The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  They talked for an hour about banking business, about the world’s economic, political and industrial developments. D’Isigny returned to his own office.

  Jean-Paul pressed the buzzer for his secretary. Like all d’Isigny employees, she dressed somberly, in a severe black suit. She was a handsome woman but the suit and pulled-back hairstyle made her look considerably older than she was.

  “Madame Coutanche,” he said. “I want to make some changes.”

  “Sir?” she said.

  “The first of these changes will be in the dress of our women employees. Please let it be known that the managing director would not make any objections to the wearing of dresses that are not dark.”

  Her mouth opened in amazement.

  “But your father, sir. Does he agree?”

  “Bright, cheerful, feminine, colorful dresses, Madame Coutanche.”

  “I will write a memorandum for you to sign.”

  “There is no need for any women on the staff of this bank to look like a schoolmistress. Unleash your hair, Madame Coutanche. The men may go on looking like funeral-parlor assistants, but the women must start looking like women.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Now, please find a good interior decorator and get him to come up with something colorful for this office.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all for now.”

  She rose from her seat, glancing at herself in the glass of a painting.

  “I find the idea quite exciting,” she said.

  “Good, Madame Coutanche ... what is your Christian name?”

  “Marianne, sir.”

  And so the changes began. Like most European banks of its kind, the Banque d’Isigny had always been prepared to sit back and await business. Now it began to go out and seek new clients. It was done, of course, with subtlety — gentle hints were dropped in the Bourse and in the clubs frequented by industrialists and the rich.

  D’Isigny had protested mildly, but he had seen the reasoning behind Jean-Paul’s newfound aggressiveness. New groups of merchant bankers had been forming all over Europe. D’Isigny had not been affected, but it was a time of boom, especially with the Common Market’s emergent industrial power.

  Another change, however, did worry d’Isigny. He saw it in Jean-Paul.

  It was hard to discern immediately; the older man saw it first in his son’s eyes. The dark rings had disappeared and so had the lines of pain. But there was something in those piercing blue eyes which had not been there before. It was a coldness, a determination. Sometimes, especially in conversations away from the bank, he noticed that Jean-Paul was not really listening, that he was strangely detached.

  D’Isigny talked to Eva about it.

  She said, “You do not know what that look is about? I do. I’ve seen it too many times. It is the look of a man seeking revenge.”

  *

  He saw little of the Paris he had grown to love so during his marriage. He shunned every place he had ever taken Claudine, and had to force himself to enter the apartment in which they had lived.

  He drove there on a Sunday afternoon. Eva had thoughtfully removed traces of his wife that she knew would hurt him. He stayed there only long enough to take a few books, a photograph album and a small case filled with papers he would need to sort out.

  The next morning he called the bank’s senior computer expert and handed him the yellowing sheaf of papers Razziz had given him.

  “I don’t know what it all means,” Jean-Paul said. “It’s probably all out of date, but try to break the code, if indeed there is one.”

  OVER ELBA, 2130

  The atmosphere in the Petite Concorde aircraft now was alive, electric. The technicians, no longer quiet and serious, laughed and shouted and whooped to release their tensions as the computer recorded the success of action on the ground. Base after base, garrison after garrison was being taken with every minute that clicked by on the clock.

  Becker did not share their excitement. It was too early. With the leaders on the ground, he had played this war game too often. Things could go wrong. The NATO men could extricate themselves from the mud and move at high speed across Germany into France. And there were still civilian aircraft to bring the British back from Ireland or the French paratroopers up from Pau.

  There were other factors. The Compagne République Sécurité in France, for instance, was controlled directly from the Ministry of the Interior. They were full-time troops, combat-trained, highly mobile, each man operating under an oath of loyalty to the President. Two hundred men would be on duty in each département that night. And there were the carabinieri in Italy. They were a strong and effective strike force, though in this situation they might not be able to act.

  A final gamble remained: what posture would the United States take in a sudden turnover?

  The American bases in Britain, Germany and Italy remained untouched. A pushbutton in the Defense Secretary’s office could unleash a powerful retaliation. But would it? NATO was geared to a communist offensive from outside — but not for a sudden takeover by the Trojan horse that Becker controlled. He relied upon the disillusionment in Washington with European allies whose halfheartedness had grown through the years. And he relied on the fact that he himself was popular with fellow giants, who would not support a military move against a multinational corporation like his.

  His intelligence network indicated that the State Department would welcome this move. They would make a lot of noise, certainly. There would be saber-rattling in the Senate, and the Pentagon would pay lip-service to its NATO commitments. But the U.S. would not retaliate immediately; most certainly not for several days. By then it would be far too late.

  As for the Russians, they were not going to take easily to the fact that seventy percent of their best agitators were being arrested in Europe that night; no more would they accept the man who had carried out the coup. Becker’s war games had never really reached a conclusion in this respect. It was an intellectual argument in which every known precedent was quoted over and over again. Would they risk confrontation with the Americans?

  The Centra prediction was that Russia would not move. It had been, for several years now, a docile giant, content to mend its own internal ills and to leave Europe to rot politically until it collapsed from within.

  There would be outbursts at the Security Council, and Russia would veto a European membership of the U.N. But in the end it would acquiesce. And it would wait, doing its best by subversion to bring the Becker Group down.

  For the moment he was winning. There were three factors he had banked on heavily. The first of these was the way in which the operation had been planned, the speed with which it had been carried out and the simple audacity of its conception. The second factor was the known nature of each of the four security companies involved. They were entirely familiar and trusted. Thirdly there was the European weekend, which stretched from Friday until Monday morning. Armies sent their men home for weekends in this age, not because they were any more easygoing, but because it saved on heating, lighting and cooking. As four-day armies, they were vulnerable.

  Becker also acknowledged a fourth factor. Luck, in the shape of the foul weather below, had been on his side. Centra did not recognize luck.

  The pattern emerged in bright green and red dots on the computer map of Europe. The British army had collapsed, certainly as far as the mainland of the United Kingdom was concerned. The French army had been made powerless. The depleted German army had surrendered to the Armor force with not the slightest hint of opposition. Italy shone bright with red. Its limited army, too, had been taken entirely by surprise.

  Only one exception was glaringly evident. It was the principal garrison town of northern Italy, the city of Udine. According to all calculation, the city should have fallen much earlier in the schedule, and been glowing now on the screen.

  Becker punched out the code for Adagio North. The screen read back to him: NO CONTACT.

 
He tapped the computer keys once more, adding a Q, which meant his signal should override all others.

  The machine printed out: ADAGIO NORTH UNABLE ANSWER YOU FOR OPERATIONAL REASONS. WAIT.

  He waited.

  *

  The Udine strike force of Adagio North had run into serious trouble along the straight main highway that led from their base at Campoformido to the city of Udine. The coaches and all the ancillary vehicles had been completely blocked by the collapse of an aqueduct near the village of Santa Caterina. The men had to walk the last two miles, mostly up to their waists in floodwater, their weapons held high over their heads.

  It was a serious decision for their leader to have to take. They would be revealed too soon. Police patrols would be on this road with radios. It would not be easy to explain four hundred armed men.

  But there were no police. The men were able to move through the rain-blackened night without detection. Nonetheless, their leader turned them off the main road as they approached the suburbs of the city and began to force the pace as they crossed rough grazing land, stumbling in the total darkness over stone walls and sleeping animals, until they could see the lights of the barracks before them.

  The rest was comparatively easy. There were fewer than five hundred men in the garrison that night and most of them were watching a preview of the next day’s soccer game on television. The guards, weary and demoralized after an evening of watching the streaming rain, surrendered quickly.

  It was nine-forty-five. They were fifteen minutes late reporting that the Udine Garrison had been neutralized without casualties.

  14

  The computer expert returned a week later.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but these figures mean nothing — except for every alternate fifth line. These are addresses and brief notations. Look — ‘34 Rue du Police, Amiens, foundations.’ And here is another one. ‘22 Place du Vendôme, Rennes, south facing wall.’ I’m afraid it means nothing to me, sir.”

  Jean-Paul thanked him. After the man left he sat looking at the papers for several minutes. Then he rose from his seat and went out along the corridor to the elevator that took him to the underground bank vaults.

  He did not recognize the guard, in a green uniform, behind the grill. A pistol sat unclipped in the man’s holster. A giant German shepherd growled at Jean-Paul.

  “May I see your identification, sir?”

  “I’m d’Isigny, managing director of the bank. Who are you?”

  “Vigilance de France, sir. Your guards are both ill with flu. Your identification, please.”

  Jean-Paul produced his bank pass.

  “And authority to enter the vaults.”

  “I sign the authorities.”

  “All authorities must be countersigned, I’m afraid, sir. The rule applies equally to directors.”

  The man was apologetic, but clearly adamant.

  Ten minutes later, Jean-Paul walked through the vaults, between banks of gold bars that rose four feet from the concrete flooring.

  He picked up several heavy ingots and looked at the numbers on them. It was really very simple.

  He left the vault and entered the elevator. He was mid-way to the ground level when the small seed of a giant concept began to germinate in his mind.

  *

  The bullion expert looked at the numbers.

  “But of course,” he said. “The stolen Rothschilds.”

  “Tell me,” said Jean-Paul.

  “These are the numbers of eighty thousand bars of gold that were stolen by the Gestapo from the Rothschilds in 1943. They were worth a billion or so old francs then.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They never turned up again. It is almost certain that they were melted down. They are probably financing a few Nazi war criminals here and there in Egypt and South America.”

  “Thank you.”

  *

  That weekend, under the guise of visiting the d’Isigny stables, he drove to Rennes. The Place du Vendôme was an ugly, quite dilapidated square of small terraced houses. Number 22 was at the far corner. It was not occupied.

  A small notice in the center of the place announced that because of “redevelopment” it was for sale.

  That afternoon, in an attorney’s office in the Rue De Gaulle, he bought the complete Place du Vendôme, paying for it with a check drawn on his personal account.

  The following morning, armed with mallets and heavy chisels that he had borrowed from a blacksmith’s forge, he drove in a discreet stable van to Number 22. He wore overalls and carried the tools in a canvas tote bag.

  The interior of the house smelled damp and reeked of mildew. The furniture left behind had turned green with mold.

  He studied the southern wall of the house for several minutes until he found what he was looking for. There was a clear indentation in the whitening floral wallpaper.

  He took a chisel and muffled the mallet with cotton waste. He began to tap gently, working upward. The walls of the house, which had been built before the advent of modern ventilation, were made of granite that had been lined with brick on the interior.

  The plaster crumbled immediately. The mortar between the bricks was old and gave little resistance to the sharp chisel. With the edge of the chisel, he levered out the first brick. He blew away the coating of fine red dust and leaned forward.

  Between the bricks and the granite he caught the dull gleam of yellow metal.

  OVER ELBA, 2145

  He saw the red dot appear on the screen. The pattern disappeared.

  A line of print appeared across the screen. It read: YOU ARE GREEN FOR STAGES TWO AND THREE AS SCHEDULED.

  The time schedule allowed for the takeover of the four armed forces was, of course, more critical than that for any other phase of the operation.

  The second phase, which involved the detention of every potentially dangerous political opponent, was more generous in its margins. Most of the prisoners would be set free within a matter of days. But the move also involved the capture and detention of every known terrorist on the Continent. For them there could be no freedom.

  Ten minutes to go before Claudine and little Marcel would be avenged. In spades.

  Avenged? Was this monumental operation really just a matter of revenge?

  Thinking about it, he decided that it was not. Here, at fifty thousand feet, in this cylinder glinting in the moonlight, amid the whirring, purring and chattering machinery, he was truly able to feel detached. He was just tidying things up. It was really as simple as that.

  15

  It took him only a few years to become one of the richest and most powerful men in Europe. The fact that no one knew it pleased him. The fact that his empire had been built on stolen gold did not trouble him in the least. The total value of what he had found, thanks to Razziz, was fifty million dollars.

  First he had formed a nominee company to set up a small factory at Rennes. Then he hired, as workers, six illiterate Algerian migrants who spoken only Arabic. Each week he brought them a shipment of gold which, in a furnace and with molds, they turned into unnumbered ingots. At the end of a few months, he paid the men off handsomely and arranged for their return to Algiers, where they would be wealthy and, he hoped, silent for the rest of their lives.

  He lodged the gold in a chain of banks that stretched from Stockholm to Beirut.

  With the loans raised on its value, he began to invest through a complicated structure of small companies he had formed in several countries. He bought wisely in growth industries, and the returns were enough for him to begin an innocuous series of investments in major corporations.

  In three years, he doubled the value of the money. He sought to quadruple it in six years and succeeded. His holdings began to increase geometrically.

  By day, he worked as the managing director of the Banque d’Isigny in Paris. By night, he operated his investment companies from an eight-room apartment in the Rondpoint district.

  The operatio
n was so carefully concealed that it was several years before a trusting Jacques d’Isigny discovered that his bank’s name had been used in guarantees of a large number of companies that showed neither assets nor profits — nor any chance of collateral realization.

  The elder d’Isigny began to make inquiries. There had been something in Jean-Paul’s dismissal of his fears that disturbed him gravely. He kept his suspicions to himself, but employed a team of accountants to dig out the truth.

  He could hardly believe what his accountants told him. The Banque d’Isigny was no longer merely a silent partner in the affairs of Europe. It had become an instrument of control, with strings of command leading to every major industry. And at the other end of the strings was Jean-Paul d’Isigny.

  The scene between the two men in the library of the d’Isigny house was as quiet as any of the hundreds of conferences they had held there, and to an outsider would have looked as cordial. But when it was over they were no longer father and son.

  “I apologize to you for deceiving you,” said Jean-Paul. “However, except for that, you will find I have not been dishonest. I have explained where the money I used to start my operations came from — perhaps you feel I have been less than an honorable man with the Rothschild gold, but at least it was money long since written off as lost; I did not steal from the Banque d’Isigny or from any of its clients. I have simply made the money the basis of an instrument for carrying out my will. The Banque d’Isigny has never been more than a tool other people use to carry out their own wills.”

  “Exactly,” said d’Isigny. “That is why we are one of the most respected financial houses in the world. We have, naturally, engaged in many confidential enterprises. But we have never misled a client, or the world at large, about the business we are in.”

  “Like a faithful dog, yes, we have always done our duty. Meanwhile, while the money we lend works and multiplies, the men we lend it to destroy the world. I will not be a dog, faithful or unfaithful.”