Siege at the Villa Lipp (16 page)

However, since this is not a history of the post-World War II black markets - the writing of which I happily leave to a scholar of the Krom school of fantasists - I shall merely give some idea of the scale of them by reporting that, during our first eighteen months of operations, Carlo was ‘entrusted’ with nearly half a million dollars derived from the Italian markets
alone.

I say
alone
because before long we were getting word of much larger sums needing our services in Germany.

The early reports from Carlos’ man in Lugano told of a chaotic situation. Big money was being made, but those making it, mostly American senior NCOs and junior officers in transportation and supply units, seemed unaware of the difficulties into which they would soon be getting. This was not simply because they were new to the game, but because in West Germany the rules were complex and the conditions of play tended to promote over-confidence. For instance, there were three distinct occupation zones, in two of which - the French and the British - exchange control restrictions were maintained on their national currencies. In the British zone, these restrictions were enforced by a Special Investigation Branch squad of remarkable ferocity. So, the American wheeler-dealer, who already benefited from his access to the most sought-after market commodities, also enjoyed the advantage of being able to do business in the only freely convertible currency available, the dollar.

Soon, stories began to come in of American soldiers crossing into Switzerland for ‘Rest and Recuperation’. On arrival, most of them made for the nearest bank. Perfectly natural, one would have said, if all that those fine boys were doing was exchanging a few of their dollars for francs to spend locally during their furloughs; but that, it seemed, was by no means all that some of them were doing; lots were opening bank accounts.

This, of course, was before the mere possession of a Swiss bank account by an American or British citizen rendered him, at least in the eyes of his native Revenue men, at best a jail-worthy tax-evader if not a Mafia narcotics-pedlar as well; but murmurings about refugee Nazi funds being protected by the Swiss bank secrecy laws were already getting louder, and a newspaper story about a black market in antibiotics involving occupation medical-corps personnel had caused a considerable fuss. As always when the nostrils of higher authority are assailed by smells of corruption other than their own, the cries of outrage and disgust are promptly followed by sounds of loophole-stoppings and stampings-out, of tightenings-up and clampings-down.

In the American sector, by the end of 1946, an efficient laundry service of the kind Carlo could provide had become essential. I do not claim that his was the only one in the field - we had our imitators by then - but it was unquestionably the safest and most reliable.

In November, having at last been told that the army no longer required my services, I asked for a travel warrant to London and was demobilized there. Acting on Carlo’s instructions, I then obtained a British passport as well as renewing my Argentine papers, before returning to Milan. From Milan I went to Lugano, where I spent a week or so learning a few more ropes. From Munich, I wrote to my family explaining that I had gone into the scrap-metal business.

The code-name given to me by Carlo for use when I needed to authenticate confidential messages was ‘Oberholzer’.

In 1956, Carlo had an operation for the removal of his gall bladder. The surgeon who performed it somehow bungled the job, and later in the year a second operation became necessary. He recovered all right, but it was a long, debilitating illness and it changed him. I don’t mean that he aged prematurely, though I have noticed that serious illness can have that effect on persons in their sixties. With Carlo what happened was that, as his physical health returned, the pattern of his characteristic psychological responses seemed gradually to intensify. He became an exaggerated, larger-than-life version of himself. Things that would once have only made that smile of his blossom, now made him laugh aloud. Things that would once have been dismissed as annoyances now produced outbursts of rage. It was as if, in the struggle to regain his health, he had been obliged to shed the emotional weight of several old but crucial inhibitions. The result was in many ways a more engaging man, but also a more formidable and sometimes frightening one. I have said that Carlo could be vindictive. After his illness he could be cruelly so. The man who could dream up the butter-train coup was also capable of applying himself with relish to more disagreeable amusements.

His claim that ours was a bank on which there could never be a run had proved to be justified. On that score we had no anxieties; and, after 1951, when the double-taxation conventions between Switzerland and the US and UK came into force, the possibility of a run ceased to exist altogether. Our ‘customers’, a cagey bunch of crooks with finely-tuned survival instincts, could never all go crazy at the same time.

That is not to say, however, that some of them did not over the years withdraw their deposits, having devised their own ways of accounting for them. Some of the ways worked. Few attempted, though, to use the legacy method of getting their money, and most who did chickened out, as Carlo had predicted they would, before the pay-off was finally made.

The typical American customer seeking to close his account with us was usually in Europe on a business or vacation trip. Mostly, they wrote, after leaving the United States and generally from London or Paris, to announce that they were on their way. Those who went unannounced direct to Lugano were referred to Milan, and Carlo was immediately given advance warning either by telephone or by one of our couriers. When such customers arrived they were usually, and quite naturally, a bit flustered. Doubt and greed, plus a little anger and a lot of fear, make a disturbing emotional mix; but most were easy to handle.

The one who so upset Carlo was exceptional in a number of respects. To being with, he was not flustered, only bloody-minded. Furthermore, during the time that had elapsed since I had signed him up in Germany, he had returned to the United States and, under the GI Bill of Rights, qualified as an accountant. In addition, he had married a woman, also an accountant, whom he had met while they were both attending a post-graduate course in business administration. She had worked then for a firm of Wall Street investment bankers. After their marriage they had gone into business together, starting an employment agency specialising in trained data-processing staff.

This customer was so different from our prototypical Mr Q that I shall call him Vic - as in Victor and victim.

When I first met him, Vic had been dealing with the already overcrowded market for stolen PX goods, but later, thanks to a lucky posting and a promotion, he had been able to switch to army truck tyres and make real money. By the time his tour of duty in Germany ended we were holding over seventy thousand dollars for him, and he, although he had met Carlo only once, held nine of the notarized receipts. The courier service we operated made such transactions fairly routine, once confidence had been established at an initial meeting, as well as safer. The meeting usually took place near Zug, where Carlo’s holding corporation was registered.

Vic gave no advance warning of his arrival in Milan, and none was received from Lugano because he had not bothered to go there. I had other projects to supervise by then, and was dividing my time between Milan and three other cities. It was by chance that I was there when Vic descended on us. A lucky chance, I think; not because the occasion was in the least enjoyable, but because it made me think more carefully than I had thought before about Carlo. Naturally, he called me in to greet his old client and my old friend.

At first, Vic showed no signs at all of bloody-mindedness. He was not exactly affable, but cool, polite and collected. He had a brand-new Gucci brief-case which he carefully placed on the floor between his legs. Then he told us what a wonderful little woman he had married and why he hadn’t troubled to go to the bank in Lugano.

A month earlier they had been talking about expanding their business, of opening a second office in Chicago. They had spoken of the additional capital that would be needed and of the problems of borrowing it they would have to face. In the watches of the night Vic had revealed for the first time that while in the army he had not always been a simple soldier.

Mrs Vic had heard his confession with surprise but only token distress. They were both human, weren’t they? Once her surprise had worn off curiosity had taken over. Her Wall Street experience had given her some knowledge of Swiss banking customs.
What
sort of an account did he say he had? An
anonymous
one? Didn’t he mean numbered? No, he meant one hundred per cent anonymous numbered. Well, honey, I have news for you. There are numbered accounts, but not one hundred per cent anonymous ones. Okay, your name’s not on the account externally, but it’s on it internally. The only anonymity lies in the fact that no more than five key bank personnel can match the name to the number. Exactly how did you open this account? What sort of application did you sign?

Now, Vic turned narrowed eyes in my direction. ‘How many other suckers did you sign up, Paul baby?’

‘You had an anonymous account.’

‘There’s no such thing.’

‘There’s no such thing
now.
The rules were changed when the double-taxation conventions were signed.’

‘Bullshit!’

I gave him the weary look. ‘If you yourself had not insisted that, for security reasons, contacts between us could only be made on
your
initiative, you would long ago have been formally notified of the situation. Why project your paranoia on us? If you had simply gone to the Lugano bank you would have been referred here automatically.’

‘Well, now that I’m here
un-
automatically, where’s the money?’

I looked at Carlo. He already had his hand on the intercom to the outer office. He flipped the switch and said in English: ‘Send in the current confidential fiscal account of Mr Vic’ To Vic he said: ‘I am assuming that you can produce the original receipts that I notarized. You have them with you?’

‘Sure.’ He reached for the brief-case and took out an old-fashioned pouch file of the kind that is tied with a linen tape. He undid the tape, took out the receipts and spread them out elaborately in the shape of a fan. ‘How many peanuts are they worth now?’ he asked unpleasantly.

What interested me at once was their condition. I had seen a number of those receipts produced for inspection in Carlo’s office, and always before they had looked unfit even for his elegant waste-basket. Either they had been dog-eared and greasy from years of furtive handling and re-examination, or so creased, folded and refolded to suit strange hiding-places that they were nearly falling apart. Vic’s were all clean and smooth. As well as being astute and impertinent, he was also, it seemed, overwhelmingly sure of himself.

Carlo’s senior secretary, the matriarch, came in with the statement of account and placed it reverently on the desk in front of him.

Normally, that is faced with a client who had minded his manners and was there merely to enquire about the state of his dream money, Carlo would have let the account lie there for a few minutes while he chatted away knowledgeably about some new sculptor whose work had caught his eye, or the follies of currency speculation, or anything else that had happened to come into his mind as he sat there. The truth was that the accounts, which were always updated twice a year, were his own particular pride and joy. He did them himself and they were masterpieces of obfuscation. One of his greatest pleasures was to see a client, on examining an account, purse his lips and then nod vaguely as if it were all perfectly understandable. He believed that the preliminary chit-chat - what he called his abracadabra - helped the process along by bemusing the client.

With Vic, however, abracadabra was obviously not going to work. Besides, the fellow annoyed him. Almost before the secretary had left the room, Carlo leaned forward and tossed the account folder in Vic’s direction.

Vic caught it neatly, opened it and spent about ten seconds glancing at each of the three pages inside. Then, he slapped it shut and skimmed it back so that it plopped on to the desk right under Carlo’s nose.

‘Mr Lech,’ he said, ‘I left you with seventy-three thousand dollars of mine. In eight years those dollars have become one hundred eighty-six thousand somethings. First question, what kind of somethings? Lire?’

Carlo put the account folder aside as if the sight of it now offended him. ‘American dollars, of course,’ he said. ‘You have more than doubled your money.’

Vic did not look in the least pleased. He just said: ‘How? How have I doubled it? Tell me, Mr Lech.’

Carlo touched the account folder without looking at it. ‘It is all here, Sir. I thought you understood figures.’

Vic made a spitting sound. ‘Sure I understand figures, when I know how they’ve been cooked. You, or rather your boy Paul here, now tells me that my money hasn’t been in that bank after all. So where has it been?’

‘Acting on your behalf, we held it in a deposit account.’

‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Acting on my behalf, you said. Right? So what did you invest it in? German blue chips? Schering? Siemens? Daimler-Benz? Hoechst? What was the portfolio?’

Carlo had a small ebony-edged silver ruler which he used as a paperweight. With it, he suddenly rapped on the desk. ‘That is enough, sir,’ he said sternly. ‘I am a lawyer, not an investment banker. You found it convenient to utilize my services in order to hold your money in trust. I have held it in trust. It is more than intact. You can receive it back at any time you wish, less my proper fees but plus compound interest at bank rates as they have fluctuated over the relevant period. You have more than doubled your money. What is your complaint?’

Vic sat back, as if relaxing, then cocked an eye again at me.
‘What
kind of an account do you charmers say you put it in?’