Appetite for Risk by Jack Leavers

Author:Jack Leavers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Book Guild
Published: 2019-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

EPSOM — LATE OCTOBER 2004

I’d submitted the report and invoice for the Monaco job; a job well done with a sizeable invoice total, although yet another disappointing profit margin. My personal overdraft was almost exhausted and the outstanding balances on my credit card statements read like telephone numbers. My director’s account for the business still had some leeway, but unless I generated more revenue soon, everything would grind to a halt. I tried to ignore the Customs and Excise situation. Pete was adamant that elements within the Security Service would see to it that the case was quashed, so I focused on that outcome.

‘There’s no way this is going to trial, mate. Too many people knew what was going on. There’s a lot more to it than those muppets at customs know.’

‘And there’s a lot more to it than this muppet knows as well, mate. Because I know fuck all. What’s this got to do with the Security Service?’

‘Don’t worry. I told you, I was a source for them, for MI5. Giving them information about those idiots and the VAT carousel, the oil theft in Nigeria, all of it.’

There was either a lot more to this than I knew about or a lot less. ‘So why have customs arrested us all and had us charged then? It doesn’t make sense unless they know absolutely nothing about your secret squirrel stuff. I tell you mate, no one’s going to come out fighting for us if this was just some complicated blag done off your own bat.’

‘No John, you’re wrong,’ Pete said, but I could see I’d struck a nerve.

Fuck. It seemed more and more likely this was all caused by a madcap scheme and the authorities had the wrong end of the stick. Customs probably assumed they’d caught serious players with their pants down. Little did they realise it was only us bunch of clowns putting on a Billy Smart’s performance to top the lot.

*

As I checked the spam folder of my Hushmail account, I noted an encrypted email from Faris. I’d set him up with a free account requiring access every three weeks to avoid being disabled. A surprise he’d managed to keep it going. He’d only sent me a handful of emails and none since shortly after I’d returned from Baghdad at the end of April five months earlier. Maybe he used it for other stuff. Not that I should be affected; other than our meagre correspondence, it wasn’t linked to me in any way.

Hushmail uses PGP encryption to send secure emails between users. It also functions as regular email if the other party doesn’t have a reciprocal PGP secured account. Faris had sent me an encrypted email which decrypted automatically on my computer. In theory the contents couldn’t be intercepted and read by anyone else, government or otherwise. I had my doubts. We had nothing to hide but it was good professional practice to keep communications confidential.

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