Eric Ambler - Siege at the Villa Lipp

‘No, I daren’t do business with Paul Firman any more, nor with anyone connected with him. The banks won’t have him. Nobody’ll have him. I don’t wonder. I’ve read the Krom book too.’

That’s when I decided to take action; after hearing what an intelligent man who knew me was prepared to accept from Krom, a man who didn’t know me at all.

It was Wednesday. I was impatient to hear what Symposia’s German lawyer had had to say at the meeting that morning. I called Brussels just before noon.

Neither of my people was there.

I waited twenty minutes and then called again. The operator knew my voice of course, but hers sounded odd. I soon understood why. The person she put me through to was Frank.

‘Hi, Paul.’

There was a tightening of muscles, but I managed to keep my voice level. ‘There seems to be something wrong with the line. I’m calling Brussels.’

‘Nothing wrong with the line, Paul, just with your thinking. I’m sitting in what used to be your office.’

‘I see.’

‘Well, now, that’s what seems to be at the heart of the problem. You don’t see.’

‘So you’re going to explain. Is that it?’

‘No, Paul, it isn’t. Nobody’s giving you any more explanations. You don’t listen to them. Nobody’s giving you any more advice. You don’t take it. So I have the job of telling you what you are going to get from now on.’

‘I can hear a squeaking noise, Frank. It isn’t just your voice. You must be rocking backwards and forwards in that chair of mine. I wouldn’t do that. I keep the spring adjustment on the tight side. If you lean too far back the whole thing’s liable to flip right over. You could hurt yourself.’

I tried to make my concern sound genuine. It sounded genuine enough to make him lose his temper.

‘Don’t get cute with me, Dad. Just shut up and try to listen. You were warned to keep a low profile. You didn’t. You blew it. If Krom had taken you seriously a lot of damage could have been done. Luckily, you didn’t impress him. But now you’ve had it. You were warned extra plainly last time. For a while, we thought we’d finally gotten through to you. But no. You’re like all the rest of the old farts. You’re told, you act like you’ve heard and then you forget what was said to you.’

‘What did I forget, Frank? To fasten my seat belt?’

‘Don’t joke about serious matters, Paul. You’ve had your chances and you’ve been lucky. The Krom situation was contained, no thanks to you. Now what happens? You want to start suing that big prick and open the whole can of worms again.’

‘You’re mixing metaphors on a open line, Frank.’

‘You don’t have anything left to hide, old-timer. It’s all hanging out for everyone to see, including the shareholders, and nobody likes the look of it. So, as of noon today, you’re out. No need for you to worry about the chair I’m sitting in. It’s been fixed and if you think it can still be unfixed, forget it. You’re out on your arse.’

That I could believe. Keeping in touch is never the same as being on the job and Frank has always been an ingenious accountant. He has other skills I’m told. When signatures are needed from persons not immediately available, or willing, to give them, he is able to produce excellent forgeries.

‘You’re not forgetting that I’m a major shareholder, myself, are you?’

‘Twenty per cent is what you have, and I’ll tell you what the deal is there. It’s been okayed from on high, so you can believe me. Right? Want to hear?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Call off the dogs on Krom, buy that nice retirement home you’ve always dreamed of owning in dear old Senior City, and you get a golden handshake. We’ll buy that twenty per cent of yours at book valuation, your book valuation. So what do you say?’

‘Drop dead.’

There was a pause. Then: ‘Paul, that offer’s quite genuine. We mean it. Just lay off Krom.’ The effort he was having to make to remain civil was nearly audible.

‘Drop dead.’

‘Paul, I’d like you to reconsider that answer.’

‘Okay. I’ve reconsidered. The answer’s no.’

‘Because if anyone’s going to drop dead, it’s not going to be anyone here.’

‘Frank,’ I said, ‘you wasted your money on Yves. Why did you have to hire people to kill him? You should have just tied him down and kept talking to him. The way you’re talking to me. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant death, any more than the ‘plastiqué’ was, but it would have been a whole lot cheaper for Mat. And it would have left no traces. Well, scarcely any. Just the sort of rictus a man gets on his face when he’s been hit by a poisoned arrow or dies yawning.’

There was another pause. ‘I’m going to read out some numbers to you. You know about communications codes. Well, this is yours, your current one. It places you and your Kraut helper about four hours from here by road, and about three from the guys with the know-how that you tell me is so inefficient and over-priced. So, better take a deep breath. If you’re going to run again, this time, you’ll have a long way to go. Ready? Okay. This is your code. Prefix reads. . ‘

I listened to the first seven figures, just to make sure that my old security man hadn’t thought he owed it to me to make a slight error.

He hadn’t. The Brussels old-pals act had been repealed. It was time I got moving.

I hung up and called Melanie.

She always knows best how to make travel arrangements.

Carlo’s house smells like a handkerchief out of an old drawer. Even when it was newly built one had been aware of a certain mustiness. Carlo had attributed it then to the brackish water used in mixing the concrete and said that it would gradually go away. It never has gone away; instead, it has ripened. That verbena-scented anti-mildew spray which Melanie gets at the general store on the Out Island only makes it worse.

She does the trip on our boat, with Jake to navigate and nurse the engine, every week; and, every week, she returns with our mail and our groceries and our drinks and a denunciation of the Out Island hairdresser. Every week, too, she says that that is the last time and that next week, no matter what the risk, she is leaving for Nassau or Miami and the joys of Elizabeth Arden. She adds that bad food can kill you just as surely as ‘plastiqué’.

She has my sympathy. Tonight, though, when I’ve thought everything through again and treble-checked it, it is possible that I may at last have an escape plan to submit to her.

Yesterday, the mail brought back with her consisted of two letters.

One was from a real-estate agent in Kingston, and it was to tell me that my asking price for the island was a bit too high. We get lots of letters like that. I mention it only to explain how we’ve been operating. Just in case somebody working for Mat and Frank somehow, somewhere, accidentally got on to the fact that I had access, as one of Carlo’s trustees, to a Caribbean island, we have an early-warning system. There are hundreds of small island properties around here; and, since the real-estate people know more than the government records office about who really owns what, they’re the ones who always know first if anyone starts making enquiries. Who but a prospective buyer would make enquiries? So, although I haven’t the slightest right to be, I am a prospective seller. In that way, I get the benefit of the real-estate agents’ intelligence network. Thus far, only one prospective buyer has actually reached our dreamy lagoon. After a lunch prepared by Carlo’s cook — getting a little old now but still resolutely awful — he left and we heard no more.