Habiyarimana was trapped between the extreme members of the akazu Hutus, who would never agree to share power with the Tutsis, and the African and western powers, who insisted that he had to. Whichever way he moved he would lose, and after eleven years in power, he didn’t want to lose, but he was running out of time. He refused the glass of champagne offered by Marie-Ange and closed his eyes and tried to sleep as the triple Garrett turbofan engines roared to life and thrust the aircraft up into the night sky.
At the end of the track the three trucks pulled into a circle on a desolate grassy plateau that had been cordoned off with red and white tape that morning. The plateau faced north-east, towards the presidential palace, about three kilometres away. It was now pitch black and the lights of the runway at the airport could be seen, at about half that distance. The approach to the airport was from the East, going across in front of their position and directly over the palace on its final descent. At a command from one of the men in civilian clothes, the twelve soldiers formed themselves into a cordon around the vehicles, holding their rifles at the ready. The officers unloaded the crates from the lorries, opened them up and placed the contents on a large plastic sheet, laid out between the trucks. The two civilians supervised their work until they were satisfied with the placement of the equipment. They tested each piece to ensure it hadn’t been damaged in transit then they prepared them for use.
“Bon. Tout est prêt. Attendez notre signal. Everything’s ready. Wait for our signal.” One of the men took out a pack of Gitanes and offered them round. The men and the officers sat smoking quietly, surrounded by the trucks and the cordon of guards. The time was seven thirty.
* * *
At five minutes past eight, the French pilot announced that they would be landing in ten minutes. Marie-Ange collected the empty champagne glasses from the passengers and ensured they were buckled into their seats. After depositing the glasses in the small galley at the back of the aircraft, she went into the toilet just opposite.
At ten minutes past eight, the air traffic controller at Gregoire Kayibanda International Airport repeated his instructions to the pilot of a United Nations C-130 Hercules transport plane which was approaching the airport. “Please make a turn to your starboard, descend to twenty-five thousand feet, take a holding pattern to the north and await further instructions. Another aircraft has been given priority over your slot time.” The weekly Belgian Hercules flight was carrying UN troops, part of the UNamir contingent stationed in Rwanda, who were returning from leave. The pilot responded affirmatively and the plane banked away into the clear, starlit sky to leave the airspace clear for the presidential plane.
“You are cleared for approach, Falcon Fifty.”
“Roger that, tower.” The Falcon pilot started to line up for his approach. Habiyarimana was exhausted. The Burundi president and even some of his own officials had continued to harangue him during the flight and he had spent the last hour trying to find good reasons to defend his procrastination. He leaned back in his seat, wondering how he would be able to hold them off for much longer. He would consult his wife, Agathe Kanzinga, the power behind his throne, when he arrived home.
“Quick, quickly now!” Marie-Ange pushed Benoît, the aide de camp, down onto the toilet seat. His trousers were around his ankles. She hoisted her short skirt, pulled down her panties and straddled him. “We’ll arrive in a couple of minutes and I have to be present for landing.”
On the hillside, the group were listening to the voice of the announcer of Radio Milles Collines berating his audience for not taking decisive action against the Tutsi enemy. He suddenly stopped speaking for a moment then announced that the presidential jet was coming in to land. A selection of classical music began and the commentary ceased.
“Ça y’est. Allons-y! Let’s go!” The plain-clothed men barked out orders and picked up two of the Russian-made 9K38 Igla-type surface-to-air missile launchers, loaded up with their 9M39 missiles. Each man held a weapon in place, facing the presidential palace, which was exactly on the approach path to the airport. At between three and four kilometres, the target would be well within the range of the Igla missiles. The army officers had the remaining weapons loaded and ready, but they knew if the first shots missed, they would be unlikely to get another chance.
Everyone in the group was motionless, listening intently and scouring the skies with narrowed eyes. The UN transport plane had appeared a few minutes ago, but had turned away without landing and was no longer in sight. “Voilà. Là bas!” One of the civilians pointed towards the airport. They could discern the faint lights of the Falcon circling from the north side of the airport all the way back to the south of them, then turning into a final approach path from the east that would take it across their line of vision. The muted sound of the aircraft’s engines became louder in the silence of the night. They watched the lights approach them until the aircraft was almost level with their position, about three and a half kilometres away.
The two men adjusted the range finders on their weapons, squinting through the sights at the dual infra-red images that would enable the rockets to seek out the aircraft’s heat track. “Tirez!” The first missile streaked away, its fiery tail lighting up the hillside. The second followed a couple of seconds later, arrowing after the first, straight towards the Falcon.
“Oui, Oui! Yes, Yes! Keep going! Faster, faster!” Marie-Ange cried out as she and Benoît began to climax at the same time. He was already holding her tight with his hands around her middle, but she grabbed him around the neck with both hands to hold herself in position.
President Habiyarimana was dreaming. He was piloting a helicopter and could hear the rotors spinning faster and faster. It was almost out of control, but Agathe, his wife, was giving him instructions through the headphones. He felt reassured. His wife was always right.
The first missile struck the Falcon just behind the portside wing, ripping off a two metre section, exposing the toilet area. Marie-Ange and Benoît, still sitting in the coital position, were sucked out of the gaping hole in the fuselage and hurled through the air, clinging to each other in abject terror.
The impact pushed the wing upwards and the tail section down, directly into the path of the second rocket. The tail was completely blown off by the explosion of the missile and landed in splinters on the western end of the runway. The forward section of the aircraft was immediately engulfed in flames as the fuel tanks erupted and the remains of the Falcon spiralled like a flaming comet in a deathly descent towards the earth, ironically smashing into the ground just short of Habiyarimana’s presidential palace, the bodies of the ten remaining occupants strewn outside the landscaped gardens.
The soldiers loaded up the three lorries with the remaining material and they trundled quietly off back down the mountain on their way to the Kanombe military barracks. After a few minutes, the classical music on the radio stopped and the announcer said, in a respectful tone, “We have just learned that the presidential aircraft has crashed, resulting in the death of our beloved President Habiyarimana and several of his government members.”
Then the slaughter started.
FEBRUARY, 2010
ONE
Geneva, Switzerland
La Bise is a French word meaning ‘The kiss’. It is also the name of the cold, sharp wind from the east which regularly sweeps across central Europe, especially Switzerland. Local people will tell you that it always appears for one, three or five days, but everyone knows it can blow for a week or more. It was blowing strongly as the young woman climbed out of the taxi in front of the private bank in Plainpalais at nine twenty-five on a freezing cold February morning. She pulled her coat tighter around her against the chilly air, grateful for its warm cashmere fabric and hurried across the pavement and through the massive double doors.
“Bonjour, Madame Bishop, I hope you are well.” The man waiting in reception shook her hand. “Welcome back to Klein Fellay. Everyone is here, expecting you. Please follow me.”
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br /> They entered the lift and he pressed six. “Did you have a pleasant trip, Mme Bishop?”
“As usual, Mr. Schneider, but a more pleasant prospect this time.”
“Indeed.” He nodded his head. “It has not been an easy time for you. I understand. It’s been rather a difficult period for us here at the bank also.” When the woman said nothing, he took out a handkerchief, blew his nose loudly then continued, “May I say that I admire your determination and courage in fighting this matter and I’m personally delighted that it has been resolved in your favour.”
She smiled grimly. “Thank you, Mr Schneider. Then we’re both delighted.” Jenny Bishop didn’t like Eric Schneider and she didn’t like Klein Fellay. The litigation was the only reason she still had her accounts there, but that’s going to end today, she told herself.
They exited the lift and she handed her coat to a woman assistant. Schneider led her to what she assumed was the bank’s main conference room, extravagantly large, with a high painted ceiling featuring a baroque scene, nudes, angels, cherubs and all. The room was beautifully furnished, with a number of recognisable old masters on the walls. Jenny had attended several meetings at the bank and each time it seemed they found a larger and more opulent ambience to display their wealth. Designed to impress and intimidate, she thought, but it won’t work this time.
Four men and a woman were already seated at a magnificent Boulle baroque style table, made for Louis XIV, inlaid with tortoiseshell and red leather veneer. Twenty Hepplewhite armchairs were placed around it, which to Jenny looked rather incongruous. The table was set with eight leather writing pads, two on one side and six on the other, each with a matching ballpoint pen and pencil. Jenny shook hands with them all then sat with her lawyer on the client side of the table. Schneider sat on the other side with his boss, Emile Bluchner, the bank’s Chief Executive, and the four lawyers.
Six to two, she registered suspiciously. Why so many when the matter’s already resolved? Her own lawyer, Sylvestre Prideaux, smiled confidently at her and poured her a glass of water. Prideaux was reckoned to be the best of Geneva’s new breed of techno-lawyers, specialising in the recent phenomenon of cybercrime; embezzlement, fraud and robbery over the Internet. He had been recommended by a Swiss colleague of José Luis Garcia Ramirez, her Spanish lawyer, and she had hired him a year after the dreadful experience with d’Almeida, the psychopathic murderer. That was when she had finally come to terms with the death of her husband, Ron, his father and his partners and the catastrophic events she and her friends had lived through at the Angolan’s hands. After months of wrangling, she was still fighting to recover the money he had stolen from her and this was her last attempt to settle the matter before the court case, scheduled to begin in March.
Bluchner himself served coffee to everyone and there were a few minutes of general conversation as they settled in their places. Jenny had met all of them before, except for the female lawyer and knew their style, what to expect from them. The men had always deferred to Bluchner, adding only legal footnotes to his long monologues about new technology, client protection and bank liability. She listened carefully to the woman’s few remarks, trying to gauge her attitude to the meeting and anticipate her position on the litigation. To Jenny, she sounded self-opinionated and bossy.
Finally Bluchner opened the meeting. “Mme Bishop, thank you for coming to meet with us today and I hope that it will prove to be worthwhile for everyone concerned.” Jenny said nothing and he turned to the woman lawyer. “Mme Wyss, can you please summarise the bank’s proposal for Mme Bishop.”
“Certainly Herr Bluchner.” The woman cleared her throat and started reading from a set of notes in a fast staccato rhythm with a Swiss German accent so strong that Jenny couldn’t understand half of what she said. What she could understand was that she, Mme Wyss, had been brought in to deliberate on the extent of the bank’s liability and she proposed to do this by reference to the few available precedents in the field of financial fraud by Internet.
After a minute or two of this incomprehensible rhetoric, Jenny sat forward and said, “Please don’t continue Mme Wyss. I can’t understand you and I don’t want to listen to any more long legal speeches. I’ve had almost a year of them already.”
Prideaux, her lawyer, put his hand on hers as if to say, hold on, don’t interrupt, but she pulled it away and went on, “Mr Bluchner, I came here today because you advised my lawyer that you acknowledge that an error was committed by your bank in making a transfer without proper authority. If that is the case then there is no need to examine precedents or to make any kind of a proposal. You must simply reverse the transfer and we can both pay our lawyers and forget the matter. If not, then we’re going to proceed with the court case scheduled for next month. It’s as simple as that.”
“But Mme Bishop, the fact that we agree that an error was committed doesn’t settle anything. We must decide on reciprocal culpability and discuss the amount of appropriate damages. Please let Mme Wyss continue with her analysis and our proposal.”
“We deny that there is any reciprocal culpability.” Prideaux was now on his feet. “My client and her two companions were held at gunpoint and forced to disclose their PIN numbers. The perpetrator had already received the security codes from one of your own employees and he sent all of the information himself via your Internet Banking System. Your bank therefore executed a transfer of twelve million dollars based upon improper instructions. Subsequently, Mr Peterson, one of your clients whose account was pillaged, was shot dead by the villain who then also died in the fracas.” He stopped for a moment, letting this last awful statement hang in the air.
“The law is clear on this matter. Your duty to your clients is to only operate their account with instructions received from the account holders themselves, not from a third party, unless they are in possession of a power of attorney, which we know is not the case. Please inform me where my clients’ culpability arises in this case.”
Mme Wyss sat forward and started speaking to Prideaux in French, with an even stronger Swiss German accent, a hard grating sound to Jenny’s ear. She caught the words “Internet” and “PIN securité”.
“Please speak English Mme Wyss, my French and Swiss German are a little rusty,” she said.
The woman looked at her contemptuously and continued haranguing the lawyer until Bluchner called for order. Everyone sat back down and lowered their tone, but within a moment the conversation became heated again and continued for several minutes, each side trying to make their point against the other, until Jenny stood up and banged on the table.
“Stop this arguing immediately. You sound like a bunch of market traders trying to settle the price of a second hand fridge. Please listen to me carefully, because my return flight to London leaves in two hours so I don’t intend to stay here much longer.
Prideaux, who knew Jenny and her temper quite well by now, put his hands over his eyes and sat back in his seat. The others, shocked, said nothing and waited for her to speak.
“Firstly, you have agreed with my lawyer that you made an error in making the transfer of twelve million dollars. You didn’t specify the error, but Mr Prideaux is right, it is because none of the account owners, neither I nor Adam Peterson nor Leticia da Costa actually sent any instructions to you and this has been confirmed by the police investigation.
“Secondly, I know that the bank has a professional liability indemnity policy in place for two billion Swiss Francs, for just such errors as this. That should be enough to cover my claim.
“Thirdly, thanks to the stupidity of the actions of the UBS, after its sixty billion dollar bailout, the Swiss banking system is under immense scrutiny right now, not just by the United States, but by Europe and even here within Switzerland. I don’t think your parent bank, the International Bank of Paris, would be very happy to see their Swiss subsidiary’s name all over the international press and on TV in connection with a Geneva law-suit involving cyber-fraud, a serial murderer and tw
o very unhappy clients who have lost twelve million dollars because of an error that you admit was your fault.”
She squared up to Bluchner, looking him straight in the eyes. “Mr Bluchner, if you want to fight, then you’re going to have to fight my way, because I don’t have two billion francs of insurance. I came here to collect my money and get on with my life. If I can’t do that, then I’ll have to find my satisfaction in some other way.”
Jenny sat down, shivering with fury and fright, in equal measure. Prideaux put his hand over hers again, this time to signal, well done.
“So, Mme Bishop.” Bluchner took a deep breath. “You’re saying it’s twelve million dollars or a battle?”
“Exactly, Mr Bluchner. But a battle on my terms.”
TWO
Geneva, Switzerland
An hour after Jenny’s impassioned speech, Mme Wyss placed a three page document in English before her on the table then turned and walked away without a word. Sylvestre Prideaux read it over carefully and nodded his agreement. Jenny read it for her own satisfaction, registering mainly the sentence; KF agrees to rectify the error by crediting, with immediate value, the amount of Twelve Million US Dollars to the aforementioned bank account in full and final settlement of TAC’s claim against it.
She fleetingly thought of making a further argument for accrued interest but decided that she had had a pretty good run for her money. Don’t push your luck, Jenny, she thought. Besides, interest rates are so low it makes very little difference. We’ve won, that’s all that counts. Jenny took out her own pen and signed the agreement, in triplicate, on behalf of The Angolan Clan, the business created by Charlie Bishop, her father-in-law, over thirty years before, bringing success and wealth to the members for many years before being targeted by a pathological genius, ending in catastrophe and death. There, Charlie, she said to herself. I got our money back for you. I hope you’re proud of me, getting the better of this crooked bank. She pushed the papers over to Bluchner, who signed them without comment.
The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set Page 61
