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Published: March 29th 2008
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Huey Lewis and the News are playing here in my hotel tomorrow night. Tickets apparently cost ‘from $79’, but I don’t believe that. Everything here costs more than you think it will, especially the restaurants, so I don’t see why chicken-in-a-basket cabaret featuring faded eighties rock bands should be any different. At least we won’t be expected to leave a 15% gratuity. And b.t.w. if you happen to be reading this and you are one of the many people who keep trying to sell me Cuban cigars, please stop. I am already struggling to see how I can include a $79+ ticket to see Huey Lewis on my expenses for this trip; Cuban cigars would just be taking the piss.
This morning I gave Ansbacker House another go. This was how it panned out...
I am sitting in Rawson Square again, waiting for the business day to begin. My body clock is still getting me up at 5 a.m., so I’m here good and early out of boredom (the alternative is another dawn stroll amongst the empty slots of the ghost-casino). I am wearing different clothes from yesterday in the hope that I will not be recognized. Not
that I did anything wrong yesterday, apart from tell a small lie that made my job slightly more difficult.
Across in Parliament Square a black limo has pulled up. There are three police motorbikes next to it, their blue lights flashing. Men in black suits stand around, and police/military people in an array of different uniforms also loiter. Something’s going on.
I blank it all out. Ansbacker House is on the street bordering Parliament Square, and it has an entrance on that street (East Street), so I don’t need to make it past all these uniforms. As I watch the build-up of important Bahamian men, I rehearse in my head what I need to say when (if) I make it into the offices of Sovereign Trust:
Good morning, my name is John Barlow and I’m a novelist - I have a book in my bag to prove it - and two Swedish artists have sent me all the way here from Europe to find out about an offshore company called Headless that an employee of Sovereign Trust confirmed to them was incorporated here in 2002 and which we are using as the basis for a murder mystery
novel called HEADLESS about the defunct secret society Acéphale and the offshore business; so, although offshore companies are private and secretive, could you please tell me - an absolute stranger who’s just walked in off the street - all about this particular company? Go on, tell me all about it. Go on. Thank you.
I go in through the doors as confidently as I can. The security guy is friendly. I ask him for Sovereign, and he knows them right off. This is no small, tin-pot trust company. It’s offices are here, in the building of the Bahamas Supreme Court Registry and the Court of Appeal Registry, right behind Parliament Square. Sovereign is on the second floor. As I ride up in the elevator, I remember that not very long ago my paymasters, Swedish artists goldin+senneby, received several threatening communications from Sovereign’s legal advisor in Gibraltar warning them to cease all approaches to the company and to stop harassing its employees there. I also remember that a London-based lawyer specializing in such things, having read these communications, told them that they really should stop all activities pertaining to Sovereign, unless they wanted potentially serious problems. Instead, what Swedish fucking artists goldin+senneby did was to send gullible writer John Barlow all the way to the Bahamas to annoy Sovereign even more. Oh crap. The bell pings. I’m on the second floor. What would you do now?
I knock. Come in. The girl behind the reception desk listens to a garbled (but mercifully shortened) version of the above introduction. I won’t say that she *knows* the name Headless as soon as I say it, but she doesn’t show any surprise at all. And it is kind of a strange name for a business, don’t you think? Headless. Perhaps it’s her training, part of the cloak of secrecy. I ask her if there’s anything I can learn about the company. This is what she says:
There’s nothing they can tell me here. The company was established through the Gibraltar office.
I wasn’t expecting that. Anyway, how does she know this, off the top of her head? Sovereign must manage thousands of companies, and they have 28 offices worldwide that I’ve counted. She just happens to remember this fact?
Is there anyone I could talk to in very general terms about the company?
No.
Could I talk to anyone in general terms about the offshore business?
No.
She’s not, strangely, negative about this. She just cannot help me. There’s nothing she can do for me. Headless Ltd was set up from Gibraltar, although it is incorporated here in the Bahamas. They don’t know who set it up, not that they’d tell me it they did.
You can look up its registration papers, she says. They’re public.
She tells me how to get to the Registrar General’s offices. But I am a bit surprised about the Gibraltar information, and don’t really listen. The instructions involve going down what I think is a back exit to the building, but which in fact brings me out into a sea of colonial pink directly behind Parliament Square. There are armored police vans, officers standing about, lawyers striding here and there...
I can’t find the Registrar General’s building. I mistake Shirley Street for Bay Street and try the entrance to an imposing building down across the road, on the edge of Rawson Square. Two police officers holding ridiculously long truncheons approach me more swiftly than normal, and come right up, closer than normal. I explain. Not here, he says. You know where, I ask. No, he says, as if the idea of the Bahamas having a company register is puzzling. He stays right where he is as I walk off. It turns out these are the offices of the Bahamian Prime Minister.
I walk back across the road and into Parliament Square. Why not? I expect to be stopped, but no one bothers me. It turned out there is a state funeral goin on. I am in dark trousers and white shirt. Perhaps I pass as a mourner. Whatever, I choose the main building (the Supreme Court) and go in through the main entrance. Now, I don’t want to diss the island’s security measures, but it strikes me that the Bahamas’ great and good are all here today (the funeral is of a politician, a janitor tells me later on) and the assembled bigwigs are flanked by a pretty impressive security detail. I just walked through it.
Inside the building, I wander around for a moment of two, peeking in doors, before knocking on one that is half open.
Enter! someone shouts.
I enter, and find myself facing a floor-to-ceiling bank of TV screens, the heart of Nassau’s security operation.
The guy thinks he knows where the registry is. He in fact doesn’t know. He sends me to a building just behind the square and tells me to look on the wall for a sign. There is none. however, there is a lift. I take it. Up on the first floor are lawyers’ offices. A beautiful girl at the reception desk of one office says the registry is not here, but she will take me to it. She really is beautiful.
It turns out to be a few minutes’ walk. As we walk, I tell here the places I’ve just been. She jokes that the next one might be a police cell, if I keep trying to get into the Prime Minister’s offices. She leaves me right at the door of the registry.
(continued...)
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