Billionaire

by Peter James

  As was normal, the Viscomte drove fast, flashing his lights and blasting slow-moving traffic out of his path with the car’s piercing air horns. As he drove, occasional important thoughts entered his mind, and he made mental notes that they must all be discussed later that evening.

  He was a tall man with a handsome, if somewhat weak, face. He had fair hair with some silver streaks, thick eyebrows that hooded his crystal-clear blue eyes, a long straight nose and an almost feminine rosebud mouth. His skin was of a texture and colouring that exuded health, well-being and wealth; it was a skin that seems only to be found on the faces of aristocrats – the genuine articles, not the self-made first generations. He had been married three times and divorced three times, and had seven children, all living with their mothers; right now he was thoroughly enjoying his fourth bachelorhood. To those who didn’t know him well, he appeared a gentle man; he was soft spoken, deliberate but delicate in his movements, and always appeared deeply and passionately interested in anyone he happened to speak to – something he had learned from carefully studying the English Royal Family. Outwardly, he was the perfect, divinely-mannered image of everything that a French Viscomte should be.

  Two hours out of Limoges and one hour past Perigueux, on the N89 Bordeaux road, the Maserati slowed down and turned sharply right into a narrow, straight, tree-lined lane. The Viscomte changed down into first, and flattened the accelerator; the car raced up the lane. At fifty-two miles per hour he changed to second, still keeping his foot flat on the floor, the tyres clenched to the grey ribbon of tarmac between the trees; at eighty he changed to third, and the car leapt over the 120 miles per hour, or, as he was interested in, the 200 kilometre mark; then he began to ease off. It always gave him a kick, hitting 200 kilometres on this straight stretch.

  Within a few hundred metres, the trees gave way to wall; a massive wall, over twenty feet high, with broken glass and barbed wire along the top. The wall continued for three kilometres without break, and the car continued at high speed. Then it began to slow down, the right turn indicator started blinking, the Viscomte gave two long blasts on his air horns, and stopped in front of a massive wrought-iron gateway with an elegant beige stone lodge beside it.

  A curtain inside the lodge parted and a pair of eyes looked out; the curtains dropped back and, after a few moments, the electrically-powered gates began to swing open. A portly man in his late fifties hurried out of the house and stood at the side of the drive, out of the way of the gates.

  The Viscomte was home. He turned in through the gateway.

  ‘Bonsoir, Monsieur Le Viscomte,’ said Henri Taflé, the gatekeeper.

  The Viscomte nodded. ‘Bonsoir, Taflé. Ça va?’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur Le Viscomte, ça va bien, merci.’

  The Viscomte gave his gatekeeper an oily smile that was reserved exclusively for introductions to heads of state, conceding points when negotiating business, and for greeting his peasants on his estate, and drove off. Three hundred metres on, around the second bend in the driveway, the chateau itself came into view.

  Chateau Lasserre is one of those French chateaux in which fairy tales are set. Although he had seen it come into view a million times as he had rounded this bend, it still rarely failed to fill him with a deep sense of satisfaction and, on more occasions than he could count, it had made many a girl throw aside any previous reservations she might have had about her date and decide, no matter what happened, no matter how she might feel about the Viscomte, that before she was driven back home she wanted to get laid, at least once, inside those simply stunning portals.

  The chateau was awe-inspiring, and it was impossible to take it all in in one look. There were walls upon walls, turrets and towers topped with castellations, heaped one upon the other in a mixture of shimmering white stone and marble. The chateau was encircled by a deep moat; to the rear was a vast lake and, at the front, a drawbridge, complete with portcullis.

  The estate was vast even by French standards, covering over seventeen thousand acres of land. Of these, a mere fifty-five were given over to the growing of grapes from which came the annual 38,000 bottles of one of France’s least inspired clarets. The rest was lush parkland for hunting, the village of Lasserre, a massive pig and sheep farm, and the Lasserre racing stables and stud farm.

  Two hundred metres to the far side of the lake, well clear of the chateau and of any trees, was an 800 metre grass landing strip, complete with full landing lights on both sides. On a course that would take them directly down onto the eastern-most point of this landing strip in thirty-five minutes time were, at a height of 19,000 feet, Sir Monty Elleck and his pilot, in the Globalex Mitsubishi Solitaire twin-prop plane.

  Also heading for the chateau was Jimmy Culundis; he was walking down the gangway of his private DC-8 at Bordeaux airport. It had had to land there, as it was too big for private airstrips, even the mighty one in the Viscomte’s back garden. Culundis walked to the terminal building to complete customs formalities before completing his journey in the chauffeur driven Citroen Pallas the Viscomte had sent.

  Lasserre greeted Nicole Varasay, his current residential playmate, with a peck on both cheeks; she was wearing a slip, and seated at the dressing table in his vast bedroom, putting on her make-up. Her long dark hair tumbled around her white shoulders, and the Viscomte slid his hands inside her bra and caressed her breasts.

  ‘Who is the Englishman who is coming tonight, chéri?’ she asked.

  ‘He is someone very important. I want you to be specially nice to him.’ He whispered into her ear, and she giggled a long wicked giggle.

  Lasserre dressed for dinner, taking care to keep his backside well out of Nicole’s sight. She was still putting on her make-up as he pulled on his dark green smoking jacket. ‘I have some work I must do for a few minutes in my study; I will see you when you are ready, downstairs.’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she said.

  ‘Try not to be, it would be nice for you to be down when they arrive.’

  ‘Two minutes,’ she said, tossing her hair back away from her face.

  The Viscomte walked down the carpet that ran along the centre of the stone floor of the long corridor. There were lights at intervals down the corridor, and each light that he passed threw a long shadow of himself in front of him. These weren’t the only shadows, he reflected, sadly. There was, right now, a shadow cast over the whole of Chateau Lasserre, the whole estate. The shadow was called François Mitterand. Mitterand had decided that Viscomte Lasserre had too damned much money and too damned much land, and he was going to do something about it. It was nothing personal against Lasserre; the two had never met, and it wasn’t only Lasserre; it was many Frenchmen, both noble and nouveau riche, all with the one thing in common: wealth. Since his election to office, the French President had set about doing one of the things he had put in his election manifesto: soaking the rich. He was doing it well, too damned well, thought Lasserre, as he descended the massive staircase. Viscomte Lasserre right now was badly in need of money; the land tax Mitterand had imposed was crippling him. Before that, the estate ran at a small profit. From the wine and the farming, the costs of the racing stables, the parkland and the chateau itself were met. Sure, he owned the massive Lasserre group of companies – the munitions and aircraft industry – but now there were punitive taxes on the proceeds of sales of shares; it was not a good time to sell and, besides, how long could he keep the estate going by selling shares before the shares began to run out? Several years, without doubt, but he was a businessman. His interest was in making money, adding to his pile, not diminishing it. No; he needed additional income, a lot of it, and preferably well out of the clutches of Mitterand and his tax collectors. He was close to getting it. After tonight’s meeting, he hoped he would be closer still; closer possibly to being the richest man in France.

  14

  ‘That must be it down there, Sir Monty,’ shouted out Elleck’s private pilot, Ex-RAF Wing Commander Hopkins. Elleck looked up from his De
Beers Gold Report; lounging back in the large seat in the centre of the plane, it was difficult for him to see out in any direction without stretching himself, and right now he needed all the relaxation he could get, for he had a feeling it was going to be a long and taxing night.

  ‘Good man,’ he said, trusting to his pilot’s judgement to put them down on Lasserre’s runway and not the middle of a housing estate.

  Elleck liked his trips alone; he was fond of Laura, his wife, but her presence always seemed to restrict him, to remind him of his age, to prevent him thinking at times as lucidly as he needed to. Without her, when he travelled, he always felt a spirit of adventure. He never thought about the reasons too hard; he just supposed it was that when she wasn’t there and the opportunities came up to get laid, he could take them – not that they did come up that often, and not nearly as often as he would have liked. He turned his mind to Viscomte Lasserre. He was wondering why it was that the Viscomte, one of his oldest and best clients, had invited him to dinner.

  As the plane began its landing descent, he started checking his clothes. His patent leather shoes still looked spotless, and his trousers looked fine. He tightened his bow tie. He had dressed for dinner before he had left the office in London. Chateau Lasserre was 400 miles from London; in this plane, with its cruising speed of 315 knots, including the stop at Le Havre to clear French customs and immigration, it had taken them less than an hour and a half to get here.

  The flight was the first opportunity he had had to think clearly at all during this particular Monday, which had been the most hectic he could ever remember. The whole world was bailing out of coffee and the coffee market, at around midday, had completely collapsed. On Friday, at the close of trading for the week, three-month coffee futures stood at £1,004 a ton. By mid-afternoon today, you couldn’t give it away. It was listed at a shade over £500 a ton, but there weren’t many takers even at that price.

  Elleck was busy doing mathematics in his head. Millions of pounds had been wiped off the net wealth of Globalex’s clientele, which meant they would have less money to invest in the future and therefore there would be less trading and less commissions for Globalex. The crash of coffee had produced nervousness in other soft commodities – sugar, cocoa and almost all the others had dropped sharply. Business in some metals had picked up a bit as a result, as some investors turned to them for security, but mostly the investors were liquidating their positions to cover their coffee margin calls.

  Elleck turned his mind to the people who would be the hardest hit: the small investors, the private punters, heavily exposed on their margins. Coffee had closed on Friday night at £1,004; it had begun trading on Monday morning at £400, a drop of £604, before rising slightly and levelling out at just over £500. People who had bought on margin at around about the thousand mark – where coffee had been for some time – would have about £100 invested for every ton. With a drop of £500 in the price, it meant that when the time came for them to pay the balance of the £1,000 purchase price, they would have paid out £1,000 for coffee that they could sell for only £500 – and they would therefore have lost £500 for each ton. In common with other commodity broking firms, Elleck could not let Globalex be on the hook for this difference; so when a commodity dropped substantially in price, the investors in that commodity were required to increase their margin to cover the position. It was known as a ‘margin call.’

  The first job Elleck had done this morning was to check the margin positions of all Globalex’s clients. He had noticed, to his surprise, that Alex Rocq held over 1,000 tons on margin. Even at ten per cent of the price, that was a lot of money he had invested – over £100,000. Elleck did not like his employees playing the markets, and particularly not through their own firm; if they wanted to invest, they were supposed to go elsewhere, although that rule was not strictly enforced. One hundred thousand pounds was a lot of money for a fellow of Rocq’s age to have invested, and £1 million was an incredible amount to be on the hook for in just one commodity. Elleck had a feeling, just from looking at the figures, that Rocq was playing with fire.

  Thirty seconds on the intercom to the accounts departments told Elleck the name and branch of Rocq’s personal bank. Two minutes later, he was talking on the telephone to one of the directors of the bank, in his office in Cannon Street. Eight minutes later the director called him back: Rocq was hocked to the eyeballs for £102,000. Elleck thanked him, assured him he’d be the first person to receive the next hot tip he came across, and hung up. Rocq now owned only £500,000 worth of coffee, but he was contracted to buying £1,042,000 worth. Rocq would shortly be receiving a margin demand for another £400,000, and that was if coffee didn’t drop any more.

  Elleck pinched his nostrils together and blew hard; his ears always popped in aeroplanes. They bumped through a series of air pockets and he heard the engines change pitch a couple of times, as Hopkins lined them up for the landing approach. He’d looked at Rocq’s position at midday; by the close of play, coffee had dropped to £420 a ton; that meant Rocq’s margin call by the end of the day would have stood at about £480,000. For a man hocked to the eyeballs, that was a lot of long green ones to stump up in a hurry; it was a lot of long green ones to stump up at all. Elleck smiled to himself.

  The first thing that had happened this morning was that all the smart boys in coffee had tried to go short. It was the rush to sell short that had contributed to coffee’s rapid decline to its £420 figure. But Elleck knew from experience that the situation would change. During the next few days the World Health Organization would clarify their views, doctors for and against would be on every news show, talk show and documentary for the next fortnight, and the newspapers would be stuffed full of arguments. Slowly, a general opinion would emerge: as bad as was feared, not so bad, or worse. Whichever way it shifted, coffee, which had overnight become the most volatile substance in the world, would shift too – in leaps and bounds. Fortunes had been lost on coffee; but Elleck knew full well that during the weeks to come, equally great, if not greater, fortunes would be made on the stuff by those that had the money to stay in the game.

  As soon as Elleck had got his information on Rocq, he had summoned the Honourable James Rice up to his office.

  ‘I presume Alex Rocq has spoken to you about his coffee position?’ Rice hesitated, wondering whether his boss might be trying to trap him into something. ‘What do you mean, Sir Monty?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, James, you must know what I mean. Rocq bought £1 million worth of coffee through you last Monday. Surely it hasn’t failed to escape your attention that there have been one or two adverse articles about this particular substance in the newspapers during the past twenty-four hours?’

  Rice felt faintly silly; he was friendly with Rocq, but not so friendly that he was prepared to draw the wrath of his boss to defend him. ‘Well, he’s concerned, Sir Monty – very concerned, I’d say.’

  ‘What’s he doing about it?’

  ‘Trying to go short.’

  ‘Along with the rest of the world?’

  Rice shook his head. ‘No. Most people seem to be giving up and sitting tight; there are no buyers for the stuff at any price – haven’t been any since about eleven o’clock. Hasn’t been a short market at all today – those that did get out either went into cash or other commodities. A lot of people did go short very early, but they pushed the price down so rapidly that even the wide-boys got nervous.’

  ‘Did Rocq go short?’

  ‘No – he hasn’t yet – I think he’ll wait a day or two – that’s what I’ve advised him. You know what these medical scares can be like – doctors seem to change their minds on things every few months. Cholesterol used to be bad for you; then they discovered not enough cholesterol is worse than too much. I’m not saying it’ll be the same here, but who knows.’

  Elleck nodded in agreement. ‘I trust Rocq will get his margin call today – along with everyone else?’

  ‘It’s on the computer – alon
g with everyone else’s,’ nodded Rice.

  ‘Has he said anything about it?’

  ‘Well – he won’t receive it for probably another hour, Sir Monty.’

  ‘No, I know he won’t have received it yet – but he must know he’s going to. He hasn’t said anything at all?’

  ‘Well,’ again Rice hesitated, ‘he wants me to have lunch with him – tomorrow.’

  ‘And if he brings up the business of the margin then?’

  ‘Rules are rules – I can’t do anything about them, can I, Sir Monty?’

  ‘I’m pleased with your work for this company, James. You have a good future here, a very good future indeed.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Monty.’

  ‘I would offer you a cup of – er coffee – but I imagine you probably have more than you need right now anyway.’

  Rice grinned and Elleck stood up. ‘Thank you for coming up to see me, James – and – er, by the way – if young Alex does mention this margin business to you – I’d – er, I’d be very grateful if you would let me know.’

  ‘Do you think he will, sir?’

  ‘Four hundred and eighty thousand pounds is a lot of money,’ said Elleck.’

  ‘I’ll let you know, Sir Monty.’

  ‘Thank you, James.’

  The wheels of the Mitsubishi bumped down onto the grass, lifted up, and then settled down; the plane roared as the pilot reversed the engines. Elleck smiled to himself. He had Rocq by the balls, and he had a feeling that to have a person of Rocq’s calibre, and in Rocq’s position, by the balls was, right now, not at all a bad thing.