Mortal Bonds (11 page)

Bearer bonds comprise a whole other subset, which lives by its own rules. The sum total of my knowledge of them had been learned in a single terminally boring lecture in B-school many years ago, by a professor so consumed with jealousy that in a few years we would all be earning in a year what it took him a decade to earn, that he managed not to notice that half the class was asleep.

Unlike other bonds, and most stocks these days, which are all registered and exist only as micro-bytes in a computer, bearer bonds exist only on paper, in physical form. They are printed on heavy paper in some official-appearing font like the document you get with a set of commemorative coins. Only, the document itself is worth a lot more than a bunch of silver coins from the 1980 Moscow Olympics. And they come in large denominations. Very large.

Once upon a time, in the ancient days of finance—the first half of the twentieth century—all bonds were bearer bonds. When it was time for an interim interest payment to be redeemed, the owner of the bearer bond clipped off a dated coupon and presented it at a bank for payment, similar to a check. The bank made sure that the coupon was legitimate—not a forgery, nor the obligation of some defunct entity, like the Confederate States of America—and paid out in cash. The wrinkle was that the bank had no obligation to determine that the holder of the coupon was the legitimate owner. Whoever had possession of the bond could redeem it for cash. This anonymity makes them particularly valuable for anyone who needs to move large amounts of money without leaving a trail for regulators, the IRS, or the police. Bearer bonds are not so much investments as they are a proxy for cash. The U.S. government stopped issuing them in the early 1980s and the IRS penalized U.S. corporations that issued them. They issued them anyway. The savings in interest payments were worth paying the penalty.

“Didn’t the Treasury do away with bearer bonds? Thirty years ago?” I said.

“It is true that the U.S. Treasury no longer issues bearer bonds, but it is still possible to redeem one. It is legal to own them. But the paperwork involved removes the cloak of anonymity. Anyone who presents a bearer bond for payment in a United States bank must provide identification. The transaction is reported to various government bodies which are on the lookout for tax evasion, money laundering, organized crime, terrorism.”

“But outside the U.S.?” I said.

“Exactly.” He smiled at the good pupil. I was being schooled again. “In certain money centers around the world, bearer bonds are used for transactions daily wherever anonymity is of concern.”

“The drug trade again,” I said. “Not interested.”

“And would it surprise you,” he continued, ignoring my comment entirely, “to learn that many of the issuers of these bearer bonds are the foreign subsidiaries of A-rated American corporations?”

I wasn’t surprised.

“They are also users of bearer bonds,” he went right on. “How else could they pay for Iranian oil? Any other transaction would be traceable. It is not just the arms and drug trades that benefit. How better to convince a reluctant bureaucrat in a third-world country that your company’s proposal is superior to any other? Cash is bulky and awkward.”

I held up my hands. “Please. I am convinced. There is corruption in the world. What I would like to know is, where did Von Becker hide his billions? Bearer bonds? Is that what you’re saying?”

Castillo made a steeple of his fingers and pursed his lips in thought. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “But I have an idea. I am being quite honest with you, Mr. Stafford, because I think our interests coincide. Von Becker was more than a little familiar with the product.”

If Castillo was going to resort to telling the truth, I was sure he had something to hide.

“My family did a considerable amount of business with William Von Becker—business that benefited mutual clients.”

Money laundering.

“From time to time, a client would need to purchase or divest of some bearer bonds. Mr. Von Becker was most helpful. Money would be wired into one of the Von Becker banks and a meeting would be arranged. Lawyers—or couriers—for both parties would meet in Zurich and make the exchange.”

“Always in Zurich?”

“Mr. Von Becker insisted. The clients did not mind. They used couriers if they wanted the bonds moved elsewhere.”

“Where did they meet? At a bank? I assume the certificates were kept in a safe-deposit box or a vault.”

Castillo grinned. “A meeting in a bank would defeat the purpose of using bearer bonds. The meeting would no longer be anonymous. If both parties had to enter the vault, they would have to sign in, show identification. There would be a paper trail. Impossible. Therefore, the meeting would always take place at a café. Across the street from the bank. Away from the surveillance cameras.”

In a world of computers, cell phones, and instant access to money, information, or communication, Von Becker had relied on the anonymity of the sidewalk café to conduct his business.

“So only the lawyer would go into the bank vault,” I said. “No one could ever connect him to the other courier.”

“Exactly. There must be no trail—no connections. And the system worked well right up until last fall. On the day that William Von Becker surrendered to the Feds, one of my clients had initiated a purchase of one hundred million dollars of these bonds. The money was deposited and wired, but the authorization for the physical transfer was never made. No doubt, Mr. Von Becker was preoccupied that day with the details of his arrest and he never made the call to Switzerland.”

“No one else could handle this?”

“Mr. Von Becker did not normally trust anyone else to make the arrangements.”

That fit with what everyone else had told me about him.

“My clients,” he went on, “tell me that they made some early attempts to contact other family members, but failed. They did not share the details with me.”

“So your client was out a hundred million dollars? Was that a normal-sized trade? How bad was he going to miss it? Enough to have Von Becker executed in jail?”

“It was far from normal. But killing him would have been counterproductive. As long as he was alive, he would, at some point, be able to make the necessary arrangements. He was being held at the MCC downtown. It was easy to get messages in or out. It was only a matter of time.”

“So you believe he killed himself.”

“Out of shame? That’s what the family is trying to spin. No. I think one of the sons had him killed.”

“Why?”

“Because they found out what he was doing and wanted to keep the bonds for themselves.”

Which meant I could be working for a murderer.

“That’s an interesting theory. What about contacting the lawyer directly? They must have had some contingency plan.”

“Approaches were made—and rejected. The lawyer—Herr Serge Biondi of the firm Kuhn Lauber Biondi in Zurich—was an old man and somewhat rigid in his ways. He insisted we wait until word came from his client.”

“But Von Becker died.”

“Well, actually, the old man died first.”

“That is a very ugly coincidence.”

“The newspapers said it was a heart attack.” Castillo removed an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve and flicked it to the floor. “He was eighty and lived a sedentary life.”

“And since then? It’s been more than six months.”

“The chain is broken. My clients grow impatient. So do yours, I imagine. That’s why you were hired. Somewhere there is a key or a code. Somewhere those bonds are waiting to be found. Approaches to the bank have been made, but without that code—or key—there is little hope of recovery.”

“And if I find them?”

“My clients want only what is rightfully theirs. And they will be generous in rewarding the person who returns their goods.”

“And if I don’t find them? What then?”

“They are already impatient. They will find other means.”

There was no doubt in my mind that Castillo knew much more than he had told me—but whether the information would have helped me or not, I had no idea. There were still people I had not yet interviewed and there was no guarantee that finding Castillo’s money would lead me to Von Becker’s, but he was right, our interests might yet coincide. His confidential manner suggested that he assumed that I was as big a crook as he. I didn’t like that, but I was used to it. I thought I could handle it.

“What’s the name of the bank?” I said.

He relaxed back into the chair and smiled. “Welcome on board, Mr. Stafford.”

Schooling began in earnest.

F
BI Agent Marcus Brady had lost some weight and gained some gravitas in the eight months since I had last seen him. He’d saved my life and I had given his career a boost. Thanks to his efforts, and my engineering, he had been instrumental in wrapping up a multiple murder case that covered three jurisdictions. The powers that be had rewarded him with a transfer out of forensic accounting.

“So there I was,” he said, smiling coldly.

There’s an old trader’s joke—What’s the difference between a fairy tale and a trader’s story? A fairy tale begins “Once upon a time” and a trader’s story starts “So there I was.”

“There you were,” I answered.

We were sitting in his office at the Federal Building downtown—a windowless walk-in closet holding a desk, two chairs, and some filing cabinets. It was worse than my old cell, which was bigger and at least had a window. Of course, Brady didn’t have to share the space with a roommate with gang tats.

“And I’m scrolling through surveillance tapes of the entrance to the Merchants and Traders Club . . .”

“Our tax dollars at work,” I said.

“And, Whoa! Who do I see? An old friend . . .”

“Acquaintance.”

“. . . arriving for a meeting with one Tulio Castillo, the main subject of a major interagency investigation. And I think, there must be some very good reason that a guy with almost two and a half years to go on his parole would risk being seen with a bad guy like that.”

“You’d think.”

“So I figured I’ll ask. It can’t hurt.”

The FBI seemed to know my schedule. The two agents had been waiting outside the Ansonia when I got back from dropping the Kid at school. They had been polite but firm, offering me a choice. I could come downtown with them with the handcuffs on or off.

“Mr. Castillo invited me to come down and talk with him. Same way you did. Only he did it classier. Do I tell him what you and I talk about?”

“Suppose I put a wire on you and send you back?”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a strong aversion to being dead.”

Brady chuckled. “I understand.”

“Thank you.”

“Shall we start over?”

“Old friends?”

“Reluctant allies?”

It was my turn to laugh. “Done. Who goes first?”

“You do.”

There was never any question on that. “Okay, I’ve been hired by a wealthy New England family to recover some money.”

“Who’s this?”

“Just let me finish.”

“Come on. I know you’re not working for the Kennedys. Are these people connected?”

“You’re way off base.”

“If Castillo is teamed up with the Patriarca people, I need to know about it.”

“Who?”

“The New England mob.”

“Stop. Stop. Let me tell it.” How was it that everyone I talked to knew who I was working for—except for the FBI?

“Get to the point.”

“Castillo invited me to his club. Politely. He sent a card. We had a long chat, and he wants to hire me, too—to find the same money, which he says belongs to his client.”

“Client!” Brady snorted.

“Do I get to tell this or do I get to go home?”

“Start from the top.”

Everett Payne. Newport. The Von Becker family. Paddy. Douglas Randolph. The clerk, Rose-Marie.

“She says there is no stash, right? Wouldn’t she know?”

“Not necessarily. What I’m beginning to see about Von Becker is that he was brilliant at keeping everyone in the dark. No one got to see the whole picture, only their little part in it. Maybe the other clerk knows something—but he’s not talking. At least not to me.”

“How did Castillo find you?”

“I don’t know, but it feels like everyone knows what I’m supposed to be doing.”

I filled him in on the whole conversation with Castillo. The bearer bonds. The lawyer, Biondi. The Swiss bank.

“So you’re working for him?”

“No. I told him that if I come up with something that looks like it belongs to him, I’ll let him know. That’s it. He’s run out of ideas, though he gave me one lead. If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know.”

“You’re in trouble. Way out of your depth.”

“I promised him nothing. Zip.”

“Did he say who this client is?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Well, I can guarantee they know who you are. And you don’t want that. That is not a good thing. It is a bad thing.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with any of that. I plan on staying squeaky clean and out of prison.”

“There’s scarier things than going back to jail. Let me tell you a little story. You need to know who you’re dealing with. Then I’m going to bring some other agents in here. They’ll want to hear your story—in triplicate—so get comfortable. And if you don’t believe what I tell you, ask these guys. They’ve seen it all.”

Brady’s story was an eye-opener. When the U.S. and the Colombian government finally broke up the two big cocaine cartels, back in the late 1990s, they left a power gap at the top that still hadn’t been filled. But they hadn’t stopped the flow of drugs—there was just too much money involved. The remaining players—mostly the Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans—had rushed in to take over the distribution. And when the Taliban shut down the poppy growers in Afghanistan in 2000, the Central American gangs had seen a new growth opportunity—heroin. With considerably shorter distribution routes to the world’s largest market, they were able to provide a product much closer to pure in a much shorter period of time. They captured market share. The profits they were raking in made the old Medellín and Cali cartels look like kids’ lemonade stands in comparison.

But without centralization of the power structure, there was no way to maintain agreed-upon areas of influence. The drug war became a free-for-all. The violence ratcheted up. It wasn’t just the Mexican border gangs that were out of control, killing one another, policemen, politicians, and innocent bystanders in a crazy bloodbath. Honduras had the highest per capita murder rate in the world. Guatemala was not much better. There no longer needed to be a reason to murder someone—terror was now the objective.

“Castillo is an aristocrat. His family has been at the top of the food chain in Colombia since they arrived three or four hundred years ago. That makes him think he has some control over what these people do. He doesn’t. They are very scary people and they now know your name. If you’re not scared, you’re an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot.” Everyone was calling me an idiot.

“Good. Stay here.”

He went out and returned a moment later with three members of the team—two from the DEA and Brady’s senior agent. I started again from the beginning.