Kitabı oku: «The Lock keeper of Kiev», sayfa 3
Scene 4: Ice Time in the Ukraine
The following Monday was foreseen for research time in the office: Bob wanted to check his high risk customer list again. Jela should report sick at the CERN project office. Sandrine had promised to offer support where possible.
Bob went through his list but now with the mind of a criminal expert: where could he identify situations in which someone could win or lose big? Based on his China experience, he knew that in states with quasi totalitarian structures there was a huge pressure to transfer money abroad, mostly to the West.
Since years he was well informed about the capital leaving countries like Russia and China and had tried to be selective where he was involved. The accompanying M&A** activities were a specialty of his bank and, consequently, the local management of the Mega Bank were not amused about his restrictions as it was easy money. In his research he targeted three countries and established three categories for the activities: acquisition of European companies by local firms, the respective state, or by individuals. The result was clear-cut: in Belorussia there were only eight projects but they were so small that he qualified the whole country as ‘not critical`. They had sixty requests out of Russia out of which eighty percent originated from private persons. Bob asked himself whether to go deeper here but came to the conclusion not to do so.
Since the beginning of the new millennium no country refused to accept this Russian capital. With the tensions around the Ukraine this might change, he thought, and sent an e-mail to his direct report in Moscow to group the requests by names, families or clans and provide intelligence regarding how close they were to the Kremlin.
In any case, Bob wanted to get clear-cut information regarding investments, residences in Russia and in the West and - if available - connections to competitive banks anywhere. Laura had agreed that they could buy data from the private eye guys in London** whenever they didn’t have enough background inputs. This was necessary relatively often as just the translation of the names written in Cyrillic caused problems of identification.
In the afternoon, Bob did his analysis of the situation in the Ukraine which turned out to be rather similar. The volume of the roughly twenty five demands for project support added up to some thirteen billions. After the failure of the negotiations regarding the association with the EU in November of 2013, in accordance with his rules Bob had ordered a three-month freeze of all M&A activities with the Ukraine. The No-Go period would run out in a few days.
It was surprising, though, that in the Ukraine almost all requests were linked with the same names. His local business partners at the Mega bank didn’t want to provide information by phone. So, Bob announced a visit and asked Maître Angel to get an ok for him to fly to the Ukraine. To everybody’s surprise, it arrived already next morning.
And once again, Bob was in a plane on the way to an adventure. He regretted to leave Jela alone with the aftershock of the funeral but Sandrine was a super help for his wife. On top, Bob had noticed an important difference in comparison with the old days. There was nothing like a depression to be seen with Jela. Interestingly, it was Lena who created difficulties when he left the house. She didn’t want her daddy to leave her! It was the first time! Was this a bad omen?
Kiev was white because it had freshly snowed. The local risk manager of the Mega bank, Oleg, picked up Bob and brought him to his hotel which was close to the Parliament. They had to take detours because there were several demonstrations. Bob couldn’t know that he had an image here as the successful project manager of the huge China deal. It became a triumph for the bank because he had successfully fought off all attempts to torpedo the deal. Bob felt the over-sized respect of Oleg and wanted to relax him with stories about his family and coercing him to talk about his family, too. When he finally offered to be called Bob, he had won.
Oleg explained: “There are tensions with Russia because the Ukraine wants to get closer to the European Union and the president as pro-Russian is against it. The contract of association is dead for time being but the West Ukrainians want to revive it with the demonstrations on Majdan Square. This will certainly have some impact on the acquisition activities of the local oligarchs. We have had a strong increase in demands of that sort during the last few days.”
In all details Oleg explained the corruption system around the president: “I can assure you that practical all buying demands are coming from the clan of the president. He pulls billions out of the country on a monthly basis. You need to see his palaces. I will be in danger if I inform you officially on these crimes.”
Bob made a quick check-in and they took a taxi to go to a restaurant close by. He explained what had happened to his family and asked whether Oleg could see a warning for him in it in the context of the Ukraine. Oleg scratched his head and even a few Vodka´s didn´t get them further. Then, all of a sudden, Oleg put his face close to Bob´s and whispered: “I would like you to meet a good friend of mine. His English is a catastrophe that is why he comes with a translator. I will leave you alone!”
He stood up and left and before Bob could react, the two persons announced by Oleg stood at the table. The man was in his forties with broad shoulders and round glasses. Like many Ukrainians he had his hair cut extremely short. She was a beautiful blonde with blue eyes like so many of them in the Ukraine.
She excused her partner whose English was not good enough to express what he wanted to convey to Bob. His name was Pjotre and hers Elena. The man could hardly wait and blurred out so much that she had to stop him. She translated that the man excused himself again and that he, as one of the heads of one of the three big opposition parties, had an important request for him.
Then it was Pjotre´s turn again who rattled on until the woman interrupted him for the second time. Obviously she was stressed but explained politely that the politician was extremely excited and that it was not easy for her to translate. She summarized: If she understood him correctly he wanted a commitment from Bob not to support the export of stolen money from the Ukrainian people any more. As one of the deciders of the biggest bank in the world he should use his influence to stop this move.
Bob tried to explain to her that he had no influence on the basic business rules of his bank with a head quarter in the US and that the competition especially of the Swiss banks – would certainly not accept political pressure. As he found out later, that was surprisingly wrong and this fact helped him a lot during his days of freeing up frozen funds since it closed an important loop hole. While she translated he took a closer look at both of them.
She was probably around thirty-two, with an energetic nose with a small bridge and funny pit marks when she smiled. She was dressed simply but with taste – in total contrast to him. He was impressed by the quick brain and the professionalism of the woman.
On one hand she had to understand complex content and connections to translate them to a level of comprehension of the person in front of her. On the other hand she had to perceive subtle indirect signals and made it part of her translation. Her British English was perfect without accent and only the rolling ´R` was indicating her Slavic background.
For the well-trained eye of Bob, the man permitted no easy categorizing. He gave the impression of a professor who was obsessed by a specific subject and was preaching it now where-ever he could. But his cause was so positive and compre-hensive that Bob decided to continue with him. He ordered a desert for all three and a bottle of wine.
While eating her cheese cake, Elena asked Bob on Pjotre`s behalf whether his bank could stimulate other big ones to establish a boycott of the gang of the Ukrainian oligarchs. Bob quickly denied that request. The only valid reaction could come from the US and the EU on the political side. If the Ukrainians could revive the association treaty with the EU that could help them and even that was not clear. In the current situation the banks in the receiving countries could only intervene in case of problems with the law of the countries receiving the funds like with money laundering or in similar situations. Elena translated and Bob got used to the red wine while he was observing the beautiful blonde who was explaining his ideas with a lot of temperament.
“Mr. Horner”, Elena asked, “what will your position be in case of internal turmoil? As you can see we are already having serious demonstrations on Majdan square.”
Bob recognized that she was personally disgusted also in regards to what was done to her country, but he didn`t see any possibility to promise anything. For him all these topics were of politic nature in which the banks would not interfere. So, the discussion went on and it got late. Pjotre asked Bob whether he could introduce him to other political opponents. They would like to ensure the support of a major bank in case of a change in government. Bob tried to bring Oleg´s perception of his importance to a realistic level but it was obviously in vain.
Elena wished to show him the way to his hotel and they started to walk into the night. It started to snow and her cheap coat could not protect her well against the biting cold despite a small fur collar. She told him that she was divorced and had a daughter of eight.
Giving a very rough version, Bob reported about his family and they went across the big square close to his hotel. “This is Majdan square. Here all Ukrainian revolutions take place”, and she gave him an overview about the political development during the last years, but especially since November 2013. Bob was speechless: in the freezing cold hundreds of men with motor bike helmets and in weird clothes were piling up car tyres on top of the barricades which were already at least seven foot high. In the center of the square he saw light in the tents of fortune put together in haste, in some men were singing. They sounded like the melancholic songs as Bob had heard them with Russian choirs. Men with bats were standing around some open fires. Bob couldn´t help having a strange feeling and shuttered. He hoped that nobody would be killed here. He was wrong.
“Hopefully you don´t live very far,” Bob felt forced to ask her when he saw no taxi left in front of the hotel. “No, it is very close by”, she bravely lied.
With a heavy head Bob met Pjotre at eleven next day at the main station of Kiev. As a connoisseur he smiled: always the same techniques not to get noticed. Elena was there also. She looked much better and was radiating when she saw Bob. They talked about the subjects of the evening before as if that could help. Again, Bob explained his role in the Mega bank but omitted his strong ties with Laura and his experiences in China.
Of all the people he met, most were very sympathetic to him. He started to conceive how complicated the situation was with the high percentage of Russians in the East of the country. What he found especially depressing was that previous revolutions had not caused any significant changes, on the contrary! The whole day long, Elena helped the changing partners in their discussions to understand each other. Often, the positions were far apart. At the end of the day, Bob agreed to an enlarged stop of transactions via his bank. Without knowing, this alone made him a hero out there. Elena accompanied him on the way to the airport. When Bob asked her whether he could help her in whatever form she bravely denied again. When they took their ´good-by´ coffee he had the feeling how much she would have loved to go with him to the calm and the peace of Western Europe.
But what should he do? Introduce a new woman to Jela: “Darling, this is Elena and we don´t have anything with each other!” He gave her all the Ukrainian cash he had for a taxi back into the town of four million people. He asked himself whether he should give her some money also to buy a better coat because it started to snow again.
Before the flight back, Bob sent an e-mail to all his risk managers in Europe to stop all Ukrainian M&A activities even after the three month period and to inform their country managers about this decision. In addition he wanted them to check carefully all other transactions with the Ukraine. “They are in a pre-revolutionary phase: no engagements with risks from our side!” To take some of the harshness out of the message, he added: “As soon as any new government is signing the association treaty with the EU expect new marching orders.”
Scene 5: Clear Indications
Since the death of Dora, Laura had ordered that Bob was to fly first class and he had the special status of ´VIP Security`. For his standard airlines, this meant that he had to have a seat behind which nobody else could sit, that he was under constant observation of the cabin personnel and that the ID of all first class passengers could be checked by him. These people were mostly passengers with Senator Status or were known to the airline otherwise.
When someone sat down in the cabin partition next to him, an alarm was triggered unnoticed by any passenger. Two stewards and the co-pilot asked the man to show his papers. Bob noticed the whole thing only when the man addressed him and asked for help: “Mr. Horner, I don´t wish to threaten you. Please, give me only five minutes to explain something to you.” Bob had a closer look at the man: would he try to kill him? But he had more the feeling that he was afraid, very afraid. So he informed the personnel that he knew the man and that everything was in order. With the exception of the two stewards they all went back to continue their work.
When things had calmed down, Bob offered Vodka to the man who was sweating with fear. He drank it in one shot and pulled out a paper. In very bad English he read his text: “I am only the messenger, please, don´t do anything to me. My employer would like you to know the following things and that you follow exactly the requested actions. Number One: Your bank continues with all requested acquisitions or in case of impossibility you buy shares at EuroStoxx the next week. I will give you the names of the projects in question.” “Number Two: Losses in value don´t play a role in these transactions.” The man drank another glass of schnapps and continued: “Number Three: You will confirm all transactions to a company in Berlin of which you find the name on the bottom of the list. Number Four: In case my employer is not content he will take care of your children. Number Five: In case I will be imprisoned another member of your family will die.” He gave Bob some papers and disappeared. The renewed threat was a shock for Bob which was hard to digest.
Falling asleep, Bob saw the faces of his daughter in front of his eyes, then the one of Elena and Dora and then, for a long time, the one of his wife. That felt so good that he slept through all the way to Zurich. Here, he had to take the connection to Geneva. It was too early to call his office to get an appointment with Laura.
Then he called Jela who told him to go to the school first because Lena created quite some fuss: she told everybody that her daddy was dead. Totally shocked, Sandrine had called in despair. Bob agreed and did not forget to report back to his special friend Latour.
Consequently, the first stop on the way back from the airport was the school. When Bob opened the door of Sandrine’s classroom, there was a loud cry; Lena discovered him first and shot towards him like a rocket. Sandrine sent the children into an early ‘récré‘ and took Lena down from Bob’s arms after a while. She stood there with her arms hanging down on the sides of her body like dead: “Last night, they killed twenty people on Majdan square in Kiev.”
Bob couldn’t help taking her into his arms the same way as he had done it with his child. He had the feeling that the little school teacher was sobbing. When she calmed down in his arms, he let her go. She put her nose up into the air and took Lena by the hand going into the school yard. Bob was not sure whether to invite her for the evening to the house, but then he just did it.
After 9:00 o’clock, he arranged a luncheon with Laura in their favorite restaurant above the lake where the Rhone River leaves the lake of Geneva. He called Jela to prepare her for Sandrine’s visit. She took it quite calmly. She didn’t know anything yet about the new threat. Having some time left before lunch he went over to his house. Samy let him enter into the yard and Jela came running out of the house. She almost knocked him over when she embraced him. He picked her up and carried her into the house where he put her on the couch. She covered his face with kisses and he rolled up her T-shirt and kissed her breasts. When she started to breathe regularly he stopped and told her that he had to leave to present his report to Laura. Hardly had he finished his sentence when his wife knocked a cushion on his head and used a lot of her Stanford Junior language on him.
He fled towards the twins´ room, kissed his babies, and ran through the kitchen door back to the car. When he closed the door, a shoe and a brush banged against the car. “Nice Italian temperament!” he smiled proudly. He was already on the freeway when she called. He knew how to stop her: “Jela, the bank is being blackmailed. I have to inform Laura.” That stopped the second attempt to train her university jargon on him. “Well, at least you have to pay for that tonight, buster!”
At lunch, when he was through with his report he made a remark which was more meant for himself than for Laura: “In the US, risk management in finance included almost always pure business topics like productivity and solvency. Here in Europe, these criteria are pure technicalities. The mass of real risk issues is of political nature here and I ask myself whether I am well positioned to solve them as an American.”
Laura took her slightly tainted glasses off and said that she saw his US passport more as a neutral position in Europe causing no prejudice. On top, the fact that their bank was based in Switzerland could only support this.
But naturally, her real topic was the blackmail attempt. “I believe that I need to digest this at first. Naturally we cannot accept it just like this. But what are we going to do with you and your family?”
She had an idea: “I will ask Jerry to come to Geneva tomorrow. His dry accountant brain has already been helpful with the China business and the Germans are much closer to the Ukraine than us here in the Swiss Paradise. We will start something like a crisis task force. In any case, we will have a closer look at that company in Berlin.”
On the way back, Bob made a quick stop at his police ´friend´ Latour to whom he gave the papers he had received in the plane. He had made several sets of copies of the papers in his office. He insisted that his inputs were put on paper and signed. Latour didn’t see it as this urgent.
Bob understood: Most likely, Latour had to hand over the case to Interpol now. His travel ban had been cancelled. While driving down the few miles towards Divonne he informed Maître Angel regarding his adventures and that a set of copies was on the way to him.
Because of the presence of Sandrine at dinner, Bob didn’t talk about the blackmail but took time to report details of this country which was in a form of civil war as of the night before. Already during the dessert, Lena was allowed to sit down on his lap. In bed he was too tired to tell Jela more about the burning issue. Exceptionally she forgave him for that mistake.
When the breakfast was finished and Lena had left, he took his chair and sat down in front of Jela looking directly into her eyes: “I’ve got to tell you something, your honour!” Jela´s face turned white and he continued quickly to avoid that she got wrong ideas: “The bank and I are blackmailed. We will have a crisis meeting today in the afternoon.” He told her what had happened in the plane and asked her to think about a place where she could hide herself and her kids for a while.
„The place where you go needs to be reached by car – otherwise it will be too easy to find.” She looked at him for a long time: “At first I produce a super show with my father and you supported and guided me all the way through that story. You even helped me to get back on board after my depressions, buster. Now I should be able to deal with your little Ukrainian circus.” He embraced her for a long time.
At the bank, Laura and Jerry were already waiting for him. Like always dressed in black, Laura had invited the head of the Eastern Europe department, a Polish banker named Bronislaw, and a Russian lady whom Bob didn’t know to join their task force. “This is Maria. She is with us here in Geneva since more than ten years and she is the account manager of many of our Russian and Ukrainian customers in the M&A space. I would like them to join our team.” Everyone was looking at Bronislaw who didn’t react. “So, then it’s all set!” Laura continued with her usual speed. “I want a proposition of everyone in the task force regarding how to proceed in the mid-and long term.”
Laura became more precise: “The volume of our bank in the Ukraine only for the M&A segment lies at twenty billions Euros. We do not talk about peanuts. - Jerry, please, start!”
As usual, Jerry´s analyses were clear-cut but only offered Bob one new perspective: the oligarchs in the Ukraine were split into two camps like the whole country – a pro-Russian and a pro-Ukrainian camp. On top of freezing the accounts, Jerry proposed a detailed listing of all Ukrainian accounts in Europe and the US. When it comes to money, all these people only had one friend: themselves.
Not surprisingly, the observations of Bronislaws reflected the strong anti-Russian position of all Polish people. He warned that Russia could not accept a strong tie of the Ukraine with Europe or NATO.
Bronislaw proposed to freeze all requested M&A businesses and the accounts with Russian Oligarchs also. Interestingly he got support from Maria who explained that the families of the people concerned would not live in Russia any more but on the Côte d´Azur or in Geneva or Berlin: “Lots of them are Russians only in a nationalistic sense. Their children in Berlin are educated according the values of the Germans and those in Switzerland according to Swiss-German standards. In 2012 Germany alone had provided 380´000 visa to Russians. The cliché of ex-KGB officers and their under-aged playmates travel internationally has long been outdated. A freeze of their accounts would be hard for them because they could not live in their villas without fresh money.”
Laura just wanted to make her position known as her secretary came in wanting to talk to her. When she re-entered the conference room she looked very serious: “Europe is sending three Foreign Ministers to Kiev tomorrow and we have a visit of the US Foreign Office today late in the afternoon. Please, be prepared for a second task force meeting later.”
The four members of the crisis team took half an hour to make calls and then went to have lunch. They assumed that Laura would invite the employee of the Foreign Office for lunch – which turned out to be correct.
Later they were asked to join Laura in the conference room where Laura introduced a certain Jordan to them who looked like a military. In his fifties, short grey hair and glasses like an intellectual. Later they agreed to call him ´the general´.
The man interrupted Laura quickly and corrected her: „The situation is far too serious to play games. I represent the CIA** and have clear orders to support an eventual pro-western government in Kiev. Whichever form this interim government will take, one thing is for sure. They will have endless financial problems. We mobilized a small fund in case the dynamics of the events will go this way and we count on your cooperation. I am content to hear that you already froze a lot of activities and accounts. We will send you a list with names of those people who we like to be blocked in their movements. Even the Swiss banks are freezing accounts of Ukrainian citizens, you know.”
Laura looked at Jerry and Bob. She knew that their relationship with state employees of the US was not specifically friendly. Rightly so, Jerry, a Dutch national, attacked right away: “Should we take this as an order or a recommendation?” The man was looking at Laura. He was totally irritated.
Bob asked whether the proposed actions were coordinated with the EU or whether the Americans were still along their ‘fuck the EU’ policy. The CIA general was breathing heavily. Obviously he didn´t expect such a welcome. Before more problems were created, Laura intervened and took Jordan´s arm leading him out of the room.
Maria and Bronislaw were speechless. In their hierarchical view of the world they just witnessed some heavy blasphemy. Bob and Jerry explained to them their disturbing experience with with US diplomats*, but for them their behaviour was totally out of order.
On the freeway at night in the direction of Lausanne, Bob was smiling. First of all he was looking forward to seeing his family, especially the smile of his darling Lena. The rest of the afternoon went on in a different atmosphere after Jordan excused himself and asked for help. His agents didn`t manage to establish working relations with the heads of the opposition. That was why he asked Bob to use his influence in Kiev to do several things which were clearly in the interest of the Ukrainian people. Somehow, Bob felt a bit cocky but he controlled his narcissism well. His thoughts were elsewhere. He was asking himself what Jela had come up with as a hide- out. Also he had taken a big envelop with cash which he wanted to leave with Jela on her way into ‘vacations’.
At the entrance gate of his yard, Samy waved to let him in after he had checked the inside of the car with a torch light to ensure that nobody was sitting behind Bob. “Bon travail”, Bob praised him. Bob went into the house which seemed to have all lights on. There was nobody in the living room, so he had a look into the kitchen. Here Sandrine was peeling potatoes. She smiled at him as he was used to with the teacher. “Where are Jela and the kids?” She smiled even more “I won´t tell you!” and Bob thought he had problems with his brain.
So, Sandrine was forced to tell him what his beloved wife had figured out as a plan with the help of the two body guards and herself during the lunch break: Sandrine rented an SUV in her name and parked the car next to the big super market at the entrance into Divonne. A colleague of hers brought her back to school. Jela used the rest of the day to pack and stowed everything in Pierre`s function car. Then the plan looked like this: when Lena arrived from school late in the afternoon, Jela would put her on the back seat of Pierre`s car next to the babies, so that one could not see them from the outside and put herself on the floor of the car in the front.
Then Pierre was supposed to do as if he was driving home but to turn around after a while when he was sure that nobody was following him and to go back to the parking lot in Divonne with some more tricks. There he put the family and their baggage into the rented SUV. The next step for Jela was to go on the freeway in the direction of Annecy and to stay overnight wherever she liked. She had enough cash for a few days. Using the credit card or the mobile was not allowed.
Bob was speechless and went to have dinner with the French woman with the sweet accent: “Did she say anything else?” Sandrine was amused: “Yes, something like: while he is doing business as usual I will save my family!” He was angry at his wife and - at the same time – admired her. He had an idea and wanted to take his revenge by seducing the sweety who was obviously only waiting for it. So he asked Sandrine to stay over night at his house to signal to people watching them that there was a normal family life in the house.
The little teacher could be flirtatious but understood right away: “Ecoutez, M. Horner, I would love to do so but I still need to prepare the classes for tomorrow.” She stood up and kissed him on the forefront which was not so easy, given her size, took her stuff, and left the house for the garden in the back which didn`t seem to make any sense. Still with the picture of her gymnast´s body in front of his eyes, he understood. A potential killer would control the big entrance gate but not the garden where she was probably just climbing off the wall. “Damned females,” Bob thought, “they believe it is funny to play hide and seek.”
When Bob ran around in an empty house next morning, it was a Saturday, he felt left totally alone. He missed each of the children and Jela. He went into each room and found out that he didn’t even have pictures of his beloved ones. He swore to change that. In Lena’s room he found one of her old teddies with one leg totally deformed by Lena when she had had a bad sprain herself. He took the teddy and went into the office because he wanted to prepare his next trip. On the road he found out that the three Foreign Ministers were still in Kiev and that there were more deaths during the night. He took the liberty to call the general who didn`t want to talk on the phone and proposed to come into his office.
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