He found reminders of his past life as he walked past the jewellers where he had bought Jutte’s birthday present only the week before she died. He paused briefly to look in the window and rested the tips of his fingers lightly on the glass for a few seconds before moving on past other expensive shops, which had once contributed significantly to his lifestyle: they now seemed very alien. He turned his back on them and set out to find freedom down by the shores of the lake. As he waited to cross the busy road, a white Citroen was in the parade of cars that passed by. Unknown to him, it contained Jean-Paul Rives and the music of Vivaldi.
Rives spent the entire morning working on a revision of the price of Lehman Steiner products in Italy. Serious instability in the Italian government had meant that company profit margins had been stretched to their limit. Something would have to be done and it was his decision to recommend a ten- per cent rise across the board. He further decided that this should be implemented over a period of three months and gave a grunt of satisfaction as he closed the file and leaned back in his chair to stretch his arms in the air.
‘Lunch?’ suggested a colleague.
Rives shook his head, saying that he was going to get some fresh air and grab a sandwich.
After ten minutes spent enjoying the sunshine and taking deep breaths, Rives returned to the Lehman Steiner building with his sandwich and a plastic mug of coffee, which threatened to burn his fingers by the time he got to the third floor. He had to run the final few steps before hurriedly depositing it on his desk and blowing his fingertips.
He had been working on Italy all morning so Rives set up his test equation for that country. It took forty-five minutes to go through the analysis and for him to be satisfied that there was no serious imbalance in assets against investments. With a sigh he consigned Italy to the waste-paper basket and moved on to the next country.
Fifty minutes later Rives was looking at a serious imbalance. Excitement grew as he checked again, cautioning himself that he had been caught out once before and a perfectly rational explanation was possible. This time however, there was no chain of Pharmacies in the pipeline to account for the discrepancy in the figures. There really was an imbalance and what was more; it amounted to approximately 18 million dollars. He’d found the country where X14 was located.
Rives’ throat went dry with excitement. He drained the dregs from his coffee cup and couldn’t stop staring at the screen. He had come this far; was it conceivable that he could find out a bit more? Could he ask the computer to account for the imbalance? He typed in the question and the computer confirmed what he had just worked out for himself. The impassive lettering on the screen said, ‘X14 Account’.
Rives’s colleagues were all back from lunch and he had to return to the demands of the day. He decided he’d work late again and, for the moment, put X14 out of his mind while he worked on an appropriate price rise for Lehman Steiner’s products in Sweden. He also added a recommendation that one of their shampoos, which was selling very badly, be withdrawn altogether from the Scandinavian market. He tried twice to reach Eva during the course of the afternoon but once more had to leave a message with the clinic secretary to say that he would be late home.
By six thirty Rives was all alone in the office and had worked out his next plan of action. He would request access to the X14 file but would not really expect to get it. If and when that failed, he would go back to the original account numbers given to the X14 project. He had access to these and he knew that they had not been changed. Now that he knew which country was involved, there was a good chance he could trace which bank in that country was dealing with the financing of X14. Once that was established, a bank sort code might lead him to the city where X14 was located.
Rives requested access to the X14 file but the word, RESTRICTED, appeared on the screen followed by a request for his personal password. Without thinking, Rives typed it in and again was told, RESTRICTED. This time he was asked for his priority code number. Thinking that this might grant him access, Rives typed in the number and waited. NO ACCESS said the computer and Rives shrugged his shoulders. It was back to the numbers game.
There were sixteen relevant banks in the country Rives was interested in; two nationals and fourteen merchant banks with which Lehman Steiner did business. Rives wrote down the sorting codes for each and set out to find if any of them appeared in the account numbers he had listed for X14. By nine o’ clock he had found out which merchant bank was involved and by half past, he knew exactly where X14 was located. He phoned Eva at home and told her of his success. She was delighted and excited, saying that she would call MacLean immediately and ask him round to hear the good news. ‘How long will you be?’ she asked.
‘About half and hour.’
ELEVEN
As Rives was clearing his desk, he suddenly had the feeling that he was not alone. He paused as he imagined that he’d heard the squeaking hinge of a door somewhere along the corridor but there was nothing but the hum of the air conditioner and an intermittent buzz from a strip-light that needed replacing. He continued clearing things away and was fastening the clip on his briefcase when he heard movement outside in the corridor. ‘Is anyone there?’ he called out into the darkness. There was no reply.
Rives berated himself for being so jumpy. He put it down to the darkness and the fact that he had been doing something the company would rather he hadn’t. There was nothing quite like guilt for distorting things out of all proportion, he concluded. He checked his desk for the last time and walked to the elevator. Somewhere far above, the winding gear whirred into life and the indicator lights above the door flashed silently on and off as they tracked the rise of the car.
The doors slid back and he was about to step inside when he was suddenly joined by two men, one on either side of him. They appeared to have materialised out of nowhere. Rives was startled and blurted out something about not realising that there had been other people working on the floor. Neither man replied but all three got into the elevator. Rives pressed the button for the basement garage and his companions seemed content with that.
Rives was afraid. The two men did not look like any members of staff he’d seen before in the building. The taller of the two had a distinctively yellow complexion, almost jaundiced, he thought, while the other was short, squat and fair with a squarish head that seemed to grow directly out of his shoulders. Both men stared into the middle distance as the elevator descended.
The doors opened and the smell of petrol and car wax heralded their arrival in the garage. Rives was just beginning to think that he had been worrying about nothing when he felt his elbows being gripped and he was steered quickly towards a black, Mercedes estate car. He protested and started to struggle but the short man held up a pistol to his head and motioned with the barrel towards the car.