I couldn’t bring myself to believe that—right or wrong, success or failure—this was really the end. It didn’t seem possible, after all our cleverness and hard work, that we could go down in a complete shutout, without scoring a single point.
Pearl went off to the hot pool to bathe alone, probably so that we didn’t have to look at each other like miserable, helpless lumps while waiting for the knell of fate that might not come for hours.
I sat there alone and watched the butterfly; it was zipping around with no apparent goal, sometimes bouncing off the wall, riding an air current in an aimless circle, disinterestedly exploring a flower. How strange that an insect could survive without any goal, I thought, when people never could.
Lawrence, for example. I knew from the first that his every act was triggered by a motive, though I hadn’t been able to prove any of them to be nefarious and illegal. His motive for keeping the auditors at bay was because he planned to buy this island and park money here. And his motive for sponsoring Kiwi to the Vagabond Club was—
I sat up in my deck chair and looked at the butterfly more closely. That flitting, aimless motion around one spot—could it be camouflage?—or an evasion tactic? What was Lawrence’s motive for sponsoring Kiwi to the Vagabond Club? And if a guy like Lawrence did sponsor someone like Kiwi, surely he’d first make certain beyond a doubt that no one would blackball his handpicked candidate. It must have been Lawrence himself who’d put the kibosh on Kiwi—but why?
Then in a sudden flash, I understood. I had been asking myself the wrong question, all along. The question I should have asked was not why—but when.
When did Lawrence propose Kiwi for membership in the Vagabond Club? Answer: The week my quality circle project started.
When did Lawrence move my project to report directly to him? Answer: When Pearl and Tavish suggested that it should be moved to the Managing Committee, or to the audit department, instead.
When did Lawrence decide my project should continue, instead of being canceled? Answer: When I threatened to turn it over to audit.
When did Kiwi get blackballed from club membership? Answer: The week my project ended and I left for vacation.
Last question: If Lawrence did all of the above because his goal was to get rid of me so he could do something crooked on the bank computer systems—when would be the perfect time to do it? Answer: Now! Now!! Now!!!
What an idiot I’d been not to see it. It must have been Lawrence all along! Lawrence who’d killed my very first proposal about security—Lawrence who’d arranged to bash any chance of that job with the Fed—Lawrence who’d tried to ship me to Frankfurt for the winter.
So understated was Lawrence’s handling of others, that poor Kiwi might even think all those ideas were his own—even that someone other than Lawrence had dumped him from the club. But the fact that Kiwi had been dumped for outlasting his usefulness—that I was absent from the bank, and that Lawrence was about to arrive here on the island—assured me that the time was now.
I had to get to those phones and call Tavish at once. I leaped to my feet and raced for the house, cursing Pearl for leaving me in the lurch. I didn’t have time to dash to the pool to get her help—but I hadn’t a clue where things were kept here at the castle, or where to find something I might use as a disguise.
I went through three or four rooms, pawing through trunks and barrels and boxes until at last I found an old black burnoose with a hood to cover my hair. I threw it on quickly, then grabbed one of Tor’s big silk hankies and fastened it over my lower face. Casting a quick glance in the rusty wall mirror, I seemed to resemble a Franciscan monk wearing a surgical mask—but it would have to serve. I threw on a pair of leather sandals, hitched up my skirts, and tore up the side of the rocky slope, without bothering to follow the switchback; it took too long.
It was half an hour, running at full clip, before I sighted the tiled roofs of the village. By the time I reached the waterfront, having scrambled the last hundred yards like a goat, my heart was beating like a caged bird, as much from fear as exertion. I was terrified I might be too late.
Coming up to the sail makers’ building, I pulled up the hood closely about my already veiled face, with only one eye peeping out, as an Islamic hausfrau might do. As I reached the entrance a distinguished Middle Eastern chap in Western-style clothes stepped out the doors, and I winced at my luck—an authority who could unmask my unprofessional disguise.
“Allah karim,” he said, brushing past me with some distaste. “God is beneficent”—in other words, ask Him, not me, for a handout. I’d have to speak with Georgian sometime about the state of her wardrobe. On the other hand, maybe it had made me safe—for the moment.
I raced up the stairs inside and, with skirts still hiked, dashed for the room with the phones. I threw the door wide with a bang, barged in—and froze.
Lelia was standing there at the blackboard, chalk poised in midair. Before her, sitting in neat little classroom rows, were Tor and Georgian—and the dozen or more members of the Vagabond Club!
Lelia stared, they all craned in their seats to check out this disruption, and Lawrence—in the last row, only inches from me—started to rise from his seat! Bowing and backing up as fast as I could, I retreated into the corridor and reached out to shut the door. But Tor was too fast for me. As soon as he saw me, in three swift strides he bounded across the room. He grabbed me by the arm, shoved me against the wall, and slammed the door behind us.
“What in hell are you doing here?” he whispered frantically. “Have you completely lost your mind? What if they’d recognized you?”
“… desperate … telephone …” I muttered through the layers of veil and hood.
“What do you have stuffed in your mouth—an apple?” he said irritably, yanking open my hood. He stared at the handkerchief, then smiled as he put his hand beneath my chin, turning my veiled face to left and right for a better view. “How charming,” he said, still smiling. “I rather like this new look of yours. Perhaps if you only wore the napkin and nothing else …”
Just then the door, not fully latched, swung open again, Lelia again frozen with chalk in her hand, Georgian wincing at my choice of attire, and the others continuing to stare. Tor remained, still grasping my arm, his other hand beneath my chin—smiling sheepishly at the group within.
“Forgive me,” he said, recovering himself and clearing his throat. “Gentlemen—may I present Madame Rahadzi, the wife of one of our most important clients from Kuwait. She’s asked to be shown to a private room where she waits until her husband has completed his business here. If you’ll excuse me? …”
“Of course,” Lelia replied for them, bowing to us. “And saha, Madame Rahadzi!” As Tor closed the door again, more firmly this time, I heard her say, “Now let us to continue, gentlemen.”
Tor nearly dragged me along the hallway. At the far end, he shoved me into an empty room with hardwood floors, stepped in behind me, shut the door, and—leaning against it—pulled me to him, pulled down my veil, and kissed me so deeply I felt my knees go weak.
“Madame Rahadzi,” he whispered when we surfaced for air, “would your husband mind it very much if I played around under your burnoose?”
“This is serious!” I said fiercely, trying to focus on what I’d come for.
“I should say it is,” he agreed. “I can’t keep my hands off of you—I can’t keep my mind on track—that’s more than serious!” He bent down and kissed me again, until I could feel it in my toes. “Madame Rahadzi, I’m going to have a very hard time returning you to your husband. Why don’t we lock the door and pretend you aren’t married?” he said.
I took a deep breath and held him away as he reached for me again.
“I must get to those phones and call Tavish,” I managed to get out. “I’ve figured out what Lawrence is up to—but now I have to prove it.”
“You mean, something more than what we already know?” said Tor, his eyes lightening.
“I think
he’s their banker,” I told him. “Where else did they get all that money—hundreds of millions of dollars—to buy up those loans? I think he’s done some creative financing in these last few weeks.”
“Without passing through the loan department for approvals?” he suggested.
“He’s the head of bank-wide data processing. If we could get into the system and grab that dough, why couldn’t he?—he’d only need it for the short term—”
“Especially if he cut a few corners, like refusing to pay us,” agreed Tor. “I think you’re onto something. The only phones for international calls are right there in that room. Stay here. I’ll get Lelia to wrap things up quickly, drag them off, and show them a bit of the island or something. Never fear—I’ll get you in there.”
“Couldn’t you have found a more reasonable hour to phone?” Tavish moaned, his voice gravelly with sleep. “Have you any idea what time it is here?”
“This is an emergency,” I told him. “Get up, dunk your head in ice water, make a pot of coffee—anything. I want you to get on-line to the bank in San Francisco and hit every file till you find what I’m looking for.”
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Money. Lots and lots of money. About four hundred million dollars in short-term, low-interest, no-penalty loans.”
“Anybody we know?” asked Tavish, his voice sounding considerably more cheerful.
“Only time will tell,” I said.
But two hours later, I was a bit less optimistic. We were still on the phone, Tor and Lelia having left a note that they were taking the Vagabonds on a lengthy walking tour of the island, and would meet me for cocktails at the castle.
I was lying on the floor of the boardroom, the World War II telephone sitting on my chest, the receiver propped on the floor near my ear as Tavish and I pounded through our paces.
“I’ve tried every bloody loan in the system that’s short-term and has low rates,” he informed me. “I even checked those loans for automobile flooring, recreational vehicles, small boats, and student education! I’m afraid—rumors to the contrary—that there are no four-year-college degrees that cost over fifty million dollars!”
“There has to be something out there,” I said, cursing under my breath. “There aren’t that many of these Vagabonds. How many men would they trust in a deal this confidential—twenty-five—fifty—a hundred max? And these guys are all CEOs of major corporations—not idle heirs to a dimestore fortune. They may be well paid, but not that well. They don’t have that kind of cash lying around their checking accounts. They got it from someone—and that someone was Lawrence. Why else was he so frantic to keep me and the auditors off that system?”
“Terrific theory—I’m in total awe,” said Tavish. “But I’ve rather exhausted my supply of rocks under which to look. Any new ideas—so long as we’re footing the global bill for satellite communications?”
“Try the password file,” I said. “Whatever Lawrence did, he must have done under his own password.”
“You can’t be serious,” said Tavish. “There are fifty thousand IDs out there. He might have used anything—or two or three, or a dozen—or a hundred!”
“Try Lawrence,” I suggested.
“Beg pardon?”
“Lawrence!” I repeated. “L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e. Or Larry—something like that.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Tavish with disdain. “No one would use his own name as a password—like a birth date or mother’s maiden name—it’s the very first thing a thief would think of trying.”
“We have nothing to lose at this point,” I said. “Humor me—give it a shot.”
Tavish went off mumbling, but a few moments later, I heard exclamations—then a shriek.
“There is a password of Lawrence!” he cried. “By God, this is the bloodiest, ugliest, most criminal thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life!”
“What is it?” I cried, sitting up and clutching the phone to my ear.
“I’ll print it all off on Charles Babbage so we’ll have the hard copy later,” he said, “since I can’t print on your line. But I’ll read the basics off to you. I hope you’ve got a quill handy.”
“What is it?” I repeated, clutching the pen and pad in my hands.
“It’s stocks, ducky—three hundred million in bank stock—all of it transferred in the last two weeks.”
“Bank stock? You mean, shares in the Bank of the World?”
“Believe me, I haven’t a clue where it came from,” said Tavish, “but I can quote you name, rank, and serial number for mucho millions of shares.”
Perhaps Tavish didn’t know where it had come from—but I did. And I smiled. It wasn’t too hard to figure out where there was a block of bank stock that size, and one that was really handy. In fact, it could be transferred without ever leaving the bank’s computer system.
They’d ripped off the bank’s own employee pension fund!
It was late afternoon—nearly evening—when I cut through the woods and dropped down below the castle to enter from the small peninsula beneath. From there, cobwebbed internal stairwells led directly to the observation tower overlooking the parapet and the sea—without passing through the courtyard, where I might be seen.
I knew that sound traveled better uphill, and thought it might be to my advantage to learn first how things stood—down below on the parapet, where Lelia, Tor, and the Vagabonds would by now, presumably, be having cocktails.
But when I glanced through the slitlike window, I saw only three figures standing on the vast expanse of tile: Lawrence, and my two friends. Their voices reached me as clearly as if we were standing three feet apart.
“Baroness Daimlisch,” Lawrence was saying as Tor poured the champagne, “Dr. Tor informs me that you are the key principal in this consortium. I hope you won’t mind if I say I find it difficult to believe you’ve been in the world of high finance for long. Your expectation to receive an additional markup of thirty million for this business is quite untenable.”
“Then why did you agree to it initialement, monsieur?” asked Lelia sweetly.
“Not only is this piece of rock nearly worthless as a property,” he said, ignoring her, “but as purchasers we have no assurance we can continue forever to operate here as a tax haven. Geographically, we’re between Greek and Turkish coastal waters. If those countries chose to dispute ownership—as they did with Cyprus—we’d find ourselves in a lot of trouble.”
“And yet you wish so badly to purchase this valueless business of ours that you attempt to force us to give it to you. I hope chat you do not mind, monsieur, if I tell you that you are not very gentil.”
“In the real world, madame—the world of business and finance—being a gentleman is hardly a criterion. If you do not sign the contracts we’ve brought today—for the one million we’ve agreed to, and no more—I assure you that we shall take ungentlemanly measures to remove you and your colleagues from your positions with no further consideration. We all agreed to take a risk in this venture—but a calculated risk. And my calculations suggest we’ve risked enough by assuming those loans that financed you in the first place.”
“It’s hardly a risk,” Tor chimed in, bringing the champagne glasses from the table where he’d poured them. “Not when you plan for your bank, and all the corporations of which you men are officers, to park their assets and execute taxable contracts here, as soon as you take over.”
“It’s illegal for banks and other corporations to park reserves in tax havens,” Lawrence said coldly, “as surely you know.”
“They all do it nevertheless—as surely you know,” said Tor with a smile. “What would the board of your bank think if they knew you’d been pressing them to an illegal act from which you yourself would profit as a principal?”
“I don’t know where your information comes from, but these unfounded allegations would hardly hold up in a court of law,” snapped Lawrence.
“This isn’t a court of law, and more t
han one brilliant reputation has foundered on the shore of innuendo,” said Tor.
But he must have wondered—as I did—why Lawrence seemed so unconcerned about his reputation at the bank. After all, if they learned one of their key officers was a principal in a tax haven trading against the bank, wouldn’t they take steps to protect themselves first? Unless Lawrence had far more influence at the bank than I had guessed.
And then, of course, I saw the picture in its entirety—and red blood rushed up behind my eyes. He hadn’t stolen that stock from the pension fund—he owned it! This wasn’t a short-term takeover of our little island business at all; that was only the tip of the iceberg. They didn’t just want a tax haven to shelter other people’s funds—they wanted their own country. And now I knew why!
“You clearly don’t understand with whom you’re dealing,” Lawrence was saying to Tor.
“But I do!” I cried from my window in the tower, unable to control myself one second longer.
All three looked up and squinted into the sun—and I saw Tor smile.
“Ah,” he said with casual grace, “it seems our silent partner has found a tongue at last.”
“Silent partner?” said Lawrence, glancing at him.
I lifted my robes, dashed down the spiral stairs three at a time, and came out onto the parapet.
Lawrence looked at me coldly. I was certain I must be the very last person on earth he wished to see just now—but to do him credit, he didn’t show it.
“Banks, perhaps you can explain just what you think you’re doing here,” he said.
“I’d rather explain what you’re doing here, instead,” I told him, trying to control the fury in my voice. “You sons of bitches are taking over the bank!”
Tor’s head snapped around to stare at me, and Lelia put her hand to her breast. Lawrence stood there, his face an expressionless mask. His pupils were slits of icy self-containment. He set his champagne glass on the wall and pulled a packet of papers from his breast pocket.
A Calculated Risk Page 32
