Питер Джеймс - Billionaire

‘Corked,’ said Rocq.

‘Pardon, Senor?’

‘It’s corked. No good.’

The waiter’s eyes opened a fraction: he hesitated for a moment. ‘Si, Senor.’ He swept away with the bottle.

‘I have never seen anyone send back a bottle before,’ said Amanda.

‘It was muck.’

‘What’s up?’ she said. ‘Why are you in such a ratty mood tonight?’

‘I’m not ratty; that’s a very expensive wine, and it’s off. I know the wine well — I actually had some at lunch today — not such a good year and it tasted a hundred times better. I want a nice wine for us — not one that’s off.’

‘Well I’m glad something’s caught your attention tonight, because I certainly haven’t.’

‘You look terrific,’ he said.

‘That’s the third time you’ve told me that tonight; it’s very nice to be told that, very flattering, thank you. You’re looking very dishy yourself; maybe we should start the Alex and Amanda mutual appreciation society. You’re pretty good at flattery, and I’m sure I could learn fast.’

He grinned. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve had a heavy day. I’m unwinding a bit slowly.’ He paused. ‘How is work at Messrs Garbutt, Garbutt and Garbutt?’

‘Frantically busy. They’ve landed a massive contract for an Arab country — Umm Al Amnah. There’s some mad sheik who’s decided that there should be a squash court for every man, woman and child in the land — and the firm’s been commissioned to design a seventy-five storey high rise squash complex, and the whole thing completely in smoked glass.’

The waiter reappeared with a belligerent look on his face and a new bottle, without wicker basket, brandished in his fist like a dagger. He cut the seal off the lip with all the grace of a rabbi performing his tenth circumcision of the morning, stabbed the corkscrew into the top as if it were a harpoon, and twisted it several times, like a monkey wrench. Then, with a triumphant gleam in his eye and all the delicacy of a plumber removing a plunger from a blocked lavatory, he wrenched the corkscrew out. The gleam soon faded. Attached to the corkscrew was a mere one-third of the cork. The remaining two-thirds stayed exactly where it had been wedged, on a day back in the early 1960s, when the Beatles were jeered for having long hair and the mini-skirt had not yet been invented.

There were storm clouds in Amanda’s blue eyes; Rocq had not seen storm clouds in her eyes before. He wanted to defuse the situation, and defuse it quickly. ‘How’s Baenhaker?’ he asked, not because he was interested, but because on the spur of the moment, he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.

‘Why do you always call him “Baenhaker,” Alex? I call him Danny, why can’t you?’

The waiter now had the bottle gripped between his thighs; he was bent over it at an angle which was provoking curious glances from a number of the other tables around, and was engaged in a long and subdued conversation with the bottle in a language that was not immediately recognizable to either Rocq or Amanda. At the same time, he was gently winding the corkscrew back in.

‘Look, Amanda, I don’t wish to be disrespectful about your ex-lover, and as I have never met him, it would be extremely discourteous not to call him by his surname.’

‘In that case you should call him “Mr” Baenhaker.’

‘Amanda, you’re being ridiculous. If that’s how you feel about him, then I suggest you go back to him.’

Her eyes began to well with tears, and she shook her head slowly. ‘I love you,’ she said, straining hard not to cry. ‘I love you and I don’t love him. But he was my boyfriend for a long time — over a year and a half, and it’s one hell of a shock to see him in hospital in that condition. Can’t you understand that?’

Rocq nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll try to be nicer about him.’

There was the sudden loud yell of an Italian waiter crushing his index finger between the neck of a claret bottle and the blade of a corkscrew. It was followed in rapid succession by the sound of a cork being forced through the base of the neck of a bottle, followed by the sound of vintage claret, under considerable pressure, shooting out of the neck of a bottle and liberally dousing a party of ill-tempered German film producers.

‘You know,’ said Amanda, ‘I think I’d be quite happy to stick to white.’

General Isser Ephraim, head of the Mossad, whilst heavily guarded at his office and home, relied on nothing but his wits when he was not in these places. He travelled frequently, and used a combination of disguises, spontaneous changes of plan, and illogical routes.

On this particular mid-June Tuesday morning, having flown the night before from Tel Aviv to Athens, he had hopped onto a Singapore Airlines jumbo making its last stop between the Far East and London, using a passport which identified him as being an air conditioning systems consultant.

As he emerged into the throng of people at London’s Heathrow Airport, his eyes, behind slightly tinted lenses, worked their way in a matter of seconds over every face that was in the terminal. They relayed to the memory banks of his brain essential details of features, height and stance, information that could at any split second trigger the alarm bells. But on this hot summer morning, General Ephraim did not notice anybody whose business it might be to kill him hanging around this section of the airport. He walked smartly out, climbed into a taxi, and ordered it to take him to the West Middlesex Hospital.

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting beside Baenhaker’s bed in the large ward. The Mossad agent was conscious and sitting up in bed, looking sullen, and attached by a battery of wires to a large assortment of monitoring equipment.

Occupying the bed to one side of him was a 90-year-old white-haired man who was sorting out a cardboard box full of used bus tickets and muttering to himself; on the other side was an equally ancient man who appeared, to Ephraim’s trained eye, to have been dead for some hours. The beds on the other side of the ward did not, in Ephraim’s quick summing up, contain anyone who appeared remotely capable of carrying out even the most basic surveillance.

‘How are you, Danny?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, you’ll have to ask someone else. I’ve no idea how I am.’ Baenhaker stared at the General for a brief moment, then turned his eyes away.

Ephraim looked him up and down carefully. Considering the distance he had come, he felt he was entitled to a slightly heartier greeting than this. It further confirmed the feelings he had about Baenhaker. He wanted him out of this hospital and out of this country. ‘The Sister tells me you are making a good recovery.’

‘What have you come for, General? To say goodbye?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, General, they don’t reckon I’m going to last another week.’

Ephraim looked shocked. ‘Sister said they’re going to start you walking again tomorrow.’

Baenhaker gave him a pathetic look — a look that was full of defeat — and told him not to bother to lie. ‘They reckon I’m crippled for life — if I don’t die from my internal injuries.’

Ephraim stared at him for a long time, then shook his head. ‘Is that what you’re doing, Danny? Lying in bed, thinking about everything that’s bad, and how it can all get worse? Is that all you’re doing?’

‘What else should I be doing?’

The General leaned forward. ‘You should be working, Danny, that is what you should be doing. You are an agent of the finest Intelligence organization in the world; you committed yourself to working for that organization twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. How long have you been in this hospital, Danny? Eight days is it? Do you know who else is in here? In the other wards?’