A Calculated Risk

by Katherine Neville

  “Pink champagne for the guests,” said Francis the elevator operator, holding out a plastic glass of the bubbly for me.

  The maid was in Lelia’s entrance hall, bobbing and bouncing, a little holly wreath circling her brow. She ladled me a crystal cupful from the punch bowl on the entry table. I dumped my plastic champagne, helped myself to some cookies from the big silver platter, and went into the hall. The doors to the Red Room, halfway down, were open.

  “We’re dining in half an hour,” Tor informed me as soon as he saw my fistful of cookies.

  “Let her eat! She must be fatter!” cried Lelia.

  She was ensconced in a red silk chair, her feet propped on an embossed leather ottoman. Tor, standing beside her holding his own cup of grog, was wearing a burgundy velvet dinner jacket with peach silk ascot. His coppery ringlets shone in the firelight. He looked dashing, like someone from another era. I was certain Lelia had had a hand in his attire.

  Lelia was even more radiant, sitting there before the thick tree whose branches were laden with crimson satin bows and fat tallow candles. That brocaded, dark red caftan beautifully displayed the two-ton dog collar of canary diamonds that plastered her throat. Her tawny, disheveled mane was pulled back to reveal enormous crystal cabochon earrings, surrounded by cut diamonds, which dangled nearly to her shoulders. When I bent down to kiss her, she smelled of vanilla and cloves.

  “You both look great. Where’s Georgian?” I said.

  “She prepare the excitement for you,” said Lelia. “She want very much that you will look surprised when you see all the work she has made this week.”

  Then she pursed her lips and regarded me sternly. “My darling—again you are wearing the black—but why? No one is dying here; there is no need to arrive in mourning. When I was your age, the young men stopped as I walked on the Champs-Elysées. They brought me flowers and jewels, and kissed my hand, and they suffered if I was forgetting to notice them.”

  “Times have changed, Lelia,” I said. “These days, women want more than flowers and jewels.”

  “What?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “What more is there? These make the romance. You do not understand—that is clear. You must have a great manque in your life, which causes you to act in this fashion.”

  “What—pray tell—is a manque?” Tor asked with a smile.

  “A loss … a hole … an absence of something,” I translated.

  “Quel sangfroid,” said Lelia. “She has always been très difficile, this one.”

  “I should say,” agreed Tor. “She’s très difficile in French, English, or any other language. She isn’t wearing black for grieving, you see. Black is widely regarded as the color of power—and power is what she wants.”

  “What is power?” cried Lelia. “Charm is everything. You, for example, are a charming man—très gentil.…”

  “Well-mannered, polite,” I told Tor with a smile.

  “This charming man—he has only one thought in his mind,” Lelia told me, “and that is to make love with you. But you are so much a fool, you do not see it—and talk of power and being the man, instead!”

  Tor wasn’t smiling.

  “Indeed?” he told Lelia coolly. “I’d hardly jump to conclusions about my interest in black-clad fiscal wizards. They’re not quite as appealing as some might think. I believe I’ll go see what’s holding things up with Georgian.” And he departed without so much as a glance at me.

  “Lelia, you’ve embarrassed Dr. Tor,” I said sternly. “All this continental wisdom of yours is amusing only up to a point.”

  “He loves you, I say,” she hissed under her breath. “You say I’m a foolish old woman, but often it takes la folle to speak the truth, out in the air where everyone can hear. The blindness of Monet, I could help—I could see the flowers for him—but there is no help for the blindness which comes from the heart.”

  Just then, Georgian arrived in a tiny dress no longer than a shirt, coated in salmon-colored paillettes that glittered when she moved.

  “Thor’s on his way to the Plum Room,” she announced. “Come—come! We have it all set up!”

  In the Plum Room, the big printing press was at center, the tarp spread out on the floor beneath. There were tables with boxes of supplies and, mounted on the scaffold, a photo enlarger and a huge camera, both trained down upon the surface of the large table.

  Georgian stood before it, twisting one leg around the other like a child, and looking at us with great round eyes.

  Tor was mucking about, moving levers and switches as the equipment shifted up and down with whirring and clicking sounds. He didn’t look up when we arrived.

  I wondered just how much Lelia had picked up about our little wager. She was standing—all ears—just at the door.

  “Isn’t it fabulous?” asked Georgian, barely able to contain her excitement.

  “It is impressive,” I agreed. “But what are you going to do with all this stuff?”

  “We’re going to counterfeit securities,” said Tor, still screwing with the levers, “just as I told you before.”

  “You never said that,” I told him. “I thought you were going to rob that place—the Depository Trust—to prove how easy it was.”

  “Not quite,” he replied with a smile, looking up for the first time with that penetrating gaze. “I see no reason to steal securities. Not if you can arrange it so that they never get there in the first place. Why would I need a photographer, if I only planned to rob a vault?”

  At last it all made sense. They would copy the stocks and bonds—keeping the real ones—and they’d put the fake ones into the vault! Why hadn’t I seen that before? But even so, I realized, there were a few unanswered questions.

  “If you’re not going to break into a vault, how will you substitute the fake for the real?” I wanted to know. “It seems you’d have to swap them before they got there.”

  “Precisely,” Tor agreed, with a smile.

  “Let me explain,” Georgian chimed in.

  She plucked a document from the table and handed it to me. It had a blue border and wavy, complex lettering. I ran my fingers over it and felt the irregular surface.

  “Thor’s gotten copies of many kinds of bonds that are being traded heavily this month,” she said. “These are the likeliest to be transported to the Depository Trust just now. We’ve made multiple copies of each kind—this is an example.”

  “You printed this?” I asked, and when she nodded proudly, I added, “but don’t securities have serial numbers?”

  “Yes, and other identifying information, too,” Tor agreed. “We won’t know the unique identifiers for each bond we’ll be copying—not until we actually see the physical instrument itself. And we won’t see it until it’s being sent by a brokerage or bank to the Depository’s vault.”

  “We’ll only have a brief time to engrave those unique numbers onto the security,” Georgian added. “That’s what I’m most concerned about—the drying time for the ink. Fast-drying ink crumbles and slow-drying ink smears. But we have to have a flawless copy.”

  “This one looks pretty good,” I admitted. “Is there someone, an expert, you could ask?”

  “Not unless you’d care to phone the Treasury Department and request their opinion,” Tor said dryly, leaning against the wall with folded arms.

  I had so many questions, but they stood there making it all sound so simple.

  “How do you plan to get your hands on these securities—knock over a Brinks truck?” I asked. “And what about watermarks? All negotiable instruments have those—even cash—”

  “Ah, but we must retain some secrets,” Tor cut in with a smile. “After all—you’re the enemy!”

  “That’s right!” agreed Georgian. “This is a competition! Our lips are sealed from now on.”

  “I think you’re overlooking the value of my contribution,” I told them, feeling suddenly very much left out. “After all, I’m a banker. For instance—I bet you haven’t thought of the re
gistration!”

  “What registration?” Georgian wanted to know.

  “When stocks are purchased by someone, they print the purchaser’s name on them. Or even if they’re registered in ‘street name,’ the title company keeps track of who the owner is. Tor’s certainly aware of that—he told me so himself.”

  “Is this true?” Georgian demanded.

  “Absolutely,” said Tor with that cryptic smile, “which is why we are not going to counterfeit stocks, my little feathered chickadee. We’re going to counterfeit bearer bonds instead. And bearer bonds are gold!”

  During our conversation, Lelia had slipped away, and had not yet returned when the maid came to announce that dinner would soon be served. So we three headed back up the hallway.

  “Just how involved is Lelia in all of this?” I asked Georgian.

  “Oh, you know Mother. You can’t keep her nose out of anything. She’s volunteered her help in every imaginable way. I’m not sure she understands that it’s not just a game, though. In fact, I’m not sure I believe it myself. We’re actually doing something illegal—regardless of the purity of our motives. If we’re caught before we give the money back, we’ll wind up in jail!”

  “All the more reason to keep Lelia out of it,” I agreed. “You know how she is.”

  Tor was dawdling behind us, examining the paintings that hung between every set of mirrored, louvered doors.

  “You don’t have to do this at all, you know,” I told Georgian. “In fact—though the whole thing was my idea—I feel over my head myself. It was Tor who turned this into a circus. He loves doing that to me—that’s why I’ve avoided him like the plague all these years. Though I’m not always smart enough to remember it.”

  “If you want my opinion,” she informed me, “he’s the best thing that ever happened to you. You haven’t done anything even close to adventurous in years.”

  “You haven’t seen me in years,” I pointed out.

  But I had to agree. If Tor hadn’t gotten himself involved, it was unlikely I’d have gone through with a scheme as foolhardy as the one I was about to launch. That was what worried me so.

  He caught up to us as we reached the dining room, but Lelia still wasn’t there. The rich, dark table had been rubbed with oil till it shone, the charming arrangement of white narcissus and holly was reflected in its surface. Multitiered candelabra stood at each side, and the tall champagne icers at either end. A wonderful glow was all about us; it smelled of Christmas.

  We were about to be seated when Lelia dashed into the room.

  “I made the solution!” she bubbled brightly.

  With a complicitous smile, she drew her hands from behind her back and held out a large, revolver-shaped hair dryer. We stared at it in silence.

  “Mother—you’re a genius!” cried Georgian at last. “I should have thought of that myself.”

  “It is as plain as the hairs of your head,” agreed Lelia, quite pleased. “I shall make the little stand to hold it in place while you are drying the papers for the great crime. Then I shall be important, no?”

  “Then you’ll be important—yes,” Tor agreed, giving her a hug.

  As usual at Lelia’s dinners, the food was wonderful: cold carrot vichyssoise, aspic with baby vegetables and black truffles—arranged within the jelly, like a giardiniera—roast pheasant with gooseberry sauce and chestnut puree. When we could eat no more, the sweets and coffee arrived.

  Lelia passed Tor a box of cigars and took one herself, clipping the ends and lighting each with a long taper. Tor was mellow and, as he puffed, in the mood to talk. Lelia solicitously poured him a balloon of cognac.

  “You know,” Tor told me, “I’ve been thinking about this problem at the Depository for years. But if you hadn’t surfaced with that cockeyed idea of yours, I’d probably never have done a thing about it.”

  “I don’t see why you need my involvement—or this bet,” I pointed out. “You’d have caught their attention just by grabbing a few million dollars and mailing it in.”

  “It would hardly take a billion to prove my point about security,” he agreed. “But there’s another lesson—of vital importance—that needs to be taught. That’s why I wanted our wager. I’ve seen far too much rampant corruption and greed in the world financial community. Though they are entrusted with safeguarding other people’s money, bankers and investors—in times—often come to regard those assets as their own. They play fast and loose, taking risks, employing neither forethought nor hindsight. Whole civilizations have been destroyed through this kind of mad roulette.”

  “I see,” I said wryly, hearing this pretty speech. “You’re Crusader Rabbit—setting the world economy on its ear. I thought you were the sort who never did anything for altruistic motives.”

  But I knew he was right; something had to be done and soon. Banks were folding right and left, with none of it caused by men of particular honor or integrity. The “mistakes” that had been made in my own bank ranged from criminal incompetence to outright theft, but nobody blew the whistle—or even slapped a wrist. Kiwi’s intransigence over security seemed the slightest offense of the lot, when you thought of it.

  “Tell me,” I asked, “how does our little bet fit into the grand design?”

  “Believe it or not, it does,” he assured me, sipping his brandy. “The way I plan to invest our money will certainly drive home the point. But it’s only a gleam in my eye just now; I’ll explain later, in detail.”

  “I can hardly wait,” I told him, meaning it. I was dying to know what Tor really had up his sleeve.

  “If high finance were practiced as it once was—in the days of the Rothschilds, for example—” said Tor, “things might be different now. They were clever—perhaps even ruthless—but not corrupt. The Rothschilds almost single-handedly created the arena of international banking we know today. They stabilized currencies across state lines—built a world economy, where only warring special-interest groups had existed before—”

  “So boring a story,” Lelia cut in. “They have to make marriage avec leur propre famille, to be accepted. That old one … he was a real cafard!”

  “A cockroach,” I translated for Tor, who’d been as surprised at her outburst as I. “The Rothschilds had to marry into their own family, in order to inherit, or so I gather.”

  “Quel cochon,” Lelia muttered.

  “What a pig,” I explained.

  “Mother—that’s quite enough,” said Georgian. “We’ve been over that all before.”

  “If the truth is not spoken, these things come like the ronde d’histoire,” Lelia went on, oblivious. “Your papa, he would rise up in his tombeau … he was murdered in his … comment dit-on âme, my darlink?”

  “His soul,” I said. “If we don’t discuss these things, history will be repeated. Your father’s soul was killed, he’d rise up in his grave, if—”

  “I know what she’s saying! She’s my goddamned mother!” snapped Georgian.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this up—” Tor began. But Lelia cut in again.

  “Wisteria,” she said.

  “Beg pardon?” Tor looked at her, confused.

  “Wisteria—that is the name,” Lelia elaborated.

  “Wisteria—it’s the name of the flower Lelia used to admire,” I explained to Tor. When he made no reply, I added, “In Monet’s garden at Giverny.”

  “I see,” said Tor.

  “A previous conversation,” I pointed out.

  “Quite so,” said Tor.

  “I’d like to show you something,” Tor informed me as he pulled his car out of Lelia’s underground garage and headed down Park Avenue.

  “Now? Good Lord, it’s nearly midnight! I have a flight tomorrow morning—can’t this wait?”

  “Never fear, it won’t take long,” he assured me. “It’s something I’ve bought. I want to know whether you think it’s a good investment.”

  “If you’ve already bought it—what difference does it make wh
at I think? This isn’t the sort of investment that can be viewed only from the recesses of a sofa, is it?”

  “Far be it from me—at this late date—to sully your impeccable virtue.” He laughed. “Believe me, this investment requires hundreds of yards of open space to be fully appreciated.”

  “It’s outside? You must be joking—tonight? Where are we going? This is the way to the bridge!”

  “Precisely; we’re going to Long Island, where no civilized person sets foot this time of year. But then, you and I were never all that civilized, were we?” He ruffled my hair with one hand and swung up the ramp to the bridge.

  I awakened, what seemed like hours later, with my head in Tor’s lap. His coat had been removed and tucked in around me, and he was absentmindedly stroking my hair.

  I sat up and peered through the frosty windows. Before us, the moon reflected from the glossy black surface of the ocean. At least, it looked like the ocean. But then I saw it was some sort of pond or lake, and the expanse I’d thought was water was in fact black ice. Embedded in the ice were dozens of boats.

  “How can people leave those boats out there?” I asked. “Don’t they get hurt if they freeze up like that?”

  “Yes, they would—if they were ordinary boats,” he agreed. “But these are magical boats: iceboats. And the one out there with the tall red mast is mine.”

  “An iceboat—that’s your investment?” I said.

  “Come. I’ll show you.”

  We got out in our evening clothes, and crossed the crunchy snow. The air was colder than I’d imagined, and the wind lifted the snow—moving it back and forth across the surface of the ice. It gave the lake a mystical appearance. I thought of the story of the Snow Queen, guiding her sled across the skies—sending splinters of ice to earth to freeze childrens’ hearts.

  “You see,” he was explaining as he helped me up to the dock where the wind seemed stronger, “this boat is extremely lightweight, with a sail to catch the wind. It has two runners—”

  “Like Hans Brinker’s racing skates,” I said.