The Deal : Chapter Four
Four : You find a trap after your foot lands in it
Thump Thump Thump Thump….
Abhiram had pages on his desk floating all around… his head dug deep within them… he was trying hard to concentrate with the sounds…
Thump Thump Thump Thump….
Vishal was snoring on the sofa in the hall… that’s what he did all day and night…
It had been a boring three months. In Antwerp.
Abhiram drew some more line diagrams on his pages…
Thump Thump Thump Thump….
He was getting irritated by the frequent visits of Raf, a local, whom they had met at a bar within a week of their arrival. Abhiram find him cool. But then something happened…
Thump Thump Thump Thump….
Meera and Raf grew close to each other.
Thump Thump Thump Thump….
And Raf became Meera’s muse who would come to their office and both he and Meera would disappear into the bathroom.
Thump Thump Thump Thump….
Abhiram’s irritation grew… he got up from his seat, took his jacket and muffler and walked out on the street. He decided to walk towards the ocean where he could enjoy a few drinks.
“ABHIRAM!!”
It was Vishal running towards him…
“Where were you going?”
“To get a drink… I’m damn irritated with Meera, Raf and the thumping every afternoon”
Vishal smiled… “Alright… let me join you. Don’t wanna sit there alone with them doing their thingy inside… doesn’t Meera have any shame left?”
They started walking towards the bars a few blocks away.
It had been three months since GV had sent them here. They received a million and a half on their arrival at Antwerp. GV’s men then set them up in an office. Deurne Diamonds.
The office was empty except for one phone, two tables, four chairs, a sofa and 32 lockers each big enough to fit a suitcase.
The trio of Meera, Vishal and Abhiram would open the office at 8am each morning and sit on their chairs reading newspapers, magazines or occasionally answering the phone which always was a wrong call. They had been taught to not speak anything except say “Deurne Diamonds” when they picked up the phone.
The office doors were always open. Strangers would step in on some days, show them GV’s business card and move towards the lockers. On some days a stranger would push a suitcase in one of those lockers… while on other days someone would open a locker and pickup a suitcase and leave.
No words were exchanged between the strangers and the Trio.
And within two weeks of their entering Antwerp, Meera, Vishal and Abhiram knew… that something was not right. They could sense it. They could feel it. That they had walked into a trap.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Diamonds. They require cutting, tooling, shaping and polishing. And during this process many things go wrong. Originally intended shapes and sizes get disfigured. The original value it was intended to achieve falls with every faltering in the production process. This falling of value in many places could be written off as a loss in tax filings.
And GV took complete advantage of this. Completely intact diamonds were written off as failure in quality. The diamonds were then moved to a few of his storage locations. Buyers would then buy these real diamonds, paying on paper the cost of a bad diamond and paying in cash the balance of the value of the real price of the diamonds.
This was one of the ways GV had learned and perfected for turning all black money into white, for his rich friends in Europe.
Until Shakeel entered the scene…
Now a lot of Shakeel’s blood money was turned in white diamonds using GV. GV hated it… but with a gun pointed to his head, he couldn’t do anything about it.
Besides getting distribution rights for his movies at half the cost, Shakeel had was also using GV’s diamonds to launder his money and spread them across the world for his various “businesses”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The two men had been following Abhiram and Vishal. They sat at one of the table at the bar as they saw their targets ordering beer.
After about 15 minutes, when they were assured that their targets wouldn’t be meeting anyone and were there simply for the beer, the two men got up and walked to their targets’ table.
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“Hi Abhiram… Vishal”
Abhiram looked up. The man who had addressed him was in his late forties, grey hair, round glasses and wearing a plaid jacket. The man next to him was younger, early thirties…
“I’m sorry… I didn’t recognize you…”
“I’m Pankaj Chowksi working for the Indian Government. This is Raj Purohit… can we join you two for a minute”
“Sure”… Abhiram slided in to make room for Chowksi. Vishal looked at Raj Purohit, not sure if he should do the same… he had a bad feeling about this… he looked at Chowksi - “How do you know our names”
“Because it is our job”
Vishal wasn’t going to be satisfied with the answer “Since when did the government of India start doing it’s job?”
Chowksi looked at Abhiram and then and Vishal “Since the citizens of India got involved in laundering money for drugs and terrorism”
Abhiram was struggling to get an understanding of this new situation… “What… what do you mean?”
Chowksi smiled “Give up your activities… at the earliest possible… your client won’t be out roaming free for long… and I’ll see to it that you join him in that dark dingy jail cell for the rest of your lives”
Vishal erupted “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
Chowksi smiled at him “Diamonds”
Abhiram spoke “You mean the company here that we are working for”
Chowksi looked at him “No… I mean the company here in Antwerp that you three are running”
“Wait… it’s not our company!!!” Vishal protested…
Abhiram wanted more to understand what was happening… “Wait… I’m not sure what and why you are understanding us in the way you are… I don’t even know what you are talking about…”
Raj Purohit who had been standing so far cut Abhiram off… “Sure Mr. Bose. Soon pretty soon… you’ll know what we are talking about… when I handcuff you and drag all three of you to India…”
Chowksi got up from his seat… “I had simply come to warn you… your days are numbered… so you have two choices… shut your business down and come with us to the embassy for interrogation or… keep continuing what you do until we come down and shoot the life out of you three…”
The two men left leaving Abhiram and Vishal dumbfounded.
Vishal looked at Abhiram… “What the hell was that?”
Abhiram kept looking at the two men walking out of the bar on the street until they disappeared into the fog and crowd… he finally spoke without looking at Vishal….
“That my dear friend was… Trouble”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The funky email message would be a stupid story that one would have deleted half way through.
But the reader read the email again and again… and with a pen and paper was translating the true meaning of the email.
After having satisfied that he had deciphered the entire email, the reader deleted the mail and ensured it had been removed from the trash folder.
He carefully folded the email and went to the counter to pay for the internet services at the cyber cafe…
As he walked out on the busy streets of Paris, he stopped at the lights waiting for the green, to cross the streets.
His pocket was picked as soon as he had stepped on the road to walk across. The pick pocketer had been paid to shadow the man since the last two days. He had almost died of boredom until his target had entered a cyber cafe and started writing something on the paper while surfing the internet. As he reported this activity over the phone, his instructions were to get the piece of paper without the target ever realizing it had been lost.
Job done.
The pick pocketer left the note at the couter of the coffee shop two blocks away. The note was then carried to the third floor of the same building.
The man of the house sat in the living room with visitors from South Africa. He opened the note and read it’s contents. This was an emergency… this could not be… no one would be a fool to do this… no one in the right mind would dare do this…
He rushed to the other room to make the phone call… the phone at the other end was ringing… as he waited for the receiver to pickup the phone, he gave the note one last look…
“Next Shipment of Shakeel is target. Underground Deurne Diamonds after act.”
The message was clear to anyone involved in the business.
The three people of Deurne would be swindling Shakeel of his 150 million dollar diamond shipment. They would then vanish.
The man chuckled… Fools… Vanish they will… but just their lifeless bodies…
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December 11th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Finally another dose of the Oz of old! Riveting…absolutely riveting!
December 12th, 2006 at 1:44 am
Superb..Oz….:)