“It’s surely true in battle,” agreed Wellington. “But I wanted to say good-bye before I went into retreat in Ireland. I even thought of bringing a gift in thanks for all that you’ve done for me—and for Britain—but I couldn’t imagine what one might give a man of your wealth and position. You’ve already a title you do not choose to use. Is there something you’ve wanted that I might provide, in thanks for all your aid?”
“In fact, there is,” said Rothschild. “I’d like you to accept a gift from me.”
“From you? Impossible! You’ve done so much already.…”
“My dear Wellington, you must remember that the gifts a rich man bestows always have strings attached—that’s how he becomes so rich.”
“What is it then?” Wellington laughed. “You pique my curiosity.”
“This small basket,” said Nathan, “which I hope you will keep by your side at all times. No—don’t open it now. Inside, you will find some small gray birds, and I will tell you what I want you to do with them.…”
THE PAYOFF
Money is the root of all civilization.
—Will and Ariel Durant
We hiked over the hill that next morning, Lelia and Pearl riding in the cart behind like a small army preparing for battle.
When the Vagabond committee showed up two weeks hence as new proprietors, someone would have to show them the ropes of the business they’d bought. Since Lawrence might recognize Pearl and would surely know me, we two would have to remain in hiding at the castle during their stay.
Therefore, we hit upon Georgian to demonstrate the foreign exchange operation. Today was her first day of training and she was none too pleased.
“Camera F-stops are the only numbers I understand,” she complained as we walked before the cart, kicking up dust. “They told me I have to explain this stuff as if I’ve been doing it all my life.”
“How tough could it be?” I asked her. “After all, if Pearl’s made millions at it in only a few short months, anyone can do it!”
I glanced over my shoulder at Pearl, who shot me a look from her perch in the cart. Georgian, Tor, and I stepped aside to let the horse and cart pass, jouncing Lelia and Pearl as they descended the mountain.
We went through the streets between rows of small stucco houses, their fronts stenciled in turquoise and gold, with little gold balconies and flower trellises. At the end of the street stood the two-story structure, long and thick, with a peaked roof like a granary.
“This used to be the sail makers’ barn,” Pearl explained. “It was the only industry in town before we arrived; but we needed shelter at once for our business. So we paid them enough to go build themselves another.”
It was a big, dark building, smelling faintly of mildew and the sea, with high vaulted ceilings in front, and at center a stairway up to the loftlike second floor. At the front desk, I glanced at the sign-in sheet, which bore names of some pretty weighty international firms, presumably doing business there even now.
“European clients?” I asked Tor as our group headed upstairs.
“Middle Eastern … Oriental … you name it,” he said with a smile. “Anyone who wants to avoid taxes and is willing to play by our rules is welcome.”
Upstairs was a long, dark hallway with a small window at the far end. At either side was a row of doors; we entered the first room at left. Pearl went to the large desk across the floor, decorated only by a single lamp, and picked up some papers. Beside the desk was a tiny switchboard of vintage make, and a bank of phones on a table just behind it. Instead of the standard wire service “ticker tape” light panel, Pearl had a blackboard with a piece of chalk, where she’d already scratched up today’s currency rates by the time we’d collected chairs from against the walls and taken our seats before the board.
“Okay, friends,” she said, all business, “we’re trading foreign currency here—‘FX’ to you—and this business has a lingo of its own, like any other. Georgian, when our buyers come in, you’re our seasoned professional trader. The first thing you’ll explain to them is how we make our money. Keep it simple. Show them the rates we use and give a few details. For instance, tell them that each morning you phone up the large money-center banks to check world rates, and then you set our rates against our vehicle currency, which happens to be the gold Krugerrand—”
“What’s a ‘vehicle currency’?” Georgian asked.
“The one against which we compare the others, sweetie—the numeraire.”
“I will explique,” offered Lelia, raising her hand. “You see, chérie, you cannot change dollars against francs and francs against marks and marks for pounds sterling—it will all be too confusing. So you choose one kind of money to make value with, against all the others.”
“Okay,” said Georgian, looking a bit dazed as Pearl began again.
“Once you’ve explained to them how we establish the vehicle rate, you’ll tell them how we—”
“Wait,” said Georgian. “How do we establish the, um … vehicle rate?”
“We set it a few pips above market,” said Pearl. “I’ll show you the formula when we’ve—”
“What are pips?” asked Georgian, sounding slightly desperate.
“Percentage interest points,” said Pearl with controlled patience. She glanced sideways at Tor and me with an arched brow, as if asking whether to continue.
“Why don’t you start by defining all the terminology?” I suggested to Pearl. “That might make it simpler to follow.”
“Good idea,” Pearl agreed. “Now, for one thing, every currency has a nickname of its own. It’s not in any book; it’s just the slang we traders use with one another when making deals. For instance, Italian lira are called ‘spaghetti’ and British pounds sterling are ‘cable’ and French francs are called ‘Paris’ and Arabian riyals are called ‘Saudi.’ When you’re doing a trade, you refer to the size of the deal as tiny or a yard—so one million lira, for example, would be ‘a yard of spaghetti.’”
“I can’t believe I have to learn all this jargon in under two weeks,” Georgian told me under her breath. “I can’t even remember what ‘ropes’ are—”
“Cable,” corrected Pearl, squinting at her with thinly veiled irritation. “But that’s hardly important—I’ll give you a list. The critical thing is that you understand how deals are done. Now, there are two markets in the FX business: the spot, meaning now, and the forward, meaning then. Which leads us into the distinction between hedging and speculating.” She picked up her chalk.
“You see, chérie,” Lelia interjected calmly, “it is really quite simple when you think of this—that you may offer the price the money has today, or instead you may choose to guess the amount you hope the money will have tomorrow. But there are different ways to agree to buy the money, and—”
“I can’t stand it!” cried Georgian, jumping to her feet. “It’s clear that even Mother understands this better than I do!”
“It certainly is,” said Pearl firmly. “Lelia—how would you like to replace your daughter on the trading floor?”
“Oh, I am happy, happy, happy for doing so very important a thing!” said Lelia, glowing with this recognition of her worth. “But one problem I fear—it is my speaking of English. I think it is sometimes too much suffer even for the ears of my friends.”
“That’s okay, sugar,” said Pearl, coming up to put an arm around her. “When I’m through with you, you’ll be such a hotshot, you could be speaking Russkie and no one would notice.”
Pearl asked the rest of us to leave for the afternoon so she could begin Lelia’s intense training alone. So Georgian headed off with relief to take more photos around the isle, and Tor and I headed back to the castle for lunch and a plotting session—until later that day when the time differential would permit us to phone Tavish in New York.
“I know Lawrence is a crook,” I told Tor. “I found a memo from him about parking—he’s planned this gig as long as you have yourself. If only I could prove
it before he learns too much about us.”
“I shouldn’t be too concerned about all this,” said Tor as we climbed the hill. “I don’t think any of us shall go to prison or even be brought to court. These gentlemen are unlikely to draw attention to us, if it means drawing attention to themselves. I’d wager anything that they’ve all tried to coerce their own firms into parking money here—in a tax haven they themselves own. As you pointed out, that’s not only illegal evasion of taxation, but using their positions for private financial gain. Furthermore—those who are bankers, like Lawrence himself, are prohibited by law from trading FX in direct competition with their own institutions! They’re in double jeopardy. They’ll surely want to conceal their involvement; and I doubt they can prove ours, in terms of implicating us in actual theft.”
It was true. Though the Depository Trust might be filled with counterfeit bonds, it’d be awfully hard to trace how they got there, or where the real ones had gone. Although Lawrence had bought out Tor’s loans—and taken over those callable bonds in the process—we couldn’t be sure he suspected that duplicates existed somewhere (after all, ours were the real ones!)—and he’d agreed to turn them over to us as soon as we signed over the island to him. We still had time to do so before their due date for recall.
As for Tavish and me, we had only to self-destruct our programs in order to erase them in an instant. We’d never used any passwords—or put any money into accounts—in our own names. In point of fact, none of us could be proven to have benefited from crime. For the most part, it would be hard to prove we’d even engaged in one.
So it was still possible for us to wrap things up neatly without getting caught. But that wasn’t enough for me. I’d progressed well beyond mere concern for saving my ass. I had wasted four months of my life—all without accomplishing one damned thing that Tor and I had initially set out to do. The picture seemed bleak, all right, but I was far from finished. That you’ve missed your goal doesn’t mean you don’t still have one.
Tor and I were passing through a grove where orange trees, heavy with blossom, scattered richly scented petals on the orchard floor. Tor snapped off a twig from a nearby tree, and twined it in my hair. Tossing his arm across my shoulders, he inhaled the aroma as we continued on our way.
We came upon a cluster of small boys, running down the rows of trees, carrying roughly cut wooden birds covered with spring flowers. Tor laughed, reached in his pocket, and scattered a handful of pennies among them. They scrambled to pick up the loot, chattered their thanks with merriment, and dashed away.
“It’s a very ancient Mediterranean tradition,” Tor explained. “Around Easter, young boys make hand-carved wooden swallows, paint them, deck them with flowers, and go about begging for coins. It’s mentioned in the oldest of writings and legends.”
“It’s a very charming custom,” I agreed.
“It reminds me of that children’s fable of the bird in the gilded cage. A bird that—like you—had to be left free in order to sing. I’ve thought of it often these last months. It’s been nearly impossible, staying away from you like this, after what’s passed between us. I couldn’t bear not to hear your voice—I wanted to phone you each night, and to wake with you each morning. But I knew any such gesture on my part—even if it were possible—would be construed by you as the worst form of—”
“What?” I said, halting in my tracks and staring at him. I couldn’t believe my ears. Then I burst into startled laughter. He, too, had stopped in surprise to look at me. But I couldn’t stop laughing; there were tears in my eyes. Tor watched me in stony silence.
“Perhaps you could share the joke, if it’s not asking too much,” he suggested with irritation. “It seems to amuse you that I should want you—and perhaps it is a bit odd, after all.”
“That’s not it.” I choked down the laughter as I brushed back my tears. “You don’t understand; I was furious with you for leaving like that. I’d have called you—if you’d only told me how! I was absolutely miserable, wondering why you didn’t phone, why you didn’t write, what had become of you. And all the while, you were only trying to make me happy by setting me free like that little bird!”
Tor looked at me with those strange flame-colored eyes as it dawned on us both precisely the sort of admission I’d at long last made. His stony expression faded into the familiar wry smile.
“It does seem odd,” he admitted, “that two people whose minds share a powerful wavelength—and whose bodies combine so beautifully, I might add—should require a translator to interpret such a simple thing as feeling.”
“Perhaps you can translate this simple feeling,” I said, returning the smile: “I love you.”
He paused a moment, as if he’d never before heard the word. Then he pulled me to him with one swift movement, embraced me, and buried his face in my hair.
“I believe we’ve arrived,” he whispered.
But though Tor and I might have gotten our romantic bearings at last, seas were still choppy when it came to more pragmatic ventures.
As the days trickled by, bringing closer the arrival date of the island’s new owners, my mood progressed from real fury (the vendetta impassionata, as Lelia called it)—to intense determination—to righteous indignation—to helpless frustration—to miserable desperation—at last to hopeless exhaustion. And though I spoke to Tavish daily and racked my brains day and night, in the end I had no solution, nor a way to snatch us from the grasp of the nefarious Vagabond Club.
At the forefront of all our minds, of course, was that these were the very men against whom we’d made our wager! It was to expose men such as these that we’d risked and lost everything.
These were the sort of men who’d leveraged Bibi out of his bank—a bank built by nickel-and-dime investors at the cost of their lifeblood. A bank built by people who believed that bankers would honor their word—protect deposits and increase assets—instead of slipping those assets under the counter in bad loans to their pals and bribes to indulgent senators. Men like these should be drawn and quartered in the old town square—not invited to the White House to dine. But that wasn’t the way it worked.
But the cruelest cut of all from my perspective, strange as it might seem, was the club itself. Not only the Vagabond Club—which held no special carte blanche—but all such clubs.
These clubs did not exist in order to make the world a better place. They performed no service, delivered no product, provided no function—such as improving their members through learning or counsel to take productive and valued roles in society. Men like these joined clubs like these because they believed they already were the most valued members of society, and they wanted to shut everybody else out.
If the main purpose of the Vagabond Club had been only a little boyish camaraderie, who would care? But this so-called brotherhood was a license to unearned privilege outside club walls. The last three CEOs of the Bank of the World, for instance, had been chosen in the paneled rooms of private clubs like these. They were not selected for intelligence, competence, productivity, leadership, or value, nor were the handful of men who chose them necessarily qualified to judge such things. They were chosen because they belonged to the Club!
I felt it was time to end this ghost government of the American economy—but the task was daunting and time was running out. Inevitable as fate, the night came at last—the night before the arrival of the Vagabonds. I gave one last call to Tavish to see if he’d found a single trace of anything I might pin on Lawrence. I’d been so desperate in these last two weeks, I’d even asked him to phone his teckie pals around the bank to troll for gossip—but this, too, had proven fruitless.
Tonight he sounded as gloomy as I felt. We knew that by ten o’clock tomorrow, Aegean time—when the ship from the mainland arrived here on the isle—it would be the end. And there wasn’t a damned thing that we could do.
“Though it’s no help at all,” said Tavish on the watery-sounding line, “there’s one rather amusing thing I though
t might cheer you. I spoke with your secretary; Pavel always has the juiciest gossip around the bank. Guess what the fates have brought your old boss, Kiwi? He’s been blackballed from joining the Vagabond Club!”
“Not really?” I gasped. “How could something like that happen?”
“It seems it was during the secret vote to decide on his admission,” Tavish explained. “But Pavel says that hearsay indicates it might have been Lawrence himself who cast the dissenting vote.”
“Impossible,” I assured him. “I have it from the horse’s mouth—Lawrence was his only sponsor. You’d hardly peg him as a chap who’d change his mind at the finish line.”
“Nevertheless, even Kiwi believes it,” Tavish told me. “You can’t imagine his behavior. Pavel says he’s been locked up for days, wearing mirrored glasses and frothing at the mouth! No one seems to know, either, if he’s still next in line to succeed Lawrence at the bank. The only thing that would cheer me more would be if Karp got deported to Germany!”
We hung up, laughing a lot and pretending we were more uplifted than we were. I told Tavish I’d phone the next day with a postmortem on our joint fate, once I knew what it was. But if Kiwi’s blackball was the only news Tavish could dredge from the bank, I was afraid I knew our fate already.
The sun rose brilliantly on the dreadful day—casting its sparkling diamonds indifferently upon the sea beneath, like that old tale about pearls before swine.
The swine boat had not yet arrived, but those in our group looked as if they were the ones being taken to slaughter as they headed over the hill to town—leaving Pearl and me behind at the castle to hide our recognizable faces. I lay on the sun-splashed parapet in an absolute daze, mindlessly watching a butterfly moving like a silvery bit of paper among Lelia’s many flowers.
A Calculated Risk Page 31
