The Clayton Account Read Online Free PDF Page A

conspiratorially, the question of the manor settled in her mind.
    ‘Probably,’ he replied apologetically.
    ‘That’s great! Every family should have a crooked ancestor.’
    ‘Does your family have one?’ he asked, amused by her enthusiasm.
    ‘Of course!’ she laughed. ‘They pillaged and plundered all across the Empire – how do you think one ever got rich? Sometimes,’ she murmured, rolling on top of him and kissing him gently on the mouth, ‘I’m amazed how naive you Americans can be.’

2
    ENRIQUE SPEER DROVE his hired car from Medellín to Bogotá, where he caught the LACSA flight to Costa Rica. Once in San José, he crossed the road from the airport terminal and retrieved his Land Rover from the car park.
    Speer was fond of Costa Rica, his birthplace, the land of eternal spring. His father, a minor Gestapo official, had fled to Central America in 1945. Arriving with little other than the clothes he wore, and ten gold ingots in his only case, he made a fresh start. He married a local girl, established a timber mill, and lived in sufficient comfort to send his son to law school in Mexico City and eventually buy him a law practice in San José. On his death, Gunther Speer had left his son a house, a business and a case full of documents: fading sepia photographs of Bavarian country folk, a lengthy explanation – in simple language – of life in Germany in the Thirties and Forties, his own justification for having served the Führer, and a venomous tirade against the Americans, whom he accused of the most infamous treachery: joining forces with the Stalinist scum to crush the hopes of the Aryan race. He had also left Enrique an original birth certificate testifying to the birth of Gunther Johannes Speer in Vilshofen, Lower Bayern, on 23 December 1913.
    Years later, when the dust of the World War had settled and dead Nazis were of less interest to the world, it was this single piece of paper that would prove invaluable to Enrique the lawyer, enabling him to obtain German citizenship and with it a second passport. During a visit to Germany he had bought a small apartment in Munich and, using that address, applied for and obtained an American visa, valid indefinitely, as was usually granted to West German citizens in those days.
    A week after his trip to Medellín, Speer had packed a bag with winter clothes and flown directly to the Dutch Antilles. He left San José as a Costa Rican and entered the Dutch colony as a German, his passport perfunctorily looked at and no questions asked: in Aruba they were used to European lawyers visiting the tax havens of the Indies.
    He checked into the Hyatt Regency, where Doktor Speer was a regular and welcome guest, and called Joe Salazar in New York. Later he went down to Neder Gouda’s, a girlie bar in the picture-postcard town, and drank a dozen beers with Marcus, the owner and sometime client whose income from immoral earnings Speer invested in Holland. At ten he announced he was returning to the hotel for a meal, and asked Marcus to send his two best girls over after midnight.
    While dining, alone, he considered the inconvenience of such devious routing just to get from San José to New York. But you could never be too careful. In any event Morales paid handsomely: three hundred dollars an hour, and that meant every hour. From leaving home for Bogotá, to returning home – provided there were no delays – that would amount to 98 hours. $29,400, plus expenses, which Speer knew would be paid promptly as always, no queries, and in cash.
    The offices of Salazar & Co occupied the third floor of a nondescript five-storey building on South Street. Smart enough to denote ample solvency yet sufficiently discreet to elicit approval from clients who valued discretion above everything. Yet for all its low-key approach, the firm’s premises offered occupants and visitors alike some splendid views over the East River, easy access to and from New York’s airports, and a short walk