Free The Clayton Account by Bill Vidal

office in Medellín would act as main contractor. It would select and pay the subcontractors out of the fifty million it would receive from abroad, in turn invoicing the Morales Foundation for the entire project. In time, the Foundation would pay Malaga back. Some of the capital required to do this would be raised by collecting donations in Medellín. But when a firm donated ten thousand, Morales would pay in twenty or thirty thousand, in that firm’s name, using the ever-increasing stream of banknotes that came in with each new shipment of cocaine. In Speer’s estimate, if the total cost of the project came to fifty million, at least ten would have been raised from local contributions. In the process, Morales would have laundered a further forty million without paying any intermediary a single cent.
    ‘When do you think your end can be in place?’ Speer asked, once details were agreed.
    ‘I understand instructions for the transfers have already been sent.’
    ‘Excellent. In that case I shall start the ball rolling straight away,’ replied Speer, satisfied.
    On Friday night they drove off the central plateau to the coast at Puntarenas and ate fresh lobsters by the Pacific Ocean. They drank a passable Mexican Chardonnay and accompanied the best coffee Sweeney had ever tasted with a few rounds of smuggled Chivas Regal. They then drove back to San José, collected girls from the club – just two this time – and returned to Speer’s place. Mid-morning on Saturday, Enrique drove Dick to the airport and watched him board the fight back to New York.
    The difference between a secret and an item of common knowledge is no more than the degree of openness with which information spreads. In Colombia, even under threat of Morales’ own version of justice, the most closely guarded of secrets will still reach those for whose ears it was never intended. Such is the power of gossip.
    Julio Robles, like his predecessors and those who undoubtedly would succeed him, bought secrets. Everyone in Medellín knew Julio, the Forestry Sector Specialist from the Inter-American Development Bank.
EL BID
, as the bank was commonly known – an acronym of its Spanish name – loaned billions of dollars that might never be repaid. In theory the bank was funded by all the governments of the American continent. In reality most of its resources were provided by the United States, which is why its headquarters were in Washington, DC. The majority of its staff was Latin American and all of its money was ‘loaned’ south of the Rio Grande, where politicians and businessmen perceived it as a soft touch: the source of hard currency for the grandest of infrastructural projects.
    It made sense to be close to the men of
EL BID
.
    So Julio Robles had no problem making friends. He was a familiar figure. Dressed in jeans and carrying a rucksack one day, as he went off into the jungle. Back in a suit or tuxedo the next evening for the city’s social rounds. Always sought after, invited to lunch here and receptions there; the jovial young Guatemalan could dispense large cheques for forestry conservation and job creation. A strikingly good-looking, dark-haired bachelor, Robles had Caribbean-blue eyes and a smile which broke many a Medellín heart. But whereas most Sector Specialists in the BID were posted for two years at a time, the incumbent in Julio’s job would be pulled out every six months or so, because that was how long his masters judged their envoy could remain alive.
    In truth he was neither named Robles nor a Guatemalan, and the salvation of the tropical rainforests was only of passing interest to him. Julio Cardenas was a US citizen in the employ of the United States Department of Justice and totally committed to the aims of its Drug Enforcement Administration. How the DEA got its men into the BID, Julio did not ask. But they did, and so far not one had been exposed. Perhaps, he thought, this was thanks to the power of money. One man lost,