Mistress of the Game

by Sidney Sheldon

  Then out of the blue, another thought struck him.

  What had Marshall said? Find a market that’s still up-and-coming. Get in on the ground floor.

  And Jamie McGregor? I went into places that most people considered far too dangerous.

  Suddenly the answer was obvious.

  A little bit of research confirmed Gabe’s excitement. The South African rand had all but collapsed against the U.S. dollar since the fall of apartheid. Property in Cape Town was going for a song as white families fled, fearing a new explosion of black violence. Fearing revolution.

  If the revolution comes, I’ll lose everything. But if it doesn’t…

  At last, Gabe McGregor had a plan. He would go to Africa to seek his fortune.

  Just like Jamie McGregor had done before him.

  By 7:30 A.M., Gabe was on a subway into central London.

  By nine, he was waiting outside the glass doors of the exclusive Coutts Private Banking offices at number 100 The Strand.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  The security guard gave Gabe a look that made it perfectly clear that the last thing he wanted to do was help him. Gabe didn’t blame the guy. He’d shaved and smartened himself up as best he could, but in his thin gray jacket and ancient, rain-soaked jeans, he did not look like a typical Coutts customer.

  I’ve left you a little something at Coutts. Just to get you started.

  It was typical of Marshall Gresham’s generosity. He’d already done so much, kick-starting Gabe’s appeal, teaching him the real-estate business. Billy and the prison doctor might have gotten Gabe clean, but it was Marshall Gresham who’d kept him that way. Marshall had given Gabe hope, something to live for other than heroin. He hadn’t so much saved his life as given him a whole new one.

  And now he wants to make sure I have money for a bed and a meal tonight.

  It was both touching and much needed. Gabe had walked out of Wormwood Scrubs with only five pounds to his name, and that had gone on his subway fare and a bacon sandwich at Kings Cross. This afternoon he’d start looking for construction work. Friends inside had given him a few contacts. But it was nice to know he wouldn’t have to sleep rough on day one.

  “I’m here to see Robin Hampton-Gore.” Gabe spoke softly but with confidence. “I believe Marshall Gresham informed him I’d be coming.”

  The guard’s look now said, And I believe you’re a chancer come to try your luck with a sob story. Well, if you are, good luck to you, mate. You won’t get far with Mr. H.-G.

  Out loud he said: “Wait here, please, sir.”

  Gabe waited there. Five minutes later, as much to his own surprise as the guard’s, he found himself being escorted into a corner office by a genial man in a pin-striped Savile Row suit and the shiniest pair of wingtips Gabe had ever seen.

  “Mr. McGregor, I presume?”

  The man sat down behind a comfortingly solid mahogany desk. He gestured for Gabe to take the chesterfield chair opposite.

  “Robin Hampton-Gore. Marshall told me you’d be coming. Waxed quite lyrical about you, in fact. He assures me you’re going to be the next Donald Trump.”

  Gabe laughed uncomfortably. For a ritzy banker, Robin Hampton-Gore seemed suspiciously friendly toward an ex-heroin addict, just out of prison for burglary and aggravated assault, whose only recommendation came from a convicted fraudster.

  “Marshall’s an old friend of mine,” Robin explained, as if reading Gabe’s thoughts. “He made me in this business. He was my first big client and he stuck with me, long after he became so rich he could have insisted on someone far more senior handling his account. I owe him a lot.”

  “So do I,” said Gabe.

  Robin Hampton-Gore unlocked the drawer of his desk with an old-fashioned brass key and pulled out a crisp white envelope.

  “This is cash,” he explained unnecessarily, handing it to Gabe. “Marshall thought you’d need some immediately.”

  Gabe broke the seal and gasped. Inside was a small fortune. There was a smattering of tens and twenties, then hundred after hundred after hundred, the distinctive red-inked bills fluttering between Gabe’s shaking fingers like rare butterflies as he thumbed through them, trying to count.

  “There’s only ten thousand there. It’s a float. The rest is in an account in your name. I have all the details here.”

  Robin Hampton-Gore passed Gabe a second envelope. This one was already open, with a sheaf of Coutts letterheaded paper sticking out of the top.

  Gabe stammered, “I…I don’t understand. What do you mean ‘the rest’? I think there must have been a mistake. I only need a couple of hundred quid.”

  Robin Hampton-Gore laughed. “Well, you’ve got a couple of hundred thousand.” He handed Gabe a third envelope and his business card. “It’s a letter from Marshall. I trust it explains everything, but if you’ve any further questions, don’t hesitate to call me.”

  Gabe’s hands were still trembling. As ever with Marshall Gresham, the letter was short and to the point.

  Dear Gabriel,

  It’s not a loan. It’s an investment. Fifty-fifty partners.

  Love, M.

  P.S. Don’t forget to write from Cape Town.

  Gabe felt a lump in his throat and swallowed hard. Now was not the time to get emotional. He had too much to do. There were so many people he was indebted to. Marshall Gresham, Angus Frazer, Claire, his mother. He couldn’t let them down.

  I’ll pay you all back. Every penny.

  I’m going to Africa to make my fortune.

  I won’t be back till I’m as rich as Jamie McGregor.

  EIGHTEEN

  AUGUST SANDFORD GRIPPED THE SIDES OF HIS CHAIR AND ground his perfectly straight white teeth with frustration.

  The team meeting of Kruger-Brent’s new Internet division had run over by almost an hour now. Max Webster, Kate Blackwell’s twenty-one-year-old great-grandson and Kruger-Brent’s probable future chairman, was on his feet, pontificating.

  August thought: I didn’t spend eight years at Goldman Sachs to sit here and listen to some business-school freshman talking out of his ass. Or did I?

  August’s girlfriend, Miranda, had warned him about joining Kruger-Brent.

  “It’s a family company, babe. However huge, however global, at the end of the day the Blackwells will always call the shots. You’ll hate it.”

  August had ignored her warnings for three reasons. The headhunter from Spencer Stuart had promised to triple his salary and bonus; he’d be fast-tracked onto the Kruger-Brent board, and he wasn’t in the habit of taking career advice from his girlfriends. August Sandford picked his lovers according to a strict set of criteria involving largeness of breasts and flatness of stomach. He wanted a lioness in the sack, not a life coach.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” August told Miranda patronizingly. “I know what I’m doing.”

  But he didn’t know shit. Miranda was right. On days like today, August Sandford yearned for his old job on the Goldman derivatives desk like a shipwrecked man yearns for dry land. No salary was worth this.

  “You’re being shortsighted.” Max Webster’s black eyes blazed with passion. “Kruger-Brent should be allocating more money to its Internet businesses, not less.”

  His speech-more like a sermon, thought August bitterly-was directed entirely at his cousin Lexi Templeton. As if the two Blackwell heirs were the only people in the room. Both Max and Lexi were on a six-month leave from Harvard Business School. When they graduated, both would join Kruger-Brent. But only one would ultimately take on the mantle of chairman, a position reserved for family members only.

  The general consensus was that that person would be Max. Aside from the obvious drawback of her hearing, Lexi was seen as too much of a party girl to be taken seriously. She showed up for the first day of her internship on the back of a Ducati, her long legs wrapped around its owner, Ricky Hales, and her trademark blond hair flying in the wind. Ricky Hales was the drummer with the latest hot rock band, the Flames. M
ore tattoo than skin, with a heroin habit that made Courtney Love look like Mother Teresa, Ricky was almost as much of a paparazzi favorite as Lexi herself. Lexi gave Ricky a lingering kiss on the steps of the Kruger-Brent building, a shot that made the front cover of every gossip rag in America the next morning.

  Lexi Templeton was an enigma. Part vulnerable child, part vixen, she kept the press guessing and the Blackwell-obsessed public intrigued. But August Sandford sensed that Lexi’s little show with Ricky Hales was not intended for the media. It was a deliberate attempt to goad her cousin, the brooding Max Webster.

  The rivalry between the two Blackwell heirs was intense.

  They reminded August of the Williams sisters, announcing at their first Wimbledon tournament that they considered their only competition to be each other, thereby instantly alienating every other women’s tennis player on the international circuit. Unlike the Williams sisters, Lexi and Max further fueled the flames of their competitiveness with a sexual tension so strong you could practically smell it in the air. Not that either one of them would admit it, even to themselves.

  Miranda’s voice rang in August’s ears: It’s a family company. The Blackwells will always call the shots.

  August looked around the table. Apart from Max, Lexi and himself, there were three other Kruger-Brent executives at the meeting. Harry Wilder, a gray-haired former academic with mad-scientist eyebrows, was nominally the most senior. A board member for a decade, Harry Wilder was a golf buddy of Peter Templeton’s, Kruger-Brent’s current chairman. Other than a decent handicap and an affable clubhouse manner, however, it was hard to see what value he added to the company. Nobody took him seriously, least of all August Sandford. The fact that Harry Wilder was the board member chosen to head up the Internet division did not bode well for any of them.

  Next to Wilder sat Jim Bruton. Jim Bruton was an up-and-comer at Kruger-Brent. A dead ringer for a young Frank Sinatra, Jim’s most meaningful personal relationship was with his mirror. Second came his busty personal assistant, Anna. In distant third was his loyal wife, Sally, mother of Jim’s three legitimate daughters, Corinna, Polly and Tiffany, always referred to pretentiously by Jim as “the heiresses.” (His two illegitimate sons, Ronnie and Carlton, lived with their mother in Los Angeles, unbeknownst to Sally and the girls.)

  To say that August Sandford despised Jim Bruton would be an understatement. But even August had to admit that Jim was sharp. He’d tripled the profits of the biotech division during his stint as head in the early nineties. Jim made no secret of the fact that he intended to make Kruger-Brent Internet his next money-spinning fiefdom.

  Over my dead body, thought August.

  Beside Jim Bruton was a young woman named Tabitha Crewe. Recently hired from Stanford Law School, Tabitha was attractive in a neat, regular-featured, hair-pulled-back-in-a-ponytail sort of way. Apparently she’d started and sold a small dot-com while at college and made herself a little nest egg, hence her assignment to the team. August looked at Tabitha’s impassive, makeup-free face and found it hard to imagine her having the get-up-and-go to start a washing machine, never mind a business. She seemed so…blank. Especially when she sat next to Lexi Templeton.

  Now there’s a chick with a fire in her crotch. If she weren’t so obsessed with her prick of a cousin…how much would I like to screw all the haughtiness out of her? Sexy, opinionated, stuck-up…

  “Mr. Sandford. Are we boring you?”

  Jim Bruton was staring at August, a wry smile playing across his lips.

  Yes, you’re boring me. You’re all boring me stiff.

  “I apologize.” August returned the smile. “What was the question?”

  “Mr. Webster here is proposing we make a formal submission to the board, asking for a bigger budget with which to make acquisitions. Ms. Templeton disagrees. Harry and I were wondering where you stood on the matter?”

  August opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by Lexi. Her deafness made her speech slower and more deliberate. She also had a habit of moving her hands when she spoke, unconsciously signing her words. August watched her long, slender fingers perform their delicate dance and found himself wondering what they’d feel like wrapped around his cock. He started to get hard, which irritated him even more.

  Lexi said: “I’m all in favor of expanding our online reach. What I’m not in favor of is throwing money at a random bunch of start-ups before we’ve done our due diligence. My cousin seems to think that no economic fundamentals apply to Internet companies. I disagree.”

  “So do I,” said August.

  Max glared at him. Jim Bruton and Harry Wilder followed suit. Both had clearly decided that the chances of a deaf woman taking over Kruger-Brent were slim to none, whatever Kate Blackwell’s will might say, and were pinning their colors firmly to Max’s mast.

  If I had any sense, I’d do the same, thought August. I don’t even like the girl, so God knows why I’m defending her. But the fact was, Lexi was right. Max was talking out of his ass, jumping blindly and greedily onto the Internet bandwagon like every other Harvard Business School groupie.

  “Any acquisition proposal we make to the board needs to be specific and backed up by hard data.” August stood up to leave. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I have an important lunch appointment.”

  That night in the bath, Lexi Templeton thought about August Sandford.

  He’s not the ugliest man in the world, she conceded grudgingly, picturing his thick chestnut hair, strong jaw and almond eyes, offset by a butterscotch tan acquired, no doubt, on the beaches of East Hampton this past summer. Lookswise he was the exact opposite of Max. Brad Pitt to Max’s Johnny Depp. Or so August probably thought.

  He’s almost as good-looking as he thinks he is. Not half as smart, though.

  Lexi knew scores of August Sandfords at Harvard. Handsome, rich, well-educated, chauvinist pigs. Take one rampant ego, sauté lightly in wealth and privilege, top with a blue-chip business card, and voilà! August Did-I-Mention-I-Was-at-Goldman? Sandford. Yawn.

  The bright young things at Harvard bored Lexi, but they served a purpose. She slept with all of them. Ever since the night of her sixteenth birthday party, when she’d lost her virginity to Christian Harle, Lexi had been haunted by the thought that her childhood abuse might have ruined her for sex as an adult. Having worked so hard to overcome her deafness, it was terrible to imagine that the pig might have won after all. That he might have turned her into some sort of sexual cripple. Determined not to let this happen, Lexi threw herself into college sex with all the single-minded fervor of a sailor on shore leave. Harvard was an education on every level: algorithms by day, orgies by night. Threesomes, bisexuality, sex toys, role-play; Lexi wanted to discover it all. To prove to the world and to herself that she was not a victim, that the pig had not defeated her. It was an open secret on campus that Lexi Templeton was the best lay at HBS. But an unspoken code of loyalty prevented her classmates from spreading rumors in the newspapers. Harvard was a closed world, a safe place to explore one’s wild side. Outside the college walls, it was a different story.

  At Kruger-Brent, I’ll have to be more careful.

  Lexi brought her thoughts back to August Sandford. At least he’d stuck up for her against Max today, which was more than those other stuffed shirts had done. Lexi was well aware that 99 percent of Kruger-Brent’s senior management had written her off. Kate Blackwell’s will favored her over Max for the chairmanship, but then Kate Blackwell had never known that Lexi would grow up to be deaf. In any event, a unanimous board decision could see Max usurp her position. Most people at the company, including Max himself, not to mention Lexi’s own father, seemed to view this as a foregone conclusion. It drove Lexi wild with rage.

  How dare they write me off? My GPA has always been higher than Max’s. I’m smarter than he is, I have more business sense. Okay, so I can’t hear. But Max can’t listen. That’s the real handicap. He loves the sound of his own voice too much.

  Lexi r
ubbed soap under her armpits and breasts with a sponge. Men were all the same. So impressed with themselves, beating their chests like baboons. August Sandford, Jim Bruton, Max…they were just grown-up versions of Christian Harle and the other Andover jocks. They patronized Lexi, the way they patronized all women, only in Lexi’s case her deafness seemed to make it worse. That and the fact that she was beautiful, rich, famous and smarter than all of them combined.

  August Sandford might have thought he had his poker face on today. But Lexi could see the envy in his eyes.

  He hates me because I’m better than he is. He hates me because he wants to sleep with me and he can’t. He hates me because-

  A flashing light on her PC screen in the living room caught her attention.

  New message.

  Grabbing a towel, Lexi leaped out of the bath and ran, dripping, across the polished walnut floor of her apartment. Unlike mommie’s-boy Max, who still lived at home with Eve, Lexi had her own place on the Upper East Side and reveled in her independence. A sleek, modern two-bedroom in a classy building on Seventy-seventh Street, between Park and Madison, it was decorated in neutrals and whites with huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. A delicate Christopher Wray chandelier in glass and stainless steel hung from the living-room ceiling above a cream pony-skin rug. In the far corner, perched on a Danish Modern desk was Lexi’s white Mac-her portal to the hearing world. She’d often wondered how on earth the deaf had managed before the advent of the Internet and thanked God she’d been born in the age of the text.

  Scrolling past e-mails from Robbie and her father, her Harvard professor Dr. Fairford, and countless lovers, Lexi said a silent prayer.

  Please be from him.

  Finally, she reached the new message. Clicking it open, her heart gave a little leap of excitement. The subject heading read:

  I’ve found him.

  Tommy King did not like Thailand.

  There was only so much Asian pussy that one man could enjoy. Once you’d seen the first hundred girls fire Ping-Pong balls out of their assholes, smoke cigars with their pussies, and exhaust the rest of their repertoire of bizarre sexual party tricks, it actually got kinda tame. And then what were you left with? Fried bugs, stinking hot weather and friggin’ dysentery, that’s what.