Carillo nodded in agreement. “Something that had less to do with his political career, and more to do with BICTT’s Black Network, who had taken lives for less.”
He was right about that, she thought. It was that same paper trail that the CIA wasn’t willing to divulge to the American public, citing national security issues, as they were either still hunting down BICTT’s Black Network, or they were covering for their own involvement in using the bank. Hence the hush-hush about the real story. For now, Sydney could live with that. She knew the truth, and in a sense some form of justice had been done. For Wheeler at least. She still had questions about her father’s involvement, still wondered how the man she’d known and loved could have been involved in something so wrong. Perhaps one day she might come to understand him, learn to accept he wasn’t the man she thought he was. For now, she was going to have to accept her mother’s mantra, tell herself it was time to move on-no matter how much it hurt. She had her mother, and sister, and Jake, she thought, looking from Schermer to Carillo, then at the boxes on her now empty desk. “I think that’s everything. Any last words of wisdom?”
“Actually,” Carillo said, lifting one of the boxes to help her carry it down to her car, “I was hoping for some from you, since you know Dixon so well. He’s, uh, not going to keep watching me close, is he? I can’t even turn around without him wondering what the hell I’m doing.”
“He’ll get over it. He’s probably more upset about you having corrupted me than anything else,” she said with a smile. “And even if he’s not happy with you, his boss is.”
“Only because he got to go on live TV, stand next to the governor, and state that the FBI was instrumental in solving the twenty-year-old wrongful conviction of Johnnie Wheeler, who was falsely accused of murder.”
Which of course got the governor good exposure, because he got to overturn a conviction with lots of fanfare, and the trickle-down effect was noticeable-until it came to a screeching halt at Dixon’s desk.
If it didn’t get him to Tahiti any faster, he wasn’t impressed.
She looked around, grabbed her briefcase and the smaller box left on the desktop. “Ready when you are.” She’d already said her good-byes to Dixon and Lettie. Now all she needed to do was go home, finish packing her things there.
When they got to the elevator, Carillo asked, “How’s your mom taking all this?”
“I think she’s finally finding peace.”
“You finding any?”
“Only if I don’t think about it too much,” she said, reminding herself what her mother had told her, that her father had loved her, and she should just remember him before that time. “Jake gets out of the hospital tomorrow,” she said, changing the subject somewhat. “Angie keeps asking when she can take a photo of his scar, so she can brag about it to her little friend whose daddy works for the sheriff’s office. She’s one up on him, you know. His dad’s never been shot.”
“That kid is one tough cookie.”
“If Angie ever becomes a cop, watch out for the bad guy.”
The elevator door slid open, they stepped on, and Carillo pressed the down button. As the door swished closed and they started their descent, he said, “So. About the copies of the bank numbers we kept. I’m not sure I buy that they only belong to a few offshore accounts, but then it’s certainly none of our business if they’re still hiding something, still in operation… Of course, now that you’re heading to your nice, safe, and, I might add, boring job in Quantico, maybe we should turn them in.”
“Yeah, maybe we should,” she replied as the lift came to a stop, the door opening to the parking garage. She looked over at him and smiled. “But then, what fun would that be?”
Author’s Note: Fact or Fiction
While the body of this novel, and each character within, is a work of fiction, many of the events were inspired not only from my own experiences working as a forensic artist and police officer, but also from documented history, some of it decades old, just as the book portrays.
Although my fictional bank is known as BICTT, the inspiration for this international financial institution came from the real life Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was known in federal law enforcement circles as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals. BCCI was a major international bank founded in Pakistan in 1972, which eventually operated four hundred branches in more than seventy countries, with dozens of shell companies, and offshore banks with assets totaling more than twenty-five billion dollars.
In 1991 BCCI became the focus of the biggest banking scandal in history, with thirteen billion dollars still unaccounted for, and allegations of a “black network” division- still in operation after the bank’s closure-responsible for mafia-like tactics, be it extortion, kidnapping, and, by some accounts, even murder. Investigators found that BCCI was AUTHOR’S NOTE 381 set up specifically as a conduit for a number of illegal operations, such as terrorism funding, arms trafficking, drug money laundering, sale of nuclear technology, bribery of public officials (which explains how the bank managed to stay under the radar for so many years), and tax evasion.
Buying and selling global intelligence through the bank was a natural by-product, because the bank held the skimmed national treasuries and funds of some of the world’s most notorious leaders, such as Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega, as well as funds from numerous countries’ intelligence agencies. The National Security Council used BCCI to funnel money for the Iran-Contra deals, and the CIA maintained accounts in BCCI for covert operations. Investigators were told that the Defense Intelligence Agency maintained a slush-fund account with BCCI, apparently to pay for clandestine activities.
BCCI attempted to infiltrate the U.S. banking industry by secretly buying three U.S. banks, including First American Bankshares, whose chairman was former U.S. Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. BCCI’s de facto ownership and “nominee” shareholder arrangement meant that BCCI itself remained invisible to U.S. banking regulators.
For a time, perhaps.
That much money can’t be moved without raising some questions, and eventually the New York District Attorney’s office pressed an investigation, as did Senator John Kerry’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations. But Kerry’s probe into BCCI was hindered at every turn by the Justice Department, who refused to turn over documents and even blocked the deposition of a key witness. Some believe the bribes and intelligence connections of BCCI were one reason that the Justice Department seemed less than cooperative. Others speculate that the Justice Department was merely covering up for various U.S. governmental agencies’ ties to BCCI, especially with the allegations that BCCI had funneled millions to bribe top U.S. officials (for at least ten years before the bank’s downfall).
Imagine running across a little black book that held all the 382 Author’s Note records showing which U.S. officials and major corporation heads were bribed to facilitate the bank in its operations. That would certainly shake up a few individuals, and send them running to cover their tracks. And who knows what happened to all the money still unaccounted for, or if some other enterprising crook has pocketed some of that money, or opened up a new bank to fill the void left by BCCI’s departure. Whatever the real truth is, Senator Kerry’s subcommittee report and other scholarly articles and books on BCCI make for some interesting reading. It certainly fueled my imagination.