The Sterling Connection

By Liam Adair

When a boy, Paul Blair, from New York is granted a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school in England, he has no inkling of the future contribution he will make to humanity.

He is befriended by another boarder, a Knight of the Realm. Even though they are from two different ends of the social spectrum, their friendship takes them into adulthood.

Blair became a member of the US Special Forces and worked with the UN. His friend Sir Charles Spencer had taken to a life of crime. He used his construction company and position in society as a front to build a criminal empire and multibillion dollar fortune.

The struggle between these two will take them from England to Africa, the Middle East, and the USA. Spencer decided the quickest way to make money was to plunder third-world countries of their mineral wealth. It is Blair who brings him to stand before the International Court of Justice in the Hague to answer for those crimes.

The outcome will be tragic for one of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503507739

Liam Adair

I am descended from a long line of Irish-Men, I received my education at a private boarding school in England. I am an author writing under the pseudonym of “Liam Adair.” I currently reside in Victoria, Australia. Since retiring from my former career, I undertook the task of president and tutor of the University of the Third Age, Geelong Victoria, before I dedicated myself entirely to writing, I was in my seventies when I began writing. To enhance the stories and scenarios in my books, I have used my employment history that took me to several countries around the world. Also, my previous military service, to create my first main character ‘Paul Blair,' a fictional character based on my life experiences. I am the author of: - The Sterling Connection. The Rand Connection. The Ruble Connection, The DC Connection, New Directions, (in that order) all of which are focused on the character of Paul Blair, and his team of former Special Forces. Following those are my latest novels all set in Canada? Introducing Detective Chief Superintend Steve Benson RCMP, and his staff of dedicated detectives. They are, Blood under the Maple Leaf, The Douglas affair, Evil in Command, and The First Nations Affair, and as a change of pace, I have now published a short Autobiography of the life and times of William James Adair: - Title “My life, It’s been a Hell of a Ride.”

Book preview

Chapter 1

Paul Blair sat back in his office chair in the small room that had been put aside for him in the Peace Palace, the permanent home of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He was impressed every time when entering or leaving this imposing building. The prevailing atmosphere that comes from so many people of different nationalities all striving to achieve one thing, an independent court of Justice that is not compromised by wealth, or status, or political interference, is an almost physical presence. There is the sense that if a result in law can be found, it will be found here. In spite of the fact that the design of the building was changed at least three times before it was completed, Blair thought the end result lent a dignity to its purpose for existence. The building itself sits in an award wining garden designed by the English Horticulturalist Thomas Hayden Manson, around which there are quiet walks and places to sit, when the weather allows, to take in the ambience of it all. The whole thing being surrounded by a very high wrought iron fence, with a huge set of wrought iron front gates, that gives everything an air of permanence.

It had taken just over a month to put together the report and lay out the evidence against his former school friend, Sir Charles Spencer; for he will definitely be his former friend once this is out. He was ready now to present it to the various Lawyers representing the British Crown and the International Court of Justice. He had spent many hours with various Lawyers and Barristers, in the Peace Palace, including several trips to London, to talk with members of the prosecution for the Crown. But he could move on now, head for home and wait for the call to come back for the Court proceedings.

It was a sad day for him for many reasons. First was the loss of his friend Jim Gilbert, through the efforts of Spencer and his chief honcho Leif Johnson, who actually performed the dirty deed, and sad that his boyhood friend was responsible for ordering Johnson to carry out the task. He had put the package together in his usual methodical way, so he was confident that the evidence would stand up in a court of law, first the British Court, and then the International Court of Justice. He would insure that Spencer was brought before the courts to answer for his life of crime, and Blair would personally seek out Johnson and administer his own permanent punishment to this individual, regardless of the consequences.

He had kept in touch from time to time with Sir Charles Spencer over the years. He had been invited to Charles’s and Eleanor’s birthday parties, their wedding, and some social events when MPs and other distinguished guests had been invited to a weekend at Clivendon Manor. Mostly as he was passing through London on the way to US, if he had time and he would telephone in advance.

The whole thing with the courts was going to become very distasteful to everybody concerned. As he sat there reminiscing, Paul Blair was not looking forward to the prospect especially as regards to Lady Eleanor Spencer. That was going to be the hard part, because she had always treated him with kindness and had given her friendship with no strings attached. But weighted against the crimes that Spencer had committed there was no alternative but to bring him to justice.

He thought, I’ve done my bit to bring some form of justice to all this, and if you want to see justice done, then you can’t sit on your hands on the sideline. That’s it he thought, I’m off now to my little part of heaven, to my lovely home and the love of a good woman in Australia, and I will have no regrets one way or the other. It is all in the hands of the court system now.

Blair had also spent over two weeks in London helping put together the preliminary case for the British Justice System. He was more than tired of it now, and occasionally he had wished he had never gotten mixed up in the whole affair in the first place. But life was starting to become very short, and he definitely had some more living to do, so he was happy to turn his back on it all now. He will be happy saying his goodbyes to that great bunch of people he had been associated with in the Peace Palace and go home, for a well earned rest and some good old fashioned R&R.

When Sir Charles Spencer had first started Spencer Construction, he hated the fact that he had had to borrow in the first place, but the family inheritance didn’t amount to much, apart from the title, and Clivendon Manor, that had been around for several hundred years. But he was determined that the day would come when he would rectify the situation, and live in grand style in Clivendon Manor.

As his business progressed with the revenue from the mining of diamonds and bauxite, he would essentially be stealing everything that he was extracting from Sierra Leone, he would then look to oil as the ultimate prize. Especially if he could extract it under the same conditions in other countries, like he had the minerals in Sierra Leone. It was the oil embargo of 1973 that really gave Spencer the push he had been looking for. Spencer had already set plans in motion to plunder the mineral wealth of some of the poorer countries of Africa where there was a chance of discovering oil. He was at the time mining and selling oil on an ad hoc basis, but enough to make good revenue for the operation.

Oil as a commodity would fetch good returns around the world, none more so than the USA, who couldn’t get enough of the black sticky stuff. He had already floated a subsidiary construction company in Africa, the African Construction and Mining Company, the ACMC with borrowed money, and that was overseen by Johnson, his senior construction boss, and chief maker of mayhem when necessary. He had been very careful to remain at a distance when he had started the company, so as not to be seen to be involved.

But he struggled to keep himself afloat in those early days before the mineral payoff and oil. But he knew a god sent opportunity when he saw one, and he also knew that he would reap some big benefits from his hard labour. He was just starting to see some return for his activities in Sierra Leone. He had put some dubious bank accounts in operation waiting for the day when he could fill them with money. He knew because of Sierra Leone he could keep ACMC afloat for long enough to win. It was all there for the taking if you were bold, greedy and cunning enough.

He had been given his inheritance just two years after leaving Montfort College, were he had boarded for nearly 7 years, with his still not really proven engineering certificate. As soon as he knew it was his, he went to see his manor. Standing there in the driveway, it looked run down and had an air of neglect about it. Still it was on a grand scale, and surely as an engineer he must be able to rectify the situation. That was until he went through the front door, and then the neglect was absolute up close. It was going to need a lot work and money, time he could provide, money was the problem.

Sitting there on an old chair at the bottom of the grand staircase, it was as if a light had been shone into a dark place. He thought, wait a moment, I’m now Sir Charles Spencer, Lord Clivendon, what more is there. I’m going to milk that for all its worth. Africa as the next emerging source of minerals and diamonds and oil, that’s what I need to concentrate on. I can use my contacts in the House of Lords to pry the information and intelligence to point me in the right direction.

So he would eventually through his contacts in Government go to Sierra Leone as a good prospect, and set in motion those early projects, of the mining of diamonds and bauxite. Once ongoing, he went on to Kenya and Uganda, and Spencer World Construction was born.

He was happy to add World to the title of his company when he moved his company headquarters to Grosvenor Square, in Mayfair in London, once sufficient profits were coming in, to lift the his company profile. Spencer Construction was still non-the-less doing other projects, which were the meat and potatoes of all construction companies, such as local government jobs, road building, housing, building factories and so on. But the pace was much too slow for Spencer. He was determined to make money in a hurry; he did not want to wait till he was an old man before he saw the fruits of his labour.

His first and biggest success in his burgeoning life of crime and greed at that time was in Sierra Leone, where he managed to mine Diamonds and Bauxite, at the townships of Makeni and Lunsar.

It was also in Sierra Leone that he had run across Leif Johnson, a fellow Englishman, who was running a small project prospecting for oil. He seemed to know his business, and more importantly he seemed to know and understand the locals and how their minds worked. Johnson also had a hand in the pocket of the Chief Minister, who for a substantial money arrangement would ensure there would be no problems with any paper work, or mining leases required. He had Johnson arrange a meeting with the Minister, and after some horse trading, an agreement was reached, which all parties duly signed.

So Spencer had invited Johnson to dinner at his hotel in Freetown, the Capital of Sierra Leone. The dinner wasn’t spectacular, but the point of the exercise was to give Spencer time to asses Johnson’s capabilities. Johnson had already told Spencer he had been trained as a commando during his military service, and he had seen enough action, to be able to survive in dangerous situations. So he was sure it would not be too hard for him to accomplish whatever Spencer had in mind. As the night wore on and the wine flowed, Spencer finally got around to the point of the exercise.

If your interested then come and see me at my office in London, as soon as you’ve finished what you are doing now, I will pay you well for your time, he told Johnson.

Spencer would offer him a large sum of money if and when necessary he could grease a few palms, and take out some of the competition as required. And of course now that Spencer had Johnson and the Chief Minister in hand, things should start to happen.

It was time to get things started. The first priority Spencer saw was to extract some diamonds that could readily be exchanged for hard cash. Spencer already knew who would accomplish the sale of the stones in Europe, and that would provide much needed float money. So they parted with Spencer making it firm that he needed action within two months if at all possible.

Johnson didn’t think that would be a problem, he was positive he would call at Spencer’s office in London in about three months for his money. Johnson did however warn Spencer that some locals would die during the mining process and there may have to be some form of compensation. Spencer made it clear that he wasn’t concerned with how many locals Johnson had to lose as long as the job got done. Johnson understood that from now on, extreme prejudice was to be applied. What he didn’t know was that Spencer had recorded all of this without telling Johnson, in case it should surface in the future. He had also recorded his meeting with the Minister as insurance. Recordings that could be altered if the situation collapsed making it appear that the other two were the evil ones and not Spencer.

Spencer had given Johnson the task to get the initial parcel of diamonds out of the interior and ship it to London as soon as possible. When the first diamonds arrived within a month, Spencer knew he had picked the right man for the job. So when they next met in London, he was happy to pay Johnson the agreed contract price, he had done a superb job with no come back. Spencer felt confident this was the man who would lift him into the big time.

He thought its time, as he laid out his plans to steal as much oil, minerals or diamonds from Africa or the middle East, as he could get away with, pay whoever he had to, to get it done, or take out the opposition, all he needed was a good man on the spot. Johnson hesitated before agreeing, but when he did, Spencer knew that from that point he had him. That was when he offered him a very handsome salary and title of senior construction manager for Spencer World Construction, when he reformed his company. So the partnership had been sealed in blood. He also made it clear that there were to be no prisoners taken or witnesses left behind. Fortunately for the rest of us in this sad world that didn’t always happen, and that was how Paul Blair, Spencer’s old school friend, picked up the trail some years later, that would see both Spencer and Johnson sent to hell for eternity.

The one stipulation Spencer made was that when Johnson was addressing him in private he was to call him Sir, and in public it was to be either Sir Charles or Lord Clivendon. Spencer also made it clear he needed to get as many diamonds and as many tones of bauxite out of Sierra Leone before the door was closed.

In Spencer’s case it would be some years before these activities would be halted, long enough for him to make a very considerable fortune. His construction boss Johnson, would also make a considerable fortune as well, as Johnson would put it, he did all the dirty work, so he was entitled to all the spoils, and besides as far as the diamonds were concerned his boss Spencer would never know how many he was extracting anyway. Still Johnson was careful to only hold back small amounts for himself, so as not to arouse anyone’s suspicions.

Chapter 2

Sierra Leone had been set up as a Province of Freedom, by the British in 1787, to help 400 freed slaves from the US, Nova Scotia, and Great Britain, return to settle in Sierra Leone from where they had been taken in the first place. By 1827 it was becoming a magnet for English-speaking Africans on the Africa’s West Coast. For more than a century, it had the only European-style University in western sub-Saharan Africa. Then in 1951, the Constitution was amended to provide a framework for decolonization.

Local ministerial responsibility was introduced in 1953, when a local born in Sierra Leone was appointed as Chief Minister, who then became Prime Minister on the successful completion of constitutional talks in London in 1960. The country was taken over by a military coup in 1967, by the local Brigadier George Memoto, commander of the Sierra Leone military forces. It was prior to 1960 that Spencer had established himself, with lots of bribes and gifts to the leaders of the local communities, with the promise of more money to come, he had gained his permits, and offered local labour to mine in the interior. But he was very careful to make sure with Johnson’s help that the locals didn’t know or realize how much actual diamonds and bauxite he was taking out of the country. In a very short time the profits were enormous, and Spencer was on his way to being a multimillionaire.

Paul Blair had run into Spencer twice in Sierra Leone in those early days, and two or three times in Kenya. He was surprised at first because he was the last person he thought he would see in a place like Freetown the capital of Sierra Leone, it was definitely outside Spencer’s comfort zone. They had spoken that first time over a few beers before they went their way. But the second time he met Spencer in Freetown, he couldn’t resist asking him what he was doing there.

Spencer said I’m here to do some exploring and mining, while the frontier is still opened.

He studied Blair thinking that this man had an unmistakable presence about him that said step away. But he knew that from Montfort College, (they had been close friends there), it was very much more pronounced now. He was dressed in a safari suit, with ammunition held in the slots on the top pockets of the jacket. He had a mean looking pistol in a holster on his right thigh, he was slim and muscular, and with his bearing and wide shoulders he was a man to avoid. But it was the two very tough looking companions he had with him that also got Spencer’s attention. They also looked very capable, and the way their eyes never stopped surveying everything around them that said, these two are professionals.

In fact Blair’s two companions John Gannon and Alex Craven were there at his request. Right from the first time Blair had gone into a dangerous situation for the UN, he had made a stipulation that these two were to be found and recruited by the UN, or he would recruit them himself. Gannon and Craven were two of the most highly trained Special Forces soldiers that had been part of Blair’s group, in his active days in the military. The most important thing was that they were totally devoted to Blair as their leader. So once they had been found and the situation was explained, they simply asked where we sign on. From that point the threesome got the nickname of the three musketeers.

Spencer thought that Blair was definitely the man he should have recruited for his company. This was a man who would get the job done regardless of the opposition. He was to remember that all those years later when he was tried for various crimes,