Billionaire

by Peter James

  He buzzed on the intercom to the investment manager, Gary Volendam, to ask him to come down.

  One hour and a quarter later, Baenhaker was standing in Austin Reed’s, in a lightweight navy double-breasted suit that could have been made to measure for him. He added a white shirt, conservative blue-and-white polka dot tie and black slip-on loafers with small gold chains across the insteps. He left, feeling decidedly New York preppie.

  For some minutes, as he walked, he looked decidedly strange, for every other step, he scraped either the sole or the side of one shoe or the other along the pavement. He was in fact trying to scuff them so that by the time he arrived at Globalex they wouldn’t look too new.

  He arrived at the front door of 88 Mincing Lane at exactly eleven o’clock. ‘Good morning, Sir, may I help you?’

  The burly figure of Sergeant Major Bantry, in his full Globalex dress regalia, blocked Baenhaker’s path.

  ‘I have an appointment with the metals section of Globalex at eleven o’clock,’ said Baenhaker.

  Bantry ran his eyes, like stiff pointed fingers, down the full length of Baenhaker’s body; they stopped on his shoes. ‘Can’t be much,’ thought Bantry to himself, ‘if he can’t even afford a tin of shoe polish. ‘Very good, Sir,’ he said, standing aside. ‘Nice day, could be rain later.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Baenhaker, ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Reception is straight down there, Sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Baenhaker, entering the building.

  22

  ‘I got it, I got it, I got it!’ Gary Slivitz yelled out excitedly.

  ‘For chrissake, shut up,’ said Rocq, ‘I’ve got the most blistering hangover, and I’m fed up hearing you shout every five minutes “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.”’

  ‘Well, I have this time – look – look!’ He excitedly held the Rubik’s cube under Rocq’s nose. The whites were all together on one face, the greens all together on another face. He turned it over to show Rocq the oranges were all together, as were the yellows. But then Slivitz noticed there was one red cube in the blue section, and one blue one in the red section. ‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

  ‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’ said Rocq.

  ‘Look, Rocky – did you ever see it so close?’

  ‘Slivitz, why don’t you get yourself up to date? Rubik’s cubes went out with the ark.’

  ‘All I’ve got to do is this – look – like this!’ Slivitz twirled the cube excitedly in his hand; there was a sudden sharp snap and the cube fell apart, showering multi-coloured blocks across his desk and onto the floor. ‘Oh, shit!’ he shouted, at the top of his voice, ‘Oh, shit!’

  Rocq’s intercom buzzed. ‘Yes?’

  It was the receptionist: ‘Your eleven o’clock appointment is here. Will you see him in an interview room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Room 4 is free.’

  ‘Okay – I’ll be right out.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve got another big one,’ he said, rubbing it into Slivitz’s misery as he scrabbled underneath his chair to pick up the pieces.

  ‘It’s probably some one-legged old bat who’s just won five hundred quid on the Bingo, and wants you to make her fortune for her.’

  ‘No, Slivitz – those are all reserved for you.’

  Rocq walked out of the office. There was a rotation system among the brokers for handling new accounts: if a new client did not specify the broker he or she required, then it went around in turn. Rocq had tipped the balance more than slightly in his favour, by tipping the receptionist with some delicate trinket from Asprey’s or Garrard’s for each decent account he landed. If she ever passed him one-legged widows, it was only because they were very, very rich.

  He walked through into the fourth-floor reception, with his standard smile firmly on his face, and marched straight up to Baenhaker, briefly studied his pock-marked face, thin dark hair, smart blue suit with dandruff on the shoulders, garish tie and scuffed shoes. He noticed a scar above Baenhaker’s right eye. He summed him up right away as someone who thought he was a whizz-kid, but probably didn’t have the authority in his company to go to the bathroom without permission.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Bernstein. I’m Alex Rocq.’

  ‘How do you do, Mr Rocq.’

  ‘Come this way.’

  Rocq led him into a small, functional office, overlooking Mincing Lane. Vertical blinds kept out the brightest of the June sun’s rays, and the air-conditioning kept out the heat. In spite of his hangover, Rocq was feeling tired, but very happy. He’d called Motortune at nine that morning, and discovered they had a 911 Turbo Porsche almost identical to his previous one, in stock as a result of a cancelled order. The banker’s draft from Globalex was in his wallet and he was going to collect the car at lunchtime. He had got up early, and before leaving home had put telephone calls through to Milan, to Theo Barbiero-Ruche, to Umm Al Amnah, to Sheik Missh, and to several other members of his ‘A’ team.

  The interview room was designed to make clients feel at ease. At one end was a pair of two-seat chesterfields, facing each other, where they could sit and talk relaxedly. At the other end was a flat mahogany table, with two pairs of reproduction Queen Anne dining chairs facing each other. The idea was that business should be negotiated over the table, then sealed over a drink in the chesterfields.

  They sat at the table. ‘How can we be of help to you?’ asked Rocq.

  ‘We want to expand our investment portfolio in this country. So far we are only in blue chips. We feel now it is time to – er – play with a little racing money. We are looking for a firm with whom we can work, and one we can trust. We are a Jewish firm, so are you. We are interested in metals – you are among the leading metal brokers. It is natural to start here.’

  Rocq nodded.

  ‘We require, first, a great deal of information about your company. We are very choosey about whom we do business with – although we are sure your credentials will be in order.’ Baenhaker managed a weak smile.

  ‘I am sure you will find so,’ said Rocq. ‘May I first ask you the size of the investment you are intending?’

  ‘We have approximately £40 million sterling allocated for this at the present time. I trust that will be sufficient to open an account?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rocq, after a short pause for air. ‘Quite sufficient.’ Normally, the cash register in his brain would have begun totting up his potential earnings from commissions from an account of such a size. But there was something about this man, Bernstein, that didn’t quite add up to Rocq. Rocq was no stranger to people discussing sums of money the size of telephone numbers, and he had long since been able to determine when someone was genuine and when someone, as he put it, was bullshitting. He was already convinced that the man across the table was a time-wasting bullshitter; but he had no option but to hear him out.

  ‘The first thing that I would need from you is a full client list.’

  ‘That is quite impossible – we never divulge our clients.’

  Baenhaker stared across the table at Rocq. Rocq was in a double-breasted Lanvin blazer, a blue-striped shirt with white collar, plain navy silk tie, elegant grey trousers, and polished black loafers with the much-copied green-and-red Gucci colour-band across the instep. Baenhaker wasn’t an expert on Gucci shoes, but he knew these were not a copy. When he had stepped out of Austin Reed’s this morning, Rocq was the sort of person he had hoped he looked like: genuine preppy. He studied Rocq’s face: it was good-looking, slightly boyish, emphasized by his slightly long, schoolboy-style black hair which continually slipped down onto his forehead. He had quick blue eyes, a short, straight nose and a slightly arrogant mouth. His well-cut blazer hung from his shoulders correctly, as did his collar sit round his neck correctly, as was his tie equally correctly knotted. He looked exactly how a successful young man ought to look. He was everything Baenhaker hated, because he was everything Baenhaker wanted to be and never was. What aggravated Baenhaker further was that he knew Rocq had the me
asure of him. He was aware that he had an uphill struggle ahead. He paused for some moments and then spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid, Mr Rocq, if you wish to have our business, then you will have to divulge your client list. You see, we are very particular about whom we get into bed with. If, for instance, you had any Arab clients, we would have to think very carefully, very carefully indeed.’

  Rocq thought about the £40 million and the slim chance that Bernstein might be genuine: he didn’t want to throw that away. On the other hand, he sensed trouble with this man. He decided it wasn’t worthwhile lying; throw the cards down face up, he decided, and give everyone the chance to get out before the betting starts. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Bernstein, we do have a number of Arab clients; many of them have sums invested through us that are very considerably greater than the amount you have mentioned. Perhaps it would be better if I did not waste any more of your valuable time.’

  Baenhaker was beginning to feel extremely foolish, and very annoyed with himself. As far as he was concerned, he had always been a good agent, and had always taken the trouble to do his homework carefully. Today, his homework had been done in less than an hour. He had been under the impression that £40 million was enough money to have gained him, if he had wanted it, an immediate audience with the chairman of Globalex; now he realized it didn’t even rate him a cup of morning coffee with this underling. He had been rushed and he hated being rushed; he liked to work at his own pace, without pressure of time. He knew he should have surveyed all the brokers in the firm, watched them carefully, studied their habits, before picking on the one that looked the weakest, and then either softened him up with booze, or gone for blackmail. He had blown it with this one, he knew. He had put him on his guard, and it was going to be difficult to get him to drop that guard.

  ‘The reputation of your firm is sufficient,’ said Baenhaker, ‘that we may be prepared to waive the fact that you have Arab clients.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I would be very interested, Mr Rocq, in a brief tour around your offices – I think it would be very helpful.’

  ‘Certainly. It will have to be quick, as I have an urgent appointment at 12.30.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Baenhaker.

  The urgent appointment was currently undergoing its final pre-delivery checks in Motortune’s Service bay.

  Rocq took Baenhaker around the offices, the computer room, the massive Globalex switchboard, which could plug any one of the 310 telephones in the offices directly into any of Globalex’s offices anywhere else in the world. So massive was the switchboard, and so important was it to Globalex business, that it employed here in London two full-time telephone engineers.

  They finally came down into the trading room and Rocq took Baenhaker over to show him his desk and chair, in between Slivitz and Mozer. He pointed out the Reuter Moniter computer terminal, on which he could receive, at the touch of a button, the price of any commodity, stock or share on any market anywhere in the world. But Baenhaker did not take that in. An object on Rocq’s desk had caught his attention, and was holding him riveted: it was the framed photograph of Amanda. His face went white; he looked carefully at it, trying to see if he was mistaken – but he knew he wasn’t. Proof came when he suddenly noticed, amid a pile of letters on the desk, some opened, others not, a bunch of keys attached to a Porsche keyring.

  Baenhaker froze, and Rocq’s words poured over the top of him. He felt as though his insides were in tatters, and he was unable to think straight.

  ‘Would you like to see the London Metal Exchange itself? It will give you a good idea of how the metal trading business actually works, if you see the ring dealing yourself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Baenhaker meekly, following him out, down, across the road and into Plantation House. A few minutes later, they stood looking through the soundproofed window, down onto the actual floor of the London Metal Exchange.

  It is a circular room, around the outside of which are numbered telephone cubicles, almost all of them occupied by someone holding two receivers to his head, listening to one and talking to the other, whilst at the same time passing on an endless chain of messages which are shouted at him from one of a couple of young men. In the centre of the room is a circular red leather bench-seat, around which, on this particular day as on any other day, sat a mixture of men and women, mostly in their twenties. Suddenly, a bell rang; they got up and were replaced by a second group of people who took their seats.

  ‘They deal in five-minute turns in each metal, in two sessions: the first is from 11.45 to 1.30, the second from 3.25 to 5.00. They’ve just been dealing Copper, now they’re starting Tin,’ explained Rocq.

  The people, with few exceptions, looked young to Baenhaker. He told Rocq.

  ‘Dealing in the ring is very high pressure,’ said Rocq. ‘You get burned out very quickly – and you really have to be either young, or quite exceptional, to be able to think and act quickly enough to keep pace. I did it for a while, and I occasionally do a day in there now – but if I went on doing it I would be dead by the time I reached forty.’

  A clerk, nonchalantly chewing gum, carried a piece of paper from the ring to one of the kiosks; prominently displayed on his back was a notice of which he was evidently unaware, in spite of the entire rest of the London Metal Exchange’s sniggers. The message read, ‘I’m a burk.’

  ‘What happens in the evening?’ said Baenhaker. ‘Do your offices close?’

  ‘They do in London – but we have offices in cities covering all the world’s time zones. So we keep buying and selling for our clients twenty-four hours a day. One of our rivals has the slogan: “Twenty-four carats, twenty-four hours.” We go one better. Our slogan is: “At Globalex, we make you richer while you’re just dreaming about it!” ’

  ‘I prefer 24 carats 24 hours,’ said Baenhaker.

  ‘Yes – maybe it is better,’ said Rocq, defensively. ‘But we’ve just taken on a new ad agency, so maybe they’ll come up with something better.’

  ‘I’m sure they will, Mr Rocq.’

  When they parted company, at 12.15, Rocq went straight back to his office and telephoned Eisenbar-Goldschmidt.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said to the switchboard operator. ‘Can you tell me – do you have an Investment Manager by the name of David Bernstein? You do? Is he about six foot two, with blonde hair? No? About five foot eight with dark hair. I see. No, thank you very much – I’m thinking of the wrong person.’

  Rocq was not to know that the switchboard operators at Eisenbar-Goldschmidt were every bit as trained in the art of lying as many of the others who worked there.

  Rocq replaced the receiver. So Bernstein was genuine, he thought. He shook his head. Something was bothering him about Bernstein. Bothering him a lot. All the same, he decided, now that he had discovered he was genuine, he could turn out to be a useful client. He buzzed down to Sergeant Major Bantry and asked him to hail a cab; then he dashed for the stairs, not bothering to wait for the lift.

  He settled back in the seat of the cab, forgot about Bernstein, and thought about his new Porsche. He would take Amanda out in it tonight. Thinking about her made him feel horny. He reflected; hot summer days always made him feel horny, he decided. He looked forward to seeing her tonight even more than usual.

  After Baenhaker parted company with Rocq, he walked back to Lower Thames Street feeling as if he had been hit with a sledge-hammer. He was surprised at the intensity of the hatred he felt for Rocq; it was stronger even than he could ever remember feeling against the Arabs, after his mother and two sisters had been blown to pieces by a terrorist bomb in a Jerusalem vegetable market. He found he could not prevent himself from shaking with rage. He was filled with a desire to go home, get his Walther and go back and blow Rocq’s brains out. All his training in the control of emotions, never to let personal feelings intervene, was of no use. He could not get it out of his mind: he wanted to smash Amanda to pulp and blow Rocq’s brains out.

  He reached his offi
ce, and began to stab out her home phone number on his push-button phone. Then he stopped. He realized she would be at work; he began to stab out her work number.

  ‘Garbutt and Garbutt,’ said the receptionist of the Knightsbridge architects.

  ‘I’d like to speak to –’ he paused, then hung up; he shook his head. There was no point, he knew. He began to attack an unpleasant spot that was festering just above his shirt collar. Then he sat back and thought about his meeting with Rocq. Other than discovering who it was that had pinched Amanda from him, he had achieved very little. He had blown any chances of a quick answer to anything from Rocq. However angry he might have felt with Ephraim, first after his visit to the hospital and then after his phone call, he wanted to stay on the right side of the chief of the Mossad. Ephraim could, he knew, make life very unpleasant indeed for him; equally, he could make it very much better. The information Ephraim had asked for really should not be that difficult, he reasoned; after all, it was a private company, not the vaults of MI5, which held the information.

  The offices of Globalex did not operate around the clock, Rocq had told him. All the office staff would have left by eight thirty, and the cleaning staff by nine thirty. He wondered if the doorman he had seen lived on the premises, not that that particularly bothered him.

  He forgot about the aches and pains in his body from the accident, and started to think hard:

  It was Wednesday today: he had tonight and Thursday night; there was no time to lose. He would go straight in tonight. He began to draw up in his mind the list of things he would need. For the first time in a long time he felt excitement, felt his adrenalin begin to flow. ‘You can do whatever you want to get this information,’ Ephraim had said. ‘Anything at all that you do will have our full support.’ The words were like a drug to him, like a deep snort of cocaine. He began to feel good, very good and very protected; it had been a long time, he reflected, since his Control had given him carte blanche. Far too long.