Kingdon said abruptly: ‘I intend sticking to my estimate of profits.’
‘I thought you would.’
‘And I intend going public.’
‘I thought you would.’
‘Doesn’t anything surprise you?’
‘You’ve always surprised me, Paul. It’s merely that I’ve come to expect your surprises. How much do you hope to raise?’
‘Thirty million pounds,’ and when Prentice looked sceptical: ‘Anything wrong with that?’
‘Nothing wrong with it. Provided the shit doesn’t hit the fan before the offering.’
‘Your command of the English language continues to amaze me,’ Kingdon said, reaching for the plastic cup of water.
‘Like sanction busting hitting the fan.’
‘Do you really think the City, Wall Street, gave a monkey’s toss about sanction busting? They might have expressed distaste but they knew it was big business and secretly they were thinking, “Kingdon has done it again.” Anyway the sanctions will be lifted soon.’
Prentice went on: ‘I think the real danger will come from within your empire. Your lieutenants who have been promised a slice of the pie when you go public. Know what they’ll do? They’ll sell pretty damn quickly and then turn on you. The money’s been re-cycled into the pockets of the few for too long and the recent investments have been bloody awful. When word gets round everyone will dump and your shares will be worthless.’
‘Thank you, Mr Jeremiah Bloody Prentice. But—’ Prentice held up his hand. ‘Don’t tell me. You’ll find ways of buying your own shares to prop up the price. I don’t have to tell you that in this country that’s against the law.’
‘Sod the law,’ Kingdon said. ‘All I need is breathing space. Thirty million pounds worth of it. You should see what I’ve got lined up for the punters when I’ve raised the bread.’
Kingdon tossed the prospectus for the public offering across the desk. It was as thick as a short novel.
Prentice flipped the typewritten pages. Ten banks … eleven trust funds … real estate … investment banks … ‘Limitless opportunities for the future.’
Prentice dropped the manuscript on the desk. ‘So, what’s your problem?’
‘Underwriting,’ Kingdom told him. ‘Just one bastard underwriter.’
Prentice looked surprised. ‘Just one?’
‘Just one. I’ve got dozens from Tokyo to New York City. But one’s holding out.’
‘Who?’
‘Gerards.’
‘British or French connection?’
‘The British end of the family,’ Kingdon told him, crackling the plastic cup in his hand. ‘The British bastards.’
‘So what’s so disastrous about that? I presume you’ve got half a dozen lead underwriters?’
‘You know bloody well what’s disastrous. Whatever one Gerard house does the other follows. Until now. It’s unprecedented for the British side of the family not to follow the French. Supposing the Press start asking questions about the break in tradition? Supposing some bloody City page reporter contacts Gerards?’
‘They’ll say, “No comment.” They always do.’ ‘Supposing this same reporter speculates about Gerards’ reasons for not underwriting us? If the shares bomb then we’re finished.’
‘No reporter could speculate adversely after he’s read this,’ Prentice said innocently, tapping the draft manuscript on the desk. ‘Your prospectus seems very comprehensive.’
‘Don’t be funny,’ Kingdon said angrily. ‘No prospectus stands up to examination under a microscope.’
‘Some better than others.’ Prentice stood up and walked to the window. In the silence they could both hear the muted sounds of the biggest money market in the world. Prentice turned and said: ‘I may be able to help you.’
Kingdon looked up expectantly.
‘I’ve been invited to Bilderberg again.’
‘Again?’ For a moment Kingdon almost hated him. ‘Christ, that’s the third time, isn’t it?’
‘Fourth,’ Prentice said. ‘But don’t sound so appalled. You know as well as I do that they always invite a few people like me. Just to make it all seem democratic and decent.’
‘But why you?’
‘What you mean,’ Prentice corrected him, ‘is why not you.’ He sat down again. ‘In any case you should be pleased. The London end of Gerards will be there. Robert Gerard.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘Maybe I’ll be able to influence him a little ….’
‘Lean on him?’
Prentice shrugged. ‘We’ve got time on our side. I am an industrial consultant. I haven’t got round to Gerards yet but I’m sure they’re not completely untainted, not with all those billions at their disposal.’
‘Very well, George.’ Kingdon had his anger under control now. ‘I’m very grateful. If there’s anything I can do ….’
‘None of your lousy shares, please.’
‘Why the hell do you want to help then?’
‘I’ll tell you if you like, but you won’t enjoy it. Originally I helped out because you were providing a means for the impoverished millions to make a few bob. Invest fifty quid and in no time they’d have five hundred: colour telly or a holiday in Majorca. You enticed them away from the doldrums of saving to the high-flying excitement of investment. You performed a public service, Paul. You gave the masses a little hope.’
Kingdon watched him impassively, accepting the plaudits, awaiting the indictment.
‘And it worked well. You had your espionage net spread over Europe. With your knowledge—our knowledge,’ he corrected himself, ‘it wasn’t difficult to invest in the right properties. The millions rolled in -’
‘For God’s sake, get it over with,’ Kingdon snapped. ‘You’re a good spy, a lousy preacher.’
‘You know what went wrong. You got greedy. Instead of using the client’s money for their benefit you used it for your own.’
‘My trouble was that the sales managers got greedy. They lived like millionaires. Some of them are bloody millionaires,’ Kingdon added.
‘You were the boss,’ Prentice said.
‘You haven’t answered the question: Why do you want to help now?’
‘I want to save some of the money all those poor sods invested. As simple as that. One headline in the Financial Times—GERARD AGREES TO BACK KINGDON INVESTMENTS – and you might, just might, be back in business.’
‘You could say you’re compounding a crime.’
Prentice stood up and walked towards the door. ‘I admit it. For a good cause. So what you’ve got to do is persevere with your astonishing estimate of profits and make your prospectus at least half plausible.’
* * *
Paul Kingdon swore softly as he reached the house. Pools of mist had gathered in the hollows in the garden. The silhouettes of the trees against the darkening sky were forbidding.
In the oak-beamed lounge Kingdon tried to shake off the sense of apprehension. He warmed his hands in front of the blazing log fire and rang the bell for Willett, his manservant.
Anticipating his request, Willett brought a bottle of Chivas Regal, ice and water, and poured Kingdon a drink. Kingdon gulped it down and poured himself another.
Willett said: ‘There are a couple of messages on the machine, sir.’
‘Anything important?’
Willett shook his head. ‘One woman sounded a little crazy, sir.’
Kingdon accepted his judgement. Willett was astute enough. He performed many functions – valet, butler, cook in a basic sort of way, and bodyguard. He was fifty years-old, perhaps a little too muscular for black jacket and striped trousers. His features were seamed, his hair thick and grey and neat. Kingdon had known him in the East End; he had given him the job when he was released from prison after serving a sentence for assault. Kingdon trusted him more than he trusted most people.
Apart from the woman who came in to clean the house every day, Willett was the only domestic
servant.
‘It’s your night off, isn’t it?’
Willett nodded; he spoke sparingly.
‘Where are you going?’ Kingdon felt the need for conversation.
‘I thought I might go up east, sir.’
‘Well, don’t get into any trouble.’ Not that he ever had in the ten years that Kingdon had employed him.
‘No, sir.’
‘I envy you.’
And in a way he did. After Willett had gone the house echoed with emptiness.
Kingdon poured himself another drink, paced the spacious lounge. The floor-boards creaked beneath his feet. He threw a log on the fire, settled himself once more in a leather armchair and switched on the television with the remote control button.
The news. The police had been awarded a pay increase! Kingdon switched the television off.
Somewhere in the house a window banged.
In the garden a guard dog barked.
Kingdon turned off the lights and went to the window. It was dark and the first stars were cold in the sky. A shooting star traversed the heavens, disappeared. A death? Again Kingdon shivered. Christ, what was the matter with him? One bad day and he was anticipating the arrival of the Fraud Squad.
He chinked the cubes of ice in his empty glass. Stared at them and smiled, and fetched the keys to the cellar where solace, immutable, arrogant and flawless, awaited him. A therapy that never failed.
But first he had to deal with his own security. Industrial espionage had helped to create an industry: electronic surveillance. That in its turn had created a side product: surveillance detection. Kingdon’s house bristled with anti-surveillance equipment – bug alerts, wiretrap warnings, telephone analysers. No-one was going to trap Paul Kingdon at his own game.
The cellar was a strong-room. Steel doors a foot wide, the combination of the lock known only to Kingdon; a wireless/television monitor; ultrasonic warning beams and an electronic system that alerted the local police station, Kingdon closed the steel doors behind him and disconnected the surveillance apparatus.
The vault which Kingdon now entered was dimly-lit. He switched off the conventional lighting and flicked a switch that activated a single beam of light from a halogen bulb.
His fear receded as the fears of other men recede in the arms of a woman. As far as Kingdon was concerned power was more important than sex, and his power was crystallised in diamonds.
In the beam of light, on a bed of satin, stood a beautiful stone, its 58 facets flashing fire at him.
Kingdon’s contingency plans were centred around the one diamond for which he had paid the highest known price since Harry Winston sold the 75.52-carat Star of Independence for $4 million in New York in 1956. The Kingdon Diamond was 87.38 carats; when the ratings of the world’s most illustrious diamonds were re-assessed it would find a slot in between the Star of Persia, now 45th, and the Spoonmakers which was 46th – ten notches above the pear-shaped diamond that Richard Burton had given to his then wife, Elizabeth Taylor.
The Kingdon Diamond was now worth about $10 million; the Kingdon Collection in the region of $30 million. One day, perhaps, if the unthinkable occurred and Kingdon Investments collapsed, he would elope with them. His riches, his passion.
Kingdon stared at the single stone glittering on its cushion. Reluctantly he saw it for what it was: a fake.
The real Kingdon Diamond lay in a vault in the City of London. If any thief managed to penetrate the fortifications outside the cellar in the house, he would have access to a simulant made from strongium titanate.
But Kingdon felt calmer now. Thank God he could still fall for the wiles of a beautiful imposter.
Back in the lounge he stood in front of the fireplace and examined the exhibit in the glass case above the mantelpiece. The old ten-shilling bank-note on which he had founded his fortune …. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of tyres crunching on gravel. He walked across the lounge and activated the closed-circuit television. In the small black-and-white screen he saw a girl photographed outside the door with infra-red beams. The doorbell chimed.
He opened the door and the girl walked in, noticed the surprise on his face and said: ‘You mean you forgot?’ She tossed her red fox jacket onto a chair.
‘I forgot.’ He kissed her. ‘Sorry.’
‘Well, it’s a new experience I suppose.’
The girl was long-legged and small-breasted; her black hair shone with bluish lights and her features were flat and beautiful. She was Eurasian, born Betty Winkler in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, but renamed Suzy Okana by the escort agency which had first employed her.
She had graduated from the agency to be the chosen companion of famous men such as Paul Kingdon. Her name had been linked with Royalty and she featured regularly in the columns of William Hickey in the Daily Express and Nigel Dempster in the Daily Mail.
She wore slit skirts because it was expected of her, and on occasions swore like a dockland whore. Many men eulogised over her beauty – oriental, enigmatic – but none ever noticed the expression that shadowed her face in unguarded moments. Lost innocence settling into disillusion: the expression of a girl in her teens searching for what the woman of twenty-five suspected was no longer attainable.
Her relationship with Kingdon suited her. All he needed was a fashionable woman to display publicly.
Kingdon, who had invited her to dinner, grinned. ‘Can you cook?’
‘Again a first. No-one’s ever asked me before. And the answer’s no.’ She poured herself a whisky and lit a cigarette. ‘In any case I understood we were going out. I thought you liked us to be seen together.’
‘Not tonight,’ Kingdon said. ‘It’s been a shitty day.’
She shrugged. ‘Okay, open a few tins.’
‘You’ll find an electric tin-opener on the kitchen wall. It shouldn’t be too difficult to operate.’
‘Oh boy,’ she said and disappeared into the kitchen. While she was away Kingdon played back the recorder attached to his telephone tap alert. Willett’s voice ordering liquor supplies: then Willett talking to a woman. Willett: ‘Mr Kingdon’s residence.’
A woman’s voice: ‘Is Mr Kingdon there?’
‘No, madam, he’s at his office.’
‘Can you give him a message?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tell him November 12th 1978.’
Kingdon frowned.
Willett’s voice: ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
‘It’s simple enough. A date. Make a note of it.’
The woman repeated the date.
Willett: ‘Is that all?’
Click.
Kingdon switched off the recorder and wrote down the date on a memo pad. He tore off the page and went into the kitchen where Suzy had opened cans of chicken breasts, salmon and paté de fois gras.
‘Not exactly a scene from Jennifer’s Diary,’ she remarked. ‘Did you telephone me today?’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘No, why should I have done?’
He read out the date. ‘Mean anything to you?’
She shook her head.
The feeling of unease returned. He sat down and began to eat without appetite.
‘Would you rather I went home?’ She was dressed in a maroon and gold thread lamé trouser suit with a ruby pendant necklace at her throat. ‘I don’t feel quite adequate for the occasion. I’m not dressed for understanding wife consoling worried hubby.’
‘The date,’ he said. ‘What the hell is that date? I’m exdirectory, I had the number changed last week. A woman calls. Leaves a date and hangs up. What the hell do you make of that?’
‘Not a lot,’ she said. ‘A practical joke?’
Kingdon pushed aside his plate. ‘Champagne?’ ‘Shouldn’t it be a mug of cocoa?’
Kingdon took a bottle of Bollinger from the fridge and eased off the cork. He poured the champagne into two tumblers, gulped half of his.
‘That’s all I needed,’ he said. ‘A bloody mystery.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘And spend the night?’
‘Do as you please.’
‘You really know how to make a woman feel wanted.’
She went into the lounge, leaving Kingdon sitting in the kitchen watching the bubbles spiralling in the bottle.
Half an hour later he went up to bed. As midnight struck on the grandfather clock in the hallway he heard her go to her room.
He slept fitfully for a while. A breeze had risen and the branches of a tree clawed at the mullioned window panes.
He awoke abruptly as the clock struck two. His mind clear, the date surfacing from his dreams.
The date on an elegant receipt …. ‘A day to remember, Mr Kingdon,’ as he signed the cheque and handed it to the dealer.
November 12th, 1978, was the day he bought the Kingdon Diamond.
But next day was better.
On top of the pile of mail on his desk in his office was an invitation. To Bilderberg.
XIII
The original Chàteau Saint-Pierre was built by François the First, the additions by various successors to the French throne, and the red-brick annexe by a builder from Orléans who later admitted that he had little sense of history.
Annexe apart, the Château was a mellow and dignified place. Two wings reached out protectively from the main building, but they were the only concessions to geometric design; successive architects had discovered ancient foundations and built on them, with the result that the extensions tended to wander and guests sometimes took a couple of turns round the corridors before finding their rooms. The outside walls were terracotta, the turrets and clock-tower verdigris green.
Orderliness to the general picture was restored by its frame – the gardens. Lawns as green and fine as moss, an open-air theatre fashioned from holm-oak, carp-filled pools surrounded by stone balustrades, patterned gardens set in clasps of silver Helichrysum, several foundations and a maze which, despite its internal convolutions, looked neat and compact from the outside. The gardens were enclosed by fifteen-foot high railings spiked with gold-painted barbs.
I, Said the Spy Page 18