Sidney Sheldon - Mistress of the Game

I’ve left you a little something at Coutts. Just to get you started.

It was typical of Marshall Gresham’s generosity. He’d already done so much, kick-starting Gabe’s appeal, teaching him the real-estate business. Billy and the prison doctor might have gotten Gabe clean, but it was Marshall Gresham who’d kept him that way. Marshall had given Gabe hope, something to live for other than heroin. He hadn’t so much saved his life as given him a whole new one.

And now he wants to make sure I have money for a bed and a meal tonight.

It was both touching and much needed. Gabe had walked out of Wormwood Scrubs with only five pounds to his name, and that had gone on his subway fare and a bacon sandwich at Kings Cross. This afternoon he’d start looking for construction work. Friends inside had given him a few contacts. But it was nice to know he wouldn’t have to sleep rough on day one.

“I’m here to see Robin Hampton-Gore.” Gabe spoke softly but with confidence. “I believe Marshall Gresham informed him I’d be coming.”

The guard’s look now said, And I believe you’re a chancer come to try your luck with a sob story. Well, if you are, good luck to you, mate. You won’t get far with Mr. H.-G.

Out loud he said: “Wait here, please, sir.”

Gabe waited there. Five minutes later, as much to his own surprise as the guard’s, he found himself being escorted into a corner office by a genial man in a pin-striped Savile Row suit and the shiniest pair of wingtips Gabe had ever seen.

“Mr. McGregor, I presume?”

The man sat down behind a comfortingly solid mahogany desk. He gestured for Gabe to take the chesterfield chair opposite.

“Robin Hampton-Gore. Marshall told me you’d be coming. Waxed quite lyrical about you, in fact. He assures me you’re going to be the next Donald Trump.”

Gabe laughed uncomfortably. For a ritzy banker, Robin Hampton-Gore seemed suspiciously friendly toward an ex-heroin addict, just out of prison for burglary and aggravated assault, whose only recommendation came from a convicted fraudster.

“Marshall’s an old friend of mine,” Robin explained, as if reading Gabe’s thoughts. “He made me in this business. He was my first big client and he stuck with me, long after he became so rich he could have insisted on someone far more senior handling his account. I owe him a lot.”

“So do I,” said Gabe.

Robin Hampton-Gore unlocked the drawer of his desk with an old-fashioned brass key and pulled out a crisp white envelope.

“This is cash,” he explained unnecessarily, handing it to Gabe. “Marshall thought you’d need some immediately.”

Gabe broke the seal and gasped. Inside was a small fortune. There was a smattering of tens and twenties, then hundred after hundred after hundred, the distinctive red-inked bills fluttering between Gabe’s shaking fingers like rare butterflies as he thumbed through them, trying to count.

“There’s only ten thousand there. It’s a float. The rest is in an account in your name. I have all the details here.”

Robin Hampton-Gore passed Gabe a second envelope. This one was already open, with a sheaf of Coutts letterheaded paper sticking out of the top.

Gabe stammered, “I…I don’t understand. What do you mean ‘the rest’? I think there must have been a mistake. I only need a couple of hundred quid.”

Robin Hampton-Gore laughed. “Well, you’ve got a couple of hundred thousand.” He handed Gabe a third envelope and his business card. “It’s a letter from Marshall. I trust it explains everything, but if you’ve any further questions, don’t hesitate to call me.”

Gabe’s hands were still trembling. As ever with Marshall Gresham, the letter was short and to the point.

Dear Gabriel,

It’s not a loan. It’s an investment. Fifty-fifty partners.

Love, M.

P.S. Don’t forget to write from Cape Town.

Gabe felt a lump in his throat and swallowed hard. Now was not the time to get emotional. He had too much to do. There were so many people he was indebted to. Marshall Gresham, Angus Frazer, Claire, his mother. He couldn’t let them down.

I’ll pay you all back. Every penny.

I’m going to Africa to make my fortune.

I won’t be back till I’m as rich as Jamie McGregor.

AUGUST SANDFORD GRIPPED THE SIDES OF HIS CHAIR AND ground his perfectly straight white teeth with frustration.

The team meeting of Kruger-Brent’s new Internet division had run over by almost an hour now. Max Webster, Kate Blackwell’s twenty-one-year-old great-grandson and Kruger-Brent’s probable future chairman, was on his feet, pontificating.

August thought: I didn’t spend eight years at Goldman Sachs to sit here and listen to some business-school freshman talking out of his ass. Or did I?

August’s girlfriend, Miranda, had warned him about joining Kruger-Brent.

“It’s a family company, babe. However huge, however global, at the end of the day the Blackwells will always call the shots. You’ll hate it.”

August had ignored her warnings for three reasons. The headhunter from Spencer Stuart had promised to triple his salary and bonus; he’d be fast-tracked onto the Kruger-Brent board, and he wasn’t in the habit of taking career advice from his girlfriends. August Sandford picked his lovers according to a strict set of criteria involving largeness of breasts and flatness of stomach. He wanted a lioness in the sack, not a life coach.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” August told Miranda patronizingly. “I know what I’m doing.”

But he didn’t know shit. Miranda was right. On days like today, August Sandford yearned for his old job on the Goldman derivatives desk like a shipwrecked man yearns for dry land. No salary was worth this.

“You’re being shortsighted.” Max Webster’s black eyes blazed with passion. “Kruger-Brent should be allocating more money to its Internet businesses, not less.”

His speech-more like a sermon, thought August bitterly-was directed entirely at his cousin Lexi Templeton. As if the two Blackwell heirs were the only people in the room. Both Max and Lexi were on a six-month leave from Harvard Business School. When they graduated, both would join Kruger-Brent. But only one would ultimately take on the mantle of chairman, a position reserved for family members only.

The general consensus was that that person would be Max. Aside from the obvious drawback of her hearing, Lexi was seen as too much of a party girl to be taken seriously. She showed up for the first day of her internship on the back of a Ducati, her long legs wrapped around its owner, Ricky Hales, and her trademark blond hair flying in the wind. Ricky Hales was the drummer with the latest hot rock band, the Flames. More tattoo than skin, with a heroin habit that made Courtney Love look like Mother Teresa, Ricky was almost as much of a paparazzi favorite as Lexi herself. Lexi gave Ricky a lingering kiss on the steps of the Kruger-Brent building, a shot that made the front cover of every gossip rag in America the next morning.

Lexi Templeton was an enigma. Part vulnerable child, part vixen, she kept the press guessing and the Blackwell-obsessed public intrigued. But August Sandford sensed that Lexi’s little show with Ricky Hales was not intended for the media. It was a deliberate attempt to goad her cousin, the brooding Max Webster.

The rivalry between the two Blackwell heirs was intense.

They reminded August of the Williams sisters, announcing at their first Wimbledon tournament that they considered their only competition to be each other, thereby instantly alienating every other women’s tennis player on the international circuit. Unlike the Williams sisters, Lexi and Max further fueled the flames of their competitiveness with a sexual tension so strong you could practically smell it in the air. Not that either one of them would admit it, even to themselves.