‘Three!’ There was a sharp crack, the feeling of wind on his cheek and then the plaster on the wall next to him exploded, fragments tearing into his face. He flinched as his ears and chin burned. He touched his face. Blood from the plaster.
He turned to see Visser holding the rifle to his shoulder. ‘On second thoughts there would be some tiresome interviews to deal with,’ Visser said. ‘But remember, this is my country, not yours. I can have you killed here easily any time I like. And I will do that unless you take a plane out of South Africa tonight. My people will be watching you. Now go.’
Calder hesitated.
‘Go!’ wheezed Visser. Calder left the room and walked stiffly out to his car. His knees were weak and he had a strong urge to run, but he didn’t want to give Visser the pleasure. He slowly climbed in, and drove off down the track. As he reached the small country road, a blue Toyota Corolla appeared behind him. There was a white man inside with a thick neck and a baseball cap. Calder made no attempt to evade the car as it followed him all the way to Pretoria.
There were many Bloomfield Weiss bankers that Benton Davis disliked, but the one he loathed most was the man who was at that moment screaming at him down the telephone. Simon Bibby was an Englishman, but he was based in New York where he was head of Global Fixed Income, and also chairman of the Underwriting Committee. A powerful man. An angry man.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you committed the firm to underwriting a junk-bond issue without referring to the Underwriting Committee first?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ! I thought we’d sorted this problem out years ago. Bankers cannot commit the firm to a client on a whim in a meeting. Didn’t you know that?’
‘I did what I had to do to secure the deal,’ Benton said. ‘The financing letter went out to Zyl News yesterday.’
‘Why couldn’t you leave it to Dower?’ Bibby said. ‘He’d never have done that. It’s a rookie’s mistake, Benton.’
‘There’s only another fifty million pounds needed,’ said Benton. ‘That’s less than 10 per cent of the value of the transaction. Surely we can raise that? What happened to that famous Bloomfield Weiss placing power?’
‘The point is that it’s we who decide how much of the firm’s capital we risk, not you. You know that. I do not like being bounced into taking decisions by idiots who will sell the firm to win a deal.’
‘If you haven’t the balls to stand up for a lousy three hundred and fifty million for one of the bank’s best clients don’t blame me,’ said Benton.
Bibby sputtered. ‘You’re out of here,’ he snarled. ‘Once this deal is over, you’re history, I’ll make sure of that.’
‘Great to have your support,’ said Benton as he put down the phone.
Bibby wasn’t his direct boss, but he could get him fired. Benton knew that he had sinned, he had known it at the time he had given his word that Bloomfield Weiss would come up with the funds. There was a strong likelihood that he would lose his job as a result. But he didn’t regret what he had done.
Cornelius van Zyl deserved support from Bloomfield Weiss. This was the key moment in Zyl News’s history. The company had been a loyal client for over twenty years, since Bloomfield Weiss had structured the complicated set of parallel loans that had enabled Cornelius to evade South African exchange controls and make his first investment in US newspapers. Since then the firm had done a dozen deals with Cornelius, big and small, profitable and less profitable. At that moment Cornelius had needed Bloomfield Weiss’s unequivocal support and Benton was glad he had given it. It had been the right thing to do. And he was sick of cowering before the likes of Simon Bibby.
His phone rang. He picked it up. ‘Benton Davis.’
‘I’ve just had Peter Laxton on the phone,’ said Cornelius.
‘Yes?’
‘He’s worried that we can’t raise nine hundred million.’
‘Where did he get that idea from?’
‘Gurney Kroheim. They’re telling him that the debt markets are getting tougher.’
‘That’s true, but we can handle it.’
‘Did you see the article in the Lex column this morning?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Benton. The Financial Times’s daily Lex column carried comment on the stock market and recent takeover gossip. That morning it had questioned the reliability of Zyl News’s bid, and suggested that shareholders might be safer taking the slightly lower price from Sir Evelyn Gill. ‘Gill’s PR is working overtime.’
‘So you’re sure you can raise the funds?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Benton. ‘You’ve got our letter, haven’t you?’
‘Good. Because that’s what I told Peter Laxton. My reputation’s at stake on this one.’
You’re not the only one, thought Benton. But he didn’t say it. What he did say was, ‘You can rely on us, Cornelius.’
‘I don’t know whether Laxton will go with us,’ Cornelius said. ‘But I do know we can’t bid any higher than nine hundred.’
‘That’s higher than Gill. Laxton’s shareholders will get more cash if they sell to us. That’s the important point.’
‘Very few of the institutional investors have tendered their shares to us so far,’ Cornelius said.
‘Don’t worry. They’re playing a waiting game, hoping for a better offer. When one doesn’t materialize they’ll accept ours, you’ll see.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Cornelius and rang off. Benton stared at the phone. He went through the outcomes. If Zyl News won the deal and the junk-bond issue was a success, he would live to fight another day. If they didn’t win the deal, he was in trouble. If the bond issue flopped and Bloomfield Weiss were left with a three hundred and fifty million pound bridging loan to a struggling Zyl News, then he was toast. There was nothing more he could do to influence the outcomes one way or the other.
Cornelius was worried too as he replaced the receiver. He appreciated Benton Davis’s support, and he himself had sounded supremely confident to Peter Laxton. But he could feel the doubt in Laxton’s voice. They were going to go for Gill’s offer, the safer option.
He looked up from his desk as his assistant came in. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from Todd,’ she said. ‘He wants to see you. Right away.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘He says he has something to ask you.’
Calder took Andries Visser’s threat seriously. He was confident that he was on to something and he didn’t want to give up. The closer he got to finding out who had really killed Martha van Zyl, the more determined he was becoming, for Todd’s sake, for Kim’s, for Anne’s, for his father’s, for his own. But neither did he want to die. He might evade the Toyota, but there could be other people watching him, people he hadn’t seen. The Laagerbond was clearly a powerful organization, and at this stage he had no idea how powerful, or how widely its tentacles stretched through South Africa.
If he was to stay alive he had to be seen boarding a flight leaving South Africa that day.
He drove back to his hotel in Pretoria, where there was a message for him to call Tarek in London. He tried, but his friend was in a meeting. So he checked out, drove the fifty kilometres south to Johannesburg airport and bought a one-way ticket to London via Lusaka. Two hours’ wait, two hours to Lusaka, and there he bought a one-way ticket back to Johannesburg. He was back in South Africa by ten o’clock, hoping that whoever had watched him leave the country was not hanging around the arrivals hall to see if he returned. He hired a car and drove to Sandton, a northern suburb of the city, where he found a hotel. It was too late to call Tarek, but he did call Kim’s mobile. It was switched off, but he left her a message on her voicemail explaining where he was.