The Enigma Rising

“We need some contacts in some of the usual offshore banking organizations that are sympathetic to taking large cash deposits for a small percentage. We don’t need a huge inventory of places around the world, just a couple of reliable contacts preferably in our own back yard of the Caribbean.

“I want you to take Robert and JC with you to completely understand air traffic patterns into and out of these areas, local orientation to currency movements, and bankers we can trust. If the banks are too large then there are too many prying eyes, but if the banks are too small then they can’t explain the large influx of cash nor will they be able to exchange it effectively. I want you to act like this is our money. In fact, that is a good idea. If we have our money in this laundry machine, we can sell this business proposition far easier as well as protect our investments. I mean, we might want to be legit someday too.

“Also we need to learn about moving money securely electronically. At some point we will need to upscale the money hauling business, and I don’t know enough about that yet so keep an eye out for us to be able to learn more about that. I will do some research as well.”

Juan declared, “I better get started right away. There is a lot of territory to cover and people to meet.”

Carlos finished, “And I have to go sell this to the drug lords before they get grabbed up by the federales. Oh and by the way, I only gave the drug cartel half of the money up front and told them the other half would be in the plane to be surrendered upon inspection of the goods.”

Juan looked incredulously at Carlos then asked, “So you put the money in the plane for delivery once we got the drugs? Where did you put it? I didn’t see anything like that before they took off or after they landed.”

Carlos smiled at the private joke, then enlightened, “It wasn’t there because I didn’t send it. I figured on our first time we would put up only earnest money we could afford to lose, if everything went wrong.”

“So, what if the deal had gone as planned? They weren’t about to give us credit, and you would have put JC and Robert in an awkward position. What would you have done then?”

“JC and Robert would have been put on the spot. But they are only gringos. They would have had to call me to ask for the location of the rest of the money. I would have said that the money was in transit or some such nonsense. They could then offer that the drug cartel should only give us half of the drugs if they weren’t comfortable with things. I was reasonably sure that we could have gotten half the shipment loaded at a minimum. If we could have moved it, we could come back for the rest. If the drug cartel didn’t like the offer, the worst they would do is kill JC and Robert and keep our aircraft. The best would have been that they loaded half the goods, and we made our profit. We couldn’t pay for the whole load before we moved half of it anyway so it was a calculated risk. And yes, I was gambling with JC and Robert. Sometimes that’s how things roll. Any other questions?”