Disorderly Elements by Bob Cook Page A

banks still regard numbered accounts as more vulnerable than “ordinary” ones, and so further precautions are insisted upon.
    Wyman was told that cash withdrawals could not be made over the counter. To release any sum of money, Wyman would have to see his account manager in person, and M. Barthes would withdraw the cash under his own signature. The lowly cashier was far too untrustworthy to be allowed to handle numbered accounts.
    Once the formalities had been completed, M. Barthes left, and M. Piaget gave a cigar and a glass of brandy to his new client. He expressed his delight at being able to do business with an Englishman.
    â€œThe English are such gentlemen,” he enthused.
    â€œYes,” Wyman said. “Perhaps that’s why they get foreigners to handle their money for them.”
    â€œPerhaps,” said Piaget. “The English have the most… unfortunate banking system. Your desire for privacy in domestic and social affairs is most laudable. It is a pity that it does not extend to your commercial affairs.”
    â€œIndeed,” Wyman said. “This is because the English obsession with privacy is outweighed by the English obsession with tax.”
    â€œQuite so,” Piaget remarked sadly. “It is most unfortunate.”
    â€œDo you really think so?” Wyman asked.
    Piaget’s face creased into a frozen smile.
    â€œOf course not,” he said.

Chapter Eighteen
    E DGAR P. RAWLS STRAIGHTENED his knitted-wool necktie as he walked along the corridor to his boss’s office. He knocked on a door marked “293: NAGEL ”. From behind the door came a noise that sounded like the belch of a laryngitic duck. The noise bore a vague resemblance to “Come in”, so Rawls opened the door and went inside.
    Rawls was forty-one years old, though like most CIA men he could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty. His jagged face had no laugh-lines on it. A pair of dead-blue eyes stared grimly at the world through his tinted spectacles, and his expression was one of sardonic indifference.
    He had joined the CIA early in 1965, where he was employed in the Special Operations Division. In the following year he worked in Vietnam under William Colby (who was later the Director of the CIA) in Colby’s Provincial Reconnaissance Units programme. The PRU had been set up to infiltrate the Communist areas for the purposes of disruption, intimidation, interrogation, abduction, terror and murder. Rawls excelled in all these fields.
    In 1967 Rawls became involved in Colby’s “Phoenix” programme in South Vietnam. Essentially, the work consisted of remorseless elimination of Communist spies, assassins and terrorists. In its first thirty months of operation, the Phoenix programme cost the Vietcong over 20,000 casualties. Of these, at least 3,000 were directly attributable to Rawls.
    After this, Rawls was transferred to the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA’s Clandestine Services section. From November 1970 he worked in Chile towards the overthrow of Salvador Allende Gossens, who led that country’s first democratically elected Marxist government. Once again, Rawls did his job with surgical efficiency.
    Between 1975 and late 1977, Rawls was transferred to the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, and he worked as a liaison officer between the CIA and the US National Security Agency at the American Embassy in Bonn. He was involved in the exposure and capture of Lothar-Erwin Lutze and his wife, Renate, both of whom had worked in the West German Defence Ministry. During his inquiries, Rawls discovered that the Lutzes had passed on NATO’s secret defence plans for West Germany to the KGB, along with a great deal of research data and top secret communications. Rawls gave the news to the BfV, West Germany’s counter-intelligence agency, and the Lutzes were subsequently brought to trial.
    Rawls’ extraordinary career did not end there.