Let’S Make Like Lucan

Let’s Make Like Lucan

ROGER GUEST

AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: 0800.197.4150

© 2013 by Roger Guest. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/13/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7785-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7786-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

List of Characters

Chapter 1       From Luxury to Uncertainty: Summer 2008

Chapter 2       Pros and Cons

Chapter 3       The Plan

Chapter 4       Implementation and Improvisation

Chapter 5       Staying Alive

Chapter 6       The Flight

Chapter 7       Escape to Europe

Chapter 8       The Dawn of Suspicion

Chapter 9       La Manche

Chapter 10       Coincidence… or Murphy’s Law ?

Chapter 11       Plan B

Chapter 12       Pursuit

Chapter 13       Revenge or Revival?

Chapter 14       Rien a Changée

Chapter 15       Closure?

Chapter 16       Life in Gay Paris

Chapter 17       Counter Moves

Chapter 18       Catch and Return

Chapter 19       Contact

Chapter 20       Resolution

Preface

T he main character in this story is not a hero… he exhibits greed, dishonesty, and cunning. The story follows his actions and their effects on the lives of people at different levels of society, their thoughts, and their reactions. The narrative touches on the corruption of wealth and associated privilege of those in authority and on how they use the trappings of officialdom to further their personal agendas.

The book is based on similar events and reveals real weaknesses in port security. However, the story is fiction, bearing no connection with persons living or dead.

As the plot develops, one of the characters is compelled by circumstances to pursue the fugitive, but he would not describe himself as a hero either. The fugitive staged his own death, so his pursuers are never sure that subsequent reports of his demise are true, resulting in persistent investigation and pursuit by the main character.

Chapter 14 mentions the sharing of intelligence data between the United States and the United Kingdom by using key word computer analysis to identify covert and illegal activity; at the time of writing, this was merely fictional conjecture. However, the recent revelations of Edward Snowden and the reaction of the United States government have confirmed that such programmes do exist. This information is consequently in the public domain and can therefore no longer be considered classified.

The author has some fifty years’ experience in aviation and related matters and forty years’ sailing experience as an RYA Yachtmaster Offshore and delivery trips in the Channel, in the Mediterranean, and to the Canaries. He is an avid game fisherman and naturalist.

List of Characters

Rory Luccombe, fugitive (alias Benedict Larsson and Stewart Way)

Shelly Luccombe, Rory’s wife

Giles Greenaway, English airline boss and entrepreneur

Chuck Ball, veteran chopper pilot

Gil Lamont, Florida motorcycle patrolman (alias Brian Stone)

John Litton, FBI agent

Gunter Piesporter, dropout, crop sprayer/aircraft mechanic

Mary-Jane, Gil’s old girlfriend and childhood sweetheart

Nelson Aluitious, swamp fisherman

Dan Hetherington, GG Sunseeker captain

Pierre Dupont, boat owner and skipper, Raz de l’Orizon

Daniel and Maurice, crewmembers on Raz de l’Orizon

Brian and David, English yachtsmen

Jeremy Stanforth-Jones, Old Etonian

The Honourable Piers Dumont, Old Etonian

Francoise Bateille, French flight attendant

Janine, eldest daughter of Francoise

Isabelle Fouchard, waitress at Le Cosmos

Armentrude Chemin, Interpol agent

Carlos Rossi, Mafioso from Florida

Marcus Leon, Mafioso from Florida

Gordon Farquhar, head gamekeeper at Castle Kerreg estate

Willy McNeish, gillie at Castle Kerreg

Corporal Neil Statham, Black Watch Scottish Regiment

Constable Duncan, Ullapool policeman

Darren O’Sullivan, Glaswegian criminal

Jim Silt, Glaswegian criminal

Let’s Make Like Lucan

A short story of greed, deception, and evasion.

Can you really disappear?

Chapter 1

From Luxury to Uncertainty:

Summer 2008

R ory Luccombe sat in his Jacuzzi in his Florida home, and dosed in a state of complacency. Fifty years old with light brown hair greying at the sides, he is clean shaven, 170 pounds, and five feet, ten inches tall. An ex-airline pilot, he had retired from flying freight for FedEx in the 1970s, using his superannuation money to form his own company, Cellex, manufacturing cell phone covers. Fortuitously, in the late 1990s, the global demand for mobile telephones expanded the market for his products, and he became a multi-millionaire. As a CEO, he mixed with the rich and famous, who seduced him into playing the international property market, investing heavily through the larger US banks to make even more money. Now he was contemplating a visit to his best friend, Giles Greenaway; the Englishman had a beautiful villa in the Bahamas. Rory planned to leave Shelly, his forty-year-old wife, behind; she’d be content in her golf club, and he looked forward to the possibility of meeting a budding starlet or two at Giles’s island holiday home.

Giles had formed his own airline in the late 1960s, profiting from the growing holiday trade. Expanding into long haul routes using Airbus A330s, he now had a reputation as a dashing (if slightly eccentric) entrepreneur. He was known for attempting to break numerous records, which he saw as a challenge (albeit quite pointless and extremely expensive). Despite this, he had escaped the usual financial pitfalls and was relatively secure in view of what was about to befall many of his peers. Giles relaxed in his Gulfstream 3000, some 38,000 feet over the Atlantic, and replied to an e-mail from Rory, suggesting a meeting at his Bahamian hideaway. He could divert to Orlando and pick up Rory, who would drive down from his home just south of Jacksonville. After refuelling, they would then fly to Nassau, New Providence Island, and then by helicopter to his house at Deadman’s Cay.

Rory jumped out of his Jacuzzi and dried himself with his towelling dressing gown as he responded to the e-mail alert. In the den, he saw that he had four messages: one from Giles, one from his commercial director, one from his lawyer, and one from his accounting firm. Within the next five minutes, his fantasy world fell apart. The news was stark: the US bank he had a complex financial alliance with had collapsed, a total crash. He had just set up a deal which had seemed only a very short-term risk, but the bank’s failure made his entire financial structure crumble. He was now in hock for some $2 billion!

The phone rang. It was the Wall Street Journal. He slammed it down. It rang again. It was the Financial Times. He slammed it down again.

It was now 16.30 and would be dark in a very short time. He must get to his company safe and recover his only liquid assets: some $5 million in cash, share certificates, and bearer’s bonds. He pulled on some chinos, a shirt, and some trainers and then got into his Alfa Romeo and shot off up the pike to Jacksonville. As he arrived, it began to rain as only it can at Jacksonville. Within minutes, the tropical rainfall filled the sandy soil beneath the main streets, which were saturated with sea water only a few feet down, and flooded the highway with about two feet of water. He slowed down to a crawl through the flood, but cars and limos were floating across the street, and then a Greyhound bus put up a four-foot wash. His engine was drowned; the Alfa floated out of control. It was now dark, and the water was subsiding quickly after the rain stopped. As storekeepers removed the wash boards from the shop fronts, Jacksonville resumed normal operations. Rory abandoned the Alfa and caught a bus to the far side of town; he jogged over to the Trading Estate, where the familiar sign for Cellex, Makers of Excellent Phone Covers came into view. He checked in through security with a nod and a smile and hurried to his office.

He filled a briefcase with the larger denomination notes, bearer’s bonds, and share certificates, but as he headed towards the main entrance, he saw a bunch of reporters gathering outside the gates. In fact, he was carrying more cash value than the company books could explain; he must get away… and thoughts of vanishing completely began to form in his mind. He left the premises via Goods Inwards and took a company car—a Chevy four-wheel-drive—waving cheerily at the puzzled gate security. He headed for the highway, and driving as fast as he could, he got on I-95 going