The Song of Mawu. Jeff Edwards

I’d like to work on that,’ said Lana, turning to her husband. Brian nodded in agreement.

      ‘Well that leaves nothing for me to do,’ said Justine, ‘I would normally be very cross about that but I have a few thoughts of my own and I think I might be popping in to see all of you at some time.’

      ‘You’re taking on a roving commission then?’ offered Brian

      ‘Yes. Something like that,’ she replied quietlywith a faraway look in her eyes.

      ‘She’s up to something,’ Nori whispered to her husband as the assembly broke up to pursue their various goals, ‘And I believe it may involve a very handsome doctor,’ she smiled.

      16

      Late that evening Justine lay wide awake with a single thought incessantly circling through her overactive brain.

      In frustration she finally reached up and tapped several times on the small lump in her neck, ‘Are you awake?’ she asked.

      ‘I am now,’ replied her friend, ‘What’s up?’

      ‘I met someone today.’

      ‘I meet people every day.’

      ‘I can’t stop thinking about him.’

      ‘Don’t tell me you’re a human after all. Justine in love, that’s a new one.’

      ‘I’m not in love,’ she protested weakly, ‘it’s only that I can’t get him out of my head.’

      ‘And you get all twisty in the stomach?’

      ‘No! Well maybe…a little.’

      ‘What do you want me to tell you? That you shouldn’t see him again? That you aren’t allowed to be in love?’

      ‘No…it’s just that there are…complications.’

      ‘There are always complications. That’s what makes it all such a pain in the rear. But if it works out for you it’ll be worth it.’

      ‘What makes you such an expert? You’ve never been in love.’

      ‘At least I’ve had boyfriends. I can fall in love any time I like…at least I’m not afraid to try. I don’t mind having feelings.’

      ‘It isn’t like me to react instinctively. I always plan what I do.’

      ‘This is romance and romance defies planning. Now let me get back to sleep. We can continue this some other time when you’re sober.’

      ‘I’m not drunk.’

      ‘You’re in love and that’s worse. Goodnight Justine.’

      ‘Good night Eliza.’ The connection went dead.

      In Namola, Eliza smiled and thought. ‘That poor man doesn’t know what he’s in for,’ as she rolled onto her side and difted off to sleep.

      Justine remained awake and continued staring at the darkened ceiling. Now that the ‘problem’ had been identified she had plans to make.

      ***

      Brian and Lana Reynolds packed a small suitcase each and headed for the Jersey ferry. They had booked ahead to stay in a small boutique hotel on the harbour front, not far from the International Bank of Jersey.

      The bank was one of the major assets owned by The Fund and its current manager, Lionel Rafter, had become a close friend.

      The following morning, they sat opposite him and explained their problem.

      ‘So you need to find where your President Lattua secretes his ill-gotten gains?’

      ‘That’s the problem,’ said Lana, ‘Can you help?’

      ‘Well I can certainly help but I can’t guarantee success, besides, even if you do manage to track the funds down there’s no way of you being able to touch them without the correct passwords. When you ‘appropriated’ Harry Soh’s money you knew exactly where it was. All you had to do in that case was to find the key that would enable you to get to the money.’

      ‘I agree that it isn’t going to be easy,’ conceded Brian, ‘But knowing where the money has been hidden will give us an indication of how to go about retrieving it.’

      ‘Quite possibly,’ conceded Lionel Rafter, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ He dialled a number and they were soon joined by an impeccably dressed young Asian man carrying a note pad and pencil.

      Lionel Rafter introduced the Reynolds’ to Chris Tan the bank’s head of IT. ‘I won’t tell you how much it cost us to poach young Chris here from his former employer but he has been worth every penny. The bank’s security systems are now decades ahead of our opposition.’

      Chris Tan laughed, ‘Hardly decades. With change taking place so fast, a month ahead of the rest is what we aim for.’

      Chris Tan sat down and Lionel Rafter explained the situation. Tan took a few notes before leaning back and looking absently out the window.

      Finally, he began to speak. ‘Every day there are virtually trillions of transactions taking place in the banking world. To track down a single, anonymous, transaction will be way beyond the figures of the old ‘needle in a haystack.”

      He turned to a clean page in his notebook, ‘First, we have to know WHERE the money is coming from. Then we have to know WHEN the transaction will take place and finally we have to know HOW MUCH the transaction will be for. When we have all that information we will have a reasonable chance of tracking the funds to their destination. If only one of the pieces of information is missing, then your chances of success will become virtually zero.’

      ‘How accurate does this information have to be?’ asked Brian.

      ‘A very astute question,’ smiled Chris Tan. ‘The ‘where’ is vital. Without knowing where to look, an amount would simply get lost in the avalanche of transactions that take place in the normal banking day. The same goes for ‘when’. While not as important as ‘where’, we will have to know how long to keep looking. The funds could sit in an account for years before moving.’

      ‘The man we’re dealing with is greedy,’ said Brian, ‘He won’t allow the money to sit for long.’

      ‘That’s all well and good but I’ve left the worst for last. ‘How much’, that’s going to be the tricky part.’

      ‘How so?’ asked Lana.

      ‘Well, what if the full amount isn’t transferred? What if part of it goes to paying off an accomplice?’

      ‘I see. Is there any way around that?’

      ‘There is a way, but only if your target obliges us by acting normally. I’ll explain. You have a million dollars in funds and your accomplice wants his ten percent share. You simply transfer one hundred thousand dollars to his account and keep the remaining nine hundred thousand, which you then transfer to your secret account overseas. If we were looking for a million dollars, then we’d miss it because it wasn’t a million dollars that he transferred. We could keep an eye on the account where the money was first lodged for any transactions at all. Then we would know about the payment and we could then concentrate on the balance of nine hundred thousand.’

      His audience nodded, feeling more hopeful than they had a minute before.

      However, Chris Tan was not finished with the bad news. ‘Now then, do you have any idea how many transactions totalling nine hundred thousand dollars are processed in any one day?’

      ‘It’s an odd amount. There can’t be that many,’ said Brian.

      Chris Tan nodded his head, ‘Odd amount or not, there could still be several million and I don’t have the computing power that would be required to follow each and every one. It would take years to analyse every one to locate the particular one you’re looking for.’

      ‘But