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Hamid was now the master of an empire, and all those who had invested in his dream were richly rewarded with the dividends paid to shareholders. He continued to supervise much of what his businesses produced, attended the most important photo shoots, still designed most of the clothes, and visited the desert three times a year to pray at his father's grave and give an account of his activities to the sheikh. Now he has taken up a new challenge; he is going to produce a film.
He glances at his watch again and tells Ewa it's time to go. She asks if it really is so very important.
"No, it's not, but I'd like to be there."
Ewa gets to her feet. Hamid takes one last look at the famous couturier, sitting alone and contemplating the Mediterranean, oblivious to everything.
4:07 P.M.
The young all have the same dream: to save the world. Some quickly forget this dream, convinced that there are more important things to do, like having a family, earning money, traveling, and learning a foreign language. Others, though, decide that it really is possible to make a difference in society and to shape the world we will hand on to future generations.
They start by choosing their profession: politicians (whose initial impulse always stems from a desire to help their local community), social activists (who believe that the root of all crime lies in class differences), artists (who believe there's no hope at all and that we'll just have to start again from zero)...and policemen.
Savoy had been sure he could be a useful member of society. Having read a great deal of detective fiction, he imagined that once the baddies were all behind bars, the goodies would be able to enjoy their place in the sun forever. He went to police college where he studied assiduously, received excellent marks for his theory exams, prepared himself physically for dangerous situations, and trained as a sharpshooter, although he hoped never to have to kill anyone.
During his first year, he felt that he was learning about the nitty-gritty of the profession. His colleagues complained about low salaries, incompetent judges, other people's preconceived ideas about the job, and the almost complete absence of any real action in their particular area. As time passed, life as a policeman and the complaints continued more or less the same, apart from the addition of one thing: paper.
Endless reports on the where or how or why of a particular incident. A simple case of someone dumping some rubbish, for example, required the rubbish in question to be meticulously searched for evidence of the guilty party's identity (there are always clues, like envelopes or plane tickets), the area then had to be photographed, a map drawn, the perpetrator identified and sent a friendly warning, followed by a rather less friendly warning and, if the transgressor refused to take the matter seriously, by a visit to court, where statements were taken and sentences handed down, all of which, of course, required the services of competent lawyers. Two whole years might pass before the case was finally relegated to the files, with no real consequences for either side.
Murders, on the other hand, were extremely rare. Recent statistics showed that most of the crime in Cannes involved fights between rich kids in expensive nightclubs, break-ins at holiday apartments, traffic offenses, black marketeering, and domestic disputes. He should, of course, be pleased about this. In an ever more troubled world, the South of France was an oasis of peace, even during the Festival when Cannes was invaded by thousands of foreigners visiting the beach or buying and selling films. The previous year, he'd had to deal with four cases of suicide (these involved about fifteen pounds of paperwork) and two violent attacks that had ended in death. And now there had been likely two deaths in a matter of hours. What was going on?
THE BODYGUARDS HAD DISAPPEARED BEFORE they could even give a statement, and Savoy made a mental note to send a written reprimand--as soon as he had time--to the officers in charge of the case. After all, they had let slip the only two witnesses to what had happened, because the woman in the waiting room clearly knew nothing. It took him no time at all to establish that she had been standing some way away when the poison had been administered, and that all she wanted was to take advantage of the situation to get close to a famous film distributor. All he has to do now is to read more paper.
He's sitting in the hospital waiting room with two reports before him. The first, written by the doctor on duty, consists of two pages of boring technical details, analyzing the damage to the organism of the man now in the intensive care unit: poisoning by an unknown substance (currently being studied in the laboratory) and which was injected into the bloodstream through a needle that perforated the left lumbar region. The only agent on the list of poisons capable of provoking such a rapid and violent reaction is strychnine, but this normally sends the body into convulsions. According to the security men in the tent, and as was confirmed both by the paramedics and by the woman in the waiting room, there were no such symptoms. On the contrary, they had noticed an immediate paralysis of the muscles and a stiffening of the chest, and the victim had been able to be carried from the tent without attracting the attention of the other guests.
The second, much longer report was from the EPCTF (European Police Chiefs Task Force) and Europol, who had been following the victim's every move since he set foot on European soil. The agents were taking turns during the surveillance, and, at the time of the incident, the victim was being watched by a black agent originally from Guadeloupe, but who looked Jamaican.
"Even so, the person charged with watching him noticed nothing. Or, rather, at that precise moment, his view was partially blocked by a man walking past holding a glass of pineapple juice."
Although the victim had no police record and was known in the movie world as one of the few revolutionary film distributors around, his business was, in fact, just a front for something far more profitable. According to Europol, Javits Wild had been just another second-rate film producer; then, five years ago, he was recruited by a cartel specializing in the distribution of cocaine in the Americas to help them change dirty money into clean.
"It's starting to get interesting."
For the first time, Savoy feels pleased by what he's reading. He may have an important case on his hands, far removed from the routine of fly-tipping, domestic disputes, holiday apartments being burgled, and those two murders a year.
He knows how these things work. He knows what the report is talking about. Traffickers earn fortunes from selling their products, but because they can't show where that money came from, they can't open bank accounts; buy apartments, cars, or jewels; or transfer large sums of money from one country to another because the government is sure to ask: "How did this guy get to be so rich? Where did he earn all this money?"
To overcome this obstacle, they use a financial mechanism known as money laundering, that is, transforming money earned by criminal means into respectable financial assets which can then become part of the economic system and generate still more money. The expression is said to have originated with the Chicago gangster Al Capone, who bought a chain of laundries known as the Sanitary Cleaning Shops and then used those shops as a front for the money he was earning from the illegal sale of drinks during the Prohibition Era. So if anyone asked him how he came to be so rich, he could always say: "People are washing more clothes than ever. This line of business has turned out to be a really good investment."
"He did everything right," thought Savoy, "apart from forgetting to file a tax return."
Money laundering was used not only for drugs, but for many other things: politicians getting commission on the over-invoicing of construction work, terrorists needing to finance operations in various parts of the world, companies wanting to conceal profits and losses from shareholders, individuals who deem income tax to be an unacceptable invention. Once, all you had to do was open a numbered account in a tax haven, but then governments started drawing up a series of mutual collaboration treaties, and the money launderers had to adapt to these new times.
One thing was certain, however: the criminals were always several steps ahead of the authorities and the tax inspectors.
How does it work now? Well, in a far more elegant, sophisticated, and creative way. They just have to follow three clear stages: placement, layering, and integration. Take several oranges, make some juice, and serve it up--no one need ever suspect where the fruit came from.
Making the orange juice is relatively easy: you set up a series of accounts and start moving small amounts of money from one bank to another, often using computer-generated systems, with the aim of bringing it all together again at some future date. The routes taken are so circuitous that it's almost impossible to follow the traces left by the electronic impulses because, once the money has been deposited, it ceases to be paper and is transformed into digital codes composed of just
two numbers: 0 and 1.
Savoy thinks about his own bank account; the little he has in there is entirely at the mercy of codes traveling up and down wires. What if the bank decided, from one moment to the next, to change the whole system? What if that new program didn't work? How could he prove he had the amount of money he said he had? How could he convert those numbers into something more concrete, like a house or food bought at the supermarket?
He can do nothing because he's in the hands of the system. However, he decides that as soon as he leaves the hospital, he'll visit an ATM and get a balance statement. He makes a note in his diary to do this every week; that way, if some calamity does occur in the world, he'll have proof on paper.
Paper. That word again. How did he get on to this subject in the first place? Ah, yes, money laundering.
He goes back to what he knows about laundering money. The final stage is the easiest of all; the money is put into a respectable account, for example, one belonging to a property development company or an investment fund. If the government asks: "Where did this money come from?" the answer's easy enough: "From small investors who believe in what we're selling." After that, it can be invested in more shares, more land, in planes and other luxury goods, in houses with swimming pools, in credit cards with no cash limit. The partners in these companies are the very same people who first financed the buying of drugs, guns, or some other illicit merchandise. The money, though, is clean; after all, any company can earn millions of dollars speculating on the stock market or on property.
