Ennis opened the door to his room. His mind was blurred in a haze of alcohol. The rum and cigars that had not seemed to have had any effect in the Trova were finally taking their toll. The music, the atmosphere, the excitement of the conversation with their newly found friends had stalled the reaction.
An envelope lay on the floor. Inside it announced that a fax awaited him at the reception.
Bollocks! he thought dimly, throwing the fax on the table.
After a struggle to undress he flopped onto the bed and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep.
A series of detonations awoke him. It took a couple of seconds to realise it was not the overthrow of the revolution but the telephone.
“Buenos dias Señor. We have a fax for you at the reception.”
Shit! he thought looking at his watch. It was nine twenty and a dull thumping resounded in his head.
Twenty minutes later he picked up the fax. It was from Paris, the bank requesting he call Daniel de Forsta, the press and PR manager of the BCN.
It had been Daniel who had fixed them up with the reportage. He was a good friend who had helped them a lot over the years in return for the glamour and friendship of real reporters, even though their reputation was modest. They enjoyed good living, eating and drinking with friends, and night clubbing at the in-spots. Daniel saw them as swashbuckling reporters compared to those he knew in the financial press, or compared his own staid though very secure well paid job as the PR manager at the bank’s Paris headquarters.
He calculated that with the time difference it was three twenty in the afternoon in Paris. He called Paul, then checked with the operator to see if he could make a phone call to Paris.
“Yes Sir, we can open a line, if you deposit one hundred dollars or sign a credit card authorisation.”
That took fifteen minutes and the line was opened.
To his surprise it was direct dialling and he had the bank online at once. De Forsta got to the point speaking in French.
“No problem, it’s just an extension to the job. The Chairman of the Irish Union Bank, one of the members of the BCN group, is going to be in Jamaica,”
“Jamaica!” Ennis interrupted.
“Yes, Jamaica, on a business trip, officially to inaugurate a new hotel and tourist complex that the bank has jointly financed. I’d like you to cover it.”
“When?”
“Next weekend.”
“We’ve only just got here!”
“Don’t worry it will only take two or three days and then you can return to finish the job.”
“It could be a problem, I don’t know what else we’ve got on.” He knew a few days extra would not be a problem.
“Look do it as a favour for me,” de Forsta almost pleaded. Ennis was pleased to turn the tables. Now de Forsta was asking him a favour.
“Okay, we’ll fit it in, but just for you. When does he arrive?”
“Excellent, David Castlemain arrives on Saturday, there’ll be a reception at the new hotel on Sunday and the official inauguration with the bigwigs. He then leaves for Guadeloupe on Monday.”
“Let me talk to Paul. He should be okay. I’ll call you back when we’ve looked into the travel arrangements and in case there any problems. Book us into the new hotel if that’s possible.”
“Good.” De Forsta rang off leaving Ennis to solve the problem of the other arrangements.
“Don’t look but doesn’t that face ring a bell,” Ennis whispered to Carvin.
Paul replied with a shrug more interested in inspecting the plastic bags filled with cigars and rum that he had bought in the airport shop. They stood in line with the few passengers for the AeroCarribean flight to Kingston, Jamaica.
“I’m serious, take a look!”
“Okay, Okay,” he glanced sideways, “No, not really.”
“Well he does to me. I’m sure I know him, at least the face.”
At the passport control he managed to get a glance at the passport the other passenger was carrying. He saw it was a Bordeaux coloured European Union type and he could make out what looked like a harp on the cover. Then he saw in gold letters ‘Eire Ireland’.
Once aboard the Gulfstream he tried to get a look at the small carry-on bag the passenger was carrying. He twisted his head to see the name tag. He made out the name, John Ryan.
It did not seem to be familiar. He knew of nobody called John Ryan.
He pulled out his Sony digital camera and caught their fellow traveller with a sneak shot. It was not that good, Ryan was in half profile looking out of the window. Ennis then forgot his curiosity settled down to the drinks and the meal on the one hour flight to Kingston.
The last he saw of Ryan was his back as he disappeared into the international transit lounge. Once having been through the formalities he checked on the departures screen and saw destinations to George Town, London and Miami within the following hour or so. George Town where? He took out the airline magazine and on the map of the Caribbean saw it was the capital on Grand Cayman. Could be he thought, but on the other hand George Town was a fairly common name in ex-British territories. He would check it out on their arrival at the resort.
They were booked on a local helicopter flight to Montego Bay, just a short hop across on the other side of the island. There they checked into the Caribbean Palace where Ennis picked up a copy of the Times of London of the previous day.
He flipped through the pages, nothing special, politics and scandals. The financial section was dominated by Internet and telecoms news. Swap was in trouble its tycoon owner was unavailable for comment after large losses were announced.
Swap! That was it, Kavanagh! The man with the passport in the name of Ryan looked a lot like Kavanagh. He remembered the face from the launch of a start-up at the BCN branch in the City of London about a year or two before.
A highly leveraged introduction of an Internet New Technology start-up. Kavanagh had rocketed from obscurity overnight to join the start-up nouveaux riches. He, like them, had had the right idea at the right time and also a background in the IT business. His firm, a fairly typical small to middling IT services company had been specialised in services for banks and investment firms in the City. The firm was based in Dublin, it was not a very long established company, that was to say by Old Economy standards, it had been around for about five years or so if he remember the press blurb that had been handed out at the launching. He thought wryly, five years was a life-time in the so called New Economy.
The start-up he had remembered was called Swap, it had shot to front page news when Kavanagh and his partners signed a WAP agreement with a major credit card company and airline.
Wireless Applications Protocol. That was the name in the current net jargon. A technique that would bring the stock market and trading to the mobile phone.
It was ambitious, the mobile phone could access internet for transport, hotels and all the other services, to the mass of international executives that worked in or jetted between both the major and minor cities of Europe everyday.
It was to be a real money spinner. As foreseen the money flowed in like an unstoppable torrent. Swap was awash with almost one hundred million pounds and its shares had shot into the stratosphere, multiplying in value at every trading session.
Kavanagh had rocketed from being just another fairly anonymous businessman, owner of a modestly sized IT company with some 250 employees, to becoming the owner of a huge fortune almost overnight - at least on paper.
According to The Times report that Ennis scrutinised, he was unavailable for comments and a lot of questions were being raised about Swap, which seemed to be in difficulties. According to the report profits seemed to be distant and the share value had plunged over the last two weeks. The investors and spokesmen for the company seemed to be desperately trying to calm the market.
Later in his room he downloaded the Sony digital image to his portable PC, then zoomed it, selecting just Kavanagh’s profile, it was not too bad for a sneak shot he tho
ught. He then transferred it by email to their office in Paris asking Juliette to do a search on the mugshot.
Early Monday morning, midnight in Paris, his mobile rang it was Juliette.
“It resembles a person called Sean Kavanagh. We did a thing on him a couple of years back.”
“Thanks I remember now.”
“He made a fortune on the Internet.”
“Right, but there’s a problem. It seems like he’s disappeared. He could be somewhere in the Caribbean. It looks like BCN stands to lose a lot of money they’ve invested in his business."
“Where did you get the picture?”
He dodged the question.
“Look keep this quiet, don’t speak to anybody, there could be a story for us. Try and find out if he has any business or banking links out here. In the Caymans for example, or one of those other places and call me back as quick as possible.”
“Okay, no problem,” she said ringing off. He could trust her to keep quiet. She had worked with them for several years in their small agency and knew the value of news. Being second was worthless.
The phone rang again over breakfast. It was Juliette working very late as usual, that was the lot of press agency staff.
“They’re saying that he has a holding of some kind in the Bahamas. I’ve looked on the map, it’s not far from where you are…”
“Yeah…not the Caymans?
“It doesn’t mention that here.”
“Okay,” he replied a little puzzled.
“Not only that but he’s disappeared. It looks like a good financial scandal in the making. The BCN Group is a major creditor to his company.”
Chapter 6
The Cayman Islands