The Coil (32 page)

“More than one person this time,” Simon whispered. “Trying to be quiet.”

“It could be nothing.”

“Or something.”

With memories of the bloodbath at the Eisner-Moulton warehouse fresh in her mind, she broke into a run down to the third floor. Simon was right behind. They ducked off the staircase and out of sight, waiting.

Sixty years old, in excellent health, Prometheus jogged along the dark embankment above the River Seine. Sweat drenched him, but he hardly noticed. Of medium height and build, he had always been an athlete—tennis, golf, and jogging. His darkly tanned face was scored with lines from years of exposure to the sun.

In public, he was known for his wealth, compassion, and platinum Rolodex. But the truth was, Prometheus lived a secret life of solitude and anger. His hair-trigger temper was notorious among his staff. Married and divorced five times, he lived alone in New York, Paris, London, and Rome. He was one of the great financial speculators of the New World, a pioneer of an investment instrument—the hedge fund—that was something of a novelty in the long-ago days when he first began.

In his white shorts and T-shirt, he ran past Paris's famous quayside bookstalls, his Nikes pounding the pavement. Not given to self-examination, he had no idea why he needed to run right now. He saw little connection to the events that had been set into motion today, when he received word he was being sued by the State of New York on civil charges that he had steered business to the Darmond Brokerage in exchange for hot stock offerings.

Still, Prometheus was outraged and more than a little worried. This new suit claimed he directed corporate finance work for InQuox—his public investment firm—to the brokerage arm of the Darmond Bank in return for sweetheart deals on initial public stock offerings—or “spinning,” as Wall Street's practice of personally rewarding executives with coveted IPOs was called.

The New York attorney general's complaint demanded he pay a fine of $28 million, which it claimed was the amount of spinning profits made when he sold his IPO shares. That was not all. The asshole wanted another $500 million—preposterous!—for what he said were profits reaped from his sale of InQuox shares. His lawyer read him the news story, since he had not yet received the written complaint: “The shares were ill-gotten due to their being touted to the public by the Darmond's brokerage analysts as part of the scheme.”

He had met the attorney general at several Metropolitan Museum of Art parties, which he always attended when in New York. But then, he was on the board of directors, where his Rolodex and, consequently, he were in great demand. He remembered the attorney general as small and sly, his ambition feral.

Every time one of his feet thudded onto the pavement, his muscles complained, and his outrage increased. It was all too much at a time when he needed to concentrate on the new deal he was weaving together in former East bloc countries. It was crucial, providing a beachhead for InQuox where creative financing was still unregulated.

Disgusted and at last tired, Prometheus slowed. He signaled Raoul and Roger, two of his bodyguards, who had been running on either side and a little behind. Their faces were red, and they were breathing hard.

Raoul handed him a bottle of Evian. “Shall I have the car brought, Mr. Hornish?”

“I'll walk.” Prometheus—Richmond Hornish—drank and hurled the bottle at Raoul without bothering to screw the lid back on. The water splashed his shirt and the blouse of a woman who was walking past with a little boy. The expression on Raoul's face did not change as the woman shrieked in surprise and pulled the boy close.

Feeling a moment of satisfaction, Hornish turned and stalked back toward his
hôtel particulier.
He banished the noise of Raoul's apologies to the woman and reached out a hand. Roger slapped a plush terry-cloth towel into it. As he mopped his face and neck, Hornish heard his private cell ring. It was attached to Roger's belt. He yanked it off and gave a short, imperious wave. The two bodyguards backed out of earshot.

He took a deep breath. “This is Prometheus.”

 

“Where are you, Prometheus?”

“Paris still. Why?”

“We need a meeting of the entire Coil. My place, London, in two hours.”

“I'll be there. What in blazes is going on with the Carnivore's files? I expected the next time you called it'd be to say they'd been located.”

“I should think you'd have other things to keep your mind busy. I hear you're in trouble in New York now.”

“That? Lawsuits are simply a hazard of doing business. I've been waiting for an update about the files from you, Cronus. Are you trying to run this operation without us?”

“The charges against you are far from minor, as we both know, and there are still the ones in California. I imagine you're having to borrow.”

“Possibly, but Hyperion's useless for that now, isn't he?”

 

Intensely private and exclusive, the Travellers Club was housed in an elegant manse in the heart of the city, just off the Champs-Elysées. Atlas vaguely recalled that a nineteenth-century adventuress—a notorious marquise, whose name he had never learned—had once owned it. In the club's Grand Salon, he nursed a cup of Assam tea at a linen-covered table set against a solid interior wall. The windows were on the far side of the room, lessening the chances of electronic eavesdropping from outside. The ornate salon's other tables and easy chairs were spaced far enough apart to ensure private conversation.

Tall, thin, and intense, Atlas sat curved like a scimitar over his tea, hiding his impatience as he waited for EU Competition Commissioner Carlo Santarosa. Santarosa was crucial, because he could approve Gilmartin Enterprises' projected $40 billion deal to regain its once-dominant position in world construction.

He checked his Timex. The EU bastard was late.

Surrounded by dark woods and the hushed air of privilege, the engineer was imperfectly turned out in his off-the-rack suit, sturdy wing tips, white button-down shirt, and Stanford school tie. There were blue ink stains on the middle finger of his right hand. A calculator and a cell sat near his elbow on the table. Although his fortune was valued at nearly a billion dollars, he hardly noticed luxury. He liked the Travellers Club because it was discreet, not because it was chic; because his privacy was assured; and, most especially, because it impressed those with whom he did business.

He was in his early fifties but already had high blood pressure. His unpretentiousness and apparently relaxed nature hid shrewdness and bottomless ambition. But then, his great-grandfather had built the Hoover Dam, while his grandfather was celebrated as the Atlas Industrialist of World War II, honoring the long line of warships the company's shipbuilding arm had produced under the war's difficult conditions.

His father had topped both when he laid the Alaskan pipeline and doused Kuwait's flaming oil wells after the 1991 Gulf War. When his father chose him from among his three brothers to take over the family empire, Gilmartin Enterprises was the undisputed giant of global contracting. Since then, it had been edged out by hungry newer companies with aggressive interests in services and a willingness to merge.

But Atlas was no financier. He was an engineer who came from a long line of engineers. Like them, he ran Gilmartin Enterprises with a steel hand. Unlike them, he still had made no extraordinary mark on the company. He would admit to no one how deeply this disturbed him. However, that was about to change.

When his cell rang, so much time had passed that he knew the news was bad.

It was Santarosa's assistant, offering apologies. “The commissioner is most sorry, Senhor Gilmartin.”

Atlas—Gregory Gilmartin—said smoothly, “Tell him I'm disappointed.” Like a scalpel, the forefinger of his free hand drew a sharp line across the tablecloth.

“Senhor Santarosa is equally disappointed,” the man said politely in accented English. Santarosa was Portuguese, and so was his assistant. Small people from a small, unimportant country.

Gilmartin allowed steel to show in his voice. “I expect him to make time to have a private conversation tomorrow. Tell him that.”

There was a pause of uncertainty. “I cannot—” the assistant began.

Gilmartin's other cell vibrated silently against his chest. He snapped, “Tell him!” He broke the connection. As he surveyed the other guests in the salon, he took his private cell from inside his jacket and turned his back.

 

“Atlas here.”

“Are you still in Paris, Atlas?”

“Of course. What news do you have?”

“We need to meet. Two hours, my house in London.”

“Tonight? Why so late, Cronus?”

“It's the situation with the files. We may need to reevaluate.”

“I'm not surprised. When the foundation is weak, the project collapses.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I've never been convinced the files existed anyway. It's entirely possible we're chasing a chimera.”

 

It had not been a good year for Ocean. A few doors from the Baroque church of Saint-Louis-en-l'île stood one of his favorite pieds-à-terre, a magnificent town house owned by his automotive company but built by a French duke during the reign of Louis XIV.

Bare-chested and wearing linen trousers, Ocean sat tensely on a Second Empire chair in the high-ceilinged master bedroom, trying not to think. Cecily was singing to herself in the bath, preparing for him. He was a vigorous fifty-five years old, with a full head of black hair, a sloping Prussian nose that Bismarck would have prized, and a stocky build that he never allowed to devolve into fat. He had a charming but implacable will, whether at the most lavish dinner party or in the most competitive boardroom.

He had taken his blue pill an hour ago. That was usually more than enough time, but today he wondered. The evening heat pounded the tall windows, making the glass panes seem to vibrate. Above the bed, a plantation fan rotated lazily, and for a few seconds it seemed as if he had escaped to some exotic place in the Far East…perhaps to teeming Beijing or colorful Shanghai, where Eisner-Moulton was launching new auto and truck factories, and he could concentrate on the exciting problems of growth.

Two decades ago, he had been Europe's most celebrated wunderkind. He had turned around West Germany's Eisner Motorwerks almost overnight, retooling it from a company that produced clunky, sputtering sedans to one that turned out sleek machines with powerful engines that begged to be driven. After that, his empire had grown rapidly. Dodging economic downturns and leading changes in taste, he had transformed Eisner into an intercontinental powerhouse that produced cars, trucks, and airplanes. In the 1990s, he bought the Clarke Motor Company, the declining U.S. maker of luxury cars, and then merged with truck-building Moulton of France. Today, Eisner-Moulton built vehicles of all kinds and classes around the world.

But now it—and he—were in trouble, largely because he had thought the world economy would continue to boom. Who would have envisioned such a drastic downturn? Worse, that it would last so long?

In January, he'd had to fold the balance of Eisner-Moulton's money-losing electronics subsidiary into other divisions. The cost was a nasty write-off of 1.1 billion euros. In March, he discovered Eisner-USA auto units were draining twice the red ink his accountants predicted. Then came the third blow: In May, he'd had to cut off Koekker Air, the floundering Dutch airplane maker, of which Eisner-Moulton owned 51 percent. As a result, Koekker declared bankruptcy, and Eisner-Moulton faced another write-off, this one a shocking 4.2 billion euros. He had just learned yet another subsidiary, Truckliner America, was expected to post losses of nearly 1 billion euros. A total of some 8.3 billion lost so far, and the year was barely half over.

Ocean jumped up and paced, thinking angrily about Claude de Darmond. He had counted on de Darmond's giving Eisner-Moulton a discreet loan to get past this, so he could diversify into new areas, especially in Eastern Europe. He needed that money. He thought about Citibank's problems with the Justice Department, the money-laundering charges against Bank of America, the internal waffling of Deutsche Bank. Where was he going to find a bank large enough, sensitive enough, and healthy enough—

“Christian,” Cecily called, her voice a coo.

Ocean—Christian Menchen—lifted his head. She was shimmying in from the bathroom, blond and swathed in some sort of see-through diaphanous material.

With relief, he felt his heart thump excitedly. She pirouetted beneath the gilt cove ceiling. More than a distraction, she was fascinating, as only the young who did not yet know themselves and their impact could be. As the translucent fabric swirled, he inhaled sharply. There was the tattoo on her left buttock—a curled serpent's tail. He could smell her from where he stood, the scent of musk and violets. In his mind, he saw the five places on her privates where she had applied the costly perfume.

Heat exploded through him, but he did not move. He liked the agony.

She picked up her cloudlike gown, turning, allowing his gaze to follow the blue-green tail that seemed to grow backward from her pink ass, snaking around her hip to her belly, where it swelled into a roaring red dragon tattoo perched just above her blond pubis.

He stared, swallowed hard. His problems evaporated. The curls were pale, barely yellow. He had forgotten how innocent. Like a little girl's.

In three steps, he grabbed her wrists and yanked her close.

She giggled, pretending to try to escape. “
Non, non,
Christian. Oh, you
frighten
me!” She was like a French pastry, smelling of woman's sugar and moistness.

“Bon,”
he growled. “Be afraid.”

She laughed again. He bit her neck. She moaned, and he yanked her head back and covered her mouth with his.

 

Two hours later, Cecily was drinking champagne and running naked around the room, dressing and prattling. Lying on the large bed, he felt a deep fondness for her. If she had asked for a diamond tiara, he would have considered it. Instead, he knew she was content—even grateful—for the thousand euros he would slide into her purse before she left. He liked that about her, that she was genuinely fond of him.