Tango One

by Stephen Leather

  Clare sniggered contemptuously at his visitor.

  "What do you make in a year?" he asked.

  "I get by."

  "You get by? You don't know what getting by is. Whatever you earn in a year, multiply it by a thousand and I've got more than that tucked away. Think about that, you sad fuck. You'd have to work for a thousand years to get the sort of money I've got."

  The man took a slow drink from his paper cup, then placed it carefully on the table.

  "And that, Marty, brings me to my second order of business, as it were."

  Clare felt a chill in his stomach, suspecting that things were about to take a turn for the worse. He tried to keep smiling, but his mind was racing frantically, trying to work out what was coming next.

  "Your money situation might not be quite as clear cut as you seem to think," said the man.

  "What the fuck do you know about my money situation?"

  "More than you'd think, Marty."

  "Who the hell are you? And don't give me that bringer of bad news crap. You're a Brit, so you've no jurisdiction here. I don't have to talk to you."

  "Do you want me to go, Marty? Just say the word and I'll leave you to your weights and your porn channel until the men from the CAB pay you a visit. But by then it'll be too late."

  "What the hell would the CAB be wanting with me?"

  "Take a wild guess."

  Clare took another drink from the paper cup. His hand was shaking and water slopped over his arm. He saw his visitor smirk at the show of emotion and Clare hurriedly put the cup down on the floor. The Criminal Assets Board was an Irish organisation, set up to track down the assets of criminals living in Ireland. Their initial brief had been to run drug dealers and other criminal undesirables out of the Irish Republic, and they had been so successful that their remit had been expanded to cover tax evaders and white-collar criminals. Their technique was simple they tracked down assets and put the onus on the owner of the assets to prove that they were acquired by legitimate means. Homes, land, money, bonds. And if the owner couldn't prove that the assets weren't connected to criminal activities, the CAB had the right to confiscate them.

  "All my stuff in Ireland's legit," Clare said.

  "It's in your wife's name, if that's what you mean. But that's not quite the same as legit, is it? And what about the property development in Spain? And the villas in Portugal? You probably thought you were being really clever putting ownership in an Isle of Man exempt company, but CAB are wise to that."

  Clare swallowed. His mouth had gone dry again but he didn't want to pick up the paper cup. He folded his arms and waited for the man to continue.

  "They found your accounts in St. Vincent and they're homing in on your accounts in Luxembourg. Then there's your Sparbuch account. Do you know where the name comes from, by the way?"

  Clare shook his head. He was finding it difficult to concentrate. The man's voice seemed to echo in Clare's ears, as if he were talking at the end of a very long tunnel.

  "From the German, Sparen, which means save, and Buck, which means book. Brilliant concept, isn't it, for guys in your line of work? An anonymous account operated under a password. No signature, no identification, completely transferable. He who has the passbook and codeword has the money. Got yours just before the deadline, didn't you? Smart boy, Marty. Austria stopped issuing Sparbuch accounts in November 2000. You had the inside track on that, I bet. You can still get them in the Czech Republic, but Austrian schillings are so much more confidence-inspiring than Czech crowns, aren't they?"

  Clare slumped in his chair. He felt as if a strap had been tightened across his chest and every breath was an effort of will.

  "Are you okay, Marty? Not having a heart attack, are you? Though I have to say, the Dutch do have an excellent health care system."

  "Who grassed me up?" gasped Clare, his hand on his chest.

  "Who do you think?"

  Clare frowned. Sweat was pouring down his face. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and it came away dripping wet.

  "By the way, I think you were being a tad optimistic on your figure of a thousand times my annual salary. I reckon at best you've got five million quid salted away and CAB know where pretty much all of it is."

  Clare's mind was in a whirl. The only person who knew about the Sparbuch account was his wife Mary, and he trusted her with his life. The realisation hit him like a punch to the solar plexus.

  "Mary."

  The man grinned.

  "Ah, the penny has finally dropped, has it? She was none too happy with your arrest situation the two Slovakian girls .. ."

  Clare closed his eyes and swore. The man with the camera.

  "You bastard," he whispered.

  "The women, plus the fact that CAB were prepared to cut her a deal on the house and the Irish accounts pretty much puts your balls on the fire, Marty."

  Clare opened his eyes.

  "What the fuck do you want?" he asked.

  "A chat, Marty."

  "About what?"

  "Den Donovan."

  Donovan spent the night at the Hilton Hotel in Kingston. He checked in wearing a Lacoste polo shirt and slacks, but when he checked out of the hotel in the morning he was wearing baggy denim jeans, a T-shirt that he'd bought in a gift shop in Rasta colours with "I Love Jamaica' spelled out in spliffs, and a woollen Rasta hat. If the receptionist thought his attire incongruous for a business hotel, she was professional enough to hide her opinion behind a bright smile of perfect teeth.

  Donovan knew that he looked ridiculous, but then so did most of the Brits returning home after two weeks of sun, sand and sex in Jamaica. The worst that would happen was that he'd get a pull by Customs at Stansted, but they'd be looking for ganja, not an international drugs baron.

  He settled his account with American dollars and tipped the doorman ten dollars for opening the back door of a taxi and putting his suitcase and holdall in the boot. It was a thirty-minute ride to the Norman Manley International Airport. Donovan had no idea who Norman Manley was, or why the Jamaicans had named their airport after him, and he didn't care. The only thing he cared about was that it was a relatively easy place to fly to the UK from.

  He put on a pair of impenetrable sunglasses and joined the hundred-yard-long check-in queue for the charter flight. Honeymooning couples who were just starting to think about what married life meant back in dreary, drizzly England; middle-aged holiday makers with sunburned necks, keen to get back to good old fish and chips; and spaced-out fun seekers who were biting their nails and wondering if it really had been a good idea to tuck away their last few ounces of Jamaican gold into their wash bags There was a sprinkling of Rasta hats, several with fake dreadlocks, and lots of T-shirts with drugs references, so Donovan blended right in.

  It took almost an hour to reach the front of the queue. He handed over the passport and ticket and flashed the Jamaican girl a lopsided grin.

  "Wish I could stay longer," he said.

  "Honey, you can move in with me any time," laughed the girl, 'but you'd have to lose the hat."

  "I love my hat," he said.

  "Then it's over, honey. Sorry." She checked the passport against the name on the ticket. Donovan's travel agent had worked wonders to get him a seat on the charter flight. A scheduled flight would have been easier, but there'd be more scrutiny if he arrived at Heathrow. Holidaymakers returning to Stansted would barely merit a second look. The agent must have had a pre-dated return ticket issued in the UK and then Fed-Exed it out to Kingston. It had arrived first thing that morning as Donovan had been eating his room service breakfast. The unused Stansted-Jamaica leg section of the ticket had already been discarded. It was that sort of creativity that merited the high prices the agent charged. Donovan was paying more for the cramped economy seat to Stansted than it would have cost to fly first class with British Airways.

  The check-in girl ran him off a boarding card and handed it back to him with the passport.

  "I'd wish you a good fl
ight but it looks like you're flying already," she laughed.

  Donovan bought a pre-paid international calling card and phoned the number in Spain. The answer machine kicked in again and Donovan left another message. The Spaniard could be difficult to get hold of at times, but that was because his services were so much in demand.

  Vicky Donovan put her hands up to her face and shook her head.

  "I can't do this, Stewart. I can't."

  Sharkey reached over and massaged the back of her neck.

  "We don't have any choice, Vicky. You know what he's capable of "But running isn't going to solve anything, is it? He'll come after us." A car horn sounded behind them and Vicky flinched.

  "Relax," said Sharkey.

  "He's miles away."

  "He'll be on his way. And if he isn't, he'll send someone." She looked across at Sharkey, her lower lip trembling.

  "Maybe if I talk to him. Try to explain."

  "He was going to find out some time, Vicky," said Sharkey.

  "We couldn't carry on behind his back for ever."

  "We were going to wait until Robbie was older, remember?" Tears welled up in her eyes.

  "I can't leave Robbie. I can't go without him."

  "It's temporary."

  "Den won't let us take him, Stewart. You know how much he loves him."

  Sharkey shook his head.

  "He left him, didn't he? He left both of you."

  "He didn't have a choice."

  "We all have choices." Sharkey took her hand. He rubbed her wedding ring and engagement ring with his thumb. The wedding ring was a simple gold band, but the engagement ring was a diamond, and sapphire monstrosity that had cost six figures. Sharkey knew its exact value because he'd been with Donovan when he'd bought it from Maplin and Webb with a briefcase full of cash. Vicky had shrieked with joy when Donovan had presented it to her, down on one knee in a French restaurant in Sloane Square. Now Sharkey hated the ring, hated the reminder that she was Donovan's woman.

  "He'll calm down eventually," he said soothingly, even though he knew that it would be a cold day in hell before Den Donovan would forgive or forget.

  "I'll get a lawyer to talk to him. We'll come to an arrangement, don't worry. Divorce. Custody of Robbie. It'll be okay, I promise."

  Sharkey stroked Vicky's soft blonde hair and kissed her on the forehead. She wasn't wearing make-up and her eyes were red from crying, but she was still model pretty. High cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes with irises so blue that people often thought she was wearing tinted contact lenses, and flawless skin that took a good five years off her real age. She would be thirty on her next birthday, a fact that she was constantly bringing up. Would Sharkey still love her when she was thirty? she kept asking. Would he still find her attractive?

  "We shouldn't have taken the money, Stewart. That was a mistake."

  "We needed a bargaining chip. Plus, if we're going to hide, that's going to cost."

  "You'll give it back, won't you?"

  "Once we've sorted it out, of course I will." He smiled and corrected himself.

  "We will, Vicky. We're in this together, you and me. I couldn't have moved the money without your authorisation. And I'm the one who knew where it was. And where to put it."

  Sharkey pulled her towards him and kissed her on the mouth. She opened her lips wide for him and moaned softly as his tongue probed deep inside. He kissed her harder and she tried to pull away but Sharkey kept a hand on the back of her neck and kept her lips pressed against his until she stopped pulling away and surrendered to the kiss. Only then did Sharkey release her and she sat back, breathing heavily.

  "Christ, I want you," said Sharkey, placing his hand on her thigh.

  "We've time. We don't have to check in for our flight for three hours."

  "Stewart.. said Vicky, but he could hear the uncertainty in her voice and knew that he'd won. He pulled her close and kissed her again and this time she made no attempt to pull away.

  Donovan stayed air side when he arrived at Stansted. It had been the flight from hell. The teenager occupying the seat in front of him had crashed it back as soon as the wheels left the runway and didn't put it upright until they were on final approach to land in the UK. Donovan had downed several Jack Daniels with ice, but the seat was so small and uncomfortable that there was no chance of sleeping. Plus, there was the small matter of the four-year-old sitting behind him who thought it was fun to kick the seat in time with badly hummed nursery rhymes.

  He collected his luggage and went through Customs without incident, still wearing his sunglasses and Rasta hat. Like most UK airports, Stansted had installed a video recognition system during the late 'nineties. Closed-circuit television cameras scanned passengers departing and arriving, cross-checking faces against a massive database. The system, known as Mandrake, was still in the test phase, but Donovan knew that his photograph, along with all other top players in the international drugs business, was in the database. The technology was almost ninety-five per cent accurate, final checking always had to be done by a human operator, but it could still be fooled by dark glasses and hats. Donovan had been told by one of the high-ranking Customs officers on his payroll that once the system had been debugged and was running smoothly, the airport authorities would insist that all head coverings and sunglasses be removed in the arrival and departure areas. They were already working out how to avoid the expected flurry of lawsuits from Sikhs and others for whom a covered head was an act of religious expression.

  There were only two uniformed Customs officers in the "Nothing To Declare' channel and they were deep in conversation and didn't seem in the least bit interested in the charter flight passengers. Donovan knew that the lack of interest was deceptive the area was monitored by several hidden CCTV cameras, and Customs officers behind the scenes would be looking for passengers who fitted the profile of drugs traffickers. Donovan's Rasta hat and druggie T-shirt would actually work in his favour it would mark him out as a user, but no major drug smuggler would be wearing such outlandish garb.

  Donovan passed through without incident. He shaved and washed in the airport toilets and changed into a grey polo neck sweater and black jeans. He kept his sunglasses on and carried a black linen jacket. He dumped the Rasta hat and T-shirt in a rubbish bin.

  He had two hours to kill before his Ryanair flight to Dublin, so he stopped off at a cafeteria for a plate of pasta and a glass of wine that came out of a screw-top bottle, and read through The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

  His seat on the Ryanair jet was if anything smaller than his charter seat, but the flight took just under an hour. There were no immigration controls between the UK and Ireland, so there was no need for Donovan to show his passport.

  He collected his Samsonite suitcase, walked through the unmanned blue Customs channel and caught a taxi to the city centre. Donovan was a frequent visitor to the Irish capital. It was the perfect transit point for flights to Europe or the United States. From here he had the option of travelling to and from the UK by ferry, or of simply driving up to Belfast and flying to London on what was considered aUK internal flight.

  The taxi dropped Donovan at the top of Grafton Street, the capital's main shopping street. It was pedestrianised and packed with afternoon shoppers: well-heeled tourists in expensive designer clothes rubbing shoulders with teenagers up from the country, marked out as the Celtic Tiger's poor relations by their bad skin, cheap haircuts and supermarket brand training shoe. Careworn housewives pushing crying children, groups of language students with matching backpacks planning their next shoplifting expedition, all remained under the watchful eyes of security guards at every shop front whispering to each other in clunky black transceivers.

  Donovan carried his suitcase and holdall into the Allied Irish Bank, showed an identification card to a uniformed guard and went down a spiral staircase to the safety deposit box vault.

  "Mr. Wilson, haven't seen you for some time," said a young man in a grey suit and a floral
tie. He handed a clipboard to Donovan, who put down his suitcase and holdall and signed in as Jeremy Wilson.

  "Overseas," said Donovan.

  "The States."

  "Welcome back to the land of the living," said the young man. He went over to one of the larger safety deposit boxes and inserted his master key into one of its two locks, giving it a deft twist.

  "I'll leave you alone, Mr. Wilson. Give me a call when you're done."

  Donovan waited until he was alone in the room before putting his personal key into the second lock and turning it. He opened the steel door and slid out his box. It was about two feet long, a foot wide and a foot deep and heavy enough to make him grunt as he hefted it up on to a teak veneer desk with partitions either side to give him a modicum of privacy.

  The single CCTV camera in the vault was positioned behind Donovan, so no one could see what was in the box. He lifted the lid and smiled at the contents. More than a dozen brick-sized bundles of British fifty-pound notes were stacked neatly on the bottom of the box. On top of the banknotes lay four gold Rolex watches, four passports and two burgundy-coloured hard-back account books. They were Czechoslovakian Sparbuch accounts, one with a million dollars, and the other containing half a million. With the appropriate passwords, they were as good as cash.

  Donovan placed his holdall next to the metal box and packed the money into it, then put the passbooks and passports into his jacket pocket. He put the UK passport that he'd used to fly from Jamaica into the box, then replaced the box in its slot and locked the metal door.

  He pressed a small white buzzer on the desk and the young man came back and turned the second lock with his master key. Donovan thanked him and carried his suitcase and holdall upstairs.

  Donovan walked to St. Stephen's Green and along to the taxi rank in front of the grand Shelbourne Hotel. A rotund grey-haired porter in a black uniform with purple trim took the suitcase from him and loaded it into the boot of the lead taxi. Donovan gave him a ten-pound note and kept the holdall with him as he slid into the rear seat.

  "Airport?" asked the driver hopefully.

  "I want to go to Belfast," said Donovan.