The Truth

  He was dressed in a Savile Row suit, his tie was elegant, winged horses printed on green silk, his black shoes, out of sight beneath his desk, glinted like mirrors; his long, slender fingers, which were leafing through a computer printout, had been finely manicured. His whole manner exuded confidence. He might only have been in his mid fifties.

  His name was Emil Sarotzini.

  The name was a legend. People told stories about his fabled life with the post-war set – on the French Riviera, partying on the Dockers’ yacht in Cannes, dining with Bardot in St Tropez, lunching with the Grimaldis in Monaco; and in the US, where he courted stars like Mansfield and Monroe, and where he was himself courted by the aristocratic circle of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and the Mellons. It was rumoured that Warhol had painted an entire collection for him, which Mr Sarotzini had forbidden ever to be shown to the public. And in England, it was whispered, he had been shielded by the Astors from the glare of the Profumo scandal.

  Other stories about the man were more discomforting, and there were plenty that would chill people to the marrow. Some of these stories no insider ever dared to tell, because, it was rumoured, Mr Sarotzini had ears everywhere and disloyalty was not an option.

  Rumours surrounded every aspect of his life, and none more so than his age, which was to some a matter of idle speculation and to others a disturbing enigma.

  No one who worked here was innocent of Mr Sarotzini’s reputation. It acted like a magnet: they were repulsed but they were attracted. Positive and negative. Intrigue, mystery and speculation had been Mr Sarotzini’s ever-present shadows throughout his life. And few people he met failed to fall under his spell.

  The man who was bringing him the information he was awaiting knew more about Mr Sarotzini than perhaps any other living person. And, for this reason, was even more afraid of him than anyone else.

  Kündz opened the panelled double doors and entered the secretary’s ante-room. She was the sentinel who held all the keys to access Mr Sarotzini, and precious few ever even reached this inner sanctum of her office. But she barely gave Kündz a glance.

  Mr Sarotzini was visible through the open entrance beyond her, like an Egyptian god in his hypostyle hall. His office was mostly in darkness, one pool of brightness from a gold table lamp illuminating the neat stack of papers beside the leather blotter on his desk. There was a large window but the slats of the blinds were angled and narrowed against the glare of the mid-morning sunlight.

  Kündz was six feet, six inches tall, with broad, quarterback shoulders, close-cropped hair and a blunt boxer’s face. He was dressed in one of his habitual plain two-piece suits, today a navy one, his tie carefully adjusted, his shoes scrupulously polished. The suits were made for him by Mr Sarotzini’s tailor, but in spite of the expensive cloth and the careful fittings, he never looked quite at ease in them. To the casual stranger he could have been a night-club bouncer, or perhaps a soldier on leave in borrowed civvies.

  Before taking a step forward he swallowed, checked the knot of his tie, shot a glance down at his shoes, buttoned his jacket. He knew that, sartorially, he failed Mr Sarotzini. But in every other respect he prided himself on the way he learned from his mentor and carried out his wishes.

  Mr Sarotzini had made him everything that he was, but Kündz was aware that he could just as easily strip it all away from him again, and this was part of the fear that fuelled his slavish devotion to the man.

  ‘So?’ Mr Sarotzini said, smiling expectantly as Kündz approached his desk. The smile relaxed Kündz and his love for this man was so intense that he wanted to reach across that huge desk and hug him, but this he could not do. Many years ago Mr Sarotzini had forbidden this kind of physical contact. Instead, Kündz handed him the envelope, and stood stiffly to attention.

  ‘You may sit, Stefan,’ Mr Sarotzini said, shaking out the contents and immediately becoming absorbed in them.

  Kündz sat, tensely, on the edge of a chair that had once been owned by an Ottoman prince, whose name he could not remember. Although Mr Sarotzini’s office was filled with treasures and antiquities, there was something about this room that mere money alone could not create, and that was the sense of power it exuded.

  Kündz felt like the little girl, Alice, who had stepped into a world where everything was so much bigger. He sat dwarfed by the size of the furniture, by canvases the size of high-rise buildings that hung from the walls, by sculptures and busts and statuettes that leered down at him, by shelves of leather-bound volumes that sneered at anyone of lesser education than their owner. He looked up at Mr Sarotzini.

  It was hard to read his expression.

  The room smelt of stale cigar smoke, but the only ashtray, a cut-glass one on Mr Sarotzini’s desk, was clean. Kündz knew that Mr Sarotzini, who was a man of habit, would have already smoked his first Montecristo of the day, but would not light his second for another hour.

  Mr Sarotzini held the thin document, just six pages long, with fingers that were long and bony, softened by hair. He said nothing until he had finished reading, and then his face tightened with displeasure.

  ‘What am I to do with this, Stefan?’

  This threw Kündz. Yet he knew, from long experience, that the answers Mr Sarotzini required were not always the obvious ones. He took his time, as Mr Sarotzini had long taught him, not rushing into his answer. ‘There are no restrictions,’ he replied, finally.

  Mr Sarotzini’s face hardened into a near rage that made Kündz frightened and confused. ‘This is a shopping list, Stefan, a grocery list. Look, it says, “Twelve bagels, two litres of skimmed milk, butter, dried apricots, salami.” What have you given me this for?’

  Kündz’s mind swirled. This wasn’t possible, surely, he couldn’t – couldn’t have made a mistake – no. Where could this list have come from? He thought quickly, thought of the man who had given him this document, a very great genetics scientist. Could this fool scientist have given him the wrong thing?

  No, it was impossible. He’d checked and rechecked it.

  Then the expression on Mr Sarotzini’s face changed from rage into a quiet smile. ‘It’s all right, Stefan, don’t look so worried. Relax. I’m only joking. You must learn to take jokes.’

  Kündz stared back at him, bewildered, unsure what was coming next.

  ‘This is good,’ Mr Sarotzini said, tapping the document. ‘It is very good.’

  Kündz tried not to show his relief: he had learnt never to show weakness to Mr Sarotzini. And gratitude was weakness. He was expected to know that the document was good; a reaction was not required. With Mr Sarotzini he was on a learning curve that had no end, and he had lived with this almost all his life.

  He looked down at the soft pile of a Persian rug to avoid giving anything away in his eyes, and took in the complex pattern; all Persian rugs told stories, but he did not know what this story was. He turned his thoughts to Claudie, focused on her, wondered if Claudie would let him tie her up tonight and whip her. He decided he would ask her, and if she said no he would do it anyway.

  Her smell rose from his skin; he thought of her sprig of black pubic hair and his fear of Mr Sarotzini turned fleetingly into arousal for Claudie. Then the fear returned.

  He looked up at the painting on the wall directly behind Mr Sarotzini: modern art, abstract, he did not understand this kind of art, he did not know whether it was a good painting or bad, he knew only that it must be of immense value, of great importance to the world of art, to be in this room. Then Mr Sarotzini skewered his thoughts with his voice. He spoke, as usual, in flawless German, although Kündz knew that German was not Mr Sarotzini’s mother tongue.

  ‘It has taken thirty years. This is how long we have been looking. Thirty years, Stefan. You understand the importance?’

  Kündz understood, but remained silent.

  ‘You have a weakness, Stefan?’

  Kündz was surprised by the question. He stalled, knowing that with this man he could not lie. ‘Everyone has a weakness. That i
s the Nineteenth Truth,’ he replied.

  Mr Sarotzini seemed pleased by this answer. He opened a drawer in his desk, took out an envelope and handed it to Kündz.

  Inside it Kündz found photographs of a man and a woman. The man was in his mid thirties, with dark hair and striking, if boyish, good looks. The woman looked a few years younger; she had red hair that stopped just short of the shoulders; a pretty face; modern.

  There was another photograph, showing her in a T-shirt with straps, and a short skirt. She had great legs, slender, a touch muscular maybe, and he realised they were arousing him; her breasts looked firm inside her T-shirt and they aroused him also. He wondered if she smelled as good as Claudie; he decided he would like to tie this woman up and whip her. Perhaps with her pretty boy-faced husband trussed up and watching. Mr Sarotzini spoke again, interrupting his thoughts: ‘Mr and Mrs Carter. John Carter and Susan Carter. They live in a house in South London, which they have only recently purchased. He has his own business, in multimedia, she works in publishing. They have no children. You will find me John Carter and Susan Carter’s weak spots. All is clear?’

  Kündz looked at the photographs again, his excitement deepening. In particular he looked at the one that showed Susan Carter’s legs and breasts, and wondered if her pubic hair was also red. He hoped so.

  Mr Sarotzini had given him Claudie as a gift for being good. Maybe if he continued to please Mr Sarotzini, he would give him this woman as well.

  ‘All is clear,’ Kündz said.

  Chapter Three

  As John Carter hurried up to the front entrance of the bank, he was suffering a bad attack of butterflies. He was perspiring and he could not remember when he last felt like this – probably not since those terrifying summonses to the headmaster’s study when he was at school.

  His shirt clung to his back, and his brain had locked up, hung itself, crashed. He pushed the door, which was clearly labelled PULL, but was too nervous even to feel embarrassed.

  He crossed the foyer, feeling even more like a scared schoolboy, glanced at the queues at the tellers’ desks, got his bearings, then walked over to the window marked ENQUIRIES.

  Even the woman clerk made him feel uncomfortable as she looked at him through the glass partition, as if his name and description had been circulated to the entire staff here on some secret blacklist. Watch out for this man.

  ‘I have an appointment with Mr Clake,’ he said, his voice withering like a faltering sales pitch under the clerk’s stony glare, and he worried from her frown of disapproval whether he had incorrectly pronounced the manager’s name. ‘That is how you pronounce it?’

  She nodded stonily.

  John was wearing his most conservative suit, plain navy lightweight, white cotton shirt, a quiet tie and black lace-up brogues – as well as his red and white polka-dot boxer shorts, which he wore when he needed luck. He’d discussed what to wear with Susan both last night and this morning, and had tried three different ties and four pairs of shoes before she felt that the image was right. He looked smart, she told him, without looking showy.

  He thought about Mr Clake, wondering, for the umpteenth time, what kind of a man he was. He had been thinking about him for a full twenty-four hours now, ever since the phone call from Mr Clake’s secretary yesterday. He thought about his car also, which was sitting on a double yellow line down the road from the bank; maybe he’d get lucky and wouldn’t be clamped but it was an anxiety he could do without right now. He’d had no choice – there were no parking spaces and he was already fifteen minutes late.

  John thought suddenly of a joke he’d heard. It was about a man who told his friend that his bank manager had a glass eye. His friend asked how he could tell which was the glass eye and which the real eye. ‘That’s easy,’ the man replied. ‘The glass eye is the one that looks warmer.’

  The joke didn’t seem funny any more. John pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed the moisture that was running from his forehead like a burst main, silently cursing evolution for sabotaging his body. Adrenaline was the problem. Fifty thousand years ago adrenaline had helped cavemen flee from the sabre-toothed tiger. But John didn’t need it right now. He didn’t need the glands pumping the stuff out, powering his muscles, switching up the rheostat of his heartbeat, dilating his pupils, converting his sweat glands into fire hydrants. He needed calming down, and evolution had not equipped him with anything to do that.

  He mopped his forehead again; his neck was sticky, the sweating getting worse. Not sweat, he thought suddenly, no. Horses sweat, ladies glow, men perspire.

  John’s brain was swirling; he was finding it hard to hold onto his thoughts. He felt a brief stab of panic about his car. How long could it last on a double yellow line in Piccadilly? Ten minutes? Twenty?

  ‘Would you like to come this way?’

  He stooped to glance at his reflection in the glass, nursed back into place some stray hairs with his finger, straightened his tie, then took a deep breath. Control. All his working life he had been in control. He knew how to charm people: he was a master at manipulation and he had charmed the socks off his previous bank manager, Bill Williams. All he had to do was keep calm, be polite, friendly, show this Mr Clake just how good the future was looking.

  He followed the assistant through a door. It was all bland blue carpet, dark wood, the same as it had always been, with just one difference. Mr Clake, instead of Bill Williams.

  Bill Williams had been a sucker for technology and for seven years John had juiced him with it. They played virtual golf between their offices on their computers, and occasionally John took him out to his club at Richmond and they played real golf. John taught him how to surf the Net, and where to find the dirty pictures – the totties, Bill called them – and how to stack them up inside a sequence of files on a hard disk protected by a password.

  John taught Bill Williams more than he ever needed to know about computers and, in return, Bill gave him all he needed from the bank, and more, far more, than enough rope to hang himself, Bill often joked.

  And now Bill Williams was history. He had taken early retirement. Overnight. Bill had rung him just a week ago, sounding like a man bereaved, saying he would explain some time but was not at liberty to do so at the moment. He apologised, he was truly sorry, but everything would be fine, he assured John. They agreed to have a game of golf but made no date. The bank would continue to look after John, he was in good hands. But there was no conviction in Bill’s voice.

  And there was not much warmth in Mr Clake’s handshake. Even less in his expression. He was as bald as an egg, his mouth was small and off-centre and he wore square glasses that did not suit him. ‘Mr Carter, it’s good of you to come at such short notice.’

  He talked like a ventriloquist, his tiny skewed lips scarcely moving, as if he was gripping a pin between his teeth.

  They sat down. Mr Clake leant forward across an open file containing several sheets of computer printout. Without reading them, John guessed it contained the financial entrails of his business. Beside them on the desk was a photograph that he presumed to be of Mr Clake’s wife and children. John studied the wife’s face. She looked pleasant – at least Clake was human, he thought, feeling a ray of hope.

  ‘You’re in the multimedia game,’ Mr Clake informed him.

  John nodded, and swallowed. Mr Clake’s body language was making him tense as hell, and he did not like the way the man had said multimedia.

  ‘Yes, technology.’ Mr Clake drew a breath with a hiss and glanced down at the printout. ‘Technology.’ He smiled. It was like the flare of a distant match in a vast, freezing emptiness. John fleetingly thought about his car, wondering how long Mr Clake was going to detain him, but the car wasn’t important. He brought his focus back to this meeting, ran over the answers he had prepared for any of the questions he figured might be lobbed at him.

  ‘Not a computer man myself,’ Mr Clake said, sitting tightly behind his desk. ‘Don’t go for all this technology. It has a pl
ace, of course, and I can understand why you see the potential.’

  John looked at Mr Clake’s dapper suit, at the man’s smug face, and felt the anger rising inside him like a choking fog. How could anyone, in a modern bank, in Mr Clake’s position, make such a crass remark?

  Then he noticed an object on the bare expanse of desk that he had not previously seen. As he looked at it harder, he could barely believe his eyes. It was a Bible. Mr Clake had a Bible ostentatiously placed on his desk. What was this man, where was he coming from, John wondered.

  ‘The five-year forecast,’ Mr Clake said. ‘Who produced it?’

  Clake must be a born-again Christian, he decided. He could detect something devout now in the man’s expression; something pious; something messianic. Maybe Mr Clake was on a crusade to save the world from technology?

  John, his heart sinking further, struggled to keep his cool and maintain his warm, polite, courteous facade. He rummaged inside his briefcase, pulled out his laptop computer and powered it up.

  Irritation showed on Mr Clake’s face and John’s apology that it would take a minute or so to boot up only served to annoy the bank manager further. John ransacked his brain for something to say to break the awkwardness of the silence, to try to find common ground between the two of them. ‘Are you – a – golfer?’ he said, lamely.

  Clake responded with a single shake of his head.

  ‘How long have you – been – with – the – bank?’

  ‘Fourteen years. How long is this machine of yours going to take?’

  ‘It’s almost done.’ John stared at the screen, willing it to be ready. Then, when the computer finally stabilised, John asked, ‘The plan? The five-year plan or the five-year forecast?’

  ‘The forecast, I said.’ Mr Clake’s reserves of courtesy appeared to be running out. John tapped two keys and his computer crashed.