Heidi Blake - From Russia with Blood

From his earliest days in Dundee, Young had an irrepressible habit of making dangerous associations. His first mentor was a gun-toting casino king named Alex Brown, who wasn’t afraid to settle a pub brawl with a shotgun and whose venues had a strange tendency to burn down in unexplained fires. Brown would eventually be found dead, floating facedown next to his luxury yacht in a Spanish marina, but that was long after Young had made enough money to leave Scotland for the brighter lights and bigger deals that London had to offer. And when he got to the capital, the young hustler set about forming an altogether more treacherous alliance.

Patsy Adams was one of three brothers who ran Britain’s most feared organized crime gang, and he was famed as one of the most violent figures in London’s underworld. The Adams family, or the A-Team, as they liked to be known, had amassed a fortune worth hundreds of millions of pounds through their profuse crimes. Patsy was the family’s enforcer: high-speed motorcycle shootings were his hallmark, and Scotland Yard had linked him to as many as twenty-five gangland hits. Young wangled an introduction to the gang boss when he got to London and worked hard to win his trust. He soon started working for the family—and that was when the cash really started flowing.

The A-Team distinguished themselves from Britain’s lesser crime gangs not only by their propensity for extreme violence but also by their international outlook. Scotland Yard had tracked the family’s connections with both the Colombian drug cartels and the powerful Russian mafia groups shipping their heroin and cocaine into St. Petersburg. The brothers were suspected of doing a brisk business trafficking those narcotics into Europe, on top of their healthy trade in racketeering, extortion, bribery, sex trafficking, money laundering, smuggling, fraud, gun running, theft—and armed robbery.

Young didn’t mention his association with Patsy Adams to the lawyer. But he did explain that he had teamed up with a crew of armed robbers who had made millions hitting banks across Europe. Most of the loot was stashed in bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein or in suitcases filled with more cash than they knew what to do with. But every time Young tried to splash out in the UK, he got questions from Inland Revenue that he didn’t know how to answer.

The problem had become more pressing since he had fallen in love. He had met Michelle when she was a successful fashion buyer in her early twenties and told her on their first date that he knew she would be the mother of his children. Now that had come true, and she’d agreed to become his wife, too. His fiancée certainly had a taste for the finer things in life, but she had no inkling that he was anything other than a legitimate businessman. He needed to find a way to spend his money in the UK freely so he could lavish her with the kind of luxury they both felt she deserved without arousing suspicion.

It struck the lawyer that there was a touching kind of naive candor about his new client. He wanted to be accepted into the wider community. It was nice, he thought, to see a young couple so much in love and moving up in the world.

He told Young he knew just the man to help get him on the straight and narrow. They needed to talk to a tax barrister.

When the lawyer ushered Young into the senior barrister’s chambers, they were met at the door by an eager clerk.

“This is going to cost you £3,500 an hour” was his greeting. That seemed like an eye-watering sum, but Young was desperate. He nodded, and they were shown through.

The barrister perched behind his desk and listened attentively as Young explained the whole story. When he finished, the barrister nodded, twiddled his thumbs, and asked some supplementary questions while the clock ticked. Then he leaned back in his chair and dispensed his prized advice.

“You should tell the tax man where you got the money,” he said. Young goggled at him. Confessing his crimes to the authorities was not a piece of advice he felt like paying for. But the barrister elaborated. It just so happened, he said, that the schedules of taxable earnings in the Income and Corporation Taxes Act of 1988 did not make any mention of money stolen in bank heists. Technically speaking, that meant Young was not liable to pay a penny on the proceeds of the robberies. Better still, the law protected people from incriminating themselves when making tax declarations—meaning Inland Revenue couldn’t turn him in to the police.

“They don’t want to stop money coming to London,” the younger lawyer chimed in sagely. If Young simply declared that all the cash was stolen, and if he agreed to pay tax on the interest he had earned and any future profits he made by investing it, the authorities would be happy.

To Young’s astonishment, that advice proved correct. He became a regular visitor at the lawyer’s grand Georgian house on the edge of Epping Forest, spinning up the drive in his Porsche each morning for another painstaking day sorting through his tangled finances and getting ready to come clean. After three months, the process was complete. As predicted, Inland Revenue accepted the declaration, and Young suddenly had millions of pounds sitting in his UK bank accounts.

On his final visit, Young pulled up in his Porsche and rang the bell carrying a large polished wooden box. Once inside, he sat on the sofa sipping a cup of tea and passing the time of day while the lawyer eyed the mystery object keenly. Only when he was getting ready to leave did Young hand the gift over.

“I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done for me,” he said with what the lawyer felt was a look of touching sincerity. “Why don’t you open it?”

The lawyer lifted the lid, and his mouth fell open. Inside was a solid-gold Rolex Daytona, brand new and sparkling, with a brown leather strap. Young took the watch from the box and fastened it to the lawyer’s wrist—where it remains to this day. Then he said goodbye and set off into the world a new man.

Oxfordshire, England—1996

From the window of the study overlooking the expansive grounds of Woodperry House, a Porsche could be seen gliding up the long gravel drive. The sleek vehicle purred to a stop outside the golden stone frontage of the eighteenth-century Palladian mansion—named after the Old English “wudu-pyrige,” meaning “the pear-tree near the wood”—and a tall, expensively dressed stranger climbed out. Hearing a knock, the Iranian academic arose from the paper he was finishing inside and made his way to the door, where he was greeted with a wide grin and an outstretched hand.

“Scot Young,” said the man outside. “I was on the way to Heathrow, and my wife said we’ve got to buy that house,” he continued, gesturing at a slender blonde woman waiting in the passenger seat. “If you want to sell it, I’d like to bid.”

Woodperry’s owner, the eminent Oxford University law lecturer Kaveh Moussavi, had not been planning on selling. But there was something strangely compelling about the man on the doorstep, and he found himself agreeing to a meeting in London a few days later to talk terms.

When Moussavi arrived in the plush bar of the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair, Young presented him with a flute of Champagne already poured from a bottle on ice by the table and raised his own for a toast.

“What are we celebrating?” Moussavi asked.

“I’m going to make you a deal you’ll be very happy with,” said Young with a flash of his engaging grin. “I’m going to buy your house in cash.” He pulled out a briefcase from under the table, and Moussavi’s eyes widened as he opened the lid. Inside, stacked to the brim, were rolls of fifty-pound notes.

Four years had passed since Young had reached his entente with the tax authorities, but he had not lost his taste for the thrill of a dangerous deal. He had continued his involvement with the Adams brothers, but he had recently set his sights on even loftier treasures. He and Michelle were now married with two small daughters, Scarlet and Sasha, so he had a whole family to think of. He’d been busy making new associations, and he wasn’t just dealing with the odd million stashed in this Swiss account or that suitcase anymore. The stakes were much higher.