Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  “Hélène—Jesus. I don’t know what to say. I mean—I can imagine how you feel…If you want time to think this over—I didn’t come here meaning to lean on you, I want you to know that. I can see something like this isn’t an easy decision…”

  “Oh, you’re wrong. It’s extremely easy. I never work with people I don’t respect.”

  There was a silence. Gertz flushed. “You worked with me on Runaways.”

  “Yes. I respected you then. You were very helpful to me.”

  “And you don’t respect me now?”

  “Not really. You’re temporizing. You’re prevaricating…I’m sure you know that.” She turned away coldly.

  “Greg—you’d better go.”

  There was another silence, a longer one this time. She could sense the struggle within him. Then he said, “All right. I accept that. You’re not wrong. But that’s how it’s got to be in this place—in most places, come to that. If you want to get anything done, if you want to work, you have to compromise.”

  “Oh, this is a compromise, is it?” Hélène turned around and looked him directly in the eyes. “I see. It feels like disloyalty. If you really want to know what it feels like, Greg, I’d say it feels like a kick in the teeth. However—I’ve had quite a few of those lately. One more doesn’t make a great deal of difference—even from you.”

  He moved toward the door, and Hélène turned away wearily. She looked out the window, at the garden, at the clear blue sky. In the distance, over the city, a jet was banking, coming in to land.

  At the door, Gregory Gertz stopped, and turned back.

  “There’s one thing you didn’t ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You didn’t ask why A.I.’s doing this, or Joe Stein.”

  “I’d have thought it was fairly obvious. Why bother to ask?”

  “I would.” He paused. “Don’t ask me, because I can’t tell you. Ask Joe Stein. Better still, ask Thad.”

  “Thad?” She stared at him. “What would Thad have to do with this?”

  “Ask him,” he said. “That’s all.”

  She telephoned Thad as soon as Greg Gertz had left. He seemed not in the least surprised to hear from her.

  “Yes, well, maybe we ought to have a talk,” he said, when she’d told him why she was calling. “I was going to call anyway. I’m pretty tied up today. There’s a lot going on…”

  “Thad—do you know something about this?”

  “I might. Just a little bit. I tell you what.” His voice brightened. “Come over tomorrow afternoon, and have tea.”

  It was ten P.M., they had finished dinner an hour before, and now the two senators, one Republican, one Democrat, were loosening up. Across the living room of the Georgetown house Partex owned, and kept staffed for occasions such as this, Drew Johnson caught Edouard’s eye, and slowly closed one of his own. Edouard glanced at his watch; behind him, Simon Scher rose quietly to his feet, and made for the door.

  “I’ll go check on the car. It should be here.” The door closed softly behind him. Neither senator seemed to notice his departure. Drew, in a diversionary gesture, was plying them with more Chivas Regal.

  The two senators were powerful men, and they had been useful. They had lent their weight where it counted most—on certain vital Senate committees—and, in the case of the Democrat, in the White House itself. Now that the controversial merger had taken place, and in precisely the way Drew Johnson and Edouard had planned it, now that Partex was only one remove from being the largest oil company in the United States, Drew was saying thank you. It was something which he did with ebullience, and obvious enjoyment: Drew never forgot his friends, just as he never forgave his enemies.

  The senators, both awarded substantial stockholdings in a Partex subsidiary whose connections with its parent company were impossible to trace, were now being rewarded in simpler ways. A fine dinner. Exceptionally fine wines. Chivas Regal. Black market Cuban cigars: “Castro’s privates, boys,” Drew remarked with a broad smile. “Yessir! Gives me real pleasure every time I light one up…”

  Shortly, Edouard knew, it would be time for what Drew called “the entertainment,” announced with another wink.

  Edouard, who had found the dinner grandiose, and the senators tedious, who was less adept at these occasions than Drew, indeed disliked them, always left at this point. He never participated in such things, but he countenanced them nonetheless, and the fact that he was doing so now filled him with distaste.

  It was not simply the question of “the entertainment”—it was far more than that. The disguises of bribery, the necessity for bribery at all, disgusted him, and filled him with self-reproach. When he had been younger, and perhaps more ruthless, he would have argued that the end could justify the means—within reason, of course. But where should the line be drawn? Edouard felt that, in the past few months, he had crossed it, in a way he had never done before. The whole long drawn-out saga of this merger had sapped his energy and, he felt suddenly, his judgment. He sat there, saying nothing, angrily aware that he had compromised his standards in achieving this deal, and he had no one to blame but himself.

  “Napalm.” The Democrat, one of President Johnson’s key men in the Senate, was growing excitable. Throughout dinner he had kept returning to the subject of the war. “Give the Cong a taste of that and it’ll be over in six months. Lyndon knows what he’s doing.”

  The Republican senator looked pained; a tightness set in around his mouth.

  “History demonstrates…” He paused. He had a pinched and pedantic voice, which a liberal quantity of alcohol had failed to slur. “History shows that to be a fallacious argument.” He glanced in Edouard’s direction. “If you take, for example, the experiences of the French in Indochina, I think you can see that conventional tactics, applied in the face of a highly organized, highly motivated—and let’s not fool ourselves, in their terms, they are highly motivated—guerrilla organization—”

  “Defeatist talk,” the Democrat interrupted him impatiently. “I don’t like to listen to talk like that. We’ve got boys out there in the field. Boys my son’s age—younger. Dying for their country…”

  “My own boy’s draft age. You don’t need to remind me of that.” The Republican took a large swallow of his drink. “Strategically speaking, and I’m talking strategy now, the decision to start bombing is an unnecessary escalation. U.S. involvement should remain marginal. In Saigon—”

  “In Saigon they couldn’t piss in a pot unless we told them where to aim. In Saigon they wouldn’t have a pot to piss in, if it weren’t for—”

  “Boys. Boys.”

  The Democrat held his liquor less well than the Republican; his color and his voice had risen alarmingly, and Drew was quick to intervene, as Edouard, his face taut with suppressed anger, rose to his feet.

  “Boys—we going to get off the subject of politics, or what? I got guests coming aren’t going to want to listen to doom and gloom. Come on, now. Break it up. Git off your high horse, fella. Have another cigar…”

  The Democrat shrugged. He gave a sheepish grin, reached for the cigar box, and missed. The door opened, and Simon Scher’s head appeared around it; he caught Edouard’s eye and nodded. “Drew. Senators. If you will forgive me…” Edouard was already moving toward the door.

  All three men rose to their feet. Drew embraced him; the two senators shook hands without great enthusiasm. It was an embarrassing moment, in which mutual dislike was palpable, and it was saved by a diversion.

  From outside came the screech of tires as a car came to a halt; doors slammed; female voices and laughter could be heard. The entertainment had arrived. The two senators exchanged quick glances; Drew grinned; Simon Scher and Edouard slipped quietly out into the hall.

  They walked out of the house, and down onto the brick sidewalk. The expensive women walked by: three tall willowy figures, a drift of scent on the night air, laughter and sidelong glances from the top of the steps, then the door closed behind
them.

  Simon Scher was perhaps tempted; he looked back, sighed, and then turned to the waiting Lincoln. Edouard, who was not tempted, felt nonetheless a sudden aching regret, a nostalgia, a longing for female society. To be with a woman; to touch her skin; to stroke her hair—to talk about something other than the manipulations of power and money—just then he wanted that acutely. It was a long time since he had held a woman—any woman—in his arms.

  He stood for a moment, looking up at the empty steps, the closed shutters; then, with a small angry gesture, he, too, climbed into the back of the Partex Lincoln. They were going straight to the airport; since late January he had been in the Middle East, in Canada, and in Japan; the merger negotiations had taken much more time than anticipated. He had been away too long.

  “I’m sorry?”

  They were driving alongside the Potomac; the surface of the river glittered in the moonlight; Edouard, looking out the windows of the car, became aware that Simon Scher had asked him a question.

  “I said—I assume you’ve not had time to catch up on the developments with Sphere—and there have been a number of developments in the last couple of months.”

  “No, I haven’t had time to catch up on Sphere.” Edouard sounded annoyed. “I’ve hardly thought about Sphere. I saw the results of the Oscars, that’s all. What’s happening?”

  “Well, as I say, there’ve been developments—quite surprising ones. I’m not absolutely certain myself quite what’s going on. We’ve been having a lot of problems with Angelini.”

  “Oh, why?”

  “Well, as you know, there is the question of Ellis II.”

  “And Ellis III, you said, if I remember.”

  “The trilogy. Yes. I was told of that possibility by Hélène Harte, not by Angelini, and when Angelini found out I knew, he was very angry indeed. The problems started then. They’ve been multiplying since.”

  “I thought it had been agreed that we would deal with the two sequels separately? There isn’t even a script for the third.”

  “It was agreed. It was also agreed, in principle, that the filming of Ellis II would be postponed until later this year. Because Hélène Harte was not free to make the picture in April, which was when Angelini wanted to start. And, as it happens, I thought that was no bad thing. There were a number of aspects of Ellis II which were worrying us a good deal…”

  “You wanted a budget reworking, if I remember?”

  Edouard glanced at him, and Simon Scher sighed. “Correct. We got it completed—finally—after months of stalling from Angelini. It was more than stalling, actually—I would have said he was being deliberately obstructive. He wanted virtual carte blanche, and I think he thought that if he could delay until the Academy Awards ceremony, he’d be in a better bargaining position. He wanted ten million: we got it back to six point seven million, finally, and I still think that’s underestimated. There are nonreflected union increases that could take it up to seven, easily. And then there’s the question of post-production expenses. Angelini’s set himself a very tight schedule: an eighty-five-day shoot; six months from start date to final cut…”

  “He’s always kept to his schedules before…”

  “He’s never worked to a schedule like that before. Post-production on Ellis took the best part of a year. He sat on that film like a chicken on an egg. And Ellis II is longer, and on an even bigger scale. I don’t believe in the budget—I still think it’s made with a crystal ball—and I don’t believe in the schedule either. I would have said that Angelini’s Napoleonic tendencies are becoming definitely more marked. Those eight Oscars have gone to his head, for one thing…”

  “Simon. You almost sound as if you dislike the man…”

  “You know perfectly well that I can’t stand him, and never could. However, he makes good films, and the box office returns on Ellis are phenomenal for such a serious movie. The fact that when he sits in my office and drinks tea I could cheerfully lace it with strychnine is neither here nor there…” Scher paused. “No, the point is, there’s something going on, something I don’t like the smell of at all, and I still don’t know what it is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, by late January we were, in theory, all set to go. We had a budget; we had a shooting schedule; we had a start date—July first. We had everything lined up, with one exception, and Angelini started to stall again.”

  “What was the exception?”

  “Hélène Harte’s participation.”

  There was a silence. Scher waited. The exact reasons for Edouard’s involvement with Sphere had never been explained to him, and he had been careful not to ask. But his closeness to Edouard, over a long period of time, had sharpened his instincts: the question of Hélène Harte, he suspected, was key. Which made what he had to stay next all the more difficult.

  “Hélène Harte’s participation is vital.” Edouard’s voice had become cold. “Without her, the sequel could not be made.” He paused. “Before I left I was given to understand that it was more or less a matter of course.”

  “Angelini has insisted from the first that she will do it. He’s unshakable on that point.”

  “You mean he’s wrong?”

  “I mean, we haven’t had a chance to find out, because every single time we’ve tried to move on the Harte contract, he’s warned us off. As you know,” Scher hesitated, “they have a very close working relationship. And Angelini is protective of her. Very. He more or less informed me that if we took matters into our own hands and went ahead with the contract negotiations, the whole thing might fall through. He insisted it was essential that the timing be absolutely right, and that he would know when that was. In normal circumstances, I would have overruled him. But the last few months have been anything but normal.”

  Something in his voice made Edouard turn, and look at him closely. He said sharply, “What has happened?”

  “Well, her marriage broke up, for one thing. That was his first argument for delay.”

  “I heard that.” Edouard looked away. “That was last year. I saw some newspaper item about the separation.”

  “This year there have been a number of problems too.”

  “I saw that she did not win the Oscar…” Edouard glanced at him.

  “No, she didn’t win.” Scher’s mouth tightened. He hesitated, and then slid an envelope across the seat. “I thought you probably would not have seen these, so I had a sample prepared. These are just a few of them, and not necessarily the worst examples either, I’m afraid.”

  Edouard opened the envelope. He switched on the reading light to his rear, and pulled the newspaper out. He looked only at the top copy, and only its front page, then he slid them back into the envelope again.

  “I make it a point never to read this kind of thing.”

  “I know that. I wouldn’t normally read them either.” Scher’s voice was slightly reproachful. “However, I think you should look at them, on the plane perhaps. Then you might understand why I saw Angelini’s point. It did not seem a good moment to pressure Hélène Harte about her contract—indeed, to pressure her about anything at all.”

  “I see.”

  “I thought he was concerned for her welfare. I assumed that to be the case…”

  “And now you have reason to think otherwise?” Edouard looked at him sharply.

  “Yes. I’m afraid I do.” Scher hesitated. They had reached the airport. He cleared his throat. “I think he was stalling for other reasons entirely. Nothing to do with concern for Hélène Harte. Rather the reverse, in fact.”

  “Come to the point.”

  “All right. I now think that he may have—quite deliberately—sabotaged the film she was going to make in the spring. And I also think, though I could be wrong, that he’s about to take the whole Ellis project to A.I. and Joe Stein.”

  “You mean—break away from Sphere?”

  “Exactly that. With Hélène Harte as part of the package, needless to say.”

  “How d
o you know this?”

  Scher smiled politely. He said, “I’ve never seen eye to eye with the husband. But I have become quite friendly with Rebecca Stein. We have a lot in common—she can’t stand Angelini, and she’s always liked Hélène Harte. More important, she doesn’t like to see someone being used.”

  “And is that what is happening?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Scher sighed. “Yes. I think it is.”

  The car came to a halt. There was a silence. Edouard looked out across the lights and the building to the runway, where his plane was waiting for him. For an instant, the years telescoped, and he saw himself with Christian, back at the airport at Plymouth, leaving for Rome, thinking the search was over. He saw again Prince Raphael’s library, and its Bellini bronzes. He saw the short plump figure of Thad Angelini, as Angelini explained his film, explained the woman Edouard loved, confident—supremely confident—that he, Angelini, understood and could control her.

  A contest had begun then, Edouard knew. It had continued, at a distance, for the past five years, even if Angelini had no inkling of that fact. Angelini was his rival; he had sensed it then, and he felt it acutely now. Not Lewis Sinclair, nor any of the other men Hélène might or might not have been involved with: Angelini.

  He had hated him on sight; now, standing on the tarmac, he hated him again. Simon Scher touched his arm. His voice was apologetic.

  “Edouard. You’d better tell me what you want me to do.”

  Edouard looked at his watch. It was almost midnight, May 17—Cat’s birthday. He hesitated.

  “I have to be in Paris tomorrow. I should have been there today. Is there some way you can stall Angelini, prevent his doing anything decisive about the move to A.I. for at least twenty-four hours?”

  Simon Scher smiled his small polite smile. “Well, there are his Napoleonic tendencies. There is his megalomania…”

  He left the sentence adrift in the air; he knew Edouard would understand and he did.

  “Call him first thing in the morning, his time. Tell him, in view of the European returns on Ellis, we’re considering revising the budget for the sequel. Upward. Tell him we’ll maybe go to the ten million he wanted. Can you find out what Stein might be offering?”