Chapter 6

Amanda: A New Life

You would think that life would be one big party once Kaid had changed me. Hell, no! The pig made me study in my spare time, literature mostly - like the classics and Shakespeare and so on. It was hard going at first but he was a good teacher and he explained all the hard parts to me until, very soon, I could read those slow, dull books without help. Eventually I discovered they were neither slow nor dull. The writers had a lot to say and they took the trouble to put all their thoughts and feelings into words. They wrote those wonderful stories at a time when reading was a luxury and they had all the time in the world to do it. Just think. It was a time when there was no TV, Internet, computer games, or organised commercial sports. Just reading and the stage.

Kaid said that literature was a short cut to worldly knowledge, a kind of crash course to street smarts. All persons with common sense who understand what they read can convert their readings into a sort of database on which to judge situations and especially people. That's why it's important to read the right kind of stuff. Otherwise your head would be filled with third-rate crap. Also, he said, people with very long lives get bored easily and the best antidote to boredom is the pursuit of knowledge. It isn't necessary for us to be original thinkers but it's vital for us to nourish the ability to think. Well, there it is. I don't talk like the old Mandy, do I?

Mathematics and science are not for me. Though Kaid is a math genius, I'm at the other end of the scale, not that I'm a moron as far as counting is concerned.

And on top of all that I had to learn First Speak. My jaw took a while to get itself back into shape. But once I mastered the basics, I was comfortable with First Speak. It became easier and easier as I progressed. Now I speak it all the time with Adam. First Speak is necessary if you want to master magic. He taught me some elementary magic but not the more arcane stuff, like conjuring elementals and such. It was too dangerous, he said. Even he held back when it came to black magic.

He also made me read the business news, so I said, "What the hell do we need to learn about business for? Our business is to suck blood."

That earned me this long lecture on how important it was to maintain a front and not show what we really were and that the best way to achieve this was to be so rich that people would shy from messing with us. Bit by bit I began to see the light. Then he told me he was worth millions but he wasn't sure exactly how much. I really hit the roof that time. I come from a poor family and we know money is very important.

"Kaid," I said, "you're something else, you know. How can you talk of millions like it's so much grass seed?"

He replied that money was only bits of paper and figures with lots of zeros in his account books. I mean the man's impossible.

Surfing the net and electronic eavesdropping kept us well informed as to the political climate of the moment. Kaid said that our well-being depended to a large extent on being well informed about political trends and who was currently on whose shit list. It was equally true that corruption and a modicum of chaos also suited us nicely. Money really talks. Deception, wealth and our willingness to keep out of the limelight allowed us maintain the anonymity so important for our way of life. Our ability to make people forget about us helped in no small way. It's really very easy. You look into their eyes and tell them not to remember and they don't.

Kaid: It's Just Another Business

It's true. Unlike Donald Duck's Unca' Scrooge, rich people don't keep their wealth in a strong room in the basement of their houses. Nor do they dive in and out of those piles of gold coins in that special underground cellar. All that wealth appears in account books and bank balances and manifests itself as buying power and the dubious advantage of borrowing more and more of the stuff from banks and so on. Mostly they borrow from themselves. It helps to reduce taxes. I don't know how it works but my accountants swear that it does.

You'd be surprised what money can buy. Like the time a clever little director of Immigration began to look more closely into my passport. I didn't buy him. I used blackmail instead. It transpired that he lived two lives. He was a Jekyll-Hyde character. To the world at large, he was a happy family man, but secretly he was a pervert. He liked teenaged boys of sixteen to eighteen to be exact. He loved to stretch their butts and then turn round so that he could get his share of being stretched. He positively loved being pounded in the rear while he was strapped face down, a thick cushion under his belly, over one of those long wooden benches.

I found out where they had their butt stretching parties and bugged the place with the latest in spyware. My hidden vid-cams recorded hours of him doing the vice versa. When I had enough dirt on him I gave him a preview of the tape and he was glad to forget about me and Mandy. I gave him the tape and he was happy to get it. Mandy and I amused ourselves watching it before we gave him a copy. We kept the original just in case he went back on his deal. The guy was very inventive sexually and for all I know he's still at it. Live and let live is my motto.

I remember the first time I carried a suitcase stuffed with nearly £5 million in negotiable bonds and sight drafts through customs in Heathrow. All that paper weighs quite a bit, but I handled the weight quite easily. I was just a tad nervous (call it opening day nerves) but all I had to do was look at the customs officers and say, "Nothing to declare, mate." They made their chicken tracks on my luggage and waved me out. At first I used a trunk with a false bottom. But the ease with which I passed through customs showed me I didn't need a false-bottomed trunk. I stuffed three quarters of the suitcase with legal tender and covered the money with clothes and underwear. Then I told the 'roadblock' that I had nothing worthwhile fussing over.

The problem wasn't getting the money into those countries with the numbered account banks. The problem was getting it out of this country. I took the money out without making the proper declarations. One mustn't forget that although I used a chartered jet later on when my company (Monkshood Inc.) had been incorporated, I still had to go through those security checks in and out of airports.

In one year I transferred the greater part of my wealth to several offshore banks in Europe and the Cayman Islands. With my powers of mind control and manipulation it was child's play to move millions in cash and negotiable certificates out of the country whenever there was a need to do so.

Like all who are transformed, my mental powers have grown by several magnitudes. It is not genius. It is more like my brain operates more efficiently so that I (and Mandy, too) develop certain mental powers. A photographic memory is one of them. I can memorize whole books without effort if I want to. Another of those mental powers I share with Mandy is the ability to control a human's thoughts and mind. It goes deeper than hypnosis because we can even command a person to kill or to suicide — in general to make them do anything we desire. We also developed a kind of precognition. We can't read the future but somehow we can guess certain trends. For instance, the direction the share markets are taking.

The money I made on the futures market had been taken out of the country and stashed away in discreet places where they didn't ask awkward questions. I then reinvested a good part of the money in land and property as well as in well-run medium-sized industries all over the world. I kept all my businesses outside Malaysia and maintained only the property business in my country. Even those were 'foreign-owned' with a few local partners to meet the legal requirements. I selected my managers with care, gave them a good wage, a share of the profits and a mind-set that included a Protestant work ethic, loyalty and honesty.

I had the best bunch of loyal servants any employer could want. All the so-called 'directives' from Herr Direktor (that's me) were 'channelled' through myself in my capacity of 'Permanent Representative' and the companies were controlled through a number of dummy corporations. Impossible to accomplish in three years? Then you don't know what real money and the ability to go without sleep for days can do. I had at my disposal a Lear jet fitted with long-range tanks that could take me from Kuala Lumpur to New Delhi in one hop. It wasn't one of those super jets fitted out like a sultan's harem. It was comfortable and workaday. I employed two pilots and a stewardess and left the maintenance to a reliable local firm.

In a few years I had built up a business empire whose components operated independently. Finally I merged all the dummy corporations that controlled the real money earners into a conglomerate under a holding company which I named Monkshood Holdings, incorporated in Lichtenstein under the executive chairmanship of a mysterious character named Hermann Monck. Monkshood Holdings 'sent' orders to me and to the lawyers who fronted for me in Kuala Lumpur. It was dead easy. I emailed all directives to my company managers through a server located in xxxx. Sorry! That has to remain secret. Soon I did not need to speculate in the share market for funds except during extreme emergencies when cash was suddenly required. Both Mandy and I appeared on the payroll of the local controlling dummy company, Monkshood (Malaysia) Pte. Ltd., as their representatives in South East Asia and the Far East. Regional headquarters were located in Kuala Lumpur. Monkshood (M) Pte. Ltd. soon became a financial byword and yet no one knew who was behind it. What few people knew was that Monkshood, Inc. was wholly owned by small, unknown company called Borneo Rubber and Timber, plc, incorporated in London in 1923. I held 80% of the shares after I had shifted 10% to Mandy. The remaining 10% was owned by three individuals, now deceased. I bought the company from the heirs for a song.

Mandy and I were able to live extremely well but we maintained a low profile and we drew huge salaries plus all expenses from Monkshood. Inevitably, our earnings and perks drew the attention of the Internal Revenue Bureau (IRB). I was invited to call on the Director-General of IRB for a chat. It turned out to be very frustrating for them. When I turned up at his office the Director-General, a rather stout Malay who looked like he loved his food, was not a little startled by my pallor, which, as you know, is my natural complexion.

"Are you not feeling well, Mr. Kaid? You do look somewhat pale," the Director-General said.

"Not at all. In fact I'm in the pink of health. Ha, ha!"

I enjoyed that.

He coughed and shuffled some papers. He waved me to a seat and the interview began. He went for the jugular.

"What exactly is your role in this company, Mr. Kaid," the Director General asked.

"Role? What role? I'm only an employee. Is there anything wrong with my returns, Tan Sri?" I asked with false anxiety, using his title and putting a worried frown on my face for good effect. These titled wallahs set great store on being addressed properly.

"No. Your returns appear to be correct ... so far. But we are curious as to your role, er ... sorry, the terms of your employment. Would you kindly elaborate?"

"But of course. I get my orders from the head office in Lichtenstein and I execute them or pass them on. That's all there is."

"And for this you receive fifty thousand a month all expenses paid plus house plus a very expensive car, etc?"

He gave me an incredulous stare.

"Oh, no, the house and car are mine which I bought when I made some money on the share market. It was enough to cover the costs."

"I believe you have an associate, a Miss Amanda Lopez?"

He referred to my file again. What an act. My file was so thin I bet he had it memorised.

"Yes. Why do you ask? Have we broken a law or something?"

"No, no. But I notice that she, too, is on the payroll of Monkshood, Inc."

"Oh, dear. Are you saying that we have done something wrong?" I moaned with monumental insincerity.

"Not at all. I merely want to clarify Miss Lopez's role as your assistant," he whined unhappily. He shuffled the papers in my file again and took another shot at me. "If your job is merely to pass on orders what do you need an assistant for?"

He had a good point there, but I had an answer for that, too.

"The main office thought I needed an assistant to help pass on the orders to the various managers of the projects currently under way. If I may say so, they are helping the economy of our country which, as you know, is not doing so well at the moment."

That stopped him for a minute but he was persistent. He would have made a great Bible salesman — oops, wrong book. All Malays are Muslims by birth.

"Yes, but what exactly does she do?"

"You know. The sort of thing special assistants do. Helps me remember those long orders we get from HQ. Passing on orders is no joke, if I might say so. You know, Tan Sri, some guys simply hate to take orders and that makes my job of passing orders really tough. Also she helps to pass the time away."

I leered at him and winked. He recoiled. He was a very religious man. I could tell this from the discoloured spot on his head, generated by the prayer ritual performed by Muslims. One part of the ritual involves touching the forehead to the prayer mat.

Then I put on a vapid look and stared at him blankly. I wanted to let my jaw drop and hang out my tongue, but that probably would have given the game away. My blank face irritated him no end and added to the confusion. He must have thought I was the all-time asshole of the month and that suited me just fine. After a few moments he thanked me for calling and I was free to go. I never got called for an interview again. My taxes were always paid promptly and Monkshood Malaysia was a big player in the Malaysian building industry and property sector.

An appointment in Bangkok

One evening, about six months later, Mandy gave me an apologetic look and said, "I have to go to Bangkok." She had been closely monitoring the calls going in and out of Jefri's mobile phone.

When the ripe parts of the three thugs had turned up in Jefri's house, he had passed out in a dead faint. The identity cards that came with the putrefying bits showed they had belonged to the trio he had hired to beat Mandy up. His father had been home at the time and when he was brought out of his faint his father demanded to know the reason for the gruesome package. He had tried to bluff his way out but his father was relentless and bit by bit everything came out — his involvement with Mandy, her rejection and finally his hiring of the three thugs to teach her a lesson.