To Save a Son (34 page)

“You listened to my call?” demanded Franks, outraged.

“I told you we were going to be as careful as we considered necessary,” said Waldo. I suggested it to the British, because it's their responsibility, and they agreed.”

Franks came forward on his seat, so that he was very close to the FBI man. “Stop it!” he insisted, red-faced with anger. “I want an assurance—not from you but from Ronan himself—that I will not be spied upon. I
will
not continue any sort of cooperation—any sort whatsoever—unless I have his assurance that I'm going to be properly treated. You got that?”

“It's my job to protect you,” said Waldo. “You got that?”

Franks wanted to hit the man, to knock the supercilious expression off his face. “As a material witness,” he said, remembering the previous day's dispute. “Everything will already have been started by now against Pascara and Flamini and Dukes. And without me, you haven't got a case. That's why you
are
protecting me. Stop the spying or I withdraw. Your choice.”

Waldo seemed unmoved, but Franks was sure Schultz shifted in his seat, worried by the threat.

“We're doing our job, Mr. Franks,” argued Waldo.

“You're overdoing your job,” said Franks. “Any listening device will be removed from my hotel telephone before I return, today.” And he knew a way to guarantee it, Franks decided.

He allowed them to escort him to the conference room, as they had the previous day, and as they had the previous day Waldo and Schultz settled themselves outside the room. Inside Franks used the internal telephone to delay the managers' meeting by fifteen minutes and then called Rosenberg, in New York, glad of the man's home telephone number and careless of waking him because of the time difference. He was surprised that the American lawyer did not regard it as much of an intrusion.

“They're just nervous, that's all,” said Rosenberg sleepily.

“I'm not,” said Franks. “I want you to get on to Ronan and tell him. I'm being treated like shit instead of someone who's helping them. If the tap doesn't come off, then everything else is off—literally—as far as I am concerned. Tell him that.”

“What if they revert to the prosecution of you?”

It would mean there would be no immediate grand jury hearing—not against Pascara or anyone else at least—and so the six-month time limit to which he'd agreed yesterday wouldn't apply. But Podmore and those who'd followed him had realized their strength; they'd insist upon six months from some other starting point, if they agreed to remain at all with an actual prosecution against him. Fuck it! thought Franks. He'd got away with the bluff once and he could get away with it again. “We know now how their evidence ties in with the file Nicky left, how it points toward my innocence. If they want to prosecute me, then let them go ahead and lose everything.”

“I'll tell him,” promised Rosenberg, fully awake now. “How's it going there?”

“Could be better,” said Franks.

“Big problems?” asked the lawyer.

“Nothing I can't solve,” said Franks. I hope, he thought.

“Call if you think I can help.”

Franks thought again how much he would have liked the man alongside him the previous day. “I will,” he said.

Franks was still hot with annoyance over the tap, but he tried to put the attitude aside for his meeting with the managers and their immediate subordinates. It was easier than the previous day, but Franks still felt uncomfortable. Franks rigidly maintained the employer-to-employee relationship and this time greatly abbreviated the circumstances of his entrapment, not wanting to diminish himself in their eyes. He devoted more discussion to the company changes, announcing the elevation of the managers to their respective boards and offering his congratulations. Remembering his promise to Tina—and her reminder the previous night—he said that although much of what he had talked about was temporary, their appointment would not be. Determined to prove that he was still absolutely in control and wanting to show it to the awkward bastards who'd backed him into a corner, he said further that their directors' fees would be five thousand pounds a year but that there would be additional emoluments representing a commission based upon five percent of whatever increase was shown over the previous year's trading. The decision would irritate Podmore and the others, but there was not a damned thing they would be able to do to reverse it.

The managers' meeting went on longer than he had anticipated because of the salary increases upon which he'd suddenly decided, which meant the second meeting with Kenham was delayed. Franks welcomed the delay and then indulged himself, actually protracting it. He had never used his office in the building regularly. It was simply a place to be—like a bus shelter was a place to wait for a bus—when he was required to work from the company building. Which hadn't been often because of his constant involvement in setting up the new enterprises. But the office was there, actually adjoining the conference chamber. Franks was surprised—worried, because it was so inexplicable—that it hadn't occurred to him to go into it the previous day, but now he did. It was a reasonably expansive room—although, he remembered, not as flamboyant as Nicky's; but he felt no association or even attachment to it. A plush bus shelter. It was dusted and neat. He sat in the chair—again not as high-backed or chariotlike as Nicky's—and swiveled left and right and tried to feel some attachment. Nothing came. Deciding he could do with a drink, Franks looked around the room and realized there wasn't a refrigerator or hospitality bar. Had he needed to look around—this theatricality was becoming ridiculous as well as infectious—to realize that? It was his office, for Christ's sake. He'd approved the fittings and the design and he knew damned well he hadn't decreed any sort of booze cabinet. So why was he looking for one now?

Remembering the headachy legacy from last night, Franks welcomed the way he was feeling now. The discomfort had gone and the meeting with the impressed managers—maybe wrongly impressed but nevertheless impressed, some even unashamedly open-mouthed—gave Franks a renewed feeling of confidence. He'd needed—looked for—that sort of confidence for weeks. He realized further that despite every attempt at self-analysis, until now he hadn't been prepared to accept something that was essential to his survival. So much had happened so quickly—at least something he'd already accepted—that his personal confidence was gone. The awareness worried him; he'd lost too much—how much he didn't yet know—to lose that. Everything he had achieved had been because of his own unshakable, unassailable confidence. If he couldn't sustain the belief in himself, then he couldn't sustain anything. Franks sat at the unaccustomed desk, surveyed the unaccustomed office, and was glad he'd come here because the visit crystallized more empty apprehensions and more positive realities than he'd so far been able—or prepared—to confront. He'd fight, because he was a fighter. A survivor, like his father. In fights people sometimes got beaten—a misstep or a misjudgment—but the champion was the person who recovered from those mistakes to go on to win. He was going to go on to win; to win against the bastards who thought they could manipulate him in America and the bastards who thought they could manipulate him in England. He looked again, reluctantly, around the office, wishing he'd installed some sort of hospitality arrangement; winning was going to be better than the best drink he'd ever imagined.

Franks summoned Kenham at last, remaining behind his desk and not bothering with anything but the most perfunctory greeting when the lawyer entered. His association with the business professionals who comprised his boards had never become social—not that they had a particularly social life—but of them all Franks had hoped there might have been something different between himself and Kenham. The owlish lawyer had been a junior partner to a financial solicitor who had been one of the men with whom his father had forged wartime links, and Kenham had been the man whom his father—and then, very quickly Franks—had drawn forward after the original friend died. Because of their support, Kenham had progressed to other City positions, and Franks felt he could have expected better support from the man than had been evident the previous day.

Kenham entered blink-eyed like the owl he resembled, briefcase before him as a shield. Franks nodded him toward a chair and Kenham sat, smiling hopefully. Franks thought, asshole, and didn't bother to respond. Resisting any immediate attack about the previous day, Franks said, “You've made the Swiss arrangements?”

Kenham nodded hopefully—an owl isolating an unsuspecting mouse, thought Franks—and said, “Everything's fixed; waiting for you.”

Without the support of the others, Kenham's demeanor was very different, Franks decided. Double bastard, he thought. “What are the details?”

Kenham went into the briefcase and produced a file. “Everything's there,” he said, offering it across the desk.

Franks let it lie, refusing the man his escape, conscious as he did so that it wasn't just to recover from what had happened earlier but to reimpose his own superiority—as he'd reimposed it that morning with the managers—to recover his own flaked confidence. He said, “Set it out for me.”

Kenham smiled again, hopefully. “The establishment is being created by Maitre Francois Dulac. He's got chambers at Limmatstresse. Number thirty-nine. I've arranged for your private bank account to be transferred to Zurich, too. To the Swiss Banking Corporation on the Paradeplatz.” The lawyer gestured toward the unopened file. “The correspondence there will accord with mine to them. Provide the introduction. They'll need passport identification, in addition. It's part of the protection, of course, that I don't know what Dulac will have arranged in the transfer company, in Liechtenstein.”

Conscious of the previous day's arrangements, Franks said, “When I'm in Switzerland I shall assign authority for Dulac to advise you in the event of anything happening to me.”

“I was going to remind you of the necessity,” said the lawyer.

“There's no need,” said Franks.

“There wasn't the opportunity for me to express it yesterday, but I'd like to say how much I regret what's happened to you. On a personal basis, I mean. And to say that I'm sure everything is going to resolve itself, black though it may look at the moment.”

“Why didn't you say so?” queried Franks at once.

“I just did,” said Kenham.

“Now,”
said Franks. “I don't remember any sympathy—any particular support even—in yesterday's meeting.”

“You've got everybody's sympathy,” insisted Kenham. “But Podmore was quite correct about our responsibilities. None of us could have done anything differently than we did yesterday.”

Liar, thought Franks. When the time came—how much he hoped it would come quickly!—he'd dump Kenham as well as Podmore. When the time came he might even dump the bloody lot for the way they'd treated him. Bastards, he thought again. He said, “Don't write me off. Don't imagine—don't any of you imagine—that because of what happened yesterday these businesses are going to slip away from me.” It sounded like another defense, he thought.

“No one imagines that,” assured Kenham.

The man would tittle-tattle back to the others, Franks knew; he was uncertain whether to disclose that morning's decision to increase the newly elevated director-managers' salaries. Better left until it was utterly irrevocable; so soon it might still be reversed. He would be denied Kenham's reaction, which he regretted. But then Franks realized that he was committed to return, to sign officially the formal documents. By then they'd know what had happened; all of them, not just Kenham. Far better to wait, to savor the irritation of them all. Franks said, “Thank you for setting everything up as efficiently as you have.”

“It's my job,” said Kenham.

Enjoy it while you've got it, thought Franks. “I still appreciate it,” he said.

“I don't envy you,” said the solicitor. “In fact, I can't actually imagine what it's like.”

“It's not very pleasant,” said Franks. “In fact, it's bloody awful.”

“If there's anything further that I can do,” offered Kenham, “all you have to do is call.”

He'd rather trust Rosenberg, Franks decided. He said, “Thank you, yet again.”

“
Is
there anything further?”

Franks said, “Only that I want the remaining companies run as efficiently and as well as possible until I get back.” Franks decided at that moment that he
would
replace the boards of all the companies; bring in fresh men with fresh ideas and stronger degrees of loyalty. He didn't want to leave Kenham or any of them even as caretakers, although he decided caretakers was a function for which they were ideally suited; church hall caretakers.

Kenham rose, anxious to get away. “We'll meet again when you get back from Switzerland, then?”

Reluctantly, on his part, thought Franks. He said, “Yes. It should only take a day.”

“Everything is arranged,” repeated Kenham nervously. “There shouldn't be any problems.”

“I'm sure there won't.”

After the company secretary had left the room, Franks still didn't move. There were staff—personal secretaries even—whom he hadn't greeted, let alone spoken to properly. But if he spoke to them he would have to provide some sort of explanation, and although he thought the FBI was overacting he conceded that to make some sort of general staff announcement would be foolish. It was fortunate that because of the way he worked, he hadn't forged any close staff relationships.

Franks enjoyed emerging from a door that neither Waldo nor Schultz expected, smiling openly at their momentary confusion. Franks supposed by now Rosenberg would have been in contact with the New York district attorney. How would Ronan communicate with the two irritated men approaching him now? They'd be even angrier when it happened.