Billionaire

by Peter James

  23

  Amanda, standing above Rocq, carefully unscrewed the top of the can of Mazola corn oil, then tipped the tin upside down. The cooking oil gushed out all over him. She poured it over his chest, down his body, down each leg, then back up again; the oil gushed over his body and onto the polythene sheet on which he lay, and which stretched out not only across the bed, but across several feet of the thick pile carpet all around the bed.

  ‘Enough – I’m drowning!’

  She dropped a small studded leather ring, about one inch in diameter, onto his stomach; ‘Put that on,’ she said.

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to be? A lifejacket?’

  ‘No silly, it’s the very latest thing.’

  ‘Latest what? If it’s meant to be a condom, it’s not much use – it’s got a bloody great hole in it.’

  ‘It’s from the States – a girlfriend of mine just sent it to me. Haven’t you seen one before?’

  ‘What is it?’ Rocq inspected the object carefully: it looked like a miniature dog collar. ‘A Hoopla for mice?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s an extra special small size for you.’

  ‘Small size what?’

  ‘You’re really thick at times, aren’t you. Where the hell do you think it goes?’

  ‘I’m meant to put that on?’ he said, astounded.

  ‘Sure you are.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It’s meant to keep a certain part of you interested in me – regardless of how the rest of you feels.’

  ‘Is that meant to be a hint? I didn’t know I was such a crummy lover I needed propping up.’

  She kissed him deeply. ‘You’re a wonderful lover.’ She rubbed some oil slowly across him. ‘Simply wonderful. I thought it might be fun to try one of these out, that’s all.’

  Reluctantly, Rocq tried it out. Two hours later, when he was finally allowed to remove it, he collapsed into a coma.

  The alarm went off at 6.30 and Rocq snapped out of the dream he was having that he was drowning in a butter dish. He lay back and began to focus his mind; it was his normal practice, before he got out of bed, to recall the events of the day before, and plan the day ahead. It was something he’d done ever since he was a child.

  He remembered the row he and Amanda had had the night before last. After the taxi had dropped him outside the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street, and in full view of 120 guests at the Andy Warhol preview, he had fallen flat on his face, and proceeded to be sick onto the pavement. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, he reflected, if he hadn’t then proceeded to enter the gallery, collar Warhol, spend five minutes explaining to him in a slurred voice, while Warhol helped to prop him up, why, in his view, the pile of vomit on the paving stones was a more important personal statement than Warhol’s life work. For a further half hour, he had staggered about among the guests, avidly lecturing anyone he could collar on the poetic beauty of tomato skins and diced carrots, before eventually falling asleep for half an hour in the ladies’ lavatory.

  Sometime around midnight that night he had finally shaken off the worst effects of Elleck’s Chivas Regal, and by dawn he was beginning to feel sober. Before leaving for work, he had made a number of telephone calls, first to Milan and then to Tunquit, in Umm Al Amnah, then to Toronto, then Lagos, then Kuwait. When he had arrived in the office, shortly before 9.00, yawning and with a splitting headache, the first thing he had done was check the gold price. The London Exchange hadn’t yet opened, but gold, which had closed on the London Exchange the previous night at $494 an ounce had risen during the night, and had closed on the Hong Kong exchange at $521, which would be the opening price in London. Rocq had smiled to himself. By the close of the London exchange on Wednesday afternoon, gold had risen again, another $8, closing at $529.

  He stretched a hand out of the bed, found his handkerchief, wiped off as much of the Mazola as he could, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialled Globalex’s closing prices. The recorded voice informed him that gold was currently at $538. Rocq slid out of the bed and waded his way over the polythene, and through the broadloom, to the shower.

  The traffic was thicker than usual as he pulled his new Porsche into his parking bay, in the multi-storey NCP car park behind Lower Thames Street, at five past nine, twenty-minutes later than usual. He switched off the engine, and sat back for a few moments, savouring the smell of the new car: the fresh leather and hot oil. He climbed out; the door shut with the neat clunk that he liked; he reflected that there was no other car he knew of where one could get pleasure out of merely shutting a door.

  He crossed Lower Thames Street, and walked up towards Mincing Lane. His feeling of well-being suddenly disappeared and was replaced with one of disquiet; up ahead was a cluster of police cars, with blue lights flashing, as well as an ambulance. Part of the pavement appeared to be cordoned off. As he got closer, he saw that the area around the entrance to Globalex was cordoned off with white tape.

  He walked straight up to a police constable who was standing behind the tape.

  ‘What’s happened, officer?’

  The policeman looked at him, suspicious of anyone that tried to suck up to him by calling him ‘officer’ when it was clear as a bell to anyone that had a pair of eyes, or even one, come to that, that he was not an officer, but a plain constable.

  ‘Do you work in here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The constable lifted the tape and jerked his thumb towards the doorway. ‘Okay.’

  Rocq ducked under the tape. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Someone’s been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ He dashed inside the entrance. He had heard of the expression ‘crawling with policemen,’ but he’d never actually seen a place that fitted the description – until now. They were everywhere, dusting, scraping, examining, interviewing. As he waited by the lift, the manager of the metals section, Tony Zuckerman, came down the stairs with a man he presumed to be a detective. ‘What’s happened, Tony?’ said Rocq.

  ‘Sergeant-Major Bantry’s been murdered. Burglars – whole place been turned upside down during the night – he must have heard them and gone to have a go – poor sod.’

  ‘What – how?’

  ‘Bust his neck,’ said the detective. ‘Professionals, whoever did that; vicious bastards.’

  Rocq got out of the elevator on the fourth floor; the receptionist, Miss Heyman, was looking ashen faced. ‘Good morning,’ said Rocq.

  ‘Good morning, Alex.’

  ‘Nice start to the day,’ he said.

  She burst into tears. ‘Poor old man – why did they have to kill him? Surely they could have just tied him up and gagged him?’

  Rocq nodded silently. ‘Sickening, isn’t it. What did they take? Ten quid petty cash and Sarge’s wallet?’

  ‘I should think that’s about all there was of any value in this place.’

  ‘What the hell do these bastard burglars think?’ exploded Rocq, angrily. ‘That we’ve got bloody gold bars lying all over the place?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said.

  He shook his head exasperatedly, and walked through to his office. He recoiled when he saw it: the drawers of all the filing cabinets were pulled out, and papers were strewn everywhere. Slivitz, Mozer, Prest, Boadicea and the rest of his colleagues had already begun the clearing-up. For a change, nobody got at anyone, and nobody felt like cracking any gags.

  At eleven o’clock, Elleck called Rocq up to his office. As he walked down the corridor, he saw Elleck’s secretary checking through a filing cabinet. She stood up and announced him to Elleck.

  ‘Good morning, Sir Monty,’ said Rocq.

  ‘Morning, Alex.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Sarge,’ said Rocq.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Elleck, ‘everyone is. Now, I wanted to see you about the gold situation. As of this moment, gold is $549 – that’s a rise of $51 in a day and a half. This is an unbelievable rise – it seems there is some very heavy buying going on, and it isn’
t in this country. But no one seems to be able to pinpoint the source. It’s having a strong impact on the world market – people are starting to panic buy.’

  Rocq was taken aback for a moment that Elleck didn’t seem to be affected by what had happened to Sarge Bantry. ‘This is nothing to do with your syndicate?’ asked Rocq.

  ‘No – well – unless they’re playing some game they haven’t told me about, it isn’t. I just don’t understand it – I don’t understand it at all.’

  ‘Do you think I ought to start buying for the syndicate now – and not wait until Monday, sir?’

  Elleck shook his head. ‘I don’t think so; this buying must subside during the next day or so. There’s nothing to sustain it. Have you heard anything at all? You boys down there often hear far more than I ever do.’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘I don’t know what to make of it; 549 is too high – we must wait for it to go down before we start. It should be at 500 to 510 – that’s the right price – no more. Don’t buy any until it has dropped back to at least 510.’

  ‘Even if it is higher still on Monday.’

  ‘Even if it is higher still – unless I tell you. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Monty.’

  ‘Good.’

  Rocq went back to his office. In the five minutes it had taken him to go and see the Chairman, gold had risen a further $4; by the time he went to lunch, gold had topped 560, and at the second fixing of the gold price that day at Rothschild’s at three that afternoon, the price of gold was fixed at $568 an ounce.

  Whatever the power, authority and influence of the men from the largest bullion dealers in the world, within an hour of their fixing, people were eagerly stumping up $5 above it. In Rocq’s office, the death of Sarge and the burglary of the building had already become a thing of the past. There was a gold rush on, and nothing mattered any more except the price people were prepared to pay for those long, thin, dull-yellow metal slabs, over which a thousand wars have been fought, and a million fortunes made and lost, and with which a trillion teeth have been filled.

  By nine o’clock Friday morning, the price of gold had soared over the 590 mark, and was soon nudging 600.

  In the first hour’s trading in London, the price rocketed to 604 before dropping back to 598. At lunchtime Friday, it stood at 609, and at two o’clock in the afternoon it hit 612. At the Friday afternoon fixing, at 3.00 p.m., the price was fixed at 616; by the close of the London market, gold was at 621, and strongly tipped to go over the $650 mark on Monday morning.

  Mozer and Slivitz engaged in a heated argument about the continuation of the boom, and Rocq listened.

  ‘As long as people keep buying, it will keep rising. I reckon it can stand another hundred, maybe hundred and fifty dollars.’

  ‘You’re full of shit, Mozer; everyone got caught with their pants down last year when it was up in the early 700s. There were billions bought in the early 700s; the moment the price gets back up there, it’s going to pop like a balloon: bang! There’s going to be so many people bailing out of gold they won’t be able to give the stuff away by the end of next week – just like coffee.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Gary – what do you think they’re going to discover – that gold fillings make people’s tongues drop off?’

  ‘I’m not letting any chick with gold fillings give me a blow job if that’s the case.’

  ‘You’re disgusting, Slivitz.’

  ‘At least I know it, Mozer; you’re disgusting and you don’t know it. You’ve got B.O., bad breath, and every orifice in your body is plugged with something nasty.’

  Rocq got up from his desk, and closed his briefcase. ‘Night girls, have a sweet weekend.’

  ‘What’s your hurry?’ said Slivitz. ‘Got to get the suit back to Moss Bros, or the Porsche back to Avis?’

  ‘No – I just want to go to the lavatory before you two block it for the weekend.’

  24

  Shortly before 5.00 p.m. Friday, French time, Viscomte Claude Lasserre’s secretary was put through, by Globalex’s switchboard operator, to Sir Monty Elleck’s secretary. As usual, Lasserre’s secretary spoke in English, and Elleck’s secretary spoke in French; in spite of this, the two men were promptly connected.

  ‘Good afternoon, Monty, how are you?’

  ‘Well, thanks, Claude. Very enjoyable dinner on Monday.’

  ‘Thank you. You had a good flight home?’

  ‘No problems – the airways still aren’t as congested as the roads. To what do I owe the honour of this call?’

  ‘I was talking with Jimmy and he asked me to call you. We must be making out pretty good with the gold already, no?’

  There was a pause. Elleck scrabbled in the box of Havanas for a cigar: ‘Well – er – sure – I – er – can you hang on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Elleck put the receiver down, cut the end of the cigar, and put the cigar in his mouth; he pulled out his gold Dupont and lit it slowly; all the time he was thinking hard. ‘Hallo, Claude?’

  ‘Yes, I am here.’

  ‘I’ll have to check how much we have actually bought so far.’

  ‘You haven’t bought it yet?’ he sounded incredulous.

  ‘Oh, no – sure, we must have bought some – as you know – I’m not doing it directly myself. We didn’t want to draw attention, right?’

  ‘That’s what we agreed.’

  ‘But I just don’t know how much we have – got to be careful buying in a bull market – I think this is only a temporary bull –’

  ‘Bull?’

  ‘Oh – it’s a – er – trade expression – a rising market.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘My personal view is that the gold price could drop as quickly as it has risen – and we don’t want to get stuck having paid top dollar.’

  ‘I see.’ The Viscomte didn’t sound at all convinced. ‘Then it is not our purchasing which is causing this rise?’

  ‘Good lord no, Claude; if we’d banged ours in all at once, it might have pushed the price up ten dollars or so – but our sort of money could never create a bull like this.’

  ‘Now if the price – does not – er drop – you are going to have to pay this new price for our gold?’

  ‘If it steadies out at this new level, then yes, we will have to; but if it steadies, then it will not affect our plan – because our plan will still push it up. But first we must see if it steadies. I am certain it won’t. It must drop. A lot of punters are going to start selling. You’ll see, Claude, it all will start changing at the beginning of the week.’

  ‘We only have until next Friday – is that going to be time enough?’

  ‘I’m not a clairvoyant, Claude – we’ll just have to wait and see what happens and play it by ear.’

  ‘Why didn’t you buy the moment you saw it rising?’

  ‘Firstly, we agreed we had to keep this whole thing quiet. We didn’t want anyone tumbling what we were doing – and that means buying in small amounts here, there, a bit in Tokyo, a bit in Toronto, a bit in Amsterdam; buying through different dealers, some Krugerrands from here, bars from there. A bit of this and a bit of that. Opening bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and perhaps elsewhere. A thousand million isn’t much in gold terms, Claude, but it’s one heck of a lot of money to have to spend in a hurry without anybody noticing.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Secondly, there isn’t anyone in the world who could have predicted this price rise. It’s unbelievable, illogical.’

  ‘A word of warning, Monty,’ said the Viscomte. ‘My friend Jimmy thinks you may be behind this, and he does not like to be double-crossed.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Elleck’s voice rose several octaves.

  ‘Jimmy Culundis thinks you may have something to do with this rise; he is not going to be pleased to find our syndicate has missed out on it.’

  ‘I can’t help what your nasty little Greek poofter thinks – he’ll have to si
t on his little greased bottom and wait for the results.’

  ‘I’m just warning you, as a friend,’ said Lasserre.

  Elleck suddenly realized that the tone of Lasserre’s voice had become chilling. ‘What exactly are you warning me?’

  ‘I am warning you as a friend,’ said Lasserre, ‘that is all. I understand the world of money, of commodities. Jimmy Culundis has a more – how do you say – simple outlook on business. He provides a service and he gets paid for it. He does understand that you cannot buy gold today because it may go down tomorrow. He is a man with much power and he is a very ruthless man indeed. I am warning you my friend, that if he feels – how you say – that he is going to get screwed – in a way that he does not consider pleasant – he is a man who will get revenge.’

  ‘Do I understand exactly what you are saying, Claude?’

  ‘I think so, my friend. Have a good weekend.’ Lasserre hung up.

  Elleck sat and stared at the humming receiver, then he replaced it on the hook. He tapped a button on his Reuter terminal. Gold had risen yet another $4. Thank God, he thought, that it was the weekend. Perhaps the investment world would come to its senses over the next couple of days. He sincerely hoped so. For the first time since his days in Auschwitz he felt scared – very scared.

  25

  Baenhaker looked at his watch: it was two minutes to five, Friday afternoon. He rubbed his eyes, and stacked up the last of the pile of micro-fiches that had been developed and printed from the hundreds of photographs he had taken on Wednesday night, in the Globalex offices.

  He wasn’t pleased that he’d killed the security guard, but it didn’t bother him; as far as he was concerned, he had had no option. The man had crept up on him while he was working on the computer, trying to get an account list printout, and in their ensuing struggle, had made it clear that he recognized him: ‘ ’Ere,’ he had said, ‘you were ’ere this morning – came to see Mr Rocq.’

  He dialled Ephraim’s number in Tel Aviv. It was answered after less than half a ring. ‘Hallo.’

  ‘This is Marvin here.’ Marvin was the code Baenhaker was assigned to identify himself by.