Frederic Forsyth - The Cobra

While most of the unloading of enormous quantities of oil to keep Europe functioning is accomplished at sea islands of pipes and pumps far out of reach of the city, Rotterdam's second specialty is its container port; not quite as large as Hamburg but just as modern and mechanized.

Dutch customs, working with the police and, in the time-honored phrase "acting upon information received," had exposed and arrested a senior customs officer by the name of Peter Hoogstraten.

He was clever, devious and intended to beat the charge. He knew what he had done and where he had banked the payoff money, or, more precisely, where the cartel had banked it for him. He intended to retire, and he intended to enjoy every penny of it. He had not the slightest intention of confessing or admitting a single thing. He intended to play his "civil rights" and his "human rights" down to the last card on the table. The only thing that worried him was how the authorities knew so much. Someone, somewhere, had blown him away; of that, he was certain.

Ultra-liberal though the Netherlands prides itself on being, it plays host to an enormous criminal underworld, and, perhaps because of the extreme permissiveness, a very large part of that underworld is in the hands of European foreigners and non-Europeans.

Hoogstraten worked primarily for one such gang, and they were Turks. He knew the rules of the cocaine trade. The product belonged to the cartel until it rolled out of the sea-container port onto the highways of the European Union. Then it belonged to the Turkish mafia, who had paid fifty percent up front, with fifty percent on delivery. A consignment intercepted by Dutch customs was going to hurt both parties.

The Turks would have to re-place their order, while refusing to pay any further money. But the Turks had customers who had also placed orders and demanded delivery. Hoogstraten's skill at clearing sea containers and other cargoes was invaluable and paid extremely well. He was only one asset in a procedure that, between Colombian jungle and Dutch dinner party, could easily have twenty layers of different participants, all needing to be paid a cut, but he was a crucial one.

The mistake occurred because of Chief Inspector Van der Merwe's private problem. He had been in the Royal Dutch Customs all his working life. He had joined the criminal investigation division within three years of entering the profession and had intercepted a mountain of contraband over the years. But the years had taken their toll. He had an enlarged prostate and drank far too much coffee, which exacerbated his weak bladder. It was the source of smothered grins among his younger colleagues, but, as a sufferer, he could not see the joke. Halfway through the sixth interrogation of Peter Hoogstraten, he simply had to go.

It should not have been a problem. He nodded to the colleague beside him that they would all take a break. The colleague intoned, "Interview suspended at…," and switched off the digital recording machine. Hoogstraten insisted he wanted a cigarette and that meant he had to go to the "Smoking Permitted" area.

Political correctness forbade it, but civil rights allowed it. Van der Merwe longed for his retirement to the country house outside Groningen, with his beloved vegetable garden and orchard, where he could do what he damn well liked for the rest of his life. All three men rose.

Van der Merwe turned, and the tail of his jacket disturbed the file that lay in front of him on the table. The buff file turned ninety degrees, and a paper inside peeked out. It had a column of figures on it. In a second it was back inside the folder, but Hoogstraten had seen it. He recognized the figures. They were from his bank account in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Nothing crossed his face, but a light came on inside his head. The swine had penetrated banking secrecy details. Apart from him, only two sources could know those figures and which bank, half of whose name had been showing for a fraction of a second. One source was the bank itself; the other was the cartel who filled that account. He doubted it was the bank, unless the American DEA had broken through the computer firewalls protecting the accounts.

That was always possible. Nothing was truly impregnable anymore, not even the firewalls of NASA and the Pentagon, as had been proved. Either way, the cartel should be alerted that there was a leak, and a bad one. He had no idea how to contact the Colombian cartel, whose existence he had read about in a long cocaine article in De Telegraaf. But the Turks would know.

Two days later at a bail hearing, Dutch customs had their second piece of bad luck. The judge was a notorious civil rights fanatic who privately favored the legalization of cocaine, which he used himself. He granted bail; Hoogstraten walked out and made his call. IN MADRID, Chief Inspector Paco Ortega finally pounced, and with the full blessing of Cal Dexter. The money-laundering lawyer Julio Luz was of no further use to him. A check on reservations at Bogota Airport indicated he was flying to Madrid on his regular run.

Ortega waited until he was emerging from the bank while behind him two members of staff handed over a pair of heavy Samsonite hard-framed suitcases. Suddenly it rained armed Guardia Civil, led by plainclothes UDYCO men.

In the alley behind the bank, directed by UDYCO's man on a rooftop five hundred meters away, two men later shown to be hired muscle working for the Galician gangs were snatched along with the bank staff and the suitcases. These contained the fortnightly "settlement of accounts" between the combined underworld of Spain and the Colombian cartel.

The total haul was over €10 million, packed in bricks of five-hundred-euro notes. In the Euro zone, this bill is hardly ever seen, the denomination being so high it is almost impossible to use on the street. It can realistically be used only for huge settlements in cash, and there is only one business that needs this on a constant basis.

At the front of the bank, Julio Luz was arrested, and, inside, the brothers Guzman and their senior accountant. With a court order, UDYCO seized all the books and records. To prove collusion in transcontinental money laundering was going to take a team of the best accountants months of research, but the two suitcases supplied the "holding" charge. They simply could not be lawfully explained being handed over to known gangsters. But it would be much simpler if someone confessed.

Being led to the cells, the Galicians were walked past an open door. Inside was a distraught Julio Luz being offered coffee and sweet biscuits by Paco Ortega, who was beaming down at him as he did.

One of the uniformed Guardia grinned gleefully at his prisoner.

"That's the guy who is going to get you life in Toledo Penal," he crowed.

Inside the room, the Colombian lawyer turned toward the door and for one second made eye contact with the scowling gangster. He had no time to protest. The man outside was dragged away along the corridor. Two days later, being transferred from central Madrid to a holding jail in the suburbs, he managed to escape.

It appeared to be an awful breach of basic security, and Ortega apologized profusely to his superiors. The man's handcuffs had been badly locked, and in the van he had worked one hand free. The van did not drive into the courtyard of the jail but stopped at the curb. The two prisoners were being led across the pavement when one tore himself free and raced off down the street. Pursuit was lamentably slow, and he got away.

Two days later, Paco Ortega walked into the cell of Julio Luz and announced that he had failed to secure an extension of the arrest warrant against the lawyer. He was free to go. More, he would be escorted to the morning's departure of the Iberia flight for Bogota and put on it.