Chapter 26

From the Desk of François Lou­bet

Chat­G­PT, rewrite in the style of a friend­ly Eng­lish gen­tle­man, please.

Anoth­er email from Rob Ken­na, my trusty mur­der-bro­ker. I almost for­got to put my Chat­G­PT on, by the way! What a shock you would have had, hear­ing the real me!

Amy Wheel­er still at large. Apolo­gies. Being dealt with.

Well, I real­ly have got myself into some­thing of a pick­le here, haven’t I?

Let me tell you a lit­tle about myself, so I can explain all! If you’re read­ing this, it’s either because I’m dead or I’m in prison. There is also the slight chance that these lit­tle notes might be inter­cept­ed by the author­i­ties one day, so I will con­tin­ue to cloak myself. But that’s unlike­ly, because I take care. And that’s also why I very much doubt that I will ever end up in prison. And that’s because I always take out insur­ance.

Mon­ey-smug­gling is the biggest busi­ness of them all—that’s the first thing you need to under­stand. Every sin­gle ille­gal activ­i­ty in the world is made up of two sides. The buy­ers and the sell­ers. The sell­ers offer all sorts of dif­fer­ent things: drugs, guns, peo­ple, coun­ter­feit cloth­ing, secrets, rare-bird eggs, mil­i­tary-weapons sys­tems. But the buy­ers, by and large, offer just one thing—money.

And so it goes, that in the sum of the parts of all the ille­gal activ­i­ties any­where in the world, tril­lions of dol­lars’ worth of good old-fash­ioned cash mon­ey is just slosh­ing about, look­ing for a safe har­bor.

And, for the most part, that mon­ey is noth­ing but trou­ble. Have you ever tried pay­ing a mil­lion pounds into your local bank branch? Try it. See where that gets you. In the old days they turned a blind eye. A pile of fifties stained with blood? Let me count that for you, sir.

But now? Some­times it’s hon­est­ly not worth the both­er. Anti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing laws are a real dis­in­cen­tive to entre­pre­neurs. Just last week a friend told me she had sighed when being hand­ed a bag con­tain­ing ten mil­lion dol­lars, dis­mayed by the thought of the effort and time and expense it would take to clean it all up.

And that’s why peo­ple employ me. If you need your mon­ey laun­dered, fed through fake com­pa­nies, washed through casi­nos or mon­ey exchanges, I am a ver­i­ta­ble one-stop shop!

So that’s me! Now, about this cur­rent scheme, which has begun to back­fire like a cheap motor car!

A lot of the job is elec­tron­ic these days—transfers upon trans­fers upon trans­fers, a long, labo­ri­ous process that means it might be months before you have some actu­al cash in your hands.

Which is why one of the fun parts of the job is when cir­cum­stance forces one to phys­i­cal­ly move mon­ey around the world. A client in São Pao­lo needs a mil­lion dol­lars in cash by Tues­day. An Aus­tralian min­ing mag­nate needs untrace­able cur­ren­cy to pay a bribe at a week­end bar­be­cue. Some­times peo­ple just need cash, and they need it quick­ly.

This is where couri­ers come in. Just as mules smug­gle drugs, so couri­ers smug­gle mon­ey. Every day, sums large and small pass through the scan­ners and secu­ri­ty checks of air­ports and docks around the world. Much of it con­trolled by my good self—the man known as François Lou­bet, though, by the time this is being read, you will of course be famil­iar with my real name!

Now, at any giv­en time, I have an awful lot of smug­gling schemes on the go. I diver­si­fy. I refuse to put all my eggs in one egg-recep­ta­cle.

So when did this “influ­encer” scheme begin? Two years ago, some­thing like that?

I had been using the ser­vices of a com­pa­ny called Max­i­mum Impact Solu­tions. Just a bit of light secu­ri­ty work for one of my peo­ple in Lon­don. They were per­fect­ly fine, effi­cient, didn’t ask too many ques­tions, and they didn’t balk when they were paid in Rwan­dan francs through a bank in Indone­sia.

Then a week or so lat­er I received an email from some­one called “Joe Blow,” who was clear­ly con­nect­ed with Max­i­mum Impact. “Joe Blow” had rather a neat pro­pos­al to sup­ply me with couri­ers.

Influ­encers.

I hadn’t even real­ly known what the word meant when Joe Blow emailed me out of the blue and sug­gest­ed it to me. I’d heard of it, of course, but hadn’t paid it any heed. But, it turns out, they are the per­fect couri­ers.

You see, if you want to smug­gle large sums of mon­ey around the world—and I do very much want to do that—here is the ques­tion you must ask your­self.

Who has a jet-set lifestyle? Who might trav­el halfway around the world for only a day or two? With bulky lug­gage? With­out it look­ing too sus­pi­cious?

Famous peo­ple would be the answer. Hid­ing in plain sight, tak­ing self­ies on the plane, always with the per­fect rea­son to be fly­ing to Amer­i­ca, or St. Lucia, or the Cay­man Islands.

But what’s the prob­lem with most of the famous peo­ple who lead these jet-set lifestyles?

You’re ahead of me, I’m cer­tain. They’re already rich.

So this is where these influ­encers come in. The influ­encers with lim­it­ed num­bers of fol­low­ers. They can fly around the world rais­ing no sus­pi­cion. But they have no mon­ey. And there­fore they can be bought.

Sim­ply set up a few dum­my com­pa­nies, I have many of them already. Joe Blow and I use a com­pa­ny called Vivid Viral Media for this scheme. Then book your influ­encers on a few fake assign­ments abroad, adver­tis­ing the prod­ucts of oth­er front com­pa­nies you already own, and, unbe­knownst to them, give them a big bag of mon­ey to smug­gle through cus­toms every time.

Well, almost every time. Some­times your poor couri­ers, usu­al­ly with no idea what they’re car­ry­ing, get caught. And that’s the ori­gin of this cur­rent brouha­ha!

Joe Blow is clear­ly high up at Max­i­mum Impact, with access to this email address cer­tain­ly. I don’t give it out willy-nil­ly!

At first I sim­ply assumed that Joe Blow was Jeff Nolan. He seemed like a good guy who would hap­pi­ly put his clients at risk for an immense pay­day. How­ev­er, I fear I was mis­tak­en, because, after two of our couri­ers had been caught by cus­toms offi­cials, Jeff Nolan him­self sent me a very rude email. Accus­ing me of all sorts. Quite the nerve.

So I decid­ed to move on. As I say, I have plen­ty of these schemes; as soon as one gives me gip, I move along posthaste.

But, before I did, I sent Jeff Nolan a mes­sage in return. And by “mes­sage,” I mean I had one of the couri­ers killed, very pub­licly. No point pussy-foot­ing around, is there? It was sim­ply a gen­tle warn­ing to back away, a shot across Jeff Nolan’s bows, and I thought that would be the end of it.

But no. There was a fur­ther email from Jeff Nolan. He had tak­en offense at the mur­der, for good­ness’ sake, and wasn’t back­ing down. He wished to expose me. You know that sort of non­sense. All ego.

My response was the only rea­son­able one in the cir­cum­stances. To have anoth­er couri­er killed. Incon­ve­nient for me, but one must always respond to threats, mustn’t one? I can’t abide a bul­ly.

But still Nolan wouldn’t back down.

The third mur­der was a few days ago. South Car­oli­na, I believe. I’m not ful­ly across the details. This time I even told Rob Ken­na to leave the mon­ey with the body. A mil­lion dol­lars. That was me say­ing, very sim­ply, to Jeff Nolan, “This isn’t about the blast­ed mon­ey, old thing, this is about the blast­ed prin­ci­ple, so we must let bygones be bygones and live in har­mo­ny.”

Noth­ing from him since, so per­haps this has done the trick, and I can get on with the rest of my busi­ness in peace?

Back to the email from Rob Ken­na, though. Amy Wheel­er on the run.

Where does Amy Wheel­er come in? And why do I want her dead? I did tell you that I always take out insur­ance, and, on this occa­sion, Amy Wheel­er is my unwit­ting insur­ance pol­i­cy. I will explain more when she’s dead. I don’t want to get too cocky!

I know that Amy Wheel­er is far from a fool, you see, and, though I trust Rob Ken­na to get the job done, it won’t do any harm to send him a note of encour­age­ment.

Mr. Ken­na,

I under­stand com­plete­ly; these things hap­pen. While I still have great faith in you, be assured that if Amy Wheel­er is not dead with­in a week, you will be.

Warmest regards,

François Lou­bet

Hope­ful­ly that should focus his mind. Chop-chop, Robert!