Gibraltar & Back: Edward Dantès

ISBN-13: 9781536883503 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 390 str.

Lord Big Foot

Opis

The Edward Dantes Story continues. Ed to his friends, has dug himself out of the financial quagmire where honest shop keeping had got him when the UK economy fell off a cliff at the end of the eighties. He had pulled himself out from under the wheels of the bus Chancellor Nigel Lawson had driven through the High Streets of Britain. The way out for Ed was a life changing decision and he entered the murky world of international crime almost by accident. The banks and the creditors squeezed him out of his home, and with a young family he was in trouble. His financial salvation came from a different source of Revenue, quite literally revenue; VAT on gold sales. It didn't last, as Her Majesty's Customs & Excise soon moved the goalposts. The new associations and friendships however did. Ed had proofed his mettle and was inside the organisation. Nobody ever referred to it as that, it was just a collection of individuals with different skill sets, who complemented each other. These individuals had little concern for the rules as decreed by any parliament. They had their own rules, made their own luck and tried to stay under the radar. Gibraltar was Ed's first stop after HMC&E, or un-affectionately referred to as the Church by the gang, took gold off the table. Ed and the guys still fancied the gold business could produce something meaningful. The Costa del Sol was the centre of the known universe for the supply of cannabis resin to the UK. The players lived there, met there and partied there. It was a convenient place to meet the Moroccan growers and the sun nearly always shone. The girls and the golf weren't bad either. Ed was never in the drug business, nor were any of his immediate associates, or so they would tell you. Perhaps they even believed it. What they were in was the money job. Law enforcement had started to follow the money in the war on drugs. The average Scouser in a shell suit couldn't walk through Liverpool airport anymore, heading for his easy jet to Malaga, with two hundred grand in his golf bag. It was too risky and inevitably led to questions and confiscation. Carrying cash by someone trading in gold was explainable, Gibraltar had a thriving gold and currency business. Ed stayed away from Marbella and the Scousers. Instead he fell in love with Gibraltar and set about establishing a gold business there. Occasionally a bag of money would be collected by a friend of Bernie's, which Ed had been given in London by another friend of Bernie's. Africa was the next stop as Ed's foreign travels increased. It was a natural progression to follow any supply line to the source for a good business man. What Ed didn't expect to find there was himself, in the dead of night in the middle of a war torn country fighting for his life, quite literally. West Africa was riddled by armed conflict in the early nineties; Ed found himself there at the height of it and very lucky to be on one of the last flights out. Leaving behind friends he'd made in what should have been a beautiful country, except for man's greed and corruption. The trouble was, he knew he would have done business with them if he could. How he had changed."