Harlequin

by Morris West

  Our exit from Washington was less than glorious. Rain was falling out of a low, leaden sky. The weekend exodus had begun and we were just four more sheep to be herded through the disinfectant dip and shipped out as quickly as possible. Our hand-luggage was searched; we were marched through a detector gate; we were patted and probed and held in a pen, while security men searched the aircraft for lethal devices. Good sheep that we were, we told each other we approved the care that was being taken to save our lives. We deplored the violence that made the precaution necessary; and we committed ourselves with absolute faith to the care of our anonymous betters and our armed shepherds. My faith had become more fragile with the years; so, as soon as we were airborne, I claimed my ration of cocktails and immersed myself in Mendoza’s report on the fabulous career of Basil Yanko.

  The first part of it was standard folklore: the son of poor Bohemian migrants, he had sold newspapers and delivered groceries to pay for his education, and had established himself by sheer guts and brains in the new science of computer technology. His career in the giant companies was rapid and unblemished. He was well-paid. He saved his money. His parsimony was the only notable feature of his private life. He had no political affiliations and apparently small need of friendship. He submitted, without complaint, to the disciplines of the corporate society. He asked no favours for himself. He gave no quarter to subordinates. He refused all solicitations to company intrigue. His one recorded declaration was a terse adjudication in an executive’s dispute: ‘We make brains and teach people how to use them. For once, let’s use our own!’

  He was thirty-two when he left the service of the giants and set out to become one himself. His net worth, at that moment, was a quarter of a million dollars, with which he bought a third share in a small data-processing outfit in New York. In the same year, he married the daughter of his senior partner. The next, his wife went to Nevada and divorced him. She, too, was on record with a slightly hysterical character sketch: ‘He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t kind. He just wasn’t there. I married him with stars in my eyes; what I was really seeing was flashing lights and whirling tapes… When I reached out to him, all I could touch was baked enamel. He wasn’t a man. He was a mechanical monster.’

  Six months before the divorce, Basil Yanko had founded a shell company called Creative Systems Incorporated. It didn’t do anything except exist. Six months after the divorce, his senior partner died from an overdose of barbiturates. There were rumours of scandal: fraud in the accounts; industrial espionage; sales of data to his clients’ competitors. The dead man had abdicated his defence. Basil Yanko defended him stoutly enough to establish himself as a fairminded, loyal friend and retain his best clients. Then Creative Systems Incorporated bought the company at a bargain price. Basil Yanko owned it all. He could now offer the sole service of a genius, unbound from servitude to lesser spirits. The giants began to send him business. He expanded, slowly, but with a kind of cold certainty, buying talent, selling ideas, delivering always in excess of his contract.

  His mode of life changed, too. He lived more richly, entertained more lavishly, but surrounded himself at the same time with an aura of Faustian mystery. It was an act that invited criticism because it suggested the mountebank; but the act paid off when the mountebank demonstrated beyond all doubt that he was a true wizard. Powerful companies funded his research. High men sought his counsel and he, in turn, endowed them with instruments of power.

  He married the daughter of one of them, a thirty-year-old plain-Jane, reputed to be a lover of young girls, but rich enough to afford the eccentricity. She was killed when she pressed the starter of her speedboat on Lake Tahoe and the gas in the bilges exploded. Basil Yanko was in New York when it happened. He flew back to mourn at the graveside, collect the insurance and probate a three-month-old will which made him richer by eight million dollars.

  Then, he began to expand, devouring small companies, stripping their assets, retaining their best people, tossing the rest back to his rivals. In the palmy days of the middle sixties, when every petty king was paying a fortune for invisible clothes, Basil Yanko went public and made another fortune. He bought hardware. He invaded Europe, buying stock and real estate, making allies and setting up affiliates. There were malicious rumours that he was selling, too: information in return for capital holdings in European enterprise. Mendoza’s report cited several cases, but all were based on defective evidence. In one sinister instance, a European drughouse was accused of stealing secrets; while, three days after the news, a senior analyst from Creative Systems was killed in a car crash in the Dolomites.

  In a sense, it was all old hat and déjà vu: a rewrite of the histories of the tobacco barons and the oil emperors and the arms peddlers. You knew it happened. It would cost a fortune and three lifetimes to prove it. If you did, no one would give you a medal – even if you were alive to accept it… Which was fine; so long as it happened yesterday to someone else. In fact, it was happening today, to us. The boys in the market knew it; but so long as their own pockets were not hit, they could hardly care less. If we won, they might even be embarrassed. If we lost, they would still dine Basil Yanko at the Bankers’ Club, and dismiss us with the catch-all epitaph: business is business.

  The seat-belt light flashed on. The hostess told us we were dropping down into Dallas, where they killed John Kennedy and buried the truth with his assassin and everyone lived happily ever after.

  6

  When we crossed the Rio Grande, I was asleep and dreaming. I woke to see the peak of Popocatepetl, snow-clad and serene, against a sky full of stars. Below were lesser crags and lakes of darkness, dotted with the tiny lights of villages. Ahead and far away was the loom of Mexico City, a golden glow diffusing itself through the smog, spreading itself high among the starfields. I felt a strange sense of liberation and relief as though I had emerged from a long tunnel into a vast but friendly wilderness. Beside me, Suzanne was glowing with the same sudden wonder and excitement. She held my hand and chatted like a child, full of fantasies and half-remembered histories: the plumed serpent, the golden city in the lake, the people to whom time was a sacred mystery, Cortés, who was welcomed as a god and was too human to know it.

  George Harlequin came to share the moment with us. He was obsessed by the small lights in the great valleys: tiny treasure-troves of racial memory that would never be recorded, because those who held them could neither read nor write and their language would die with them. He talked of the strange amnesia that afflicts the human race: how what they gained of wisdom in one age, they cast to the winds in a single generation. Hung between heaven and earth, we saw scraps of visions, held, for a moment, stardust in our hands.

  When we hit the ground, the visions dissolved in acrid smog; the stardust turned to earth-dust, gritty on the fingers, dry in the mouth. We shuffled like a chain-gang through passport control. We waited like patient peons for baggage and customs. We were caught in a churning sea of men, women, children and assorted livestock. Just as we were about to lapse into screaming despair, the sea parted, and José Luis Miramón de Velasco welcomed us into the land of the Aztecs.

  In our records, he showed as thirty-five, unmarried, a graduate of the National Autonomous University and the Harvard School of Business Administration, member of an old gachupine family: which meant that his ancestors wore shoes and spoke Castilian, while the rest of the country went barefoot and spoke Nahua and bastard Spanish. It also meant that he was rich in his own right, handsome and proud as Lucifer, and could walk blindfold through the labyrinth of Mexican administration.

  His welcome was courtly. He presented us at the hotel with regal pomp. He put himself and his services and his house at our instant command. I saw the women pale with amazement that so much and so beautiful a maleness had managed to stay so long unmarried. I forebore to mention that a rich gachupine who ran an investment bank in Mexico City needed marriage as little as he needed pulque and tamales for dinner.

  Before he left, he begged the
favour of a private talk with Harlequin and myself. He was affronted by what had happened at the bank; he could not sleep calm until the slur on its reputation was removed. Knowing his quite ferocious pride, I feared we were doomed to a re-run of Larry Oliver in Castilian. On the contrary, his immediate concern was for George Harlequin.

  ‘…You have been ill, my friend. It is monstrous that you should be involved so soon in this – this sofistería! But that is the way of Yanqui business. If you will not sell at their price, they lay siege to you, scare you with lawsuits and spies digging into your private life. Well, here at least, we may manage to hold them off. We are damaged. You must know that first. It is argued that a good banker smells a fraud before it happens. It is also argued that we sold stock in Creative Systems; that we contracted for their services; that, if we have fallen out with them now, it is our mistake, not theirs… Tomorrow, you and Madame Harlequin are invited to luncheon with Pedro Galvez and two others of your Mexican shareholders. Galvez is the strongman. Convince him and you are out of the shadows and back in business. He wants investment funds for new mines, new access roads; he would rather get them from Europe or Japan than north of the border. There are overtones here, hard to catch, hard to interpret. Our roots are in Europe and in the old indigene life of this country. Our loyalties are to ourselves. Our enmities go back to the Alamo. Hernán Cortés, himself, is not yet absolved… Forgive me, I do not explain myself very well. There is something else, too – embarrassing to say, but necessary…’ He broke off, begging to be pardoned a moment while he set a difficult speech in order. Finally, he came to it. ‘George, my friend, I have been a fool!’

  ‘It’s a common complaint, José,’ said Harlequin, with a grin. ‘We all suffer from it.’

  ‘This time, George, it is you who are suffering. The last two days I have been working with your investigators at the bank. It is clear that the operator who coded the false instructions was a girl called Maria Guzman, who left us in January. I told your investigators she had dropped out of circulation and that it might be very difficult to trace her… That was a lie.’

  ‘I’m sure you had good reason for telling it, José.’

  ‘I put that to you for judgment. This Maria was – is – a very attractive woman. For a while I – er – entertained her. Then, when she began to be serious, I dropped her. All this was, oh, September, October, last year. Of course she stayed with us. She was good at her job. She was well-paid. Then, in January, she told me she wanted to leave. She had been offered a better place at Petróleos Mexicanos. I gave her a first-class recommendation and let her go. For me, the matter was happily closed. It is not the easiest situation when you meet an old flame every morning – and Maria didn’t make it any easier!’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ said George Harlequin mildly.

  ‘I know it. You can have my head on a dish if you want it.’

  ‘I’d rather have the facts, José.’

  ‘I have them, George. Before I give them to you, I want a favour; I have no right to ask it, but I do. The girl is guilty, no doubt of it. I beg you not to take her to law. If you had ever seen the inside of a Mexican prison, you would understand why. I will pledge what I own against your losses. But I beg you…’

  ‘Are you still in love with her, José?’

  ‘Name of God! No! I think she’s a stupid bitch; but I was more stupid than she was.’

  ‘Very well! No charges. And the last thing I want is your money, José. Now, what have you got?’

  ‘A confession in Spanish, an English translation, two photographs, all notarised.’

  ‘How did you get them?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t ask, George. I’m not proud of that, either. Just read the document.’

  George Harlequin read it slowly, then handed it to me. The statement was limpid as a tear-drop:

  ‘…I fell in love with a man who was not in love with me. When he told me our affair was finished, I felt foolish and hurt and angry; but I stayed in my job because I knew it shamed him, though it did not make me feel any better. One day, a young man visited the bank to check the workings of our computer system. His name was Peter Firmin. He said he was in Mexico for a month, visiting clients. He invited me to dinner. After that, we saw each other constantly. I opened my heart to him. We became lovers. He said he wanted to marry me: but, first, he must divorce his wife, and that would cost a great deal of money. I had nothing. I could not help. Then he told me that, if I would feed certain instructions into our computer, money would be paid: ten thousand dollars. He said it would be no crime. I was not stealing anything. When it was found out, it would be a big joke against José Luis, because he would have to answer for it. I agreed: but I would not take the money. I gave it to Peter to use for his divorce. He went away. I never saw him again. I wrote many times, to his Company and to the address he had given me in California. My letters were all returned – addressee unknown. No one questioned the computer instructions; but in January, I decided I must leave. All I have left of Peter Firmin is some photographs which I took of him one Sunday in Chapultapec Park. I affirm and declare that this is a true statement and that I have made it of my own free will in the presence of…’

  One photograph showed a young man, dressed in summer casuals, posed with a balloon seller. In the other he was squatting on his haunches with a tiny Indian girl offering him a flower. He looked cheerful and uncomplicated, like any prosperous young executive out with his girl on a summer afternoon. I had seen dozens of him in a dozen cities and yet… and yet…

  ‘Do you recognise him, Paul?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But there’s something familiar.’

  ‘I know him,’ said José Luis Miramón de Velasco. He gave us an embarrassed smile and a shrug of apology. ‘I did some detective work of my own. He signed a month’s lease on an apartment: one of those they rent, furnished, to tourists and business men. To do that, he had to show a passport and supply a business reference. His real name is Alexander Duggan and he works for Creative Systems in Los Angeles, California… I told you the girl was stupid. She could have found that for herself.’

  I remembered him then: the naive young man in the bar of the Bel Air hotel, the ingenuous fellow who thought the sun shone out of Basil Yanko’s backside, and the sky rained bonuses and stock-options. I began to babble excitedly but George Harlequin cut me off in mid-sentence.

  ‘It’s useful, Paul, very useful; but it’s far from conclusive. Let’s sleep on it… José, I’m grateful. Julie and I will lunch with Galvez tomorrow and we’ll meet at the bank on Monday morning. Not a word of this to anyone else. Understand?’

  He understood. He was chastened; but he did not forget his dignity. He made a brief, sober speech of thanks and then bowed himself out like a courtier who had just been reprieved from the headsman.

  George Harlequin lay back in his chair and sighed wearily: ‘There, but for the grace of God… eh, Paul? He’ll wear that folly like a hairshirt for a long time.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter a damn how he wears it, George. He’s given us the first solid evidence against Basil Yanko.’

  ‘Correction. We have an unsupported deposition by a disappointed woman.’

  ‘Come on, George! Put Alexander Duggan in the dock and examine him on that document, you’ll cause a sensation!’

  ‘How do we get him there, Paul?’

  ‘Arrest him on a charge of conspiracy to defraud.’

  ‘The conspiracy was committed in Mexico City. We can’t extradite him without proof of crime. We can’t get that without charging Maria Guzman, which we’ve promised not to do. No, Paul. Our friend, José Luis, is a very stylish fellow. He clears himself; he incriminates a girl but makes sure she won’t be called to testify; he hands us the name of a man we can’t indict. What does that say to you?’

  ‘It says I call Saul Wells and send him a copy of the document and the photographs and set him to work on Alexander Duggan.’

  ‘Is that all?’


  ‘It’s the best I can think of at midnight, after a long day.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you something to sleep on, Paul. A man doesn’t walk into a bank like a telephone mechanic and say he’s come to check the computer system. He telephones for an appointment. He presents himself to the manager. His credentials are checked at source, and from his personal documents…’

  ‘So Maria Guzman was lying.’

  ‘No. As I read it, José Luis was careless. He took the telephone call from a Mr Peter Firmin of Creative Systems, made an appointement, and in the best Latin style, didn’t check back, and accepted his visitor at face value.’

  ‘He could also have been a conspirator himself.’

  ‘No, Paul, he’s too rich to need it.’

  ‘In that case, he’s too rich for us, George. Get rid of him.’

  ‘Not yet, Paul. Let him keep face. We need it as much as he does at this moment. This is another country. Life isn’t all business. Style is important, too!’

  He was probably right. I was too tired to argue. All I could say was that you could buy a hell of a lot of style for fifteen million dollars and that a manager who couldn’t keep his hands off the help wasn’t my style at all. The which, of course, was blithe hypocrisy, because when I got back to my suite, there was Suzanne dressed to kill, loaded for bear, and waiting for me to show her Mexico City on a Saturday night.

  I woke, dead and damned, with my mouth full of hot coals. I was blind, too; which was probably a mercy. I certainly wasn’t deaf, because the telephone was a torment in my ears. I found it finally and managed a sub-human croak. The caller was an old denizen of the nether world. ‘Good morning, Mr Desmond! This is Aaron.’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘I expected you to call me last night.’