the hospital administrator and the trip to the police station. She looked concerned when he told her of the burglary and then genuinely shocked when he explained finding the memory stick under the oven in his kitchen. He barely needed to emphasise his point that the man must have had a real motivation to make such an effort to hide it when he could scarcely even breathe.

  Her eyes wandered over his black eye and puffy lip again as he went through his ordeal at the hands of Slater and Gresham and then widened in disbelief as he described his escape through Spitalfields Market and Liverpool Street station.

&nb
sp; 'That's pretty much when I rang you.'

  'Jeez. That's crazy.'

  'You're telling me.'

  'Are you ok? I mean, do you need painkillers or something?'

  He shook his head, eager to talk now, to share the burden. 'What I have found out so far is a little surprising. I mean, certainly it's a lot of speculation on my part - you have to make a few assumptions. But you shouldn't find that too hard given what I've just told you and the state of my ribs.

  'Your company was the brainchild of two men in the mid-1990s. One was an expert on antiquities, rare and valuable artefacts and so on. The other a bit of a financial and business brain who did the deals and the negotiating. All perfectly above board and legal. That kind of thing is pretty specialised though which meant that they had to become experts at moving difficult and sensitive items to and from difficult and sensitive places. Such expertise has a wide cache. It is a valuable commodity. Before you know it they're even shifting guns. Again, all legal and above board. Private contracts, security firms.'

  Sarah was nodding as he spoke, obviously familiar with this potted history of her employer.

  'You know this I guess. Sure. Well the arms trade is not exactly full of kindly benefactors and philanthropists set on world peace and the eradication of poverty,' he said.

  'What are you implying?'

  'I think that one or possibly both men got caught up in some? questionable activity. I found a number of references to the shipment of unspecified goods to Tunisia and then Liberia. I don't presume they were selling fine art and ancient sculptures to the starving Liberian public.'

  Sarah shook her head. 'Guns obviously.'

  'Well? not that obvious really. There is no direct reference to any arms that I could see - everything is coded, reference numbers and that sort of thing. But there were some unnecessarily complicated transactions in those particular cases and some interesting shipping records. But I have found something else. Like I said, I'm making a few leaps of logic here.'

  'Guesses.'

  He nodded but held up a hand that she listen, before dismissing. 'Western companies that set up operations in third world countries often do so in quite lawless areas. As such they are generally required to provide their own security arrangements. The same is true in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Or was true at least. So you get firms who are ostensibly mining companies - geological surveyors, oil - who also have close ties, even subsidiaries that are involved specifically in providing security - in certain circumstances, that can be quite extreme. I'm talking guns, troops, vehicles. Serious personnel and serious hardware and ex-military guys.'

  Sarah was listening intently to Campbell now. He changed tack.

  'Michael Horner is an investment expert. Before Griffin he worked in the city for two different investment banks. He was very successful in a short space of time, real whiz kid. When he set up the venture with Geoffrey Asquith it was a sideways step into a new area of industry. But he never cut his investment ties and continued to play the markets. Shortly after the first shipment of arms to Liberia - of which there were several more over about three years - Horner, or at least a hedge fund of which he was a director - invested heavily in two private security firms. He also personally bought stocks in three mining companies who have clearly established links to these security firms.'

  'How the hell do you find this stuff out?'

  'It's all there if you know where to look, albeit fairly well hidden. Shareholder registers, Companies House searches, that sort of thing. Transparency and corporate governance and all those buzzwords. Anyway, about three months later, the Sierra Leonean government contracted those same security firms in separate operations near the capital Freetown and further inland in the diamond areas and in both cases they assisted government forces in pushing back rebel troops and securing the territory. Subsequently those related mining companies were awarded diamond-mining licences in Sierra Leone. Michael Horner profited handsomely. In both instances.'

  'Slow down Daniel,' Sarah said frowning. 'You're saying he was insider trading?'

  'Keep up because there's more. I'm saying that he may well have been or he may have just got in to those firms on the off chance that they won the deals. The point is he was profiting from the civil war. Not just that, but these other, more mysterious shipments were going to Liberia. Liberia was generally acknowledged to be the source for most arms supplies to Sierra Leonean rebels. I think Horner was providing guns to both sides one way or the other.'

  'Jesus.'

  'Quite. When the UN tried to go in and stop the fighting, the rebels - the RUF - repeatedly stalled on agreements to disarm. The rebels held huge areas of rich diamond mining country. According to what I've found out the official production of diamonds for Sierra Leone was,' Campbell shuffled through some papers, 'in 1998, 8,500 carats. The Belgian Diamond High Council in Antwerp had it at 770,000 carats.'

  'Quite a profitable war.' Sarah said looking stunned.

  'Yes but for who? 75,000 people were killed between 1991 and 1999 in the civil war. 75,000 people. Quarter of a million women and girls were raped or abused. Some unbelievable human rights abuses and atrocities against the civilian population - limbs hacked off, eyes gouged out. Half the population was displaced by the conflict. Half. Sierra Leone has the world's third biggest reserves of diamonds but in the year 2000 the average annual income was $100. $100 per year. In 2000 it was at the bottom of the UNs Human Development Index - the poorest in the world. Most of the soldiers that fought for the RUF - the rebels - were children. The average age was about fifteen. Most of them were addicted to alcohol and hard drugs. Horner got rich off that.'

  Sarah stopped Campbell and began to pace the room, running her hands over her face as if washing something away. 'This is too much to take in. How is Griffin involved in this? Is this all on the memory stick?'

  'Most of it. Clues at least. The rest of the information is available, so long as you know where to look and you can pretty much fill in the blanks. There is one last thing though. Horner also developed ties with a company in Antwerp not too long after he began his little African adventure. Antwerp is the centre of the world's diamond industry.'

  'So he was spreading the net a little wider? Investing in the diamond industry in Belgium?'

  Campbell stopped her with a shake of his head. 'The way it works in Antwerp is this: companies or people called 'Sightholders' are presented with mixed parcels of rough diamonds from the mining companies which they buy and then sell on, having re-sorted and repackaged them. Horner was not investing in a sightholder.'

  'What then?'

  'He wasn't buying anything in Antwerp. He was selling.'

  36

  Thursday. 2pm.

  Michael Horner was a very self-assured man who took particular interest in his appearance and was always impeccably dressed.

  Walking stiffly at his side, the equally immaculate figure of Geoffrey Asquith was eyeing the camera-laden tourists bunching around Cleopatra's Needle with a mixture of contempt and caution. He dipped his head a little into the upturned collar of his coat as the two men strode past them.

  'How far does it go Michael? How much did you hide from me?'

  Horner took a deep breath before speaking. 'Everything Griffin told you is true. I was routing shipments of arms into Liberia, through Tunisia and Guinea and did so on seven separate occasions. The illusion of legitimacy was maintained for the company through the fact that there were various waypoints for the merchandise. As far as you were concerned they were delivered on time and accounted for by the clients in North Africa. What you did not know was that the merchandise did not stop there. It was moved on again through another African state and repackaged before arriving in Liberia.'

  'And then?'

  'And then I presume into Sierra Leone. Perhaps it stayed in Liberia. I wasn't on the ground.'

  Asquith shook his head but it was obvious that he was wrestling with a boiling temper.

  'How could you have even co
ntemplated such a thing?'

  'I don't need to answer that. You were never especially sharp on the operational side of things and that made it easy enough for me to do what I did. You were rarely watching.'

  'And where did the money go?'

  'The goods were largely paid for already, separately. We acted as the carrier. The company was paid on arrival at the first stop. A sub-contractor took it on from there. After that the final legs of the journey were funded privately. Myself and others involved in the physical movement of the goods were remunerated separately. Entirely off the books.'

  They stopped at the wall and looked out across the river, County Hall sprawled out across the bank down to their right and a cold wind whipped up off the water and stung their eyes as they gazed up at the majestic sight of the London Eye.

  'This could destroy us both Michael. What worries me is why we haven't heard anything yet. I mean what are they waiting for? What do they want?'

  'I imagine we'll find out soon enough. Whoever is in possession of this data assuredly has some agenda or other and clearly it relates to the two of us.'

  Asquith nodded. 'More to the point, who is behind this?'

  'We are both wealthy and successful men. You don't get that way without making a few enemies, making a few people jealous. It could be anybody.'

  37

  Thursday. 3.30pm.

  Daniel Campbell leaned back in the chair and stared at Sarah Knowles who had her hands over her face and her elbows on the table. In front of them the laptop computer hummed quietly.

  'I just can't get my head around this,' she said.

  Campbell had spent the past hour showing her the information on the memory stick and then showing her the different sources of information with which he had filled in the blanks. Some of it he accessed through different websites which were either publicly accessible or to which he had subscribed through necessity at work. He also had a wad of documents that further backed up his story. It was all there, as fragmentary as it was, and the stick itself only gave a hint at the wider picture.