Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘You can come in,’ she said, ‘I won’t embarrass you.’

  ‘Embarrass,’ he queried uneasily, ‘why embarrass?’

  She looked at him, knowing him inside out, recognizing the weakness and the uncertainty. Her smile held a certain wary affection. The doctor at the clinic had been right. It was trickier thinking in threes.

  ‘What’s the news?’ she said. ‘I imagine you must know.’

  Goodman seized the question gratefully, neutral territory, all too welcome. At the same time, he realized he couldn’t give her an answer. Not because he didn’t trust her, but because – like everyone else in the city – he simply didn’t know.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘to tell you the truth.’

  Suzanne nodded, spooning coffee granules into the waiting cups.

  ‘You’re busy,’ she said, ‘I can tell.’

  ‘I am,’ he said, ‘you’re right.’

  She smiled at the cups, screwed the lid back onto the coffee jar, and turned into him, a simple fluid movement, unsignalled, entirely spontaneous. She put her arms around his neck and looked at him.

  ‘You’re worried about the baby,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be. Everything will be fine. I promise you.’

  Goodman closed his eyes for a moment, trying to keep the darkness at bay, trying to shut out a world he could no longer control. Her simple phrases could mean anything. Or nothing. He no longer knew. Or even cared. Just another problem. He felt her fingertips on his face. She kissed him lightly, on the forehead, on the eyelids, his mistress, his best friend, his nurse.

  ‘I love you,’ she said softly, ‘I want you to know that.’

  ‘I know,’ he said hopelessly, ‘I know.’

  The kettle began to whistle, and she turned away. By the time he was back in charge of himself, she was decanting hot water into the cups. They walked through to the bedroom, the place where they’d always talked, always settled things. The bed was unmade.

  He sat down, balancing the coffee cup carefully on his knee. She made a space amongst the pillows, and sat beside him, her shoulders flat against the quilted bedhead, her knees drawn up to her chin.

  ‘You came for a reason,’ she reminded him. ‘You don’t need me dripping on.’

  He smiled, wondering how to start. He was quite empty now, all the resolution gone, the strain and the tension put aside for a moment or two in this dark little cave of a room, their very own foxhole.

  ‘I’m organizing a little trip …’ he began, ‘a voyage …’

  He outlined the plan, the need to get the wives and kids away, his responsibility to his colleagues, his feeling that they’d all perform better with one less problem to worry about. He mentioned Harry Cartwright, and the agreement he’d reached with him. He said there were still knots and bows to tie, loose ends to arrange. He needed to be sure about the destination. He needed to know what lay in store for these women and children when they finally arrived at journey’s end. He needed to know they’d be safe.

  ‘And?’ she said, when he’d finished.

  He smiled at her, touching the warm flesh, the easiest thing in the world.

  ‘And I want you to take care of it.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. Harry will give you an office. Best if you work there. You’ll need to find accommodations. Places these people can stay. Food. Lodging.’ He smiled again. ‘Your stock in trade.’

  ‘Where, though?’

  ‘Southern Ireland. Or Portugal. Somewhere west. Somewhere out of the way. Your choice.’ He paused. ‘But I need to know they’ll be safe. We have to be certain.’

  She frowned for a moment, turning the plan over in her mind, suddenly the businesswoman, the bright young travel executive, multi-lingual, charming, ruthless, hotly tipped by the trade papers for stardom.

  ‘Ireland,’ she said at last. ‘It’s closer.’

  ‘You’ve got contacts?’

  ‘Some. But I know where else to look.’ She paused. ‘When does the boat go?’

  ‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘about ten.’

  ‘Tonight,’ she looked at her watch, ‘it’s half-past one already.’

  He put his coffee on the side table, beside the book, and reached across for her.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know.’

  ‘Business ends at five.’ She paused. ‘Four in Ireland.’

  Goodman squeezed her arm.

  ‘Harry’s there now,’ he said, ‘he’s expecting you. You’ve got a good two hours.’ He hesitated. ‘In any case, the phones go off tonight. Or most of them do, anyway.’

  ‘Off?’ she said blankly.

  He nodded, remembering Davidson’s curt reminder. The Telephone Preference System, a mechanism for disconnecting 95 per cent of the nation’s telephones, would be actioned at dusk, yet another little incentive to keep fifty million people in place.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘off.’ He paused, reluctant to clutter the conversation with any further details. ‘So …’ he began, ‘what do you say?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To my proposal. My little scheme.’ He paused. ‘Sorting out the Irish end.’

  She hesitated, stirring her coffee, not looking at him.

  ‘Tell me something,’ she said at last. ‘Is your wife on this list?’

  He looked at her, the long firm line of her thigh, the swell of her breasts under the T-shirt, the warm animal scent of the bed she slept in, and he knew, deep down, that there was no longer any hope.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she will be.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘You …’ he smiled, and reached out for her, ‘… you stay.’

  By the time Harry Cartwright closed his personal passenger list, it was early afternoon. He’d been on the phone since eight o’clock, working carefully through a list of clients he’d culled from the business files he held on a new IBM PC computer he reserved for his personal use in the office. After some thought, he’d decided to limit the offer to a relative handful of premium clients from the hundred or so he serviced, men and women with serious money to their names, individuals with the necessary clout and confidence to make an instant decision about a largish sum.

  He knew most of these people well, knew how he’d put it to them, knew the calculations they’d make in their own minds, knew that even now, even with their lives on the line, it would be a strictly business decision, balancing outlay against return, measuring the up-front fee against the risks of staying put.

  The exact size of the fee, Cartwright had pondered overnight. Mick’s first suggestion – £3,000 – had sounded far too high, but the more he thought about it, and the more aware he became of the city’s predicament, the more he realized that Mick’s fee was probably too low, that the latest security measures had created a commodity it was almost impossible to quantify in simple figures. What they were selling, after all, was the prospect of survival. And that required a pricing mechanism infinitely more subtle than a crude flat rate. It was a question, as ever, of presentation. Handled properly, the right mix of persuasion, and advice, and plain common sense, some of these clients would part with a great deal more than £3,000.

  At this point, early hours of the morning, Cartwright had returned to his files, displaying the spread sheets of his chosen clients one after the other, last audited sets of accounts, profits and losses, accumulated funds, capital charges, and that key figure at the end of it all which indicated the pre-tax profit at the year’s end. Within this figure, he drew an arbitrary line. Only clients reporting pre-tax profits of one hundred thousand pounds or more would qualify for an introductory call. He wrote a simple program and fed the figures into the computer. A list of clients appeared on the screen. He counted them. They numbered thirty-four. A man who’d made a small fortune manufacturing hosepipes for washing machines. Another, a design consultant, who’d patented a number of hi-tech gizmos for the defence industry. A husband and wife partnership who’d made a success of a string of small hotels. An Asian who’d
started the city’s first oriental wholesale food operation. A young ex-builder who’d gone into cut-price funerals. A middle-aged woman whose aerobics studios had given her the money to expand into more exotic services. The list went on and on, names and phone numbers. He began to list them carefully on one of the yellow legal pads he always kept to hand.

  The list complete, he gazed down at the pad, preparing the pitch in his mind, casual, a word or two on the telephone, an enquiry about their plans, an agreement that things looked pretty bleak, and an invitation to participate with him in a very special piece of life insurance. Put that way, he could preserve the fiction that this was strictly business as usual, just another investment, an utterly logical financial decision totally in keeping with the relationship he’d so carefully built up with these people. That, he knew, was essential. There might, after all, be a city left to come back to, a career to resume, and looking at the list of names on his desk, the cream of his clientele, he could think of nothing tackier than a simple bald demand for a certain number of pound notes, to be delivered on the dockside, cash on the nail. He’d obviously have to charge something nominal – say a hundred pounds – to take care of his own expenses. But an up-front fee on the scale suggested by Mick Rendall would destroy him utterly, an exercise in simple extortion that would shred his reputation and leave him totally exposed. Far better to dress it up, to disguise it. Just another piece of business. Just another of Harry’s little winners.

  He’d lifted the phone at eight in the morning, dropping the tiny pellets of Sweetex in his coffee, glad of the silence in his empty office. The first call had gone to an old client, a man he’d admired, an ex-restaurateur who’d abandoned pretentious menus and French cuisine and made a small fortune from a modest chain of licensed pizza bars. The man, he knew, applied the same sense of stern realism to every department of a complicated life, and the conversation would provide Cartwright with the clues he’d need to refine the offer.

  The man was interested at once. He’d already tried to leave the city by road, packing his latest wife and sundry children into the back of his Mercedes estate, and arguing the toss at the big roadblock that sealed off the motorway to the north. His arguments had got nowhere, cut short by an officious young captain who’d simply waved him back into the city, back along the line of cars awaiting a similar fate. Back home, he’d tried phoning, pulling strings, calling in old favours, but whoever he talked to the answer was always the same. City closed for business. City under siege. Everybody stays put. No can do. Cartwright’s opening line, therefore, was all the more persuasive.

  ‘Peter …’ he said, ‘I’m organizing a little excursion. Might you spare the time?’

  The client hooked, Cartwright then explained the deal in detail. He’d acquired certain rights of passage. He had access to a boat. He’d secured a supply of fuel. There were a limited number of berths available. They’d be leaving tonight. The pizza man short-circuited Cartwright’s prospectus with a brisk question of his own.

  ‘How much?’ he said.

  ‘A hundred pounds a berth.’

  ‘A hundred quid?’

  Cartwright smiled to himself, letting the surprise die in the man’s voice, the lowness of the figure. Then he outlined the rest of the deal, an arrangement which would, he believed, serve their mutual interests. It involved the eventual transfer of certain assets out of the country, to a designated account in St Helier, Jersey. He and the client would be co-signatories on the account, and in the event of peace breaking out, Cartwright would oversee the future investment of these assets for the benefit of both parties. The pizza man, who had an acute sense of the obvious, butted in again.

  ‘These transfers,’ he said. ‘You mean cash?’

  Cartwright shrugged. ‘Or a bond,’ he said. ‘Against securities.’

  ‘But how much?’ he said again.

  Cartwright paused. ‘50 per cent,’ he said, ‘of last year’s audited profit.’

  ‘Pre-tax?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Half?’

  ‘Yes.’ He paused, before sugaring the pill. ‘I invest these moneys thereafter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We split the profit.’ He smiled. ‘After subtraction of a service charge.’

  ‘What’s the split?’

  ‘Fifty-fifty.’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. Cartwright could imagine the man running the sums through his head, making the odd note, scribbling down the figures, trying to compute a price for another couple of weeks on planet earth. Or perhaps he was doing none of that. Perhaps he was simply staring out of the window, watching the flowers grow. The voice came back. Cartwright had been right first time. The man had the deal word perfect.

  ‘So you want half my last year’s profit, to invest on your own account?’

  ‘On our account.’

  ‘At your discretion?’

  ‘With you retaining half the profits.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that.’ The man paused. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The capital reverts to you.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ There was another pause. ‘We sign an agreement?’

  ‘I’ll fax you a draft.’

  There was a silence, and Cartwright wondered for a moment whether the arrangement wasn’t too complicated. Protecting himself by laundering his fee through joint accounts and offshore banks was one thing. Trying to sell it in the time available was quite another. His earlier calculations had suggested a potential capital take of nearly two million pounds. Even at building society rates, should they all survive, he’d be looking at an annual yield of nearly £200,000. Split two ways, that gave a £100,000 annual income. Good money for a night’s work, and easily defensible should questions be asked afterwards.

  The pizza man picked up the conversation again. He’d evidently been sharing the same thoughts, doing the same thinking, reaching the same conclusion.

  ‘It’s a good deal,’ he said briskly. ‘Send me the fax.’

  Now, more than six hours later, Cartwright was exhausted. He’d contacted twenty-five of the thirty-four clients, adding nine more to the list from other client files. He’d explained the deal to them all, adding the odd refinement, varying the percentages according to the temperature of the conversation and his knowledge of their financial commitments. A handful had refused point blank, preferring to take their chances in the city rather than mortgage a hefty chunk of whatever was left of the next five years. Others took an opposite view, interpreting the deal as an opportunity to share in Cartwright’s undoubted investment flair. The percentages, and his service charge, were incontestably high – one client used the word ‘penal’ – but these were extraordinary times, and there was a general feeling that Harry, their little Harry, had once again stood the impossible on its head and somehow conjured up a means of escape. If it amused him to play financial games on the side, then so be it. He wasn’t asking for much cash up front. He wasn’t milking them dry. He was simply asking them to sign a form, and take a risk or two, and trust him with their money. In that sense, quite literally, it was business as usual.

  The cathedral clock was still chiming two when Cartwright finally put the papers to one side, and sat back in his big leather seat, and let the tension ease from his body. His assistant was already faxing out the contracts and sealing the legal loopholes. To the best of his belief, the agreement was legally binding, but his assistant had an excellent analytical brain, and it was best to be sure. Cartwright opened his eyes and gazed down at the final calculations he’d made on the yellow foolscap pad. After deductions for expenses – food, fuel, money for the skipper – he’d be looking at a post-war bounty of £2.1 million, a little more than he’d first anticipated. From this, he could expect an annual yield of at least a quarter of a million, half of which would remain with the clients. That left him with around �
�125,000 a year for a personal investment fund which he knew could produce a million within five years. He’d yet to decide quite where Mick Rendall belonged in this scheme, but he was no longer impressed by the bravado and the bluster, and he knew there’d be no problem.

  He picked up the telephone and dialled a number from memory. The phone was answered at once, a cultured voice, male, languid, slightly amused.

  ‘Tristan,’ he said, ‘it’s Harry.’

  The man at the other end of the line gazed out of the window, at the few yachts left in the harbour. St Helier, and the anchorages on the east of the island, had virtually emptied over the past few days, their owners heading west, out towards the Atlantic, and the farthest reaches of southern Ireland. Cartwright briefly explained his morning’s work, the deals he’d struck, the boatload of clients he expected to arrive late the next day. The other man’s smile widened. He’d been right about Harry. The little man never lost his nerve.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, ‘quite excellent.’

  ‘Any problems with berths?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Hotels?’

  ‘Virtually empty.’ He smiled again. ‘The season’s dead … if you forgive the phrase.’

  Cartwright nodding, risking one of his few words of French.

  ‘Demain,’ he said.

  ‘Demain,’ the other man agreed, ‘et bon voyage.’

  Cartwright replaced the telephone, aware of a figure at the door, a young woman, neatly dressed, businesslike, attaché case, dark glasses. She smiled at him, a brisk professional smile.

  ‘My name’s Wallace,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about Ireland.’

  Mick Rendall sat on a crate of potatoes aboard the Timothy Lee, gazing at his solar-powered calculator, trying to turn his wilder fantasies into a set of real figures. He’d still heard nothing from Harry, and Albie had disappeared yet again with the van, mumbling about unfinished business and promising to return within the hour. Intrigued by Albie’s evident affection for white paint, Mick had by now concluded that he was into a spot of decorating. Quite why he should bother at this point in history, he didn’t know, but there were parts of Albie that had always remained a mystery, and he suspected it was wise not to push it any further. If Albie wanted to swap notes on décor and the virtues of Dulux Silthane, he’d gladly oblige. Otherwise, he’d give the whole thing a miss.