by John Niven
‘I don’t get jet lag,’ I say. ‘It’s vulgar. Listen, Trellick tells me that Danny Rent’s managing this house act you’re after, Norwegian Dance Crew?’
‘Yeah, you know him?’
‘Back in the day and all that. How’s it going?’
‘It’s a fucking nightmare. Danny’s a friend of yours?’
‘Define friend,’ I say in a tone that leaves her plenty of leeway.
‘Well, excuse me, but he’s a fucking lowlife cocksucker who should get AIDS and die.’ I’m beginning to like this girl. ‘Two weeks ago this was our deal and then suddenly Capitol get let back in the door and now he’s taking meetings with XL too? Fuck me.’ She sweeps red hair out of her face and leans forward to sip her coffee, allowing me an eyeful of vast, milky cleavage in the scoop-neck T-shirt.
‘Where are you at?’ I ask.
‘Money-wise? Six fifty now.’
‘Mmmm,’ I say, thinking. ‘Is it worth it?’
‘You’ve heard them. It’s nothing. Just standard-issue, David Guetta, Calvin Harris-type shit.’
‘But …’ I say.
‘But the kids fucking love it and we need some hits, right?’
‘Good girl,’ I say. I wonder if she’s quite turned thirty yet. ‘Well, if I can do anything to help, let me know.’
‘They’re spinning in Vegas this weekend. If you fancy slumming it and flying commercial …’
I stifle the usual burst of murderous rage I experience when Americans use the phrase ‘spinning’. What the fuck was wrong with ‘DJing’, you Sherman cunts? We managed fine with it for the twenty years before any of you thought to even bosh a fucking pill. Obviously the list of things I’d rather do than go to Vegas to watch some dance cretins ‘spinning’ is fairly exhaustive, but then I look at this mane of red hair, that rack, those clear blue eyes. ‘Might be difficult,’ I say. ‘I’ve got my hands fairly full at the minute …’
‘Yeah,’ she grins, ‘what’s going on with you guys? All feels very … cloak and dagger.’
‘Oh, nothing. Just helping James out with a couple of things. Anyway,’ I change the subject, ‘what else are you looking at these days? Who’s happening?’ I ask. She starts talking about bands, singers, DJs, tapping away at her iPad to show me things, numbers of hits on websites, the number of streaming plays on Spotify and Pandora.
I drift off, remembering a meeting we had at the label, back in ’94, over twenty years ago, in another lifetime, when I was a junior A&R guy, back in the days of dial-up, the screeching, squeaking modem, taking four hours to download your nude photograph of Pamela Anderson. There was me and Trellick and Waters, Derek, Ross and a couple of other guys from marketing. A pair of American fruits came in to show us how the Internet was going to affect our business in the future. They were looking for an investment, something like fifty grand for some new business they were setting up. ‘So, the kid will download the track onto his computer,’ this guy said. ‘And he’ll be able to do this anywhere, in a cafe, on a train, in the street …’
‘Eh?’ Ross said. ‘How … where will he plug it in?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The wires, the computer. What, there’ll be sockets you can plug into all over the place?’
The American guys looked at each other. ‘No,’ they said. ‘In, like, ten years or so there won’t be any wires any more. Everything will be wireless.’
We all exchanged looks at this point.
‘And the CD will be burned straight onto your computer?’ Derek asked.
‘No, no. There won’t be any CDs then.’
‘What? Where will the music be?’
‘Just … on your computer.’
Now we were all wondering about the guy’s sanity. ‘And the artwork?’ Ross asked. ‘Will that print off from your computer and you’ll be able to –’
‘Guys,’ this Yank said, taking his glasses off, ‘you need to get it – there won’t be any CDs. Or any artwork. Or albums as you know them. No one’s going to care about that stuff any more. Listen to me – people just want to hear that song they like.’
Well, we looked at each other one more time and then we burst out laughing. We sent that pair of bumlords out of our building with a fucking boot ringing on their backsides.
The company they were setting up was called Yahoo!
Later, much later, over redundancy drinks, some of the accounting staff worked out that if we’d invested fifty grand in Yahoo! in 1994, rather than making, say, the second Rage album, we’d all have been worth …
Well, you win some, you lose some. I tune back into Chrissy, who is saying ‘… you know, that whole Upper West Side Soweto thing –’
‘Shit,’ I say, looking at my watch, ‘I gotta run, sorry …’
‘Where you headed?
‘Van Nuys.’
‘Oh yeah, I heard you have the jet right now,’ she smiles. ‘You wouldn’t believe how pissed a couple of people are about that. You headed somewhere nice?’
‘Just a quick business trip,’ I say.
‘Have fun,’ Chrissy says.
‘Oh yeah,’ I say with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever.
NINE
I wake up and pull the blind up, to see we are over a glittering expanse of sea. I check the inflight monitor on the TV screen, yawning, calling for coffee and water, and see the little aeroplane icon is over the Red Sea. We’ve just passed Egypt. I breakfast, shower and change into fresh clothes: my navy linen Huntsman suit and a crisp white shirt. I reset my Pepsi-Cola GMT to the new time zone. We are twelve hours ahead of LA now.
When I disembark the Gulfstream the heat is so great that your nostrils burn when you inhale. I take my first few breaths with a hand over my mouth and nose, trying to diffuse the heat before it enters. I’ve been over this way a couple of times before (to Dubai recently, a shopping mall built on slave blood – capitalism at its finest) and, even by Gulf standards, the heat is deranged. Fortunately, I don’t have to endure it for very long. As soon as I’m on the tarmac a tall, bearded Arab is introducing himself, saying how pleased he is to meet me, and walking me towards the inevitable Maybach. There are two others flanking it. I ride alone in the back seat, stretched out on cool leather, gazing numbly at the endless desert that slides by through the tinted glass as I work on my pitch.
I wonder idly how much of my adult life has been spent doing what I’m doing now: gazing through smoked glass as I try to figure out what I’m going to say when I get there. Many, many hours. (I can hear you saying, You don’t need to work, Steven. How much money can you need? I’ll assume if you’re asking that last question you are actually dirt poor. Poor people will often ask – ‘What’s the difference between 220 million and 230 million dollars?’The answer, of course, is ten million dollars, you fucking clown.) I’m pulled out of a half-nap by the lurching feeling of the car slowing down. The drive from the private airfield has taken just twenty minutes. I look up to see the palace rising in front of me out of the desert, at the end of the two-mile driveway lined with mature trees. (The irrigation costs alone …)
This … to call it a ‘family home’ would be a savage understatement, like calling Peter Sutcliffe ‘unreasonable’. It is immense, in pale stone. I know from my reading that it covers 250,000 square feet and contains three swimming pools, an ice-skating rink and its own mosque. It is the only structure as far as the eye can see. The car comes to a stop in front of a two-hundred-foot artificial lake studded with fountains spraying water high into the air. More functionaries appear and I am ushered into the hall – a cool expanse of pink marble the size of a football pitch. And then the Sultan of Quatain is walking towards me, smiling, extending his hand.
Game on.
The Sultan is shaking his head gravely and repeating ‘this poor man’. The Sultan’s son? He’s actually crying. We’re drinking mint tea and eating dates in a vast lounge, sitting below a huge Rothko. ‘Abdullah,’ the father eventually says, patting his son’s shoulder, ‘please. Stop.’ (Remember, fa
mily is a big deal for these guys.) With a sniff, the kid pulls himself together. I say ‘kid’ – he’s twenty-two and, I strongly suspect, a raving fucking iron. ‘Mr Stelfox,’ he gestures to me, ‘I apologise. My son is an … emotional boy.’ Yep, Dad knows son’s an iron. ‘Please, continue.’
‘He’s … he’s very sick. What he needs most now is total rest. Utter seclusion. The way things are in our country, in the West, with the press, the tabloids, social media, he’ll never get that. If this story, these lies, come out … well, I don’t think he could live through it. It … it would kill him.’ Young Abdullah has to stifle a scream, or a sob, or a bit of both at this. He stuffs his fist in his mouth. ‘I’ve been trying to find a solution. Somewhere he can recuperate, somewhere journalists would never find him. Somewhere …’
‘Like here!’ Abdullah exclaims, beyond himself with excitement.
‘Well, exactly,’ I say.
The Sultan just nods, having figured out long before his son where this was all headed.
‘Father,’ the kid says, ‘we must help him.’
‘Of course we’d pay for all the living expenses. Mr Du Pre has his personal physician who would be with him, so all his medical needs would be catered to. We’d just need access to a pharmacy. His medications, for his disease, are … extensive. It’s just, the most important thing is – no one could ever know he was here.’
‘Mr Stelfox,’ the Sultan says, ‘you arrived here today. You landed at my private airfield and travelled over my estate to this house. We are hundreds of miles from anyone. Privacy is not an issue.’
‘Of course. I meant more in terms of your staff. Of loose tongues.’
‘He could be installed in his own wing, with his own staff, whose loyalty to me is unquestioning.’ I believe this. You do not fuck with these guys. They’ll chop your fucking cock off for looking at their wife funny. Your hands off for stealing a chocolate bar. ‘But …’ I can see the dad still has some reservations …
‘Father,’ Abdullah says, ‘what is there to think about? Lucius Du Pre is asking for our help!’
‘Abdullah,’ the Sultan says, ‘leave us.’
The kid stands up and goes to leave. He turns back. ‘If we do not help Lucius then I will kill myself!’
The Sultan doesn’t reply, just dismisses his son with a wave of his hand. It takes a good thirty seconds for Abdullah’s heels to click across the marble and out of the door. ‘I apologise for the impudence, Mr Stelfox. As you can see I am a soft father who indulges his children too much.’
‘He seems a fine boy,’ I lie.
He ignores this. ‘Tell me, Mr Stelfox, these crimes he is accused of. Your Du Pre. Are the accusations real?’ Yeah, he’s done his homework, this old clit-chopper.
We look at each other.
‘He is a complex man,’ I offer.
‘Please, let’s not be coy with each other. Understand – I make no moral judgement. Sheep, goats, women, boys, whatever a man wishes to loose his seed into is no concern of mine.’
I like this guy. I lean forward. ‘Excellency, I understand you have been trying for some time to invest a more significant part of your income in the United States.’ I’ve done my homework too. The tsunami of dirty money flowing through the Middle East these days. ‘But, as you know, this can be difficult. The abeed Obama and his regulations.’
‘Well … that might all be changing soon.’
‘Indeed. But for now, the company I represent, Unigram, their share price is very weak. Something occurred to me. An opportunity for you …’
We talk for a long time about financial instruments. Shell companies. Cypriot banks. Junk bonds. The long bond curve. The talk of pure money. I admit, he’s way ahead of me. I don’t quite follow all of it. But I get the gist. You bet I get the fucking gist. After a while I say, ‘Sir, I will speak with my bankers in New York. They are very … creative.’ (This is an understatement. Stern, Hammler & Gersh? They’d channel the profits from blood diamonds to fund human trafficking.) ‘I am certain we can find a solution that may help us both. And I can assure you of my utmost discretion. As I will have to depend upon yours.’
He pours more tea. ‘There was one other matter.’ Here we fucking go. You scratch my back, I’ll do you up the coalhole with no lube. ‘You are an A&R man, are you not? A finder of talent?’ I nod. ‘I have nine children. My eldest daughter, Aesha, she yearns to be singer. She has made a recording …’ Nothing fucking changes. Whether it’s a cab driver, or the TV repair guy, or some cunt at a wedding, or the Sultan of fucking Quatain, as soon as they find out what you do it’s ‘my brother/son/girlfriend/whatever has a fucking demo you need to listen to’.
‘I think,’ I say, sensing the close drawing near, ‘Mr Du Pre’s label would be very interested in hearing your daughter’s music.’
The cunt grins for the first time, expensive, capped teeth showing in his mahogany face. ‘She is most talented.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Besides,’ the Sultan sighs, ‘I fear if I refused your request Abdullah really might kill himself.’ We both laugh, making light of it, but I feel his pain. Imagine your son was an iron? How might that go? You’re sitting there, happily picturing his first girlfriends, the immense amount of pumping you’re going to get to see him doing, then the grandkids, the continuation of the line. You’re thinking about succession, about passing on assets, the family name growing and strengthening into future generations, long after you are gone, and then the kid says ‘Dad, this is Sebastian …’ and there’s some brick shithouse of a bender standing there, massive cockduster moustache, leather cap, aviators, white vest, the lot. And your actual son is standing there holding his hand, asking you to be pleased for him, proud of him, for telling you that he is sodomising – or being sodomised by – a man. That he has chosen to sow his seed (your seed) in the barren wilderness of the male anus, where nothing will ever grow or blossom. Fucking imagine it. Speaking of which …
‘I too have one last request, Excellency,’ I say. ‘As we touched on earlier, Mr Du Pre … his needs are not limited to the purely medical, if you understand me …’
He smiles again. ‘Mr Stelfox. We have some of the finest boys in the world. Twelve, thirteen years old. Virgins. Whatever he requires. We will make him most comfortable. And, please, I do not want to hear any talk of payment. Mr Du Pre will be my honoured guest and will be treated accordingly.’
‘Sir, I am in your debt.’
‘Now, I will tell Abdullah. You will undoubtedly hear his shriek of delight from here.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘You will be spending the night of course? I have prepared a suite of rooms for you.’
‘Forgive my rudeness, Excellency, but I must return immediately to Los Angeles. The matters I am dealing with here, they are extremely time-sensitive.’
‘I understand.’ He rises and we shake hands. ‘Do you have children, Mr Stelfox?’
‘Allah has not given me that blessing yet.’
‘One day, when he has, you will understand the decisions fathers must make.’
He leaves. I quietly high-five myself. Phase one is done. Phase two is up next. Lots of hurdles yet to cross. One thing though – I’m kind of looking forward to telling Trellick he’s going to have to give some crazed Arab boiler a record deal. But first things first. I make the call from the car on the way back to the jet.
TEN
Terry Rawlings, in first class, in seat 4B of an American Airlines flight from Bogotá to LAX. Terry chose the smoked salmon and then the beef, thanking the steward and handing the menu back before putting his screen up for privacy. He sipped his Bloody Mary and returned to his work – a notepad, a stack of papers and a ballpoint pen on the little table in front of him, his feet up on the footstool, stretching his six-two frame out. Terry was sketching plans, outlines, contingencies. He was thinking about possible sites, somewhere that met exacting specifications: remoteness, plausibility, ground exit routes, the availability of nearby airstrips and so forth. He
licopter though, Terry was definitely thinking helicopter.
It amazed him that so many high-net-worth individuals still chose to use them. They were so much more vulnerable than planes in bad weather. They flew lower to the ground, a chopper’s max ceiling without pressurisation was about 12,000 feet (also, conveniently, ideal height for a jump without oxygen), making you far more likely to encounter buildings or hills that suddenly appeared out of fog. They also had a lot more moving parts than aeroplanes, a lot more things to potentially malfunction: main rotor, tail rotor, gearbox, and the drive shaft running the entire length of the aircraft, all these things in constant motion, the parts wearing out more quickly. Terry had a couple of hundred hours under his belt – Apaches, Lynxes – and knew how much trickier they were to handle than aeroplanes: the cyclic control, the collective control, the anti-torque pedals, the throttle, all happening at once. The rate of accidents during instructional flights was twice as high for helicopters as for aeroplanes. (Terry had seen a couple of nasty spills during advanced training, at Middle Wallop, down in Hampshire, back in the nineties.) Yeah, on grounds of plausibility alone, it was definitely helicopters. He took a map of southern California out of his stack of papers and began thinking about flight paths. Oh, this right here, this mountain range, this could be good …
Terry had been introduced to his current employer at a party, a little over ten years ago, on a yacht in Cannes, by Lev Kalonsky, the Russian energy billionaire whom Terry had done a few jobs for – boom times workwise in Russia over the last decade. It surprised Terry that his career trajectory was the stuff of novels and movies, because for him it was so boringly obvious it almost defied belief. From public school to Sandhurst – where he excelled in everything – straight on to SAS training, and then eight years of ops before entering the private sector. There were a tedious couple of years of bodyguard stuff before some more interesting jobs started to come his way. He was forty-two now though, and the aches and pains were starting to become increasingly real. For the first time, thoughts of retirement were beginning to cross Terry’s mind. This job, insanely well paid by anyone’s standards, would definitely help.
