Blood Is Dirt (11 page)

‘There's something about a fresh start I've always liked. Even this one, which will stay fresh for as long as a calabash of fish in the sun.'

I took another slug of the orange juice, which burned down my oesophagus. I tried to get some baguette down after it to stop it stripping off my stomach lining but it got stuck in my neck and I had to cough it back up.

‘I've got to go,' said Bagado, slapping my back.

‘Hang on. There's somebody for you to meet.'

I knocked on Selina's door. No answer. I pushed the door open. The room was empty. I told Bagado about Selina Aguia and we opened up the OTE/Chemiclean file which had been left on the table. The telexes and letters had been filed in chronological order. This whole big bad problem started with the simplest inquiry you could imagine:

 

380 mts Chemicals
Ex Leghorn
IMMY

 

‘No destination but immediate shipment,' said Bagado. ‘Is that usual?'

‘Very unusual for this kind of business. They might fix crude oil from the Persian Gulf with no destination or just Med or Western Europe, but chemicals are products you don't ship without a buyer. They're too specific, especially only three hundred and eighty tons of the stuff. It's not as if it's three thousand tons of benzene or toluene. It also says “chemicals”, which would normally mean a number of parcels. Even more specific.'

‘So he should have known it was wrong from the start.'

Selina had photocopied notes from Napier's day book. There was an Italian phone number, then OTE and scribbled alongside ‘ready-treated industrial waste' and the name Fabrizzio Franconelli. Underneath the name Napier had written, ‘45 X 20 ft containers. Chemical products in drums'. There was a line and the workings of some cargoes for a North Sea contract for BP Chemicals. On the next sheet was a massive doodle of what could have been the left flank of an armadillo and underneath a circle with OTE and Chemiclean in it. Then there was a fax from Chemiclean.

 

CHEMICLEAN INTERNATIONAL LIMITED

 

 

30th August

FAX MESSAGE

Dear Mr Briggs,

We have been informed by the International Chamber of Commerce that your company specializes in the transportation of hazardous chemicals.

I am writing to introduce our company to you with the hope that you might be of our need or help in scouting out some industries in Europe in need of evacuating waste products emanating from their company's productive activities.

My name is Daniel Emanalo (Operations Manager). My father is a tradition ruler in the Western State of Nigeria. We own a vast tract of land close to the border with the Republic of Benin. On this land we have built a reinforced concrete bunker 60 ft below the surface for the storage of industrial waste.

Please note that we are only able to accept pretreated industrial waste. We are not having the facilities or know-how to treat waste products. We cannot accept any radioactive material as this is a serious offence under our nation's penal code and punishable by death.

Our handling, transportation and storage charge is fixed at $30,000 per ton of chemical products as a one-off payment for life.

If you would in anyway assist in scouting out for some industries in Europe who need our services we would pay a commission on all trade of 5 per cent. Please don't hesitate to contact us immediately to enable us to furnish you with our operative modalities.

Looking forward to hearing from you and doing business with you.

Yours sincerely,

 

Daniel Emanalo (Operations Manager)

 

PS. All communications will be in strictest confidence.

 

After this fax Selina had filed a permit from the Office of the Pharmacist's Board of Nigeria allowing Chemiclean to import pretreated industrial waste and a notice from the Federal Ministry of Health, Environmental Protection Agency confirming that the Chemiclean facilities had been inspected and pronounced Al.

All the negotiations had been typed up on to a single sheet of paper. Napier had fixed a vessel called the
Paphos Star,
some Cypriot rust bucket, for $2500 per container ex Leghorn/Tin Can Island Lagos on a laycan of 10/15 October subject to contract. Napier's opening offer to OTE had been for $30,500 per ton and they'd come back with $7000 per ton which looked like an unbridgeable gap and would have been between serious business people. As it turned out, Chemiclean would have agreed to store the waste at $12,000 per ton but not in the concrete bunker—OTE wanted to be in that concrete bunker and eventually agreed a price of $23,000 per ton.

‘A lot of money,' I said.

‘A lot of money,' agreed Bagado. ‘Too much money. I looked over some files I kept at home on a toxic-waste-dumping scandal in Benin four years ago. The cost of disposing a two-hundred-and-five-litre drum of intractable hazardous waste in Europe is somewhere between four and seven thousand dollars, depending on what it is. OTE are supposed to be shipping pretreated waste so it should cost even less. Even if the waste has a specific gravity of water that's still more than four thousand dollars per drum. It's not what you'd call commercial business.'

‘Money laundering?'

‘Italian company. Mafia money?'

‘Drug money.'

‘Maybe the full circle. The drugs come into Nigeria from Columbia and the Far East. They courier them to Europe. The money goes through OTE, through Napier Briggs, back to Nigeria, by which time it's clean.'

‘How much are we talking about?'

Bagado flipped over to the next sheet. An early December bank statement showed an underlined credit for $8,740,000 and another for $112,500—the product and the freight. The mid-December section of the statement showed $8,303,000 going out, followed by another $110,250—the product money less the 5 per cent commission and the freight less a 2 per cent commission. Napier Briggs had cleared nearly $440,000 with a few phone calls.

Then came the sting.

 

 

29th November

Dear Mr Briggs,

I am senior accountant with the Ministry of Finance in the Benin Republic. I have been given your name by Daniel Emanalo, the Operations Manager at Chemiclean. He has told me that you have recently concluded a very successful business transaction with OTE in Leghorn. He has asked me to contact you with my proposal as a reward, I think you call it a ‘success fee', for bringing Chemiclean and OTE together.

In my position at the Ministry of Finance I have many contacts in government and in the banking system. Some friends of mine at the Banque Beninoise de Development (BBD) discovered a government account containing $38,742,480. Through my files here in the Ministry of Finance I have traced this money to the overinvoicing of a contract awarded to a Danish company for clearing untreated toxic waste which had been illegally dumped in Benin during the previous administration. As you know from your dealings in West Africa, the powers of the old regime were dramatically reduced by the multipartite national conference in March 1990 and a new cabinet resulted with a new Prime Minister. This new administration know nothing about this account.

Through my offices at the Ministry I have been able to effect a payment authority but I require a foreign company account to make the transfer, it being in dollars and originally designed for a foreign firm. I hope you can see how your cooperation in this business might be of mutual benefit.

We have decided to offer you 40 per cent of the fund if you will allow us to make use of your bank account to make the transfer. Out of your 40 per cent you will have to pay 5 per cent to Daniel Emanalo for making the introduction but this would still leave you with a net gain in excess of $13,000,000.

All we would require from you is the following:

1) Three (3) blank copies of your company's letterhead, signed.

2) Three (3) blank copies of your company's invoices.

3) Name and address of your bank, account number and telephone/fax and/or telex numbers.

The invoices will be used to show goods and services which your company supplied and the letterheads will act as covering letters to back up the invoices. We will fill them in with all the necessary information that would have pertained to the original contract and can then push them through the BBD system and effect the transfer.

Please note that your letterhead and invoices should not only be signed but stamped as well as is the custom in West Africa. All communications should be sent by DHL as the local postal system is too unreliable.

We will update you with the progress of the transfer. On the day that the monies arrive in your account two officials will make contact with you in London—Mr B. Segun and Mr A. Idris—they will effect disbursement of the funds.

Please keep this business strictly private and confidential.

Awaiting your immediate response.

Yours sincerely,

 

M. Aounou.

 

A copy of a letter from Napier to M. Aounou showed that he sent the letterheads and invoices out on 6th December. Selina had typed up his December/January diary making the note that the secretary, Karen, had left the office on 21st December and gone on holiday until 5th January. Napier had been all over the place—Genoa for the launch of a gas ship called the
Amedeo Avogadro,
Madrid for a meeting with a broker called Navichem, Hamburg for a meeting with a shipowner called Hamburger-Lloyd, Copenhagen for a Christmas party, Bergen to see an owner's broker called Steensland, Paris to discuss a Far East time charter with some brokers called Gazocean and Manchester to see a Shell refinery. He didn't go back into his office until after the Christmas break and he didn't see a bank statement until Karen tried to effect a freight payment to an owner on 10th January and was informed by the bank that there were insufficient funds.

The printout of the January statement which Karen had asked for immediately and had gone to the bank to pick up showed the accumulation of money in Napier's account while he was travelling. He hit a maximum of $1,932,724 before three debits on 5th January of $728,965, $514,496 and $613,768 which took $1,857,229 out of his account.

He applied for a Nigerian visa on 10th January afternoon but didn't receive it until 29th January. It took him six days to get a flight to Lagos, where he arrived early in the morning on Monday 5th February. He spent the first night in a hotel called the Ritalori but there was no record of subsequent nights. He moved to Cotonou on the 14th February and set himself up in the Hotel du Lac where he spent two nights, getting himself killed on his third night on Friday 16th February. The last three sheets in the file were copies of the signed letterheads received by Napier's bank instructing them to transfer three different amounts to three different banks in three cities in the UK.

‘How did they know how much money he would have and when it would be in the account?' I asked.

‘Somebody in the bank, somebody in Briggs's office or outside information.'

‘They timed it well, didn't they? Over the Christmas break.'

‘What did he do and who did he see for those ten days he spent in Lagos?'

‘That's what I want you to find out,' said Selina, who'd come in silently and was standing by the door with all her hair cut off into a spiky bleached crew cut. She had a plastic bag in her hand.

‘That's a bit radical, isn't it?' I said. ‘The hair.'

‘You don't like it?'

‘It looks cool.'

‘I'll take that both ways.'

I introduced Bagado. It was clear we'd looked through the file.

‘What do
you
think, Mr Bagado?'

‘Very nice,' he said, ‘but I didn't see the “before”.'

‘It's in the bag. I thought I'd bury it with Napier,' she said, lightly. ‘My father always loved my hair.'

Bagado was experienced in grief. He knew how to handle these blank spaces where weighty things said breezily send emotions into free fall and paralyse speech. He didn't suddenly start talking about the heat, which was folding itself into the room and expanding, or comment on the weather, which everybody knew was always hot. He radiated sympathy without tilting his head or drawbridging his eyebrows into a ‘sincere' expression. He felt for the woman and she could sense it.