Matters of Honor (29 page)

Adapted? exclaimed de Rham. He’s taken over. If we didn’t want as a matter of policy to have a couple of seniors here to keep an eye on the kiddies, both Warner—he indicated a solidly built man patiently listening to Mrs. Allen—and I could pack up and go home. He has excellent relations with all the
avocats
and
notaires
we deal with and has already reeled in some big fishes. Do you see this man over there—I don’t want to point—the one talking with Henry and the young woman who’s married to a Frenchman?

I nodded.

That’s one of them. A Belgian, Count de Sainte-Terre. Immensely rich and in control of a very aggressive holding company making strategic investments one after another. He’s fallen in love with Henry, or rather the structures Henry’s been inventing for him. A man worth meeting.

XXVIII

T
HE NEXT DAY
Edie went shopping with Margot, Henry was at his office, and I had lunch with George. He showed me new photos of the children and gave me one of my goddaughter, dressed as a Halloween witch, in a Tiffany silver frame engraved with my initials. It was my Christmas present. At some point, I asked about Henry’s new Belgian client.

You mean Goldfinger? George asked. Henry says that’s what they call him behind his back. He knows about it, of course, but doesn’t seem to mind.

I told him I meant the very muscular blond man with ears that stuck out to whom de Rham had referred as the count of something or other.

Right, he said, Hubert de Sainte-Terre. Did you see his wife? She was there too, looking like the lady leading the unicorn. Hubert’s supposed to be the richest man in Belgium, one of the most powerful too. Henry has him eating out of his hand. Last July he got him to ask our group to do his estate plan. The partners in the group now think he can do no wrong. Just to prove my point, I’ll tell you what Billy Rhinelander told me. He was taken in two years ago so he participated in this election. Anyway, Billy said that this time there was only one partner who got one hundred percent of the vote. Guess who!

You, I said.

No, Billy specifically told me it was Henry, though to be honest I have to tell you I can’t believe that anyone voted against me. Or maybe I can—one of those self-appointed censors who are always inveighing against nepotism.

I raised my eyebrows and asked since when did he have uncles or even cousins among the partners.

Of course I don’t. I couldn’t have gotten in the door, they’re so strict about it. But I am Hugh Bowditch’s son-in-law. That’s not nothing, but believe me it’s a double-edged sword. Sure, all the partners know that as a practical matter they can’t turn down a guy whose father-in-law controls thirty percent of the firm’s business unless they have a damn good reason. I’d have to be a real bonehead or really lazy or screw up in a major way. On the other hand, a case like mine sets off all kinds of alarm bells, because Hugh has so much influence. They start to worry about the firm’s depending too much on a single client, the other associates’ perception of unfairness, and on and on. Thank God, nobody can say that I don’t do a good job or don’t pull my weight. My hours are way up there, on a par with the corporate guys.

Henry managed to find time to have dinner with me before I left for Malta, where Tom and I were going to spend the Christmas and New Year’s holidays together. Afterward, he would return to Cambridge. If the island turned out to be as attractive as I had heard, and the climate as mild, I thought I’d stay on, perhaps until summer, if it took that long to finish my book.

Henry had told me to pick him up, and I found him waiting in what would soon be his old office, a nice room with a window on rue Royale. He showed me the one he was moving into as soon as the paper hangers had finished with the wallpaper, which wasn’t paper but silk, and the cabinetmaker had installed the mahogany bookshelves. The new office had two windows overlooking place de la Concorde, was almost as large as old de Rham’s corner office and equal in size to that of the other corporate law partner, Dick Garland, who on the night of the party at Maxim’s was in Amsterdam at the closing of a bond issue. Henry introduced me to this sturdy-looking fellow, perhaps ten years our senior. After I’d shaken his hand I looked at Henry and then again at Garland and suppressed the urge to crack up. On the surface, Henry had come to resemble him and George and, I was certain, all the other bright Wiggins partners more or less his age. How deep did the likeness go? I supposed that among these future grandees of New York, he still saw himself as a Moses—a Moses who had slain no Egyptian for smiting a Hebrew and wasn’t likely to and would neither lead his kinsmen into the wilderness to feast unto the Lord nor go forth into it himself.

This time Henry was the host. He took me to one of his favorite fleshpots in Paris and as soon as we had ordered told me about his holiday plans. He was in high spirits. The de Rhams had an annual Christmas Eve party for lawyers and staff. In the new circumstances, he thought it was his duty to attend and would be glad to do so. They were all nice people. On Christmas Day he was invited to dinner at the Garlands. Two days later he would be picked up at Le Bourget by Hubert de Sainte-Terre’s private plane and taken to St. Moritz for a week of skiing with him and Gilberte—Gilberte, he explained, was Hubert’s wife. He’d stay at their chalet. They would all come back together around January 5. There was an argument for treating most of this time as client development; otherwise it would be charged as vacation days. He wasn’t sure which he’d do; he didn’t really care.

Since when do you ski? I asked.

I don’t, he said. Hubert has told me I must learn, so that I can go with them on their vacations. They’re both passionate about it. He says the teacher he has on retainer in St. Moritz could turn an elephant into an Olympic skier.

In that case, I told him, perhaps you do have a chance. Babar was pretty regal on skis, so why not you?

Why indeed, he replied, though it does seem to me that Babar started younger.

I didn’t remember whether this was so, and I didn’t ask where he had come across Babar, my own acquaintance with him being from books I had bought in Paris for the Standish twins. Instead, I asked by what magic he had conjured up such an important client and become so close to him and his wife.

No magic at all, said Henry, blushing. Pure luck. You remember the van Dammes?

How could I forget Madeleine? I asked. Besides, don’t you remember that she and Etienne were at Margot’s wedding?

Of course, he said, that’s all ancient history. It slipped my mind. Actually, Etienne and I have been seeing each other in New York, pretty much every time he has come through. He’d ask me to dinner to get some free legal advice.

It occurred to me that this would be news to Margot.

The Sainte-Terres, he continued, have been family friends of the van Dammes for generations. Hubert is only a few years older than Etienne, and they are very close. In fact, Madeleine is a cousin of Hubert’s mother-in-law, whose husband—the father-in-law—is a member of the French family at the head of which stands Duc de Grandlieu. Gilberte’s being a Grandlieu is a source of considerable satisfaction for Hubert. Anyway, unlike Etienne, who is a very good businessman but not very ambitious, Hubert is a bird of prey, what the French call
un rapace.
About ten years ago he inherited from his father a profitable but relatively small Belgian bank—Banque de Sainte-Terre.

Palestine! I interjected.

Shut up, said Henry. As the only child, he inherited all his father’s shares and became by far the largest shareholder, with something like sixty-five percent of the capital, the rest being held by some of Belgium’s best-known companies. Belgium, in case you don’t know, is the land of holding companies. Companies invest in each other’s shares and then scratch each other’s backs. A few years ago, when Hubert set out on a buying spree of companies, Belgian, French, and Dutch, he was able to get his shareholders to join forces with him. Usually, he and those shareholders as a group take control. In Europe that doesn’t necessarily mean buying a majority of the capital. Bearer shares rarely vote, so a much smaller position can give you control, or at least a veto over any important corporate move. Take Banque Industrielle d’Occident. Occident is worth perhaps twice, some people say three times, as much as Hubert’s bank, Banque de Sainte-Terre, and has most of its value in businesses outside of France. Banque de Sainte-Terre has control over that bank although it owns only about forty percent of the capital and the vote. It was one hell of an investment. Of course, when I say that Sainte-Terre owns all those shares, I don’t mean that it acquired them directly. For tax and bank regulatory reasons, it’s often done through intermediate holding companies located in countries with a particularly favorable tax regime. The Netherlands and Luxembourg are used a lot. In some cases Switzerland may be better, but it has lots of problems. Using holding companies, by the way, makes financing this sort of acquisition easier because third parties can be brought in as equity investors all the way up the line, so that you take effective control with minimum capital outlay.

I raised my hand to stop the rush of words while the waiter refilled my wineglass. Henry’s enthusiasm for this esoterica took me right back, I thought, to the evening so many years ago when he first spoke to me about
Ubu Roi.
There was something zanily wonderful about it.

Apparently having judged the pause long enough, Henry went on. You can imagine that such operations, especially if they involve more than one country, as Hubert’s almost always do, eventually result in complex legal structures and very tricky tax problems. Believe me, even if the basic business is sound, the real profits depend on structure. In order to realize tax savings in each country that’s involved, you have to make these transactions sing under company laws and currency control and banking regulations. Otherwise, you’ve bungled it.

All right, I interrupted, that’s very interesting, but how does that put you and Hubert together?

Excuse me, he said. I do get carried away. Who would have thought that this stuff would become my passion? To answer your question, the van Dammes put us together; it’s that simple. Hubert and Gilberte were at Bayencourt. Etienne was there as well. They talked about business, and Hubert said that he’d been looking without success for a suitable American lawyer who could act as his general adviser. He wanted someone based in Europe but American trained, with the resources of a first-class American firm behind him, ready to jump in when the right opportunity presents itself and he tries to enter the American market. Etienne mentioned some senior lawyers doing international work in Paris and London. Hubert had already seen them all and was unimpressed. In some cases it was a lack of personal chemistry; in a couple of others he wasn’t sure that the particular lawyer would be willing—or even able, given his other commitments—to give him full-time attention. Between him and his bank, he said, he had enough work to keep a partner and a team of associates going full tilt. He had come to think he needed someone younger. As soon as they heard this, Madeleine said that she and Etienne knew the right lawyer for him. Between you and me, Henry said, blushing, I don’t know how she could have any idea of my legal skills or talent or why anyone would trust her on that subject. But Etienne, who does know these things, chimed in and said all sorts of extravagantly flattering things about me. I gathered that he had been making inquiries about my reputation for his own purposes. Perhaps he was trying to decide whether one day he would hire me and pay for my time. Anyway, this conversation was in early June. Hubert came to Paris shortly afterward and invited me to his office to discuss a possible project. He grilled me for about two hours about my studies, the work I had been doing at the firm, and how I would solve various hypothetical problems and, believe it or not, about Latin and Greek poets. He’s something of a classicist himself. I sensed that the session was coming to an end, when he asked, as if it were an afterthought, By the way, why aren’t you listed in Martindale & Hubbell as a partner in your firm? I said, It’s simple; I’m not a partner. I wanted desperately to say I wasn’t a partner yet, but I didn’t dare. I see, he said, you’ve been passed over. I pulled myself together and explained that my turn hadn’t come yet. He shook his head saying, Etienne might have told me. I thought that was that; he’d thank me for having taken the trouble to see him. Instead, he looked at me very intently and said he was willing to bet I’d make it. And I was hired!

Quite a story, I said.

He’s quite a fellow. It’s the most exciting work I can imagine. Besides, we’ve become friends. If I didn’t know that he likes women a lot, in fact too much, I’d wonder whether I should be on my guard.

Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re much as queer bait, I told him.

Of course not, he answered, excuse me. But, speaking very seriously, I would like you to meet Hubert and Gilberte. You’d hit it off. I’ve talked a lot about you.

I told Henry that would have to wait until late spring or early fall, depending on how long I remained in Malta and what I did in the summer.

Whenever you can will be fine, he answered. In the meantime I’ll get them your books.

By the way, I asked, how did you manage to remain on such good terms with Madeleine even though I gather the more intense part of the friendship is over?

A rare diplomatic triumph of mine, he said. I remained available in theory but more and more busy in practice, and then a year passed and soon the other thing was no longer there. It had evaporated.

T
OM CAME DOWN WITH PNEUMONIA
within hours of his arrival. We thought it was treated skillfully by the Italian doctor recommended by the hotel. All the same, it cast a pall over the holidays, and I was relieved to be able to put him on the plane for Rome. He planned to spend a few days at the American Academy before the long flight to New York and then Boston. I stayed on in Malta. The old-fashioned hotel and its mostly empty restaurant suited me so well that after I sent off my corrected manuscript I got to work immediately on some short stories that I hoped could be published together in book form. It was late June before I returned to Paris, in the midst of a heat wave. Henry was in Brussels attending meetings at the Banque de Sainte-Terre headquarters, and his secretary told me that he wasn’t likely to be back for another week or ten days. Over the intervening weekend he would stay with the count and countess. She discouraged me from acting on the idea, which had immediately crossed my mind, that I could go to Brussels for the night and have dinner with him.

He will be much too busy, she said. They work very late and have food brought into the conference room.

She gave me his telephone number, however, and asked whether the photos of Henry on skis during his second trip with the Sainte-Terres, which he had directed her to send to my hotel, had reached me. Indeed, they had, and I apologized for not having acknowledged their arrival. They showed Henry in a black snowsuit, poles tucked under his arms, his knees bent, executing a turn on a steep-looking slope. I called at the end of the afternoon and told him I was in Paris for just a few days and would like to see him. He confirmed what the secretary had told me: even if he could get away for a meal, it wouldn’t be fun. He was too wrapped up in what he was doing.