by Morris West
I was furious – because he hadn’t discussed it with me, and because a share-dumping operation is about as moral as murder, and often more brutal. The principle is the same, though you need a lot of money and a lot of nerve to make the killing. If you sell large numbers of shares in a given enterprise, you depress the market value. If you keep selling, you create a panic among other shareholders, who rush to unload. The price goes down to bargain basement level. You buy again, and if your timing’s right, and you have the cash to cover the deal, you can end up, if not with control, at least with a sizeable profit and possibly enough votes to get you a seat on the board. Which is fine for you, but can be ruinous for other people less fortunate, who see their life’s savings wiped out overnight, or their loan limits slashed at the stroke of a bank manager’s pen.
I could understand Harlequin’s reasoning. The bank had very large holdings in Creative Systems. Many of its clients had, too. Some of the clients had given the bank discretion over their investments; so that Harlequin could sell without reference to them. If all that stock were tossed back into the market, there would be a stampede of the Gadarene swine. Basil Yanko, himself, would be millions poorer; and to stop the rot, he would have to buy, and keep buying, until the market stabilised again. Add that to his other troubles – a Federal investigation, a list of suspicious clients, and his political problems in Washington – and you had a neat reversal of his threat to Harlequin: a crisis of confidence on a global scale.
I had seen it done before. I had heard it justified, with the cynicism of whore-mongers, as a normal market operation. I had also seen some of its consequences: a friend who jumped out of a tenth storey window, another who lapsed quietly into fugue, and several notable bastards who lived rich as Midas ever after. The fact that Harlequin could even contemplate the tactic filled me with disgust and disillusion. I was ready to storm up to his suite and challenge him, but Suzy held me back.
‘Please, Paul! If he knows I’ve told you, he’ll never trust me again. Besides, I’m sure he wouldn’t do it without consulting you. I know he talked to Herbert Bachmann and asked him to make some calculations about the effect on the market. He hasn’t got them yet and he hasn’t issued any instructions to the managers. It’s a big operation. He’d have to prepare it.’
‘If he does it, Suzy, I’m finished. For always! I mean that. I don’t know what’s got into him.’
She gave me a long, searching look and said flatly, ‘Is it any different from what you’re doing, Paul – except you’re doing it by proxy through Aaron Bogdanovich? Is it any different from what Basil Yanko is doing – except he’s willing to raise the market instead of dropping it?’
‘No, Suzy, it is different. Ours is a private fight. Yanko invaded us; we’re fighting him with his own weapons. But if George does this, a lot of innocent bystanders get killed.’
‘If they play the market, they take that risk.’
‘It’s plain piracy. George knows it.’
Instantly, she was on fire with righteous wrath. ‘Why are you Simon Pure, while George is suddenly a monster? I’ll tell you why! Because you want him up there, perched on a pedestal, like the protector of the faithful! He makes you feel good, even when you’re not. He’s something to be proud of and jealous of at the same time. You’re like Julie. You don’t want to believe he’s a man. You want to look out the window and see him standing there, every day the same, sunshine and snow, with the pigeons perched on his head. He’s like the bronze horseman on the Capitol. So long as he’s there, Rome is safe. But George isn’t bronze or marble. He’s flesh and bones and hotter blood than you ever give him credit for. If he wants to fight, let him fight! Don’t tie his hands. I don’t want to see him made a mockery in that brigand’s hole you call a market! I don’t care whether he’s right or wrong. I love him, don’t you understand? I love him…’
Ay – Ay – Ay! Of all the dumb oxen in the world, I was the dumbest. Of all the lovers in the world, I surely was the blindest. I had held this woman in my arms night after night, month after month, and I had never found the talisman that would open the treasure cave of her loving. Well, I had it now; but for all the good it did me, I might as well toss it in to the Potomac. I poured us another brace of drinks and made the time-worn toast:
‘Well, here’s to crime!… I wonder how far he’ll go?’
‘How far will you go, Paul?’
‘I guess, as far as my nerve will stretch.’
‘Or your conscience.’
‘Do you think I have one?’
‘A confused one, yes.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It gets in the way – between you and George, between you and Julie… Now, don’t be angry, chéri! You and I had a long time together. It was good; but it wasn’t the best and we both know why. We both see what’s wrong with that marriage. If it ended, you’d probably get Julie. I wouldn’t get George. I’m just a piece of office furniture that he hardly sees any more and I’m too old for the mating game anyway. So I’d rather see him happy than miserable.’
‘I’d rather see them both happy. Julie talked to me on the train. She knows she’s done a lot of silly things. She doesn’t know how to undo them. I think you could help.’
She gave me the old hard look that the sweetest of them get in the summer of their discontent. She shook her head and said coolly:
‘No, Paul! I’m dear good Suzy; but I’m not as good as that. If you want to be Julie’s white knight, I’ll clap and cheer and help you saddle your charger. For the rest – No! No! No!… At least I’m an honest bitch, chéri. Could you bear to take me to dinner?’
At eight in the morning, George Harlequin called me. He was leaving at nine forty-five to make an early call on his Ambassador. He would like me to meet him for lunch. He hoped I was rested. I was. Had I any news from New York? None; I would be out and about during the morning; I would report to him at twelve-thirty. Wasn’t it a beautiful morning? I hadn’t seen it yet: but I was glad to know there would be sunshine in our lives. Until later then… And if that was all he wanted to tell me, to hell with him!
Next door, Suzanne was tapping out letters with the steady rhythm of a good Swiss machine. I poked my head round the door to bid her good morning. She gave me a vague salute and went on typing. I felt like the last spear-carrier in the pageant, draggle-tailed and unloved; so I went down to the lobby hoping to make the acquaintance of Arnold, the deputy bell-captain. I found a confusion of departing guests, all clamouring for bills and baggage service and taxis. I walked out into the sunshine, took a taxi to the Tidal Basin, leisurely as any provincial tourist, to commune with old Thomas Jefferson in his shrine among the cherry trees.
I will tell you a sentimental secret. This is one place in America which I truly love. This is one man in all her turbulent history who moves me to admiration and, all too rarely, to meditation. Scraps and snippets of his wise and tolerant code sound longer in my memory than the strident voices of my own time. He hated ‘the morbid rage of debate’. ‘If I could not get to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all… Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched…’ I suppose that, younger and more open, I had seen in him what I had found – and lost – in George Harlequin: a largeness of mind, wit, humour and a soul hospitable to the whole experience of mankind.
Even so early, there were lovers and families on the lawns and I envied them. I was grateful that the shrine was empty, so that I could brood in the solitude of the past, which is like the solitude of the sea, cleansing and healing. The pity was that the past belonged only to those who lived it – and Jefferson knew that, too: ‘ .… I knew that age well; I belonged to it and laboured with it. It deserved well of its country…’ I, Paul Desmond, belonged to my age, and profited from it, and deserved well of nobody. I would go from this place to another, where they sold flowers and sent greetings by telegraph, and arranged for me
n to be shot when they opened the door for the message. Other times, other manners! Tom Jefferson was lucky he had not lived to see them; else he would have lost a great many noble illusions.
Mr Kurt Saperstein of Bernard’s Blooms bore no resemblance at all to Thomas Jefferson of Albemarle County. He was short, round and buttery. He had a bald pate surrounded by a hedge of black hair. He wore a suit of midnight blue and a butterfly tie and thick myopic spectacles. His chubby hand was damp, his smile was wide as a cut in a watermelon. He talked in a heavily accented rhythm as if he were intoning verse.
‘My dear sir…! Welcome, welcome! I do hope you liked the flowers. One of our best efforts if I may say so. One of our very best. Arnold called you? Delighted. A good man – very good. Now, sir, may I suggest a stroll. It’s a heavenly day’
The moment he stepped into the street, he changed completely. He walked briskly, talked quietly, and, in spite of his odd appearance, was inconspicuous as a lizard on a rock. I swear I would have walked past him without a second glance. His briefing was brisk and laconic:
‘Instructions first, Mr Desmond. No further contact between you and me. I’ve seen you. I know you. Arnold brings me your messages. I say mine with flowers. Most things you want, we can do: car hire, reliable escorts, a bodyguard, if you need one. We’ve got friends in most places: the Pentagon, National Security, the Embassies. We’re good at documents, too; but remember they take time… I’ve got some news for you. Aaron’s travelling; but Tony Tesoriero’s nailed down tight in Miami. He can’t spit without hitting a shadow. The FBI have been talking to Saul Wells. He’s sure they’ll be visiting you here. Also he’s made the calls he promised and the cat’s having a field day among the pigeons. He thought your president might get a few calls from other worried presidents… That’s all I’ve got so far. Is there anything you need right now…?’
‘Do you know a good journalist who could leak a story and forget where he got it?’
‘Sure. This town’s crawling with pressmen, good and bad. Let me think about it. When would you want to see him?’
‘Tonight, if possible; but privately, away from the hotel.’
‘Leave it with me. Arnold will get word to you.’
‘I need a man who won’t talk around afterwards.’
The remark offended him. He took ten strides to recover from it. Then he reproved me, curtly:
‘Have you ever been to Yad Vashem, Mr Desmond?’
‘I don’t even know what it is.’
‘It’s in Israel. A monument to six million dead. We never want to build another.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘How could you know? How can anyone know who didn’t smell the smoke of the holocausts? I must get back now to my beautiful flowers and my dear, dear customers… Strange people, Mr Desmond! The rooftrees of the world are cracking round their heads and they don’t hear a sound!… Shalom!’
I had still time to kill, so I wandered back to join the small crowd of idlers and tourists at the boundary of the White House, where the President lived, beleaguered, among the ruins of his own reputation and the hopes of a great people. I had no right to sit in judgment on him; I was an outlander, a free-booter from far away; but I could not escape the haunting reflection that this man, too, had sought to build an apparatus of terror. He had enlisted a shabby crew of informers, spies, blackmailers, thieves and perjurers and shielded them under the cope of power, which his own citizens had laid reverently on his shoulders on the day of his inauguration.
In the end, the apparatus had broken down; his minions had deserted him; but the terror was still abroad. If the President flouted the law, what writ could run and what contract would hold? If authority was in discredit, the centurions held the fort and the anarchs were in command in the street. If a man could not live private, and walk safe abroad and die, quiet, in God’s good time, then the ruffian was king and his scavengers would lay waste the land with impunity… It was nearly noon. The taste of infamy was stale in my mouth. I turned away and walked briskly back to the hotel.
I needed to introduce myself to Arnold; but, as I stopped to collect my key, I was greeted by Mr Philip Lyndon, late of New York, presently, it seemed, in the charge of a wet-nurse, Mr Milo Frohm, who looked more like a banker than most of our colleagues and talked like the Beloved Physician on a house-call. Mr Frohm hoped I could spare them a little time. I told him I was free until twelve-thirty, when I was bidden to lunch with Mr Harlequin. Where would I like to chat? The bar? They would prefer somewhere more private. My suite, then? Yes, they would be grateful for that. As we rode up in the elevator, I told them of my morning visit to Thomas Jefferson, to whom I found Mr Frohm was as dedicated as I was myself. I was delighted to have found a soul-brother, who knew all about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the moral foundations of the body politic.
Suzy was still working in the suite, but she agreed to vacate in favour of the law. I asked her, pointedly, if Harlequin had returned from his meeting with the Ambassador. She rose to the cue and told me, no, he had expected a long conference. And, by the way, there was a note to call my own Embassy. She asked would we prefer coffee or a pre-lunch cocktail. Mr Frohm and Mr Lyndon opted for tomato juice. I decided on a bourbon and branch water. Mr Frohm praised my taste for good southern tipple. Mr Lyndon smiled and said nothing. After we had toasted each other, Mr Frohm led for the Republic.
‘First, Mr Desmond, let me say that we do appreciate your frankness in a previous interview with Mr Lyndon. We regret that the phrasing of certain questions caused unwitting offence to you and to your principal. In our job we deal with so many different people that certain lapses of tact are inevitable. I hope you understand?’
‘I do, Mr Frohm. Neither Mr Harlequin nor myself has any hard feelings towards Mr Lyndon; but as foreigners we are sometimes shocked by American methods. However… what can I do for you now?’
‘More questions, I’m afraid, Mr Desmond.’
‘May I ask one first?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you, Mr Lyndon, check the answers I gave at our first interview?’
‘Yes, Mr Desmond.’
‘And you found them accurate?’
This time Mr Frohm answered for him. ‘In all particulars, Mr Desmond. However, there are some gaps in the narrative. We’d like to fill those, if we can. Let’s go back to your dinner with Valerie Hallstrom. That was a purely social occasion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you tell us what you talked about?’
‘The usual banalities. I told her my life-story. She didn’t tell me hers – except that her father bred saddle horses in Virginia and she wondered whether seven-fifty a week really paid for the wear and tear of New York.’
‘She did mention money, then?’
‘Seven fifty a week – oh! and fringe benefits. Her very words.’
‘Did she specify the wear and tear part of it?’
‘In a way, I suppose she did.’
‘In what way, Mr Desmond?’
‘Well… First, she said that if her employer knew she was dining with me, she’d lose her job and never get another.’
‘Didn’t that strike you as strange?’
‘Very. I told her it was blackmail, tyranny and enslavement.’
‘Why blackmail, Mr Desmond?’
‘She explained that she had once been in love with her employer and it hadn’t gone well. She called him – let me see – a toad with a gold crown on his head. She warned me that he could be a dangerous man.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Only one thing. When she got out of the car to walk home, she said, “God sometimes likes to know how his children spend their evenings.”’
‘Those are striking phrases.’
‘They are, aren’t they?’
‘Why then did you not record them in your first statement to the police and your second to Mr Lyndon here?’
‘I’ll tell you why, Mr Frohm. The police were investi
gating a murder. Those phrases were hearsay which, though inadmissible in evidence, might have thrown suspicion on an innocent man. The remark about God suggested that it was Basil Yanko who was waiting in her apartment. I don’t like what he does in business, but I have no right to hint that he could be a murderer. You ask why I didn’t mention it to Mr Lyndon. That’s easy. His last question – the one which broke us up – implied that we might have bought Valerie Hallstrom’s notebook to discredit a business rival…’
It took Mr Frohm a long time to test that one for taste and texture; but, finally, he seemed to accept it. ‘You make your point, Mr Desmond. Now, let’s talk about the notebook. We accept your account of how it came into your possession. In default of contrary evidence, we must accept that you do not know who sent it or why. However…’ He paused to let the premonition weigh on me. ‘However, it is a fact that you – or your investigators, acting on your behalf – are, at this moment, making capital out of it.’
‘Capital in what sense, Mr Frohm?’
‘Mr Saul Wells is disseminating its contents to interested parties. Already this morning five major companies have called us to report a breach in their security. I am sure there will be others. In the context of your relations with Creative Systems and with Basil Yanko, does that not suggest an effort to secure tactical advantage?’
‘It represents an attempt, gratuitous and unsolicited, to save other reputable businesses from the fate which has befallen us.’