Chapter Eleven
Hari used his shabby clothes to walk unidentified past the crowd of journalists waiting for him, encircling the Caribbean Airlines jetliner with Clarity, until they both reached the arrivals area of Lettsome airport. After crossing the airport building discreetly, standing on the sidewalk of the airport terminal, looking out for something or someone, Hari pressed several buttons on his smartphone. A few minutes later, his green MG came to him without a driver, remotely controlled from Hari's phone, losing its retractable roof with a massive noise of junk falling on the asphalt, before the car reached them. An airport employee pushing a trolley and a tourist who was holding the rooftop which had crashed on him, his arms yielding to its weight, began yelling at the car and the Sheik.
"All right, let's go," said Hari.
Hari took the wheel, got a stack of twenty dollar bills from his shirt pocket and threw it behind him without looking. Clarity took the passenger seat and turned around while the car rolled forward, seeing the airport employee push the tourist slightly forward, so that the retractable roof carried him to the floor, and he could catch the stack of bills.
"Where are we going?" Asked Clarity. She saw the speed gauge of the MG reach one hundred miles an hour.
"I want to talk to the lawyers of Augiers Urbina, what is happening at the airport with all those journalists is no coincidence. I need to do things on my own, because no one in my entourage is going to give me all the information I need to know what is happening. Specially with Nora, I have no clue why she left me."
"Well, there is a mess around you," said Clarity.
"You may be right, still, it's a mess revolving around luxury," said Hari.
The offices of Augiers Urbina were located at Jayla Place, on Wickham's Cay, in Tortola. Hari parked his car in a parking spot facing the marina, and walked to the BVI offices of the prestigious Panama law firm. A single person was seating at the reception desk, Alfonso Martinez, known as Fonsito, the janitor in charge of general maintenance. Clarity glanced at the offices beyond the entry hallway. Several filing cabinets were laid out in the corridors leading to the partners' offices, their drawers open and empty. Fonsito said what he had been told to say.
"Everyone has left the office, I was told to stay here in case a customer came. If you want to get in touch with the lawyers or the partners, you have to write to a P.O. Box in Panama." Hari began thinking about inquiring, something which strained his limit for processing information.
"So where is everyone?" Asked Hari.
"In Panama."
"Why did they leave?"
"Scrub Leaks." Fonsito did not speak much, but what he said made sense.
"We know about that," said Clarity. "Do you happen to know who leaked the information on Sheik Al-Najib?"
Fonsito smirked coyly, having seen a photo of the guy with a smirk, in one of the business reports that Augiers Urbina oversaw on the company of the Sheik, SRA-199. The same guy, the previous owner of Heir Force One, insisted that the photo of him and his name be taken out of the report, and so the only mention of him left on the document was a general reference to his annoying, smug smile, which elongated the right side of his lips up and to the right. Fonsito knew that the smirk played a role in the guy being rich, but he didn't know exactly how the laconic expression was so favorable. In any case, he was not rich like the guy, but he knew that the law firm where he worked liked privacy.
"Yeah, but I'll be fired if I tell you, so I'll say no. I'm going on my morning walk in a few minutes, you can walk with me."
Realizing that Fonsito would insist on not sharing vital information, Clarity pressed the Sheik for something impossible, a potential decision to do something, other than staring at Fonsito and playing Friends for Sale with him on a smartphone around the marina.
"So what do we do now?" Asked Clarity. Hari answered unusually promptly, getting all the common sense he needed from looking at Fonsito.
"My money, I want to get access to my money. Right now, I have no money."
They drove the MG to the offices of Kuwait Capital, both of them sitting in the small back seat of the convertible, letting the car navigation drive them. Hari was breathing more calmly, refreshed by the breeze and by doing nothing, as they drove through a highway. Clarity watched the Caribbean, thinking she wanted to swim naked. She pushed herself away from the Sheik a few inches, he was seating too close to her. The whole setting was idyllic, except she was seating with a moron, everything else could have been a part of a very romantic or pleasant vacation. After a twenty minute drive, the car parked itself in front of the offices of Kuwait Capital and the doors opened.
"Good morning Sir, another good day at work?"
"Yes, a good day Ahmed. My assistant Clarity will be with the me the rest of the day."
"Very good, Mr. Merhab or Mr. Moghadam will not be with you then?"
"No, they're resting today, taking the day off. Coaching and managing the affairs of a Sheik is a tiring job."
It occurred to Hari that he actually could ask a few questions regarding his own account. He waved at Ahmed, who walked towards the Sheik. Hari lowered his voice, to be as discreet as possible.
"Ahmed, tell me, do you know of an account open in my name here? You know, my own account."
"Of course your Highness, it is an honor to store your funds here." Hari glanced at Clarity, who gave an expression of approval. The Sheik was moving in the right area of initiative, for the first time since she'd met him.
"I'd like to see it then."
"I'm afraid that's not possible your Highness. Hakeem is the one who holds all power of attorneys and your name is not on the list."
Clarity began thinking there was something odd with the setup. Hari pulled on a shredded puff of his sweater, leaving a large hole below the rib.
"I'd like a credit card drawn on the account then. Just to use the money in it, I mean, not to add money or anything like that." Ahmed kept staring at the Sheik, who held the stare. Hari insisted. "To use it."
"No, I can't do that either Your Highness, I would need permission from Hakeem to do that. Your father opened the account, you can also ask him to write a board resolution to grant you powers over the account, which is actually there as retirement money for you. My instructions are to hold access to the account as margin for any trading you might do, that will not be possible either." Hari glared at the clerk, but refrained from venting out by tossing him over the reception desk, noticing Ahmed was not a dwarf. He missed his dwarves.
"Can we simply take a look at the balance of the account?" Asked Clarity. "We may do some additional trading, something Hakeem will have to approve, and use some of the balance as guarantee." Hari rushed to add a word of reassurance.
"To recoup losses, of course." An impossible endeavour, thought Hari, but a worthy one.
"Look at the balance, yes, that's possible." The bank clerk pointed them to the office, which had been set up for Hari.
"It'll be a few minutes, you'll see the account information in one of the tabs of the robo advisor application."
Hari opened the office door on his own, to get a sense that he was able to do things on his own. He was showing the face of someone in complete disarray, who needed some help, for he had never used banking software to access information on any of his accounts. Clarity sat on the desk and turned on the robo advisor application, seeing several tabs appear on the left. She pressed on the tab linked to the account of Hari, thinking that a computer or machine advising on investments could not possibly be reliable. She showed the balance of the account to Hari, a total of eight million dollars, five of which were set aside, but on hold, as possible margin for future trades. That left an amount of three million dollars remaining in the account as cash. Hari began a series of complex manoeuvres with his finger to draw out the calculator in his smartphone. Clarity noticed a slight change in the balance of the account, sixty dollars were missing, the balance was slightly lower. Within minutes, the balance of the acc
ount began decreasing, in chunks of ten thousand dollars. Clarity looked at Hari, who was busy feeding the boars in his reserve remotely, using his smartphone, having abandoned the idea of actually using a calculator.
"Hari, something is happening with the account, the balance is decreasing." The Sheik placed his smartphone on the desk and glanced at the screen.
"Yeah, it may be Hakeem, he may be transferring the money to my account in the Emirates. I'm sure there is a reason for this." Clarity did not say anything and suggested to Hari that he check his account balance in his other Emirates account. With his smartphone, he could do that.
"Are you seeing it?" Asked Clarity.
"No. There is nothing coming in."
"The money keeps leaving the account here, there is about one million left in the BVI account. And the amount on hold as potential margin, is also leaving, all of that has left already, the other five million dollars are missing as well."
"All right, it may show up in the other account when all of it is transferred." Hari began to think his account was some kind of slot machine, which could or could not hold any funds. The account dwindled to zero.
"We're at zero," said Clarity, "there's nothing left. Are you seeing the balance in your other account?"
"No." Hari frowned, sensing that something important was about to happen. As with the slot machines he was studying with Plum, he did not know whether the result of the event would be in his favor. A new tab appeared on the screen of his smartphone.
"I see this other account, from a bank called Banco Intercentral del Caribe y Cuba, BICCC, it's all there, except for a one hundred thousand dollars commission."
Clarity sighed and began toying with the mouse, knowing what it meant. The financial system was not working as it should be working. Money in the bank, in any bank, was electronic, or digital, simply a set of accounting entries and bits stored in a server. A server, but not necessarily your bank's server. In this case, it was somebody else's server.
"The Cubans got your money."
"The Cubans?"
Hari's face mushed away in disarray. If the account balance was at zero, and his money was under Cuban jurisdiction, there was no way he could access that money. His father would go bonkers. Hakeem would be so mad as to forbid him entering Heir Force One again. And Merhab would prepare another firewalk for him, of about one or two miles in length. Clarity observed a new balance showing on the screen of Hari's account.
"Oh, wow, you got two million dollars, not sure where they are coming from." Hari sighed with relief.
"All right, that's better, show me." Hari widened his eyes and looked closely at the balance of his account onscreen. He felt like a capital markets expert on a bad day.
"There's nothing," he said. Clarity nodded.
"Yes, that's right, the two million dollars just disappeared. I guess someone traded with them pretty quickly."
She checked the accounting tab related to the account, which was automated. A short text indicating the bank instructions of BICCC showed up onscreen. The two million dollars of unknown provenance were also headed for the Cuban bank in charge of all shady deals for the communist republic, BICCC. Intrigued, Clarity began tracing the source of the two million dollars, finding only a set of anonymous servers. It dawned on her that the Shawab might have been using the account to take his own money out of the regular banking system. Her eyes turned to the speakerphone on Hari's desk, blinking a red light. She pressed the connection button.
"Yes? Mr. Al-Najib assistant here, this is Clarity." The voice of Ahmed informed them of an unplanned visit.
"Two people from the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission are here, a deputy director of the Legal and enforcement department, and someone else from the Registry of Corporate Affairs would like to see you."
"Just a second, that is a matter for His Highness." Hari answered the request with a slightly different pitch in his voice, telling the bank clerk to show both representatives in a few minutes. He turned to Clarity, his face asking her for ideas and begging for his bean bag.
"What now? Should we call Hakeem? My initiative is running out of balls. Why are these people here?"
"Your balls are steady, your initiative is fine," said Clarity. "Hakeem would not let us do any of this. Keep him uninformed and keep thinking." Hari's mind began churning at one mile an hour, mostly about how to get back to Heir Force One, where he would feel safer.
"Maybe the robo advisor can help us," said Clarity.
"Do what?" Asked Hari.
"Hold our own turf against Hakeem, finding a company for you to buy, a luxury company."