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Bill Vidal was born
in Argentina
and educated in England.
He lived and worked in the USA,
South America,
the Middle East,
South East Asia
and Europe
before settling with his wife and twin children in East
Kent. In recent years he
has slowed down his
business commitments to devote more time to writing and to his lifelong
love
for aeroplanes. Bill's articles about flying have been published in
leading
newspapers and magazines. The Clayton
Account is his first novel.
I was in my office last week when
Special Branch
popped in. That in itself was not unusual – my office is in
an airport and
since 9/11 anyone involved in aviation is subject to regular scrutiny.
It’s
what happened next that
amused me. A visiting friend announced the impending publication of my
first
novel and the police officers wanted to know all about it, including
the
inevitable question, did I write it from personal experience?
“I
shall have to be very
guarded with my answer,” was the best way I could put it,
“given that my book
is set in the world of bank fraud, drug dealing and money
laundering.”
That
produced a few laughs,
and two copies of The Clayton Account
on back order for our plainclothes friends.
I
imagine that all novels
are a mixture of a writer’s experiences and his or her own
imagination. In a
career spanning three decades in international trade, I lived and
worked in
many exotic places where crime – especially large scale crime
- was often so
prevalent you’d have to be blind not to notice and abnormally
insensitive to be
totally unaware.
Corruption
is perhaps the
most evident. The developing world’s wheels will simply not
turn unless
lubricated by copious quantities of cash. But do not dismiss corruption
as a
third world issue: those paying the bribes usually spring from our side
of the
fence.
Once
big sums are paid, banks
come into play: the last place on earth a crook would want to keep his
money is
close to home. So discreet accounts appear in offshore havens where the
banking
community winks knowingly and says “Thanks very
much.”
People
often ask me whether
I used to be a banker and the answer is no. But banks –
public and private -
were my clients. I attended top management meetings and, more
significantly,
spent countless evenings dining and wining with their directors. I
sometimes
shake my head in disbelief on recalling some of the stories I have
heard.
A
few years ago I stopped
working – “retired” would be wrong word.
I was in my early fifties and not
about to call it a day. I turned instead to my two passions: flying
aeroplanes
and writing. I also started writing about flying and one magazine,
Today’s
Pilot, gave me the space. My regular Going Places feature focuses on
the
attractions of individual European destinations and includes technical
information of interest to pilots.
But
my real interest has
always been the novel. Years jetting about the world in my previous job
meant
stacking up with books at airports.
I read
mainly thrillers and ventured I could write one. Deighton, Le Carre,
Forsyth,
Clancy, Grisham. You name them, they kept me company in far-away hotels
and
long-haul flights. I started to write fiction twice but abandoned both
projects
as life got in the way.
As
the idea of quitting work
started to germinate I took myself back to college: London University’s Birkbeck College is geared for students in
full-time work and holds its lectures in the
evening: Four years later, I left with a BA in Spanish and Latin
American
Studies. The course was mostly literature and invaluable. It taught me
to
understand the novel and its possibilities in ways I may have never
fathomed on
my own.
I
plotted The Clayton Account around
the world’s
largest criminal activity: the trade in illegal drugs, specifically
cocaine.
The business is so vast that if it were brought to a sudden halt some
countries’ economies would simply collapse. The banking
sector, currently
reeling from the aftermath of their sub-prime adventure, would watch in
anguish
as a trillion dollar business vanished from its books.
Such
is the power of the
drug trade that many police chiefs have called for the complete
decriminalisation of drugs as the only way to put an end to an activity
that
drains away almost half of all law-enforcement resources.
Some years ago I had to
purchase 125 grams of
pure cocaine. Quite legally, with a Home Office licence. I was buying
it for a plastic
surgeon friend in Dubai who used it as a local
anaesthetic. The little
bottle cost me £14. Sold
illegally, it
would have fetched £8,000. The difference between those two
sums is the gateway
to the opulent lifestyle of the drug lord.
On
occasion, in my travels,
I’ve met “farmers” whose South American
smallholdings – two or three hundred
acres at a time – somehow failed to explain a lifestyle that
a million-acre
cattle baron would struggle to attain. Lavish mansions, cars, boats,
planes
blatantly displayed, the source of funds cleverly disguised by lawyers,
bankers
and complicit governments, supported, when necessary, by threats and
bribes.
I’ve
known of household-name
companies securing contracts with undisclosed commissions paid through
friendly
banks, and learnt of briefcases full of dollars delivered to corrupt
judges to
secure the outcome of a hearing.
So, to answer my friends
from Special Branch,
there’s always a bit of personal experience in a novel. But I
shan’t be
assisting you with your enquiries in this instance. I thoroughly
enjoyed
writing The Clayton Account and I
feel very fortunate to have Random House behind it now.
I’m
currently working on
another thriller. I don’t want to say too much about it at
this stage. Besides,
I don’t think I can. I’ve created the main
characters, I know what they want
and what they are up against and I know how I would like the story to
end. But
I shan’t know the entire plot until I see how the characters
react. I can say
that the story is set in Spain, Russia and Latin America and populated by an
international collection of thugs and criminals as well as, I hope,
thoroughly
likeable individuals. And the historical facts on which it is based are
real
enough, but if, perchance, the true nature of what happened should
clash with
the way I want things to have happened, I shall use the fiction
writer’s
prerogative: I shall make it all up!
Writing
and flying. That’s
my life now. I can’t help feeling guilty when I call it work.
THE
CLAYTON ACCOUNT
is published by William Heinemann May 2008
£12.99 hbk
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