The Business

by Iain Banks

  They both had good bodies. She sucked his dick (a little stubby for my taste, and with a distinct rightwards curve, but there you are), then they sixty-nined, then they fucked missionary position for a couple of minutes, without protection. Looked like they both enjoyed it. I cleared my throat. My, but it was hot in here. The screen flickered, and the couple were screwing again, him taking her from behind. They were both approximately facing the camera, but I got the impression neither of them knew it was there. I studied their faces. I had a vague feeling I knew the guy, but I wasn't sure. He took longer this time. It looked like real sex and not pornography because they just humped away with no cut-away shots of her face or his backside, and when he came he did so inside her, not over her face or her tits or anything crass like that.

  Another few shots of them lying on the bed together, on top at first, then under a sheet, both talking and smiling and playing with each other's hair. Another flicker, then him leaving the apartment, hailing a cab. A yellow cab, so almost certainly the US. Possibly NYC. Flicker, then her leaving and walking away. The date/time display indicated they'd been together for just under two hours. Then, the end. Blank screen.

  I sat back. Poudenhaut sat looking at me.

  'Yes?' I said.

  'It's finished?'

  'Would you eject the disc and take it out?'

  I sat forward and inspected the machine, finding the eject button. The disc appeared and I slipped it out.

  'Please keep it.'

  I popped it into a side pocket in my jacket.

  'Do you know what you've just shown me?' I asked. Poudenhaut shook his head briskly as he turned the DVD player off, closed it and put it back in the briefcase. 'No,' he said.

  'I just have this feeling it might not be what I was supposed to be looking at.' This was becoming more than slightly ridiculous: Poudenhaut with his fancy helicopter and his Hollywood-villain briefcase and minuscule sat. phone and spanking new DVD machine coming all the way out here just to show me a few minutes of amateur porn.

  At least he had the decency to look confused. 'What—?' he began, then frowned. 'You…I believe you were supposed… expected to recognise a person.'

  I thought back to the guy in the bedroom. Did I recognise him? I didn't think so. I shook my head.

  'You sure?' Poudenhaut sounded worried now.

  'I may forget a face, I never forget a…Never mind.'

  Poudenhaut held up one hand. 'Would you wait a minute?' He moved about ten metres away through the pale grey fronds of the hanging wires. He stood with his back to me and tried to use the sat. phone. It didn't work. He shook it — which was, somehow, an encouraging thing to see — then tried again, once more fruitlessly.

  'You'll probably find you have to go outside,' I called over to him. He looked at me. 'Satellite,' I said, pointing upwards. He nodded once and headed for the line of windows.

  He stood in the sunlight, talked briefly and then started waving at me, motioning me to join him.

  I left his briefcase where it was and strolled out. He handed me the phone. He was really quite sweaty about the face now.

  'Kathryn?'

  'Mr Hazleton?'

  He laughed. 'Ah, the best-laid schemes, eh?'

  'Gang aft agley,' I agreed.

  'Hmm. One should not make too many assumptions. You aren't just teasing poor Adrian, are you ? You really didn't recognise anyone in that little film?'

  'Did I see what I was supposed to see?'

  'A man and a woman having sex in a hotel? Yes.'

  I smiled at poor Adrian, who was dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. 'I see. Well, no, I really didn't recognise either of them.'

  'How embarrassing. After all that secrecy.' A pause. 'I suppose I could just tell you.'

  'I suppose you could.'

  'Perhaps it's better if I don't, for now. You may remember of your own accord, given time.'

  'I'd rather you just told me.'

  'Hmm. I'd appreciate it if you kept this to yourself for the moment, Kathryn. Don't show the disc to anybody else. You may well find it extremely useful, in due course.'

  'Mr H, if you're not going to tell me, I might be tempted to post it on the Web and see if anybody else can tell me who these two young lovers are.'

  'Now, Kathryn, that would be very irresponsible. Please don't be petulant.'

  'I was supposed to know by now. Why not just tell me?'

  Another pause. The ship's horn blared, above and forward of us. Poudenhaut and I both jumped.

  'What was that?' Hazleton asked.

  'Ship's hooter,' I said.

  'Very loud.'

  'Yes, wasn't it? So, who was I supposed to recognise, Mr Hazleton?'

  'I suppose I am being overly secretive. It's just that there's no need for Adrian to know.'

  I smiled at Poudenhaut. 'Fine by me.' I turned and walked a few steps away, then smiled back at Poudenhaut. His mouth set in a tight line. He retreated into the shade of the lounge and crossed his arms, watching me.

  I heard Hazleton take a breath. 'You didn't even start to recognise her?'

  So it was the woman. I thought hard. 'No…'

  'When you met her she may have had blonde hair. Quite long.'

  Blonde. I thought of the woman's face (annoyingly, the image that had chosen to etch itself on my memory was of her just as she was achieving orgasm, her head thrown back, her mouth open in a shout of pleasure). I tried to ignore this, and to edit out the shoulder-length black hair and substitute blonde.

  Maybe, I was starting to think, I had seen her once, or met her. Maybe I had a bad association with that face. Something I didn't want to think about. Oh-oh.

  'No further forward, Kathryn?' Hazleton asked. He sounded like he was enjoying this.

  'I might be,' I said uncertainly. 'She might ring a vague bell.' Definitely a bad association here.

  'Shall I tell you?'

  'Yes,' I said (you bastard, was the bit I only thought).

  'Her first name's Emma.'

  Emma. Very definitely a bad association. Yes, I'd met her, just once maybe. But who the hell was she, and why the bad association?

  Then I realised, just as he spoke her second name.

  Half an hour later I stood on the bridge of the Lorenzo Uffizi, braced along with the others against one of the equipment consoles still ranged beneath the windows, while the coast swept forward to meet us at thirty knots. The Lorenzo Uffizi was headed straight for a broad gap between a half-demolished bulk carrier and a wide, unidentifiable hull that was all ribs and missing plates. Spread out on either side of us, for kilometres in each direction, were dozens of ships of every size and type and in every stage of dismantling: some freshly beached and barely touched, others reduced to little more than the spines of their keels and a few girders; tiny figures dotted the vast slope of oil-stained sand and infinitesimal sparks glowed sporadically amongst the hulks, while slanted pillars of smoke rose from a hundred different sites on the remains of the ships, the salvage-littered shore and deep inland.

  The faintest of tremors shook the vessel. I watched the bows start to rise as the edge of the console pressed against my pelvis and belly. The telegraph rang for All Stop. A few people cheered. Tommy Cholongai, still holding on to the wheel, laughed and wheezed as the deceleration forced him forward into it. The ship groaned and creaked around us and from somewhere below there came a distant crashing noise, like hundreds of pieces of crockery falling. Shuddering mightily, the Lorenzo Uffizi's bows rode further and further up the beach, gradually obscuring the view of the land dead ahead. Looking to port, I watched our wash go piling up against the rust-streaked hull of the bulk carrier in a great white sine of surf. Bangings and thuds sounded all around us, the deck seemed to flex beneath my feet and a window out on the far end of the bridge's starboard wing suddenly popped out of its frame and disappeared towards the glistening sands below.

  The creaking and groaning and the steady pressure went on for a few more seconds, then with a
final pulsing shake and a kind of softly transmitted thud that left me bruised for days and nearly hit my head on the window glass, the old cruise liner settled into her last resting place, the crashing noises ceased and the console stopped digging into me.

  More cheering and applause. Tommy Cholongai thanked the ship's master and the pilot, and then with a flourish set the bridge telegraph to Finished With Engines.

  I looked over at Adrian Poudenhaut, who had decided to stay aboard for the beaching but had looked distinctly green around the gills for the last ten minutes or so, calm seas or no. Still clutching his briefcase, he smiled wanly. I smiled back.

  And as I smiled I thought, Emma Buzetski.

  Because that was her name.

  'Buzetski is her second name,' Hazleton had said on the satellite phone, half an hour earlier, just before he rang off. 'She's Emma Buzetski. You know, Stephen's wife.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Just had a horrible thought.

  You had a dream where you woke up and somebody had removed all your teeth last week. Michael, I have some bad news for you...

  No, I'm serious. But it's about that. You recall the party I was going to see on the morning after that happened?

  Yes. What about him?

  He has a daughter. Very pretty, very Westernised, very pleased to see me, once, when her dad wasn't there. If you know what I mean.

  Gosh, you're such a rake. Actually you're a fucking cretin. You risked jeopardising a deal that size by getting involved with a CEO's KID? I can't believe you're telling me this. Is this meant to endear me to you, Mike? Make me think hey, here's one worth promoting, spread the word around the Level Fours? Are you mad? Are you drunk? DICKHEAD, Mikey boy.

  Calm down, will you? Look, it just fucking happened, all right? She came on to me. I mean she's not a child or anything; 19 I think. But I was practically raped.

  Yeah, right.

  Except she wouldn't actually let me - how shall I put it, go the hole way?

  Go on.

  I used my mouth.

  Ah. See your problem/worry. Except what was done to you was done at this end, not that end. Of the journey, I mean, not your bod.

  Still. I mean, don't you think?

  You said the party concerned wasn't too bothered about your lack of dentition.

  Quite unfazed.

  Bad sign. Think back to your previous few encounters with him, post your tryst with his li'l girl. How was his attitude then?

  Umm, well, frostier, maybe. I remember talking about that. It felt like we'd slipped back a rung or two in the negotiations. Thought it was just a ploy. But he was always really polite to me, I mean really.

  You idiot. So he's frosty, then you lose half your teeth and he's the one wreathed in smiles. Didn't you ever suffer because of somebody, and - even if you had to tolerate them because of business - be really cold towards them, and then have your secret revenge on them and suddenly find it was easy, even more satisfying to be all sympathetic towards them?

  I am in the presence of the master, aren't I? Or the mistress. Truly you are Yoda. Yodette, anyway.

  Displeased with you I am. I can't believe...no, come to think of it, I can. You're a man. We're probably lucky you didn't try to shag his wife or have carnal knowledge of his favourite golf course or something. I mean, eighteen holes; the possibilities. Actually I don't know why I'm making light of this. In all seriousness, I'm very disappointed in you. That was a very stupid thing to do. The deal is totally done, isn't it? There isn't some last little tiny detail that could explode - oh sorry, could that be ejaculate - in our faces?

  Yuk. Totally done, signed, sealed, delivered and set in reinforced ferroconcrete. Look, I've said I'm sorry, but at least I did tell you as soon as I realised.

  Ferroconcrete is reinforced. And I bet you did not just think of this. And as I seem to recall telling you, Adrian G is your immediate superior while I'm on sabbatical, not me. Plus I just scrolled back through all this and you have not said you're sorry.

  All right! I'm sorry! Really. Look, I don't have to tell AG, do I? He really doesn't like me. Say it ain't so. I'll make it up to you. This is all off the record, obviously.

  Helps to say that at the start. You do have a lot to learn. How did you get to be an L4? Anyway, I won't tell AG, but in the event that anything does happen with the deal concerned, you're going to have to confess all to the relevant authorities. As the deal's done, and the CEO was apparently happy, we're probably OK, honour satisfied. But, like I say, in the event, you'll have to own up. And another thing: have you talked to the girl since? Has she said she confessed all to her pa? I mean it looks like he found out, but through her?

  She won't return my calls. I'm starting to regret telling you this. Look, if something did go wrong later, this could end my career. You won't grass on me will you? Kathryn; please.

  I'm not promising anything. If all you pay for this is losing a few teeth, we'll all have got off lightly.

  Who's this We, white man? Might I point out that I've taken all the shit here; as far as the biz is concerned the phrase Scot free comes to mind, my little Caledonian chum. You, ie the company has lost fuck all.

  Yes, and you'd better pray it stays that way.

  I thought you were an atheist.

  It's just a form of words; don't get hot under your dog or any other collar. Where the hell is your dumb ass - sorry, arse - anyway?

  Home in a dark and rain-swept Chelsea. You?

  I'm in Karachi, and a quandary.

  Oh. Isn't that the new Toyota?

  Never mind. You should be asleep. Do try not to fuck up any important mega-deals or lose any major body parts while in the land of nod.

  Make it so, number one. Oh, forgot: Adrian G changed story again. Apparently it definitely and definitively was not our large secure friend Mr Walker he saw in that taxi the other day. My fault for getting totally the wrong end of the stick, allegedly. Just thought I'd tell you.

  Right. So now we know. Night, and then again, night.

  * * *

  We'd been lifted off the Lorenzo Uffizi by the helicopter from Tommy Cholongai's yacht. For a while I'd wondered whether we'd be taken straight to the yacht and never actually set foot on the sands of Sonmiani Bay, but we did, plucked from the deck and lowered to the beach in groups of four, and stood in the shade of the enormous stem of the old liner while Mr C glad-handed the boss-men of the ship-breaking concern that would be scrapping the vessel.

  Even while we stood there, the water still drying on the vessel's patchy red hull-bottom paint and draining from the weeds and encrusted growths that had accumulated under the waterline since her last scraping, a squad of little men and skinny boys pushing oxyacetylene cylinders on trolleys came jogging past us. They split into groups of two stationed every hundred feet or so down the length of the hull exposed above the now retreating tide, ignited their torches, flipped dark goggles down and started cutting into the ship's plates to form a series of beach-level doors.

  The Pakistani bosses were all smiles and politeness and invited us to take tea in their offices further up the beach, but I got the impression they just wanted rid of us so they could get on with the job of taking the ship apart. Mr Cholongai declined their offer gracefully and we were all ferried out to the yacht in the little Hughes, apart from Adrian Poudenhaut, who was picked up by his fancy Bell-with-the-retractable-undercarriage, the swine.

  There was a feast arranged on board the yacht, and something of a party. The Lorenzo Uffizi's captain and first officer and the local pilot received presents from Mr C. They didn't unwrap them but they seemed very happy with them all the same. Gorgeously attractive Malay girls wandered the teak decks and main lounge, serving cocktails and seafood.

  'Mr Poudenhaut did not stay long,' Tommy Cholongai observed, joining me at the port deck rail. Most people were either in the air-conditioned lounge or on this side, in the shade. Even in the shadows, with a gentle breeze produced by the yacht heading parallel with the coast
towards Karachi, it felt fiercely hot and humid.

  'A man with a mission,' I said, and sipped my margarita.

  'A present, I understood.' He held a glass of iced coffee.

  'Yes,' I said, aware of the weight of the disc in my jacket pocket.

  'From Mr Hazleton, it would be obvious to infer,' Cholongai said, nodding thoughtfully. He smiled. 'Forgive me if I'm being too nosy, won't you?'

  'That's all right. Mr Poudenhaut was delivering something Mr Hazleton thought I ought to see. I take it you weren't aware of what it was.'

  'Indeed no. Mr Poudenhaut's visit was as much a surprise to me as it was to you.' He glanced at me. 'It was a surprise to you, wasn't it?'

  'Yes.'

  'I thought so.' He looked out towards the shore. We had left behind the last of the scrapped ships' ragged outlines a few minutes ago. A thin, dark line of mangrove trees had replaced the tawny sands. 'Of course,' he said, 'given what I have told you about today, and given that the Level One executives all know of this matter, there is bound to be, oh, how would one say it? Some jockeying for position.'

  'I think I'm starting to appreciate that, Tommy.'

  'We shall be staying in harbour in Karachi for a day or two. I have to entertain various worthy but not very sparkling industrialists this evening; you are certainly invited, though I think you might be bored. However I would be honoured if you would join me for lunch tomorrow.'

  'If I have time to do a little shopping when we get ashore I'll happily join you for both. Boring industrialists hold no terror for me, Tommy.'

  Cholongai looked pleased. He glanced at his watch. 'It would be quicker to send you ahead in the helicopter.'

  'Oh,' I said. 'Good.'

  Having been met by Mo Meridalawah at the airport and transported across the ocean of poverty that was Karachi to the archipelago of shops where serious money could be spent, I had time to buy a new frock, a satellite phone and a DVD player.