Chapter Ten
"What do all these people have on us?" Asked Merhab, "we haven't done anything illegal."
More people, mostly journalists, were gathering around the 757 of the Sheik.
"I'm not sure," said Hakeem, "we should send someone to investigate."
Lubachko shook his head, indicating to Hakeem this was a communication problem, not a security problem per se. All three security guards of the Sheik stepped out of the living room area, towards the kitchen area of the plane, to grab a drink. Hakeem allowed it. Sometimes, offering a break to security personnel during difficult times, was needed to avoid a mutiny.
"Do you wanna go take a look?" Asked the retainer. He stared at Merhab.
"No, I'm a coach."
"What about Hari?"
"No, Hari cannot do anything such as an investigation. The complexity would baffle him, it would turn him into a mush of overwhelmed Arabian Highness buried under a large pile of complexity. That is not for him."
All eyes turned to Clarity.
"Then, you're going to have to go," said Hakeem.
"Me, why me?" Asked Clarity.
"Because no one else wants to go and you are available."
Plum walked behind the teleoperator, moving towards the bar area.
"Some of us get the limelight right away."
Hakeem gave Clarity instructions on what to say if someone questioned her.
"Say you are visiting the island."
"Yeah, I just stumbled upon this plane." Clarity could not believe how creative Hakeem had been regarding her investigation. She reached the back door of the plane before Hakeem could reprimand her for mocking him in front of everyone.
"Yeah, say you wanted to meet me," said Hari. He looked at Plum, seeing Clarity disappear down the stairs of the plane back exit.
"Everyone wants to meet me," said Hari.
"Your money your Highness," said Plum.
"My money? Where is it?" Hari was always alarmed when someone mentioned his money, which he thought was safe. He did not know where it was, but he knew it was safe.
"They want to see you and your money," said Plum.
Hari nodded, thinking everything was all right. As long as people thought he had money, things were all right.
Clarity peeked outside the plane, noticing the journalists were packed in a group, right below the front exit door of the plane. She stepped down the back stairs reaching the tarmac, and noticed a plane which had carried all the journalists from their investigative base in Washington D.C. She walked towards a 737 from Caribbean Airlines painted white, blue and green, with a hummingbird in flight showing in the back. There was a large amount of confusion around the plane, with a group of about one hundred journalists typing on their laptop set up in a hasty way on portable folding plastic tables and steel frame folding chairs from logo-it, with the Consortium logo written on the polyester fabric.
Carefully dodging several journalists and police constables sent by the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force, Clarity walked up the air-stairs of the plane, entering the cabin. A steward of the Consortium was attempting to keep abreast of all the requests coming from the journalists regarding any information coming in or going out of the Sheik's plane. The song from the calypso artist Explainer, called 'Lorraine', the theme song of the airline, was playing in the background.
"Your id, please, your badge."
Clarity glanced inside the cabin and saw that the journalists standing were all wearing a badge labeled Scrub Leaks investigation. Clarity was taken off guard, but reacted on the go, remembering a few facts in the article provided by Arnold.
"Clarity Nice, data editor for Newsday in New York, member of the Freedom of Information Act Machine platform. I need a press badge, it fell while I was going through customs."
"Hold on a second." A second clerk sitting a few rows further printed a badge and placed it in a plastic cover.
"Here you go, this way please." The clerk pointed Clarity to a second exit door across the one Clarity had used.
"Do you have the address of the office set up here by the Consortium, I need to send a report and I don't have access to the web." The clerk checked a sheet of paper stuck above one of the windows.
"It's in Pasea Estate in Road Town, near the offices of the BVI Financial Services Commission."
Clarity walked across the cabin all of ten feet, reaching the air-steps on the other side of the cabin. Going down the boarding ramp, she spotted an open-air taxi by Cane Soup Trips painted a fiery red and yellow, ready to tour Tortola. The Ford safari bus looked like a fire truck ready to reach Patagonia. Clarity reached for her pocket and grabbed a twenty dollar bill rescued from the Sheik's bonfire, handing it to the driver.
"Hop in, we're picking up some people on the way." A dozen journalists boarded the safari bus. Clarity sat on an aisle seat two or three rows before the last row. A woman wearing the uniform of a police constable, Jillian Matthias, sat beside her. A policewoman, thought Clarity, yeah, definitely someone supporting her investigation.
"What a mess, this Sheik is sure involved in a lot of shady businesses. So many people want to know what he is doing here."
"Yeah, it is a mess, a bit of work for us," said Clarity, "it's not bad." The safari bus left the airport and headed for Ridge Road towards Road Town.
"What are you looking for? I mean everyone here, what are they looking for?" Clarity made up a half truth, which sort of matched what she was seeing.
"The Sheik is being investigated. He is not a bad guy, but there is an issue with the amount of money which belongs to him, and that has led to other problems or investigations, with several tax authorities."
The safari bus dropped Clarity and several journalists in front of a colonial building on San Francis Drake Highway, rented by the Consortium. Clarity walked to the second floor and requested a computer.
"You can use that one over there, it's still open."
Clarity rushed to the small desk before someone else took it, marvelling at the screen of the Silicon Graphics Visual Workstation. The Consortium used an application named Snide Locator, which mapped the offshore structures of political leaders, criminals, celebrities, sports celebrities, and divorce lawyers. Another feature also exposed the connections of the different prominent people involved, things like who had met whom, who knew about the assets and the money of the other, who had slept with someone else's wife, and who was after the inheritance of such and such politician or business maven. She clicked on the Scrub Leaks button, one of the matters under investigation by the Consortium.
A Board Certificate obtained through a leak from the Panama office of Augiers Urbina, showed that the Sheik had limited Power of Attorney over SRA-199, the company owning Heir Force One. The Snide Locator graph showed that Regina Holdings could overturn that Power of Attorney and had taxes pending in several jurisdictions. It also held a term deposit with the Bank of China in Luxembourg, but a large part of its balance sheet, amounting to more than four billion dollars was unknown, listing only that the holdings were believed to be associated with Real Estate, and that some of it was not in London. Other links mapped Hari's father as shareholder of Sheik Royal Assets 199, and as main owner of the Nafurat Min Almiah Alnnaquia palace, the Fountain of Pure Water residence, belonging to the family of Hari in the Emirates. Neither Hakeem, Merhab, or any of his security guards were listed in the Consortium file.
Clarity pressed the scroll button, the file was long. There was no mention of the eight million dollars stored at Kuwait Capital offshore branch in BVI, but there was an icon named Trustee of SRA-199 which had not been identified. Clarity guessed that Hakeem acted as Trustee of the Sheik's company. She noticed something odd on the lower part of the screen, a name which caught her attention. It was her own name, listed as a relevant pawn of Hari's financial chess set. Her name was listed as one of the beneficiaries of Regina Holdings. She zoomed in on the label, just to ensure she was seeing things correctly. Clarity Nice, Beneficiary,
Regina Holdings, relation to Sheik Al-Najib, all-purpose clerk, possible mistress, or girlfriend, or travel companion.
A fuzzy feeling of uneasiness began to envelop Clarity, like it was probably a good time to leave the place. A look at a final link grabbed her attention. It listed the cook, Yergat Ghazkian in a separate icon of investigation. Issue investigated: Diverting first grade meat purchased on behalf of the Sheik and selling it in the Caribbean to bars and resorts. Amount being diverted : a good chunk, amounting to five or six hundred thousand dollars, ten or fifteen years of the cook's salary, enough for his retirement in the Caribbean, according to another Armenian cook, living in New York City, cooking in a Deli.
Clarity checked the timeline, using a visual calendar inside the application. The information was dated the day before. She just had to tell Hari about all of this, the guy was being robbed left and right by everyone around him. Maybe the investigation of the cook would divert attention from her and her name. How in the world had her name appeared in that file already, after meeting the Sheik only a few days earlier. The name of Nora flashed through her mind. Yeah, that gossip douchebag working for Vanity Gloss had something to do with her name appearing in Scrub Leaks.
Clarity made a printout of the documents she had found regarding the Sheik and herself, turned off the computer, and left the office used by the journalists. She took a taxi back to the airport and walked back to the area where the plane of the Sheik and the one who'd flown in the journalists, were parked. Getting past a large group of journalists, she climbed the stairs of the backdoor exit of Heir Force One, finding Hari drinking a daiquiri, slumped in his furry bean bag cushion, talking to Merhab about the previous week's loss of his basketball team. Before Hakeem noticed she was back and began to ask for explanations, Clarity took him aside, along with his bean bag cushion. They both sank into it for some privacy.
"Hari, the cook is stealing money and meat from you."
The Sheik began to pay attention to Clarity, setting aside with his hand part of the bean bag cushion, in order to see the face of the teleoperator, a few inches away. His lunch and dinner was no joke. They checked the pantry and noticed that all the meat which was grinded, was rated grade five by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the top grade granted by the federal agency. Hari asked Hakeem about the expense sheet of the plane, but the retainer refused. The Sheik began to think Clarity was right. She heard Merhab yell from the living area of the plane.
"Hari, your dollar recycling class."
"Recycling dollars?" Asked Clarity.
"Yeah, throwing them away, in order to throw away the need to use them. It's meant to get rid of my attachment to money, Merhab recommended that. It's also meant to throw away the fear of petrodollars being replaced by renewable energy."
Plum approached Hari, who was nearing information overload, with so much happening around him.
"You should consider leaving with Lohvia now, it's not a bad time to get married, settle in Tortola. New Life Baptist Church is on Waterfront Drive, in Tortola, and there is also Cane Garden Bay Baptist Church in Road Town."
Hari ignored Plum, although he took notice of the counsel in a sense. Lohvia was a nice woman to keep him company, but his family was not favoring the relationship, wanting for Hari someone like Nora, more established in society. Assaulted by a sudden realization that his money could be in danger, Hari held the arm of Clarity and walked towards the exit backdoor of his plane.
"Let's get out of here, I don't trust anyone."
Marrying Lohvia was out of the question, for now.