than just a successful Internet businessman. He was never explic- itly told why the organization required so many oceanfront prop- erties. But it wasn't hard to see that the houses were being purchased in the names of shell companies, or by people he never interacted with and wasn't sure were even real. Ostensibly the homes served as a base for employees, who could stay at them if Johan sent them to conduct some business in the country. In some cases, the employ- ees were simply parked in them, ready to be activated when needed. “I knew one Filipino who was staying in a house with a swimming pool by himself in Mombasa for like two or three years, basically doing nothing,” Klaussen said. “Getting a salary on standby. ‘Go find out this, go to the port, ask the price for a shipment for that small stupid thing.’ ” But it dawned on Klaussen that the proper- ties served a second purpose, as safe houses to which Johan him- self could escape. “You've got all these properties all over the world where you can just drop somebody 500 meters from the coast by boat,” Klaussen said. “He's under the radar, nobody is going to find him in that place. Who was going to look for him in Papua New Guinea?”

By late 2008 Lachlan McConnell's own duties expanded to in- volve a series of missions across Africa. Le Roux had launched a patchwork of logging and gold-buying operations spanning the continent, requiring a constant rotation of security teams overseen by Dave Smith. In search of raw, untraceable gold to buy locally, transport across borders, and then sell at a profit—disguising his own money in the process—Le Roux sent his personnel to procure it on the black market in cities like Accra, in Ghana, and Brazza- ville, in the Republic of the Congo. Other times he sent them deep into the jungle to buy from the source, small local mines. McCon- nell found himself working alongside a shifting cast of ex-military journeymen, hired by Smith and dispatched to lawless regions, carrying in bags of cash and transporting out crates of gold that eventually made their way to Hong Kong.