Sue provided the only mystery of the year. It puzzled me a good deal at the time. It was a throwback to the days spent wrestling with the decision to join Hallsworth. About a week after I signed the contracts at Durbeville's I ran into Bob Harrison, an old chum of mine from my days in the Army. He'd made Major by then, though he'd been a lowly lieutenant when we'd first met in North Wales. We had a drink together and arranged to meet again a week or so later. When we did he brought me up-to-date - on his new wife and their flat in Putney, and his current posting to Army records. I suppose I was still curious about Hallsworth and anxious to fill in the missing years, so I asked Bob to do a bit of research for me. Why I threw in the names of Johnstone and Ballantyne I'm not sure. I think because all of their fathers, Hallsworth, Pamela Johnstone's and Sue's, had served in India and I wondered if there was some kind of link from those days. Anyway I asked Bob to add their names to the list and he did.
A month passed. I was busier than a blue-arsed fly and I forgot old Bob completely. Also I suppose I'd stopped worrying about Hallsworth. So when Bob called I was only mildly curious as to what he had discovered. It transpired that Hallsworth senior had done rather well for himself. Retiring as a Brigadier no less. And even Johnstone had made full Colonel. But the strange thing was there was no trace of an officer having served in India or Germany, or even Singapore for that matter under the name of Ballantyne.
I protested at first, telling Bob he'd made a mistake or searched insufficiently. But he was adamant. He'd had the records traced back for the past forty years. Checked, crosschecked, and double-checked. There was no possibility of error.
The information embarrassed me. I could hardly raise the matter with Sue without it being perfectly obvious that I'd pried into her background. And pried without reason. God knows, I'd no claim on her. It wasn't that kind of relationship. And as she went off to Greece at about the same time, the incident slowly faded in my mind. But I never forgot it, not completely, and from time to time it popped up disconcertingly in my memory.
The year flashed past with astonishing speed, and by the end of it Townsend and Partner had acquired a good reputation, a string of illustrious clients and, if not a fat profit, then at least a plump one. It was a year of meetings, planning, decisions, and sustained hard work. And I revelled in every minute of it.
Then I met Aristotle Pepalasis.
It was Monday, the 3rd of April, 1977. The day before my thirty-eighth birthday. A messenger delivered a note from the Dorchester, a few hundred yards away from the Hill Street offices. The note was brief and to the point.
Dear Mr Townsend,
Your name has been recommended as someone well known in the money market and I would greatly appreciate a meeting. I am in London for a few days with a need to raise substantial capital for a uniquely profitable operation. To explain the details will take several hours and since I have learned it is better to pay for service than to beg favours, I enclose a contribution towards the cost of your time for such a meeting. It is only a token gesture but I can promise you a much greater profit from a closer association with my affairs. I shall be at the hotel all morning and hope to hear from you.
Sincerely, Aristotle Pepalasis.
The letter was handwritten on Dorchester, notepaper and he had printed his name in block capitals below an indecipherable signature. Inside the envelope was a bank draft on NatWest's Curzon Street branch and payable to Townsend and Partner. For one thousand pounds.
Bankers the world over suffer letters from cranks wanting money, half of them claiming 'uniquely profitable operations'. And I'd had my fair share. But never before had someone sent me a thousand pounds for the chance to present his case. I read the letter a second time, my curiosity rising as I reached for my diary. A breakfast meeting was pencilled in for the next morning, and another immediately afterwards which would finish at about eleven - then nothing that couldn't wait, until my birthday dinner with Sue in the evening.
Part Two
One
Aristotle Pepalasis received me in his suite at half-past eleven the following morning. A powerfully built man of about fifty, with a mane of grey hair and a vivid smile. Quick clever eyes, deep set in a brown weathered face. The look of a man born on the shores of the Mediterranean. Immaculate clothes, grey suit, pale shirt, dark tie; worn with the casual assurance of international businessmen everywhere. We shook hands on the threshold of his sitting room. He was shorter by four or five inches, but the strength of his grip and the width of his shoulders told me plainly who was the stronger man.
'Mr Pepalasis, I'm returning your bank draft.' I went to hand it to him as we crossed the room. 'I assure you it's unnecessary. If you've got a worthwhile proposition I'll be happy to listen to it. If not -' I shrugged and pulled a face.
'Please, the cheque is unimportant.' He ushered me to an armchair. 'No more than a calling card. Let us agree you will take it if I waste your time. The point is you're here and we're talking at last.'
'At last?' I placed the draft on the coffee table next to me, my eyes following him to the sideboard. 'You've been trying to meet me for some time?'
He laughed and waved a hand at the bottles. I asked for a gin and tonic and he continued the conversation over his shoulder whilst putting ice into a glass. 'Often, Mr Townsend, I've thought of this meeting. So - in my mind I've waited to meet you for a very long time.'
He poured a glass of white wine for himself and brought the drinks to the table, taking the chair opposite.
'Jaihmas, Mr Townsend.'
'Cheers.' I was frowning, wondering why he hadn't sought an earlier meeting if he'd wanted one. He read my mind.
'Of course, this meeting wasn't always with you,' he said by the way. of explanation. 'Or even in London. Sometimes I would imagine it in Antwerp. Other times, the States. New York perhaps. You wouldn't be English then of course, but Dutch or American. But in the end - ?' He shrugged, using both hands. 'I came to London. After all, for much of my life London has been the financial capital of the world. So why not now? When I need additional finance and a lot of it.'
'What kind of business are you in, Mr Pepalasis?'
He set his glass carefully on the arm of the chair and fumbled in his jacket pocket. A second later a small chamois leather pouch landed in my lap.
I loosened the drawstring, opened the mouth of the bag, and poured the contents carefully into the palm of my hand. There were about a dozen stones, none larger than a fingernail. I weighed them in my hand, pretending expertise I didn't possess, knowing that the stones were more impressive than they looked from the expectant expression Pepalasis wore on his face.
'Do you know what they are, Mr Townsend?'
'Diamonds,' I guessed. Knowing just enough to know that whilst Amsterdam is big in diamonds, Antwerp's a hell of a lot bigger.
'Excellent, Mr Townsend. Diamonds. Bort to be exact. More commonly known as industrial diamonds. Those are worth about a hundred and fifty thousand pounds on today's market.'
I looked at the stones with new respect. 'So who needs money?'
He laughed softly. 'May I ask you something? Do you have any knowledge of diamonds? Or mining perhaps? Any kind of mining? Coal? Iron? Gold, perhaps?'
I shook my head. Financial operators like me deal in paper and rarely have first-hand contacts with tangibles. We used them as securities, reducing a convoy of oil tankers, a new jumbo jet or a sugar crop to one common denominator. Money.
'Then if you'll permit me to sketch in a few facts. Relevant ones I assure you. Meanwhile - ?' He smiled and nodded at my hand. I replaced the stones, drew the string tight and returned the pouch to him.
For the next half hour he did most of the talking: He had a pleasant voice, made more interesting by his inability to pronounce the 'ch' sound which usually came out as 'th'. And while he talked, his fingers played restlessly with a string of beads, in one hand one moment, in both the next, endlessly twisting and turning snakelike, as if his fingers caressed instead o
f manipulated. He never looked at his hands, concentrating on my reaction to his narrative, and only once when he refilled our glasses, did he put the beads aside. Seconds later they were clicking in his fingers again.
A little before twelve a white-coated steward appeared at the door with a trolley and we adjourned to the tiny dining room for lobster thermidor and chablis. I complimented him on his choice and waited for him to reach the point of the meeting, beginning to feel slightly impatient at his longwinded approach.
'Mr Townsend, how much money do you think you could raise?'
My face went deliberately blank.
'Forgive me,' he said as my silence drew an explanation. 'But I'm trying to understand the scale of your operation. And I suppose of your experience. You are still a young man.'
My impatience curdled into irritation.
'Your company is very new, is that not so?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'And before that you were with Walpoles?'
'You're well informed.'
'I've been in London a week and asked around,' he said without apology. 'I need someone with a name in the money market and yours was mentioned. What is the value of the largest project financed on your say so? At Walpoles for instance?'
I began to understand. 'Nothing's ever funded just because a finance man thinks it's a good idea. There are feasibility studies from the experts in the industry concerned and-'
'Yes, yes. I know. All the experts have their say and then the financier makes a decision.' It was his turn to sound impatient. 'What's the most you've ever raised for a single project?'
'I don't see what this has got to do with anything, but - ' Most of the final decisions at Walpoles had been committee jobs but a few times I'd put a deal together and the Board had merely rubber stamped it. 'I suppose about ten million pounds.'
He nodded. 'And at Townsends?
'We work on a different basis. We're not a bank. We advise the clients on their investments, but -'
'Yes, yes, of course. I understand!' He sighed as a frown settled around his eyes. For a moment we were both silent. He seemed to be trying to reach a decision and I was growing tired of the game. It was his meeting, not mine. And if he didn't get on with it I'd take the banker's draft and go.
Then, rapidly, he said, 'I need to raise twenty million pounds. Can you handle a transaction of that size? I'm sorry to be blunt but there's no other way of putting it.'
Twenty million was a hell of a lot more than Hallsworth and I had dealt with in that year. Twenty million was institutional money. Pension funds, insurance companies and the like. And when they put money out they wanted watertight security.
'It depends on the project,' I stalled. 'The kind of security, rate of return. I'm sure you know the rules, Mr Pepalasis. It's a lot of money.'
He seemed unimpressed, as if he'd not been listening. 'I should like your assurance that what we are going to talk about is in the strictest confidence. You will tell no-one, without my prior consent.'
'I have a partner. He has a right to know anything concerning the business. Even - if he asked - what I've been doing today.'
He sighed and poured the last of the wine into our glasses. 'Very well.' He looked at me and then reached his decision. 'Mr Townsend, I own what I believe to be the richest kimberlite pipes in the world.' My blank expression must have been a disappointment because he went on to define what he was talking about. 'Kimberlite pipes. Volcanic pipes, Mr Townsend. Stretching to the bowels of the earth. It is where diamonds come from.'
I sifted his words carefully. 'The richest diamond mine in the world?' I asked, quite prepared to have misunderstood.
'Potentially, yes.'
'And you own it?' I resisted an urge to laugh and said instead, 'But I thought - I mean surely the sources of the world's mineral wealth were discovered years ago. Last century almost?'
He laughed, a full deep chuckle which spread up from his belly and engulfed him. 'Last century? Mankind scratched the surface. That's all. No, Mr Townsend, more minerals have been torn from the earth this century than all the others put together.'
'But that's been exploitation of known resources surely?'
He was still laughing. 'Twenty years ago would you have believed Texas roustabouts drilling in your North Sea?'
I ran a hand through my hair. 'That's oil,' I said lamely.
'The world's bulging with minerals. Bulging,' He emphasised. 'Only the most obvious have been exploited.
Fifteen - twenty years ago, diamond pipes were discovered in the frozen wastes of Siberia: Today Russia mines about a quarter of the world's total output.'
'I didn't know that,' I said, beginning to concede ground.
'Why should you? Your business: is money, not mining. And diamonds are mined all over the world. Africa, Russia, Borneo, Australia. Australian diamonds are the hardest in the world by the way.'
'But the biggest producer is still South Africa?'
'No, Mr Townsend. The biggest producer is Zambia. And then Russia. And then South Africa.' He smiled, like an indulgent adult explaining life's mysteries to a kid. 'Zambia's output last year was about five million carats. At current world prices about two hundred million pounds, Mr Townsend.'
'And your mine's richer than that?' I shook my head in disbelief.
'I haven't got a mine. Yet. That's why I'm here.'
'Let me get this straight. You own a site on which you've found diamonds.'
'If you like.'
'It must be a hell of a big site to rival the African mines.'
'Diamonds are not a crop grown in soil, Mr Townsend,' he said coldly.' You go down for them, not sideways.'
'And that's what you need finance for? To build a mine?'
'To sink a mine.'
'Twenty million pounds? Can't you sell some diamonds and plough the cash back into fresh equipment? Make the project self-financing?'
'It's more complicated than digging a hole in the ground.'
'Hell, that's what it boils down to doesn't it?' I snapped, nettled by his condescension.
'If you like. But it takes a big shovel. They've been a mile and a half down for gold in the Transvaal. Even the Kimberley diamond pipes have been worked to depths of more than three and a half thousand feet. You could drop the Empire State Building down that hole. Three times over!'
Outpointed, I changed tactics. 'Look, this isn't straight forward bridging finance. This is a risk capital with a capital R. Why not take it to a mining company who'd understand the problems? Or a diamond group who'd understand the profits?'
'For exactly those reasons, Mr Townsend. The profits are huge. Much bigger than I think you realise at this moment. Mining companies would want an ongoing involvement, participation in future profits. I'd rather pay through the nose for borrowed money - pay it back quickly, say by the end of the year - and have a future alone. What would you do if you were me?'
I thought about it and saw his point. 'What was the output of the Zambian mines again?'
'About two hundred million pounds worth a year.'
'A year? How many years d'you reckon on getting for God's sake?'
He shrugged. 'No one can say. Maybe seven or eight, ten perhaps.'
I did the arithmetic and there was just enough room left in my head to figure some of the implications. One that wasn't difficult was that, if he was right, he'd be just about the richest man in the world. Past or present. My mind groped, his words barely audible above the uproar of my thoughts.
'The world's demand for industrial diamonds is insatiable, Mr Townsend. The Russians keep theirs for themselves and the West is reliant upon Africa for eighty per cent of its needs. Can you tell me more than two or three African states that are politically stable, Mr Townsend? What the Arabs did with oil the Africans could do with diamonds.' He paused long enough for the point to sink home. 'It's possible, don't you think? And if that were to happen I'd be the only man in the world with an alternative source. Imagine what that might do to the price?'
It seemed to me we were imagining a good deal too much already. 'Let's go through this one point at a time. First, what makes you believe your site's so rich?
He tapped his jacket pocket. 'You've already seen some of the evidence.'
'A hundred and fifty thousand pounds worth?' I almost sneered.
'Enough to make a point.' He seemed unworried. 'And I'm not without some experience in geology.'
I was without so much experience in geology that I wouldn't know a wrong question from a right answer. So I tried a different tack. 'And you've got clear tide to the mineral rights?'
'I own the land itself.'
'Maybe. But often surface ownership doesn't extend to mineral rights. It's something the lawyers will want to be sure about when the time comes. If the time comes.'
He smiled, but remained silent except for the beads clicking in his hands. We were still at the dining table, the coffee pot cooling gradually.
'Of course, if you're right,' I said slowly, my brain still groping for something to hang on to. 'Even if you're a tenth right - you'll be taxed out of existence. Or nationalised. Or both.'
'But I own the land, Mr Townsend.'
'I know. You keep saying. But wherever it is the government will drop on you like a ton of bricks. Any government would.'
'But I am the government,' he said surprisingly. 'You see my kimberlite pipes have their surface point on an island.'
I stared at him. 'And you own the island I suppose?'
'People do, you know. I believe even off your own coastline there are many privately owned islands, and -'
'I daresay. But still subject to our law, our tax structure, our-'
'Are you sure? For instance, the island of Sark -'
The Money Stones Page 5
