Old Enemies

by Michael Dobbs

  The drumming stopped. The policeman gripped the wheel, his knuckles showing white. ‘You do not understand, Signor Jones. I don’t believe I was offering you an option.’

  The roast-chestnut seller on Via Oriani offered a grin from behind his stall that was broad enough to persuade Harry to stop. The wind had picked up with the sunset and it was close to freezing; he’d already consumed an entire bar of chocolate to keep up his blood sugar but his system was still screaming for more. The chestnut-seller, a dark-skinned man with a colourful woollen hat and a strong look of the North African coast, tested the nuts by squeezing each one to ensure they remained firm and sweet, then threw a couple of extras into the paper cone for good luck. Harry was glad for the chestnuts, and the smile. It hadn’t been much of a day.

  As so often in his life, it was the ordinary foot soldiers rather than the commanding officers who helped Harry make it through – the Polish chambermaid in his room, for instance, where he had returned to shower and change his clothes, and the junior concierge, Karim. Harry needed to discover the parts of Trieste that were off the beaten path, the sort of detail the guidebooks didn’t offer, the immigrant bits, and who better to tell him than immigrants themselves?

  There were a couple of thousand Romanians in Trieste, so D’Amato had claimed, but that would be the official figure and thus almost certainly inaccurate. It would make no allowance for the illegals. Yet even if he doubled the number Harry still came up with only four thousand, which suggested a small community, probably tightly knit, and this was a conclusion that both the chambermaid and Karim had confirmed.

  But it was the nurse at the Pronto Soccorso or A&E in the chaotic downtown hospital who tended Harry’s injuries who had been particularly helpful. The wounds themselves were superficial, blood but no bone, and as she swabbed them down, muttering in admiration as she did so at the work on his ear, he’d noticed the nametag on her chest. Sabic. Another immigrant, and with passable English. She had told him a lot about an area of town called the Little Balkans. It was precisely what Harry needed.

  The place she had mentioned was a run-down quarter of rented and largely dilapidated properties off the Piazza Garibaldi, a square presided over by the gilded figure of the Madonna set high on a stone column. From here, along streets on all sides stretched crowded tenements whose bell-pushes told their own stories. There were -bichs and -sics and -vichs, Mohammeds and Radulas and Taroskis, Liu Chens and even a Signor Zhu, often with two or three names scrawled beside a single buzzer. It was the old story – as soon as one of these exotic nametags appeared, the Italians left, if they could. The tide was coming in and the longer they stayed the stickier things would get. Soon it wasn’t just one building but the whole street and then the neighbourhood, and now every fourth shop which wasn’t an ethnic food store or restaurant seemed to be a recycling centre for second-hand electricals or car parts. The Little Balkans.

  It was the bars Harry was most interested in. His lunchtime conversation with Sean in the osteria had focused on them, they were the basis for his plan, as much as it was worth, which was less than half an arse now he’d lost Sean, but since when had things ever gone to plan in his life? Now, in the light of the early night as the figure of the gilded Madonna came into view, there was no mistaking the Little Balkans. Crumbling buildings a hundred and fifty years old, five or six storeys high with huge, draught-leaking windows, and bare bulbs shining through. Leaking drainpipes, crudely patched masonry, washing hanging from windows, streets where the supply of paint seemed to have run out years ago, except for the graffiti. The politics of many distant countries were being fought out on the walls with messages that were raw, rough, and often deeply racist. There were even swastikas. As he looked up Harry saw two plastic Santas dangling on ropes from a shutter – trying to get in, or to escape?

  In the doorway of a food store that claimed to be a Chinese pizzeria, its Italian owner was bawling at an Asian employee, who refused to catch his eye, looking away in the downcast habit of an Oriental. Two Muslim women in hijabs scurried by, heads into the wind, and a copy of Hurriyet wrapped itself around Harry’s ankles. Then he found his first bar. It was typical of this part of town; small, narrow like a railway carriage, with a long bar on one side and little more than a large shelf on the other for drinkers to lean on. Apart from a few bar stools it was standing-room only. A drinking hole. It was still relatively quiet, only the early crowd. Nurse Sabic had told him that these places filled up later at night, and first thing in the morning, before the working hour. The middle-aged barman was testing the flow of lager from one of his new barrels; the tap spat and coughed a couple of times before he was satisfied. Only then did he look up. Behind him Harry could see bottles of cheap whisky along with grappa and vodka, and amongst them several bottles of tsuica, the favourite spirit of Romania, distilled from plums. It could kick your head in with a single blow. Harry ordered a beer.

  He noticed a copy of Il Piccolo, the local newspaper, lying on the bar. It had a blaring headline. Doppio Omocidio! ‘Double Murder!’ Beneath it the story was illustrated with several graphic photographs of the inside of the farmhouse. So much for D’Amato and the sanctity of the crime scene. The barman was wiry to the point of looking withered, his narrow face dominated by a huge moustache with nicotine stains beneath his nostrils. His skin was like the bark of an apple tree, and his eyes kept wandering to the side of Harry’s face, and the clips Nurse Sabic had applied to keep the wounds on his cheek intact. Harry sipped his beer, didn’t want to rush this, waited until he’d gone through more than half the glass before he spoke.

  ‘You speak English?’

  The barman shrugged. ‘A little.’

  ‘I have lost some property here in Trieste. Some very valuable English property.’

  The barman shrugged again, and started polishing a glass.

  ‘I would be grateful if you could help me find it.’

  Harry spoke slowly, but the barman appeared not to have heard.

  ‘Very grateful,’ Harry emphasized.

  He reached into his pocket and brought out a new £200 note and placed it beside his glass on the counter, where it lay crisp and flat and clearly visible until Harry covered it with his hand. The barman’s eyes began to flicker in uncertainty.

  ‘I want my property back. To buy it back. No questions. And no police. You understand?’

  Another shrug, more half-hearted this time.

  ‘I will come back here tomorrow evening. If you can help me, there will be more of these.’

  He withdrew his hand, and the barman stared once again at the note with its distinctive sunflower-yellow design.

  ‘What property?’

  ‘A boy. An English boy.’

  The barman’s expression flooded with suspicion. The glass-polishing became more furious.

  Harry rose from his seat. ‘I will see you again. Tomorrow.’

  As Harry turned, the barman placed his own hand over the note and glanced around to see whether any of the other drinkers had noticed. He was relieved to see them all still staring into their beers, oblivious. The barman was nervous, he’d just made almost a week’s wages in a couple of minutes for saying nothing, with the promise of more to come. If he made this much for keeping his mouth shut, how much more might there be if he had something to say? He didn’t trust the English, he didn’t trust drinkers who left their beers unfinished, and he didn’t trust this bastard in particular. Fuck him. But he would ask around, anyway, carefully, of course, couldn’t do any harm.

  Harry got much the same reaction in all the bars he visited, eleven in total, any that had even a hint of a Romanian connection, steering clear of only the Turkish and Vietnamese. When he was finished he hailed a taxi back to his hotel. He was exhausted, a little drunk, and he knew it wasn’t wise to walk streets like these when so many knew he had his pockets stuffed with cash. This was already a turbulent part of town, and he’d just given it a bloody good shaking.

  The men had grumbled abou
t the lateness of the hour and the lack of notice, the theatre tickets that would go unused and the dinner invitations discarded, but they’d all agreed to come. J.J. had insisted. He needed them. They were the three other substantial owners of the newspaper, the men who controlled the voting shares while ordinary shareholders looked on. One of the men, David Carson, was a long-standing partner in the business, a friend of Breslin’s from their schooldays who had taken up twenty per cent of the voting shares at the outset and had stuck with them through sunshine and storm, although over the years his business interests had slowly moved elsewhere – into property, a Michelin-starred restaurant that earned better reviews than it had ever done profits, and an expensive third wife. The other two men sitting around the bare boardroom table were more recent arrivals, Laval and Cutter, money men, managers of investment funds who controlled around ten per cent each, speculators who enjoyed prowling through the wood in the hope that the grizzlies would frighten the smaller wildlife into their arms. The atmosphere in the Newsday headquarters was out of sorts, artificial, the building unnaturally quiet at this time of night, no bustle, no attentive assistants, no coffee; it had the spartan atmosphere of one of God’s waiting rooms in an existential play. Cutter was the last to arrive, and came in glancing purposefully at his watch.

  ‘I’ll be brief, to the point,’ J.J. said once they had all sat down around the boardroom table. ‘I want to sell my stake in the newspaper. Immediately. Tonight, if possible.’

  They were men of business, experienced in hiding emotion and rarely showing surprise, but each one glanced at the others, searching for a sign that he was being played in a game the others were all in on; but they found nothing in each other’s faces except bafflement. They turned back to J.J.

  ‘Our Articles of Association say that if any of us want to sell our shares we must offer the others first refusal before putting them on the open market. So that’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘But why, J.J.?’ Laval said. ‘We have a right to know.’

  ‘It’s an entirely personal matter – nothing to do with the business, if that’s what you mean. This is the last moment I would choose to sell, just when the business is being turned around . . .’ He was already starting his sales pitch.

  ‘Convince me,’ Cutter said.

  J.J. hesitated. ‘First I need to swear you to secrecy.’ He knew that would be tricky, and perhaps pointless, this was a newspaper they were talking about, but the police in both Britain and Italy had told him in the strongest terms that any publicity would only make matters more difficult, might even panic the kidnappers into doing something rash. The silence had held so far, but for how much longer? J.J. had spent many hours of his sleepless nights wondering if he would have sat on such a good story if it had been someone else’s kid. Did he have that much integrity? He hoped so, but didn’t know, not for certain. There were so many things in his life he wasn’t sure about any more. He placed his hands palm down on the table in front of him and sucked in a deep breath. He had to trust them, he had no choice. ‘My son has been kidnapped. I need the money for his ransom.’

  They stared speechless at him, their suspicions put to one side, now seeing in his face the signs of extraordinary suffering.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ! I’m gutted for you,’ Cutter burst out, his Midwest American tones stretching his words and adding emphasis.

  J.J. felt something inside turn to liquid. His stomach had been in turmoil for days, unable to cope with a diet of unrelenting misery, too little sleep, too much caffeine. He couldn’t take their sympathy added to the mix. He wanted to scream, to throw things, he didn’t want pity, commiserations, empty words, what he wanted was their stinking money! But instead of screaming, he nodded in gratitude at Cutter. ‘Look, I know we’ve been through a difficult patch, but you’ve all seen the revised business plan. It’s strong, robust. This newspaper is headed back where it ought to be. I hope you’ll take that into consideration.’

  He had rehearsed this, and each time it sounded sicker, more pathetic. The family home, the villa in France, their assets, even Terri’s jewellery, they’d had valuers poring over them for the past couple of days; as Terri had told him, those things didn’t matter, they could all be replaced. But the newspaper was different. It was the rock on which he had stood all his adult life, the lover he’d spent more time with than anyone else, the creature he’d trained, transformed, held on to through every storm. The newspaper was his life. Now he was liquidating it, ripping off his balls, bleeding to death. And these men knew it.

  ‘Sorry to throw this at you,’ he muttered, rolling his tongue around his mouth, wondering what had happened to his saliva.

  ‘Pity’s sake, J.J., no apology needed. You poor bastard,’ Carson said.

  ‘It has been a pretty terrible few days.’

  ‘I believe I can speak for all of us,’ Laval added. ‘This is so unjust. Unfair, J.J. You don’t deserve this.’

  ‘No one deserves this,’ J.J. whispered. He looked around the table. ‘So?’

  As soon as J.J. reached him, Carson’s eyes began to melt with emotion. ‘Hell, I’m sorry, J.J. Buy more? God’s truth is I was thinking of selling up myself. Will almost certainly have to, in fact. The property business – well, you know how tough that’s been.’ And there had been whispers of yet another divorce. ‘I’m desperately sorry, my friend, but I’m not in a position to help you.’

  J.J.’s stomach gave another turn. A good man, Carson. Slowly, stiffly, J.J. turned to Laval. ‘And you, Peter?’

  ‘J.J., what price do you want?’

  ‘The best I can get.’

  ‘But you know what the balance sheet looks like. There is so much debt.’

  ‘The business plan, the future . . .’

  ‘The future . . .’ Laval said, tossing up the word as though he were juggling a ball. ‘The future can only be touched by dreamers. But your needs are today.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Give me a price.’

  ‘Not at any price. Over the last three years this has been the worst-performing investment in my fund – not your fault, I know, but my investors would not understand. I’m sorry.’

  He hadn’t expected this. J.J. was more aware than any of them of the storms they had ridden, he had been the captain strapped to the helm while they were mere passengers, which was also why he could see more clearly the calmer waters that lay ahead. Or was that merely, as Laval had put it, the dream? Was he too close, too involved, too desperate, to be objective?

  He turned to Cutter. ‘Ken?’

  The American was a small, remarkably bald man, with a scalp that shone, which made his head almost phallic; someone had once described him as possessing a circumcised soul. He had a reputation as being a man who would never knowingly let anyone else get to the fridge first, even his kids. ‘I just want to say, J.J., how ripped up I feel about what you’re going through. Anything I personally can do to help, you bet I will.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But if I take another twenty-five per cent of the equity, I take responsibility for the same amount of debt. Look at it. It’s huge.’ He pronounced it ‘ooge’, as if he were too tight even to offer up the first consonant.

  ‘We’ve cut, we’ve reorganized, we’ve reshaped and restructured . . .’

  ‘Sure. Things might be much better in six months’ time.’

  ‘I don’t have six months.’

  The American sucked his teeth. ‘But right now, you’re offering furniture from a fire sale while the cushion’s still burning.’

  ‘You buy my share, you’ll as good as control the company.’

  ‘I buy your share, I buy your debt.’

  ‘Make me an offer. Or I’ll have to put the shares on the open market.’

  ‘OK.’ He held up a finger. ‘One.’

  ‘One million?’ The bastard was trying to screw him. They were worth more than that.

  But Cutter was shaking his head. ‘One pound. That’s my offer, with
all that debt hanging round its neck. One pound is what the Russian Lebedev paid for the Standard, and another pound for the Independent. Seems like the going rate for newspapers in trouble.’

  ‘You can’t—’

  ‘You know I have to put personal feeling aside on this.’

  But the comparison with the Standard and the Indy is outrageous, you miserable chiselling bastard, my life’s work for a pound? J.J. wanted to scream, but didn’t. He couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness. He was glad he’d kept on his jacket because he was sweating like a pig beneath it, his shirt drenched. Soon beads of perspiration would burst out beneath his hairline and betray him, reveal his fear. This couldn’t go on.

  ‘Very well, I’ll put the shares on the open market, see if that gets a better response.’

  ‘But you can’t do that for a month,’ Cutter replied softly.

  Something inside J.J. died. He thought it might be the last flicker of the flame that had kept his hope alive. ‘Our Articles of Association require that I give you first refusal, which I’ve done.’

  ‘They also provide that we have twenty-eight days to think about it.’

  ‘You’ve thought about it.’

  And now the circumcised soul leaked out of Cutter’s eyes. ‘I want to think about it some more. Maybe in a week or so, I could make you a different offer.’

  But nothing like what the shares were worth. The man was feral, couldn’t see a wounded animal without attacking, taking advantage. It was his nature. He’d guessed that J.J. was coming to the end of his resources, couldn’t beg or borrow much more, so Cutter’s reaction had been immediate and instinctive. Leave the sucker twisting on the spit for a week or two, and he’d be even easier to tear apart.

  J.J. stood up. He wanted to say something, words that might form a profound rebuke, some epitaph to carve on the stone above the grave they were digging for him. But nothing came. He walked away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE