Protagonists Named Nicholas

Two shelves of the many in my library

When one reaches a certain point in life, even the two thousand plus books in one’s personal library lack the capability to help one escape from the traumas of existence. Then one turns to other means, if those means are available. For me that means turned out to be a box of books left several years ago in my garage by a friend. The books were just a part of the “stuff” she left and had belonged to her ex-boyfriend, who was then incarcerated for embezzlement. I had asked her several times to remove her stuff, which covered a good third of my garage floor; she had taken some of it—the stuff she could sell or otherwise had some pecuniary value. The box of books evidently was not in that category.

Most of the books in the box were paperback novels—thrillers. They could certainly help me escape from the traumas of existence. I found it interesting that the protagonists in three of the books share my name, Nicholas, or a variation of it: Nicholai Hel in Trevanian’s Shibumi; Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper in Wilber Smith’s The Seventh Scroll; Nicholas Neumann in Christopher Reich’s Numbered Account.

I had previously read Shibumi—several times—but I reread it with gusto: Trevanian has a way of creating intriguing characters and impertinent plots that cast disrespectful shadows on the world’s most powerful institutions, from Ma Bell to the international oil cartel. In Shibumi one of those characters, which I have already introduced in a previous blog post, is a colorful Basque revolutionary whose exclamations inevitably refer to the gonads of Christianity most sacred personages. For example: By the four balls of Jesus, Mary and Joseph… Thankfully, Trevanian did not do the same with Muslim saints!

I had not read The Seventh Scroll. It, too, is a good read and great escape literature combining archeology, history, intrigue, and adventure. However, as I read it, I realized that I perhaps needed to read Smith’s previous historical novel, River God, upon which The Seventh Scroll was based.

Reading Numbered Account has taken me into areas in which I had no previous knowledge: Swiss banks, numbered accounts, “private” banking, and money laundering. It opened my eyes to the manner in which bankers serve the ultra-rich that more than bolsters my suspicions regarding the evils of capitalism. Of course the book is a novel; however, Reich, who the book says “worked in the private banking department of a major Swiss bank in Geneva,” provides more than enough detail of the workings of banks serving numbered accounts to create an atmosphere of avarice and even criminal intent in this most capitalistic of all businesses.

Interweaved in the plot of Numbered Account is the story of “the Pasha”, the name the bankers have given to the owner of Account Number 549.617 RR. The owner of Account Number 549.617 RR telephones the bank at precisely 3:00 p.m. twice a week with the same instructions: transfer all deposits in the account (ranging as high as $33,000,000.00 U.S. but never less than $10,000,000.00) to one of seven matrices, each of which lists banks around and the percentage of the funds to be transferred to each bank. Our protagonist, Nicholas Neumann, is flabbergasted by the size of the deposits and transfers.

I’m not be divulging too much of the plot by informing you that the owner of Account Number 549.617 RR is involved in the international illicit drug trade. As with the character, Nicholas Neumann, I, too, was flabbergasted by the dollars passing through Account Number 549.617 RR! I was so astounded that I decided to spend a bit of time researching the reality of these amounts. What I discovered was that the illegal drug industry is making hundreds of billions of dollars selling prohibited opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, and marijuana, as well as other drugs. Astounding!

Or, perhaps not so astounding. It has only been since I returned to Louisville about ten years ago (about the same time Numbered Account was published) that I have come to know people who were addicted to or selling drugs. It took me several years to realize how powerful these addictions are and how the addicted center their entire lives on using and procuring drugs. That realization has led to my asking the great philosophical question: Qui bono? — Who benefits?

Those addicted to drugs certainly do not benefit. I saw what addiction to opiates and amphetamines did to the life of “Candy.” She would do anything, from lying and stealing to prostituting, to obtain drugs. “Larry” I understand sold drugs: one of his clients was a retired Federal judge—or so he claimed. “Stephanie,” unknown to me when I allowed her and her baby to stay at my house, had been convicted of using and selling drugs. From my observations, none of these people or the drug addicts they told me about benefited from drugs.

So who does benefit? Obviously it is those greedy and insatiable characters such as the fictional owner of Account Number 549.617 RR. But I also wonder about world governments. The U.S. "war on drugs" started out with a US$350 million budget in 1971, and is currently (in 2006) a US$30 enterprise. I remember the allegations regarding Oliver North, Contras, cocaine, and CIA covert operations. The United States own report concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."

With so much money involved, it seems to me that maintaining the criminalization of illicit drug use is very beneficial to some. More on this point in a later blog.