The Marcos Money

By Danton Steele

The 1983 US-Soviet struggle in Asia sets up a fiction-based-on-fact alternative end to Philippine democracy pitting Paul, a rogue banker trying to end the corrupt Marcos regime by stealing their money, against Gen. Menchaka, a leftist bent on grabbing power, Paul’s girl and the Marcos money. Electronic theft in a time when computers capable of such things were only in the hands of bankers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danton Steele
• Release date: Apr 25, 2010

Book preview

Chapter 15

Maharlika

Halloween Surprise

Farewell Imelda

Bank Holiday

The Waldorf

Epilogue

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Each presidential election year, Filipinos are reminded of their perennial frontrunner issue — corruption. In this, little has changed since corruption in the extreme ushered in the Yellow Revolution in the 1986.

The nation rose on that occasion, proud of its restoration of democracy. But had that been a foregone conclusion? Could things not have gone very differently and dramatically so? Even as one charismatic figure’s ultimate sacrifice laid seed to People Power, could not another magnetic leader have emerged to take things even further in the wrong direction, as Marcos had?

All was possible in Asia in the 1980s. Few decades rival it in geopolitical transformation. The celebrated 1989 collapse of the Soviet empire had been unimaginable only six years earlier, when this story unfolded. Trends were very much in the opposite direction at that time.

Tensions simmered from Korea to the edge of Western Europe, and the image of America’s retreat from Saigon remained vivid and haunting. Few felt the West could sustain another conventional war. The next challenge might elicit a nuclear response, certainly if losing important ground to the Reds was the alternative. Scholars and pundits pondered daily where, when, and how the next confrontation might come.

By 1983, the eight thousand mile arc of water between the Suez Canal and Yokohama Bay had become as strategic as any strip of ocean on earth. A third of the world’s trade plied that route annually, including nearly all European East Asian commerce and the bulk of the oil that powered Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the Asian tigers that along with America were the engines of global economic growth.

Four strategic jewels straddled choke points along that vital sea route — Djibouti, Sri Lanka, Singapore and the Philippine Islands. Soviet puppets already held the first. Gaining control of the final three had become a well established Soviet priority, and in 1983, the Philippine Islands were high on the list of opportunities. The only question in Moscow was when and how this prize could be had without provoking nuclear war.

CHAPTER 1

The Telegram

Things were not otherwise unusual for me that day in 1983 when this saga about the Philippines began. For weeks the weather in Washington had been a dream, and October 26th was dawning bright blue as I emerged from the garden of my Georgetown home for a morning run. Minutes later I was pounding the pathways of Rock Creek Park, crisp air stinging my face as I ran, Mother Nature and my own adrenaline working magic to mask stark realities in other areas of the earth.

To be sure, 1983 was another world altogether. PCs were hot, the Net was not. PacMan was the game. Dynasty ruled TV. Deng was the new Mao. Gandhi was best picture, and Jacko was nearly normal. Qaddafi, not Saddam, was top tyrant, his agents pursuing planes to bomb, his ambitions nothing short of nuclear. Arms dealers, trampling each other on trips to Tripoli and Tehran, were throttled in their greed only by the shaky stream of oil oozing out of the Persian Gulf.

As golden leaves floated to the forest floor a mile from the Capitol, I had little doubt that by Christmas Qaddafi’s troops would once more stir the pot in Chad or that New Years Day would see Russians still in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and a half dozen other spots, toasting another year of remolding the world in their image. Back then, it was easy to conclude that momentarily man might terminate evolution with the snap of a nuclear firecracker, but when since the Cuban Missile Crisis had things not seemed that way?

Still, most felt sure that the nation would survive its own politicians and those in Moscow. Unemployment was in decline as was the crime rate. An African-American had just shuttled into space. Auto sales were booming and so was Yankee ingenuity — teenagers had recently used personal computers to hack the government’s nuclear research program. Bolshevism could never spur that kind of initiative, irreverence, and drive.

My own life was going well. As a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and international Studies, global realities were my full-time job, but pleasantly so. Consulting brought trips to the Far East and contacts with cabinet members and occasionally presidents. I was 39, and my townhouse, like my Porsche, was paid for. It was business as usual for me, America and the world, as I made my routine U-turn beneath the Connecticut Avenue Bridge. What could possibly be wrong? Nothing!

Well, nothing except my twin brother, Paul.

Waiting any longer to hear from Paul just wasn’t an option. He had been out of touch for nearly three months, other than a brief note he’d thrown in with a pair of carpets that had arrived recently from Kashmir. He had shipped those in August, shortly after his last visit to the Washington.

There had been large gaps in communication before, and normally, I would not have been concerned. However, on his last visit Paul’s behavior had greatly disturbed me. He’d been unusually depressed and bitter. Despite all he’d been through, it was totally out of character.

Our mother noticed it too, but she wrote it off to mid life crisis or the like. It’ll cure itself, she’d said. Still, she too was worried. He usually phoned her once or twice a month. Something was definitely wrong.

Concerns were magnified by the fact that Paul was in Manila, the senior man in the local operations of Monroe Bank of New York. The country was in chaos, and reliable news no longer emerged from a black hole of official silence following what appeared to be a coup. Who was in charge, Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda, or an unknown general? For the first time my professional interest in political turmoil had turned personal.

For hours the previous evening I had tried without success to reach Paul by phone. As I finished my run and headed for the shower that morning, I was wondering whether my secretary would have news waiting for me at the office. Forty-five minutes later, I came in from the corridor to find out.

Morning, Kate. Any word?

Good morning. No, nothing. I take it you weren’t able to reach him last night, she replied, pale blue eyes piercing the space between her glasses and wrinkled forehead.

No luck at all. I even had a pair of AT&T operators on it. All they could say was that all circuits were out.

Monroe says the same thing. I talked to Bill Amis, their Philippine desk man in New York, ten minutes ago. They’ve had no luck by phone, cable or telex. Frankly, I think it’s time to call the government, she advised.

Right. Tommy Mars at Langley might know something. You’ve got his number, don’t you?

Of course I do, she frowned, turning towards her rolodex. I’ll get him now. Oh, by the way, a telegram came in. Not from the Philippines though. I didn’t open it. It looked like it was from a law firm in Singapore.

I rushed to my office and threw my coat and briefcase onto the chair. As I reached for the Western Union envelope in the center of my desk, I had a feeling that Kate was wrong, that it was a message from Paul saying that he was safe in Singapore.

We were both wrong.

Kate was still dialing Mars at CIA when I slowly emerged from my office and caught her eye.

Dant! What is it? she said, responding to the look on my face. What’s wrong?

What the hell is going on? I mumbled as I handed her the telegram. What could have happened?

She consumed the contents of the cable, and then looked up to say how sorry she was. After a pause, she re-read the message, and became indignant.

But it says here ‘presumed dead.’ What’s that supposed mean? And who is this Clive Beckett? Did your brother ever mention him?

Not that I recall, I replied, still dazed.

Finally, I snapped out of my trance. Let’s find out. Get him on the phone, will you please, Kate?

She nodded as she read the message once again. And Mars? she inquired.

Later. This lawyer knows something specific.

We didn’t get through to Beckett until that evening. Singapore was half a world away and we had to wait for their business day to begin. The conversation was painfully short and not worth the effort.

That is all I can tell you, Mr. Steele, Beckett had said. Your brother’s instructions were quite precise. I must comply with his wishes. We can proceed only after you arrive here. A room has been arranged for you at the Marco Polo Hotel. Perhaps you know it. It’s at the top of Orchard Road. Your flights have been booked. I believe the details were in the telegram. Ring me once you have arrived and feel up to coming in. I look forward to meeting you.

That was it and not a word more. He had been emphatic. He would not discuss Paul over the phone. He would only continue the matter with me in person.

Later I phoned Mom in New Orleans. I was vague about the situation. There were too many unanswered questions. I sensed that she knew that she was not getting the whole story, and I promised to call as soon as I learned more. I had no inkling at the time just how long that was going to take.

The next afternoon I boarded the two o’clock shuttle for New York and a connecting flight to London.

To Singapore

I picked up Singapore Airlines at Heathrow.

The flight over the Atlantic had been uneventful, but slumber eluded me. Now, as we headed southeastward out of London, I told the stewardess to disturb me only if we were about to crash. I stretched out and drifted off quickly.

Bad dreams, filled with nonsense about Paul and the Philippines, woke me up somewhere over the Middle East. After all efforts to fall back asleep failed, the stewardess brought me coffee. The caffeine steered my mind quickly back to Paul, this time, to our younger days in Louisiana. We were in Baton Rouge competing in the state high school track and field championships. Paul was a senior, and I was a year behind. A childhood bout of mononucleosis had seen to that.

Paul was unique in having qualified in three events. I was in only one, the mile. For days prior to the meet, articles had appeared in the local papers about the Steele brothers being their own track team. I was embarrassed by it. Paul loved it. He felt vindicated by it.

We had come to Louisiana from Mississippi a dozen years before following Dad to the oilfield. It had taken almost that entire time for the Cajuns to accept us, to come to see us as something other than texyanz. That was their term for anybody whose grandfather sixth removed or more had not come screaming into life from the womb of a French settler. One didn’t have to be from Texas to qualify.

Our accents immediately set up apart, as did our names. Steele was clearly Anglo, and Danton sounded snooty. Paul was an okay name, but it still took sports to make our transition complete, especially football. Cajuns were crazy for football, and fortunately Paul was good at that too. By his senior year, few people still considered us outsiders. The transition was complete. He was proud of that.

That track meet in Baton Rouge represented another milestone for Paul. It was his last year, his last sport. As he put it, the end of his first career. It was unusual to be at the state championships at all, and all the more so to be there qualified in three events. Paul had already won two of them, the hundred yard dash and the broad jump, and he had just begun competing in his third, the pole vault.

Athletic prowess was just one manifestation of Paul’s inner strength. Where it came from I never knew, but it was there from an early age, this boundless confidence, balance and direction, never polluted with doubt, at least not in those early years. When paired with his intellect and his physical assets, it made Paul a formidable competitor and a strong leader.

That day, as I was standing near the starting line for the mile, Paul walked over to fire me up for the race. He provided this service free of charge to everyone on the track team, but I got it in extra special doses. He usually started by expressing his bewilderment at my interest in the mile.

How can you stand to be in pain that long? he cracked. I like mine fast and clean.

Before I could answer, he continued.

Oh, well. What difference does it make? Look, Dant, don’t you worry about winning or losing. Just go for that record. Everything else will take care of itself, he grinned, his pale brown eyes sparkling with excitement.

I smiled nervously, not sold on his reasoning and uncomfortable with the butterflies in my stomach.

That’s what I’m going to do, he continued. I’m after sixteen six today. That’ll be a new state record.

What? You barely got over sixteen feet last week, I countered. You’ve never even tried that height before.

It doesn’t matter. It’s my last shot. And it’s the record. I’m gonna bend that glass pole till it breaks. Besides, I just have that old feeling, he said, winking at me, beaming.

The officials then ordered the milers onto the track. As I moved to comply, Paul reached out, firmly squeezed my shoulder and looked me square in the eyes, attempting, no doubt, to transmit all his energy and determination into me.

Run it like it’s your last race, Dant, he repeated. Everything else will take care of itself.

Paul approached everything that way. Full throttle, damn the torpedoes! His eyes were always firmly planted on some goal, his mind gauging what was required to achieve it and estimating about how long it would take. Failure was never a remote possibility. Everything was achievable. He may have made enemies, but you rarely heard about that. The positive side always emerged.

Though scholarships were available, Paul gave up organized sports in college. He did not see athletics in his future. Halfway through Harvard, he decided on a business career, a logical choice given his drive and leadership skills. An MBA and a Wall Street job became post graduate goals while international economics, French, and women dominated his undergraduate days.

I often wondered when, and in what form, Paul’s stumbling block would appear, and how he would react. I thought it had come with Vietnam. His induction notice was a complete surprise and for the first time, he had at least looked worried. It was 1966, and Vietnam was booming. Literally!

The tension of it permeated graduation day. He had a scant two weeks before he was to report for basic training at Fort Polk. Mom avoided the subject, but Paul confronted it. Over lunch, though he joked about it as if nothing could possibly happen to him, I could tell he was concerned.

Paul wrote very little about those next two years. He seldom detailed the reality around him. I’m sure he knew it would only cause us more worry. While he did attribute his field commission to the low survival rate for second lieutenants, I was left to figure out that he was in the heat of the Tet offensive from the places he mentioned and the timings in the press. After Tet, his letters dropped to a trickle.

He was discharged just two weeks after Robert Kennedy was killed. When he arrived in New Orleans, it was clear how badly the war had affected him. For the first time in his life, he seemed without direction and he wouldn’t talk about it. That bothered me the most, but I concluded that he would snap out of it, that the old Paul would emerge sooner or later. It took about six months.

He lingered around New Orleans, working in the oil industry, before heading up to Washington to look up old friends. A month later, completely out of the blue, he married Elsa McIntyre, a red-haired lass from Long Island. The day after the wedding, they left for the Peace Corps in southern Africa. Paul seemed to be back on track, pursuing a new goal.

The Peace Corps had been Elsa’s idea. Paul had never expressed much concern for the starving masses, though he did feel a need to atone for the horrors of Vietnam. He had wanted to go to the Philippines even then, but Elsa insisted that there was more to do in Africa.

Two years later, Paul returned a changed man hell bent on changing the world, ending poverty, and replacing corruption with good government and opportunity for all in the developing world. He was convinced that survival of the American way depended on it.

Idealism was flying high when he entered grad school to get the business degree he felt was essential to reaching his goals. Later, he chose Monroe Bank because he saw its premier status in the financial industry as a springboard to influence on the international stage. He moved quickly from New York to London to Taiwan to Tokyo before returning to headquarters to take the number two slot in the bank’s international division in 1978. As usual, he was doing appallingly well.

Then Elsa died of cancer. Paul was devastated. I went to New York often in the months following the funeral to keep him company, and this seemed to cheer him up. On one trip, he informed me of his intention to leave New York. It was a Monday morning and he had come to Penn Station to see me off on the Metroliner. We were having coffee, waiting for the departure announcement.

Dant, I really appreciate your visits here. I suppose the only good in Elsa’s dying was that it brought us closer together. The visits have really helped me.

I’m very happy to hear that.

Unfortunately, they can’t go on, he continued.

Why’s that?

The head of the bank’s Asia Division, retires next month, and I’ve asked for the slot. I’ll be based in Hong Kong.

But, Paul, I said, isn’t that a step backwards?

Yeah, he replied. "But it’s what I want.

Why? I thought it was only a matter of time before you took over the whole international department.

Perhaps it was, but I’m not interested anymore.

I screwed up my face in disbelief.

Really, Dant, I’m not. I want a change of scenery. I’m tired of New York. I’m tired of the fight. It’s not worth it anymore. I want to get away. To think about things. You remember when we came back from Africa? All the ideas Elsa and I had about helping the poor. Maybe it’s time I started doing something about that. As a sort of memorial to her.

Sounds like a career change? I chided.

Perhaps it’s long overdue.

Whatever you think. When do you plan on leaving?

Just after Christmas.

So it’s definite then. The bank has agreed?

It’s definitely on.

They called out my train and cut our conversation short. Paul left for Hong Kong six weeks later.

The period that followed witnessed a steady decline in Paul. I’d see him three or four times annually, usually in the U.S. On each visit he appeared more bitter and volatile. Regardless of the setting, his conversation always turned to U.S. foreign policy toward developing countries and eventually to our support of dictatorships like the Marcoses in the Philippines. They, in particular, became an obsession for him.

He also began to drink more, and though he wasn’t an alcoholic, it clearly signaled a drop in his self-esteem and discipline. He also began to let his personal appearance slide. Amazingly, none of this affected his job.

In late 1981, the bank agreed to yet another transfer, this time temporarily to Manila to arrest what he considered to be a rapidly deteriorating situation. Monroe had a lot of money at risk in the Philippines, and the place was slipping, politically and economically. Paul would remain in charge of the entire region, but would run it from Manila instead of Hong Kong.

The move was a disastrous idea. It put him too close to the situation he detested the most, a U.S.-supported dictatorship. For most of us, the facts in the Philippines were merely unfortunate, but for Paul they were a twisted obsession. The Marcos’ evils were hopelessly entwined in his mind with the loss of Elsa and his failure to accomplish their dreams. Increasingly, his feelings turned venomous.

Mom, our friends, and his colleagues and clients seldom saw the side that I saw often. I had replaced Elsa as Paul’s sounding board, but only a few times a year. That was part of the problem. The rest of the time, he had only himself to argue it with, and there was no objectivity in that. As economic fortunes fell in Manila, Paul’s obsession grew, as if the fact that the Marcos era might be ending accelerated a sense of urgency to do something himself.

On his last visit to the States that August, we had dinner in Georgetown the night before he left. Afterwards we went to Gordon’s for a nightcap. Paul had already had too much to drink when he brought up the Marcoses. I had heard it all before, but I engaged him a little just to keep him happy. Then he said something that astounded me.

They must be stopped, Dant. You’re a fucking political scientist. Can’t you see where this is all heading? One day Americans won’t be able to set foot there. It’ll be under Soviet influence. The Marcoses are stealing us and their own blind. They’ve got to be stopped before there’s a revolution.

Perhaps you’re right, Paul, but I think that is beyond our control, I replied innocently as I picked up the tab. Paul’s volume had signaled that it was definitely time to go.

He slammed his hand down on the bar. Bullshit! he roared. All remaining heads in the bar turned our way.

The brief silence which followed the outburst brought a strange, determined smile to his face. I can do something about it, Dant, he stated in a low voice.

And I will, he vowed, emphasizing his determination with the same winning wink he’d shot my way on that Baton Rouge track years before. Then he dropped a twenty on the bar, slid off the barstool, and waived me towards the door. He was resting his case.

And so ended the last evening with my brother. On the way home, I asked just what he had meant in the bar. He evaded my question, but it seemed to me there was no question that, once again, he knew exactly what he was going to do.

The following morning, as I drove him to National Airport to catch the shuttle to LaGuardia, a feeling grew in me that we might be in for turbulence. As we drove, he commented on how much we still resembled each other. It was true. We had both remained trim. His face showed only slightly more age and his sandy hair was thinning a little faster, perhaps a result of his years in Indochina. Still, one had to look twice to tell us apart.

Yet there was no comparison in our mental states. His bitterness about the Marcoses and his mysterious solution to the problem they posed haunted me. He seemed grateful for the circumstances they had created, as if they had presented him with one last challenge to overcome. I could not have possibly understood, and at the time, I did not think I ever would.

I felt no closer to the truth when the captain announced our entry into Singapore’s airspace. Two days had passed since the arrival of Beckett’s telegram, the first real news from Paul, or rather about him, since that night at Gordon’s and the morning after. As the Boeing jumbo jet tacked for its final approach into the miraculous city state perched on vital Straits of Malacca, I was certain that in a matter of hours I would learn exactly what had become of Paul in Manila.

Once again, I was dead wrong.

The Lawyer

The thud of touchdown brought applause from a lively bunch of Filipino contract workers who had joined the flight in Bahrain. Jubilant about finishing the first leg of their journey home, it mattered little that onward flights to Manila were still on hold, leaving them the prospect of endless nights sleeping on the carpet of Changi Airport.

In contrast, the Marco Polo Hotel awaited me. I checked in an hour later, called Clive Beckett immediately, and set up a meeting for four o’clock.

The teak paneled offices of Beckett, Charles and Associates were on the 39th floor of Shell Tower, a majestic building in Chinatown. I found it odd that a Chinese city like Singapore would have a Chinatown. That quaint fact and the area it referred to were rapidly disappearing, however, as the economic juggernaut unleashed by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was altering the old British colony at an unprecedented pace. Had Ferdinand Marcos managed such miraculous change in the Philippines, my trip may never have been necessary.

Beckett’s secretary ushered me into his office immediately. A tall, slim man with pale blue eyes and a head full of neatly trimmed, cotton white hair emerged from behind a great desk of polished rosewood. I judged him to be about sixty. He was actually seventy-three. He greeted me with a stiff handshake, and hint of a smile.

Welcome to Singapore, Mr. Steele. Do sit down, won’t you? He motioned to a chair as he retreated back behind the desk. I hope your flight was pleasant and that everything was in order at the hotel.

Everything is fine, thanks, though I got little sleep on the plane. Perhaps I’ll catch up on that tonight.

Perhaps, he replied, a touch of doubt in his voice. Would you care for tea?

Yes, thanks, but could we quickly get to the matter of my brother?

I would learn later that Beckett had come to Singapore in 1919 with his Scottish father and the British military. He had remained in the city state his entire life except for his years at Cambridge and occasional business and holiday trips abroad. Fortunately, the university years coincided with the Japanese occupation. His father had perished in one of their camps, and Beckett probably would have met the same fate had he not been in England. He returned just after the war.

The firm that Beckett and Winston Charles later founded was flourishing when Lee Kwan Yew took over Singapore in 1959. The ensuing boom spawned a need for corporate legal services far beyond even Beckett’s imagination. Just why Paul would have needed such high powered legal advice was beyond me, but Beckett soon began putting pieces to the puzzle.

Mr. Steele, I think you are going to find what I am about to tell you difficult, so please bear with me. Your brother was a valued customer of ours despite the fact that we did not know him very long. He was an unusual chap, intense, headstrong and very particular about the letter of the law. He had several interesting, if not odd requests, as you will no doubt soon learn. The work was never dull!

That certainly sounds like Paul, I acknowledged, anxious to get around to the details of his disappearance.

Beckett nodded and then proceeded over the ensuing hour to describe how, according to guidelines set down by Paul, he had presumed my brother to be dead. He remained unclear on the details, however. No body had yet been found, no official report of Paul’s death filed. Such details were not relevant to the instructions Paul had left with Beckett.

When my calls to Manila brought no word of your brother’s whereabouts, I phoned a hotel he had specified in Hong Kong. They verified that he had stayed over the weekend, but had not returned to his room for several days, though his luggage was still there. I had no alternative but to telegram you. His prior instructions specified that action next.

So there is actually no proof that he is, in fact, dead, only a presumption based on criteria that he had left with you. Is that what you are saying?

That is correct. He did indicate that he could possibly be in a dangerous situation in Manila after his last contact with me and that this was the reason for all of the contingency planning. Unfortunately, he said no more on the subject.

As we spoke, jetlag began to overtake me, along with growing impatience and annoyance.

"So, there’s nothing more. No calls to the authorities in Manila, Interpol, or anybody else to ascertain the facts? Something conclusive? Anything, one way or the other?

Becket was about to answer, but I cut him off.

Don’t you think our family would have liked to have seen you do that much?

Beckett kept his cool.

Mr. Steele, please remember that we were not employed by your family. We are simply carrying out your brother’s instructions, nothing more. He focused us on the importance of doing that and only that. Besides, even if I were inclined to do more, I do not believe that the current situation in Manila would provide much in the way of accurate information. Trust me on that. The facts will surface eventually, but for the moment, I think we are, well, stuck!

I was on the verge of shouting, or making yet another impossible demand of the old man when he leaned forward and unlocked one of his desk drawers. He removed a stack of envelopes tied with twine, pushed them across the desk toward me, and