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The Viscomte gave his gatekeeper an oily smile that was reserved exclusively for introductions to heads of state, conceding points when negotiating business, and for greeting his peasants on his estate, and drove off. Three hundred metres on, around the second bend in the driveway, the chateau itself came into view.

Chateau Lasserre is one of those French chateaux in which fairy tales are set. Although he had seen it come into view a million times as he had rounded this bend, it still rarely failed to fill him with a deep sense of satisfaction and, on more occasions than he could count, it had made many a girl throw aside any previous reservations she might have had about her date and decide, no matter what happened, no matter how she might feel about the Viscomte, that before she was driven back home she wanted to get laid, at least once, inside those simply stunning portals.

The chateau was awe-inspiring, and it was impossible to take it all in in one look. There were walls upon walls, turrets and towers topped with castellations, heaped one upon the other in a mixture of shimmering white stone and marble. The chateau was encircled by a deep moat; to the rear was a vast lake and, at the front, a drawbridge, complete with portcullis.

The estate was vast even by French standards, covering over seventeen thousand acres of land. Of these, a mere fifty-five were given over to the growing of grapes from which came the annual 38,000 bottles of one of France’s least inspired clarets. The rest was lush parkland for hunting, the village of Lasserre, a massive pig and sheep farm, and the Lasserre racing stables and stud farm.

Two hundred metres to the far side of the lake, well clear of the chateau and of any trees, was an 800 metre grass landing strip, complete with full landing lights on both sides. On a course that would take them directly down onto the eastern-most point of this landing strip in thirty-five minutes time were, at a height of 19,000 feet, Sir Monty Elleck and his pilot, in the Globalex Mitsubishi Solitaire twin-prop plane.

Also heading for the chateau was Jimmy Culundis; he was walking down the gangway of his private DC-8 at Bordeaux airport. It had had to land there, as it was too big for private airstrips, even the mighty one in the Viscomte’s back garden. Culundis walked to the terminal building to complete customs formalities before completing his journey in the chauffeur driven Citroen Pallas the Viscomte had sent.

Lasserre greeted Nicole Varasay, his current residential playmate, with a peck on both cheeks; she was wearing a slip, and seated at the dressing table in his vast bedroom, putting on her make-up. Her long dark hair tumbled around her white shoulders, and the Viscomte slid his hands inside her bra and caressed her breasts.

‘Who is the Englishman who is coming tonight, chéri?’ she asked.

‘He is someone very important. I want you to be specially nice to him.’ He whispered into her ear, and she giggled a long wicked giggle.

Lasserre dressed for dinner, taking care to keep his backside well out of Nicole’s sight. She was still putting on her make-up as he pulled on his dark green smoking jacket. ‘I have some work I must do for a few minutes in my study; I will see you when you are ready, downstairs.’

‘I won’t be long,’ she said.

‘Try not to be, it would be nice for you to be down when they arrive.’

‘Two minutes,’ she said, tossing her hair back away from her face.

The Viscomte walked down the carpet that ran along the centre of the stone floor of the long corridor. There were lights at intervals down the corridor, and each light that he passed threw a long shadow of himself in front of him. These weren’t the only shadows, he reflected, sadly. There was, right now, a shadow cast over the whole of Chateau Lasserre, the whole estate. The shadow was called François Mitterand. Mitterand had decided that Viscomte Lasserre had too damned much money and too damned much land, and he was going to do something about it. It was nothing personal against Lasserre; the two had never met, and it wasn’t only Lasserre; it was many Frenchmen, both noble and nouveau riche, all with the one thing in common: wealth. Since his election to office, the French President had set about doing one of the things he had put in his election manifesto: soaking the rich. He was doing it well, too damned well, thought Lasserre, as he descended the massive staircase. Viscomte Lasserre right now was badly in need of money; the land tax Mitterand had imposed was crippling him. Before that, the estate ran at a small profit. From the wine and the farming, the costs of the racing stables, the parkland and the chateau itself were met. Sure, he owned the massive Lasserre group of companies — the munitions and aircraft industry — but now there were punitive taxes on the proceeds of sales of shares; it was not a good time to sell and, besides, how long could he keep the estate going by selling shares before the shares began to run out? Several years, without doubt, but he was a businessman. His interest was in making money, adding to his pile, not diminishing it. No; he needed additional income, a lot of it, and preferably well out of the clutches of Mitterand and his tax collectors. He was close to getting it. After tonight’s meeting, he hoped he would be closer still; closer possibly to being the richest man in France.

14

‘That must be it down there, Sir Monty,’ shouted out Elleck’s private pilot, Ex-RAF Wing Commander Hopkins. Elleck looked up from his De Beers Gold Report; lounging back in the large seat in the centre of the plane, it was difficult for him to see out in any direction without stretching himself, and right now he needed all the relaxation he could get, for he had a feeling it was going to be a long and taxing night.

‘Good man,’ he said, trusting to his pilot’s judgement to put them down on Lasserre’s runway and not the middle of a housing estate.

Elleck liked his trips alone; he was fond of Laura, his wife, but her presence always seemed to restrict him, to remind him of his age, to prevent him thinking at times as lucidly as he needed to. Without her, when he travelled, he always felt a spirit of adventure. He never thought about the reasons too hard; he just supposed it was that when she wasn’t there and the opportunities came up to get laid, he could take them — not that they did come up that often, and not nearly as often as he would have liked. He turned his mind to Viscomte Lasserre. He was wondering why it was that the Viscomte, one of his oldest and best clients, had invited him to dinner.

As the plane began its landing descent, he started checking his clothes. His patent leather shoes still looked spotless, and his trousers looked fine. He tightened his bow tie. He had dressed for dinner before he had left the office in London. Chateau Lasserre was 400 miles from London; in this plane, with its cruising speed of 315 knots, including the stop at Le Havre to clear French customs and immigration, it had taken them less than an hour and a half to get here.

The flight was the first opportunity he had had to think clearly at all during this particular Monday, which had been the most hectic he could ever remember. The whole world was bailing out of coffee and the coffee market, at around midday, had completely collapsed. On Friday, at the close of trading for the week, three-month coffee futures stood at £1,004 a ton. By mid-afternoon today, you couldn’t give it away. It was listed at a shade over £500 a ton, but there weren’t many takers even at that price.

Elleck was busy doing mathematics in his head. Millions of pounds had been wiped off the net wealth of Globalex’s clientele, which meant they would have less money to invest in the future and therefore there would be less trading and less commissions for Globalex. The crash of coffee had produced nervousness in other soft commodities — sugar, cocoa and almost all the others had dropped sharply. Business in some metals had picked up a bit as a result, as some investors turned to them for security, but mostly the investors were liquidating their positions to cover their coffee margin calls.