‘Do you know what the Romans did to the bearers of bad tidings? They had them flogged.’
A man in a black suit glides in bearing a tray. A slender white teapot and a single cup that he sets down on the table beside me. He stands back, awaiting instruction. Felix flicks his hand and the man turns away, the padded door sighs behind him and I picture myself scrabbling at it for all eternity.
‘So, Felix, can I ask how you knew Kapoor was in the room when I called?’
‘It is my job to anticipate what I do not know.’ He leans forward and pours me the green tea that he knows I despise. ‘So now Mr Kapoor has you running errands? Or did your boss propose you for this special mission?’
‘It was the Grope’s idea.’
‘And how is your master? Still running in those… marathons?’ the question suspended under a raised brow.
‘Three hours, 59 minutes in New York. A personal best.’ And we pause for a moment’s silent reflection on Felix’s personal best to date: two billion dollars under management, the largest private honey pot this side of the International Dateline.
‘My little carrier pigeon. Our liaison has boosted your profile no end. I am gratified that my investment in you is bearing fruit.’
‘So you already know why I am here?’
‘Tell me, my dear, did you meet with Max Lester?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you will know he is a most unpleasant individual. Very uncouth.’
‘He’s very keen to talk to you.’
‘Everyone wants to talk to me all the time. But now that you have met Mr Lester you will understand why a meeting is impossible.’ And I have to smile at the image of Max-a-Billion’s Stetson in this room.
‘I didn’t know you owned 13% of Vulkan Valve.’
‘You must learn to look around corners, Geraldine, to be more curious about who you do business with. I imagine Mr Kapoor was unimpressed.’
‘So how come you own so much of the stock?’
‘Your handlers didn’t tell you?’
‘Only that you’d owned it for a long time.’
He sighs. ‘A dreadful disregard for history. Your generals send you into battle unprepared.’
I wait, inhale the silence. It is an art that takes all my concentration. The spotlights seem to shimmer above him.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ he says, folding his hands on the tabletop. ‘My grandfather, Otto Man, was an engineer and a German citizen who came to England to find work in 1913. When war broke out he found himself interned on the Isle of Man since it was MOD policy not to have the enemy running about loose. Otto was released two years later on the condition that he found “work of national importance”. So he took himself off to London and found a job at a machine tools business.
‘But Otto longed to be his own boss. In 1917 he started his own machine tools company and called it Vulkan Valve. You might know that “vulkan” is the German word for volcano and on one of the very rare occasions that my grandfather spoke and I actually listened, he told me that he had been fascinated by Pompeii as a child. Vulkan was a tremendous success. They quickly diversified into radio; in fact they designed and manufactured the first portable radio in Britain. Vulkan began to manufacture all sorts of electrical components and by the 1930s had moved into defence, making shells, bomb cases, fuel pumps for aircraft and a huge variety of radio transmitters. The Second World War was a gift. Production exploded and at its peak the Vulkan workforce was over 10,000. They had a vast underground factory hidden in a section of the Tube tunnels between Newbury Park and Leytonstone – the twin tunnels were five miles long and workers used bicycles to get around it.
‘After the war, Otto intensified the focus on Avionics and Communications and Vulkan became increasingly important to the UK’s defence programme. But it was then that Otto’s problems began. In the 1970s they had been selling surface-to-air missile to South Africa and Vulkan was threatened with a ban by the US government under the terms of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Otto was fiercely opposed to doing business with unstable regimes but Vulkan was making 20% of its revenues in South Africa. My grandfather argued with the board over the future direction of the business company and the issue was put to a vote. Otto opposed the board’s recommendation and he lost. So he resigned his position in 1973 after an incident that he referred to as the night of the long knives.’ Felix picks up his Mont Blanc and unclips the lid, examining the inkless nib.
‘An empty protest really, since Vulkan went from strength to strength. And Otto spent his last few years brooding alone. His wife, my grandmother, was a distinctly humourless and slothful woman who died early. My father was their only child and he had died while I was still at school, so there was no one to bother Otto in his final years. But he was a potterer and prowled about in a Georgian manor house with a view over the South Downs, full of broken fishing rods and crumbling books, photos of dead relatives, broken watches, clutter everywhere.’ Felix pauses, inclines his head to one side.
‘Otto was dying when he summoned me to come to see him. Of course I barely knew him and he summoned up all the tedium of childhood – train sets and signals and batteries. He was an excellent engineer but tremendously dull, a man excited by mechanical moving parts. Partial to playing rather loud marching music.’
Felix leans forward a little. ‘Have you ever seen a dying man, Geraldine? Otto was quite shrivelled, almost cadaverous. There was a curious texture to his skin, like melting plastic. I stood there by his bedside, his only surviving relative. And he told me I was to inherit everything, including his 13% shareholding in Vulkan Valve. And then he charged me with doing whatever I could to take revenge on the board on his behalf. “In your lifetime there will be a moment where you can strike. You simply have to notice it and seize the opportunity and take away the thing they want.”’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing,’ Felix shrugged. ‘But Otto was the kind of man who took silence for assent.’
‘So it was a sort of deathbed promise.’
‘I thought it was the most appalling melodrama. These men who endow their lives with so much significance.’
‘So after he died?’
‘I met the Vulkan board for the first and only time at the funeral where the CEO delivered a rather effusive eulogy. As far as the members were concerned, I was a young philosophy postgraduate, they were condescending. A year later I left Cambridge and came out here. And eventually I used the shareholding in Vulkan Valve as collateral to start this business.’ Felix spreads his arms wide, palms upwards like a consecrating priest. ‘So you could say I owe everything to Otto.’
‘That’s quite a story.’
He nods, returns his hands to the tabletop. ‘But background, my dear, is not always essential to the development of the plot.’
‘So your 13% stake—’
‘In fact, your information is a little out of date. I have been having some fun with the stock. You might even say I anticipated all this interest in Vulkan.’
‘You’ve bought more?
‘You ask so much, Geraldine,’ he shakes his head, ‘yet give so little in return. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn’t taken an interest? You might have languished away undiscovered.’ Felix smiles again as if the thought of my decline amuses him no end.
‘So how much do you own now?’
‘All told my interest is 20%.’
‘And the board owns 10%. So if you joined forces you could make life very difficult for Max Lester. Have you spoken to Vulkan?’
‘I do not need to speak to the board of Vulkan to know that they are fiercely resistant to the idea of a takeover. Most especially by an overseas company like Texas Pistons who are only interested in the defence side of the business. Such a bid would be considered to be extremely hostile.’
‘Of course if you were to abide by your grandfather’s deathbed wish, you’d side with Texas Pistons. You would use this takeover to “take away the t
hing they want”.’
Felix sighs. ‘My investment strategy is always guided by the simplest principles: Value. Price. Surely you know me well enough to understand that I cannot be held hostage by the request of a dying man.’
‘Even though you owe all this to Otto?’
‘There you go again, Geraldine, allowing the background to cloud the plot, scampering off after a red herring.’
‘You don’t feel any obligation to him?’
‘“We do not triumph until we cast aside our humanity and make decisions on a logical basis.”’ Felix adjusts himself in his chair. ‘I would be failing Kant if I abided by a dead man’s request.’
‘So what do you think about Max Lester’s bid?’
‘There is no bid. There is nothing on the table. So far there is just idle chatter,’ he leans back and folds his arms. ‘Or perhaps you have come out here to tell me what Mr Lester is prepared to pay for Vulkan Valve? Though I doubt very much that Mr Kapoor would entrust his carrier pigeon with such sensitive information.’
I look down, study my green tea. Regroup. ‘What do you think of Texas Pistons?’
‘A very impressive operation with excellent R&D. An acquisition of a company like Vulkan would be eminently sensible for them. Scenario analyses run by my people indicate that Vulkan is considerably undervalued. We are very optimistic about long-term prospects for MSTAR – this little skirmish in Iraq will fill their order book. And I myself see a very healthy long-term outlook for the industry of war. American foreign policy will keep factories in business for a long time to come.
‘However,’ he raps the table, ‘I do not believe that Max Lester is at all interested in the electronics business. It is the defence product that he has his eye on. And therein lies a potential problem. If Texas Pistons get control of Vulkan they’ll strip the company and focus on the most profitable elements. A lot of people in England will lose jobs. Naturally this is of no concern to me but it will mean lobbying pressure. More serious of course, is the reaction of the MOD. The defence business is a national asset and politically very sensitive. A bid from a non-UK entity like Texas Pistons would end up being referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Which would be very tedious, drag on for months.’
‘So what will you do?’
But the laziness of the question annoys him. ‘No doubt my answer will do wonders for your career,’ he snaps. ‘But you forget that I am still waiting for your answer to my question.’
Felix stands up abruptly. ‘And now you must come and admire my latest acquisition.’ I follow him slowly, let a reluctant gaze signal the outer reaches of an apprehensive interest in the large rectangular painting that seems out of place amongst all the photographs.
‘October 25th, 1854. The Charge of the Light Brigade, “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre,”’ and I return his faint smile with a blank look. Felix taps the frame. Horses gallop across the canvas in a frenzy of war: blue-jacketed riders with lances drawn in the cannon dust, a yellow haze of muzzle flash in a battlefield valley where crawling corpses flounder in their own blood. ‘The Russian general Liprandi thought the British must be drunk, to ride out to be slaughtered. Of course it did wonders for their reputation in the rest of the Crimean war.’
He leans admiringly into a foregrounded soldier who is raising his sword at a clutch of riderless horses. ‘Did you know, Geraldine, that a horse will only panic when he can no longer feel the weight of his rider?’ To the left the dead figure of a soldier is slipping from the saddle of a white-eyed horse whose flanks are smeared red, his arched hooves rearing above the trampled body of a fallen trooper who sprawls, helpless, staring up at the terrorised sky.
‘Three hundred and thirty-five horses killed. And apparently almost as many again when Warner Brothers made their film.’
Something seems to flicker in the painting and I blink rapidly; my eyes are pricking and I turn away, retreat to the safety of the table.
‘I had a call from a familiar of yours this morning.’ Felix stands, arms folded by his wall of death. ‘I believe “ex” is the appropriate term.’
‘Stephen called you?’ I twitch as if the chair was electrified. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, you know how everyone wants to talk to me. And these are interesting times. He asked to see me and, as you know, I rarely agree to meetings. But Mr Graves was – perhaps still is? – such an important figure in your life and the welfare of my business associates is very important to me. It was only curiosity that made me agree.’
‘Stephen came here?’
‘You just missed him. A very charming man. Very well-bred, as they say. Tell me, Geraldine, was that the attraction? The good genes? The shires?’ He slides into the chair opposite me. ‘Not really from the same side of the tracks, though, are you, my dear? I can see how that would be problematic. Mr Graves is clearly not a connoisseur of rare breeds, he was unable to appreciate what he had.’
And then everything shrinks small and distant as if I’m looking through the wrong end of binoculars, there’s a sudden alcoholic surge in my sleepless veins, a battering ram in my skull. I exhale over the cold tea, my right hand floating up from its prone table-top position, leaving fingertip sweat circles on the varnish. I try to smile across the lacquered plain, but my eyes drift upwards to the starving horses nailed to the wall. I think I hear myself stall in the middle of a sentence that might have started out as a reply to some question of Felix’s, opening and closing my soundless dry mouth but I can’t be sure if I have actually spoken. I look down at my tea and a vision of the Grope, eyes fixed on a shimmering horizon where his triumphant chariot thunders out of a dust cloud to drop the warm carcass of a deal that he has cinched at Kapoor’s feet. I see Stephen’s commanding profile set against the arresting backdrop of a Stealth bomber and there is something else unarticulated, a connection that I sense but cannot see. And then it is gone, or like a phantom, it never was.
My upturned teacup rocks in its saucer, a spreading slop of liquid quivers on the table and it seems I’m standing though I don’t remember rising from the chair. There’s a pounding in my ear, the thud of distant cannons and the beginnings of a dizzy sobering radiating from my gut. I flop back down. My head lolls in the air-conditioned stillness. An involuntary trembling sneaks its way around my jaw and I look up to see Felix watching me closely.
‘I have been a little concerned about you of late, Geraldine. You’ve lost some condition, in fact you look rather peaky.’ He leans in, narrows his eyes. ‘I think a change of air is exactly what is required.’ He lays a chilly hand on mine. I look down at the slow spread of goose-bump prickle along my forearm, picture the future he has in mind for me: a lifetime in the chained embrace of his soundproofed Peak-top condo, naked and convulsing over a steaming bowl of Chinese food, some animal organ draped over my suspended chopstick, Felix’s face obscured by a camera lens, his pale body spasming in a jerky wank.
‘What will you do with Vulkan, Felix?’ A simple answer to a simple question.
Felix unfurls both hands as if weighing the range of possibilities. ‘“All men would have to be perfectly wise before one could infer from what they ought to do, what they will in fact do.” Perhaps you recall the reference?’
‘Descartes’ letter to Elizabeth,’ I whisper.
‘You are out of your depth in unfamiliar waters, Geraldine. And you are blindly thrashing about. The plucky Irish getting stuck into battles they never win. My intelligence tells me that various parties have been nibbling at the stock. Perhaps there is another shark circling? So I am waiting here in my little den for the interested parties to show their hand.’ I picture Felix in his sunlit office framed by the hazy backdrop of the New Territories, savouring his strategic moment, weighing the balance of power; his drifting gaze coming to rest on a wall-mounted spear.
Aasagi: Removed from the body of a fallen Zulu warrior at Rorkes Drift, Pretoria, 1879.
‘So what will you do with Vulkan, Felix?’
‘Have I not been the most gracious of benefactors? Asking for so little in return? I am beginning to feel that my business is not sufficiently appreciated, Geraldine. Perhaps I should begin to look for service elsewhere.’ Felix inspects his pen, head angled to one side and offers me his version of a smile, all those little teeth fighting for space. ‘Like God, I can give and I can take away. I can pull the plug on your career.’
‘Why would you want to?’
‘Sometimes we act simply because we can. To see what happens. When I was a boy it was how I learnt about the world. Cause and effect, my dear. A very pure curiosity.’
‘So what will you do?’
Felix leans forward and makes to rise from his chair. ‘My analysts tell me that the right exit price for Vulkan would be up 30%. And who knows, perhaps the stock may even go all the way there without Mr Lester’s help.’
7
lobster trap
tuesday 15 january 1991
15:15
hong kong
I PICK MY WAY SLOWLY across the sunshot stone of Exchange Square Two, checking each passing suit just in case Stephen is still lurking about waiting for a chance encounter, as if he could come strolling along at any moment. High above me in Exchange Tower One, Tom will be clock-watching and restless, but he’ll read it as a good omen, assume I am still holed up with Felix. On the other side of the world the Grope will be pacing his glass box, waiting for the simple answer to the simple question. He’ll call up Kapoor, tell him to relax, she’s got this guy in her pocket. The bankers will be staring at the silent speakerphone, thumbs jabbing at their HP10s, reworking the spread between best case and worst, running numbers over and over to pass the time. Max-a-Billion will be prowling his suite in the Ritz, waiting for the call. I should go back to the office, but I am not ready.
I plough on through the sticky airlessness down to the Star Ferry terminal and take a seat beside an old man hunched over a paper cup, slurping noodles from wooden chopsticks that rise and fall in a continuous rapid knitting. I sneak three miniatures out of my bag and crack open the lids, drain them one by one. The old man turns and glares, mutters angrily, jabbing an accusing finger. Then he gets up and shuffles off.
On the Floor Page 15
