Paper Money (22 page)

had been no mention of the oil license. Hamilton shares had dropped five

points on yesterday, and trading was moderate.

He finished demolishing the envelope and dropped the scraps into a metal

wastepaper basket. The oil license should have been announced an hour

ago.

He picked up the blue phone and dialed 123.

"At the third stroke, the time will be one, forty seven and fifty

seconds." The announcement was more than an hour late. He dialed the

Department of Energy and asked for the Press Office. A woman told him:

"The Secretary of State has been delayed. The Press conference will

begin as soon as he arrives, and the announcement will be made

immediately he opens the conference"

The hell with your delays, Laski thought: I've got a fortune riding on

this.

He pressed the intercom. "Carol?" There was no reply. He bellowed:

"Carol!"

The girl poked her head around the door. "I'm sorry, I was at the filing

cabinet."

"Get me some coffee."

"Certainly."

He took from his "in" tray a file headed: Precision Tubing-Sales Report,

1st Quarter. It was a piece of routine espionage on a firm he was

thinking of taking over. He had a theory that capital equipment tended

to do well when a slump was bottoming out. But does Precision have the

capacity for expansion? he wondered.

He looked at the first page of the report, winced at the sales

director's indigestible prose, and tossed the file aside. When he took a

gamble and lost, he could accept it with equanimity. What threw him was

something going wrong for unknown reasons. He knew he would not be able

to concentrate on anything until the Shield business was settled.

He fingered the sharp crease of his trousers, and thought about Tony

Cox. He had taken to the young hoodlum, despite his obvious

homosexuality, because he sensed what the English called a kindred

spirit. Like Laski, Cox had come from poverty to wealth on

determination, opportunism, and ruthlessness. Also like Laski, he tried

in small ways to take the edge off his lower-class manners Laski was

doing it better, but only because he had been practicing longer.

Cox wanted to be like Laski and he would make it by the time he was in

his fifties, he would be a distinguished, gray-haired City gent.

Laski realized he did not have a single sound reason for trusting Cox.

There was his instinct, of course, which told him the young man was

honest with people he knew: but the Tony Coxes of this world were

practiced deceivers. Had he simply invented the whole thing about Tim

Fitzpeterson?

The television set screened the Hamilton Holdings price again: it was

down another point. Laski wished they wouldn't use that damn computer

typeface, all horizontal and vertical lines: it strained his eyes. He

began to calculate what he stood to lose if Hamilton did not get the

license.

If he could sell the 510,000 shares right now, he would have lost only a

few thousand pounds. But it would not be possible to dump the lot at the

market value. And the price was still slipping. Say a loss of twenty

thousand at the outside. And a psychological setback--damage to his

reputation as a winner.

Was there anything else at risk? What Cox planned to do with the

information Laski had supplied was certain to be criminal. However,

since Laski did not actually know about it, he could not be convicted of

conspiracy.

There was still Britain's Official Secrets Act-mild by East European

standards, but a formidable piece of legislation. It was illegal to

approach a civil servant and get from him confidential data. Proving

that Laski had done that would be difficult, but not impossible. He had

asked Peters whether he had a big day ahead, and Peters had said:

"One of the days." Then Laski had said to Cox:

"It's today." Well, if Cox and Peters could be persuaded to testify,

then Laski would be convicted. But Peters did not even know he had given

away a secret, and nobody would think of asking him. Suppose Cox was

arrested? The British police had ways of squeezing information out of

people, even if they did not use baseball bats. Cox might say he got the

information from Laski, then they would check Laski's movements on the

day, and they might discover he had taken coffee with Peters.

It was a pretty distant possibility. Laski was more worried about

finishing off the Hamilton deal.

The phone rang. Laski answered: "Yes?" "It's Threadneedle Street-Mr.

Ley," Carol said Laski tutted. "It's probably about the Cotton Bank. Put

him on to Jones."

"He's been through to the Cotton Bank, and Mr. Jones has gone home."

"Gone home? All right, I'll take it."

He heard Carol say: "I have Mr. Laski for you now."

"Laski?" The voice was high-pitched, the accent an aristocratic drawl.

"Yes."

"Ley here, Bank of England." are you?"

"Good afternoon. Now look here, old chap" --Laski rolled his eyes at

this phrase. "you've made out rather a large check to Fett and Company."

Laski paled. "My God, have they presented it already?"

"Yes, well; I rather gathered the ink was still wet. Now the thing is,

it's drawn on the Cotton Bank, as you obviously know, and the poor

little Cotton Bank can't cover it. Do you follow me?"

"Of course I follow you." The bloody man was talking as if to a child.

Nothing annoyed Laski more. "Clearly, my instructions as to the

arrangements for providing these funds have not been followed. However,

perhaps I can plead that my staff might well have thought they had a

little time to spare."

"Mmm. It's nice, really, to have the funds ready before you sign the

damn thing, you know, just to be safe, don't you think?"

Laski thought fast. Damn, this need not have happened if the

announcement had been made on time. And where the devil was Jones?

"You may have guessed that the check is payment for a controlling

interest in Hamilton Holdings. I should think those shares would stand

as security-" "Oh, dear me, no," Ley . "That really wouldn't do. The

Bank of England is not in business to finance speculation on the stock

market."

Maybe not, Laski thought; but if the announcement had been made, and you

knew that Hamilton Holdings now had an oil well, you wouldn't be making

this fuss. It occurred to him that perhaps they did know, and Hamilton

had not got the oil well; hence the phone call. He felt angry.

"Look, you're a bank," he said. "I'll pay you the rate for

twenty-four-hour money--"

"The Bank is not accustomed to being in the money market."

Laski raised his voice. "You know damn well I can cover that check with

ease, given a little time!

If you return it, my reputation is gone. Are you going to ruin me for

the sake of a lousy million overnight and a foolish tradition?"

Ley's voice went very cold. "Mr. Laski, our traditions exist

specifically for the purpose of ruining people who sign checks they

cannot honor. If this draft cannot be cleared today, I shall ask the

payee to re-present. That means, in effect, that you have an hour and a

half in which to make a cash deposit of one million pounds at

Threadneedle Street. Good day." "Damn you," Laski said, but the line was

dead He cradled the receiver, cracking the plastic of the phone. His

mind raced. There had to be a way of raising a million instantly ...

didn't there?

His coffee had arrived while he was on the phone. He had not noticed

Carol come in. He sipped it, and made a face.

"Carol!" he shouted.

She opened the door. "Yes?"

Red-faced and trembling, he threw the delicate china cup into the metal

wastepaper basket, where it shattered noisily. He bellowed: "The bloody

coffee is cold!"

The girl turned around and fled.

TWO P.M. YOUNG BILLY JOHNSON was looking for Tony Cox, but he kept

forgetting this.

He had got out of the house quite fast after they all returned from the

hospital. His mother was doing a lot of screaming, there were a few

policemen hanging around, and Jacko had been carted off to the station

to help with inquiries. The neighbors and relatives who kept dropping in

added to the confusion. Billy liked quiet.

Nobody seemed disposed to get his lunch or pay him any attention; so he

ate a packet of ginger biscuits and went out the back way, telling Mrs.

Glebe from three doors down that he was going up to his auntie's to

watch her color television.

He had been getting things sorted out as he walked. Walking helped him

to think. When he found himself baffled, he could look at the cars and

the shops and the people for a while, to rest his mind.

He went toward his auntie's at first, until he remembered that he did

not really want to go there; he had only said that to stop Mrs. Glebe

making trouble. Then he had to think where he was going. He stopped,

looking in the window of a record shop, painstakingly reading the names

on the gaudy sleeves, and trying to match them to songs he had heard on

the radio. He had a record player, but he never had any money to buy

records, and his parents' taste did not suit him. Ma liked soppy songs,

Pa liked brass bands, and Billy liked rock-and-roll. The only other

person he knew who liked rock-and-roll was Tony Cox That was it.

He was looking for Tony Cox.

He headed in what he course: she jumped in the air and dropped a bag of

sugar and screamed, and later she cried and said they shouldn't make fun

of Billy. People often played tricks on him, but he did not mind,

because it was nice to have pals.

He wandered around for a while. He had the feeling that there used to be

more ships here, in the days when he was little. Today he could see only

one. It was a big one, quite low in the water, with a name on the side

which he could not read.

The men were running a pipe from the ship to a warehouse.

He stood watching for a while, then asked one of the men: "What's in

it?"

The man, who wore a cloth cap and a waistcoat, looked at him. "Wine,

mate."

Billy was surprised. "In the ship? All wine?

Full?"

"Yes, mate. Chateau Morocco, vintage about last Thursday." All the men

laughed at this, but Billy did not understand it. He laughed all the

same. The men worked on for a while, then the one he had spoken to said:

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Billy thought for a moment, then

said: "I've forgot."

The man looked hard at him, and mumbled something to one of the others.

Billy heard part of the reply: "-might fall in the bleeding drink The

first man went inside the warehouse.

After a while, a docks' policeman came along He said to the men: "Is

this the lad?" They nodded, and the copper addressed Billy. "Are you

lost?" "No," Billy said.

"Where are you going?"

Billy was about to say he was not going anywhere, but that seemed the

wrong answer. Suddenly he remembered. "Bethnal Green."

"All right, come with me and I'll set you on the right road."

Always willing to take the line of least resistance, Billy walked

alongside the copper to the dock gate.

"Where do you live, then?" the man asked.

"Yew Street."

"Does your mother know where you are?"

Billy decided that the policeman was another Mrs. Glebe, and that a lie

was called for. "Yes.

I'm going up my auntie's."

"Sure you know the way?"

"Yes."

They were at the gate. The copper looked at him speculatively, then made

up his mind. "All right, then, off you go. Don't wander around the docks

no more-you're safer to stop outside."

"Thanks," Billy said. When in doubt, he thanked people. He walked off.

It was getting easier to remember. Pa was up the hospital. He was going

to be blind, and it was Tony Cox's- fault. Billy knew one blind

man--well, two, if you counted Squint Thatcher, who was blind only when

he went up West with his accordion. But really blind, there was only

Hopcraft, who lived alone in a smelly house on the Isle of Dogs and

carried a white stick. Would pa have to wear sunglasses and walk very

slowly, tapping the curb with a stick? The thought upset Billy.

People usually thought he was incapable of getting upset, because he