Iain Banks: The Business

Everything changed again. I was sent to board at an international school in Switzerland run by the firm Mrs Telman worked for; I was miserable there, but no more than I'd been in the months between my mother dying and completing the term at Kessington Academy. I studied for my baccalaureate and found a keen, solitary release in skiing and skating.

I was surrounded mostly by forbiddingly bright girls from families which seemed to possess infinitely deep reserves of money, taste and talent, and glamorous idiots with braying laughs who were destined to go straight to finishing schools and who had no ambitions beyond a rich marriage. I finished with a flourish and several academic prizes. Brasenose College, Oxford, awaited. Mrs Telman adopted me and I took her name.

I cried for both of them when she died last year.

The phone rang for a long time, well past the number of rings you'd normally allow before concluding that there was nobody present to answer it. Finally: 'Who is this?'

The voice — rich, sibilant and velvety — was that of an elderly man who was rather angry; the voice of a man answering a phone that rarely rang and which, when it did, was equipped to tell him the number that was ringing him, and from its memory also tell him to whom that number belonged. A phone which he expected to bring only important information.

'Hello. It's me.'

'Kate? Is that you, dear girl?'

'Yes, I'm using a call-box.'

'Ah, I see.' A pause. 'Does that mean that I was right and you've discovered something interesting?'

'Possibly.'

'Where are you?'

'Near where I've been all week.'

'I see. Would it be best to meet up?'

'I think it would.'

'Perfect, perfect. This weekend's definitely on. Can you still make it?'

'Of course.' My heart, I have to say, leapt. Uncle Freddy had told me a couple of weeks earlier that there might be a high-level meeting and general hoo-ha (to use his term) this coming weekend, and that I might be invited, but I hadn't liked to take this for granted. My contingency plans had consisted of surprising Raymond and spiriting him away for a couple of nights; I would do all the driving, we'd go somewhere discreet and expensive with a log fire and I'd feed us both lots of vintage champagne…but that would have to be put on hold. I would be going to Blysecrag.

'Good. Important get-together, Kate. The cherubim and seraphim of our tribe will be in attendance, not to mention more temporal powers.'

'Yes, there have been rumours.'

'Have there indeed?'

'Well, Mike Daniels had wind of something by last night.'

'Ah yes, the L-four whose teeth were stolen. What on earth was all that about?'

'No idea.'

'Well, the bush telegraph's obviously working. Still, be that as it may…We'll need you here on Friday afternoon. Should all be finished by Sunday, but don't count on it. All right?'

'All right.'

'I should tell you your friend Suvinder will be there.'

'Will he now? Oh, joy.'

'Yes. Still coming?'

'Uncle Freddy, an invitation to Blysecrag is something I could never turn down. Oh dear, my money is running out. I'll be there on Friday. Until then.'

'Ha, right you are! Jolly good. 'Bye.'

What happened to your phone?

This new one doesn't work out here. Can you believe that?

Heads should roll. You need another phone. I believe they sell such things there in Tokyo. How did the signing go?

Fine. KR loved his bottle of Scotch. Is it really 50 yrs old?

Yep. PS get there OK?

PS usual retiring self. Apparently the X stands for Xerxes. Last seen escorting several geishas back to his 737 to show them its circular bed. Boy can that guy talk.

Talking about talking...

Oh, right. KR didn't seem to mind my slight teeth shortfall situation at all. Smiled and bowed throughout. Probably thought it was a total hoot; toothless gaijin. Recommended dentist. Been there, done that, now got splendid set of temporary Tokyo teeth. With Teflon. Now :-) instead of :-#

Well, by gum.

That took you 24 hours?

I've been busy.

The origins of what we now call the Business predate the Christian church, but not the Roman Empire, to which it might fairly be said we owe our existence, and which, at one point — technically, at any rate — we owned.

Owning the Roman Empire, even if it was only for a total of sixty-six days, sounds wonderfully romantic; a real business coup. In fact we regard it as one of our greatest and most public mistakes, and it taught us a lesson we have never forgotten.

Most of the details are available in fairly digestible form in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, where it is recorded in Volume One, Chapter V (AD 180-248) that a 'wealthy and foolish' senator called Didius Julianus purchased the Empire at public auction from the Praetorian Guard, who had disposed of the previous ruler — one Pertinax — after he had proved too keen on tackling the Empire's various corruptions (he'd lasted eighty-six days, beating our man by nearly three clear weeks). What only we in the Business know is that the unfortunate Didius Julianus — who became Emperor Julian when he ascended to the throne — was merely a dupe; the front man for a loose consortium of traders and money-lenders who had inherited a commercial cabal already many generations old.

Possibly drunk on their success, certainly unable to decide what to do with it, the squabbling merchants let the reins of power slip from their fingers. Three generals — in Britain, on the Danube and in the Eastern Empire — revolted, and limited Emperor Julian's occupation of the Imperial throne to a little more than two months. When he fell, so did many of those who had supported him.

The Business had already existed for several centuries by then. To Rome it had brought furs from Scythia, amber from the Baltic, carpets from Babylon, and — in its most intense, risky and lucrative enterprise — every year secured a host of spices, aromatics, silks, gems, pearls and manifold other treasures from Arabia, India and the Further East. Sensibly keeping away from direct political power, all taking part had prospered; estates were purchased, villas built, fleets constructed, herds increased, slaves and works of art bought. With the Didius Julianus fiasco almost all of that was lost. As I say, it was a lesson we have cleaved to for the best part of two millennia (at least until now, arguably, with the 'Pashific shing').

Documents — clay tablets, mostly — still stored in the closest we have to a world headquarters, near Chateau d'Oex in Switzerland, show that most of our original fortune was made in trading, warehousing and lending money. There appear to have been a few scams, too: shipwrecks that never happened, camel trains that were robbed by our own people, warehouses that burned down either with or without their contents, depending whether you looked at one set of accounts or another; enough of that sort of thing generally to make us no better than most but sufficiently few for us not to have been the worst.

Allegedly we still store a few items which the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire asked us to look after; sadly, nothing quite as dramatic as the body of Christ or the Holy Grail, but I've heard on good authority that we have in our possession at least one extra book the scholars don't know about which could well have made it into the Bible, a book of Leonardo cartoons, dozens of Michelangelo's pornographic paintings, various other art treasures and potentially valuable documents and several sets of crown jewels.

Rumours I've heard indicate that our Swiss Bank may be implicated, albeit marginally, in the recent Nazi gold scandal, which, aside from the morality of it all, is both careless and embarrassing, given the occasional co-operative venture we've taken on with the Rothschilds and the generally good relations we've enjoyed with Jewish enterprises over the centuries.