“Six months?”
“Unless—well, unless I can qualify for an experimental treatment the insurance won’t even begin to cover, which my physician tells me is almost a miracle, with something like a ninety percent remission rate… but really, forgive me, Mason—I didn’t call you all the way from England to talk about my health problems. I’m a banker—and we have a transaction to discuss.”
He didn’t respond, but he was thinking of Jan, of course he was, because how can anybody—insurers, doctors, hospitals—put a price on the life of a human being?
“What I need you to do, Mason—Mason, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Good. I need you to deposit twenty thousand dollars American in the account we’ve opened up at your bank, so as to cover the funds I’ve transferred to you until they clear. You see, I will need access to those funds in order to grease certain palms in the Royal Fiduciary Bureau—you have this expression, do you not? Greasing palms?”
“I don’t—I mean, I’ll have to make a withdrawal from my retirement, which might take a few days—”
“A few days?” Shovelin threw back at him in a tone of disbelief. “Don’t you appreciate that time is of the essence here? Everyone in this world, sadly enough, is not as upright as you and I. I’m talking about graft, Mason, graft at the highest levels of government bureaucracy. We must grease the palms—or the wheels, isn’t that how you say it?—to make certain that there are no hitches with the full disbursement of the funds.”
There was a silence. He could hear the uncertain wash of the connection, as of the sea probing the shore. England was a long way off. “Okay,” he heard himself say into the void.
But it wasn’t a void: Shovelin was there still. “There are too few men of honor in this world,” he said ruefully. “Do you know what they say of me in the banking industry? ‘Shovelin’s word is his honor and his honor is his word.’” He let out a sigh. “I only wish it were true for the unscrupulous bureaucrats we’re dealing with here. The palm greasers.” He let out a chuckle, deep and rolling and self-amused. “Or, to be more precise, the greasees.”
Two weeks later he was on the phone again, and if he was upset, he couldn’t help himself.
“Yes, yes,” Shovelin said dismissively. “I understand your concern, but let me assure you, Mason, we are on top of this matter.”
“But the people at my bank? The Bank of America? They say there’s a problem with the check—”
“A small matter. All I can say is that it’s a good thing we used this as a test case, because think of the mess we’d be in if we’d deposited the whole sum of $30,558,780, which, by the way, is what our accountants have determined your share to be, exclusive of fees. If any.”
He was seeing the scene at the bank all over again, the cold look of the teller, who seemed to think he was some sort of flimflam man—or worse, senile, useless, old. They’d sat him down at the desk of the bank manager, a full-figured young woman with plump butterfly lips and a pair of black eyes that bored right into you, and she’d explained that the check had been drawn on insufficient funds and was in effect worthless. Embarrassed—worse, humiliated—he’d shuffled out into the sunlight blinking as if he’d been locked up in a cave all this time.
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“Just what you—and I, and Miss Afunu-Jones—have been doing: exerting a little control, a little patience, Mason. The fact is, I am going to have to ask you to make another deposit. There is one man at the RFB standing in our way, a scoundrel, really—and I’ll name him, why not? Richard Hyde-Jeffers. One of those men born with the gold spoon in his mouth but who is always greedy for more, as if that were the only subject they tutored him in at Oxford: greed.”
“He wants a bribe?”
“Exactly.”
“How much?’
“He wants twenty thousand more. Outrageous, I know. But you’ve—we’ve—already invested twenty thousand in him, the greedy pig, and we wouldn’t want to see that go down the drain—do you use that expression, ‘down the drain’?—or watch the deal of a lifetime wither on the vine right in front of our eyes.”
Shovelin was silent a moment, allowing him to process all this. Which, he had to admit, was difficult, increasingly difficult. Nothing was as it seemed. The house slipped away from him again, everything in motion, as if an earthquake had struck. Spots drifted before his eyes. The phone was cast of iron.
“I promise you,” Shovelin said, his voice gone deeper yet in a sort of croon, “as I live and breathe, this will be the end of it.”
He’d never been comfortable in the air, never liked the feeling of helplessness and mortal peril that came over him as the great metallic cage lifted off the tarmac and hurtled into the atmosphere, and over the years he’d made a point of flying as little as possible. His most memorable—and relaxing—vacations had been motor trips he and Jan had taken, usually to one national park or the other or just exploring little out-of-the way towns in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia. The last flight he’d been on—to Hawaii, with Jan, to celebrate their golden anniversary, or was it the silver?—had been nightmarishly bumpy, so much so he’d thought at one point the plane was going down and he’d wound up, embarrassingly, having to use the air-sickness bag. He couldn’t help thinking about that as he found his way down the crowded aisle to his seat in economy, both his knees throbbing from his descent down the jetbridge and his lower back burning from the effort of lugging his oversized suitcase, which he’d randomly stuffed with far too many clothes and even an extra pair of shoes, though he was only staying two nights in London. At the expense—and insistence—of Yorkshire Bank PLC.
In the four months that had dragged by since he’d first received the letter, his expenses had mounted to the point at which he’d begun to question the whole business. That little voice again. It nagged him, told him he was a fool, being taken, and yet every time he protested, Graham—or sometimes Chevette—telephoned to mollify him. Yes, there was graft, and yes, part of the problem was Graham’s health, which had kept him out of the office at crucial junctures in the negotiations with Mr. Hyde-Jeffers of the Royal Fiduciary Bureau, but he needed to have faith, not simply in the Yorkshire Bank PLC but in Graham Shovelin’s word, which was his honor, as his honor was his word. Still, Mason had posted funds for fees, bribes, something Chevette called “vigorish,” and beyond that to help defray Graham’s medical expenses and even, once, to underwrite a graduation party for Chevette’s niece, Evangeline, whose father had been run over by a bus and tragically killed the very week of his daughter’s graduation (Mason had been presented with an itemized bill for the gown, corsage, limousine, and dinner at a Moroccan restaurant that had cost a staggering $1500). All to be reimbursed, of course, once the funds were released.
It was Graham who’d suggested he come to London to see for himself “how the land lies,” as he put it. “After all this time, to tell me that you don’t have absolute faith in me, my friend—my friend and partner—is to wound me deeply,” Graham had said, pouring himself into the phone one late night in a conversation that must have gone on for an hour or more. “You hurt my reputation,” he said in a wounded voice, “and worse than that, Mason, worse than that, you hurt my pride. And really, for a man in my condition, facing an uncertain future and the final accounting up above, what else is there for me to hold on to? Beyond love. Love and friendship, Mason.” He’d let out a deep sigh. “I am sending you an airline ticket by overnight mail,” he said. “You want your eyes opened? I will open them for you.”