Billionaire

20

After the telex from Theo Barbiero-Ruche had been placed on his desk, Rocq sat and stared at it in silence for a long time. The last of the lunchtime alcohol was wearing away, and he had a strong desire to go out, buy a bottle and keep on drinking. He was emerging into full, clear reality, and he wasn’t sure that was a condition he wanted to be in. Right now, he needed oblivion, and he needed it for a good long time. He tried to bury himself in work, but after two half-hearted phone calls he knew it was no good. He looked at his watch: it was five to five, and already one or two people in the office had started to pack up for the day. His intercom buzzed and he picked up the receiver.

‘Mr Rocq?’

It was Sir Monty Elleck’s private secretary.

‘Yes.’

‘Sir Monty wonders if you could spare him a moment upstairs in his office?’

Rocq thought frantically for a moment. He had a damned good idea what Elleck wanted to see him about: the small matter of a few hundred thousand pounds of margin. He wanted to stay well out of Elleck’s way until he could get hold of some money, but he realized he was going to have no chance of avoiding him unless he went sick, and he knew that he could not afford to go sick; he needed to watch the price of coffee twenty-four hours a day, until it had dropped sufficiently to see him out of trouble. He couldn’t take the risk of missing the drop. He had instructed Barbiero-Ruche to buy back, if it went below £327, but if it looked like plummeting well below that, he wanted to be able to cancel that instruction and hold out for even more. Reluctantly, he got up from his desk and made his way up to Elleck’s office.

He was surprised to find Elleck in an uncharacteristically jovial mood. He came out from behind his desk to greet him with a firm handshake, ushered him into a pink chair, and asked him what he would like to drink. He then went and poured two hefty Scotches, added some Malvern water, brought the glasses over, gave one to Alex, and seated himself in a lemon yellow chair next to him.

‘So how are you, Alex?’

‘Fine, thank you, Sir Monty.’

‘Good, good. Business all right?’

‘Reasonable, thank you, sir.’

‘I hear you had a car accident at the weekend. No one hurt, I hope?’

‘No, sir. My car was parked and a lorry hit it.’

‘I am sorry to hear that. Badly damaged?’

‘Smashed to pieces; a write-off.’

‘Very unfortunate. A Porsche wasn’t it? Expensive motor car.’

Rocq nodded.

‘I presume the insurance will cover it?’

‘Yes, sir. Probably take several months though, knowing them.’

‘Impossible people, insurance companies. Will you get another one in the meantime?’

‘I think I’ll have to wait until I get the insurance money — I don’t want to borrow the money at current interest rates.’

‘Of course not, they are very punitive. Still, Alex, it must be very inconvenient not to have a car?’

‘It is — I’m going to have to rent one at the weekends.’

Elleck took a sip of his drink, then handed Rocq a box of Romeo & Juliet coronas. Rocq took one, and Elleck helped himself. ‘Not very satisfactory, renting. Very expensive. I think it would be better, Alex, if you went and bought yourself another Porsche. Put it on the Company — you can arrange it tomorrow through the accounts department. I will tell them in the morning. Then you can reimburse us with whatever you eventually get from the insurance.’

Rocq was glad his chair had arms; they prevented him from falling out of it. Less than six months before, Elleck had virtually thrown him out of this same office for asking for a financial contribution towards the last Porsche. ‘Filthy Nazi toys,’ Elleck had yelled. ‘This firm has never bought a foreign car, and over my dead body it never will.’ Rocq studied his boss carefully: he was very definitely anything but dead.

‘Thank you, sir; that’s extremely generous — extremely generous.’ He was nearly shaking with excitement. ‘They are — rather expensive, sir — you do — er — know the price?’

‘I am not familiar with car prices — how much are they?’

‘The one I have cost £32,000 — on the road — I might be able to save a bit by taking the radio out of the last one.’

Elleck blanched visibly at the sum of money. ‘I didn’t realize they cost — er — quite that much. However, no problem, Alex, no problem at all — and you needn’t worry about any interest — you just go ahead and sort it out tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, sir, thank you very much indeed.’

‘Don’t mention it; let me fill your glass up.’

Elleck walked over to the drinks cupboard, and poured Rocq nearly a half tumbler of Chivas Regal from the Steuben cut-glass decanter. ‘Now, Alex — I don’t like to pry into the business affairs of my employees — none of them. What you all do with your own money is your own affair. We do have a rule that you must not trade privately through any section of this company — but,’ he handed the tumbler to Rocq, ‘we’ve never enforced that rule too strictly. However, as a result of this coffee business, I have had to scrutinize our books very carefully — to make sure we’re not on the hook for anyone to any of the clearing houses — and during my scrutiny, I couldn’t help noticing your own coffee position: you bought 1,000 tons — 200 lots — at £1,022 a ton on ten per cent margin. As you know, it has now dropped to just over £420 a ton, and under our rules you are required to cover that position — which means you’re paying out, on top of your original margin of £102,000, approximately a further £400,000. I understand you have given instructions to James Rice to liquidate your position as quickly as possible — but as buyers are on the thin side, it is unlikely to rise significantly between now and then. It would seem this is more or less the amount you are going to have to pay up.’ He looked quizzically at Rocq.

Rocq stared him straight in the eye, then took a large pull on his tumbler; he needed enough drink for courage, but not too much that he would lose what little concentration he had remaining. Then he carefully cut away the end of his Havana with his index finger nail. He nodded, slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You have this money readily available, I presume?’ Rocq pulled out his gold Dunhill and lit the cigar, slowly, deliberately, rolling the tip over and over in the flame, sucking gently, sucking deeply, caressing and nursing the end into an even bright red glow. The smoke tasted sweet, reassuring, rich and beautiful. He took one large mouthful, let the smoke curl up for a few moments from his bottom lip, then blew it hard, straight out in front of him; he swivelled his head, looked Elleck briefly in the face, then stared down at Elleck’s exquisitely polished Manolo Blahnick crocodile shoes. ‘No, Sir Monty, I haven’t.’

‘Nor the £512,000 you need to wire to your friend in Milan?’

A chill went through Rocq. Nobody had actually spelled out the enormity of the mess he was in before. The chill subsided, and he was left with a damp mixture of frustration and despair. He lifted his eyes up to meet Elleck’s: ‘No, I don’t have that either.’

‘How about forty pence for your tube fare home?’ Elleck’s tone had suddenly become warmer again. He grinned, and Elleck grinned back.

‘I think I can just about run to that,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Elleck, ‘that’s a start!’

Rocq picked up his glass for another sip; to his slight surprise, he discovered it was empty.

‘Drop more?’ asked Elleck.

‘Just a drop,’ said Rocq, conscious that he was beginning to slur his words, and fighting hard to try and feel sober again.

Elleck marched back over to the drinks cabinet. He did not speak until he had brought Rocq’s refilled glass and sat down again. ‘Alex,’ he said, ‘I like to think of my firm as a family. All my employees are one big family. If anyone is ever in trouble, and it is within my power to help them, then I will always do so.’ He paused, and lifted his tumbler: ‘Your health.’

Rocq lifted his and they both drank. Then Elleck continued:

‘Now, you seem to be in a lot of trouble. The sums of money you owe are fantastic — in anybody’s terms — almost £1 million altogether. Everyone dreams of being a millionaire. Even today, with all the inflation we have had over the years, to be a millionaire is still to achieve a magical status. You are thirty-one and you owe a million pounds. You owe more perhaps than one man in a hundred thousand will ever make in his entire lifetime.

‘You are a bright fellow. You have enthusiasm, youth, ability, no doubt. I don’t know — maybe, also, you have rich relatives — but if you don’t, you will need an awful lot of hard work, and luck, to ever pay even a portion of that sort of money back. It will be a millstone around your neck that you could carry for all your life. Instead of earning money to enjoy, you would be earning it to pay back the bank.’

Elleck paused; Rocq stared motionlessly at him, then slowly nodded his head.

‘Of course,’ continued Elleck, ‘you could opt to go bankrupt. If you do that, everything that you own will be taken from you to go towards paying your debts, but beyond that you would owe not a penny more — so that would free you from one millstone. The problem with going bankrupt is your career. You have spent much time qualifying as a metal broker, learning this business. You clearly do well at it, and you know how to make a lot of money out of it. If this — er — unhappy situation were to arise, I would of course have to terminate your employment here. I am afraid, also, that as an undischarged bankrupt — perhaps even as a discharged bankrupt — you would find it very difficult ever to get employment in this field again.’

‘I fully understand, Sir Monty,’ said Rocq. He was thinking hard about Theo Barbiero-Ruche and his coffee. It was thanks to his advice that he was here now; he had just sold 12,000 tons short, again on his advice. If Theo was wrong again, he didn’t want to think of the consequences. In spite of the warmth the alcohol gave him, he felt another chill run through his body.

There was a knock on the door and Elleck’s secretary came in. ‘Are you going to sign your post, Sir Monty?’

‘Leave it, Jane — I don’t think there’s anything urgent. I’ll do it tomorrow.’

‘All right. Is there anything you need?’

‘No thank you, Jane.’

‘Thank you, Sir Monty. Good night.’

‘Good night, Jane.’ He waited until the door was closed and turned to Rocq. ‘Alex, if this company had a million pounds spare, it would pay these debts for you gladly.’

Rocq sat up a little. For the first time since he had come into Elleck’s office, the chairman had lied.

‘But we do not have a million pounds spare.’

Rocq sat up a little further. Elleck had just told his second lie.

‘I am, however, privy to some information that, if acted upon correctly, could enable you to earn that money, and more on top from your brokerage commissions alone.’

Rocq eased himself a little further up; he took another sip of his Scotch, and missed the table completely as he put his glass down. Elleck didn’t appear to notice as it dropped and disgorged its contents into the thick pile of the carpet.

‘Does such information interest you?’

‘Of course it does, Sir Monty.’

‘I thought it might. You are familiar with the name Umm Al Amnah?’

‘Very much so.’

‘You have a very good client from there — Prince Abr Qu’Ih Missh, I believe?’

‘Yes.’

‘His father has recently abdicated, and he has now become the ruler of Amnah.’

‘Yes — that’s right — he is the new Emir of Amnah. Hasn’t done us a lot of good so far — I think he has become too embroiled in his ruling to think much about his metal investing. I do have a £5 million discretionary account for him, but the really large punting he does he likes to instruct directly.’

‘Well — this scheme, in any event, involves not him but his country. In a nutshell, two gentlemen, with whom I am acquainted, have secretly been providing the new Emir Missh with troops and secret police to help him against mounting opposition to his family. Unknown to Missh, at the same time, they have been building a stockpile of nuclear mines in Al Suttoh, the country’s port, on the Persian Gulf. One of these gentlemen has recently added a small fleet of oil tankers to his assets. On a given day, in just over one week’s time, one of these tankers, on its way up the Gulf, will be blown to smithereens by a small atomic explosive. There will be nothing left of it but matchsticks. The crew will all have been taken off earlier, secretly, by helicopter, so there will be no casualties.

‘After the detonation, an announcement will be put out from the Palace of Amnah that the country has placed 400 nuclear mines in the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Gulf. Unless Israel withdraws completely from all occupied territories and frees all Arab prisoners in its jails, then they will not render the mines safe. Effectively, no shipping will be able to get in or out of the Gulf. Over half the world’s oil supply will be stopped.’ Elleck did a gentle karate chop with the side of his right hand, about halfway up his left arm. ‘There will not have been a crisis like it since Suez,’ said Elleck, almost gleefully. He stood up, and went and refilled Rocq’s glass.

Rocq nodded. ‘Very clever. No one would ever have suspected that a tin-pot country like Amnah could have so much clout.’

‘Precisely,’ said Elleck. ‘So the shock will be all the more severe. Roping Libya in adds clout to the menace, because everyone knows that right now Libya doesn’t move an inch without full Russian approval.’ He sat back and took a pull of his drink. ‘You’re an intelligent fellow, Alex — what do you think the result of all this will be?’

‘I don’t know politically — but the price of gold will go through the roof.’

‘Good boy,’ said Elleck. ‘You’ve hit the jackpot in one.’

‘Does Missh know about all this?’

‘Not a thing. And he won’t. Even if he were to find out, he’s got no option but to keep his trap shut. Because of the delicate political situation in the United Arab Emirates, there isn’t a Western country who will dare support him. Russia and Libya and the other anti-West Arab states have been courting him like mad, but both Missh and his father are fundamentally pro-West. Libya and Russia did help them originally gain independence, but since then they have been busy shaking off these countries. I think they are hoping that one day a reconciliation with the West can be made — although of course the Russian propaganda machine has always played up the original bond between Amnah and Libya, and continues to do so at every opportunity.’

Rocq nodded. ‘So you want me to start buying gold for all my clients as fast as I can go?’

‘No,’ said Elleck, ‘that is precisely what I do not want you to do. Gold is at the moment depressed — today’s price is $494 an ounce. I want the price to stay as low as possible. I have a syndicate comprising the key people behind this whole business in Amnah. Between them, they have committed to the syndicate sufficient funds to buy £1,000 million worth of gold.’

Rocq whistled.

‘Buying that amount of gold in one place, in any one day, would be enough to push the price up $10 to $20; but we don’t want to do that. We want to keep it very, very quiet. During the next week I want you to buy that billion pounds worth, but I want you to spread your buying as much around the world as you possibly can. Don’t buy more than a few bars in any one market, from any one dealer. And don’t start until Monday morning of next week — between now and then I’m going to quietly buy a few ounces for myself.’

‘Now in return for doing this, and for keeping your silence, the syndicate will pay you a commission rate of .05 per cent on all the gold you buy, and .05 per cent when you sell. On £1,000 million, your commission when you buy will come to £500,000. When you sell, hopefully gold will have risen from four twenty to six hundred, maybe higher. That £1,000 million will have risen about thirty per cent — to say £1,350 million; .05 per cent of that will be £675,000 — giving you a total of £1,175,000 — enough to clear your debts, and give you £100,000 on top. Does that sound reasonable?’ Rocq nodded his head; it sounded reasonable enough. Anything, right now, would have sounded reasonable enough.

‘The name of the syndicate,’ said Elleck, ‘is “Goldilocks.” An account has been opened for the syndicate here at Globalex, under the name “Goldilocks.”’

‘Someone has a sense of humour,’ said Rocq.

Elleck raised his glass. ‘To your good health.’

Rocq raised his. ‘To Goldilocks. But not the three bears — let’s hope for three bulls.’

‘Goldilocks and the three bulls,’ said Sir Monty Elleck.

It was 7.00 when Rocq staggered out of the elevator into the lobby of 88 Mincing Lane. He was aware that he was completely plastered; he was also aware that he had promised to collect Amanda at 6.00 sharp from her office to go to a preview at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street. A taxi came down Mincing Lane with its ‘For Hire’ sign illuminated. Rocq put up his hand. The taxi slowed and stopped, and Rocq staggered towards it; he put a hand on the bonnet to steady himself, then leaned in through the front window. ‘I want to — shgo — er — I shwant to shgo — er — schback of Harrods.’

‘I’m not taking you in that state, mate — clear off.’ The taxi accelerated down the street, leaving Rocq in a cloud of black diesel fumes.

‘Fucking bastard,’ he yelled, squinting hard to focus. He went and sat down on the doorstep of 88. A wave hit him, and he wasn’t sure whether it was nausea or tiredness. His head was swimming and he felt he was about to pass out; he pushed his eyelids hard together, just leaving a tiny gap; in that manner, he found he could focus and see what traffic was coming down the street. Somewhere, deep inside his drink-riddled body, he felt a good feeling surging up; it had seemed a long time since he had felt good, and he was enjoying the feeling. He had sunk, and he had hit rock bottom. Now he was on the way up.

Somewhere, alongside the good feeling, something else was hatching deep inside him. He knew he wasn’t in any fit state to figure out the finer details right now, but the germ of an idea was there and he knew, instinctively, that the idea was good. He looked forward to sobering up, and to thinking about it more clearly.

‘Good evening, sir.’

Rocq looked up from the doorstep at the uniformed Retired Sergeant-Major ‘Sarge’ Bantry, Globalex’s live-in security guard and night-watchman.

‘Shevenig Sssharge.’

‘You’re going to need a banjo and collection box if you stay there much longer, sir.’

‘Shink I’m going to need one anyway.’

‘Think a good night’s sleep will do yer no harm,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll get you a cab.’

‘Shank you Sarge.’

‘It’s a pleasure, Mr Rocq.’

‘I shink I have had a bit — er — shoo mug ter drink.’

‘Doesn’t do any harm now and again, sir.’

‘Schno — sure you’re right.’