Питер Джеймс: Billionaire

‘You what?’

‘I went short with you! Remember? Paid your goddam invoice. Twelve thousand fucking tons. What the hell’s the price now?’

‘Four hundred and forty-eight pounds and rising fast; what you sell short at?’

‘Four hundred and twenty-seven pounds.’

‘Holy shit, Rocky.’ There was a silence. Rocq could hear the sound of a calculator the other end. Rocq didn’t need a calculator; he knew how much he was down — almost to a penny, exactly half of the half a million he had just made.

‘Get me out of it, fat man. Get me long again, fast.’

‘It’s limit up, Rocky, and the sellers are running away. No chance of getting you out yet. Won’t be for several days; it’s going to go limit up each day for the next five days. I may be able to get you out at about 470 I reckon — somebody owes me a favour — and you’d better count yourself lucky if I do.’

Rocq did one more quick calculation: if the Italian could bail him out when it hit £540, he would have lost, to the penny, the entire profit he had made on the gold dealings.

‘Oh, shit!’ said Rocq, smashing his desk with his fist. ‘Oh shit!’

‘Is that a buy instruction?’ said Theo.

‘Yes it fucking is,’ said Rocq, hanging up with a force that nearly broke the telephone. He sat at his desk and stared at his blinking switchboard; although Milan was a thousand miles away, he swore he could hear the Italian laughing. And yet, he smiled to himself, there had been times in his life when he might have been a whole lot more upset than he was now. He had to admit that on the whole, he had not come out of it too damned badly.

It was Thursday, six days after Rocq’s telephone conversation with Theo Barbiero-Ruche, and England was in the grip of a sweltering heatwave. It was just after eight in the morning when the Chairman of Globalex arrived at the front entrance of 88, Mincing Lane.

As yet the morning was deliciously cool; although the sky was clear blue, the heat of the sun had not begun to penetrate; it was the kind of early morning that would make anyone feel good. The Chairman of Globalex felt very good, very good indeed.

He took the elevator up to the sixth floor, stepped out and walked to his office. The morning cleaning staff were already busy and he smiled at them. Although the air conditioning was already on, he opened a window and breathed in some of the air that, for a change in the City of London, was almost fresh and heady, or at least certainly felt so to him.

He took off his Louis Feraud jacket and slung it on the back of his imposing leather chair, and leaned forward onto his massive dark brown smoked-glass desk. He liked the new colours in the room, the pale mushroom walls and the white woodwork and the thick David Hicks geometric brown and beige carpet, and he stared admiringly around at the new furniture: at the two huge white velour chesterfields, at the smoked-glass coffee table, the Pioneer hi-fi system, and the JVC video-recorder.

A couple of Roy Lichtensteins hung on the wall, depicting Superman travelling through the air and, next to them, standing quietly, were a pair of Stubbs horses. He smiled, loosened his Ted Lapidus tie, and began to pore through the massive print-out of accounts, studying carefully the names of every client, the amounts they had invested, and exactly where every penny was invested.

He had a lot of work ahead of him and eight o’clock starts were, he knew, going to be a part of his life for some time to come. He did not mind. Right now, for the first time in his life, he was so idyllically happy that nothing could bother him.

At a quarter to nine, his secretary came in. ‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Good morning,’ said the Chairman. ‘Were there any messages after I left yesterday afternoon?’

‘Yes: Sir Monty Elleck telephoned. He wondered if he could come and collect a couple of files — he wanted to come up last night, but I said he had better obtain your permission first.’

‘Do you know what they are?’

‘Personal matters — he told me he is leaving England permanently and retiring to France — I believe he wants to tie up various loose odds and ends.’

‘Tell him he can come any time,’ said the Chairman, graciously.

‘Yes, I will. Would you care for some coffee?’

‘I think I’d like a glass of Perrier.’

‘Right. Are there any tapes?’

‘Yes — two.’ The Chairman handed her them from the top of his Grundig dictaphone, and then turned back to his list of accounts.

At ten o’clock his secretary buzzed him. ‘Sheik Abr Qu’Ih Missh is on the line, Sir.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Chairman. ‘Put him through.’

A moment later, the Emir of Amnah was on the line.

The Chairman of Globalex treated the Emir with the greatest of respect. There was, the Chairman knew, as he twiddled with the Porsche key-ring in his jacket pocket, no other way to treat the owner of one’s company.