Craig Thomas
A Different War
PRELUDE
And I have told you how things were under Duke Leopold in Siena
And of the true base of credit, that is, the abundance of nature with the whole folk behind it.
All Fools' Day. The markets had been telling him that laughing at him, in effect ever since they had opened that morning. The share prices, the snippets of information, the rumours, the heavy selling, the nervousness of the banks… Like the chuckling of people at a joke at his expense.
Twenty million dollars had been wiped off the asset value of Winterborne Holdings in a matter of hours. Wall Street, open an hour earlier, had caught the infection and the stock of the US subsidiaries was sliding downwards in price. It could be fifty million dollars by the day's end. All Fools' Day.
In enraged frustration, David Winterborne stood up and walked to one of the full length windows of the first-floor drawing room which overlooked Eaton Square.
The London traffic filtered politely through the square, sunlight was dappled in the gardens. There were a few well-dressed pedestrians enjoying the spring sunshine.
The scene appeared painted, formal, like a landscape he had commissioned to celebrate ownership. Yet, as if in the moment of an earth tremor, the whole vista of wealth, exclusivity, decorousness was rendered shimmeringly unreal by the shocks of a threatened financial disaster.
Fraser, who remained seated on the sofa behind him, was just another of those bringing the bad news, a functionary reporting that the Oracle hadn't found in his favour. One long-fingered hand smoothed his orient ally straight black hair but he realised that even Fraser, a mere employee, would see that the gesture was entirely pretence. He turned to face the room, catching sight of his slim figure in a mirror above the Adam fireplace. His Jermyn Street shirt was crumpled, his tie askew.
His Eurasian features appeared un habitually thunderous, stubbornly defiant.
He had spent millions of his own trying to block the hole in the dyke.
To little or no effect… "I may have to base decisions important ones on your assessment, Fraser. Are you certain?"
Fraser shrugged, a moneylender's gesture.
"I look, sir, this is good inside information. Possibly the best. MoD Procurement and the Treasury are digging in for a very bloody campaign." Fraser's Scots accent came and went, like the sophistication of his vocabulary, in the manner of a weak, intermittent radio signal. The Treasury is twisting the DTI's arm up behind its back not lo support the European helicopter, but to side with them over the American machine." His mouth distorted in a congenital contempt.
"It's cheaper than ours yours."
"It's not mine-" Winterborne began angrily. But it was, wasn't it?
That was the whole problem. Winterborne Holdings in the UK had become far too close symbiotic, they said to Aero UK, senior manufacturing partner in the European consortium building the helicopter the British army was supposed to buy.
"You must be mistaken your sources are misguided. The government just couldn't do it…" Fraser's expression remained dourly cynical.
Winterborne turned away.
The government the damned Tory government who had seen almost a quarter of a million of his money to help their last election campaign would do it, if it suited.
"It would be the finish of a great many companies. The unemployment would be embarrassing… It would could be the end of Aero UK." He was speaking to the painted, formal scene beyond the window. He felt he was staring at the family estates, watching for the small army of bailiff's men who would soon be coming up the drive to dispossess him. Then, to Fraser: "You're sure?" He cupped his narrow chin with one hand, adding: "Is it no longer a simple matter of more money—?"
"We can't buy influence at that level. It's in the hands of the grown-ups, not the greedy kids. Aero UK's board and you could wrap yourselves in the flag, talk about job losses… It might work."
"But you don't believe it. When do they decide between Euro-copter and the American rival?"
"Some time in the next two months before the end of May."
David Winterborne turned to face Fraser.
They will do it?"
Fraser nodded.
That's the betting. That the Treasury will force MoD to buy American because of the relative costs."
"So, Winterborne Holdings has a huge stake in Aero UK, in a dozen wholly owned subcontracting companies, in various other offshoots…
While already Aero UK has a new airliner no one in the world wants to buy! And a Eurodefender fighter project that's almost four years behind schedule in the development phase alone.
Now Aero UK will lose the helicopter project, too — worth at least two hundred and fifty million sterling! Have I left anything out?"
Fraser suppressed a grin and shook his head.
"No, sir. Nothing."
In the gardens, small dogs were barking around young children and nannies. It was all so bloodily mockingly normal, a flattering image of the world he had bought for himself.
Which was now threatened. Cash-starved because of Aero UK, and even more because of his involvement in the urban regeneration project in the Midlands, his largest investment outside the US. His borrowing was at a record high, his profit at a ten-year low. He had lost twenty million because of a couple of hostile newspaper articles over the weekend and a follow-up in The Times. Just because of that damned unsellable airliner alone-! When all the other skeletons tumbled from the cupboards, Winterborne Holdings would be finished.
"It has to be stopped the rot," he announced.
"Sorry-sir?"
He turned to Fraser. His decision, which had leapt out of the dark at the back of his mind, shocked and thrilled like a sudden, unanticipated sexual encounter.
"I'm propping up the share prices and it's costing me a very great deal. That must cease."
"Yes, sir." Fraser appeared unsettled, as if he were about to be accused of not supplying a solution to the situation. He was like a hamster trying to get further into its straw. Perhaps he sensed what was coming… "I need someone. Someone you would know, your kind of person."
To do what, sir?"
"Help me to sell airliners since Aero UK have singularly failed to do just that. I need someone who can help me deal with that mess."
He moved towards the sofa, plucking that morning's Times from the arm of a chair and dropping it into Fraser's lap. The business section was folded open at one of its inside pages. The fateful follow-up to the weekend articles on Skyliner and Aero UK that had cost him so much.
There were two photographs, side by side. One displayed the bulk of the Skyliner that no one wanted to buy, looking like the profile of a winged dolphin. The other was of an American airliner the new Vance
494 long-haul. It, like the US helicopter soon also to become his bane, was cheap. Much cheaper than Skyliner to buy, lease, operate.
Those carriers not waiting for the new Boeing were poised to buy it, once its early commercial flights were successful.
Potential Skyliner purchasers would soon be queueing to buy the Vance aircraft.
Fraser looked up at him ruminatively, doubtful of the reality of his inference. Then his expression became carefully, patiently neutral.
"Find someone someone who can do something… about that' Vance 494 the airliner of the future, the caption beneath the photograph read.
Beneath that of the Skyliner were the words, Euro-boast any future at all?
"I think I understand, sir. I'll bring you some names, a scenario tomorrow?"
Tonight."
"Sir."
He heard the doors of the drawing room close behind Fraser. There seemed a finality to the sound, as if he had closed the doors on some other kind of space.