33 Haute-Corse

33 Haute-Corse

The secluded villa that stood at the end of the track had a red tile roof, a large blue swimming pool, and a broad terrace

that received the sun in the morning and in the afternoon was shaded by laricio pine. Gabriel made entry into the property

without aid of a key or unlocking device and showed Ingrid and Philippe Lambert inside. The furniture in the sitting room

was draped with white linen. Ingrid threw open the French doors and surveyed the weighty volumes of history and politics lining

the handsome shelves.

"Who lives here?" she asked, her neck craned sideways.

"The villa is owned by a British subject."

Ingrid tapped the spine of a biography of Clement Attlee. "That would explain why all of these books are in English."

"It would," agreed Gabriel.

She pointed toward a small landscape by Claude Monet. "And how do you explain that?"

"The owner is a successful business consultant."

"But why did the business consultant with a Monet hanging on his wall forget to lock his front door?"

"Because he used to work for the man who lives in the large estate in the next valley. Therefore, no one on Corsica, least of all a professional criminal, would ever be so foolish as to even think about robbing this place."

Gabriel went into the kitchen and opened the door to the pantry. It was empty save for an unopened bag of Carte Noire and

two containers of shelf milk. He prepared the coffee in the French press and warmed the milk in a saucepan on the stove while

Ingrid and Lambert freshened up in their rooms. By half past twelve they were all gathered around the kitchen table. Lambert

fired up a Winston and his laptops. And then he told them everything.

***

He began his account with an abbreviated version of his unexpectedly sparkling curriculum vitae. Born in an upscale arrondissement

of Paris, he was the son of a senior executive from the French financial services giant Société Générale and a graduate of

the prestigious école Polytechnique, where he studied advanced computer science. Upon graduation, he chose to postpone a lucrative

career in the private sector and instead joined the DGSE, France's foreign intelligence service.

"I worked in the Technical Directorate. Electronic surveillance and other special tasks. We were nowhere near as good as you

Israelis, but we weren't half bad, either. I spent much of my time targeting the Islamic State. In fact, I provided technical

support for that joint French-Israeli operation you ran after the attack on the Weinberg Center. It was a thing of beauty,

Monsieur Allon. Truly."

Lambert left the DGSE after ten years and went to work in the Paris office of SK4, the Swedish-owned corporate security firm. He specialized in network security and monitoring systems for offices and physical infrastructure, and his clients included some of the biggest names in French business. His base compensation package was a half million euros a year, a fivefold increase over his old salary at the DGSE.

"Life was good," said Gabriel.

"No complaints."

"What happened?"

"Trevor Robinson."

It was Robinson, with a call to Lambert's personal mobile phone, who made the initial approach. He said he wanted to discuss

a business proposition of considerable sensitivity. He implied that it would be well worth Lambert's while to listen to what

he had to say.

"Did he happen to mention the name of the company where he worked?"

"He said next to nothing."

"And you, of course, told him you weren't interested."

"I tried, Monsieur Allon. But he was quite persistent."

Robinson acknowledged that his firm had an office in Monaco and suggested they meet there. Lambert flew down on a Friday evening

and checked into the exclusive H?tel de Paris, where Robinson had reserved a suite in his name. They met for coffee the next

morning, continued their discussions over lunch at Le Louis XV, and came to terms while cruising the Mediterranean on the

firm's yacht.

"Yacht have a name?"

" Discretion ."

"Catchy. What about the firm?"

"Harris Weber & Company."

Ingrid opened her laptop.

"Don't," said Lambert. "I installed the tracking software on the firm's website. It's the best there is."

Gabriel opened his own laptop and found a reference to Harris Weber & Company in a directory of Monaco law firms. There was

a street address on the boulevard des Moulins and a phone number, but nothing else. Lambert filled in the rest of the picture,

beginning with the full names of the firm's founding partners, Ian Harris and Konrad Weber.

"Harris is British and Weber is from Zurich. They met in the early nineties while working on behalf of the same client and

decided to start their own firm. Neither one of them has ever seen the inside of a courtroom. They're in the business of helping

companies and wealthy individuals reduce their tax burdens by moving their assets to offshore financial centers."

"And Robinson?"

"He joined the firm in 2009."

"From where?"

"The counterintelligence division of MI5."

"Why did a garden-variety law firm specializing in offshore financial services feel the need to hire a former MI5 officer

to handle its security?"

"Because Harris Weber is anything but a garden-variety firm. Its clients include some of the richest and most powerful people

in the world. Some of the most dangerous as well. When dealing with such people, it pays to have a man like Trevor Robinson

on the payroll."

"Not to mention Philippe Lambert."

"For the record, I am not an employee of Harris Weber. I am an independent contractor with a single client, a company called Antioch Holdings. It's a limited liability entity based in the British Virgin Islands. Antioch pays me several million dollars a year, the vast majority of which remains hidden in offshore accounts. I also have use of an apartment in Monaco and a luxury villa on Virgin Gorda."

"And what sort of services do you provide this client?"

"Nominally?" Lambert shrugged. "Network security."

"And in reality?"

"The same job I did for the DGSE."

"Electronic intelligence collection?"

" Oui , Monsieur Allon. And other special tasks."

***

To understand the nature of those tasks required Lambert to offer a fuller explanation of Harris Weber & Company and the strategies

it used to serve its clients. They were, for the most part, the richest of the rich, billionaires many times over who traveled

on private jets and superyachts and maintained lavish residences in every corner of the globe. Rarely, however, were they

the owners of record of their expensive toys and properties. Instead, they acquired the symbols of their immense wealth using

limited liability shell companies created by Harris Weber. These companies were nominally headquartered not in Monaco but

in Road Town in the British Virgin Islands, where the firm maintained a small but busy office on Waterfront Drive. A secretary

in the office, a certain Adele Campbell, served as the director of these corporate entities.

"At last count," said Lambert, "she controlled more than ten thousand companies, which would make her one of the most powerful

businesswomen in the world. The real owners of the LLCs are known only to the firm's lawyers."

Buying homes and other luxury goods behind the cloak of an offshore shell company, Lambert pointed out, was perfectly legal and had numerous advantages, beginning with the tax savings. But it also allowed the superrich clients to conduct their affairs in secret, invisible to the prying eyes of government, law enforcement, and their fellow citizens. This was the world that Harris Weber & Company offered its clients. It was an exclusive world without rules or taxes where the needs of the less fortunate were of no concern.

"Fifteen years ago the total amount of wealth in private hands worldwide was about a hundred and twenty-five trillion dollars.

It is now four hundred and fifty trillion dollars, approximately ten percent of which is held in offshore financial centers

where it is beyond the reach of tax collectors. Which means the money cannot generate tax revenue to provide better schools

or housing or health care for ordinary citizens."

Most of the firm's clients, Lambert continued, came by their fortunes legitimately or through inheritance and were determined

to employ every measure legally available to them to avoid the payment of taxes—even if those measures were at best ethically

questionable and might well have led to reputational damage if disclosed to the broader public. A significant portion of Harris

Weber's clientele, however, earned their money through criminal activity or by stealing it from their citizens. The firm represented

nine kleptocratic heads of state, dozens of corrupt government officials, and numerous Russian billionaires who had grown

rich through their proximity to the Kremlin. Much of their ill-gotten money was invested in real estate, which they purchased

using offshore shell companies.

"Do you know why most ordinary citizens can't afford to live in cities like London or Paris or Zurich or New York? It is because the global superrich are bidding up the prices of real estate with the help of offshore providers like Harris Weber. One client alone, a Middle Eastern potentate who shall remain nameless, purchased more than a billion dollars' worth of commercial and residential property in London and Manhattan while hidden behind a complex web of LLCs and layered trusts created and secretly managed by the firm. And when the potentate decided to sell some of that property at a profit, the transactions took place offshore, with Harris Weber pocketing several million dollars in fees."

The firm grew wildly rich, as did its many business partners—especially the European wealth managers and private bankers who

were an invaluable source of clients. Harris Weber promised everyone absolute secrecy, but inevitably problems arose. When

they did, Trevor Robinson gave the names to Philippe Lambert, and Lambert lit them up and sucked them dry.

"Phones, computers, medical and financial data. Anything I could lay my hands on. I gave the material to Robinson, and he

used it to make the problems go away."

"He blackmailed them?"

"The lucky ones. The ones who didn't get the message he dealt with in other ways."

"Who were they?"

"Anyone who posed a threat to the firm's business or its clients."

"Such as?"

"Tax officials, regulators, investigative journalists, sometimes even the clients themselves."

"What about an art historian from Oxford?"

Lambert hesitated, then nodded slowly. " Oui , Monsieur Allon."

"Why was she targeted?"

"Untitled portrait of a woman by Pablo Picasso."

"The painting was a threat to the firm?"

"Not just the firm. The clients, the partners, the banks..." Lambert shrugged. "Everything."