Brink often cleverly referenced Deak, knowing that such authority would not be questioned and therefore making it nearly impossible to say no.Īs with Compass Travel in Hong Kong, over in Guam we had the perfect cover: our subsidiary, Horizon Travel. “Mr Deak and I want you to make some trips for us, flying from Guam,” he said. New blood was badly needed, and that new blood was mine. “Yes, of course, all the time … but never to Japan.” Tony Pong, the counter boys and all the staff at Compass Travel in Hong Kong had been to Japan too many times and we were attracting too much attention, Brink explained. That was the equivalent of several hundred thousand US dollars. “Each bag can comfortably hold millions of Japanese yen in ten-thousand denominated banknotes,” he proclaimed with extraordinary glee.
#JAPANESE WORD OF THE DAY HOW TO#
“How much cash can you put in them?”īrink smiled and proceeded to show me how to open the rivets on the bottom of the bag, then slide out a specially-made compartment lined with black cloth. Naturally, this was yet another of Brink’s unorthodox schemes to move money. I just want you to take the golf clubs from Guam to Tokyo from time to time.” “To be clear, I don’t want you to play golf. To my surprise, I saw before me a dozen or so very nice-looking golf bags. “Do you play golf?” He took me aside and opened a closet door. The following day, back in the Hong Kong office, Brink approached me with an unusual question. “How would you like to come to Hong Kong for a couple of days?” “Bruce,” he said in his usual charming manner. Tell him I need a good rate or we’ll sell it to Bank of America” – our competitor.Ī split second later, the calm voice of Brink came on. And, by the way, ask him the rate for pesos today in Manila and what the hell to do with the 50 million yen we bought over the weekend.
Would you please get back to him and see what the hell he wants. Tony Evans had gotten to the Guam office ahead of me and he startled me as I walked in.“Bruce, where have you been? Brink in Hong Kong has been calling every five minutes. While we worked on Guam, New York slept – and so our daily communications were with Hong Kong, not New York.
The morning heat was getting to me: I wished I were in Hong Kong, which tends to be mild and dry at that time of year. It was a hot and steamy morning in January 1973, and I was about an hour late arriving at work. I felt so isolated there, although over time I began to relish the feeling and grew to like the place. Guam was not my favorite place in the beginning. Dirk Brink was on the case to find him one. He urgently needed yen in Japan, and he needed a warm body to deliver it. Nicholas Deak, chairman of Deak & Co, in 1975. Things were afoot in Deak’s world of Japanese yen pickups and payments - and the “special assignment” earlier alluded to by Nicholas Deak in New York was about to come to fruition. It was not long after I had arrived back in Guam - where I’d gone to cover for the manager, Tony Evans, who was about to take annual leave - that the telex in the Deak & Company office there started tapping out messages in the middle of the night.
Among possible career moves, it’s limited by the fact that what the author was doing – as he himself is at pains to note – was illegal and could well have gotten him into a great deal more trouble than turned out to be the case. Just a word of caution to any readers who envy Aitken his previous life of adventure: Don’t try this at home. It turns out that everything written here jibes with what I’d known about the 1970s and ’80s Lockheed episode in Japan-US history, and I’ve learned a good deal more from reading it.
Clean because I knew something about the subject matter. Editor’s brief review: I chose this chapter out of more than 30 chapters included in Bruce Aitken’s newly published book Mr.
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