The Business

'What a colourful turn of phrase you employ, Kathryn.'

'Thank you.  Yes, I'm firing on all cylinders, Mr H, which is probably more than can be said for Adrian's Ferrari.'

'Indeed.  As I said, he is very upset.'

'Tough.  So, let me run this past you, Mr H: a senior executive in a venerable but still vital business organisation specialising in long-term investment sets up an unofficial and cleverly sited dealing room in a factory which the very people he's cheating on are keeping secure.  He makes, oh, I don't know how much money, stashes it in several accounts, probably here in the land of the oversize Toblerone bar, and then sends one of the account numbers to the chief executive officer of a Japanese corporation via an unorthodox route involving somebody's mouth.  Oh, and this CEO — according to my latest research — has just resigned and bought himself his own golf course outside Kyoto.  Now that must have cost a pretty penny, don't you think?  However, most of the money will be used to buy a small and very low-lying piece of oceanic land, a personal pocket state for our enterprising exec.  It's all a double-bluff, maybe even three-cup trick.  The Business is fooled once, by its own decoy in the Pacific, while the Seats are fooled twice, once in the —'

'Kathryn, if I can just stop you there.'

'Yes, Mr Hazleton?'

'I'd just like to point out that the CIA and other US agencies regularly monitor cellphone transmissions in the Caribbean area.  They're usually looking for drug-dealers, but I'm sure anything else of interest they happened to hear would be passed on to the relevant governmental department.'

'Such as the State Department?'

'Exactly.  Let's just say I understand what you're getting at without you having to go into any more detail.  It's all very interesting indeed, in a hypothetical sort of way, but where exactly does this leave us?'

'It leaves you with a choice, Mr Hazleton.'

'And what would you suggest that is?  I suspect you're dying to tell me.'

'Beyond a confession extracted — and recorded, I might add — under some duress, a few specialised land-line connectors and some circumstantial stuff, I don't really have that much evidence.'

'Yes.  And?  But?'

'But the evidence must be there.  I'm sure the Essex kids could be traced easily enough, for example, with the right resources.'

'The Essex kids?'

'That's what the regular people at Silex called the eager beavers wheeling and dealing for you in the secret room.'

'Ah-hah.'

'It wouldn't take much to get a serious investigation going, Mr Hazleton.  Frankly I'm not entirely sure if there were other Level Ones involved, but I guess just telling all of them would get things moving.'

'That's the sort of thing that might split the Business, Kathryn.  If there were other Board members involved.'

'That's a risk one might just have to take.  Anyway, I suspect our fellow was acting alone.  The point is that even if one or two others are implicated, the entire Board can't be involved or there would be no need to hide everything like this in the first place.  No matter how you cut it, the person behind this scam would be in very serious trouble indeed.'

'Of course, they might be rich enough not to care.'

'They were rich enough not to have to undertake all this in the first place.  The sort of person who'd organise this sort of wheeze does it because they love the organising, the gamesmanship of it all, the buzz of getting away with adding a zero to their personal worth just for the sheer hell of it, not because they actually need the money to spend on anything.'

'You shouldn't underestimate the developing ambitions of rich people, Kathryn.  One might decide it would be interesting to take on Rupert Murdoch in the international media business, for example.  That would take a lot of cash.'

'So would buying up a plot as expensive as the low-lying property we're talking about and then what?  Selling it on to somebody else who might want their own state?  Keeping it banked?  Whatever.  The person behind all this isn't going to be able to do any of that any more; they've been found out.  The game is up and the ball is most comprehensively on the slates.'

'It is?'

'Scottish saying.  Are you still with me, Mr H?'

'I think so.  So, let's proceed on the basis of this hypothesis then.  For amusement value only, of course.'

'Of course.  Thing is, there might be a way out of a total loss situation for our hypothetical miscreant.'

'Might there?'

'If the person involved were to present the deal he had struck selfishly for himself to the organisation he is part of, if he were simply to give what he had worked for to his peers, asking for nothing from them except perhaps their thanks, then I think they might be surprised — even shocked — and suspicious, but they would be grateful, too.  It would be nod-and-a-wink stuff, but they might decide not to investigate exactly how this coup was arrived at.  They might simply accept the gift in the spirit in which it was apparently offered.'

'Hmm.  Of course, the person doing the presenting might be watched rather carefully in future by the others, in case he got up to any more mischievous schemes.'

'A small price to pay for basically getting away with the crime, even if not actually benefiting from it.  The alternative is much worse.  Frankly, if I were a fellow Board member I might think about making a very terminal example of somebody who had betrayed my trust so comprehensively.'

'My, you are unforgiving, Kathryn.  Perhaps we had better all hope you never make it to the very top.'

'Oh, I'm not totally ruthless, Mr Hazleton.  I told Stephen Buzetski his wife was cheating on him without expecting anything else in return.'

'More wasted effort, Kathryn.  You could have used that information so much more constructively.'

'Call me a sentimentalist.'

'How did he take it?'

'He sounded as if he was in shock.'

'You realise he will probably hate you for ever for telling him?'

'Yes.  But at least I feel better about myself than if I'd got him told on the quiet by your people.'

'So you are quite selfish, in the end, aren't you, Kathryn?  Just like me.'

'That's right.  It just takes a different form.'

'Indeed.  Well, there we are.  I imagine if I was in the situation you describe I would start taking steps to do something very like what you've suggested as soon as possible.  Deliver that present well before Christmas.'

'That would seem appropriate.'

'Of course, there is a link in all this to that other, diametrically not low-lying, location.'

'I was coming to that.'

I had never felt so frightened.  I thought I knew the way we worked, I thought I had an idea what we would stop at, or at least what we would stop at in what circumstances, but I wasn't sure.  I felt vulnerable, sitting there in the park, waiting for Hans to return with my bags.  What if the conspiracy went beyond Hazleton?  What if in some bizarre way they were all behind it?  Or just Madame Tchassot, and maybe Dessous, and Cholongai?  That only left a dozen other Board members, some of them very inactive.  What if I was up against too many of them, what if this was their power base, their stronghold?  What if I'd somehow missed some crucial undercurrent of meaning and threat the previous evening, what if I'd totally misconstrued everything?

I swung back and forth, looking through the bare branches at the distant château.  Maybe there was a sniper lining me up in his sights right now.  Would I get a glimpse of a laser flickering redly around the twigs of the trees between me and the château?  Maybe a snatch squad was already an its way from the compound.  Maybe I'd disappear into the vaults and catacombs that riddled the mountain behind the château, maybe I'd end up old and out of my mind in the Antarctic base in Kronprinsesse Euphemia Land.  Maybe Hans had instructions only to drive me towards the airport, and then stop suddenly at a lonely prearranged rendezvous where Colin Walker would suddenly appear, looking regretful and carrying a silenced automatic.