Ken Follett - Paper Money

"It missed my dress," the tart said. Her accent confirmed Tony's guess about her profession: she came from the same part of London as he did.

The maitre d'hotel said: "M'sieur Cox, the house is full. There is no other table."

Tony pointed to his own table. "What's wrong with that one? Clear it, quickly."

"Please don't," Laski said. "We wouldn't like to deprive you."

"I insist."

"Then, please join us."

Tony looked at them both. The tart obviously didn't like the idea. Was the gent just being polite, or did he mean it? Well, Tony had almost finished, so if it didn't work out he could leave the table quite soon.

"I don't want to intrude-"

"You won't be," Laski said. "And you can tell me how to win at roulette."

"Right-oh," Tony said.

He stayed with them all evening. He and Laski got on famously, and it was made clear early on that what the girl thought did not count. Tony told stories of villainy in the world of gambling clubs, and Laski matched him, anecdote for anecdote, with tales of Stock Exchange sharp practice. It transpired that Laski was not a gambler, but that he liked to bring people to the club. When they went into the casino he bought fifty pounds' worth of chips and gave them all to the girl. The evening ended when Laski, by now quite drunk, said: "I suppose I should take her home and screw her."

After that they met several times-never by arrangement-in the club, and always ended up getting drunk together. After a while Tony let the other man know that he was gay, and Laski did nothing about it, from which Tony concluded that the financier was a tolerant heterosexual.

It pleased Tony to know that he could befriend someone of Laski's class. The scene in the restaurant was the easiest bit, and it was well rehearsed: the grand gestures, the posture of command, the heavy courtesy, and a conscious moderating of his accent. But to maintain the acquaintance with someone as brainy, as rich, and as used to moving in near-aristocratic circles as Laski was seemed quite an achievement.

It was Laski who made the first move toward a deeper relationship. They had been bragging-drunk in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and Laski had been talking about the power of money. "Given enough money," he said, "I can find out anything in the City-right down to the combination of the lock on the vault in the Bank of England."

Tony said: "Sex is better."

"What do you mean?"

"Sex is a better weapon. I can find out anything in London, using sex."

"Now that I doubt," said Laski, whose sexual urges were well under control.

Tony shrugged. "All right. Challenge me."

That was when Laski made his move. "The development license for the Shield oil field. Find out who's got it-before the government makes the announcement."

Tony saw the gleam in the financier's eye, and guessed that the whole conversation had been planned. "Why don't you ask me something difficult?" he countered. "Politicians and civil servants are much too easy."

"It will do," Laski smiled.

"Okay. But I've got to challenge you, too."

Laski's eyes narrowed. "Go on."

Tony said the first thing that came into his head. "Find out the schedule for deliveries of used notes to the currency destruction plant of the Bank of England."

"It won't even cost me money," Laski said confidently.

And that was how it had started. Tony grinned as he drove the Ford through South London. He did not know how Laski had managed to keep his half of the bargain; but Tony's side had been a doddle. Who has the information we want? The Minister. What's he like? The next thing to a virgin-a faithful husband. Is he getting his oats from the wife? Not much. Will he fall for the oldest trick in the game? Like a dream.

The tape ended, and he turned it over. He wondered how much money had been in the currency van-a hundred grand? Maybe even a quarter of a million. Much more than that would be embarrassing. You couldn't walk into Barclays Bank with sacks full of used fivers without arousing suspicion. About a hundred and fifty grand would be ideal. Five gees for each of the boys, a few more for expenses, and about fifty thousand surreptitiously added to the takings of various legitimate businesses tonight. Gambling clubs were very useful for concealing illicit income.

The boys knew what to do with five grand. Pay off a few debts, buy a secondhand car, put a few hundred in each of two or three bank accounts, give the wife a new coat, lend the mother-in-law a couple of bob, spend a night in the pub, and bang, it was all gone. But give them twenty thousand and they started to get silly ideas. When unemployed laborers and freelance odd-job men were heard to talk about villas in the South of France, the law began to get suspicious.

Tony grinned at himself. I should worry about having too much money, he thought. Problems of success are the kind I like. Don't count your chicks before you've laid them, Jacko sometimes said. The van might be full of wornout halfpennies for melting down.

Now that would be a chuckle.

He was nearly there. He started to whistle.

Felix Laski sat in his office, watching a television screen and tearing a buff envelope into narrow strips. The closed-circuit TV was the modern equivalent of the ticker tape; and Laski felt like the worried broker in an old movie about the 1929 crash. The set continuously screened market news and price movements in equities, commodities, and currency. There had been no mention of the oil license. Hamilton shares had dropped five points on yesterday, and trading was moderate.

He finished demolishing the envelope and dropped the scraps into a metal wastepaper basket. The oil license should have been announced an hour ago.

He picked up the blue phone and dialed 123. "At the third stroke, the time will be one, forty-seven, and fifty seconds." The announcement was more than an hour late. He dialed the Department of Energy and asked for the Press Office. A woman told him: "The Secretary of State has been delayed. The Press conference will begin as soon as he arrives, and the announcement will be made immediately after he opens the conference."

The hell with your delays, Laski thought: I've got a fortune riding on this.

He pressed the intercom. "Carol?" There was no reply. He bellowed: "Carol!"

The girl poked her head around the door. "I'm sorry, I was at the filing cabinet."

"Get me some coffee."

"Certainly."

He took from his "in" tray a file headed PRECISION TUBING-SALES REPORT, 1ST QUARTER. It was a piece of routine espionage on a firm he was thinking of taking over. He had a theory that capital equipment tended to do well when a slump was bottoming out. But does Precision have the capacity for expansion? he wondered.

He looked at the first page of the report, winced at the sales director's indigestible prose, and tossed the file aside. When he took a gamble and lost, he could accept it with equanimity. What threw him was something going wrong for unknown reasons. He knew he would not be able to concentrate on anything until the Shield business was settled.

He fingered the sharp crease of his trousers, and thought about Tony Cox. He had taken to the young hoodlum, despite his obvious homosexuality, because he sensed what the English called a kindred spirit. Like Laski, Cox had come from poverty to wealth on determination, opportunism, and ruthlessness. Also like Laski, he tried in small ways to take the edge off his lower-class manners: Laski was doing it better, but only because he had been practicing longer. Cox wanted to be like Laski, and he would make it-by the time he was in his fifties, he would be a distinguished, gray-haired City gent.

Laski realized he did not have a single sound reason for trusting Cox. There was his instinct, of course, which told him the young man was honest with people he knew: but the Tony Coxes of this world were practiced deceivers. Had he simply invented the whole thing about Tim Fitzpeterson?