Cocaine (10 page)

‘I’ll tell you, George’, he said, edging closer on the sofa which someone had moved to his terrace, enclosed with glass and which we now shared with two desks, two computers and the young man sitting at one of them, tapping away on the keyboard. I noticed
Bloomberg
was on in the living room, the large silver plasma telling me London was up seventy points already, a one point two per cent gain, and that banks were looking to consolidate once more.

‘Nice set up’, I said, thinking that it looked like an office, suddenly. The two computers looked new, as did the desks. You could buy a lot for two thousand five hundred these days. ‘Fire away.’

‘It’s like this, see. I have a special arrangement with the Treasury.’

‘Really? How intriguing.’

‘It’s quite hush-hush, because it’s a tax loophole that applies only to expatriates, to non-residents like you and me, see?’

‘I understand. I won’t tell a soul.’

‘Good, because there’s only about a hundred of us worldwide.’

‘A hundred expats? I think there are – ‘

‘ – not a hundred expats, George, a hundred
spaces
.‘ He almost whispered the word.

‘Spaces?’

‘Spaces. In the program, George. The program I’m going to tell you about and get you enrolled in faster than you can say Swiss cheese.’

I nodded, trying to look impressed. Jack Wiseman checked his watch and then the telephone rang. The young man picked it up.

‘It’s Moscow on the line, Mr Wiseman. They want to know if they should make a bid yet or hold on for a few more hours.’

‘Tell ‘em to wait.’ Jack chuckled and turned to me again, a Kit Kat in his hand. ‘Bloody Russians, eh? It’s one of my deals, mustn’t talk about it really, suffice it to say it’s a nine figure sum.’

‘And your role, Jack?’

‘Adviser.
Retained
adviser. You do know what two per cent of seven hundred million is, don’t you George?’

‘Fourteen million.’

‘Errr...yes...that’s right.’ Jack lay back smugly on the sofa and took a bite of his chocolate. ‘We’re very comfortable.’

‘Coffee, George?’ asked Jan Wiseman, creeping up on us silently.

‘I’d love some’, I answered, drawing my attaché case closer to me.

‘White? Sugar?’

‘Yes thanks.’

She poured whilst I opened my case. I looked inside at the contents and pulled out a single sheet of paper on which I had set out a list of fictitious assets including shares worth about half a million and a property in Thailand worth the same again. I had also included my white Porsche, the lovely Portia, resting in her home fourteen floors beneath us.

‘That’s me’, I said. He studied it quickly.

‘You’re exposed’, he said almost immediately. ‘We must act soon, George.’

‘So tell me about this special deal with the Treasury, the one with the hundred expats and the spaces.’

‘Yes. Yes I think I better. Before it’s too late.’

‘
Too late?’

‘
That’s right, George’ he continued, ‘we’re in for a rocky ride. Market indications are troubling me.’

‘
Market’s up seventy points this morning, Jack.’

‘
Of course it is.’

He nodded sagely, as if party to some financial secret, some market surprise that was eluding the likes of Warren Buffet, the world’s second richest man, and me. ‘That’s what I tell the hedge funds I work with. Set up structures, that kind of thing.’

‘
Structures? Which hedge funds, Jack?’

‘
Can’t say.’ He tapped his nose conspiratorially. ‘Bound by confidentiality.’

‘
So what do we do? How can you help me, Jack?’

‘
This strategy, see, this tax loophole, it’s very complex, very complex but very profitable because you can’t lose. Your capital, sonny-Jim, is safe as houses.’

‘
What do you want me to do with my capital?’

‘
Basically’, he said, waving his arms around, ‘I offer you my management skills. I pool your funds into a government-backed scheme that guarantees you forty per cent return for twenty percent invested, eighty per cent borrowed. Can’t lose, see?’

‘
So I have to borrow money?’

‘
Oh no, don’t worry. I take care of that side of it. I just need the capital and some papers signed and the tax credit normally comes in direct from the government in about three months.’

In three months’ time Jack and Jan would be sunning themselves in another location.

‘
I should get my lawyers to look over this, I think. Do you have some literature I can give them?’

‘
People always ask me that.’

'I bet they do.'

‘
And do you know what I always tell them?’

‘
No.’

‘
I’ll tell you. Look around, George. Look at where I’m living. Look at me. I’m a successful man, very wealthy. I enjoy setting up these investment structures – ‘

‘
Another tea, George?’ chipped in Jan, smiling sweetly.

‘
Yes please Jan.’

‘
Like I was saying, I get the pleasure of helping friends, plus I take a small commission only if the funds increase in value. You know, five per cent, summat like that.’

‘
So I give you ten pounds and you give me back twenty?’

‘
You got it, my son. Easiest money in the world.’

11

November 1990

We left Popayan the next day and took the bus to Cali. I noticed Juan Andres becoming more and more nervous as we approached the city, which, I recalled, contained his ex-employer's headquarters, somewhere on the eleventh floor of a nondescript downtown office block.

‘It’s Suares, isn’t it?’ I asked.

He didn’t even blink.

‘No. He replied. 'It is my family.’

‘Your family?’

‘They think I am dead. It will be great shock.’

‘They’ll be real happy for you, Juan my man’, said Kieran.

‘Yes,
compadre
, but…’ His voice trailed off. ‘It will be great shock.’

‘We stoppin’ in Cali?’

‘No’, said Juan Andres and I, together. We turned to look at each other momentarily. I saw the look of sadness in his eyes. Three tourists, according to our passports. One of us was meant to be teaching English, the other was meant to be recuperating in a Swiss detox clinic, and the third was meant to be dead. We belonged with each other. I thought I had made the right decision, but we had so far only skirted around the possibilities of what we might achieve together.

The job waiting for me in England was not a bad one, working in the quantitative analysis department of a minor investment bank somewhere in the City. The salary was to be twenty-two thousand, which was good for 1990, in fact, it was much more than most of my contemporaries, especially those with first class degrees who had gone on to do research in the labs just behind Downing College, the sandstone buildings shaded by damp green leaves. The bank had over-recruited, which meant they were happy for people to defer entry, people like me. I’d been given a grant of three thousand pounds to learn Spanish and teach English.

‘Communication’, said the head of HR, ‘communication and personal development. Broadening your horizons. Maturing.’

If she could see me now, the supercilious forty-something woman in her tweedy suit and big black brogues, looking like a man in drag with those big clodhoppers on her feet, her condescension wrapped in one hundred per cent wool-twist. I had brought my signed employment contract with me to Colombia to remind me what I had to look forward to. I had already calculated that after tax and national insurance my monthly take home pay would be one thousand five hundred pounds, which meant twenty-five pounds an hour for sixty hours a week and the designation ‘grunt.’

I knew a lot of people, especially those unfortunate enough to be unemployed, would have jumped at the chance to make so much so young, but when you thought about it, it wasn’t so much. And I didn't feel that young. I could have cheated the whole thing. I could have stayed in England, maybe spent a few months in Cornwall by the beach. The bank would never have known. I could have bought one of those ‘Learn Spanish in Three Weeks’ courses and sat on my towel watching the Atlantic rollers pound the shore at Newquay or Polzeath, the strains of ‘
donde esta el aeropuerto?
’ playing though my Walkman. Just like school.
Ecoutez et repetez.
I could have pocketed the three thousand pounds.

That'd buy a lot of product.

We were standing in what from the outside looked like a garage attached to the main house by a narrow door with two thick bolts across it. The room had a smooth concrete floor painted in a rubber-based grey paint and the walls were white-washed. There were no windows, just two fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling which illuminated a large steel work-table and four chairs. Racks similar to those at the university lined two walls, filled with a variety of packets, cartons, tubs and bottles, each with a cryptic handwritten label that I couldn’t read.

Juan Andres placed approximately one gram of the pure cocaine that we had removed from the
Universidad del Cauca
’s opthamology department onto a sterile Petri dish.

‘The control’, he said, ‘is close to one hundred per cent pure.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘
Si, claro.
’

‘Is code’, he told me. ‘No-one else know what they say.’

‘Which one’s the tropinone?’

He pointed to a large tub and took it down from one of the racks. Inside were a number of sealed packets with a stamp from a US laboratory.

‘These are from where I think they're from…?’

‘
Si.
We the only people doing this in my country, trust me.’

‘Of course. I mean, what’s the point, when you have the real thing growing in your back-yard?’

‘
Exactamente
. No-one here know or care if there is artificial cocaine. Is only gringos like you.’

He grinned at me. We were both enjoying this. I opened up my bag and pulled out a sheaf of notes.

‘
What’s this?’ he asked me.

‘
The danger in this whole business is the distribution', I answered confidently. 'The danger is the competition. If you make a different product, you’re not technically in competition with the people who distill it from the leaf. And if you have localized distribution, like a mobile laboratory, then you drive around and make it to order.’

‘
And you put the Cartels out of business, all by yourself?’

‘
It’s my plan. You can come with me. I'll need a bodyguard.’

‘
Hah!
Dios mio
!’

‘
The end user gets a hundred percent pure, every time, which we know they don’t if they buy from a source that’s ten steps down the supply chain. This is what I spent my last year doing. Dreaming up ways to make money.’

‘
Thass why you come to Colombia? You should have stay in Cambridge. Good laboratories. Famous university.’

‘
You think they wouldn’t perhaps be a little suspicious? Out here the dollar goes a long way plus we can perform quality control testing. You said five dollars for eighty per cent
pura cocaine.
’

‘
Si
.’

‘
Where?’

‘
Cartagena. In the north. Is beautiful. Nice
chicas
.’

‘
Kieran’ll like that.’

‘
You not tell Kieran about this?’

‘
Do you trust him?’

‘
I think he nice guy. He just want to find woman to have sex.’