Питер Джеймс - Billionaire

Amanda had been in the shell as part of the team of architects and designers which had been commissioned for the re-building. He went over to the drawer, pulled out the photograph once more, looked at it, then put it back. For eighteen months they had got on brilliantly and then, as suddenly as the flame had started, it died.

The last two occasions they had had dinner, she had lost interest in what he had to say, and no longer seemed to care about anything he had done. Then that weekend they were supposed to go away to Scotland, she had rung him on the Thursday to say she had to go to an architects’ conference in Cologne. He stood up suddenly, and marched over to the window. He opened it and breathed in deep gulps of the air, then put his hands on the sill and stared down into the basement at the dustbins. He remembered now. It came flooding back: Amanda in the Porsche on the motorway: the hell she had been to an architects’ conference in Cologne.

He stared out of the window for a long time, watching the drizzle. He tried to remember more about the accident, but nothing else came.

Baenhaker was conscious that he had little money. If he were paid by Eisenbar-Goldschmidt as a loss adjuster, he would have had a damned good salary and a decent car; but he wasn’t. He was paid by the Mossad out of the Israeli Defence budget. The Mossad was always short of money, and those who bore the brunt of the shortage were the employees. Baenhaker had thought of quitting on a number of occasions, but a sense of duty, a deep-rooted desire to see Israel survive, and a belief that he was an indispensable part of that survival kept him in his job.

He had asked Amanda often whether it bothered her that he had little money, could not afford to have a smart car and take her to smart restaurants; she had always replied that it didn’t. But he had noticed that the lifestyle of the rich seemed to lure her. Having seen her in that Porsche, he knew how she must have finally swallowed the hook deep down inside her. She had been to see him twice in hospital. The first time she had held his hand and looked tearful. The second time she had brought him chocolates, forgetting that he hated chocolates, and stayed for five minutes. A voice deep inside him said, ‘Forget her.’ He was trying, he knew. Damned hard.

After the telex from Theo Barbiero-Ruche had been placed on his desk, Rocq sat and stared at it in silence for a long time. The last of the lunchtime alcohol was wearing away, and he had a strong desire to go out, buy a bottle and keep on drinking. He was emerging into full, clear reality, and he wasn’t sure that was a condition he wanted to be in. Right now, he needed oblivion, and he needed it for a good long time. He tried to bury himself in work, but after two half-hearted phone calls he knew it was no good. He looked at his watch: it was five to five, and already one or two people in the office had started to pack up for the day. His intercom buzzed and he picked up the receiver.

‘Mr Rocq?’

It was Sir Monty Elleck’s private secretary.

‘Yes.’

‘Sir Monty wonders if you could spare him a moment upstairs in his office?’

Rocq thought frantically for a moment. He had a damned good idea what Elleck wanted to see him about: the small matter of a few hundred thousand pounds of margin. He wanted to stay well out of Elleck’s way until he could get hold of some money, but he realized he was going to have no chance of avoiding him unless he went sick, and he knew that he could not afford to go sick; he needed to watch the price of coffee twenty-four hours a day, until it had dropped sufficiently to see him out of trouble. He couldn’t take the risk of missing the drop. He had instructed Barbiero-Ruche to buy back, if it went below £327, but if it looked like plummeting well below that, he wanted to be able to cancel that instruction and hold out for even more. Reluctantly, he got up from his desk and made his way up to Elleck’s office.

He was surprised to find Elleck in an uncharacteristically jovial mood. He came out from behind his desk to greet him with a firm handshake, ushered him into a pink chair, and asked him what he would like to drink. He then went and poured two hefty Scotches, added some Malvern water, brought the glasses over, gave one to Alex, and seated himself in a lemon yellow chair next to him.

‘So how are you, Alex?’

‘Fine, thank you, Sir Monty.’

‘Good, good. Business all right?’

‘Reasonable, thank you, sir.’

‘I hear you had a car accident at the weekend. No one hurt, I hope?’

‘No, sir. My car was parked and a lorry hit it.’

‘I am sorry to hear that. Badly damaged?’

‘Smashed to pieces; a write-off.’

‘Very unfortunate. A Porsche wasn’t it? Expensive motor car.’

Rocq nodded.

‘I presume the insurance will cover it?’

‘Yes, sir. Probably take several months though, knowing them.’

‘Impossible people, insurance companies. Will you get another one in the meantime?’

‘I think I’ll have to wait until I get the insurance money — I don’t want to borrow the money at current interest rates.’

‘Of course not, they are very punitive. Still, Alex, it must be very inconvenient not to have a car?’

‘It is — I’m going to have to rent one at the weekends.’

Elleck took a sip of his drink, then handed Rocq a box of Romeo & Juliet coronas. Rocq took one, and Elleck helped himself. ‘Not very satisfactory, renting. Very expensive. I think it would be better, Alex, if you went and bought yourself another Porsche. Put it on the Company — you can arrange it tomorrow through the accounts department. I will tell them in the morning. Then you can reimburse us with whatever you eventually get from the insurance.’

Rocq was glad his chair had arms; they prevented him from falling out of it. Less than six months before, Elleck had virtually thrown him out of this same office for asking for a financial contribution towards the last Porsche. ‘Filthy Nazi toys,’ Elleck had yelled. ‘This firm has never bought a foreign car, and over my dead body it never will.’ Rocq studied his boss carefully: he was very definitely anything but dead.

‘Thank you, sir; that’s extremely generous — extremely generous.’ He was nearly shaking with excitement. ‘They are — rather expensive, sir — you do — er — know the price?’

‘I am not familiar with car prices — how much are they?’

‘The one I have cost £32,000 — on the road — I might be able to save a bit by taking the radio out of the last one.’

Elleck blanched visibly at the sum of money. ‘I didn’t realize they cost — er — quite that much. However, no problem, Alex, no problem at all — and you needn’t worry about any interest — you just go ahead and sort it out tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, sir, thank you very much indeed.’

‘Don’t mention it; let me fill your glass up.’

Elleck walked over to the drinks cupboard, and poured Rocq nearly a half tumbler of Chivas Regal from the Steuben cut-glass decanter. ‘Now, Alex — I don’t like to pry into the business affairs of my employees — none of them. What you all do with your own money is your own affair. We do have a rule that you must not trade privately through any section of this company — but,’ he handed the tumbler to Rocq, ‘we’ve never enforced that rule too strictly. However, as a result of this coffee business, I have had to scrutinize our books very carefully — to make sure we’re not on the hook for anyone to any of the clearing houses — and during my scrutiny, I couldn’t help noticing your own coffee position: you bought 1,000 tons — 200 lots — at £1,022 a ton on ten per cent margin. As you know, it has now dropped to just over £420 a ton, and under our rules you are required to cover that position — which means you’re paying out, on top of your original margin of £102,000, approximately a further £400,000. I understand you have given instructions to James Rice to liquidate your position as quickly as possible — but as buyers are on the thin side, it is unlikely to rise significantly between now and then. It would seem this is more or less the amount you are going to have to pay up.’ He looked quizzically at Rocq.