He passed under a red, white and green awning which left no doubt of the proprietor’s origins, and pushed open the door. It took a few moments for his eyes to grow accustomed to the light, or lack of it. When they did, he was relieved to find that the place was empty except for a solitary figure seated at a small table at the far end of the room, toying with a half-empty glass of tomato juice. His smart, well-cut suit gave no indication that he was unemployed. Although the man still had the build of an athlete, his prematurely balding dome made him look older than the age given in his file. Their eyes met, and the man nodded. He walked over and took the seat opposite him.
‘My name is Andy...’ he began.
‘The mystery, Mr Lloyd, is not who you are, but why the President’s Chief of Staff should want to see me in the first place,’ said Chris Jackson.
‘And what is your specialist field?’ Stuart McKenzie asked.
Maggie glanced at her husband, knowing he wouldn’t welcome such an intrusion into his professional life.
Connor realised that Tara couldn’t have warned the latest young man to fall under her spell not to discuss her father’s work.
Until that moment, he couldn’t remember enjoying a lunch more. Fish that must have been caught only hours before they had sat down at the corner table in the little beach café at Cronulla. Fruit that had never seen preservatives or a tin, and a beer he hoped they exported to Washington. Connor took a gulp of coffee before leaning back in his chair and watching the surfers only a hundred yards away — a sport he wished he’d discovered twenty years before. Stuart had been surprised by how fit Tara’s father was when he tried out the surfboard for the first time. Connor bluffed by telling him that he still worked out two or three times a week. Two or three times a day would have been nearer the truth.
Although he would never consider anyone good enough for his daughter, Connor had to admit that over the past few days he had come to enjoy the young lawyer’s company.
‘I’m in the insurance business,’ he replied, aware that his daughter would have told Stuart that much.
‘Yes, Tara said you were a senior executive, but she didn’t go into any details.’
Connor smiled. ‘That’s because I specialise in kidnap and ransom, and have the same attitude to client confidentiality that you take for granted in your profession.’ He wondered if that would stop the young Australian pursuing the subject. It didn’t.
‘Sounds a lot more interesting than most of the run-of-the-mill cases I’m expected to advise on,’ said Stuart, trying to draw him out.
‘Ninety per cent of what I do is fairly routine and boring,’ Connor said. ‘In fact, I suspect I have even more paperwork to deal with than you do.’
‘But I don’t get trips to South Africa.’
Tara glanced anxiously in her father’s direction, knowing that he wouldn’t be pleased that this information had been passed on to a relative stranger. But Connor showed no sign of being annoyed.
‘Yes, I have to admit my job has one or two compensations.’
‘Would it be breaking client confidentiality to take me through a typical case?’
Maggie was about to intervene with a line she had used many times in the past, when Connor volunteered, ‘The company I work for represents several corporate clients who have large overseas interests.’
‘Why don’t those clients use companies from the country involved? Surely they’d have a better feel for the local scene.’
‘Con,’ interrupted Maggie, ‘I think you’re burning. Perhaps we ought to get back to the hotel before you begin to look like a lobster.’
Connor was amused by his wife’s unconvincing intervention, especially as she had made him wear a hat for the past hour.
‘It’s never quite that easy,’ he said to the young lawyer. ‘Take a company like Coca-Cola, for example — whom, I should point out, we don’t represent. They have offices all over the world, employing tens of thousands of staff. In each country they have senior executives, most of whom have families.’
Maggie couldn’t believe that Connor had allowed the conversation to go this far. They were fast approaching the question that always stopped any further enquiry dead in its tracks.
‘But we have people well qualified to carry out such work in Sydney,’ said Stuart, leaning forward to pour Connor some more coffee. ‘After all, kidnap and ransom isn’t unknown even in Australia.’
‘Thank you,’ said Connor. He took another gulp while he considered this statement. Stuart’s scrutiny didn’t falter — like a good prosecuting counsel, he waited patiently in the hope that the witness would at some stage offer an unguarded response.
‘The truth is that I’m never called in unless there are complications.’
‘Complications?’
‘Let’s say, for example, that a company has a large presence in a country where crime is rife and kidnap and ransom fairly common. The chairman of that company — although it’s more likely to be his wife, because she will have far less day-to-day protection — is kidnapped.’
‘That’s when you move in?’
‘No, not necessarily. After all, the local police may well be experienced at handling such problems, and there aren’t many firms that welcome outside interference, especially when it comes from the States. Often I’ll do no more than fly in to the capital city and start carrying out my own private enquiries. If I’ve visited that part of the world before and built up a rapport with the local police, I might make my presence known, but even then I’d still wait for them to ask me for assistance.’
‘What if they don’t?’ asked Tara. Stuart was surprised that she had apparently never asked her father that question before.
‘Then I have to go it alone,’ said Connor, ‘which makes the process all the more precarious.’
‘But if the police aren’t making any headway, why wouldn’t they want to enlist your help? They must be aware of your particular expertise,’ said Stuart.
‘Because it’s not unknown for the police to be involved at some level themselves.’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ said Tara.
‘The local police could be receiving part of the ransom,’ suggested Stuart, ‘so they wouldn’t welcome any outside interference. In any case, they might think the foreign company involved could well afford to pay it.’
Connor nodded. It was quickly becoming clear why Stuart had landed a job with one of the most prestigious criminal practices in Sydney.
‘So what do you do if you think the local police might be taking a cut?’ asked Stuart.
Tara began to wish she had warned Stuart not to push his luck too far, although she was fast coming to the conclusion that Australians had no idea where ‘too far’ was.
‘When that happens you have to consider opening negotiations yourself, because if your client is killed, you can be sure that the ensuing investigation won’t exactly be thorough, and it’s unlikely that the kidnappers will ever be caught.’
‘And once you’ve agreed to negotiate, what’s your opening gambit?’
‘Well, let’s assume that the kidnapper demands a million dollars — kidnappers always ask for a round figure, usually in US dollars. Like any professional negotiator, my primary responsibility is to get the best possible deal. And the most important element of that is making sure that the company’s employee comes to no harm. But I would never allow things to reach the negotiation stage if I felt that my client could be released without the company having to hand over a penny. The more you pay out, the more likely it is that the criminal will repeat the exercise a few months later, sometimes kidnapping exactly the same person.’