How to Rob the Bank of England (eBook)

3. TRUSTWORTHY WITH CRIMINAL INTENTIONS

Keith Cheeseman had been anticipating a bonds heist since January, when a courier working for Rowe & Pitman had forgotten to secure the straps on his briefcase and dropped £4 million in certificates of deposit on his way to the Bank of England.

A young surveyor found the bonds outside the Stock Exchange on Throgmorton Street and marched straight into the lobby to hand them in. He was rewarded with a magnum of Laurent-Perrier champagne and enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame being photographed by the newspapers.

The coverage did not go unnoticed.

Two weeks before the robbery, Cheeseman had met Martin Newman for coffee at the Café Royal in Regent Street. That’s when Martin had given him the copy of War Plan UK that he’d bought – or lifted – that morning at Foyles, Keith’s favourite bookshop, on Charing Cross Road. As they were leaving, they bumped into Henry Nunn in his tight-fitting pinstripes with a rosebud in the buttonhole. Keith introduced them.

‘Martin, my old mate Henry. Watch yourself, he’s the king of the shirt-lifters.’

They shook hands. Henry fluttered his eyelashes as he sized up Martin. With his long hair and black leather jacket he was not within the dress code for the Café Royal, but the maître d’ turned a blind eye for those who brought style. Under his jacket, Martin wore a scoop-necked red vest revealing a lush carpet of chest hair.

‘Honestly, I prefer those who have already abandoned their shirts,’ Henry remarked. His tone changed as he turned to Cheeseman, with lines deepening on his brow. ‘Are you still in touch with your friend in Indonesia?’

‘Lovely chap. Wife’s got a new poodle.’

‘Jolly good.’ Henry turned back to Martin with a smile. ‘So nice to have met you.’

He climbed the stairs and waved as someone came down to meet him.

The robbery was all over the BBC at 6pm and it occurred to Keith that news is always a mixture of truths, half-truths and bollocks. The DCS in his shiny suit kept a straight face as he told the British public that a thief working alone had nicked bearer bonds worth £292 million and ‘wouldn’t be able to spend a penny’ because the serial numbers had been circulated ‘to every bank in the world’.

Detective Chief Superintendent Dickinson knew that the statement was untrue. Once minted, bearer bonds have the same versatility as uncut diamonds, whether the serial numbers are known or not. Using bearer bonds to hide and move assets may not be cheap, but it is easy. There are law firms and chartered accountants in the City that don’t display brass plaques, and behind their closed doors all your financial needs will be met with no questions asked. As there is no record of who the seller is or who is buying the bonds, you can move money in high denominations and store it in fiscal paradises, where the sun always shines on fishermen casting their nets in picturesque bays and omertà is a way of life.

Terrorists and criminals trade stolen bonds as collateral in arms deals, drug deals, terror plots and property speculation. Bonds washed through private banks in tax havens finance wars and overthrow governments. When Colonel Oliver North diverted cash from weapons sales to Iran in 1985 to fund the American-backed Contras plotting to oust the socialist government in Nicaragua, they used bearer bonds as security.

Keith remembered watching the movie Die Hard at the Odeon Leicester Square. Alan Rickman, playing the lead bad guy, swipes bonds worth $640 million in a couple of duffel bags and tells his gang that by the time the authorities know they’ve gone ‘they’ll be sitting on a beach earning 20 per cent’. Keith felt as if he were standing in Rickman’s shoes all the way to the final fist fight when Bruce Willis as a New York detective foils the plot.

And now in other news …

… while police search for the bond robber, poll tax rioters continue to occupy Trafalgar Square …

Keith turned off the TV and poured himself a gin with a lot of tonic.

He had made that call after lunch. His conversation with Abyasa Tjay – TJ to his mates, lasted 90 seconds.

‘TJ ...’

‘The answer is yes,’ he said the moment he heard Keith’s voice.

‘You can’t have heard already?’

‘You forget, my friend, we are always ahead of you in London – by six hours.’

‘Still …’

TJ was in.

Big time.

The bubbles from the tonic went up Keith’s nose and made him laugh. For some reason, what came into his mind was the night at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in June the previous year when he first met TJ. Vice President George Bush happened to be there at the same time, visiting the long-time Indonesian President Suharto who, like Picasso, was generally known by a solitary name. The Astoria was the watering hole for those in the pink, in the know and on the make.

Keith had forgotten his wallet and was in the lift ready to go up to his suite when a secret service man in a black suit caught the doors before they closed. George Bush entered with an escort of aides.

‘I do apologise for holding you up,’ he said.

‘That’s alright. Got all the time in the world,’ Keith replied.

‘Oh, you’re English.’

‘Keith Cheeseman.’

‘I’m George.’

‘I know, sir, the vice president.’

‘For my sins. Lovely country, England. Always a pleasure to visit.’

‘Except for the bloody rain.’

George laughed.

They stepped out on the top floor. Keith collected his wallet and went back to Peacock Alley, the lobby bar, to join Rocky Graziano; the one-time middleweight boxing champion of the world was looking for partners to buy a vineyard in Napa Valley. They were still there when George Bush passed through with his men in black.

‘Hi there, Champ. Hi, Keith,’ he called.

After this fleeting acknowledgement from the vice president, Keith always got the best table in the restaurant and was treated as a VIP by all the staff in the hotel.

Later that evening, he was having a drink with Ben Blessing, an American based in Holland. Blessing was an icon, a mythical figure, the man little boys who dreamed of scamming banks wanted to be when they grew up. His reputation had earned him the sobriquet Mr Big.

A group of Indonesian women dripping in gold and wearing sparkling dresses passed through the lobby like a flock of chattering parrots. TJ was following them but peeled off when he saw Blessing and headed towards the two men. Ben introduced them. TJ had a firm grip when they shook hands and looked Keith in the eye as if he were taking an X-ray. He was related by marriage to the old butcher Suharto, but probably had bigger ambitions.

‘Are you here on business, Mr Cheeseman?’

‘I am.’

‘And what is your business, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘I rob banks.’

‘With a fountain pen,’ Blessing added.

TJ didn’t laugh. He glanced at Blessing, then lowered his voice. ‘It is the only way to live,’ he said. ‘Do excuse me, I must take care of the concubines …’

Keith met TJ again later that year, in Florida with Mark Lee Osborne, a disqualified bond trader from Texas. Keith had some JC Penney bonds with mixed values of $10,000 and $20,000 he wanted to cash in. TJ glanced at the bonds and shook his head. The sums were too small for him to deal with.

‘May I tell you a story I was told by my father?’ he said and sipped his drink. ‘There are two bulls in a field above a meadow with a herd of cows. The young bull says: let’s rush down there, cross the fence and fuck a cow. The old bull is silent for a moment, then he says to his young friend: no, let’s go down there slowly, cross the fence and fuck them all.’

‘Hey, that’s funny,’ Mark Osborne said.

‘It is not a joke, Mark.’

They went out to eat at an Indonesian restaurant. TJ introduced Keith to nasi goreng, the national dish, and he introduced TJ to the Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon from California at $60 a bottle. They bonded over their love of bonds and Keith returned home confident that he had a good contact when the right deal came along. He flew back to the UK on Concorde, always a good place to meet people, and searches were cursory, if they happened at all.

He straightened his dark-blue-and-plum-red-striped tie and slipped on his suit jacket. The lift took him down to the car park in the basement where his green 2.4-litre Jag was as shiny as an emerald in the half-light. Rodney Miller, the doorman, was waiting to go up.

‘Evening, governor,’ he said.

‘You been polishing my car again?’

‘Lovely motor. Going somewhere nice?’

‘Who’s asking? You working for MI6?’

‘That’s my secret, Mr Cheeseman.’ He lit a rollup. ‘You hear about that robbery? Millions some bloke got away with.’

‘Hope he enjoys spending it, that’s what I say.’ They laughed and Keith tucked a tenner in Miller’s top pocket.

‘I don’t want that,’ he said.

‘Easy come. Easy go. One of my chickens came home to...