Питер Джеймс: Billionaire

Rocq sat at his desk, finding it hard to contain his excitement, harder still to keep his activities out of range of the telephoto ears of Mozer, Slivitz, and the rest of his office.

On a split commission with Theo Barbiero-Ruche, he calculated he had earned £380,000; he was out of the hole and into big money. The Toronto light on his switchboard lit up; Rocq picked up his phone, and pushed the button: the voice of the bouncing Baron Mellic boomed down the receiver.

‘Hey, Rocky — what did you do wrong?’

‘What do you mean?’ Rocq became worried.

‘You got something right for a change.’

‘And what a fucking waste to go and give it to you.’ A wave of relief swept Rocq. ‘You did it properly?’

‘You ever know me not to do anything properly?’

‘Only when you have a puncture.’

On Rocq’s advice, Missh had gone along with every penny he had, when gold was at its lowest. Knowing that when Missh sold, coupled with the no-show of the Lasserre-Culundis plot, the price of gold would cascade downwards, Rocq had advised the Baron to go short, with every penny he had, at the exact moment Missh issued his sell instructions. The Baron had gone short when gold was at $712 an ounce. The price was now $558. The Baron was not quite in the money league of the Emir of Amnah, but he had still netted some $120 million on the deal. Rocq’s half share of the commission, which he had split with a tame broker in Zurich, came to £500,000 — tax free, paid into the numbered Swiss account Monsieur Jean-Luis Vençeon, the Swiss avocat in Verbier, had kindly opened for him.

‘Up yours, Rocky — I’m off to go and spend some of my loot.’

‘Does that mean I ought to go long on rubber?’

‘Yeah — and you’d better hurry.’ The Baron hung up.

‘You talking to your bicycle repair man?’ said Slivitz.

‘If you want to stick your ears over here, for God’s sake clean them first, Slivitz — I’ve got wax all over my desk.’ Rocq dialled Amanda’s office. ‘Hallo, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’m going to give you a special treat tonight: I’ll buy you dinner in any restaurant you like anywhere in the world. Pardon? What do you mean you had a big lunch? Yes, I’m sorry about Baenhaker too — you know I am: I thought it might cheer you up. Of course it would. Okay — right, leave it to me — what do you feel like most, Italian or French? Okay!’ Rocq hung up, then dialled International Directory Enquiries. ‘Hallo,’ he said, ‘I’d like the number of a restaurant in Paris — it’s called the Tour d’Agent.’ Thirty seconds later, he had the number. He thanked the operator and hung up. He pressed the button on the Reuter monitor: gold was at 553; Elleck still had not given him any sell order, which meant he was now in the hole for a cab fare’s change from a £500 million note.

‘That’s life, Monty,’ he said, to himself, smugly; you’re five hundred million down. I’m five hundred thousand up. Never forget, Monty, the old legend: “Be careful how you treat people when you’re on the way up — you never know who you’re going to need when you’re on the way down.”’

‘Talking to yourself?’ interrupted Slivitz.

‘It’s the only way to get any straight answers in this business, Slivitz.’

‘That’s about the only intelligent thing you ever said, Rocq.’

‘Tell you what, Slivitz, you know what I’m going to do today?’

‘No Rocq, what are you going to do today?’

‘I’m going to take you out and buy you one slap-up lunch.’

‘I don’t know what’s come over you Rocq! Two intelligent statements in one day.’

‘Keep pushing your luck, Slivitz, I’ve got a third on the way.’

By half past three, two extremely drunk metal brokers staggered out of the elevator at the fourth floor of 88, Mincing Lane. One was still ecstatic with joy; the other, inside his shell of alcohol, was trembling with fear from what he had learned over lunch.

Slivitz had a wife, three children and a large mortgage; it wasn’t cheerful news to discover that the firm into which he had put eleven years of his life, and ten per cent of his annual salary for a pension, was days away from going belly-up to the tune of half a billion pounds.

Rocq left the office early that day; by the time he returned, at eleven o’clock next morning, having been delayed on the shuttle from Paris, there wasn’t anyone in Globalex who didn’t know the news. As Globalex telephone operators spent most of their time chatting to different telephone exchanges around the world, by close of play on Friday, anyone who was anyone in commodities, throughout eight-tenths of the world, knew of Globalex’s problems. When Sir Monty Elleck received a phone call from Chicago to ask if it was true, followed by calls from Tokyo, Sydney, Zurich, Panama, Liechtenstein, Guernsey, Vienna, Berne, Rome and fourteen other of his international business chums, he knew it was time to have a chat with his local friendly bank manager. His only problem was that he was not quite sure what to say. He needn’t have bothered trying to say anything; as far as his bank manager was concerned, Sir Monty Elleck had contracted a bad case of leprosy.

Rocq breezed into his office, tired and hung over after having eaten much too rich a meal. He had been sick three times in the marble-floored bathroom of his suite at the Crillon in Paris. Lester Barrow did not chirp out his usual ‘Morning, early bird.’ There was no snide remark from Mozer or Slivitz; the whole place had all the cheer of the foyer of a crematorium. Rocq’s intercom buzzed: it was the switchboard.

‘Mr Rocq — a Mr Barbiero-Ruche has called you four times this morning.’

‘Thank you — I’ll call him now.’

‘Oh, wait a second — yes — he’s calling again now. Shall I put him through?’

‘Thank you.’

The Italian’s voice came on the line. He did not sound his normal ebullient self either. ‘Okay, Rocky — very clever, hey where’s this goddam Middle East War then?’

‘What war, fat man?’

‘Yeah — that’s right — what war?’

‘You can’t win them all, fat man. It didn’t happen.’

‘How you mean, it didn’t happen? You know how much money I put on that war happening?’

‘Nope.’

‘A lot, Rocky, one hell of a lot.’

‘So — how much commission did I make you on buying for Missh?’

‘Half a million bucks. You know how much you lost me on that war?’

‘No idea, fat man.’

‘Millions, that’s how much, millions.’ The Italian, thought Rocq, sounded sore. Really sore.

‘Let’s just call ourselves quits, fat man, hey? You tucked me up good and proper on that coffee — I just got a little revenge on you on the gold, okay? Now we’re even.’

‘You crazy bastard — you nearly put me to the wall just to get even?’

‘I don’t like wrong advice, fat man. I don’t know what the fuck you were up to, but boy, you got me in a mess.’

‘Are you blind and deaf?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t you read any newspapers today?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you know what happened to coffee?’

‘No, what happened to coffee?’

‘The World Health Organization? You didn’t hear? The whole business with the cancer — it was all a hoax. Three of the directors have been arrested — it was all a huge conspiracy to force down the price of coffee — they all went short for billions, then put out the rumour. It’s going up again, Rocky, going through the roof. There’s a bad coffee rust, early frost, just like I said; you put me to the wall on your goddam war, and now I’m making you millions on coffee.’

Rocq went white. ‘Theo, you fat jerk; I closed out my long coffee. I went short with you, remember?’