The telephone buzzed. The President picked up the receiver. Claire glanced around. The Office didn’t look all that different – except for the family photographs.
The President said: ‘Tell him I’m busy right now, I’ll call him back in fifteen minutes.’ He replaced the receiver and continued as though there hadn’t been an interruption: ‘As you know better than I do, vital policies are discussed at Bilderberg meetings. This year, perhaps, more vital than ever before.’ He leaned forward. ‘After the conference, Mrs Jerome, I’d like to hear your views on them.’
‘Of course, Mr President. But ….’
‘Yes, Mrs Jerome?’
‘Surely there are more important people there than myself.’
‘Importance is in the eye of the beholder, Mrs Jerome. I won’t insult your intelligence to suggest that you will be the only guest who will be considerate enough – and patriotic enough – to confide in me. The point is that you are a specialist. You will be in a unique position to judge the trend in supply and demand of weaponry. Those trends will tell us a lot, Mrs Jerome, and when you return I have no doubt that Mr Danby will be here to assimilate them.’
He stood up; the smile returned. The meeting was over. Mohamed Tilmissan called her half an hour after she had got back to her apartment in New York. He had, he said, a proposition to make to her. Would she care to join him on his yacht anchored off Corfu?
Claire accepted the invitation; but when she replaced the receiver she wondered if anyone had eavesdropped. The two Israeli agents had heightened her awareness.
Supposing, for instance, Stephen Harsch knew that she planned to deal with an Arab middleman.
* * *
Tilmissan said: ‘You have me at a disadvantage, Mrs Jerome, I am more used to catering for the tastes of male arms dealers,’ gesturing towards two tanned hostesses with long legs and plump breasts.
‘You’ll have to adapt, Mr Tilmissan. It’s a woman’s world as well as a man’s today.’
Tilmissan smiled. ‘Not in the Arab world.’ He snapped his fingers and one of the hostesses walked across the lounge of the 85-foot yacht Tiffany, pushing a trolley bearing a bottle of champagne in a silver ice-bucket and two slender glasses.
Tilmissan said: ‘I pretend it’s not alcohol. Do you care for champagne, Mrs Jerome?’
‘Champagne will be fine.’ She studied the small, dapper man sitting opposite her. He radiated suppressed energy and his manicured hands were never still. He wore a navy-blue brass-buttoned blazer and grey slacks.
Fifteen years ago Mohamed Tilmissan, the son of a dealer in precious stones, had been poised to enter the family business in Beirut after an education in England and the US, where he had studied at the Graduate Business School of New York University. But the now cosmopolitan young man had realised the far greater potential of another of the earth’s riches. Oil.
He made his millions first through oil. Then from the arms and technology that the Arabs had suddenly found they were able to buy as they hiked the price of that oil.
Now he held sway in the feudal court of Saudi Arabia, all the other Arab states with money to spend and in the emporiums of the world’s arms manufacturers, demanding payment from both vendor and purchaser. By the midseventies, if you wanted to deal with the Arabs you had to negotiate through Adnan Khashoggi or Mohamed Tilmissan.
For an hour Tilmissan and Claire Jerome had sparred verbally about the deal. As the scarlet-uniformed hostess poured the champagne, Tilmissan asked: ‘Don’t you feel any qualms about arming Arabs, Mrs Jerome? You are, after all, a Jew.’
‘Why should I? According to you the Saudis want the weapons to protect themselves. Against a possible uprising amongst their own people, against a possible threat from Iraq ….’
She sipped her champagne. She wondered if Pete Anello had ever crewed a yacht like the Tiffany, as elegant as the Royal Yacht Britannia, with its sculptured blue hull and cream funnels. The floor of the lounge was covered with white, wall-to-wall carpeting and furnished with antique furniture, a grand piano topped with silver candelabra and a TV equipped for video. Her own cabin had a mirror on the ceiling and she wondered how many salesmen had been persuaded to increase commissions beneath its heaving reflections.
Tilmissan watched her reflectively for a moment. Then he said: ‘The Israelis don’t have quite the same tolerant attitude towards the Saudis as yourself, Mrs Jerome.’
‘I am a businesswoman. If I don’t sell those arms someone else will.’
‘I seem to have heard that argument somewhere before.’
‘I am not here, Mr Tilmissan, to argue about the principles of dealing in arms. Do you want these guns and missiles or don’t you?’
Tilmissan waved one hand eloquently. ‘You’re right, of course. Let’s not waste any more time on moral issues. Who wants them?’ He stood up. ‘Perhaps a stroll on deck? None of my, ah, entertainments here will take the edge off your business instincts. Maybe I will be luckier with the aesthetic approach. Corfu is looking particularly beautiful today.’
And it was. A wall of green olive and cypress trees with a white house lodged half way up it; a few small yachts at anchor, the sky blue and the green water ruffled by a spring breeze.
From behind the trees came the sound of breaking crockery.
Claire looked at Tilmissan enquiringly.
‘It’s Easter Sunday tomorrow. Today the Corfiots hurl crockery from their upstairs windows. Don’t ask me why,’ hands spread wide. ‘I can only tell you about Moslem celebrations. At midnight on Sunday an illuminated cross is switched on with the words Christos Anesti underneath it. Then fireworks.’
‘Talking of fireworks ….’
Tilmissan thrust his hands into the pockets of his blazer. ‘Talk away, Mrs Jerome.’
‘How many guns do the Saudis want?’
‘Of your very special guns? Something in the region of 30,000. And ammunition of course.’
‘And wire-controlled missiles?’
‘Five thousand,’ Tilmissan said. He leaned over the rail and stared down at the sea. ‘Not the biggest deal in the world but we have to consider the future.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I believe your plant at Los Angeles is geared to produce a revolutionary ground-to-air missile system.’
‘You have good information, Mr. Tilmissan.’
‘Of course, the best. I understand that the missiles reach unprecedented heights and that an enemy plane stands no chance whatsoever.’
‘At the moment it doesn’t. But, as you know, countermeasures are always discovered. It’s the history of our business.’
‘The French are also working on a similar system. But it looks as though Marks International is going to be first. The Saudis would also like to be the first nation in the Arab world to possess your system.’
‘It’s possible,’ Claire said, listening to the smashing of crockery across the water.
‘But of course we can wait for the French.’
‘How much, Mr Tilmissan?’ Claire asked abruptly.
‘For myself a million dollars. A mere bagatelle.’
‘More like poker,’ Claire said.
‘A million for me. Billions for Marks International. And I assure you I am not particularly interested in the million. I am interested in Arab pride. We are in the driving seat these days; we intend to stay there.’
‘Then if it’s the Arab cause that motivates you, why a million dollars? Why not five hundred thousand?’
Tilmissan clasped his hands together and smiled. ‘I am an Arab, Arab pride you see, And I can assure you, Mrs Jerome, you are not in a position to bargain.’ His brown eyes searched her face. ‘Tell me, what would your reactions be if one of your missiles shot down an Israeli plane?’
Claire turned away, stared at a shoal of silver fish approaching the yacht. Like marauding aircraft, she thought. ‘I would grieve, of course. Just as I would grieve if it was shot down by a French missile.’ She turned and faced the middle-man. ‘A
million dollars, Mr Tilmissan. Do we have a deal?’
He shook her hand. ‘Very well. But I can assure you that it has been a unique experience for me doing business with a woman – and a Jew,’ he added. ‘And now some lunch?’
They went below deck to the dining-room where, on a rosewood table, a waiter served dzadziki and dolmades, feta and red mullet, and one of the hostesses, a Californian blonde, dispensed wine.
After lunch Claire Jerome retired to her cabin and for a long while stared at the face regarding her from the mirror on the ceiling. Then she slept.
While she was sleeping, the Californian girl rowed herself to the shore in a dinghy.
From a waterside hotel she made a long-distance telephone call, high heel of one white sandal tapping impatiently as the plump girl on the switchboard phlegmatically made the connection.
Then she closed the door of the booth tightly and spoke urgently into the receiver, ‘The bitch has made the deal.’
* * *
Nathan Marks was watching television. An old black-and-white movie about the Second World War.
Nathan preferred the past to the present and frequently retired there. ‘In the old days we had to beat the odds. These days it’s all laid on a platter ….’ Although he was optimistic about the new crises facing the United States.
He lived with two servants in a neat grey house, squeezed between two high-rise blocks in the eighty’s close to Central Park. He should, Claire knew, have retired years ago. But when the occasion demanded it he could still put in an appearance, snappy and bird-like, as President of Marks International, so long as Claire was there behind him like a belligerent attorney.
Sitting in a leather chair too big for him, the hump in his back thin and sharp beneath a worn, red-silk dressing-gown, he looked frail and brittle; like an autumn leaf, Claire thought, as she tidied the room, while on the television some long-forgotten star with boyish good looks garotted German sentries who were forever looking the wrong way.
Eventually wave after wave of American bombers flew in to finish the job and Claire switched off the set. Nathan leaned painfully back in the chair. ‘Those were the days,’ he said. His rheumy eyes focussed on Claire. ‘But I tell you, things are beginning to look up again.’
‘If recession is good news they are, papa.’
‘Recession, recession …. The best thing that could happen. No-one ever built a fortune on prosperity. Look, the Germans played into our hands, now it’s the Russians, so what’s different? I tell you, Claire, this country needs a challenge. Already they’re rising to it. And as for Marks International, a good time ahead, Claire ….’ He noticed that Claire wasn’t dressed for watching television; she wore a dark-green waisted suit and her hair had just been styled. ‘You going someplace?’
‘Dinner with Stephen Harsch,’ she said. ‘Business.’
‘Harsch, huh? He’s a smart boy.’ Stephen Harsch was over forty-five. ‘Something going between you two?’
‘Sure there is. He wants my job,’ said Claire, who hadn’t slept with Harsch since the day she ordered him out of her apartment.
‘Maybe the two of you could get something together. You should get married, Claire.’
She said affectionately: ‘I married Marks International, papa,’ and thought about Pete Anello.
She smoothed her father’s wispy grey hair, folded the collar of his striped pyjamas over the dressing-gown. ‘Anything I can get you, papa?’
‘Feed something into that video gadget. I’ll watch another movie and then go to bed.’
‘Anything special?’ As if she didn’t know.
He told her Citizen Kane, but she was already fixing it. It was his favourite movie.
* * *
They dined in a small Italian restaurant fitted incongruously with lots of glass and stainless steel. She chose lasagne verde with meat sauce while Harsch, weight-watching, ate a fillet steak with spinach, and ordered a bottle of Barolo.
The conversation was strained; not only did he resent her power with Marks International but he still smarted from his peremptory dismissal as her lover. He was clever and zealously youthful but, as far as sex equality was concerned, old-fashioned.
‘You know something, Stephen,’ she said as he re-filled her glass with wine, ‘you try too hard.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘When it shows.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You aren’t thirty-five any more. Why try to act it?’
He straightened the knot of his fashionably thin grey tie; there was still a crisp determination about his features, but it looked strained. A mask that was slipping.
He sliced a morsel of steak and said: ‘When I’m fifty maybe I’ll admit to forty. A good age for promotion,’ coming to the point of the dinner.
Claire drank some wine. ‘Promotion to where?’
‘Look,’ he said, putting down his knife and fork, ‘I know how you feel about your father. But it is time he retired. In fact, let’s face it, he is retired.’
‘In that case,’ Claire said calmly, ‘it doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘Okay, so you’re the power behind the throne. But it’s time you occupied that throne for everyone to see.’
‘I haven’t heard any complaints.’
‘Perhaps you don’t listen too much. There’s a lot of ill-feeling in the boardroom. And elsewhere.’
‘I remember the last time you said something like that. Father and daughter as I recall it, won hands down on a proxy vote.’
‘That was a hell of a long time ago. Things have changed.’ ‘No they haven’t,’ Claire said abruptly. ‘And you haven’t changed either, Stephen.’
‘Oh yes I have. I’m more honest these days. Like I told you, I want to hustle along.’
‘What would be the difference, Stephen? I’d be president and you’d be number two.’
‘Better than number three,’ Harsch said and, as a waiter hovered: ‘What would you like to follow?’
‘Cheese,’ Claire said. ‘And some more wine.’
Harsch said to the waiter: ‘I’ll take the fruit.’
When the waiter had gone Claire said: ‘You don’t really expect me to put my father out to grass, do you?’
‘You’ve put it crudely, but he is eighty.’
‘With an alert mind.’
‘Let’s stop kidding,’ Harsch said. ‘It’s your mind.’
‘You can forget it anyway,’ Claire told him.
There was a pause while the waiter placed the cheese-board and a bowl of fruit on the table. Another waiter uncorked the new bottle of wine.
Harsch pared an apple carefully and began to speak. It sounded, Claire decided, like a rehearsed speech.
‘Look, Claire,’ he said quietly as the length of peel uncoiled from the apple, ‘we’ve worked together for a long time now. Okay, so something went wrong a few years back. I don’t know what the hell it was; maybe you can tell me ….’
Shaking her head, Claire said: ‘Come to the point, Stephen.’
‘Marks International needs strength at the top.’
Claire pointed to herself. ‘It’s got it.’
‘You’re in your forties, right? I guess that’s not a smart remark to make to a woman. But we understand each other.’
‘Oh yes,’ Claire said, ‘we understand each other all right.’
‘As you get older it’s going to get tougher.’
‘So am I,’ Claire said. She cut a slice of gorgonzola cheese and placed it on her plate.
‘It’ll be lonely up there.’
Claire nibbled a piece of cheese, washed it down with wine, then said: ‘Stephen, are you proposing marriage for Christ’s sake?’
‘As a matter of fact I am.’ The peel finally fell in a neat pattern on his plate and he began to slice the apple into quarters. ‘Okay, so let’s be honest, it might seem like a business arrangement. But I think we’d make out, Claire. I once thought we did ….’
H
arsch’s marriage had broken up years ago because for him it had been a convenience – according to the rules young executives were supposed to be married. After the break-up he had still been accepted because, it was said, his wife hadn’t understood his ambition. And that was all Harsch had been left with, his ambition. Momentarily Claire felt sorry for him because she guessed that, occasionally, he glimpsed the lonely future. Yes, she thought, I understand that.
She pushed her plate aside and said softly: ‘I’m sorry, Stephen, it wouldn’t work. How could we leave the office, occupying the positions we do, and then go home and carry on as though we’d just returned from different jobs? It’s my fault, I guess; I’m a tough old bird.’
‘Just as you please.’ His face was bleak. ‘Now I’ll put the alternative. You’ve got a fight on your hands, Claire. At the next Board-meeting there’s going to be a motion to force your father to retire.’
‘No way will it succeed.’
‘You’re wrong. You’re out of touch. Perhaps you’ve been too occupied with your personal life.’
Claire’s anger flared. ‘Personal life means just that. KEEP OUT.’
‘I respect that. I’ve no wish to compete with Mr Anello …. He’s a nice guy, I’m told.’
‘You were told right.’
‘Coffee?’
She nodded. ‘And cognac.’
‘While you’ve been … otherwise occupied’—Harsch smiled without humour—‘I’ve been looking into your figures.’
‘Booming, huh, Stephen?’
‘Sure they’re booming. I see we’ve even exceeded our own expectations.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out a sheet of paper. ‘I see we’ve doubled our quota of arms for Pakistan. A decision taken arbitrarily by yourself two days ago.’
The anger was replaced by fear, but she managed to say: ‘Then the Board should be very pleased with me.’
‘I wonder ….’
‘What do you wonder, Stephen?’
Harsch waited until the waiter had brought the coffee and cognac. Then he said: ‘I called Karachi this morning. They don’t seem to know a goddam thing about it.’
The businesswoman accustomed to dealing with emergencies took over. She smiled at him. ‘The President of the United States does, Stephen.’
I, Said the Spy Page 22