Kingdon then broadened his interests by borrowing 30,000 dollars and starting the first of his own mutual funds, which was hawked all over the United States and any country in the world that did not protest too hysterically about the outflow of capital. His own salesmen were committed to invest in Kingdon Investments; but their investments were not realisable until the day Kingdon decided to make them available on the open market.
Kingdon also expanded into real estate. Investors in his real estate funds were persuaded that property represented a slower but sounder investment than company shares; the fees charged to clients represented a far-from-slow growth rate for the fund.
Kingdon anticipated British legislation to clamp down on the use of tax havens and took appropriate avoidance measures. But his inspiration was his industrial consultancy, his private spy ring. Through the investigations conducted by Prentice, his fund managers were able to assess glamour stocks – get in quickly and get out twice as fast – and equity with long-term prospects.
By the age of twenty-seven, Paul Kingdon was a millionaire. By the age of thirty-five, his plans for his money were getting out of control.
* * *
‘Are you sure you didn’t fall on your head?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Prentice closed the dossier and returned to the present.
‘Are you sure you didn’t suffer brain injuries? You seem to be in a trance.’ Kingdon leaned forward. ‘You cocked up that job a bit, didn’t you, George?’
‘ ’Fraid so. I’m getting old. Like all of us – from the moment we’re born. But still,’ Prentice added, ‘you got what you wanted.’
Kingdon’s voice hardened. He was no longer visiting a patient: he was conducting business. ‘I want a lot more,’ he said, ‘before you’re finally over the top of the hill.’ He clenched his hands together and the knuckles shone. ‘Did you get an invitation to Bilderberg this year?’
‘Not this year. I get invited in cycles of three year intervals.’
‘At least you get invited ….’
‘Your day will come.’
‘That’s a racing certainty,’ Kingdon said. ‘But not because the fucking Bilderbergers want me. I’m not Establishment, I didn’t go to Eton, or Oxford,’ staring at Prentice. ‘I’m not a member of a cosy family bank, I don’t have Royal connections, I don’t contribute to party political funds, I’m just —’
‘An entrepreneur?’
‘And vulgar with it.’ Kingdon stood up and paced the private ward. ‘But I’ll get an invitation because I’ll force their hand. And do you know why?’
Prentice shook his head. He tried to shift his foot which was beginning to ache but failed. ‘Why?’
‘Because I want to get in there and beat them at their own game. If I could get in there among them, George, I could make the sort of killings that would make Slater and Cornfeld look like feather-weights. Do you realise what Bilderberg is? It’s a world summit conference, that’s what. Held in secret. If I knew what was discussed there I could bring off deals that would ….’
For once words failed Paul Kingdon.
‘Which is it,’ Prentice asked, ‘the money or revenge?’ His foot was beginning to itch as well as ache.
Kingdon stopped pacing and considered the question. His hungry face was framed in a shaft of wintry sunlight. Finally he said: ‘Both.’ Paused. ‘Yes, both. The bastards have patronised me for too long.’
‘So where do I come in? I’m only an economist as far as they’re concerned. A professional front man.’
Kingdon sat down again, shifted his chair nearer the bed and said: ‘I’m not bothered about your down-the-bill appearances at the meetings. What I want, before you’re in your dotage, is dossiers on every regular participant. Then,’ tapping the plaster lightly with his finger. ‘I’ll be in a position to negotiate with the bastards.’
‘If you get invited.’
‘I’ll get invited, don’t you worry about that.’
‘You don’t have to torture me ….’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Stop tapping my plaster,’ Prentice said and then, discarding the peach-stone in an ash-tray: ‘So you intend to keep me fully employed.’
‘It shouldn’t be too difficult. Not with your contacts in Zurich. The names behind the numbered accounts for a start.’
Prentice said thoughtfully: ‘Of course, we’ve got a good deal of material on a lot of them.’ He recited a string of names. ‘Plus Mrs Claire Jerome – at the request of Pierre Brossard.’
‘And, as it happens,’ Kingdon said, withdrawing from the bed, ‘Mrs Claire Jerome again wants anything new on Pierre Brossard.’
Prentice laughed. ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult, either.
Kingdon stood up. ‘So, will you do it, George?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Think hard, George. I’ll pay you well.’ He turned and walked to the door, where he paused again and said: ‘I’ll call you tomorrow from Paris.’
‘Paris?’ Prentice was mildly surprised.
‘I’m flying there in two hours time.’
Prentice’s mind vaulted ahead. ‘To see Pierre Brossard?’
‘Of course. My entrée into Bilderberg. He’s on the steering committee these days.’
‘By the way,’ Prentice said, ‘my leg’s much better, thanks.’
But he was addressing a closed door. He selected another peach, picked up the Daily Telegraph and started the crossword. Perhaps today he would beat his record.
* * *
Two days later, Prentice, on crutches, went to the MI6 offices in Northumberland Avenue and reported what he had discovered, on behalf of Kingdon Investments, about the German industrialist. A middle-aged, desk-bound intelligence officer who had been permanently crippled ‘in the course of duty’ read the two typewritten sheets of foolscap paper with minimal interest, expressing his opinion with an apparently uncontrollable series of yawns.
In five years time I’ll be like that, Prentice thought. Maybe sooner if he continued falling off ladders in the dark.
‘Thanks anyway,’ yawned the intelligence officer. ‘Every little helps. Perhaps one day ….’ Whatever might happen one day was swallowed by another cavernous yawn. ‘Care for a cup of tea?’
‘No thanks.’
Prentice picked up his crutches and made for the door. The yawns were infectious; they were still with him when he stepped out into the fast-fading daylight. Around Trafalgar Square the starlings were beginning to chatter.
He collected his baggage from the Clinic, then caught a cab to West London Air Terminal and a coach to London Airport. From Heathrow he caught a plane to the Côte d’Azur airport at Nice. Three hours later he was sitting, with his crutches beside him, playing roulette at the casino in Monte Carlo. He made a steady but modest profit with his system. What, he wondered, would happen if everyone played the same system?
* * *
At about the same time that George Prentice was collecting chips at Monte Carlo, a girl of about twenty-five years of age with a voluptuous body and a chalk-white skin was taking off her clothes in a night-club in Paris.
‘To your taste?’ Pierre Brossard nodded at the girl as she peeled off long black gloves in the time honoured manner.
‘A little amateurish, isn’t it?’
Brossard gave a professional French shrug. ‘It’s what’s underneath that counts, I suppose.’
The girl certainly wasn’t his preference. She was too passive, he suspected; she moved on the small circular floor like a robot! He had recently made the acquaintance of a red-headed girl with a vicious temper; more accomplished, even, than the blonde who had got married.
In slow-motion the girl began to remove one of her fishnet stockings. ‘In Manchester they’d be throwing beer-cans at her by now,’ Kingdon remarked.
He poured them both whisky from the bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label that had cost him £50. (Black Label was much, much more.) Brossard wa
s aware that Kingdon was picking up the tab because it gave him a tactical advantage. So he believed.
‘Really?’ Brossard pushed at the greying wings of hair above his ears with his fingers. ‘I doubt very much if I shall ever have the pleasure – if that’s what it is – of watching striptease in Manchester.’
‘It’s what’s underneath that counts,’ Kingdon told him as the girl came close to their table and tossed him a stocking. She smiled at him but her eyes were somewhere else.
The club was full. Businessmen mostly – some in tuxedos – and a few wives and girl-friends. Brossard and Kingdon wore lounge suits, Brossard’s a little threadbare around the cuffs. A revolving ball of mirror-fragments suspended from the ceiling spun flecks of light around the walls.
The second stocking came off. The brassiere, Brossard thought, would take an eternity.
Kingdon sipped his whisky and water and said: ‘Well, everyone to his own taste. But not quite yours, eh, Pierre?’
Brossard stared speculatively at the brash Englishman who would have looked more at home in Marseilles. What did he know about his sexual tastes? Another shrug. ‘I must admit that I, too, prefer something a little more sophisticated.’
‘And a little more painful?’
Fear fluttered briefly inside Pierre Brossard. A fear that owed its origins to an incident a long time ago. He squeezed his fingertips, a habit of his. Still, if you employed private detectives, which was what, on a grand scale, industrial consultants were, there was always an element of risk …. But you certainly couldn’t threaten a Frenchman with his sex life. Confidence returned to Brossard. He smiled at Kingdon almost conspiratorially. ‘If you say so.’
The girl tossed her brassiere into the audience, where it was retrieved and kissed theatrically by a fat man smoking a cigar. Her breasts, Brossard perceived, were smaller than he had imagined; the brassiere must have been padded. Unless ….
He said to Kingdon: ‘Is she your preference?’ as the girl began to wriggle out of her panties.
‘She’s all right.’ Brossard suspected that Kingdon didn’t have a great sexual drive; all his libido was concentrated in his work. ‘Not bad,’ Kingdon said pouring more whisky.
‘That’s interesting.’
Kingdon gazed at him over the rim of his glass. ‘What’s so interesting about it?’
Brossard nodded at the girl who was now naked, shrivelled penis in full view.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Kingdon swallowed his whisky. ‘I didn’t realise —’
‘Nothing to be ashamed of even if you had,’ Brossard said, retaking the initiative. ‘What does sexual taste matter if it hurts no-one?’ Or what does it matter if it does hurt? The girl skipped coyly from the floor while the audience applauded half-heartedly. ‘What was that you were saying … ?’
‘Your point.’ Kingdon licked his finger and scored a one on an imaginary blackboard. ‘Of course, we get to know a hell of a lot about both the people we’re asked to investigate and the clients who employ us.’
‘Of course. You must have a veritable library of information about the captains of industry. All stored away for a rainy day?’
‘It’s always useful,’ Kingdon said non-committally.
A girl who was indisputably female came onto the floor, followed by a muscular young man who was indisputably masculine. They lay on a black satin mattress and began to make love.
Kingdon said: ‘Do you mind if we talk business?’
So, the initiative had certainly been snatched from Kingdon. ‘Why not? That’s what we came here for, wasn’t it?’
‘You don’t find that a distraction?’ Kingdon pointed at the two writhing bodies.
‘Not if you don’t.’
‘I want to get an invitation to Bilderberg. I understand that you’re now on the steering committee.’
‘Your information is good. As always. As for the request …. It’s very difficult.’
‘Come off it, Pierre, you can swing it.’
‘I would have to be very persuasive.’
Momentarily Kingdon lost his temper. ‘Why, because I make a lot of money outside the Establishment? Because I came up from the gutter?’
‘That’s the best place to come from,’ Brossard soothed him. ‘It’s only unpleasant when the process is reversed.
Kingdon splashed more whisky into their glasses. ‘All right, all right …. But don’t give me any bullshit, Pierre. I know perfectly well what I am and I know perfectly well what the sort of people you mix with think of me. As you’ve pointed out I do have a lot of information —’
Brossard prodded one finger at Kingdon. ‘Let me stop you before you utter a threat. I don’t react to threats.’ Which, Brossard reflected, was the most outrageous lie of the evening.
Kingdon held up his hand. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. But can you do it?’
‘It’s just possible. But it will take time.’
Kingdon sank back in his chair. ‘Thanks, Pierre,’ he said softly. ‘See what you can do. Maybe then we can do a lot of things together.’
‘We’ll see. Meanwhile go on collecting your diamonds.’
‘So you’ve been investigating me?’
Brossard shook his head. ‘Everyone knows about the Kingdon collection of diamonds. The only commodity, apart from the Swiss franc, that can be relied upon to keep up with inflation.’
Kingdon held up his glass. ‘Here’s to Bilderberg. Long may it flourish.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Brossard said.
On the floor the couple finished their act. Whether or not they had satisfactorily accomplished what they had set out to do was not apparent.
Pierre Brossard, however, was completely satisfied with the outcome of the evening. He had been planning to ask Kingdon if he would like to attend Bilderberg: instead of that the Englishman had come begging.
Furthermore he had paid for the bottle of Scotch.
PART THREE
X
Claire Jerome read her invitation to the Bilderberg convention at the Château Saint-Pierre in France, while she was lying topless beside a scimitar-shaped swimming pool in the Bahamas on an autumn day in 1979.
In theory, the invitation should have been addressed to her father, the president of Marks International. But the world knew that it was Nathan Marks’ daughter who controlled the empire-with executive vice-president Stephen Harsch, now No. 3, fretting in the wings.
Beside her on a blue and white sun-lounger lay a man with the body of a football quarterback and a heavy moustache. He dozed in the sun, an old straw-hat tipped over his eyes.
Claire tossed the invitation onto the white table beside the pile of mail and said: ‘How does a trip to France grab you?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s supposed to mean uh-huh.’ He yawned.
‘Some bodyguard. Supposing someone came busting in and pulled a gun on me.’
‘Wham.’ Pete Anello kicked out in slow-motion. ‘I’d break his arm.’ Sighing deeply, he sat up, rested his weight on one elbow and flicked the straw-hat to the back of his head. ‘Why did you wake me?’
‘Because awake is what you’re supposed to be. Sleeping on duty is a court martial offence.’
‘After last night I’ve got every right to be exhausted.’
Claire smiled at the recollection. She was, she acknowledged, lucky to be able to. She was in her early forties (no longer specific) and he was thirty-five. But at least she still didn’t look her age; genuinely didn’t. Her hair was as glossy as the tresses of a girl who brushes them 100 times a day, her breasts were firm, her complexion that of a Jewess in her prime. Except, perhaps, late at night when the years slyly presented themselves at the corners of her mouth, and around the eyes.
She said: ‘So now you’re awake, what about it?’
‘What about what?’
‘France. I’ve got an invitation to meet the rulers of the world. Heads of state, prime ministers ….’
‘Any emperors?’
‘No emperors.’
‘Forget it,’ Anello said.
‘I’m going. It’s a male chauvinist affair but I’ve always been accepted.’
‘The second – or is it the third? – richest woman in the world usually is.’
‘Fifth,’ Claire said. ‘And if I go, you go. It’s in your contract.’
‘Okay by me. I guess I can’t guard you by remote control.’
‘As if anyone would notice any difference.’
‘No kidnaps so far.’ Anello slumped back on the lounger and the straw hat slipped back over his eyes.
Claire dipped one hand in the water, more blue than the ocean in its bed of cobalt mosaic, and thought: ‘He doesn’t give a damn. The first one. Or was he merely more subtle than the others?’
Anello’s breathing had returned to its shallow rhythms as he dozed again. She examined his body. Chest matted with black hair, power in the muscles sloping from neck to shoulder, belly taut – disfigured by a knotted scar. And wearing frayed Navy shorts. He bore no resemblance to a gigolo.
And yet ….
She stood up, stretched and strolled across the lawn, skirting the sprinklers tossing diamonds into the hibiscus blossom.
When her father had first bought the white, colonial-style mansion at Lyford Cay, on the island of New Providence, she had once picked a hibiscus bloom and thrust it into her hair before visiting the bars and clubs of Nassau and Paradise Island; no-one had told her that the hibiscus flower closes at nightfall.
She paused beside a stone wall and, shielding her eyes against the sun, gazed back at the man lying beside the pool. He was an enigma. Self-sufficient, apparently lazily content.
But what were his motives? She was rich, middle-aged, alone despite the riches. A gift from the gods for anyone on the make, especially anyone astute enough to realise that time-honoured ploys would be recognised for what they were.
She had met him five weeks ago in the casino on Paradise Island, the sliver of land on the other side of the toll bridge spanning the harbour from Nassau, once known less romantically as Hog Island before Huntington Hartford had developed it.
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