Harlequin

by Morris West

  I sat. The barman set my drink on the table. I asked, ‘You say you have a message for me?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s a telex from our President’s office. If there’s any reply, we’ll be happy to transmit it for you.’

  The message was an evidentiary document, formal and precise:

  ‘On current consolidated figures and a three-year forward projection, we value Harlequin et Cie at 85 dollars per share. This communication constitutes firm cash offer for total stockholding at 100 dollars per share. You are requested refer immediately to Mr George Harlequin and inform him we are prepared negotiate generous terms for sale or waiver of his existing options. Other shareholders have been informed…Basil Yanko, President, Creative Systems Incorporated.’

  I shoved the message into my breast pocket and scribbled a reply on the envelope:

  ‘Communication received and acknowledged…Paul Desmond.’

  The young man folded the envelope reverently into his wallet. ‘I’ll send this as soon as I get back to the office.’

  ‘May I offer you a drink, Mr Duggan?’

  ‘No, thank you, sir. I never drink on the job. Company policy, you know.’

  ‘How long have you worked for Creative Systems, Mr Duggan?’

  ‘Three years now.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Client relations.’

  ‘And what does that entail?’

  ‘Well, sir, I have an exclusive territory. I visit all our users once a month. I check complaints, suggest improvements, make forward projections for extending our service, which is, of course, designed to grow with the client’s business.’

  ‘Are you well paid?’

  ‘Very. We have bonus schemes, stock options and all that. It’s a fine job with good prospects.’

  ‘Do you ever see Mr Basil Yanko?’

  ‘Not often. But we know he’s there – oh, yes, sir! He knows what everyone’s doing, right down to the cleaning staff. If you don’t shape up, you don’t last long in Creative Systems.’

  ‘So you have a big turnover of staff?’

  ‘Not too big. Enough to keep us on our toes, I guess. Still, they do say even our rejects are better than most. They all seem to find jobs easily enough.’

  ‘That’s interesting. Where do they apply?’

  ‘Well, most senior computer people register with three big agencies in New York, and two here on the Coast.’

  ‘And does your company run an employment agency, too?’

  ‘No, sir. We train and recruit only for ourselves and our clients. That’s the policy. Mr Yanko’s very firm about it.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Mr Duggan. I won’t keep you any longer.’

  ‘It’s been a great pleasure, sir. And your message will be in New York in half an hour.’

  He was a pleasant young man, just naive enough to be real. I shook hands with him, walked with him to the door, and went back, pensive and unhappy, to finish my drink. Now the burr was under my tail. Yanko knew all about contingent behaviour in non-psychotic subjects – yea, brothers and sisters, he knew! A vague offer makes a man restless, a firm offer makes him greedy – and eighteen per cent over the market sends him rushing to signature before Father Christmas goes up the chimney again.

  Harlequin might refuse to sell, but it was gospel truth that he couldn’t pick up all his options at a hundred dollars a share and still meet a fifteen million shortfall. Karl Kruger might buy at ninety, but he wouldn’t go a cent over and I couldn’t blame him. Harlequin might try to fight a proxy battle – and then Yanko would play his ace: documentary evidence of fraud and misappropriation. After which, our friends, clients and allies would walk away in droves.

  It was a fine cheery bulletin to deliver to a sickroom. Harlequin summed it up with grim humour. ‘We’re caught between the crab’s claws. There’s only one consolation: the price is right.’

  Juliette challenged him, tight-lipped and angry. ‘Harlequin et Cie was handed to you on a golden plate – and you’d sell it without a blush because the price is right? I’m ashamed of you, George.’

  He flushed angrily and then turned to me. ‘What’s your advice, Paul?’

  ‘Reason says sell. Instinct says fight.’

  ‘Could we win?’

  ‘We could.’

  ‘But we could also get badly mauled. Yes?’

  ‘For God’s sake, George!’ Juliette struck at him again, cold and contemptuous. ‘Stop hedging and admit it! You’ve never had to fight for anything in your life. Everything was a gift – your own talent even! Now you’re being offered another. Fifteen dollars a share bonus to walk away from the company your grandfather founded and that should, by right, be passed down to your son.’

  Harlequin stood facing her, rigid as a stone man. I was sad for him and ashamed for us all. Finally, he said curtly:

  ‘Sit down, Julie. You, too, Paul.’

  We sat down. Harlequin stood, backed against the window, his face in shadow, dominating us. Then he began to talk, slowly, reluctantly, as if each phrase were dragged out of some secret recess inside him.

  ‘It seems I’ve failed you, Julie. I was not aware of it. I’m sorry. I know you’ve had your doubts, too, Paul. But there were reasons. I’ll try to explain them. For a long time now I’ve been disillusioned with this trade of ours, where we grow money like cabbages and peddle it like hucksters in an international market. I look at the funds which flow through our hands, and I ask myself, more and more often, where they come from: the transfers from Florida that we know, but can never admit, are gangster dollars; the oil money from the sheikdoms, where slaves are still sold, and men have their hands cut off for stealing a basket of dates; the fugitive funds from depressed countries; the loot of dictators and local tyrants. Oh, I know! When it comes to us, it’s all clean, disinfected and smelling of rosewater – and we live like kings on the proceeds. I’m not proud of that. I’m less and less proud every day…While I lay here, waiting for the doctors to come and hand me the death sentence, I wondered how I would answer for my life at whatever judgment I might have to face on the other side…Then, when all this happened, it seemed like a way out: cash the chips, walk away, buy time and leisure to work out the riddle of this world and my place in it. On the other hand, I know I’m a good banker, and that honest men trust the name and the tradition of Harlequin et Cie. But here’s the dilemma – and you’ve put it to me, Paul – if I fight Yanko, I fight in his world, on his terms, with his weapons. I’m afraid of that; but not for the reasons you think, Julie. You see, I’d like the fight; I’d like the risk and the brutality and the naked lawlessness of that other world. I believe I could be the biggest pirate of them all and smile as I wiped the blood off the cutlass. But the root question is whether I could live with myself afterwards. Would I seem more of a man to you, Julie? Could you and I, Paul, still sail together and laugh and drink wine on the after-deck?’ He smiled and made a small, shrugging gesture of self-mockery. ‘Well, that’s the speech for the defence. It’s the last one I’ll ever make.’

  Julie stared at him, blank-faced. ‘But you’re still selling out, is that it?’

  ‘No, my love. You’re a very persuasive woman. I’m going to fight. It’s the only way I’ll ever know whether the game is worth the cost of the candle.’

  It didn’t have the high brazen ring of a call to arms. As theme-music for a second honeymoon, it sounded less than propitious. Even while we plotted the campaign, it looked more like a conspiracy than a battle of the righteous against the ungodly.

  When we drove back to the hotel, the Santa Ana wind was blowing and Juliette sat silent and withdrawn beside me. I longed to hold her in my arms and make her smile again, but she was far away in fox-country, where ghost women bewail the lovers they have lost or misprized. I spent four hours and a small fortune on telephone calls and then took the midnight plane to New York.

  2

  In New York I am instantly at home, a shameless capitalist bloated with the spoils of free en
terprise. I have an apartment in the East Sixties, a Japanese manservant, one good club, and a miscellany of friends, male and female. For all its follies and frenzies, I love the town. I rejoice in its gaudy bustle, its laconic cynicism and its brusque bad manners. It is a risky place to live in, all too easy to die in; but I am happier here than in any other city in the world.

  I am also blissfully private, because I have an unlisted telephone, another man’s name-plate on the door and the use of the bank’s apartment at the Salvador, where I can entertain bores without having them set foot across my threshold. The arrangement has diplomatic advantages as well. The Salvador is a very public place where business is seen and overheard to be done. So it pays me to have the facility of a double life: to bait one lair and relax in the other.

  At eight in the morning, rumpled and drowsy, I checked in at the Salvador. At nine I was in my own apartment. By ten, thanks to the ministrations of Takeshi, I was shaved, bathed, fed and restored to human shape. At ten-thirty, I was strolling down Third Avenue to make contact with Aaron Bogdanovich, who traded in terror and very expensive flowers.

  The flower trade was booming. Two girls, armed with shears and wire, were making up table arrangements; an exotic young man was packing a bouquet in a box. An ample madam, wearing gold spectacles and a lemon-yellow smock and a voracious smile, begged to know my pleasure and rattled off a catalogue of spring blooms before I had time to draw breath. When I asked to see the proprietor, her smile faded and she was no longer interested in my pleasure but only in my name and business.

  The information gave her no visible satisfaction. When I presented Karl Kruger’s letter, she handled it as gingerly as gelignite, laid it on a saucer and carried it into the back room. A few moments later she was back with the word that I should cross the Avenue to Ginty’s Tavern and wait for a call on the pay-phone. I bowed myself out, feeling leprous and unloved.

  At Ginty’s I drank tomato juice and counted the bottles on the shelves until the phone rang and a voice commanded me to walk to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and kneel in the first confessional on the right-hand aisle. By now, I thought the whole routine was a bloody nonsense and I said so. The voice chided me, abruptly:

  ‘For banking, we come to you. In our business, we’re the specialists… Okay?’

  Put it like that, of course okay. It wasn’t far to Saint Patrick’s, and a little praying might help – provided I could remember the words. The confessional was dark and sour with old guilts. The grille which separated penitent and confessor was covered with opaque gauze. The voice which spoke through it was an anonymous, soothing murmur:

  ‘You are Paul Desmond?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am Aaron Bogdanovich. I have total recall. You will tell me the service you want. I will tell you whether and on what terms we undertake it. Begin, please.’

  I told him, in a confessional monotone. It was an interesting exercise because it made me see how vaguely I had defined my own position and how much reason there might be for Harlequin’s doubts and hesitations. Aaron Bogdanovich was a good listener and a very skilled inquisitor. He asked uncomfortable questions:

  ‘How would you express your needs in order of importance?’

  ‘To stave off a takeover. To investigate the fraudulent operation and clean up our system. To prove Basil Yanko guilty of criminal conspiracy.’

  ‘The first two operations are defensive. The third is aggressive. Why?’

  ‘If we fight a defensive war, we are bound to lose.’

  ‘Have you counted the possible cost?’

  ‘In money? No. We accept that it may be expensive.’

  ‘Money is not the prime issue.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Life and death. When you go to the police, when you call in a recognised security firm, you hire a man with a gun, to defend your life and your property. Their delegation is limited. They are answerable at law for what they do. We are not answerable, because we operate outside the law. However, we do have certain moralities and we are not assassins for hire. You can buy those in an open market; the contract rate begins at twenty thousand dollars for one killing.’

  ‘We are not hiring assassins.’

  ‘But violence may be involved and death is consequential to violence. So you have to decide first and we, afterwards, whether the issue is grave enough to warrant a mortal risk.’

  ‘Can we discuss that?’

  ‘Not now. I should like you to define your position to your own satisfaction. Then we can meet again.’

  ‘Face to face?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘You mentioned moralities. We need to know those we have in common. I’ve never yet made a bargain with a man I didn’t know. I’ve never signed an open-ended contract. So, it’s a face-to-face meeting or we finish here.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I suggest my apartment. You name the time.’

  ‘Tonight at eleven-thirty. Do you have documents I can study?’

  ‘Here, in my briefcase.’

  ‘Leave it in the booth, unlocked, with your address and telephone number inside. I’ll collect it after you’ve gone. One more thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I serve a country first. I serve its friends and mine by concession and corollary. I cannot put my work at risk. So you must bind yourself to absolute secrecy.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘You should also know the penalty for breach.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Death, Mr Desmond – and there’s no second warning.’

  It is wonderful how clearly a man thinks when his own death is in debate. As I walked up Fifth Avenue, through the press of the noonday crowd, I measured my own position against that of my sinister confessor. Aaron Bogdanovich had plausible reason for his trade. One death, a hundred deaths, were ciphers against six millions murdered in the holocausts. No life was more important than the survival of a beleaguered nation… But a bank? An anonymous society devoted only to the nurture of money. Did that merit a human sacrifice to preserve its assets? Who chose the victim and by what criterion? And what right had Paul Desmond, safe in the rectitude of possession, to appoint himself judge and jury and deputise the executioner?

  As I paused to admire the diamonds in Cartier’s window, a blind man, with a placard round his neck, rattled a tin cup under my nose. I had no coins in my pocket, so I fished out a crumpled note. As I stuffed it into the cup, I saw too late that it was a ten-dollar bill. I grudged it so unreasonably that it bought me no absolution at all.

  I had a luncheon date at the Salvador with our New York manager, Larry Oliver, who is a Bostonian, with beautiful party manners and a finical respect for tradition. If he could have furnished the office with crouch-back clerks, high desks and quill pens, he would have been the happiest of men. Once, Harlequin posted him to London for six months and he came back shocked and wounded by the decline of morals in English banking. The barbarians of Wall Street made jokes about him, but he had ridden us through the crisis of 1970 with hardly a dent in our portfolios. The simplest inaccuracy was anathema to him. A fraud in our accounts was an unthinkable horror. So I expected a difficult meal; in fact, it was a total disaster.

  Oliver toyed, unhappily, with his food while I sketched as much of the situation as he needed to know, and filled in the details pertinent to New York. He left his coffee untasted, stood up, tucked his hands under his coat-tails and began pacing the floor, for all the world like an attorney lecturing a difficult client.

  ‘…Paul, I understand – believe me I do understand – the gravity of this situation. But why wasn’t I informed before this?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Larry! We only heard in Geneva four days ago. I cabled you and all the other managers instantly. I’ve spent two days conferring with George Harlequin and the rest of the time travelling. Be reasonable, man!’

  ‘I am trying to be reasonable, Paul. But my reputation is involved, my family name…’

>   ‘So far as Harlequin and I are concerned, your reputation has never been in question.’

  ‘But once this gets out…’

  ‘It mustn’t get out, Larry. That’s the whole point. The shortfall is covered. I’m here in New York to set up a full investigation.’

  ‘But through a private agency.’

  ‘Possibly several.’

  He stopped dead in his tracks and wagged a reproving finger at me. ‘I’m afraid that doesn’t meet the bill, Paul – not by half.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Unless I misread the law, we are the victims of grand fraud. Right?’

  ‘On the face of it, yes.’

  ‘That’s a matter for the FBI. Why haven’t they been called?’

  ‘Because, though we suspect fraud, we have not yet had time to collate and study all the evidence. Besides, we operate in several jurisdictions. It may be the FBI is not the prime agency involved. However, I have a meeting with Creative Systems at which we’ll go through the report together. Then I’ll report to Mr Harlequin and we’ll decide whether or no to call in Federal investigators.’

  ‘Meantime, all our staff and I, myself, am under a cloud. I find that intolerable.’

  ‘Naturally. I can only beg you to be patient. We have to co-ordinate action with all our other branches.’

  ‘I see that, of course; but I wonder how much information has leaked out already.’

  ‘None, I hope.’

  ‘I’m not so sure of that. I was at a foursome lunch yesterday at the Club. There were some odd questions asked.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Whether Harlequin would be fit for active work again.’

  ‘He will be, very soon.’

  ‘Whether I sensed any weakness in our Geneva operations.’

  ‘And you assured them there was none?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge… I never make rash statements.’

  ‘I know, Larry. I know. What were the other questions?’

  ‘Whether we were open to a takeover bid and whether one had, in fact, been made. I said no, to both.’