Secret Skin Read online

  In a country where the men held hands in public, kissed each other openly, shunned the company of women in favor of other men and wore the dishdash – a longer version of the white shapeless dress your grandmother would have worn in hospital – the irony was usually missed entirely.

  If Arabian Outlook had been a lifestyle magazine a news roundup would have been a cinch, a copy and paste job from the morning’s press releases.

  Simply top and tail a release with a few words of original material and there you had it. A celebrity news story, with only a few hours taken out of the day and barely any need for staff.

  The algebra of personality made it easy.

  Celebrity A + Celebrity B = New Relationship Shocker

  Celebrity A – Celebrity B + Frowning = Celebrity Split

  Celebrity X + New Hairstyle = How I Turned My Life Around

  Celebrity (AB) + Fireplace = At Home With….

  No calculator required. Repeat ad-nauseum across all media until everything sounded the same, even supposedly heavyweight subjects.

  Rising Political Star + Baby + Kiss = Unmissable Photo Opportunity

  Ultimately a politician’s currency was power and influence, fame merely the by-product. Scantily clad, Britney, Madonna or Brangalina pseudo scandals always outsold the men in grey suits.

  Most editors and journalists avoided direct censorship by shunning controversy altogether. Anyone compelled to write a troublesome story had to include details of the government’s efforts to deal with the reported problem. The administration could never be portrayed as unaware, complacent or ineffective in anyway.

  Take one of the stories that morning: a class action law suit by the families of children used against their will as featherweight camel jockeys in the UAE.

  Foreign dignitaries had visited the races every year and diplomatically ignored what they saw. Only when journalists from Europe and America went undercover to report on children being starved, beaten, raped or killed while living in tin shacks in the desert did anything begin to change.

  The government, ruling family, benign dictators or whatever they wanted to call themselves didn’t see it that way.

  ‘They are being sued for the good work they have done,’ said Jehad Ali, the local government representative.

  ‘What good work?’

  ‘David, isn’t it obvious? They are disappointed that after all their efforts to clean up this issue and deal with the problem in the emirate they are being sued for all the good work they have done.’

  Repetitive key phrases limited the scope of what I could report. He was obviously reading from a script and pushing for a ‘good work’ quote.

  ‘But they are not being sued for all the good work they have done Jehad. Your ruler and several hundred others are being sued by the families of thousands of children who, allegedly, were kept as slaves.’

  ‘David, cultural misunderstandings are common in this part of the world. With all the work that has happened with international and non-governmental organizations it is impossible for anyone to accuse us of not wishing to eradicate this problem.’

  ‘It’s still going on though isn’t it?’

  ‘Have you seen any evidence to suggest this?’

  ‘Not personally no, but everyone knows....’

  ‘Well then. If it existed surely there would be some evidence.’

  ‘There’s plenty of documentary evidence out there. C’mon, how about this law suit Jehad? It hasn’t been reported anywhere in Dubai even though the ruling families own all of the race tracks where this has been going on. Is this law suit why you suddenly forced every newspaper to agree not to publish anything critical about Arab leaders last month?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know David. Now, I really must go, if I can answer any more of your questions please contact my assistant.’

  The line went dead. I knew from experience that if I did want to speak to him again his assistant would only deflect my calls to a random underling or send me copies of last year’s press releases.

  His whining denials and obfuscation combined with a statement from a member of one of the law suit families painted a clear picture in 250 words and that was all I needed.

  The second story, money laundering, was considered just another business service in liberal Dubai. There were apocryphal stories of Russians buying entire skyscrapers with suitcases loaded with cash and Ukrainians hiring passenger planes to transport the goods from their shopping sprees back home.

  I checked out some of these tales to see if I could get something from the source rather than the flies at the bar. This proved easier than anticipated. Everyone I called had a story to tell. Sensibly none of them allowed me to use their real names or positions.

  One of the client managers at a European corporate bank told me, ‘At least once a day I have someone call and ask something like, “I have $40 million I need to put into an account today. Can you help me?” With that kind of figure I’m obligated to see if I can’t find somewhere to place it. But if they’re jumpy by the time I’ve asked them a couple of basic questions like who they are and where they are based, I usually advise them to take their money to Bank Emarati instead.’

  ‘Why that bank?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, you know, they do have a track record and a reputation,’ she said. ‘They were one of the only banks to continue operating after the money laundering and arms trafficking scandals of the 70s, 80s and 90s. There was trouble at the top, family members were implicated, as were the CIA who used it to channel funds to the Mujahedeen.’

  It took a moment for this to sink in. ‘And this happens every day?’

  ‘Oh at least once a day. There is so much money we could be making here, but we can’t be seen to. We’re presenting ourselves as the honest option in a dishonest market, that’s our market niche.’

  ***

  ‘The only reason I got this job was because I speak Russian,’ said my next interviewee.

  ‘Well employing people for their language abilities isn’t so unusual. You sell motorized super yachts. Since the Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed publicized that he does most of his business from his super yacht, every self respecting Arab multi-millionaire wants one.’

  ‘Yes, but I deal only with Russians or CIS countries.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘These super yachts start a $4.5 million.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I heard a sigh.

  ‘They only employed me because so many Russian speaking men kept walking in off the street with bags full of hard cash. It’s the bulk of our business.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Chapter Nine

  My next source would only speak face to face. He was a jumpy British bank manager working at a new offshore start up in the Arabian Business Park. He had just moved from an Asian offshore bank with a worldwide presence to his new role.

  ‘The things I could tell you about that last place,’ he said fiddling with a Mont Blanc pen, at pains to accidentally show me its expensive moniker.

  ‘Go on then, tell me.’

  ‘I can’t. It might get me in trouble.’

  ‘Nobody has to know it was you.’

  ‘Yes, but….’ he said raising his hands as if to say what can I do.

  ‘Which football team did you say you supported again?’

  ‘Spurs!’ he blurted out.

  ‘Tottenham Hotspur. Yeah. Good team. Remember Ossie Ardiles back in the old days?’

  ‘The good old days,’ he said, pointing the pen at me, the little boy on the terraces looking out through his adult eyes.

  ‘They haven’t had it so good lately have they?’

  ‘Well no, but….’

  ‘But they are plucky, and brave, they’ve got courage, you’ve got to give them that.’ I said prodding his pride gently.

  He frowned and tried to work out if I’d just called him a coward.

  ‘You can stop patronizing me. I’m not a complete idiot, you know.’

  ‘
I know,’ I said and waited.

  ‘Promise you’ll hurt the fuckers.’

  ‘Well, that depends on what you tell me.’

  ‘I was bullied…’ he began, embarrassed by the admission.

  ‘Yes?’ I said, showing interest, but knowing it was hard to trust information from someone who left under a black cloud.

  ‘…by this silly little gobshite with a Napoleon complex. He liked to pretend he was an old Etonian, went to Oxford, that he was plugged into the British old boy network. But that was all bollocks of course, he’s as common as muck. James Lawrence, Jamie, Jimbo to his mates.’

  I started to ask a question but was quickly cut off.

  ‘I mean what did he do that was so fucking special?’ he asked for me. ‘I’ll tell you. The miserable little worm married the ugliest daughter of a well connected Syrian family and used their influence to maneuver himself into a position of authority at the bank where I was working. And for that little favor he had to keep his new family and especially his new wife very happy.’

  ‘Let me guess, kids, big house, lots of money?’ I said.

  ‘You got it, if she was going to marry a foreigner they still had to make the right impression. He didn’t even like her. That much was obvious from all the tail he chased and the whores he charged to expenses. But they had an agreement, you see?’

  ‘No. Tell me.’

  ‘Well, in return for her overbearing family’s persuasive powers he would provide her with a certain amount of liberty and financial independence. They could then happily avoid each other's company.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Not quite. With her family’s help he brought in big clients and big money. That’s how I ended up working with him,’ he said, jabbing the air with his pen. ‘He took over a new platinum investment program for preferred customers that I created.’

  ‘‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well if a customer had $70,000 or more to invest or save over a fixed term they would receive exceptional annual returns of between 12 and 15%. When he took over that figure suddenly jumped, 20 to 50% annually over a five year period.’

  He looked at me expectantly. They were the kind of returns that have seasoned investors spluttering the froth off their frappes to tell you it sounds too good to be true. The returns were far more than you could hope for from any high yield, savings or bond account, or from any sensibly managed stock portfolio or index tracker.

  ‘How was he going to produce those kinds of returns?’ I said.

  ‘Ah well that’s the trick, Lawrence cultivated a large group of young local nobodies who would each receive 15,000 square feet of land on their 21st birthdays as per generous UAE law. The incentive was that they had to build on the land within five years or lose it. They had no capital to invest themselves but for every 50 laborers the nobodies employed the administration would give them another 460 square feet.

  ‘So Lawrence brought in thousands of laborers and the group received more than enough land to kick-start a new development. Are you with me so far Mr. Bryson?’

  ‘No problems here, so then what?’

  ‘Well for a start these locals weren’t favorites of the ruling family. They were given one of the most useless stretches of land in the emirates just over the Dubai border in neighboring Abu Dhabi, a large ditch of shifting sand with zero infrastructure in place.

  ‘As these kids had no money Lawrence made a few enquiries within his new family. They introduced him to two people. First Mohammed Akbar, a distant relative who specialized in heroin smuggling, arms to Somalia, and training fighters in the remote mountains of Yemen, they go on to cause havoc as insurgents in various regional conflicts.’

  ‘Nice guy.’

  ‘Yeah, a real Samaritan. Second was an aging ex-Soviet colonel, Vladimir Orsa who had fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya.’

  That guy again. ‘Tell me more about him.’

  ‘He made his money smuggling arms and oil through the Caspian Sea and Iraq, as well as trafficking drugs and people on the side. Basically he’ll trade anything to anyone for a profit.

  ‘His biggest success has been staying alive so long. Apparently, Dubai is where he’s come to retire.’

  ‘Do you know all this for sure?’ I said. ‘I’ve heard he’s still into arms. It doesn’t sound like he wants to retire just yet.’

  ‘That’s what that short little shit told me. Lawrence likes to brag and play the big man. To him it’s a buzz that these people come to him to make money. He has a penthouse in the marina where he likes to “entertain”,’ he said bitterly.

  I raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  ‘Entertain means listen to him spout off about how fucking wonderful he is.’

  He looked out of the window at the Sheikh Zayed Road traffic hurtling along. I waited a few beats as he unconsciously picked the neat little emblem off the base of his expensive pen, devaluing it instantly.

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked.

  ‘He was probably born with a small cock and his mother teased him about it, that’s probably what fucking happened.’

  I couldn’t help laugh. My source joined in.

  The laughter made him relax. ‘He brought them in as the initial financiers of the project. They needed to wash money and this was a perfect way for them to do it.

  ‘The project now appears to be underway. But Lawrence needs to give these guys their laundered dividends and quickly, they’ve got other projects to finance.’

  ‘So let’s see, the local guys want their money for nothing, the terrible two want their clean cash and profits and Lawrence wants his fairly sizeable cut off the back end,’ I said.

  ‘That’s about it. They all want it yesterday of course.’

  ‘Where’s the money coming from?’

  ‘The deposits from the platinum investors and off-plan sales go straight to them. The project continues to be built, but only because they haven’t paid the laborers or creditors in six months. The first interest payments are due in four weeks which will come from the next round of off-plan installments. They’ve got another investment show next week.’

  ‘What sort of figures are we talking?’

  ‘The project is supposed to cost $200 million and return around half that again. The guys have washed about 80 mill’ already with about 20 reinvested. There was 60 mill’ from the platinums when I left and about 40 in off-plan sales. All gone of course.’

  I wrote furiously in my notebook, doing the math.

  ‘Let me get this right, $180 million has gone in, but only $20 million to the project. The rest just goes straight to these guys?’

  ‘That’s it. Just enough to keep up appearances and pay the first round of interest.’

  ‘You think they would just build the damn thing. They’d make a killing.’

  ‘Yeah but fucking people over is a way of life for these idiots. The guns and small wars they are involved in already make them plenty.’

  ‘Right. Why would you want to keep a bunch of needy middle class investors happy when you’ve got dictators with billions of dollars of development money to spend?’

  ‘You bet. Money for nothing.’

  ‘Is it Sunset Heights?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, suspicious, ‘how did you know? Lucky guess?’

  ‘Nope, I wrote it up as a good buy for European investors last week. Eight designer skyscrapers on the edge of nowhere, with some landscaped desert for the kids to burn in.’

  He sat there grinning inanely, as if the joke was on me.

  ‘Did you make anything from it?’ I said.

  ‘Just my salary and bonuses. I’m an honest man after all.’

  He wouldn’t stop mugging me with that conceited grin.

  ‘So let me see, you’ve just ripped off millions of dollars for a giant Ponzi money laundering scheme and you haven’t got a penny to show for it?’

  He shrugged his shoulders, still cheerful, as if it had nothing to do with him.

  ‘Don’t you
get it? You created it. When the walls come tumbling down on this make believe development who do you think is going to be their fall guy?’

  He stopped smiling.

  Chapter Ten

  I finally had a story. A killer story. If I could corroborate the bank manager’s information it would sell in any country where investors in the project read newspapers. That could easily lead to some healthy syndication, Middle East correspondent offers and the chance to work on some meatier subjects.

  It deserved following up and I told him so. Not that this calmed him down. I assured him that if he could give me names of anyone who might confirm his story it would take attention away from him as the sole whistleblower.

  Dipping into my bag of clichés I mixed a few metaphors and told him that it was ‘better to go down fighting than to be left hung out to dry’.

  He gave me the name of a local investor, a signatory for the holding company, Sheikh Hamza. Apparently he had been unaware of the real motives of his partners and was set to lose everything. I would approach, but carefully.

  I left the banker’s office and tried to figure out how to get to him. My phone rang. This time I recognized the number.

  ‘Yasmin,’ I said, ‘hey, I was hoping you might call.’

  ‘David, I can’t talk now. Can you meet me in half an hour at the café on Beach Road?’

  ‘Sure, wait upstairs for me. It’s quieter. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ***

  Sheikh Zayed Road was the main highway through the heart of Dubai. It wavered in notoriety as one of the most dangerous roads in the world with a daily body count higher than some war zones.