Ken Follett - Paper Money

She emerged from the copse and leaned on a fence at the edge of a field. The pasture was shared by a donkey and an old mare: the donkey was there for the grandchildren and the mare because she had once been Ellen's favorite hunter. It was all right for them-they did not know they were getting old.

She crossed the field and climbed the embankment to the disused railway line. Steam engines had puffed along here when she and Derek were gay young socialites, dancing to jazz music and drinking too much champagne, giving parties they could not really afford. She walked along between the rusty lines, jumping from sleeper to sleeper, until something small and furry ran out from under the rotting black wood and scared her. She scampered down the bank and walked back toward the house, following the stream through rough woodland. She did not want to be a gay young thing again; but she still wanted to be in love.

Well, she had laid her cards on the table, as it were, with both men. Derek had been told that his work was edging his wife out of his life, and that he would have to change his ways if he was to keep her. Felix had been warned that she would not be his fancy piece forever.

Both men might bow to her will, which would leave her still with the problem of choice. Or they might both decide they could they could do without her, in which case there would be nothing for her to do except to become de'sole'e, like a girl in a novel by Franc?oise Sagan; and she knew that would not suit her.

Well, suppose they both were prepared to do as she wished: whom would she choose? As she rounded the corner of the house she thought: Felix, probably.

She realized with a shock that the car was in the drive, and Derek was getting out of it. Why was he home so early? He waved to her. He seemed happy.

She ran to him across the gravel and, full of guilt, she kissed him.

Kevin Hart should have been worrying, but somehow he could not summon up the energy.

The editor had quite explicitly told them not to investigate the Cotton Bank. Kevin had disobeyed, and Laski had asked: "Does your editor know you are making this call?" The question was often asked by outraged interviewees, and the answer was always an unworried No-unless, of course, the editor had forbidden the call. So, if Laski should take it into his head to ring the editor-or even the Chairman-Kevin was in trouble.

So why wasn't he worried?

He decided that he did not care for his job as much as he had this morning. The editor had good reasons for killing the story, of course; there were always good reasons for cowardice. Everyone seemed to accept that "It's against the law" was a final argument; but the great newspapers of the past had always broken the laws: laws at once harsher and more strictly applied than those of today. Kevin believed that newspapers should publish and be sued, or even arrested. It was easy for him to believe this, for he was not an editor.

So he sat in the newsroom, close to the news desk, sipping machine tea and reading his own paper's gossip column, composing the heroic speech he would like to have made to the editor. It was the fag end of the day as far as the paper was concerned. Nothing less than a major assassination or a multiple-death disaster would get in the paper now. Half the reporters-those on eight-hour shifts-had gone home. Kevin worked ten hours, four days a week. The industrial correspondent, having taken eight pints of Guinness at lunch, was asleep in a corner. A lone typewriter clacked desultorily as a girl reporter in jeans wrote an undated story for tomorrow's first edition. The copytakers were arguing about football and the subeditors were composing joke captions for spiked pictures, laughing uproariously at each other's wit. Arthur Cole was pacing up and down, resisting the temptation to smoke and secretly hoping for a fire at Buckingham Palace. Every so often he would stop and leaf through the sheets of copy impaled on his spike, as if worrying that he might have overlooked the big story of the day.

After a while Mervyn Glazier sauntered across from his own small kingdom. His shirt was hanging out. He sat down beside Kevin, lighting a steel-stemmed pipe and resting one scuffed shoe on the rim of the wastepaper basket.

"The Cotton Bank of Jamaica," he said by way of preamble. He spoke quietly.

Kevin grinned. "Have you been a naughty boy too?"

Mervyn shrugged. "I can't help it if people ring me up with information. Anyway, if the bank ever was in danger, it's out now."

"How do you know?"

"My tight-lipped contact at Threadneedle Street. 'I have looked more closely at the Cotton Bank since your call, and I find it to be in excellent financial health.' Unquote. In other words, it's been quietly rescued."

Kevin finished his tea and crumpled the plastic-paper cup noisily. "So much for that."

"I also hear, from a quite separate source not a million miles from the Council of the Stock Exchange, that Felix Laski has bought a controlling share in Hamilton Holdings."

"He can't be short of a few bob, then. Is the Council interested?"

"No. They know, and they don't mind."

"Do you think we made a big fuss over nothing?"

Mervyn shook his head slowly. "By no means."

"Nor do I."

Mervyn's pipe had gone out. He tapped it into the wastebasket. The two journalists looked helplessly at each other for a moment; then Mervyn got up and went away.

Kevin returned his attention to the gossip column, but he could not concentrate. He read a paragraph four times without understanding it, then gave up. Some large piece of skulduggery had gone on today, and he itched to know what it was, the more so because he felt so close to understanding it.

Arthur called him. "Sit behind here while I go to the lav, will you?"

Kevin walked around the news desk and took a seat behind the news editor's bank of telephones and switchboards. It gave him no thrill: he had the job because, at this time of day, it hardly mattered. He was just the nearest idle man.

Idleness was inevitable on newspapers, Kevin mused. The staff had to be sufficiently many to cope on a big day, so they were bound to be too many on a normal day. On some papers they gave you silly jobs to do just to keep you busy: writing stories from publicity handouts and local government press releases, stuff that would never get in the paper. It was demoralizing, time-wasting work, and only the more insecure of newspaper executives demanded it.

A Lad came across from the teleprinter room, carrying a Press Association story on a long sheet of paper. Kevin took it from him and glanced at it.

He read it with a growing sense of shock and elation.

A syndicate headed by Hamilton Holdings today won the license to drill for oil in the last North Sea oil field, Shield.

The Secretary of State of Energy, Mr. Carl Wrightment, announced the name of the winning contender at a Press conference overshadowed by the sudden illness of his Junior Minister, Mr. Tim Fitzpeterson.

The announcement was expected to provide a much-needed fillip to the ailing shares of the Hamilton print group, whose half-year results, published yesterday, were disappointing.

Shield is estimated to hold oil reserves which could ultimately amount to half a million barrels a week.

The Hamilton group's partners in the syndicate include Scan, the engineering giant, and British Organic Chemicals.

After making the announcement Mr. Wrightment added: "It is with sadness that I have to tell you of the sudden illness of Tim Fitzpeterson, whose work on the Government's oil policy has been so invaluable."

Kevin read the story three times, hardly able to believe its implications. Fitzpeterson, Cox, Laski, the raid, the bank crisis, the takeover-all leading in a great, frightening circle, back to Tim Fitzpeterson.