bersome old laptop, outfitted with decade-old Microsoft software that he had used his programming skills to fully secure.) But many of his employees struggled to understand and implement the secu- rity measures. “I cannot open this thing!” Klaussen recalled an exasperated Le Roux responding to employees’ improperly en- rypted emails. “I cannot see what you’re writing. What the hell did you do?”

Lachlan McConnell, the Canadian who moved Le Roux’s gold in Hong Kong, learned to take whatever orders came and not ask too many questions. Company missions often began with an email from Le Roux’s second in command, Dave Smith, conveying only a set of geographical coordinates: Arrive at point X within 48 hours and await further information. McConnell recalled once being ordered to Subic Bay to meet up with a British boat captain named Bruce Jones, who regularly piloted Le Roux’s yachts back and forth to Hong Kong. Captain Bruce, as he was known around Subic Bay’s raunchy bars, was a tanned, long-haired former ferry captain from Bristol. Le Roux had recently purchased a Chinese fishing boat, called the Mou Man Tai, and modified it into a low- rent yacht, its high bow built to travel the difficult waters of the South China Sea. McConnell’s task, he found out upon arriving, involved accompanying Jones and his wife on a maiden sail to ensure the boat was seaworthy. On the route south to Indonesia, a storm blew in. “We lost both lifeboats, developed a hole in the boat, and almost sank,” McConnell said. Jones managed to ma- neuver the damaged boat to the closest coastline, only to be greeted by a group of men with guns, demanding to know why they’d landed in an unauthorized area. They talked their way out of trou- ble, and the boat was repaired and returned to Le Roux’s rotation, leaving McConnell with another you-had-to-be-there tale of work- ing for The Company. “Considering I thought it was legitimate, it was fun,” McConnell said. “When he told me to do something, I did it.”

In Le Roux’s employ, though, “legitimate” work quickly be- came an elastic concept. It wasn’t difficult to see that an organiza-