Never Enough

by Harold Robbins

  The two paintings could not have contrasted more. Alexandra’s was flagrantly erotic,

  They had come to the apartment after dinner at the Russian Tea Room, where Emily had been introduced to a culinary experience she had never known before.

  When the two wives stripped to the waist and the two couples were sipping champagne, Dave said, “Y’ know, Cole, the world is filled with marvelous opportunities, and I have to think you’re missing out on most of them. I can understand your going home to Wyckoff after establishing yourself in a Manhattan firm. What I don’t understand is why you don’t look out for ways to make big money.”

  “How would I make big money?” Cole asked. He knew what Dave had in mind, but he asked anyway.

  “Well … I could give you some market tips. That’s my business, you know: to research investments.”

  “Strictly straight?” Emily asked.

  “Let me put it this way,” Dave said. “I have a stock in mind. Every shred of information I have about it came off of NEXIS, the computer search system. You can get SEC filings. But you can also get news stories. You put two and two together. Every bit of information I have on the stock I’m about to mention is public. Anybody can get it. You just have to know what you’re looking for and how to find it.”

  “Okay. What company do you have in mind?”

  “Ever hear of Mountain Gas? Put a few dollars into it, Cole. I’ll call and tell you when to buy. I swear you won’t be sorry.”

  “Mountain Gas …”

  “And be ready to sell when I call you.”

  V

  Cole put a thousand dollars into the stock. It was selling at 13¼. Two weeks later it was selling at 22, and Dave called and advised him to sell. Net of commissions, Cole made almost seven hundred dollars on the transaction.

  What happened was that Mountain Gas announced the opening of a major new field. The stock rose. Independent geologists came in and took a look and pronounced the field minor. The stock fell back to 12.

  They sat down again in the Manhattan apartment.

  “They drilled in a well,” Dave explained. “I knew they were drilling. That was public information. The well made gas. They got enthusiastic about what they’d found. Their announcement sent the stock up unrealistically. I was skeptical. That’s why I told you to be ready to sell. In and out at the right time …”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  Dave was distracted. Alexandra was stroking his penis.

  “Question?”

  “How much did you put in it?”

  “I can’t have a trading account,” said Dave, his voice strained by what Alexandra was doing. “I can help my friends.”

  He didn’t say that Windsor Nassau Associates had put a hundred thousand dollars into the deal and come out with seventy thousand dollars profit.

  Alexandra looked curiously at Emily. “Don’t you play with Cole?” she asked innocently, cupping Dave’s scrotum in one hand and raising it, straining his slacks.

  Emily frowned quizzically at Cole. “Usually in private.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” he said.

  Emily put her hand in his crotch and began to stroke his engorged penis.

  “I can put you onto lots of deals,” said Dave. “Like I said, you ought to be making some big money. What you’re doing brings you alot of satisfaction, but you aren’t going to get rich at it.”

  Cole looked at Emily. “You want to be rich, honey?”

  “I can think of worse things,” she said.

  Conversation about stocks was not really possible with two wives sitting bare-breasted and two husbands with their penises pulled out of their pants. They drank champagne. Alexandra used the clicker and switched on the eleven o’clock television news.

  “You guys ought to stay overnight,” Dave said when the news was over. “Your baby-sitter … ?”

  “Was told we might stay. We can call her.”

  “Well, then,” said Alexandra. “Let’s bring them, Emily. We can do it again while we look at Johnny Carson.”

  She handed Emily a wad of Kleenexes and clutched another wad in her left hand. She began to masturbate Dave vigorously, and in a minute he ejaculated. Emily did the same, and shortly after Dave did, Cole came hard.

  Emily called home. She told the baby-sitter to call her parents and say that Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were staying in New York overnight. It was all right. The girl was eighteen and sometimes stayed overnight with her charges.

  They finished the bottle of champagne. Without asking what anyone wanted, Alexandra went to the freezer and poured the icy Stolichnaya into glasses also from the freezer. She brought this into the living room with a tray of crackers and a bowl of black caviar.

  The vodka was cold enough to cause the head to ache. It had to be sipped slowly. When they had finished their glasses, she brought others.

  Emily knew she was getting drunk. In fact, they were all getting drunk.

  Midnight came. Carson’s guest was Jonathan Winters. They always laughed at him, but this time they laughed louder and longer.

  “Tell y’ what,” Alexandra said to Emily, slurring her words. “Why don’t I jack off Cole and you jack off Dave?”

  Emily didn’t want to, but she no longer had the will to refuse.

  The two men accepted the idea.

  They switched seats. Emily found herself with Dave’s oversized cock in her hands. She accepted Kleenexes and set to work on him. It didn’t take long. He moaned as he squirted into the tissues. Alexandra brought Cole a moment later.

  Dave didn’t try to touch Emily’s breasts or to kiss her. He stood and returned to his seat beside his wife.

  “Maybe we can switch sometime,” Alexandra whispered into Dave’s ear. “Would you like to watch me and Cole?”

  Dave smiled and kissed her.

  TEN

  I

  APRIL, 1989

  “What’s it come to?” Emily asked as she watched Cole tote up the numbers on a yellow legal pad.

  “It comes to $58,315.25, after brokers’ commissions,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It troubles me.”

  “You think he’s feeding me tips based on insider information?”

  “He’s too damned uncannily right,” she said. “Besides that, he’s got to be making ten times as much for his own account—even though he says he doesn’t have one.”

  “That’s easy enough to figure,” said Cole. “He’s got an offshore account somewhere. And what’s more, he doesn’t pay taxes.”

  “I’m uneasy about knowing those people,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time before they suggest we trade off—I mean, really trade off.”

  Cole shrugged. “We won’t do it. That’s all there is to that. We won’t do it.”

  “We’ve gone a long way already,” she said. “If you’d asked me six months ago, I’d have said I’d dissolve into utter hysterics if anyone suggested we do what we’ve done. And now … God! It seems like it’s commonplace.”

  “I don’t see how we can stop seeing them.” He tapped his finger on the numbers on the yellow legal pad. “But we can say no if—”

  “Right,” said Emily dryly. “Just say no. We seem unable to say no to anything they suggest.”

  II

  Alexandra Petrovna Krylov Shea wanted to return to Kiev, to see the city of her birth.

  “We can fly to Kiev and from there to Leningrad,” she said.

  “Moscow?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “If you want. But I’m not much interested in Moscow. I want to see the old St. Petersburg. I want to see the Winter Palace and the Hermitage.”

  “Well …”

  Alexandra was no fool, and when he said he wanted to spend a couple of days in Zurich on the way, she didn’t even ask why. She knew why.

  They checked into the Dolder Grand Hotel, and Alexandra went out to explore Zurich while Dave kept an appointment previously arranged by telephone from New York.

 
The offices of Trust Management AG—that is, Trust Management Aktiengesellschaft, meaning joint stock company—were peculiar. Though situated in a modern, high-rise, steel-and-glass office building, they had the look of something from the nineteenth century. Maroon plush drapes covered the glass outer walls, as if they covered only windows. Oriental carpets lay on the parquet floors. No fluorescent lights glared. Bulbs in milk-glass globes, plus bankers’ lamps, lighted the offices.

  Executive offices had fireplaces. Dave wondered where, in a building of this type, the smoke went.

  As Dave would learn, the status of people in the offices could be known at a glance by those who knew the dress code. Men wore three-piece suits with white shirts. The highest ranking men wore dark blue pin-striped suits. They alone wore colorful bow ties. Bow ties and dark blue pin-striped suits were forbidden to juniors, who wore gray and black suits and ties with regimental stripes. Women wore skirts. Slacks were forbidden. Women’s status was indicated by the length of their skirts. Secretaries and file clerks wore minis; women with some executive status wore their skirts knee length. Women with status wore jackets over white blouses. Secretaries and file clerks wore pastel-colored blouses and no jackets.

  Dave was received in the office of Axel Schnyder, a senior man at TM AG. Schnyder was sixty years old or more. His face was wrinkled and jowly. His blue eyes, set in concentric wrinkles, bulged. He wore the dark blue pin-striped suit and a red and gray bow tie.

  Schnyder’s desk was a massive antique, made of cherry and elaborately carved. He took a flask from the rolltop desk behind him and poured brandy into snifters.

  “I believe you said on the telephone that you can place a million dollars with us for management. Frankly, Mr. Shea, that is our minimum.”

  The man spoke flawless, British-accented English.

  “I can maybe put more with you, if I sell—”

  Schnyder raised a hand to interrupt him. “The million will be entirely satisfactory. We will review your situation, to see what we can recommend to you. The million, I gather, is with the Pictet bank, Nassau branch.”

  “Yes.”

  “Under a different name.”

  “Under the name Joseph Windsor.”

  “I assume you have not disclosed to Pictet that Joseph Windsor is a fiction.”

  Dave nodded.

  “But they know,” said Schnyder. “Pictet is not stupid.”

  “They haven’t suggested that they know.”

  “They are also circumspect.”

  “As are you,” Dave said with a faint smile.

  “Let that not be exaggerated,” said Schnyder. “We will hold completely confidential whatever financial information we receive from you, including the name you choose to put on your account. If you are sued, we will not disclose any information about your assets. There is an exception. If someone obtains a judgment in a Swiss court, the Swiss court will order us to disclose, and we must. You should note, too, that if it sees any reason, your Internal Revenue Service will seek a judgment from a Swiss court. In any event, Mr. Shea, Trust Management AG is not in the business of helping Americans to evade their income taxes. We will assume you are complying with American law.”

  Axel Schnyder lifted his brandy snifter in salute and took a sip. Dave followed. The cognac was old and excellent.

  He had found what he wanted. Schnyder knew perfectly well that Dave would not be paying taxes on his profits—indeed would not file the required disclosure that he had assets on deposit overseas.

  “Now, then, sir,” said Schnyder, “what are your investment goals?”

  “I want confidentiality,” said Dave. “To begin with.”

  “Yes. Harcourt Barnham would be most distressed to learn that you are trading on your own.”

  “I want to trade internationally and build an asset account sufficient to allow me to exert a major influence on mergers and acquisitions in the States—where there lies the promise of immense profits. Ours is a merger-and-acquisition economy. Little companies are being squeezed out.”

  “One million dollars is a modest beginning,” said Schnyder.

  “I can be patient. Besides, I expect to add to that amount very shortly.”

  Schnyder nodded thoughtfully. “Very well. I will ask you to sign a power of attorney. It will authorize us to set up bank accounts for you and to invest funds as you instruct. It will also authorize us to invest as we see fit. You have checked our record. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  He pulled a document from his desk drawer. It was the power of attorney, with Dave’s name already typed in. “Read it over.”

  The document was short and simple. One paragraph read:

  The settlor represents to the trustee that he owes no unpaid taxes to any government and that he will file all legally required reports and pay all his several tax obligations in a complete and timely manner.

  Dave pulled a Mont Blanc pen from his pocket and signed the document with a flourish.

  “Now, sir,” said Schnyder. “I imagine you will want to assume another name.”

  “If you recommend it.”

  Schnyder smiled wryly. “I do. And more than that, I am ready to suggest a name and nationality. If there is one nation in Europe where confidentiality is better respected than in Switzerland, that nation is Austria. Unfortunately for Austria, it went through many traumas while we here were sheltered by our neutrality. Otherwise, Austrian banks might be the world’s asset managers. Anyway … I suggest the name Reinhard Brüning.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why. It comes off the top of the head, as you Americans say.”

  “Okay. And I’m a resident of—”

  “Vienna. If you agree to the name, please sign your new name on these cards. Keep one, so you can practice the signature. I will open your account for you. Also, you will need a deposit box, which I will arrange.”

  “At … Pictet?”

  “No. I have every confidence in Pictet & Compagnie, but putting everything in one bank is a mistake. I would like to set up an account for you at Deutsche Bank, where your deposit box will also be. You will have an account number, which I can use to get into your account or your box.”

  Dave nodded.

  “Now. Communication. TM AG has a modest office in New York City. It is in the Chrysler Building. You can leave messages there for me, and they will be sent to me over our private wire. I suggest that our office call your home only and leave only the message that Mr. Lee is calling. Then you can pick up my message at our office. You can pick it up? No. You must never be seen anywhere near our office. Your wife … a trusted friend … somebody. Better it not always be the same person. Your messenger should say only that he or she has come to pick up the message from Mr. Lee.”

  “Sounds good,” said Dave.

  “You understand, our services are not free of charge.”

  “I didn’t expect so.”

  “You may find that the way we invest your money is the best thing we can do for you.”

  “That’s why I came to you.”

  Schnyder lifted his snifter. “To a long and mutually profitable relationship.”

  They drank.

  “One more thing, Mr. Shea. I strongly recommend you cease to trade on insider information. It is very dangerous.”

  III

  Alexandra enjoyed her visit to Kiev. She took Dave to see the house where she was born and where she lived until her parents took her to America. Dave knew almost nothing about Kiev and Ukraine. He knew the Nazis had overrun the area in 1941, and he expected to see a shattered city being shabbily restored with grim, square Stalinist architecture.

  Well, maybe. But they stayed at the Hotel Ukraina, built in 1908, and still a hotel that would do credit to any city in the world. Great churches had survived: St. Sophia, built in the eleventh century and modeled on Hagia Sofia in Constantinople, had been dynamited during the war but had been lovingly restored; St. Andrews, built in the eighteenth century; a Roman Catholic Cathedral, called the Gothic
Cathedral; the Shevchenko Opera Theatre; and so on. Alexandra explained that the culture of Ukraine was older than the Russian and different.

  Alexandra did not want to look again at the huge sculptures erected in memory of the war dead, so they did not go to the memorial.

  “We think the Russians barbarians,” she said. “The princes of Kiev were building great churches and beautiful homes when the Russians were still building wooden kremlins.”

  They took their dinners in the excellent restaurants of the hotel, where she introduced Dave to Ukrainian dishes. One evening her uncle and aunt joined them for dinner: two sixty-something people who were happy to be invited to dinner in the Hotel Ukraina. Dave could understand nothing of the conversation, except when Alexandra broke off to explain to him.

  Though she did not entirely favor miniskirts, she wore one that evening, maybe to demonstrate to her family how American she had become.

  “My uncle wonders what you do for a living. My

  Aunt thinks you’re very handsome!”

  Dave smiled. “Tell them the next time we visit I will try to speak their language.”

  Back in their room, Alexandra wanted them to take a bath together in the huge bathtub that was the focus of the bathroom. “You could float a canoe in it,” Dave had said when he first saw it. They were soaking in warm, soapy water. For the first time, she put her mouth to his penis. As her warm tongue slowly circled his penis, he turned her body so his tongue could perform the same on her clitoris.

  They skipped Moscow and flew to Leningrad. Their airplane was a Tupolev 104 marked, “A3ρoΦοT.”