Питер Джеймс - Billionaire

‘You are to abdicate, and I am to take over as ruler. If we do this, then Mr Culundis will give us arms, and a loyal army to defend ourselves against the revolutionaries, and to rout them out.’

‘You are crazy,’ said the Emir.

‘No, father, it is you who is crazy. I will not stand by and die because of your madness.’

‘I suggest if you feel this way, then you take a plane and get out of this country, the sooner the better.’

‘No, father, this is my home. I am not leaving.’

‘And I am not abdicating.’

‘Oh yes you are.’

‘And just how do you propose to make me?’

‘By asking you nicely first: and then, if you do not agree, father — by force.’

The Emir pulled open the central drawer of his desk; it took him some moments, for it was stuck, and he had to jerk it out slowly, from side to side. Then he rummaged for several moments in a tangle of papers, pens, rulers, rubbers, cellotape, before he pulled his hand back out. In it he held a Browning revolver. It was a massive heavy gun, of First World War design, and looked like something that might have been discarded as obsolete by Lawrence of Arabia. He stood to his feet, swaying, shaking with rage and brandishing the gun out in front of him. ‘By force, you say, by force?’

He was pointing the gun at Missh, and shaking it about furiously. Missh put his hands up. ‘Be careful, father, it may be loaded.’ There was an explosion, and a bullet ripped through a window pane. The Emir’s eyes bulged and he swung the gun down towards the floor in fright; somehow, he pulled the trigger again, and a bullet tore into his own foot. Howling with pain he jerked the gun up, firing into his desk top. Missh had by now flung himself to the floor; the bullet ricocheted off a metal in-tray and ripped into the Emir’s stomach, flinging him backwards and onto the floor. Missh rushed over to his father and pulled the gun a safe distance away. His father lay there, ashen grey, bleeding heavily from both his stomach and his foot. Missh rushed to the telephone on his father’s desk; at that moment, two guards came running in through the door. Missh rang down to the palace’s residential doctor and instructed him to call an ambulance and come right away. Then he joined the guards who were kneeling by his father.

The guards looked at his father and then looked at him. Their eyes were full of suspicion. A cold wave of fear suddenly swept aside all the other emotions Missh was feeling. They suspected him of shooting his father; if his father died now, he could face a firing squad. He shook his head frantically. Ali Al Shammham, his family’s short, fat doctor, hurried into the room, clutching his black briefcase.

‘What happened? What happened?’ he shrilled in his high-pitched voice. He knelt down beside the Emir, whose breathing was becoming slower and deeper and whose eyes now remained shut for long periods between blinks.

‘My son,’ said the old man. ‘Bring my son.’

‘I am here, father.’

‘You are right,’ said the old man. ‘I am too old to rule — it is time I must step down. Tonight. Now. I have become a danger, a liability to you, to my country. From tonight, you are the new Emir—’ He looked up and around at the peering faces. ‘You here are my witnesses. From tonight, Prince Abr Qu’Ih Missh becomes Emir of Amnah.’ He nodded slowly, but certainly. ‘Now get me to hospital.’

Missh turned away, tears streaming down his face. The doctor gave the old man a shot of morphine, then began work to try and stem the bleeding. Missh picked up his father’s head and cradled it between his thighs. As the doctor worked, he wept, loudly and uncontrollably.

Amanda sat in silence, a knot of fear gripping her stomach, her hands rigidly holding onto the front of the seat; the blurred red, white and occasional amber lights beyond the clacking wiper blades came and went like the programme of some nightmare slot machine. But she wasn’t standing in front of any slot machine; she was in the passenger seat of Alex Rocq’s Porsche, and she was speechless with fear.

For an hour, Rocq had cursed and sworn at the Friday night rush hour, through Battersea and then Wandsworth and then down the Kingston by-pass. They had driven down the motorway, first the M25, then the M23, at speeds ranging between 115 and 150 miles per hour; how they hadn’t been stopped by the police was a miracle, and she would have much rather they had been, for at least it might have made him drive slower.

Off the end of the motorway, in the thick two-way traffic, he had forged a third lane and resolutely stayed there, lights blazing, hooting frenetically, occasionally ducking in behind a car or a lorry and shouting, ‘Bastard!’ at the oncoming vehicle which had not given way. She looked at his tensed-up face, eyes squinting against the glare; he had been tensed up like this all week. Something was eating him, she was sure, but he denied anything was.

She had been to see Baenhaker again, and hadn’t bothered to tell Rocq. Baenhaker looked a lot better, but he too was in a livid mood. He wouldn’t say why either. The doctors had told him his injuries were not as severe as they had at first feared, and that he could expect to make a full recovery. She thought that news ought to have cheered him up, but all he could do was pour out a torrent of vitriol against everything. She had asked him about the accident but he could remember nothing, nor even anything he had done the day of the accident.

The Porsche braked hard, the wheels sliding over the wet tarmac, the nose snaking viciously; a chill went through her. ‘Oh, God, we’re going to crash!’ she thought, but they stopped about half an inch short of the tailgate of the Range Rover that was turning right. She turned to him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Alex, I don’t want to die, thank you very much. We’re not in any hurry — why can’t you drive a bit slower?’

‘I’m not driving fast,’ he said.

‘You’re driving like a maniac.’

‘Then get out and bloody walk.’

‘Right, I’ll get out and bloody walk.’ They started moving forward again. ‘Stop the car.’

Rocq swung the car over onto the pavement; Amanda climbed out, slammed shut the door, and marched off into the teeming rain. Rocq crashed the car into gear, floored the accelerator, and, spinning the wheels right through the gears, tore off down the road.

After about two miles he began to relent, and slowed down; apart from the fact she was getting soaked to the skin, anything could happen to her on that dark road. He looked in his mirror. There was heavy traffic behind him, but nothing coming up the opposite way. He accelerated hard, spun the steering wheel hard round to the right, and then jerked on the handbrake hard for a second and a half; the car slewed around, doing a complete about-turn. He released the handbrake, dropped into second, and accelerated hard.

Just over two miles back, he saw a very bedraggled figure marching along the side of the road. He pulled over, waited until there was a gap in the traffic, then turned around and pulled up alongside her. He leaned over and opened the passenger door. Ignoring him, she carried on walking. He drove down after her and stopped in front of her, and pushed the door wide open; again, she walked past. He climbed out of the car and began to run after her.

‘Amanda,’ he said, ‘come on, get in, this is ridiculous.’

She turned to him. ‘Get lost,’ she said. She carried on walking. He ran after her. ‘Come on, stop, you’re getting soaked to death.’ She marched on, determinedly. Suddenly there was an enormously loud bang behind them, followed by the screeching of brakes, the sound of tyres sliding on the wet and an extraordinarily eerie rumbling that sounded like a thousand oil drums crashing up and down in unison. They both turned their heads; the Porsche was cartwheeling across the verge; it smashed through a hedge, rolled over three more times, and came to rest upside down in the middle of a field. An articulated lorry slithered to a halt just past the spot where the Porsche had been.