by Ian Campbell
"Well Miss Fairbrother, I hope that that was but the first of many such successes."
"You know Tom, I think this might just work," said Sam, toying with the notes in the drawer. "How much did we make?"
"Just over £10,000"
Sam swallowed hard, her eyes wide with excitement.
"He didn't exactly stick to the script, did he?" she commented.
"He certainly didn't, but there's no harm done. In fact he may have helped."
"How do you work that out?"
"Well, if he concentrated on the bureau at the main-line stations, they will be used to seeing our cheques and if their staff are familiar with the Dallasbank name, that might help the others when they turn up." Pascoe picked up the money from the desk and carried it to the safe, "We had better put this away for the time being." He counted out several notes. "Here's £350 and I'll take the same... don't forget we will have to pay the rest of the hotel bill tonight."
By close of business it seemed that everyone who was going to take the cheques, had probably already picked them up. A quick tally of the amounts recorded in the file showed they had issued a hundred and twenty six Americans with nearly $1,700,000. All they could do now was wait.
Earlier the same morning, T.T. Ford of San Diego, California, had checked out of the Great Park Inn and received his bill for £625. He wanted to pay with the Dallasbank cheques for his own personal reasons; he didn't want his movements traced from his credit card receipts. His need for secrecy was simple; as far as his wife was concerned, he was supposedly on a three-week business trip in France, not living it up with another woman in London. The fact that he had spent most of the time in bed with his mistress, was something which would cost him dear, should his wife ever find out.
Although most hotel cashiers prefer to be paid in foreign currency, so that they can make an extra profit by charging an inflated rate, the duty manager at the Great Park Inn that morning, however, was not one of them. The possibility of making a few extra dollars was outweighed by the trust his employers had placed in him. He had held his position at the hotel for over 15 years and would do nothing to jeopardize it. He was only on desk duty because of the holiday period, because in the hotel industry, when it comes to public holidays, all the staff who can 'fiddle' the time off, do so.
"Hi there, can you make up my bill... name of Ford, room 166?" The man from San Diego inquired.
"Certainly Sir. Will you be paying by cash or credit?"
"Someone told me that everything's gonna be closed until Tuesday. Is that right?"
"Yes, Sir, that's quite right."
"Does that mean no banks until then?"
"Yes, I am afraid it does Sir."
"O.K. I'm running a little low on cash at the moment and I don't really want to use my credit cards. Do you take dollar travelers' cheques?"
"Yes Sir, but I must point out that we can't give you as good a rate as the banks would."
"I see. What rate will you give me for them?" asked Ford. The manager consulted his list of rates.
"I can accept them at $1.30 to the pound if you wish."
"But that's... "
"I know Sir, and I do sympathize, but we are not a bank... we are an hotel and have to cover ourselves for any change in the rates which may occur." In fact, had Ford found other staff manning the desk, they would have charged at least $1.35 or so, especially as it was a holiday weekend. Ford was unaware that the manager was in fact being extremely fair to him. He withdrew the wallet of travelers’ cheques from his jacket pocket somewhat reluctantly and slapped it down on the counter, convinced he was being taken advantage of. Grudgingly, he studied the bill, still unhappy about the exchange rate.
"How much does this work out at in real money?" He asked, tetchily. The manager performed an involved calculation on his desk-top machine.
"$812.50, Sir." The manager announced, reading the calculator's screen.
"Can I give you a thousand dollars in travelers’ cheques and you give me the rest in English?"
"We would rather you paid the $800 with your cheques Sir, and the rest cash."
"O.K. Have it your way." Ford took eight of the cheques from his wallet and signed them while the manager watched.
"The Second National City Bank of Dallas," the manager read aloud from the cheques." I don't think we've had those before." He picked up the house phone and rang the hotel's accounts office." Are you familiar with the Second National City Bank of Dallas... Travelers’ Cheques... $100's... Yes, I'll hold.", He turned back to Ford at the desk, "I won't keep you long Sir, but we do have to check... " Ford became more and more uneasy with each passing second.
"Hello, no.., nothing reported.., I see. Yes. Thank you." The voice had returned on the line." May I just trouble you for some identification Mr. Ford. Your passport will be fine." Ford handed over his passport and the manager copied its number onto the back of each and every cheques.
"That just leaves the balance of £9.60 or $12.50 Mr. Ford." Ford gave him the money.
"Thank you very much Sir for choosing to stay with us at the Great Park Hotel. Have a good day!" T.T. Ford turned on his heels and left the reception, without returning the courtesy. To him the English had an unnerving way of getting right up his nose with their over emphasized manners. He told the doorman to hail him a cab. One slid to a stop within seconds.
"Heathrow, driver! Get me the hell out of this damn city!" The cabby turned around in his seat and slid back the dividing partition so he could speak to his fare.
"Heathrow Guv'nor... You do realize it's clock and an ‘alf," he said, pointing to his meter.
"What's that mean driver?"
"It means that you pay me 'alf as much again as is on the meter."
"And just why the hell should I do that?"
"Because if you wants to go by cab to Heathrow, that's how much it's gonna cost yer. Anythin' over six miles we can refuse to go, but if we do go, the fare's up to us. Now, do you wanna go to Heathrow or not?" Ford thought the cabby so offensive that he could easily have been in New York.
"How long's it going to take?"
"Depends on the traffic... anything from 'alf an hour to an hour and an 'alf on a day like today."
"Just get me there by eleven o’clock, O.K?"
"Right you are guv'. You're the boss." At least somebody knows his place, thought Ford. The cab joined the stream of traffic coming from Hyde Park and the cabby expertly weaved his way through the lanes of traffic and headed for the M 4 motorway to the airport. They arrived without incident, just after 10.30 a.m.
"That'll be £24.50 please," asked the cabby, looking up from the meter.
"Do you take travelers’ cheques?"
"What do you think we are mate, a bleedin’ bank?" groaned the cabby.
"Is that a 'no'?", asked Ford, tiring of the habitual question and answer routine. Why, oh why, couldn't the London cabby's settle for just being down-right rude like their New York cousins. At least with them, you knew where you were.
"What you got then?" The driver asked. Ford took out the thick wallet of cheques. The cabby's eyes lit up with anticipation.
"Are they in dollars?"
"Yes."
"Half a jif mate. I'll work it out." The cabby checked the dollar rate in his newspaper, added 10 cents to the pound to make the buying rate and another 10 cents to the pound for himself. "That'll be $35.50 in round figures, squire." He declared. "Call it $40 for cash." Ford signed a $100.00 cheque and handed it to him.
"What about your passport then? I'll need the number." Ford grudgingly handed it over.
"Thanks very much, guv.., very nice of you," the cabby said as he climbed back into the driver's seat and started the engine. He wrote the passport number on the back of the cheque and handed it back to Ford, slipping the cab into gear at the same time.
"What about my change?" shouted Ford, running alongside the cab as it gathered speed.
"Couldn't split a $100 squire. Told you I wasn't a bank.., hav
e a nice day!"
The cab quickly disappeared from Ford's view, merging with 100 others heading for the long-waiting rank at the international terminal. As he had no time to lose before his Paris flight, Ford could do nothing, but curse his luck as he entered the terminal building.
Before catching his flight, he changed some more cheques. The cashier made no comment as to Dallasbank... they were used to seeing thousands of different cheques from banks all over the world.
"Tell me something... " Ford asked the cashier, "Is it going to be as difficult changing my money in Paris as it has been here, this weekend?"
"It's always fairly difficult to change money in Paris." The cashier replied with studied indifference.
"Why is that?"
"They only have Bureau-de-Change at the main air and sea ports and the main railway terminals; otherwise you have to go to the banks.
"In that case, can I change some more here?"
"Certainly Sir. How much?" the cashier inquired.
"Is their holiday period the same?"
"I don't know, Sir, but they are a catholic country and they do take their religious festivals rather seriously..."
"I'll change another $5,000 then." The cashier didn't even blink at the size of the transaction. He was quite used to it and as it wasn't his own money, the amount never concerned him.
Ford caught the Air France flight with minutes to spare. He would be working in Paris, for at least three days, before returning to his mistress in London. Plenty of time to balance the books, as in France he could freely use his credit and banking facilities to reimburse Dallasbank the money he had spent on himself. It was only because of the running costs of his mistress that he had attended the Grosvenor House conference in the first place. ‘C'est la guerre!’ He thought.
For the Americans overall, Easter Saturday was a day of mixed fortunes. Ford had spent it travelling to Paris and while the Kennerleys were traipsing around the museums of London, Dinsdale T. Brent discovered that he had forgotten his wallet and had to use the Dallasbank cheques for the day's expenses.
Ed Dodge and his daughter were the only delegates apart from Ford, to do something different with the day. They exchanged the hectic pace of the metropolis for the burlesque atmosphere of a day-trip to France. They had been seduced by a British-rail advertising poster, of all things and had bought tickets for train and hover craft to visit the jewel of the Opal coast, Calais. There was no cultural reason for Dodge's choice of excursion other than a hankering to see the white cliffs of Dover. Before boarding the train at Charing Cross, Dodge and his daughter visited the Bureau-de-Change on the station's concourse.
"Is it O.K. to change travelers’ cheques?" Dodge asked the cashier.
"American dollars?" Inquired the clerk with an air of extreme boredom.
"Yeah," Dodge placed the plastic wallet of cheques on the counter and extracted several of them.
"These are very popular this week... 'Second National, Dallas'... commented the clerk.,
"Yeah, we were at a convention and we all got them."
"There must have been a lot of you there."
"Quite a few." Dodge replied, turning to his daughter." Sylvia, how many people would you say were at the convention?"
“Between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and fifty.”
"That explains why we've had so many then," commented the clerk. "Every year we see new cheques from 20 or so different banks around the world... the whole thing seems to go in cycles."
"That's what the convention was about... launching the bank's travelers’ cheques in Europe. They're introducing the cheques onto the market to make sure all the systems work before the big public launch in the summer," said Dodge.
"They brought the launch date forward from next year because of the strength of our dollar," explained Sylvia.
"How much would you like to change then.., a thousand dollars each?" asked the cashier, a hint of envy in his voice.
"Well that would certainly make things easier for us... save us some walking. What do you think Sylvia?"
"I don't think we should.., they told us not to change more than $300 at a time and I think we should stick to that."
"You heard the lady," continued Dodge, "$300 each it is." Soon, they were on their way to Dover and the English Channel.
The man known to Pascoe and Sam as John O'Hara, another of the delegates, had spent all his time since the conference working extremely hard, changing the cheques and had just exchanged the last $500 worth of the cheques at a small Chinese-run exchange, next door to a strip club, not 100 yards from the Swiss Center in London's Piccadilly. Now he looked for a cab to take him back to his hotel in Victoria. He found one cruising in Brewer Street and although the driver seemed less than delighted to make the trip, he made it across town in 15 minutes, a record, considering the traffic.
At first glance, Belgrave Road appears to be a long avenue of porticoed buildings, built in Regency style, reminiscent of the older part of Bath. Close inspection though, reveals a different world. The buildings, though large and imposing, have been converted from the elegant colonnaded private residences of the last century, to the Bed and Breakfast emporia of this. Some proprietors, not satisfied with the external appearance of their property, aspire to even greater heights by borrowing the names of their nobler counterparts in better areas of the city, such as the Dorchester and Grosvenor in London's Mayfair. O'Hara's hotel even supplied its own crested stationery to complete the illusion, but apart from this ready means of padding an executive's expense account, the hotel delivered far less than its name implied.
In his room, O’Hara retrieved his empty suitcase from under the bed and opened it on the small bedside table, propping up its lid against the bedroom wall. Next, he turned his attention to a shabby three drawer dressing table. He bent down, wrenched free the bottom drawer and carried it across to the bed. He tipped-out its contents onto the bed-spread and laid the drawer upside-down on the bed. There, securely taped to the underside of the drawer, were several freezer bags, containing the haul from the previous two days' cheques.., some £13,500. He stripped the packets from the wood and slung them into the open suitcase, then packed the rest of his belongings on top of them. He looked the room over, making sure he'd forgotten nothing and checked out of the hotel. In his profession, it just didn't pay to stay in the same place too long.
"Taxi!" He yelled, flagging-down an approaching cab with an outstretched arm. It was O'Hara's style of dress rather than his gesture which caught the cabby's eye. Charlie Morgan, like most London cabbies, could weigh-up a fare at 200 yards and although O'Hara didn't look to Charlie like one of the wealthier American tourists, he had him pegged as an Yank at that range. As the distance between his cab and the fare closed, Charlie's computer-like brain, honed to perfection over 15 years taxiing, had computed the odds of getting a good fare out of the punter. At 150 yards he knew it wouldn't be an airport run as the man wasn't expensively dressed and Belgrave Road didn't sport the type of hotel where American expense account executives usually stayed. At 100 yards Charlie's hopes were finally dashed and he knew it would probably only be a fare to Victoria station, a few blocks away. He switched his 'For Hire' sign on at 50 yards, having taken one last look at his quarry, to make sure the fare was all right. Satisfied that the fare presented no real problem, he slid the cab to a halt inches from the Yank and awaited him to announce his destination.
"Where to Guv?" he uttered the magic words, sliding his hand surreptitiously onto the taxi-meter and starting the clock.
"Cabby this is your lucky day!" The Yank announced. "I want to buy some luggage.., quality mind you.., and then I want you to take me to a nice quiet hotel, somewhere central. Do you think you can do that?" The request was music to Charlie's ears. It had been a lean shift in spite of the holiday. However, he was conscious of not sounding too eager.
"Yeah, I suppose I can manage that, but I'm due off in half an hour... so it'll cost yer," responded Charlie, ob
eying his first unwritten law.' Always let the client know that you're doing him a favor!'
"I'll make it worth your while."
They left Victoria and headed towards Trafalgar Square and the Strand against the flow of the traffic. A few yards past the entrance to Charing Cross station, Charlie stopped outside a shop which sold nothing but luggage.
"Before you go in there Sir, how about some'n on account," Charlie asked the Yank, protecting his interests.
"On account of what exactly?" queried O'Hara.
"On account of you disappearin' in there an' me not seein' you again."
"You don't trust me?"
"No offence, squire, but when it comes to my livin', I don't even trust me ol' granny.., and she's been dead two years."
"Just hang on for me, O.K?" said O'Hara, handing over a fiver."
Charlie nodded, having obeyed his second law of 'getting the money first', picked up his newspaper and started studying the figure on page 3.
Chapter 11
O'Hara's fiddle
It took O'Hara several minutes to find what he was looking for... a nondescript flight bag and a stout suitcase large enough to swallow it. The shop assistant thought him mad when he asked for the oldest stock items in the most drab, unfashionable colors, but he wanted something unnoticeable; something which wouldn't stand out in a crowd. By the time he rejoined the cab Charlie had worked his way little more than half-way down the same page of his newspaper. His eyes were slightly glazed from comparing the nubile form of the page 3 girl with his missus of 20 years, but the sound of his door being opened, brought him back to earth.
"O.K, driver, now I want somewhere very safe to leave this luggage. Any suggestions?"
"How about the station across the road?" offered Charlie.
"No, I don't want a locker, I want someone to look after it. I don't trust lockers." Charlie had noticed the same lack of trust before with American fares before. All the Yanks he'd ever met carried their paranoia with them, like snails carry their shells on their backs.
"That's what I told you, squire. In the station there's a 'Left-luggage Office'. You book your luggage in and they give you a receipt and charge you by the day... all right."