Over the various fried foods, George told her about his phone call and what Richard Curtis had done. She stared at him, appalled: “But why?”
“Destroy my credibility,” he said. “No matter what I do now, it isn’t a case of me charging Richard Curtis with something, it’s just me reacting to the charge he’s made against me.”
“What an awful man he is,” Kim said, “Jerry Diedrich was absolutely right.”
George shook his head at her. “Not absolutely right,” he said. “He was sure I was going to destroy the reef.”
That made her stop eating to consider him thoughtfully and then say, “Two days ago, you were my enemy.”
“And now?”
Suddenly, she felt awkward. “Well, you’re not my enemy,” she said. “We know that much.”
* * *
When he came back to the room from his second phone call, she was feeling very sleepy again, probably because of all the food and the two beers, but she needed to stay awake to know what was going on. And also, her ribs were hurting again.
He came in and looked a little less grim than when he’d told her about Curtis’s mad accusations back at the cafe. “There’s somebody for me to call in the morning,” he said. “A business friend of my friend’s, here in Australia.”
“What can he do?”
“No idea. Maybe nothing. I’ll find out tomorrow morning.” He stretched, like a man who’s been too stiff and cramped in a too-confined space for far too long. “Right now,” he said, “I think we both need sleep.”
She said, “I shouldn’t have left that bandage off, I’m getting very sore again. Could you help me put it on?”
She picked the soft roll of it up from her bed, and handed it to him.
“Sure.”
As he took the two snaps off the bandage, she said, “Wait, I have to—” and pulled the blouse off over her head. “Okay.”
He looked at her, and became awkward again. “I didn’t know how to buy a, I don’t know how the—”
“That’s all right.” She held her arms out from her sides, so he could wrap the bandage around her torso. When he stepped close, it was only natural to rest her hands on his shoulders. He put his arms around her to start the bandage and she lifted her face up to him, and they kissed, and that was natural, too.
When they kissed again, he’d dropped the bandage onto the floor, so he could stroke the skin of her back with both palms. She murmured, and their teeth bumped, and she held him tighter, but then he pressed her close and the sudden pain in her ribs made her gasp and pull away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I forgot.”
“No. I’m sorry,” she told him, still holding to him, not wanting to let go. “Damn these ribs! George, what can we do?”
Slowly he smiled. “Well, it’s an engineering problem, isn’t it?” he said. “And I’m an engineer.”
6
Andre Brevizin entered the offices of Coolis, Maguire, Brevizin & Chin at exactly ten-thirty Friday morning, as was his wont. He exchanged the usual greetings with Angela Brother, the firm’s excellent receptionist, strolled down the hall to his own office, paused to look out at the usual morning bustle at the corners of George and Margaret Streets one flight below, sat at his vast desk, reached for the stack of newspapers placed there as usual by Angela, and the phone rang.
He blinked. He didn’t much like such suddenness. A lawyer in a highly respectable corporate firm with offices in one of the most prestigious and attractive locations in Brisbane, Andre Brevizin preferred a certain stateliness in his life, a certain moderation and order.
He lowered a severe brow at the telephone—an internal call it was, not external—permitted it to ring a second time, and only then did he pick it up: “Angela?”
“Jimmy Coggins on the line for you.”
Ah. Jimmy Coggins was an important corporate client, a construction company man and developer partly responsible for the ever-widening suburban sprawl around the center of the city. As such, he was both to be deplored and catered to. And of course, he was calling at this exact moment because he was well aware of the comfortably precise routines of Brevizin’s days.
“I’ll take it,” he decided, and pressed the button on the phone, and said, “Well, Jimmy, you know all my habits.”
“Only the least disgusting ones,” Jimmy assured him. “I take it you haven’t read the papers yet.”
“I was just reaching for them.”
“Take a look at the business section of the Herald,” Jimmy suggested. “Page forty-two.”
The Sydney Morning Herald lay beneath the Brisbane paper on Brevizin’s desk; the usual order. He brought it out, opened it flat on his desk to the appropriate page, and said, “What am I looking for? I don’t see your name here.”
“No, thank God. We’ll save those revelations for another day. The Richard Curtis piece.”
“Where— Oh, down here.”
It was a brief piece, tawdry, under the slightly misleading headline AMERICAN SOUGHT IN BRISBANE IN SPY CHARGE. Industrial spying, it was, the usual disgruntled ex-employee. All of them Americans, though it had happened right here in town. Or been reported here. “And?”
“Manville says he didn’t do it.”
“Jimmy, they all say they didn’t do it. When your turn comes, you’ll say you didn’t do it.”
“Somebody has to be innocent, Andre.”
“You think so?”
“Manville’s a friend of a very good friend of mine,” Jimmy said. “Also an American. My friend vouches for Manville, and that’s good enough for me.”
“But not good enough for a judge, I shouldn’t think. Jimmy, are you sending me this fellow?”
“I’d like to. On the QT.”
“On the dole, as well?”
“Oh, I think he could probably pay a modest fee. He doesn’t have Richard Curtis’s money, however.”
Brevizin had heard of Richard Curtis, here and there, but had never had direct dealings with the man. He had a vague impression of ruthlessness. He said, “Jimmy, I’m not a criminal lawyer, I couldn’t very well go to court with this fellow.”
“He needs advice, Andre, he needs to know what his options are. Apparently, there’s quite a bit more to the story.”
“There always is.” Brevizin sighed. “All right, have him give me a call.”
“He will,” Jimmy said. “At eleven-thirty, after your tea.”
Brevizin laughed. “You already told him to call, and when? Jimmy, you do know me too well.”
“And later,” Jimmy said, “you’ll tell me all about it.”
* * *
Brevizin’s first impression of George Manville, when the man arrived for his two-thirty appointment that afternoon, was not encouraging. He had a scuffed and ragged look about him, the hangdog manner of the already defeated. Well; adversity can take it out of a man.
Later, he would wonder if that first impression had simply been his expectation of what the man in today’s newspaper would be, or if in fact Manville had been that close to despair. Impossible to tell.
So here he was, recommended by the far-off friend of a business acquaintance. The things we get into, Brevizin thought, and came smiling around the vast desk as Angela let the fellow in. “Mr. Manville, how are you? Did Angela offer you coffee, whatever?”
“Nothing, thanks,” Manville said, and turned to smile a bit wanly at Angela. “Thanks.”
“It was easy,” she assured him, and backed out, smiling, and shut the door.
So Angela’s taken with him, Brevizin thought. Her instincts were usually good. “Come sit over here, it’s more casual,” he said, gesturing to the conversation area, an L of soft gray sofas and a large distressed-wood coffee table.
They sat catty-corner, and Brevizin leaned forward to touch the long pencil resting on the yellow legal pad he had waiting there. “All I know about you, Mr. Manville,” he said, “is what I read in the Sydney Morning Herald.”
“I’ve made
the Wall Street Journal, too,” Manville said.
“Not in the way you’d have preferred.”
“No.”
“Jimmy Coggins says you deny the charge.”
“I don’t know Mr. Coggins,” Manville said, and met Brevizin’s eye. “Talked with him once on the phone, that’s all. I appreciate what he’s done, I’m grateful. But I don’t really mean anything to Mr. Coggins, so if you decide, at some point, you don’t want any more to do with all this, it’s okay.”
Brevizin found himself surprised and somewhat interested. Normally, a fellow in George Manville’s situation would cling to whatever help or encouragement he could find. To begin the conversation by assuring Brevizin that Jimmy Coggins wouldn’t go to the wall for him was unexpected. He said, “Thank you. But let’s not part company just yet. I really should hear your story.”
“I’d appreciate it. The first thing,” Manville said, “is that the published story is one hundred percent false. Curtis made it up. I’ve never met this man Bendix, never heard of him before last night. The documents Curtis is talking about are pretty vague, I couldn’t tell from the newspaper exactly what they were, but they don’t sound like things I ever had access to.”
“You’re saying Richard Curtis has gone out of his way to tell whole-cloth lies about you.”
“Yes.”
“And that he swore false statements in having that warrant made out.”
“Yes.”
“Not a thing we’d expect from a man in his position,” Brevizin pointed out.
Manville’s smile was bleak. “Part of the problem,” he said, “is that Curtis’s position is not what everybody thinks it is. I know the truth, and I know more than that. I suppose he thought I might talk, go to the police myself, so he did this… what do they call it? Pre-emptive strike.”
“What is the truth, Mr. Manville?”
“Curtis is broke,” Manville said, “or worse than broke. Conning his business partners, going deeper into debt every minute. He over-extended when he was trying to protect his Hong Kong businesses from the Chinese, and he hasn’t been able to get back.”
Brevizin dropped the pencil onto the pad and leaned back. He would have a story for Jimmy Coggins after all. Smiling at Manville, he said, “The reason I’m beginning to believe you, Mr. Manville, I myself have heard some very vague rumors that Richard Curtis might be in some sort of financial trouble. This firm’s corporate clients include a number of builders, some private bankers, venture capital investors, people who have had or might have dealings with Curtis’s companies. People are beginning to tell one another to be careful of doing business with Richard Curtis, though nobody knows exactly what the problem is.”
“He’s his own Ponzi scheme,” Manville said. “He’s losing money every day, and he has to keep bringing more in to keep the facade going. And he knows it can’t last much longer. I didn’t know there were already rumors starting about him, but he may know.”
Brevizin said, “He told you how much trouble he was in?”
“Yes. He was trying to enlist me on his side.”
“In what?”
“I’m not sure,” Manville said, and spread his large hands, workman’s hands. “He told me he had a way out, it was illegal and dangerous, but it was going to make him a whole lot of money, and if I kept quiet my share would be ten million U.S. dollars, in gold.”
Brevizin squinted. “He said what?”
“Now you’re beginning to not believe me again,” Manville said. “Mr. Curtis told me my share could either be ten million dollars in gold or, if I’d wait a little while, the same amount in a Swiss bank account. I think I was supposed to be impressed.”
“Why were you having this conversation?”
Now Manville too sat back in the sofa, though he didn’t seem very relaxed. He said, “I’ve been working for Mr. Curtis for over a year, on a project out by the barrier reef. I’ve been developing a new technical way to deal with landfill, a cheaper way to convert land to new uses, and we just tried it, Tuesday of this week.”
“Tried it.”
“We set off measured explosions in tunnels in an island out by the reef,” Manville explained.
“That sounds risky.”
“It isn’t, really,” Manville said, “but we did have some environmental protesters, from a group called Planetwatch.”
“Oh, you touch another button,” Brevizin told him. “Planetwatch has been an irritation to more than one of my clients. Including Jimmy Coggins, come to think of it. All right, what happened?”
“A diver from their ship,” Manville told him, “a woman, went into the water just before the explosions, even though they’d all been told there was no fail-safe, no way to stop the countdown. Which was my fault, I should have taken every contingency into— Well. That doesn’t matter here.”
“She was in the water, near the island, when your explosions went off?”
“Yes.”
“And she was killed.”
“Well, no.” Manville did that bleak smile again. “Though Mr. Curtis would have preferred it. For a while, we all thought she was dead, but she survived. And then Curtis wanted to kill her, as though the explosion—or the shock wave, really—had done it, in order to get Planetwatch off his back.”
Brevizin said, “Mr. Manville? Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. It was because I didn’t want him to do it that he told me what his situation was, and offered me the ten million dollars.”
“If you’d kill the girl?”
“No, simply if I’d step aside.”
Brevizin looked over at the window, then back at Manville. “You’re saying he’s that desperate.”
“I think anybody would be,” Manville said, “in his situation. There’s a fellow with Planetwatch named Jerry Diedrich…” He paused and looked at Brevizin.
Who shook his head. “Don’t know the name.”
“Well, for some reason, he has a personal vendetta against Richard Curtis, and shows up wherever Curtis is doing anything at all that involves the environment. Curtis definitely doesn’t want Diedrich around when he makes that move of his to get all the money, and he thought a dead diver could tie up Diedrich and Planetwatch in the Australian courts long enough for Curtis to finish whatever he’s doing.”
Nodding, Brevizin said, “It might. But we’re a long way from you and Robert Bendix and industrial espionage.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go along with him,” Manville said. “I told him I didn’t want Kim to die.”
“Kim. You knew this woman?”
“We met this week, after the event. What happened was, Mr. Curtis and the people investing with him in Kanowit Island —that’s where we were—they helicoptered off on Wednesday. Wednesday night, I found out from the ship’s captain that he’d been ordered to slow us down so we could go past Moreton Island late at night, so some people could come aboard to kill the two of us. We managed to get away, and now Mr. Curtis is afraid we’ll go to the authorities, so he made that charge of his own first. Ruin my credibility before I say anything.”
“It should work,” Brevizin said. “I don’t suppose you have any evidence, any proof, any signed confessions?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Manville said, and sounded as though he really was. Too worried, in other words, to have much sense of humor.
Brevizin said, “Well, do you have anything that would serve to substantiate your story?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Manville said. “I don’t have much. I have my own reputation, over the years. Kim and I both tell the same story, and we never knew one another before this week. And the Mallory, the ship we were on, might still be in harbor here. It lost a launch as a result of the business with us, they won’t be able to sail until they replace it.”
“The Mallory,” Brevizin said, and made his first note of the meeting.
“Since I don’t know this man Bendix,” Manville said, “I can’t think why he’d say I tried to sell him anyt
hing.”
“He and Curtis could be friends,” Brevizin said, dismissing it. “That aspect doesn’t bother me.”
“Tell me what bothers you,” Manville said. “If it’s something I know anything about, I’ll tell you.”
“I believe you’re probably accurate about Curtis’s finances,” Brevizin said, “and I can make a few calls after this meeting to confirm. I find it hard to believe that any businessman, legitimate businessman, would send out killers to murder two people. Hard, but not impossible. I believe, if I check into it, a ship called Mallory will be in harbor here, missing a launch. I believe it is possible you were framed, for the purpose of shutting you up. I believe it is also possible that everything you’ve said is the invention of a desperate man who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”
“It could look that way,” Manville agreed, “I know that.”
“Unfortunately,” Brevizin said, “if I choose to believe your story, then I must also believe you don’t have the answer to what’s still most troubling me. Which is, what does Curtis plan to do that’s illegal and dangerous, and when does he plan to do it? And, come to think of it, where? Here?”
“You’re right, that’s the part I don’t know,” Manville said. “I’m sorry. I get the impression it might have something to do with Hong Kong, but only because those are the people he blames for his troubles. And even if that’s right, I don’t know what the plan is.”
“And it must be intended to happen fairly soon,” Brevizin pointed out, “if it would be before Planetwatch got over the legal embarrassment of negligently causing the death of one of their own divers.”
“Oh, yes,” Manville said, “I’m sure it’s soon. I don’t think that house of cards of his can last very much longer.”
“All right,” Brevizin said, “conditionally I believe you. I should probably advise you to turn yourself in to the authorities, to let me begin the legal process, but that would leave your friend Kim alone, and if someone has tried to kill her before they might try again.”
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