"What have you been playing at?" he asked incredulously.
"Oh, blimey, Tony, wait till you hear what I've had to do."
"Well bloody tell me then!"
"Well, I had a prang, see--nothing much, just a little bump. But the geezer gets out of his car and wants to call the police. So I pisses off, don't I. But he stands in the way and I hits him."
Tony cursed softly.
Now fear showed in Jesse's face. "Well, I knew the law would be looking for me, didn't I. So I stops at this garage, goes round the back to the khasi, and nicks a set of trade plates and these overalls." He nodded eagerly, as if to lend his own approval to his actions. "Then I come on here."
Tony stared at him in amazement, then burst out laughing. "You mad bastard!" he chuckled.
Jesse looked relieved. "I done the best thing for it, though, didn't I?"
Tony's laughter subsided. "You mad bastard," he repeated. "Here you are, with a fortune in hot money in the van, and you stop"--his chest heaved, and he wheezed with renewed laughter--"you stop at a garage and nick a pair of overalls!"
Jesse smiled too, not from amusement but out of the pleasure of a fear removed. Then he became serious again. "There is proper bad news, though."
"Gorblimey, what else?"
"The van driver tried to be a hero."
"You never killed him?" Tony said anxiously.
"No, just knocked him on the head. But Jacko's shooter went off in the fracas"--he pronounced it frackarse--"and Deaf Willie got hit. In the boat race. He's bad, Tone."
"Oh, balls." Tony sat down suddenly on an old three-legged stool. "Oh, poor old Willie. Did they take him up the hospital, did they?"
Jesse nodded. "That's why Jacko's not here. He's took him. Whether he got there alive . . ."
"That bad?"
Jesse nodded.
"Oh, balls." He was silent for a while. "He don't get no luck, Deaf Willie. The one ear's gone already, and his boy's a mental case, and his wife looks like Henry Cooper--and now this." He clicked his tongue in sorrow. "We'll give him a double share, but it won't mend his head." He got up.
Jesse opened the van, relieved that he had managed to convey the bad news without suffering Tony's wrath.
Tony rubbed his hands together. "Right, let's have a look at what we got."
There were nine gray steel chests in the back of the van. They looked like squat metal suitcases, each with handles at both ends, each secured by a double lock. They were heavy. The two men unloaded them, one by one, and lined them up in the center of the barn. Tony looked at them greedily. His expression showed an almost sensual pleasure. He said: "It's like Ali Baba and the forty bloody thieves, mate."
Jesse was taking plastic explosive, wires and detonators out of a duffel bag in a corner of the barn. "I wish Willie was here to do the bang-bangs."
Tony said: "I wish he was here, full stop."
Jesse prepared to blow open the chests. He stuck the jellylike explosive all around the locks, attached detonators and wires, and connected each tiny bomb to the plunger-type trigger.
Watching him, Tony said: "You seem to know what you're doing."
"I've seen Willie do it often enough." He grinned.
"Maybe I can become the firm's peterman--"
"Willie ain't dead," Tony interrupted gruffly. "Not so far as we know."
Jesse picked up the trigger and, trailing wires, took it outside. Tony followed him.
Tony said: "Drive the van outside, in case of the petrol going up--know what I mean?"
"There's no danger--"
"You've never done a peter before, and I'm not taking the risk."
"Okay." Jesse closed the rear doors and backed the van into the farmyard. Then he opened the bonnet and used crocodile clips to connect the trigger with the van's battery.
He said: "Hold your breath," and pressed the plunger.
There was a muffled bang.
The two men went back inside. The chests stood in line with their tops hanging open at odd, twisted angles.
"You done a good job," Tony said.
The chests were neatly and tightly packed. The bundles of notes were stacked twenty across, ten wide, and five deep: one thousand bundles per chest. Each bundle contained one hundred notes. That made one hundred thousand notes per chest.
The first six chests contained ten-shilling notes, obsolete and worthless.
Tony said: "Jesus H. Christ."
The next contained oners, but it was not quite full. Tony counted eight hundred bundles. The last chest but one also contained one-pound notes, and it was full. Tony said: "That's better. Just about right."
The last chest was packed solid with tenners.
Tony muttered: "Gawd help us."
Jesse's eyes were wide. "How much is it, Tony?"
"One million, one hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, my son."
Jesse gave a whoop of delight. "We're rich! We're lousy with it!"
Tony's face was somber. "I suppose we could burn all the tenners."
"What are you talking about?" Jesse looked at him as if he were mad. "What do you mean, burn them? You going potty?"
Tony turned around and gripped Jesse's arm, squeezing hard. "Listen. If you go into the Rose and Crown, ask for a half of bitter and a meat pie, and pay with a tenner; and if you do that every day for a week, what will they all think?"
"They'll think I've had a tickle. You're hurting my arm, Tone."
"And how long would it take for one of those dirty little snouts in there to get round the nick and spill it? Five minutes?" He let go. "It's too much, Jess. Your trouble is, you don't think. This much money, you've got to keep it somewhere--and if it's kept somewhere, the Old Bill can find it."
Jesse found this point of view too radical to digest. "But you can't throw money away."
"You're not listening to me, are you? They've got Deaf Willie, right? Their driver will connect Willie with the raid, right? And they know Willie's on my firm, so they know we done the job, right? You bet your life they'll be up your place tonight, slitting the mattresses and digging up the potato patch. Now, five grand in oners might be your life savings, but fifty grand in tenners gotta be incriminating, right?"
"I never thought of it that way," Jesse said.
"The word for it is overkill."
"I suppose you can't put that much money in the Abbey National. Anybody can have a good night at the dogs, but if you got too much, it proves you've had a tickle, see?" Jesse was explaining it back to Tony, as if to demonstrate that he understood. "That's it, ain't it?"
"Yes." Tony had lost interest in the lecture. He was trying to think of a foolproof way of disposing of hot money in large quantity.
"And you can't walk into Barclays Bank with over a million nicker and ask to open a savings account, can you?"
"You're getting it," Tony said sarcastically. Suddenly he looked sharply at Jesse. "Ah, but who can walk into the bank with a pile of money and not arouse suspicion?" Jesse was lost.
"Well, nobody can."
"You reckon?" Tony pointed to the packing cases of surplus Forces clothes. "Open a couple of those boxes. I want you dressed as a Royal Navy seaman. I've just had a bloody clever idea."
28
An editor's conference in the afternoon was rare. The editor sometimes said: "The mornings are fun, the afternoons are work." Up until lunchtime, his efforts were expended in the production of a newspaper. By two o'clock it was too late to do anything significant: the content of the paper was more or less determined, most of the day's editions had been printed and distributed, and the editor turned his brain to what he called administrative sludge. But he had to be around, in case something came up which required a top-level decision. Arthur Cole believed that such a thing had come up.
Cole, the deputy news editor, sat opposite the editor's oversize white desk. On Cole's left was the reporter Kevin Hart; on his right was Mervyn Glazier, City editor.
The editor finished signing a pile of
letters and looked up. "What have we got?"
Cole said: "Tim Fitzpeterson will live, the oil announcement's been delayed, the currency van raiders got away with more than a million, and England are all out for seventy-nine."
"And?"
"And there's something going on."
The editor lit a cigar. If the truth were known, he quite liked to have his administrative sludge interrupted by something exciting like a story. "Go on."
Cole said: "You remember Kevin came in during the morning conference, a little overexcited about a phone call allegedly from Tim Fitzpeterson."
The editor smiled indulgently. "If young reporters don't get excited, what the hell will they be like when they get old?"
"Well, it's possible Kevin was right to say it was the big one. Remember the names of the people allegedly blackmailing Fitzpeterson? Cox and Laski." Cole turned to Hart. "Okay, Kevin."
Hart uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "Another phone call, this time from a woman who gave her name and address. She said that her husband, William Johnson, had been on the currency van raid, that he had been shot and blinded, and that it was a Tony Cox job."
The editor said: "Tony Cox! Did you follow it up?"
"There is a William Johnson in hospital with shotgun wounds to the face. And there's a detective beside his bed, waiting for him to come round. I went to see the wife, but she wouldn't speak."
The editor, who had once been a crime reporter, said: "Tony Cox is a very big fish. I'd believe anything of him. Not at all a nice man. Go on."
Cole said: "The next bit is Mervyn's."
"There's a bank in trouble," the City editor said.
"The Cotton Bank of Jamaica--it's a foreign bank with a branch in London. Does a lot of UK business. Anyway, it's owned by a man called Felix Laski."
"How do we know?" the editor asked. "That it's in trouble, I mean."
"Well, I got a tip from a contact. I rang Threadneedle Street to check it out. Of course, they won't give a straight answer, but the noises they made tended to confirm the tip."
"Tell me exactly what was said."
Glazier pulled out his pad. He could write shorthand at 150 words per minute, and his notes were always immaculate. "I spoke to a man called Ley, who is most likely to be dealing with it. I happen to know him, because--"
"Skip the commercial, Mervyn," the editor interrupted. "We all know how good your contacts are."
Glazier grinned. "Sorry. First, I asked him if he knew anything about the Cotton Bank of Jamaica. He said: 'The Bank of England knows a good deal about every bank in London.'
"I said: 'Then you'll know just how viable the Cotton Bank is at the moment.'
"He said: 'Of course. Which is not to say that I'm going to tell you.'
"I said: 'They're about to go under--true or false?'
"He said: 'Pass.'
"I said: 'Come on, Donald, this isn't Mastermind--it's people's money.'
"He said: 'You know I can't talk about that sort of thing. Banks are our customers. We respect their trust.'
"I said: 'I am going to print a story saying that the Cotton Bank is about to fold. Are you or are you not telling me that such a story would be false?'
"He said: 'I'm telling you to check your facts first.' That's about it." Glazier closed his notebook. "If the bank was okay, he would have said so."
The editor nodded. "I have never liked that kind of reasoning, but in this case you're probably right." He tapped his cigar on a large glass ashtray. "Where does it get us?"
Cole summed up. "Cox and Laski blackmail Fitzpeterson. Fitzpeterson tries to kill himself. Cox does a raid. Laski goes bust." He shrugged. "There's something going on."
"What do you want to do?"
"Find out. Isn't that what we're here for?"
The editor got up and went to the window, as if to make time in which to consider. He made a small adjustment to his blinds, and the room became slightly brighter. Slats of sunshine appeared on the rich blue carpet, picking out the sculptured pattern. He returned to his desk and sat down.
"No," he said. "We're going to leave it, and I'm going to tell you why. One: we can't predict the collapse of a bank, because our prediction on its own would be enough to cause that collapse. Just to ask questions about the bank's viability would set the City all a-tremble.
"Two: we can't try to detect the perpetrators of a currency raid. That's the police force's job. Anyway, anything we discover can't be printed for fear of prejudicing a trial. I mean, if we know it's Tony Cox, the police must know; and the law says that if we know an arrest is imminent or likely, the story becomes sub judice.
"Three: Tim Fitzpeterson is not going to die. If we blunder around London asking about his sex life, before you know it there will be questions in Parliament about Evening Post reporters scouring the country for dirt on politicians. We leave that sort of thing to the Sunday rags."
He laid his hands on his desk, palms down. "Sorry, boys."
Cole got up. "Okay, let's get back to work."
The three journalists left. When they got back to the newsroom, Kevin Hart said: "If he was editor of The Washington Post, Nixon would still be winning elections on a law-and-order ticket."
Nobody laughed.
THREE P.M.
29
"I have Smith and Bernstein for you, Mr. Laski."
"Thank you, Carol. Put him on. Hello, George?"
"Felix, how are you?"
Laski put a smile into his voice. It was not easy. "On top of the world. Has your service improved any?" George Bernstein played tennis.
"Not a bit. You know I was teaching George junior to play?"
"Yes."
"Now he beats me."
Laski laughed. "And how's Rachel?"
"No thinner. We were talking about you last night. She said you ought to be married. I said: 'Didn't you know? Felix is gay.' She said: 'Gay? So why can't happy people be married?' I said: 'No, I mean he's a homosexual, Rachel.' She dropped her knitting. She believed me, Felix! Would you credit it?"
Laski forced another laugh. He was not sure how much longer he could keep this up. "I'm thinking about it, George."
"Marriage? Don't do it! Don't do it! Is that what you called to say?"
"No, that's just a little thought hovering around in the back of my mind."
"So what can I tell you?"
"It's a little thing. I want a million pounds for twenty-four hours, and I thought I'd put the business your way." Laski held his breath.
There was a short silence. "A million. For how long has Felix Laski been in the money market?"
"Since I found out how to make a real profit overnight."
"Let me in on the secret, will you?"
"All right. After you lend me the money. No kidding, George: can you do it?"
"Sure we can. What's your collateral?"
"Uh--surely you don't normally ask for collateral against twenty-four-hour money?" Laski's fist tightened on the phone until the knuckles bulged whitely.
"You're right. And we don't normally lend sums like this to banks like yours."
"Okay. My collateral is five hundred and ten thousand shares in Hamilton Holdings."
"Just a minute."
There was a silence. Laski pictured George Bernstein: a thickset man with a large head, a big nose, and a permanent broad grin, sitting at an old desk in a poky office with a view of St. Paul's, checking figures in The Financial Times, his fingers playing lightly over the keys of a desktop computer.
Bernstein came back on the line. "At today's price it's not nearly enough, Felix."
"Oh, come on, this is a formality. You know I'm not going to screw you. This is me---Felix--your friend." He wiped his brow with his sleeve.
"I'd like to do it, but I've got a partner."
"Your partner is sleeping so heavily there's a rumor he's dead."
"A deal like this would wake him if he was in his grave. Try Larry Wakely, Felix. He might do something for you."
> Laski had already tried Larry Wakely, but he did not say so. "I will. How about a game this weekend?"
"Love to!" The relief in Bernstein's voice was obvious. "Saturday morning at the club?"
"Ten pounds a game?"
"It'll break my heart to take your money."
"Look forward to it. Good-bye, George."
"Take care."
Laski closed his eyes for a moment, letting the phone dangle from his hand. He had known that Bernstein would not lend him the money: he was just trying anything now. He rubbed his face with his fingers. He was not beaten yet.
He depressed the cradle and got a purring tone. He dialed with a chewed pencil.
The number rang for a long time. Laski was about to dial again when it answered. "Department of Energy."
"Press Office," Laski said.
"Trying to connect you."
Another woman's voice. "Press Office."
"Good afternoon," Laski said. "Can you tell me when the Secretary of State is going to make the announcement about the oil--"
"The Secretary of State has been delayed," the woman interrupted. "Your news desk has been told, and there is a full explanation on the PA wire." She hung up.
Laski sat back in his chair. He was running scared, and he did not like it. It was his role to dominate situations such as this: he liked to be the only one in the know, the manipulator who had everyone else running around trying to figure out what was going on. Going cap in hand to moneylenders was not his style.
The phone rang again. Carol said: "A Mr. Hart on the line."
"Am I supposed to know him?"
"No, but he says it's in connection with the money the Cotton Bank needs."
"Put him on. Hello, Laski here."
"Good afternoon, Mr. Laski." It was the voice of a young man. "I'm Kevin Hart of the Evening Post."
Laski was startled. "I thought she said--Never mind."
"The money the Cotton Bank needs. Yes, well, a bank in trouble needs money, doesn't it?"
Laski said: "I don't think I want to talk to you, young man."
Before Laski could hang up, Hart said: "Tim Fitzpeterson."
Laski paled. "What?"
"Do the Cotton Bank's troubles have anything to do with the attempted suicide of Tim Fitzpeterson?"
How the hell did they know? Laski's mind raced. Maybe they didn't know. They might be guessing--flying a kite, they called it, pretending to know something in order to see whether people would deny it. Laski said: "Does your editor know you're making this call?"