It doesn’t occur to him that men like K and T — men whom even he is prepared to describe in another part of the book, as ‘moneyed psychopaths’ — lie to the consultants they employ as readily as they lie to the revenue authorities they hope to cheat. When such clients tell you that they have three accounts, you naturally assume that they have six. For your own sake, if not for theirs, you’d better know for sure just where things stand.
His is a monochrome world of good-and-evil, innocence-and-guilt, truth-and-falsehood. If such a world exists, and perhaps it does exist in the privacy of some minds, then he is welcome to it. What he may not, must not, do is people it with real-life human beings such as Paul Oops-nearly-said-it Oberholzer, real-life business enterprises such as S. . a Inc., and real-life professional bodies such as the Institute of No-I-shouldn’t-mention-the-name.
There are some things he’s very good at not mentioning. They’re the things about which you’re not supposed to hear.
There’s no mention of Mat Williamson.
No mention of Placid Island.
No mention of Frank Yamatoku.
No mention of the murder of Yves Boularis.
No mention of the gift to us by his colleague, Professor Langridge, of an aerosol spray of ninhydrin and a camera.
There’s no mention of a lot of other things.
No one who has read Krom’s book, certainly no one who matters in the trust management field, has any doubt about the identity of the man and the Group he is indicting.
And it’s no good his retorting: ‘If the cap fits, wear it.’ As I told him at the Villa Lipp, no one concerned with the management of other people’s money can afford to ignore a smear. We’re too vulnerable.
I have the scars and mutilations to prove it.
What figure do I put on the damage?
Well, none of the cases against Professor Krom and his various publishers is yet sub judice so there can be no harm in my making a rough estimate. There’s still plenty of time to settle out of court after withdrawing the book.
To begin with, during a single month following the publication of Der kompetente Kriminelle, attendance at the two scheduled Symposia seminars was sixty per cent down. A temporary set-back? Far from it. During the month following, registrations for our big one of the year, the annual Paris get-together, were down seventy per cent. We also received polite notes of regret from all but one of our star speakers.
So, I decided to cancel.
Note that please, I decided.
I have spoken of ‘my people’ in Brussels. I was referring, of course, to my senior staff — the head of research, the internal security man, those I had hand-picked myself — to whom I had always delegated a certain amount of authority. The Mat Williamson ‘ultimatum’ had made it necessary for me to delegate more, but I had managed.
I had managed by going back to using the methods Carlo and I had used before I’d been fool enough to send those stupid roses to Kramer’s funeral.
I used an office accommodation service in a city where I wasn’t known. It was a good service, properly equipped with telephones, telex and trained operators, and efficiently run. That was how I kept in touch. That was how I went on making the important decisions. Some wouldn’t have called it delegating at all.
That, it seemed, was not what Mat had intended.
I used to go to the accommodation service office every day at noon and look at any telexes that had come in for me during the morning. Then, if I thought it necessary, I would call Brussels and talk to one or two of my people there.
Three months after the publication of Krom’s book we had quite a lot to talk about. The virtual boycotting of our seminars had been only the beginning of our troubles. An old and valued associate, a tax lawyer with whom we’d done a lot of business, had described the nature of our ultimate predicament in uncompromising terms.
‘No, I daren’t do business with Paul Firman any more, nor with anyone connected with him. The banks won’t have him. Nobody’ll have him. I don’t wonder. I’ve read the Krom book too.’
That’s when I decided to take action; after hearing what an intelligent man who knew me was prepared to accept from Krom, a man who didn’t know me at all.
It was Wednesday. I was impatient to hear what Symposia’s German lawyer had had to say at the meeting that morning. I called Brussels just before noon.
Neither of my people was there.
I waited twenty minutes and then called again. The operator knew my voice of course, but hers sounded odd. I soon understood why. The person she put me through to was Frank.
‘Hi, Paul.’
There was a tightening of muscles, but I managed to keep my voice level. ‘There seems to be something wrong with the line. I’m calling Brussels.’
‘Nothing wrong with the line, Paul, just with your thinking. I’m sitting in what used to be your office.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, now, that’s what seems to be at the heart of the problem. You don’t see.’
‘So you’re going to explain. Is that it?’
‘No, Paul, it isn’t. Nobody’s giving you any more explanations. You don’t listen to them. Nobody’s giving you any more advice. You don’t take it. So I have the job of telling you what you are going to get from now on.’
‘I can hear a squeaking noise, Frank. It isn’t just your voice. You must be rocking backwards and forwards in that chair of mine. I wouldn’t do that. I keep the spring adjustment on the tight side. If you lean too far back the whole thing’s liable to flip right over. You could hurt yourself.’
I tried to make my concern sound genuine. It sounded genuine enough to make him lose his temper.
‘Don’t get cute with me, Dad. Just shut up and try to listen. You were warned to keep a low profile. You didn’t. You blew it. If Krom had taken you seriously a lot of damage could have been done. Luckily, you didn’t impress him. But now you’ve had it. You were warned extra plainly last time. For a while, we thought we’d finally gotten through to you. But no. You’re like all the rest of the old farts. You’re told, you act like you’ve heard and then you forget what was said to you.’
‘What did I forget, Frank? To fasten my seat belt?’
‘Don’t joke about serious matters, Paul. You’ve had your chances and you’ve been lucky. The Krom situation was contained, no thanks to you. Now what happens? You want to start suing that big prick and open the whole can of worms again.’
‘You’re mixing metaphors on a open line, Frank.’
‘You don’t have anything left to hide, old-timer. It’s all hanging out for everyone to see, including the shareholders, and nobody likes the look of it. So, as of noon today, you’re out. No need for you to worry about the chair I’m sitting in. It’s been fixed and if you think it can still be unfixed, forget it. You’re out on your arse.’
That I could believe. Keeping in touch is never the same as being on the job and Frank has always been an ingenious accountant. He has other skills I’m told. When signatures are needed from persons not immediately available, or willing, to give them, he is able to produce excellent forgeries.
‘You’re not forgetting that I’m a major shareholder, myself, are you?’
‘Twenty per cent is what you have, and I’ll tell you what the deal is there. It’s been okayed from on high, so you can believe me. Right? Want to hear?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Call off the dogs on Krom, buy that nice retirement home you’ve always dreamed of owning in dear old Senior City, and you get a golden handshake. We’ll buy that twenty per cent of yours at book valuation, your book valuation. So what do you say?’