Billionaire

by Peter James

  ‘I felt it was the right thing to do.’

  The eyebrows sank down and rested on the bridge of his nose. Elleck was becoming less polite by the word. ‘You lost six of the biggest clients this firm ever had a ten dollar rise in gold, because you felt it was the right thing to do? And now you expect me to listen to your advice? You just get back down there, Alex Rocq, and at half past four, you start selling; any gold you have left in any client account by five o’clock, I am treating as your personal property and I am going to invoice you for it. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear,’ said Rocq.

  The chairman looked down at his desk, turned over some papers, nodded his head twice, and dismissed Rocq with a wave of his hand.

  As Rocq walked down the corridor, he smarted with anger, although he knew that in view of what had happened, he had actually got off extremely lightly. He had been convinced that gold would continue to rise and would go several more dollars; he wondered why Elleck was so sure it would not, and why he was so insistent on the times. He was no prophet, thought Rocq, so what did he know? He was very interested to see what would happen to the price. Very interested indeed.

  At exactly four-thirty, Daniel Baenhaker’s heart stopped beating. The surgeon at the operating table in Theatre 1 at the West Middlesex Hospital injected the heart with adrenalin; it beat again, for thirty seconds, and once more stopped. The surgeon, Harvey Johnstone-Keynes, shook his head, and looked at the clock on the wall; he was going to the theatre with his wife tonight, to see an Alan Ayckbourn play; she was mad as hell with him at the moment because, on the last two occasions when they had arranged to go, he had had to cancel out because of urgent operations. There was a danger of the same thing happening again now. If the man did die, it would solve an awful lot of problems, and with the condition he was in, the chances were, that even if he spent the next five hours operating, it would still be a waste of time; the guy had lost so much blood, he had absolutely no resistance left in him. Johnstone Keynes wanted to pull off his gloves, and say ‘That’s it.’ But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. ‘Calcium’ he said, instead, and began injecting the heart again.

  Within thirty seconds, Baenhaker’s heart was beating rhythmically once more.

  By five o’clock that afternoon, the only gold that Alex Rocq’s clients possessed was what they had stashed away under their beds and in their teeth. They no longer had any on paper at Globalex. Some, particularly Joel Simes of Country and Provincial, disagreed strongly with Rocq’s advice to sell, and the Baron was among the most vociferous. ‘You just want to unload, and go off home early to start humping again,’ he yelled down the phone.

  ‘Relax, Harry; I’ve had a word with our soft commodities department: we’re putting you deep into latex.’

  By 5.15 the price of gold had not moved for an hour and ten minutes. At 5.25, it dropped one dollar. It fell another two dollars at 5.35. Rocq stayed glued to his Reuter-System screen. The London market had closed, but, if he wanted to, he could have watched prices move all night. New York, five hours behind London, was in full swing. When New York closed, Chicago, which was an hour behind New York, would still be open; when that closed, it would be morning in Hong Kong, and that would be opening. When that closed, it would be morning in England, and London would be opening.

  Rocq did not stay through the night, but left the office at 7.30 that evening; by the time he got up from his desk, the price of gold had dropped twelve dollars.

  It was raining as he eased the Porsche out of the meter bay, and down Mincing Lane, and he drove slowly, thinking hard. Elleck had not given him advice, he had given him instructions, and he had been pretty damned sure of himself. Elleck was Jewish; he gave a lot of money to Israel. Maybe someone was paying him back a small favour; it was possible. But he was puzzled. If Elleck had inside information, he would have known the raid was going to happen, so he would have known when to buy – but how could he have known when to sell? What kind of information could Elleck have obtained that made him know when to sell? Something was making the price of gold drop, and drop hard. There was one thing that was always certain to make it drop, and that was massive selling: but it would have taken far more selling than he had been doing for his clients – even though he had sold a substantial amount, it could not on its own have had any significant effect on the market. There were a lot more sellers besides himself – there had to be – but how did Elleck know? Was it merely a hunch, the result of years of experience, of reading the signals, or was there a lot more to it than he knew? He had the certain feeling that whatever it was, it was not merely Sir Monty Elleck’s hunch.

  Rocq switched on the stereo, and punched in the old Elton John tape. The music took him back to the seventies, and he began to feel nostalgic, and a little sad. He thought about his twenty-first birthday: a lot had happened in the decade since then. He’d married Pauline, buried his parents, almost gone bankrupt, divorced Pauline. Memories of his parents came flooding back to him, and he felt sad, as he always did when he thought about them. His father, Anton Rocquinitiskichieov who had struggled through his life with two massive handicaps – one being his name, the other his lack of money. His father was Polish and had come to England in 1938 to flee Hitler, and had met and married Rocq’s mother, an English nurse, in 1940. She was not a strong woman and it was over a decade, and many miscarriages, later that Alex Rocquinitiskichieov was born. When he was fifteen, his mother contracted a rare kidney disease. To remain alive, she needed to be kept on a kidney machine. The hospital in South London, where they lived, did not have enough money for a kidney machine; nor did her husband. Alex, although in the midst of preparing for exams, did a newspaper round before school in the morning, and then worked a night shift, six days a week, in a glucose factory after school finished in the evening. His father, a tailor, also worked around the clock. Three weeks before they had saved up the fifteen per cent deposit the hire purchase company wanted for the machine, his mother died.

  Four years later, his father, then aged sixty-two, suffered a series of heart attacks. The doctors told Alex that his father’s heart arteries were damaged beyond repair; he needed a major operation in which healthy arteries would be grafted from his legs onto his heart arteries. If the operation succeeded, he would be able to return to a normal existence; without the operation he had only months, at the most, to live. Because of long waiting lists, the operation could not be performed on anyone over the age of sixty, on the National Health. If his father was to have the operation, he would have to have it privately. The estimated cost was £7,000.

  Rocq and his father simply did not have that amount of money. His father had always rented his premises and the flat above, where they lived, and had never been able to amass any money. Although now working as a runner on the London Stock Exchange, Rocq again took an evening job, this time, in a bottling factory. He worked a night shift during the week, and a double shift during the weekends. Before he had even the first five hundred pounds saved up, his father had another heart attack, and within three days had died.

  Rocq remembered as he had watched his father’s coffin slowly lowered into the ground; he remembered the sadness and the bitterness that he had felt. The only two people he had ever loved in the world, the only family he had ever had were dead because there had been no money to save them. He stood and he made a vow: never again, as long as he lived, would he allow himself to be in a position whereby he could not afford the money to save the life of someone he loved.

  He knew he had made the right decision going into stockbroking, but he equally knew that if he was to get anywhere in that field, he was going to have to plan carefully the way he could get to climb each rung. The first thing that he did was drop fifteen letters from his name. Although he felt sad in some ways to be severing what he now felt was his only link with his past, at the same time, he felt as though he had suddenly been cut free from a pair of handcuffs. When, to his surprise, and pleasure, his workmates stopped referring t
o him as ‘the Polack’ and began referring to him as ‘Alex Rocq’ he knew that although he had by no means arrived, he was, at last, on his way.

  Memories of the afternoon’s hectic activity came flooding back to him, interrupting his thoughts. He tried to ignore them, but they were persistent; his work was never far from his mind, as it never is with any metal broker. With violent fluctuations liable to happen at any moment of the twenty-four hour day, they can never completely switch off. Most of them quit broking and move into management before they reach forty; either that or into the intensive care unit of the nearest cardiac department. There was no such thing as an unscheduled morning off – everything needed to be planned and catered for. He’d gambled this morning, and lost; but, he decided, Amanda was an exceptional bird, and worth all the stick he’d received in the office. It had been a good weekend, a damned good weekend staying with his friends in Berkshire, and it was the first time since he had started going out with her that Amanda had actually gone a whole two days without mentioning that damned name, Baenhaker.

  What the hell she had seen in him, he did not know. It certainly wasn’t in his pock-marked face – not that he had ever met Baenhaker, nor seen his photograph – he just imagined him as having a pock-marked face. ‘A nasty little piece of work,’ was how Rocq had summed him up.

  ‘You’re just saying that because you’re jealous of him,’ she said.

  ‘Nasty little Commie,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a bit left, but hardly a Communist.’

  ‘Well, I think insurance assessors are a very strange breed of people.’

  ‘I doubt that he thinks too highly of metal brokers. Come on, Alex, let’s not talk about him; you’ve won, haven’t you? Why be bitter about him? He didn’t try and take me away from you – I’d been going out with him seven months before I met you. What have you got to gripe about? He’s the one that’s doing the griping – and I can assure you, he is griping.’

  ‘Does he know who I am?’

  ‘No, he most certainly doesn’t, and I’m going to make sure he doesn’t find out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s very strange. He has an almost vicious streak in him – I don’t know how to describe it, quite – it’s weird.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ she smiled.

  ‘I’m not worried,’ he said.

  Rocq remembered that conversation now. He stopped the Porsche at the red traffic lights at Westminster Bridge. On his left was a young man, about his age, in a shiny Mazda sports car. He was dressed flashily, and obviously thought highly of himself and his motor car, judging by the amount of bolt-on goodies attached to himself and to his vehicle. Rocq could see him out of the corner of his eye, attempting to study the Porsche and its occupant without giving any impression of envy. On Rocq’s right was a massive white Rolls Royce, with smoked-glass windows and a vast television aerial on the roof. It made him think of Elleck, and the vast empire he owned. Rocq was thirty-one now; he had, at the very most, another ten years of broking before he moved into management, and there was no opportunity to earn commission in management. For most brokers, management was a welcome release from the tension of broking – as well as paying better – but for Rocq it was different. His broking commission was far higher than he could ever earn in management.

  He thought hard; it was something that was troubling him more and more just recently. For the past three years he had been lucky and done extremely well. He had paid good deposits on the flat in Redcliffe Square, the cottage in Clayton and the Porsche, but they all cost a lot of money; he had two mortgages plus the H.P. on the car and, in addition to that, the alimony to Pauline. He needed every penny of his income just to stay afloat, and he didn’t just want to stay afloat. He wanted to be rich, like Elleck, and he knew there was a gap that would take a bridge bigger than the Golden Gate of San Francisco to span between the likes of Sir Monty Elleck and himself, and if he was going to do something about spanning that gap, then he was going to have to get on with it and start now.

  He took Amanda out to dinner to the Grenouille, and spent forty-five pounds on a bottle of 1957 Pouget. The wine smelt of stale tea, tasted of old dusters, and they both decided it was delicious and got very drunk on it.

  He drove her to Tramp, and ordered a bottle of Krug and fresh orange juice. They sat back in the leather bench, in the far corner of the room, under the chandeliers and the soft lighting and the opulence, watching lazily as a particularly frenetic dance took place, and he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her. ‘Happy?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘And you?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Are you really?’ she quizzed.

  ‘Can’t hear you!’ The noise of the music made conversation, even at close quarters, a shouting match.

  ‘I said, are you really?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  She looked at him. ‘What do you want most in life, Alex?’

  ‘Next to you, do you mean?’

  She grinned, and nodded happily. ‘Do you want to be a millionaire?’

  He was silent, for a long while, thinking. ‘No,’ he said, finally. ‘I don’t want to be a millionaire: I want to be a billionaire.’

  She paused, reflecting; ‘You know, it’s funny,’ she said. ‘I really am not interested in money.’

  ‘You would be if you didn’t have any.’

  She stubbed out her John Player Special. ‘Shall we make tracks?’

  At four o’clock in the morning, a cheese-knife sliced through Rocq’s head; a few seconds later, it plunged through again. He opened his eyes and closed them; the alarm clock was ringing, and so was his front door bell. The cheese-knife sliced through his head once more. He put his hand out to switch off his alarm clock; a glass of water on his bedside table fell over, rolled off the edge, and fell onto the carpet.

  ‘Blast!’

  There was a dull clank and a tin of Mazola cooking oil began disgorging its contents onto the already sodden objects on the table top.

  ‘Shit!’

  The candle, which had still been burning, fell over, pouring hot wax over his hand. He fumbled further for the alarm clock, and then he remembered that he did not have an alarm clock. The bell persisted. His hand came to rest on a large plastic object; it clattered and fell into the rest of the mess with a thump; the bell stopped.

  ‘Telephone!’

  He fumbled for the object he had just dropped, grasped it with some difficulty in his slippery fingers, and brought it to the side of his head.

  ‘Hallo?’ he mumbled, feebly.

  ‘Rocky! How are yah?’ The voice boomed down the telephone, like thunder.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Rocq knew full well who it was; it was easier to ask the question than to return the enthusiasm.

  ‘Theo! I’m in New York, and I’m with a gorgeous girl who wants to meet you. She’s gonna say hallo!’

  The voice of a very drunk girl with a strong Californian accent, came down the phone: ‘Hi, Rocky, how are you?’

  ‘Fine, just fine,’ groaned Rocq.

  ‘Theo told me all about you; I feel like I’m talking to an old friend.’

  ‘Then do an old friend a favour, sweetheart, and let him get some sleep.’

  ‘Okay, Rocky, it’s been beautiful talking to you; you sound like a beautiful guy. Next time Theo comes over here, I’ll make sure he brings you with him. Nighty night!’

  ‘Grnight.’

  ‘It’s me, Theo, back now,’ boomed the thick Italian accent.

  ‘Did you say you’re in New York?’ Rocq mumbled to the Italian commodity broker and Globalex’s largest Italian client, not only in money, but also in girth; Theo Barbiero-Ruche was a good pair of cement shoes the wrong side of twenty stone. Barbiero-Ruche used Globalex for some of the many transactions he did not want the Italian Revenue to know about.

  ‘Got a horse running at Sandown, Thursday, thought I might come over.’

  ‘Nice of yo
u to call me, you fucking fat wop. Do you know what time it is here?’

  ‘Do I know what is what? I can’t hear you too good.’

  Amanda stirred and grunted.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Rocq. ‘Why don’t you stay the weekend – bring your friend.’

  ‘Okay! I bring her husband too!’ the Italian roared with laughter down the phone.

  ‘Thanks for calling, fat man. Call me when you get to England.’

  ‘Okay, Rocky. Hey? What you doing this evening? Going out with some broads?’

  ‘I’ve already had this evening – several hours ago.’

  ‘Ciao, Rocky.’

  ‘Bye, fat man.’

  Rocq tried to hang up the phone, and missed. The receiver clattered to the floor; as he lunged after it, the entire telephone fell off the table.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Bloody Italian client; been travelling the world for the last fifteen years and still hasn’t figured out the time zones yet.’

  Amanda went straight back to sleep. The cheese-knife sliced through Rocq’s head once more; he lay there, wondering how long he could prolong getting up and going to the bathroom in search of some Paracetamol. He felt very wide awake, now. Elleck and the events of the afternoon came back into his mind. He thought about Elleck, in his palatial office, and thought about the wealth of the Elleck family, and he tried to compare it with his own wealth. The Ellecks had a house on the St John’s Wood side of Little Venice, overlooking the canal; they had a mansion and a couple of thousand acres of land near Stroud, in Gloucestershire. Their villa on the Costa Smeralda was permanently staffed, as were their Miami duplex and their Gstaad chalet, and these were just their private residences. There were, in addition, sumptuous and permanently staffed company apartments in Park Avenue in New York, in Chicago, in Hong Kong and in Zurich, as well as one hundred and thirty feet of company yacht. These small company perks were used by one employee only: Sir Monty Elleck. For transport, Elleck had a Mitsubishi Solitaire twin-engined plane, an Elvstrom helicopter, a bronze Rolls Royce Silver Spirit, a burgundy Mercedes 500 SEL, plus a fleet of lesser vehicles for purposes ranging from driving up the unmade tracks around his estate to negotiating parking meters outside Harrods.