Питер Джеймс - Billionaire

‘Damn. Try his home.’

‘I just did, Sir Monty — no answer.’

‘Keep trying it every five minutes. Do you have any idea where he might have been going?’

‘No, Sir Monty, and there’s no one to ask in his office — they have all left for the day.’

‘Okay — well, keep trying his home.’ He let go of the switch. He wanted to sell the entire thousand million pounds-worth of gold now. Take the two million loss, that was okay. He could not take the risk of the plan not coming off and, with the two principals dead, it seemed to him pretty unlikely that the plan could come off. He had to get hold of Rocq, because he had no idea where Rocq had done the buying. He had bought in bits and pieces all over the world, including the Swiss company and numbered accounts. ‘What a mess,’ he said to himself. ‘What a bloody mess.’

It had been a long time since Baenhaker could remember a bollocking as severe as the one he had received from General Ephraim on the Monday afternoon, when Ephraim had telephoned him at Eisenbar-Goldschmidt. It was Wednesday morning, and he was still smarting under the General’s torrent of abuse.

Switzerland had never been particularly helpful towards the Mossad at the best of times: Israel had been doing its best for some years to woo the Swiss, and their efforts had been beginning to pay off. ‘What the hell do you think you’re up to, trying to get your killing done for you, and in Switzerland of all places?’ Ephraim had shouted.

Baenhaker knew what he’d done, and he tried to explain it to Ephraim: that he hadn’t wanted to bring the full weight of Scotland Yard crashing down upon them by having killed three people from the same company within a week. Ephraim’s anger was all the more fuelled by the fact that he had given his instructions on Friday, expressed the urgency of the situation, and it was now Monday. Apart from losing two of his top Swiss agents and having the wrath of the Swiss government brought down upon his head, nothing had been achieved. The threat to relieve Baenhaker from the assignment and instruct another agent to do the job had hit Baenhaker hardest of anything.

‘It’s Monday afternoon, General,’ Baenhaker had said. ‘By Wednesday night, they will both be dead, I promise you.’

‘They had better be,’ replied Ephraim.

Baenhaker had not had an altogether happy weekend. He had planned to kill Elleck while Rocq was in Switzerland, only to discover that Elleck had gone sailing with friends and would not be back until Monday morning — and he had no idea where Elleck had gone sailing.

He had spent Sunday evening surveilling Elleck’s London home in Bishop’s Avenue, Hampstead, but Elleck had in fact remained on the boat Sunday night, and had driven straight to the office on Monday morning. It was now Wednesday morning; he hadn’t yet killed Elleck because he wanted to plan the killing of Rocq and leave as short as possible a time gap between the two killings. This evening, at about five o’clock, Rocq would be killed. Elleck was going to a City Livery dinner at Cutlers’ Hall; his chauffeur would be driving him home afterwards. Baenhaker knew the exact spot in the rhododendron bush opposite Elleck’s front door where he would be waiting, with the silenced Walther in his hand.

At exactly five to nine, he watched from the street corner where he was standing as Rocq’s metallic dark-grey Porsche turned into the entrance to the Lower Thames Street multistorey car park. He smiled to himself. A few minutes later he saw Rocq emerge, holding his neat briefcase in one hand, and with a mackintosh slung over his other arm. Baenhaker looked up at the sky; there were quite a few clouds. Maybe Rocq was right, he thought, maybe it would rain today.

He waited a full ten minutes, just to make sure Rocq had not left anything behind in the car, and then he slipped up the fire escape staircase of the concrete building. The Porsche was in the same bay as the previous evening, and he was pleased to notice all the other bays around it were also taken, which meant it was unlikely he would be interrupted with his work.

He slid, with his large briefcase, down between the Porsche and the car next to it, a blue Ford Cortina. He opened the briefcase, and pulled out a slim metal cylinder with a fixing plate at either end, a small drill, a screwdriver and two screws; then he eased himself under the bottom of the Porsche, directly below the driver’s seat.

Half an hour later, the explosive charge was firmly in position, Baenhaker slid further back underneath the car and then proceeded to wire the time-fuse into the car’s electrical circuit, so that when the ignition was switched on, the countdown on the fuse would start. Eisenbar-Goldschmidt used this same car park for many of their vehicles; he would not have been popular if the Porsche had blown up in here and damaged any of their cars. Yesterday, it had taken Rocq forty-five seconds from the time of starting his engine to the time he left the car-park entrance; he did not want Rocq to get too far away, because he wanted to be able to witness the explosion with his own eyes, make sure that Rocq was dead, so that he could report positively himself to Ephraim. There had been no other cars leaving at the same time yesterday. He decided he should make a contingency allowance for a delay in case there were some today. He set the dial to two minutes, ran a final check over the fixings and the wirings, and then eased himself out from under the car. It was 9.45 a.m. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the car today — just in case the extraordinary should happen and someone should steal it, or in case Rocq left early. He did not want to miss the fireworks for anything. He found himself a safe position on the stairwell, from where he could clearly see the Porsche and could hear anyone coming either up or down, and then settled down to pass the day in his lonely, dreary watch-post.

Elleck, who had not slept a wink, had left a message summoning Rocq, who had also not slept a wink, up to his office the moment he arrived.

‘Where the hell were you last night?’ said Elleck, half shouting. ‘I tried to get you all through the night! Don’t you ever go to bed?’

‘I didn’t know it was a Globalex rule that I have to sleep in my own bed.’

‘You were with a girl?’

‘Might have been; might have been with a boy.’ Rocq felt belligerent. It was none of Elleck’s damned business, he felt.

‘In future, if you’re sleeping around, you bloody well leave me the number you’re going to be at. This company operates around the clock; if you want to work for it, you have got to be on call round the clock also. Understand?’

Rocq didn’t answer; he didn’t agree, and he was too tired for a fight; he stared at Elleck in silence for some moments, and then spoke. ‘That arms dealer who was shot yesterday — Culundis — is that the Culundis of your syndicate?’

‘Yes — and not just him: Viscomte Lasserre, the other partner in it has been killed in a bloody aircrash — yesterday — no — the night before. Both of them dead — and not one damned piece of paper signed. We’re on the hook — that is, Globalex is on the hook for £1,000 million. Did you see what happened to gold during the night?’ Elleck was shrieking, almost hysterical.

‘I saw this morning. It’s dropped $30.’

‘That is a £25 million loss to this company,’ said Elleck. ‘Twenty-five million!’

‘Do you want me to unload everything?’

‘I wanted you to last night — when it had only dropped $5 — we could have got out with a two million loss — that would have been tolerable. But 25 million — I don’t know about that. Has that $30 come off as a reaction to the sharp rise — or is there some heavy selling going on? That’s what I have to find out. I don’t know if this coup is going to go ahead or not — if the coup goes ahead, then gold’s going to go back up, for sure. But if it doesn’t come off, gold is going to go down — it’s way higher than it should be right now. I’m going to make some telephone calls — you better go back to your office — and be ready to unload any moment I tell you — don’t leave the office without telling me.’