by Peter Rimmer
It was New Year’s Day, one year exactly since he had sold his business. The aircraft turned at the end of the runway and taxied back to the terminal. There was a slight flurry of snow outside, but he could see nothing on the tarmac. The aircraft taxied up to the tunnel and turned. Everyone in the aircraft stood up when the plane stopped moving; all except Matthew. First out of the aircraft would not be the first with the luggage. Matthew’s orange card was still valid and the frequent-traveller privilege would give him his luggage personally instead of waiting at the conveyor belt. He was quickly through the foreign nationals arrivals and stood for five minutes until the luggage reached the terminal building. A hostess brought him his suitcase, the same one that had travelled with him for so many years.
“Enjoy your stay.”
He smiled back. She was pretty. “We’re at the Cumberland Hotel.”
“I’ll see how it goes.” He had flown with her many times before but had never taken up the invitations. Air hostesses were even more transient than Matthew Gray.
Customs made him open his suitcase. Rhodesia’s recent declaration of independence had even had an effect at Heathrow airport. The English, Matt smiled to himself, were as mad as hell at the Rhodesians. Harold Wilson was moving swiftly towards mandatory sanctions, something that would only be effective with the co-operation of South Africa.
But such help Prime Minister Verwoerd was unlikely to give the British Government. South Africa and Rhodesia were the last bastions of white rule in an Africa which only ten years earlier had been almost entirely controlled by European colonists. The South African government considered Ian Smith and his rebels as blood brothers, allies in the fight against communism and the anarchy which they maintained always accompanied black rule. On a more practical level, there was no way that Verwoerd’s government wanted a hostile black state on their northern border.
The curt attitude of the customs officer contrasted with the pleasant reception Matthew had always received in the past. This was the first cool wind that would turn to an icy freeze. He was tempted to say that the Scots were never welcome in England but shrugged instead and made his way out through to the exit to a shoulder-wrenching handshake from Archie Fletcher-Wood. Archie was the main reason for his journey, the second being the message from Sunny Tupper saying that if he came over to England she would tell him the whereabouts of Luke Mbeki.
Matthew had waited until the previous March before buying a Land Rover and driving deep into the Okavango Swamps in Botswana to rejuvenate his soul and give his mind and body a rest from business. He stayed in the swamps for three months hiring a canoe and guide drifting through the waterways among the tall reeds and between the islands day after day swimming when the sun grew hot, pulling into the shade of the big acacia trees during the fiercer heat of the day, watching the birds, the big game and the fish jumping in the waters that were so well-filtered that Matt could put a mug in the water and drink. He had driven for two days using the four wheel drive with skill before taking the dug-out canoe. It was as far from the realities of the twentieth century as Matt could go to think.
His wealth had been carefully invested in the shares at Anglo American, South African Breweries and de Beers Consolidated, shares in gold, coal, industry, tourism, the growth shares and blue chips of South Africa. The growth was part of his plan and he had worked in silence, not one member of the insurance industry bothering to phone him and wish him well. His old clients phoned until he changed the number in his Sandown flat.
The clinically efficient service he had regimented in Gray Associates had changed to the more casual, old-boy routine the broking industry preferred. “Don’t worry, old chap, we’ll make sure they pay your claim. You can always rely on us.” Matthew had preferred to rely on the legally binding written word of an insurance contract. It was an aspect of selling his shares that had never crossed his mind, that Security Life would be unable, with their vast financial resources, to provide his clients with the same efficient service.
When he returned from the Okavango delta, he sat in the study of his flat and made his plans, swimming in the pool and visiting his old haunt in the Cock and Hen bar at the Balalaika Hotel. He was tanned the colour of mahogany.
“What are you up to these days Matt?”
“Not much. No point in working if you don’t have to. Buy you a drink?”
“Thanks. You look well. Now come on – what are you up to?”
“Nothing.” But the far-away look spoke louder than any words.
The prospects in Matthew’s plan included Archie Fletcher-Wood and Hector Fortescue-Smythe, the latter becoming more of an enigma as Matthew researched his background. What the man was doing in South Africa made no sense at all.
“What do you want to do first?” asked Archie in the car as they drove away from the airport, back towards the city of London.
“Find the nearest pub that serves draft Guinness and have a pint. Good to see you, you old sod. I missed you.”
“Next you’ll be wanting a kiss… We’ll get nearer my flat before we start drinking. You said you had something important to ask?”
“Over a pint, Arch. Where’s Lucky?”
“He’s given up the quest. Found himself a woman and moved in.”
“Is he going to marry her? Be a pity. I have a detailed and workable scheme for getting your gold, diamonds and paintings out of Zaire.”
Archie turned quickly to look at Matthew. “What makes you suddenly interested in my problem?”
“I have a need for the money.”
“You must have three million quid in the bank, and you want money?”
“Sixty million pounds, to be exact.”
“What for, Matt?”
“Not even you, good friend, will be told that until I’m ready… You think it’s going to snow properly?”
“Never does much in London.”
“Do we have a double date tonight?” Matthew was smiling to himself.
“She can’t wait to get at you and all your money. You sound like the old Matt again. There was a time when you were only talking business.”
“Sorry, Arch. That’s all over. Never again. I learnt a lot building Gray’s.”
The well-banked coal fire glowed red in the Crown and Anchor, two blocks from the flat that Archie would not be able to afford for very much longer. The coins of Oom Paul Kruger were almost spent, and Archie’s prospects were as low as his bank account. He was thirty-nine years old and had nothing to show for it, save a multitude of memories. He had listened to Matthew for an hour and a half, not even going to the bar to refill their pints.
“It may work, Matt, but the cost is way beyond Lucky or me. I’m pretty skint, just now. Have to find a job.”
“Quarter of a million pounds! I have checked each link in the chain. Nothing that can be prearranged has been left to chance. We even go on a fitness course.”
“All right. So we go. We come back. How much do you want?”
“Half of everything, and an undertaking in writing that you and Lucky will place your proceeds in a discretionary trust of which I am the sole trustee. I will probably double your money within three years and neither of you will be able to fritter it away… The main rains in the Congo will be over by the end of April.”
“I can’t last till then, Matt.”
“I will pay your rent and expenses.”
“We could get ourselves killed.”
Matthew ignored the statement. “Do you remember Hector Fortescue-Smythe? Chap who married the Minister’s daughter. Don’t like his father- in-law, for what that’s worth. Nasty piece of work, Meneer Kloss. The new bureau of state security comes under his portfolio, and that’s a licence to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with the NAT government. The story goes that Hector is the son of James Fortescue-Smythe, the CEO of Smythe-Wilberforce Industries. Now I didn’t believe it, quite frankly, as there have been many con men and ne’er-do-wells in Africa, from Kenya down to the Cape. Hector makes less sens
e, since I paid for a quiet investigation, than he did before. Not only does he inherit the controlling shareholding but, when he turns thirty at the end of the year he is made joint chief executive in terms of his great-grandfather’s will; the old man left his company to all of his descendants, not one in particular. And Smythe-Wilberforce control massive investment funds outside their core business.
“What I want to find out is why Hector is living in South Africa, speaking Afrikaans like a Dutchman and, rumour has it in Pretoria, will be, if he isn’t already, the first Brit ever to be made a member of the Broederbond, the inner sanctum of Afrikaner establishment and the think-tank that invented apartheid. Why they let him in is a big question. Daddy-in-law’s influence must be prodigious. But what’s in it for Hector? What’s he going to do at the end of the year when he inherits joint control of a multi-billion empire?”
“Bring all the money into South Africa?”
“Joint control stops bad investment. Some may come in, yes, I hope so. I have made it my business lately to cultivate Hector despite his wife, who has not changed her habits, of which everyone is aware except Hector. The curious thing about the man is his deep intelligence, despite the blind spot when it comes to his wife. He would make a superb captain of industry instead of fiddling around in the development section of Armscor. I’ll take a bet his family company invests vastly more funds in research than Armscor, however vital it is to South Africa to circumvent the arms embargo. The man does not make sense and I want to know why.”
“Cambridge are looking at a business course for non-graduates who have done well as entrepreneurs. Harvard has a programme. I am going up to see if I am eligible. The course lasts two weeks and the prototype starts next week. If the first one doesn’t make sense, they’ll sling it. Imagine, fifty smoking guns with little formal education but proven track records arguing with Cambridge dons! The mind boggles. Theory and practice head-on… Hector was at Cambridge for three years, and I have a theory. The boy was totally conventional until he came down from Cambridge… You want another pint?”
Matthew went up to the bar and returned to their corner table with white froth sliding deliciously down the sides of both glasses. “Now let’s talk about women,” he laughed. “Enough business. When can we get hold of Kuchinski?”
“He’s joining us tonight with his bird.”
“To your wealth, to hell with your health,” said Matthew, raising his glass and drinking deeply, all the time looking at Archie. Deep inside, his eyes were still smiling, the flecks of green among the softer brown sparkling in the glow of the firelight.
“To our wealth and our health,” responded Archie and they both laughed, making the barman look across at his only two customers before returning to polishing beer glasses.
The week before going to Cambridge, Matthew spent time familiarising himself with the numismatic world, the collecting of coins. As he suspected, there were some Kruger sovereigns worth more than others. The problem was rarity. Between his coin-calls, he visited art galleries and auctions specialising in Old Dutch masters. He finished with a list of people dealing in the rare and precious. There was something about tradition, genuine reputation and knowledge that made Matthew realise why London and its people successfully survived the centuries. Before his journey he had visited de Beers in Main Street, Johannesburg.
The last night before travelling by train to Cambridge, Matthew put a call through to Sunny Tupper and asked her out to dinner.
“Is this a date?”
“It isn’t business.” There was a slight pause before she agreed to the arrangements.
They met in the foyer of the Savoy Grill, Matthew arriving first in a new suit he had had made for him in Saville Row, something he knew was necessary to create the right tone in the coin and art circles. His accent had proved a problem but the image of South Africa, mixed in with diamonds and Hollard Street, gold and deep-shaft mining, had gone some way towards mitigating the circumstances. Gentle inference had been his way to confidentiality; that and the prospect of business.
In a lonely cellophane pack, Matthew carried a single yellow orchid, flecked at the throat with drops of blood, the flower exquisite in its perfection. She was wearing green as he had known she would, and his stomach did a small turn of excitement when she walked into the small room off the restaurant. It seemed that she had spent some of the money paid out by Security Life for her Gray share options on clothes, and the result left nothing of the eighteen-year-old who had first walked into his life with a terrifying name and accent straight from the London docks. Before, his ex-secretary had been sexy to the point of distraction with mini-skirts, see-through blouses and hot pants that earned their name every moment she wore them. Now she was cool, elegant and sophisticated, twenty-five years old and beautiful.
“I like the suit, Matt.”
“I like the dress… Maybe we’ve come a long way since first we met. Do you remember those first few days?” With his arm at her back, he led her through into the best restaurant in London, and gently put her into the ornate chair with its plush seat cushion and ivory-clad arms that suggested the drawing rooms of the rich.
Sunny was thinking back to their first meeting. “I wish I’d resigned and gone on a date… How are you? Got over selling Gray’s? What are you up to? How’s Archie?” They both laughed and lapsed into looking at each other. For Matthew, it was like dining with a very familiar stranger, new and yet old, exciting yet proven. It was not the feeling of brief encounter like the one he had felt the night he arrived in England, the double date with Archie. On that particular night, the social cogs had turned smoothly, as he and Archie had both known they would when they smiled at each other in mutual recognition. The bedroom with the woman Archie had provided had been as inevitable as the first dry Martini expertly served with a lighted flash of lemon peel to tang the surface of the gin.
“I’ll tell you what, Sunny, you talk the first half-hour, and I’ll keep the drinks coming. Then we’ll talk of Luke Mbeki, but first we order the full menu and get that out of the way.”
“Is this a date, Matt?”
“Oh yes. You can bet your bottom dollar. I haven’t seen anything looking so good in all my life.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Sure.” She was shaking her head with a smile almost of exasperation. After five minutes he took her hand across the table, the first physical contact they had ever felt.
Compared with the Okavango delta, the River Cam was a stream, but Matthew only noticed the antiquity, feeling the awe of centuries of learning and the same déjà vu he had felt in Scotland. He walked around staring up at the old buildings, knowing nothing of their history but understanding that here was the fountainhead of the English speaking world, the origin of its knowledge distilled by the centuries of man’s learning. He had never felt so small and insignificant. For hours he wandered, wondering, wishing to know, frustrated by his own lack of learning. Africa had so little in comparison with so much civilisation, each spurt of knowledge gained from the labour of the nation’s very best, generation after generation.
The business management seminar was at Trinity College, the same college that had educated the scientific mind of Hector Fortescue-Smythe, and Matthew set about looking for tutors who had known the man during his days at Cambridge. It was less difficult than he had imagined, as Hector had been a brilliant undergraduate, something that added more fuel to the enigma. The man was steeped in this history, and had gone out to Africa to spend an insignificant life dreaming up technology that had already been invented but kept from South Africa by political pressure.
Ever since leaving London, Matthew had found Sunny intruding into his thoughts, something that in the past had only happened when he needed a job of work done and thought of the best person to do it. Their evening together had left him light headed, a little scatter-brained and unable to give his total concentration to the projects ahead. Instead of resenting the mental intrusion, he was gla
d of the intermittent flashes that came to him of a girl he had used before as an office machine, a cog in the vital process of making his money. Over one dinner, he had learned more about the girl than he had found out during seven years of daily contact.
They had agreed to visit Luke on Matthew’s return from Cambridge, but she would still not tell him anything about his ‘twin’. All she had said was that he might not like what he saw, but they had let the shadow drift away from their table and concentrated instead on themselves. Not once had he mentioned business, and that was definitely a first for Matthew Gray. He was glad the main rains in Zaire would not be over for another three months.
The man who had lectured Hector in chemistry was very forthcoming, pleased to meet someone who knew his pupil.
“He doesn’t make sense,” Matthew finished.
“You’ll enjoy the MBA seminar. You entrepreneurs are a different breed. I think it’s the one category of men we could never train at Cambridge.” He was smiling a little condescendingly, thought Matthew, but so be it if the man would give him his time. “Now tell me why you want to know about Hector? The real reason, Mister Gray?”
At the end of half an hour, Matthew had spilled out his frustrations and explained his plan of action, omitting only the store of wealth in Zaire.
“You should win. You say you had no formal education. Amazing. One of my colleagues is deep in the study of genetics. I suspect he would find you a case worth studying. What are your politics?”
“You mean, socialist or capitalist? Racist or reformist?”
“Socialism, communism against capitalism will do. Your African politics are part of this cold war, though Korea, Malaya, Suez and the Congo are hot enough. Not my subject.”
“I had never thought of that.”
“Come, come, Mister Gray. You are a man who has thought of most things, and the way we govern ourselves must have been high on your list. Politics is the other, equally important side of the economic coin.”