Kwei Quartey - Gold of Our Fathers

Mr. Tanbry is a retired American professional basketball player in the US, age 42. He resides in Atlanta.

Were Mr. Tanbry’s route and destination the same as Akua’s? As far as Dawson knew, there was only one turnoff road just before Pakyi.

He went to the next page. It was a short entry from May 6:

Mr. Beko Tanbry stated his wish to return to the USA. He is available by phone and email. Mr. Kwadwo Yeboah is also available by phone.

Dawson saw the phone number and hoped it was both correct and still valid. He dialed it. It was around noon in Atlanta, so the timing was right. He got voice mail and left a message, wondering if people in the US checked their voice mail. In Ghana, one seldom did.

Meanwhile, Dawson tried to do a search on this Beko Tanbry, but the URL got stuck and would not budge because of the all too common network congestion. Dawson sighed. It was so tiresome.

He thought he might as well take a look at the other armed robbery case-that of the Englishman, Charles Wilshire-but just as he was about to start, his phone rang and he saw it was a US number.

“Hello,” Dawson said. “Please, are you Mr. Tanbry?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding wary. “Who’s this?”

Dawson introduced himself and told Tanbry he was investigating a series of armed robberies in the Ashanti Region in which gold or its proceeds were stolen.

“Yeah, well if you think you’re going to investigate me , mister,” Tanbry said, “you’re dead wrong.”

“No, not that at all, sir,” Dawson said evenly. “I’m making this call because I’m the new crime officer in Obuasi and I need to close some cases. I’m just asking for your help.”

“I hope you’re better than the crime officer who was there before,” Tanbry said.

“He died of a stroke,” Dawson said. “He had been sick for some time.”

“Oh, damn. Sorry. Is that guy Longdon still there?”

“The commander? Yes, he is. Did you have contact with him concerning the robbery you experienced near Pakyi?”

“Yeah. After weeks of the crime officer at the time doing practically nothing-I guess he was sick, like you say-I went upstairs to see the commander to ask what gives with the investigation. ‘Oh, we’re working on it,’ he says. ‘We have several leads,’ blah blah. Lyin’ through his teeth.”

“Please, can you describe the robbery incident in your own words, sir? It would help me a lot.”

“Okay, but I gotta give you some background first, okay?”

“Thank you.”

“So here’s the deal,” Tanbry said. “I have a clothing line and retail business in Atlanta. The last four years or so have been really tough. Last year, a Ghanaian friend of mine-I won’t name him-started telling me about some scheme he had to make a lot of money buying and selling gold via an American contact there in Ghana named Granger.”

“Chuck Granger?”

“Yeah. You know the guy?”

“Yes, sir-if it’s the same one. I met him while investigating the murder of the Chinese miner who had a site adjacent to Granger’s.”

“Oh, right. I saw the Chinese guy a couple times when I went to talk to Granger-didn’t know he got killed. What happened?”

“He was buried alive in the dirt.”

“Shit. That’s messed up. It’s like the Wild West out there. Anyway, Granger is the one who was in that crappy reality show in Ghana about small-scale mining. The government kicked him and the crew out after a while.”

“That’s him.”

“Yeah, so, my Ghanaian friend is talking about this gold scheme and I’m like, whatever, whatever. Then, back in January, he invites me to a meeting in a hotel with some other guys I didn’t know, and he’s put together this fancy PowerPoint presentation about how this Granger dude has at least half a million dollars worth of gold available for purchase. Get that out of the country and sell it in the right market, I could make a profit of a cool million.”

“Where can you sell gold for that kind of profit?” Dawson asked. It seemed too good to be true.

“Dubai,” Tanbry said at once. “The UAE government doesn’t keep track of gold coming in or leaving the country. On the PowerPoint, my friend showed how the gold would be purified in Dubai from about seventy-five percent to ninety-nine point five, and sold for a massive profit.”

“What about Mr. Granger? Was he included in the scheme?”

“After the purification, he was supposed to get a kickback, yeah, for sure. My Ghanaian friend explained that if you get a good supplier, you gotta give them a reason to be loyal and keep supplying the stuff.”

“At this point, are you convinced by the presentation?” Dawson asked.

“I gotta say, it looked solid at the time, but I was still cautious and wanted to invest only ten thousand and not half a million-just to see how it went. But there’s this Houston oil guy who’s at the meeting as well, and he gets up and says he’s providing the private jet to Ghana and arranging all the customs and immigration stuff, and he’s not putting in those kind of resources for a measly ten thousand. ‘You gotta think big, Beko,’ he says, ‘or don’t think at all.’”

Dawson’s image of the Houstonian was straight out of the movies: a blustering, stout man in a cowboy hat with a cigar.

“So they all piled up on me, arguing, persuading me, until I agreed,” Tanbry went on, “but I had to see this gold for myself. Was I gonna trust just any dude with that kind of money? Hell, no. So it meant coming to Ghana. It wouldn’t be my first time. Five years ago I was in Accra looking into real estate, so it’s not like the place was completely strange.

“Took about six weeks to get everything in place. So I get out to Accra on the private jet, and then to Kumasi, then to Obuasi and Dunkwa and all that, and I meet Granger and I’m thinking I’m gonna buy the gold from him, but no, Granger only wants to do local stuff. He’s got a Ghanaian middleman who does the international. This guy’s name is Mr. Michael.”

Mr. Michael again , Dawson thought. Who is he?

“So, I ask Granger how the hell I’ma contact this Michael dude. ‘You don’t,’ Granger says. ‘He’s gonna call you.’ Okay, so I wait a couple hours, and Mr. Michael calls me. Weird voice-creepy as hell. He tells me to head out toward Pakyi, make a left onto an unpaved road just before I get to the village itself, and just keep going till I come to his place. ‘How far out?’ I ask him. ‘Not too far,’ he says, which don’t mean shit in Ghana, sorry to say, Inspector.”

“Okay, go on,” Dawson urged, ignoring the candid observation.

“I asked if I could bring an Obuasi gold expert with me to examine the goods, and Michael said okay. When we get there, it’s this big-ass building in the middle of nowhere that looks like a fortress. The dude must be making a ton of money-got a giant generator that runs everything including the AC. He had two armed guards outside who frisked us for weapons, and then one of them took us down a bunch of corridors deep into this mansion till we get to this den. All the furniture there is shiny glass and chrome, floor looks like marble. There’s an armed thug standing guard in the room, and this one little nerdy-looking guy sitting at the desk. So, of course, I think he must be Mr. Michael. I was wrong.”

“Who was he?” Dawson asked, curious himself.

“Some damn assistant!” Tanbry exclaimed with a snort. ‘“Where’s Michael?’ I ask. Hell, I didn’t come all this way to meet some assistant. But the assistant, who looks like he’s got ice in his veins instead of blood, says Michael isn’t available, but all the gold is set up and waiting for me according to his instructions.