Vanishing Point

by Morris West

  “I observed that Carl Emil Strassberger did not enjoy the evening’s performance.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t enjoy my own, either. I feel like a goddam pander! I was paying for that exhibition. Who is Sibilla anyway?”

  “Formidable woman, isn’t she?”

  “She’s a cannibal!”

  “She’s also very clever at what she does, which is sex—sex and show-business hypnosis. She’s much in demand in certain wealthy circles from Turin to Venice. She helps, by her own account, to redress the imbalance of the sexes in noble families. You must admit that you got what you paid for. That cassette is a very usable document, against Falco and, to a lesser degree, Rubens.”

  “We can’t use it at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be a death warrant for Liliane Prévost.”

  “Possibly.” Sergio gave me a sharp sidelong look. “If, however, it were leaked over the right journalist’s name, it could take a lot of market heat off Strassberger and company.”

  “No way, Sergio! Not for Strassberger, not for my father, not for anyone! Remember, I’m not coming back here. It is known that Liliane spent this evening with me. Therefore, she would be immediately identified as the source.”

  “You’re the paymaster.” Sergio spread his hands in surrender. “I admire your virtue, but don’t think too badly of us. We’ve always been bloody-minded tribes in these parts: the Visconti, the Gonzaga, the Borgia. Even the artists were a hell-raising crew. We’ve always worked on the principle that it’s quicker and cleaner to send in the assassins first and argue later. But don’t worry too much about Liliane. Part of my deal with Sibilla was that she take the girl under her protection, give her a job, and move her out of the danger zone. She’s a powerful woman, that one! I doubt even Falco would face up to her. She knows too many secrets, has too many high connections. What’s your next move?”

  “A meeting with Rubens in Geneva, to see what deal he offers me as a special client of Simonetta. Falco has faxed him about my arrival.”

  I handed him the copy of the Falco letter which Liliane had brought from Milan. He gave it a cursory glance and handed it back.

  “That’s nothing! In effect, all it says is: ‘Talk to this man. See if he makes sense to you.’ That is worse than nothing. There’s no enthusiasm in it, no positive recommendation. Falco is obviously hedging his bets on you as a financial prospect. Maybe he does it with everybody; I don’t know, but it troubles me. If it troubles Rubens too, it’s an open invitation to spit in your eye and send you packing.”

  “Then we have the big transformation scene. The man who faces him is Carl Emil Strassberger.”

  “Who, with the rest of his family, has been rejected by Larry Lucas, who is Rubens’s client. Where in God’s name does that get you—unless you use the tapes?”

  Abruptly he abandoned the argument, drained his glass, and stood up, a trifle unsteadily. “Why don’t you go to bed, Carl? We have to be up at six in the morning. I don’t know about you, but pointless arguments and vicarious sex before bedtime always give me nightmares!”

  11

  GENEVA, THE CITY OF CALVIN and Rousseau and Voltaire, the name place of the Geneva Convention, the birthplace of Swiss clockmaking, lay placid under a warm spring sun. The lake sparkled; the water jets spouted high in the still air; the park lawns were green, the flower beds bright with blooms. My eyes saw it all on the drive in from the airport. My brain registered little of it. I was too busy composing my opening address to Dr. Rubens.

  I had called him from the Dolder in Zurich, where my family had not yet arrived. He told me he had received the fax from his colleague, Falco. He would be happy to meet me for what he was pleased to call “an exploratory conference.” His mode of address was formal. His tone was studiously neutral. I felt like a student about to present a rather rickety thesis to an exacting professor.

  Rubens’s offices were in the Rue des Granges, that sector of the old town where the great bankers of the eighteenth century established their mansions. The atmosphere of old, discreet money still trailed about them. Inside the Rubens establishment, the same air of discretion prevailed.

  I was met at the reception desk by a young male attendant who stood respectfully to greet me and then made a brief, low-voiced call on the intercom. A few moments later, a gray-haired, sober-suited woman appeared, led me up a flight of stairs, and ushered me into an interview room. It was austerely furnished with a mahogany boardroom table, straight-backed chairs, yellow notepads, freshly sharpened pencils, bottles of mineral water, and glasses. The walls were hung with eighteenth-century lithographs of life in the lakeside city. The lithographs belonged to the Age of Enlightenment; but the spirit of John Calvin, rigid and righteous, filled the room. My guide begged me to be seated, offered me a glass of mineral water, which I declined, and left me with my thesis still half prepared and a growing conviction that this “exploratory conference” was a disaster waiting to happen.

  It was three minutes exactly before Dr. Rubens presented himself. He was tall, thin as a rake, with a long face that reminded me oddly of Don Quixote—except that the mouth was a hard, mirthless line and the eyes were dark and filmed over like those of a bird of prey. His skin was pale, his manicured hands thin as a bird’s claws. His handshake was a brief silken contact, his greeting a simple acknowledgment of my presence and my name. His preamble was a terse exposition.

  “My colleague, Falco, has sent me your personal details. I have studied them carefully. I have also made contact with the person who handles your affairs at Morgan Guaranty in Paris. Now I should like you to tell me what service you believe I can offer you.”

  “I understood, Doctor, that your service was an integral—indeed essential—part of any life plan designed by Simonetta Travel for special clients. I sought this meeting as a matter of common prudence. One does not entrust one’s assets to unknown persons or organizations. Clearly, because of the information I filed with Falco, you know more about me than I do about you.”

  “How much do you know about me, Mr. Benson?”

  “I asked for a banker’s report. It came back to me in the usual form. You are a long-established trustee house. Your father has retired. You are now the principal shareholder and chief executive. Your dealings within the banking community have been punctual and correct. You are, to use the old-fashioned phrase, ‘deemed good for engagements.’”

  “You have the jargon right, Mr. Benson. Do you yourself have any experience in money matters?”

  “Enough to have run a small specialized art and design business and to have accumulated enough capital to contemplate a complete change of lifestyle.”

  “That’s what interests me, Mr. Benson. You are clearly a successful and prosperous professional. Why do you want to abdicate your present lifestyle for another, quite different? Why do you want to change your banker before you have determined what you want to do with your life?”

  “I have certain clear reasons, Doctor, and certain others which are hard to express but which are, nonetheless, real to me.”

  He did not smile. He did not unbend by a fraction.

  “Let us take the clear reasons first.”

  “I am stale. My work is stale. Fortunately, my clients haven’t noticed it yet, but I have. I am, to be blunt, at a critical stage of my career. I need new input, new experience, a new viewpoint. I need change, Doctor.”

  “Permanent change?”

  “Radical change, certainly. My professional life demands it.”

  “And your personal life?”

  “That, too, needs rethinking, reconstruction. I have just been through two difficult love affairs and, though I could never admit it to the women concerned, the difficulties were largely my fault.”

  “Are you talking here of sexual problems?”

  “No. My potency is not in question; rather, my need for a variety of relationships with a variety of women. One hopes that there are still places in the world where it
is possible to achieve such variety without too many problems.”

  I saw, or thought I saw, a faint twitch of amusement at the corners of his thin traplike mouth.

  “You have never thought of converting to Islam?”

  “Quite often, in fact. The problem is that I should have to swear off alcohol, which I enjoy in moderation. Also, I am uncomfortable with rigid orthodoxies.”

  “Instruct me a little further, Mr. Benson. You are an artist, a designer. What precisely do you design?”

  “Any and all of the decorative elements of interior living: fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glassware. I seek out and adapt to modern life the motifs of primitive and indigenous peoples.”

  “So—correct me if I am wrong—there are two elements in what you do, the creative synthesis and the adaptation to a social purpose?”

  “Precisely.”

  He paused before asking the next question. This was a very skilled fencing master. He would probe for every weakness in my defense. His next move was a feint.

  “For the creative process, I understand readily that you may need seclusion, space, privacy, even an eccentric personal lifestyle.” He paused a moment before the next thrust. “But for the second, you need—indeed, you must maintain—social contacts: consultation with colleagues, an exchange of ideas, contractual discussions. How would you find those if you lived in permanent isolation?”

  “I had hoped, Dr. Rubens, that the Simonetta Agency might help me toward an answer.”

  “On what did you base your hope, Mr. Benson?”

  “On something that your colleague, Mr. Falco, called a ‘silly little magazine piece,’ in which the agency was represented as able to help people to drop out of their normal lives and begin new ones.”

  “I am familiar with the piece, Mr. Benson. I confess I have always found it something of an embarrassment.”

  “I understand, however, that it has brought many clients to the agency—and to you, Dr. Rubens.”

  “Do you know any of them?”

  It was what fencers call a fleche, a running attack, aimed high inside the body; but it left him wide open for a direct low thrust, if I had nerve enough to make the move. The words came out swiftly, as if they were spoken by another mouth than mine.

  “I know one of them.”

  “Oh? Who is that?”

  “A man called Laurence Lucas. An American.”

  “And how did you come to meet him, Mr. Benson?”

  “He married my sister.”

  “And you are?”

  “I am Carl Emil Strassberger. There is a situation we need to discuss.”

  He was made of iron, this one. He sat immobile, eyes blank, palms flat on the table, while he digested my statement. Finally, with singular calm, he spoke.

  “There is no reason in the world why I should discuss anything with you. You present yourself in my office, using a false name. You ask me to discuss with you the confidential business of a client. If you really are Carl Emil Strassberger, you must know that you have no standing place in this matter at all. Your brother-in-law has renounced his family ties. He has asked his wife to divorce him. He is a sick man. He has placed himself and his affairs in my hands.”

  I expected him to rise and dismiss me instantly. He didn’t. He sat there dead-eyed and still, waiting for me to argue my case. He had to find how much I knew, what action the family or I myself might be contemplating. There was more at stake here than the future of Larry Lucas, an ailing man, in flight from reality, and with only a modest fortune in trust to maintain him to the problematic end of his days. I decided that the best way to hold my ground with Rubens was by reason and not by combat.

  “Your point is well taken, Doctor. Although I have not seen the documents, I have always assumed that Larry did appoint you his trustee with power of attorney.”

  “If you assumed that, why did you not refer directly to me on matters of concern?”

  “Two reasons. First, your reputation was clouded by the association with Francesco Falco and the Simonetta Agency. The reason for my masquerade as Edgar Benson was to penetrate that company and find evidentiary proof of its very questionable activities.”

  “Which you believe you have?”

  “Which I know I have, Doctor.”

  “And with which you now propose to threaten me.”

  “On the contrary. I should much prefer to bury it. But your Francesco Falco is a very unsavory fellow.”

  Rubens made a small gesture of dismissal.

  “He runs a successful travel enterprise. That puts him already halfway to heaven. He works in many different jurisdictions. It would be expensive and probably futile to mount any legal action against him. Your family has been in the banking business a long time, Mr. Strassberger. You must know that money is the most widely acceptable proof of innocence. You must also know that a trustee is accountable only for the administration of the funds he holds. He is not asked to explain their origins. My company is quite separate from Simonetta. Mr. Falco is wholly responsible at law for that company.”

  “But as a trustee with power of attorney, you are directly and personally responsible for the well-being of Larry Lucas, who is presently confined in the Burgholzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich.”

  There was a faint flicker of surprise in the hooded eyes, but his cast-iron calm was unshaken.

  “You are not suggesting, surely, that his confinement represents a delinquency on my part or an invasion of his civil rights?”

  “No, I am not. I know from my own inquiries that when Larry was in Sirmione, he entered a manic phase and you promptly sent a certain Alois Langer to stay with him and, ultimately, bring him to Switzerland for treatment. We—all his family—are grateful for that.”

  “You are concerned, then, about my administration of his funds?”

  “No, they are, after all, his funds and he can dispose of them in any way he chooses.”

  “So what, precisely, is troubling you, Mr. Strassberger?”

  “His future.”

  Again he made that curt, dismissive gesture.

  “Once he is stabilized in the hospital, he will be released. He will be free to go where he chooses, live as he likes.”

  “Subject to quite heavy charges against his funds if he rescinds your power of attorney or breaks his contract with the Simonetta Agency.”

  That was a guess, but it turned out a good one. Rubens was swift to state his position.

  “Both contracts were executed in good faith, while Lucas was in full possession of his faculties. Those who witnessed the contracts can testify to that. It would take a long and expensive lawsuit even to call them in question, let alone overturn them. So what do you really want, Mr. Strassberger? What was the point of this whole cloak-and-dagger charade—which I find quite absurd?”

  “It is absurd, Doctor, but as Dr. Langer must have explained to you, one of the problems of this illness is that the sufferer draws many others—family, friends, business associates—into his zones of unreality. He, or she, plays manipulative games. Larry’s disappearance, his change of identity, the secrecy of his dealings with his own and his family’s funds, were all designed to involve us in a melodrama in which he was, and still is, the central character. As a money man, you must have factored this into your original deal with him. For example, how much time and money did you have to spend to get Larry out of Italy and into safekeeping in Zurich?”

  “Quite a lot. But, as you know, we recover out of the funds deposited with us.”

  “And how much would Simonetta factor in to get him safely to the Seychelles and maintain him there, at least without scandal?”

  “Again, quite a lot.”

  “My charade, too, was a costly exercise which involved an international security organization; without it, I doubt we would have discovered so much in so short a time. I was warned, before I set out, that this illness is, in a very special sense, a communicable disease. The warning was not overstated.”

  “S
o tell me plainly what you want from me.”

  “Larry’s wife and children, my father, and Larry’s New York physician, Dr. Alma Levy, arrive in Zurich tomorrow morning. They want free and open access to Larry Lucas at the Burgholzli Clinic. For that, as things stand, they require the consent of the admitting physician and your permission as the legal custodian of Larry’s interests.”

  “Failing which?”

  “An attorney in Zurich has already been briefed to secure an access order from the District Court in Zurich.”

  “I would see no point in contesting such a case. My sole concern is the well-being of my client. If his family can help him, good! I am all in favor. If they can’t, I am still bound to serve him to the best of my ability. This isn’t a one-way street, Mr. Strassberger. My fees are high, but I do give service, even to the most difficult clients. Before you leave, I shall dictate a brief letter of authority to the clinic and I shall speak personally with Dr. Langer, who resides in Zurich.”

  “Thank you. I am grateful—my family will be grateful for your cooperation.”

  “My compliments on your handling of a difficult brief, Mr. Strassberger. I confess I was a little concerned before our meeting.”

  “About what?”

  “My colleague, Falco, called me this morning. He told me that in your incarnation as Edgar Benson, you had invited one of his staff out to dinner last night. She didn’t show up for work this morning. She had not returned to her apartment. You didn’t, perhaps, bring her to Switzerland with you?”

  “No. I sent her home at eleven-thirty in the company of three other guests, a man and two women. I was up at dawn to catch a flight to Zurich and come here.”

  “So you will not be seeing her again?”

  “No.”

  “And, obviously, you will not be pursuing your inquiries as a potential client of Simonetta?”

  “Obviously not. I’d be grateful if you’d inform Falco.”

  “I shall.”

  “You should also inform him that any action by way of threat, intimidation, or harassment against the girl, because of her brief contact with me, would be met by immediate publication of very damaging material. Last night’s dinner party was attended by two police officers and the Italian director of Corsec S.p.A. Liliane Prévost went home in their company and is substantially under their protection. One further point: Falco himself urged me to take an interest in the girl. He said she might well be my future guardian angel if I became a special client of the agency. He did not know that I knew she had acted in a similar role with Larry Lucas in Paris. Do you know why she was posted to Rome?”