Free The Perfidious Parrot by Janwillem van de Wetering Page A

obviously confronting a cruel and daredevil enemy. Any help would be nice.
    “I say,” the commissaris said, “Grijpstra, I forgot to ask you. What happened to the
Sibylle
’s captain, Souza, that poor chap.”
    “Taken home to Aruba, sir.”
    “Young Ambagt said so?”
    “Yes sir, the
Sibylle
captain was helicoptered to St. Maarten and ambulanced to the airport. Something wrong with his legs. Poor circulation. Gangrene in both feet.”
    “And the captain knew nothing about the assault on his vessel?”
    “Too intoxicated, sir.”
    “Aruba,” de Gier looked at the map. “And the yacht, the
Rodney
is now in Bermuda’s harbor? Didn’t you say thatAmbagt & Son once had their office in Bermuda? Before they became sailors?”
    The commissaris quoted a police file shown him by Inspector Cardozo. Peter and Carl Ambagt, some twenty years ago, started their career as Rotterdam-based car thieves. The garage they kept on the Schiedam Dike was a “chop shop” where stolen cars are quickly taken apart. Parts were then sold all over the country. Carl did the stealing, mostly of expensive Ford models, and Peter was in charge of chopping and dealing.
    Peter Ambagt was arrested and spent a year in the jail at North Canal, Rotterdam. Carl was released on probation.
    Prosecutors underestimated the size of their case. Shortly after Peter was released the Ambagts started their crude oil business in Bermuda, well-capitalized.
    “Capital earned by the sale of car parts?” Grijpstra asked. De Gier thought this quite likely. The total value of a car’s parts is about three times the value of the new car. The Ambagts would have sold them at wholesale so their prices would have been lower. Suppose you do a car a day. Say three hundred cars a year (allowing for off-days) at twenty thousand each. That would be six million a year, gross.
    “Costs?” Grijpstra asked.
    De Gier was still calculating. Help. Rent. Having dinner in the “The Meuse” Yacht Club. Peter Ambagt had a male Chinese prostitute habit to keep up in the Cat’s Creek quarter his file had said. Then there were Carl’s linen blazers and Swiss gold watches. Say they made a profit of three million a year, say they kept it up for five years, that would give them savings of fifteen million as starting capital for the oil business. Yes?
    The commissaris didn’t see how the calculation could be toofar out. According to Cardozo’s police file the Ambagts’s subsequent oil business was conducted from far-away Bermuda, well out of reach of the Dutch police. The Ambagts started off by buying Russian oil and shipping it to South Africa. South Africa at the time was unpopular with all western countries. The embargo included crude oil. South Africa has no energy sources of its own. Red Russia couldn’t deal directly with the white Protestant Boers but would sell to anybody via third parties. “And then …” the commissaris hit the table top with his small fist, “… haha!”
    “Haha what, sir?” asked Grijpstra.
    An absolute wonderful construction, the commissaris said. How did the rascals ever think of it! Real smart Alecs those two. The Russians had to be sure they would get their money so payment was arranged with a letter of credit, a transfer of dollars guaranteed by a Bermuda bank. The cash was released as soon as the Russians could prove delivery of the oil. The South Africans paid Ambagt & Son, Ambagt & Son paid the Russians, and in between was
paperwork
.
    “Bureaucracy,” the commissaris said. “You know what Professor Mindera of Erasmus University says about bureaucracy.
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency
.” The commissaris raised an all-knowing finger. “Bureaucracy is based on lack of trust. Its paranoid fear requires tedious paperwork. Eventually even the best of us get irritated by dotted lines and multiple choices. Frustration with red tape tempts us to beat the system. Become crooks.”
    “Professor Mindera