Billionaire

28

The Monday following Rocq’s trip to Geneva was a blazing hot summer’s day, without exception right across Europe. There was plenty to do for the estate workers at Chateau Lasserre and it was this, coupled with the general feeling of lethargy that the heat brought about, combined with the thick summer foliage, that enabled the two men at the edge of the dense L-shaped forest, to work quietly and unspotted.

The men had in the woods two large reels, around which were wound lengths of wire flex and to which were attached, at twenty-foot intervals, light bulb sockets. Alongside the edge of the trees, so close that many of the sockets almost nestled against the roots, they laid one wire, 600 metres long and coming to a halt just in front of the L-part of the forest. As they unwound the wire, they placed a 150-watt light bulb into each socket.

When they had laid the full length, they repeated the process with the second wire, laying the trail of lights parallel, twenty feet apart. Then they connected the ends of the two wires into a junction box and connected that into the mains electricity supply of Chateau Lasserre, via a power cable that traversed the estate. When they had finished, it was seven o’clock in the evening.

Eight hundred kilometres away, in Switzerland, Viscomte Lasserre and Jimmy Culundis waited their turn on the Eighteenth green at Crans Montana Golf Club. The Viscomte was looking grim. He had lost the game at the Eleventh, and he was now one down on the bye; the best he could hope for was to halve it. The foursome in front of them appeared to be inspecting the borrow of every blade of grass. Lasserre was anxious to finish as he had a long flight back home, and unlike the Greek, he did not have the luxury of a personal private pilot.

‘Tell me, Claude,’ said Culundis, ‘you are really sure you trust that man Elleck?’

‘Jimmy — I am not going to risk 500 million francs of my own money on someone I don’t trust. He knows best — because he is the best.’ He leaned over towards Culundis conspiratorially. ‘I am reliably informed that he has investment portfolios for many of the English Royal Family.’

‘So what does that signify?’

‘It signifies, Jimmy, that he is a man who can be trusted.’

Culundis grunted. ‘I wonder what’s happened to the gold price this afternoon? He told you it was going down today; well, by lunch time it was up to $650 — it closed Friday at $625. In my language that’s up, not down.’

Lasserre nodded. ‘Look at those people,’ he said, almost exasperated. The four players had placed ball-markers down, and were now cleaning their balls and arguing about something at the same time. He turned to Culundis. ‘He assured me he would buy today — regardless of what happened.’

‘If he had bought last week, at four hundred and ninety-four, do you realize how much we would have made? We wouldn’t have needed this whole damned business with Amnah.’

‘If we could foretell what was going to happen in the markets, we’d be playing with gold golf balls, Jimmy.’

‘It doesn’t look good, Claude; I don’t like it. I think it’s Elleck who has caused this price rise. Look, it’s just too much coincidence: except in the Osirak crisis, the gold price does not move for eighteen months; then, the week we talk with him about doing something about it — bang — it goes through the roof. Surely to God, that is a little strange?’

‘What are you suggesting, Jimmy — you want to pull out?’

‘I think we’re crazy to stay in — we’re being taken for the biggest ride of our lives.’

‘Look at him,’ shouted Lasserre in frustration. ‘A ten-centimetre putt — how can anyone miss a ten-centimetre putt? I shall have him thrown out of this club!’

‘Did you hear what I said, Claude?’

‘Sure, I heard. What are you going to do with your 100 Israeli sailors that are sitting this moment in the docks at Al Suttoh?’

‘Who gives a shit about them? Take them out and drown them — or give them back. What does it matter?’

‘It matters a lot, Jimmy. I need that money; we have planned this carefully, it is all going according to plan. Why the hell should we pull out now?’

‘The plan was to force up the price of gold and make a killing. Someone — or something — has already forced the price up, and you and I are not on that boat — although I’ll bet your friend, Mr Elleck, is.’

‘I think you have something personal against Monty.’

Culundis glared at him.

‘So gold has risen $156. When Israel announces she is going to block the Persian Gulf, you think it’s not going to rise any more? The world has gone gold-mad this week — Mon Dieu, Jimmy, are you going senile? When Israel announces her intentions, you know what is going to happen? I’ll tell you: Gold is going to go not to one thousand, but to two thousand!’

The foursome finally plopped their last ball into the hole and moved off the green. Culundis took his nine-iron and bent over his ball. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he said. He swung at the ball and it dropped to a halt less than six inches from the hole. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘How about that?’

‘Shot,’ said Lasserre, grudgingly.

Lasserre took his own nine-iron, and swung; the ball dropped short of the green into a bunker. Culundis looked at him quizzically: ‘Want to bother to putt out?’

Lasserre shook his head. ‘I concede — well played.’

They walked to the green and collected their balls and then walked towards the Clubhouse. ‘You played very well today — better than ever.’

The Greek shrugged his shoulders, and spat out a mouthful of phlegm in full view of the Club Secretariat and about ten other members. Lasserre winced as a battery of dubious frowns greeted them at the Nineteenth hole.

‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ said the Greek.

Lasserre looked at his Tissot watch. ‘Just a Perrier and a coffee.’

‘You really have to get back tonight? Why don’t we have dinner and both leave in the morning?’

‘I have to be in Limoges tomorrow at nine — and I don’t want to have to get up at five. You’re okay, you have your own pilot. You can go to sleep in your plane — I have to fly myself.’

‘Claude,’ said Culundis, ‘you know — you are so poor, I feel so sorry for you. Seventeen generations of Lasserres, and what you got to show for it? A few acres of piss and a lousy golf swing.’

Lasserre grinned. ‘Just you better watch out next month when we play — you’d better bring plenty of money.’

‘Why — you going to have golf lessons?’

‘No — I’m going to give you one.’

At ten o’clock, Viscomte Lasserre looked down from the cockpit of his Piper Navajo at the lights of Bergerac, cut back the throttle and began his descent. It was a crystal clear night, and he had navigated visually the whole way from Sion Airport — it was a route he knew almost with his eyes shut. He stared at a point in the darkness about ten miles beyond Bergerac, leaned forward and pushed a button at the top of the instrument panel; within a fraction of a second, the lights of a runway appeared in the darkness. He smiled to himself; his new radio-controlled switch system worked well.

There was no wind tonight, so he could go straight down from this direction. Ahead of him, he could make out some of the rooms of the chateau. His height dropped to 1,000 feet, then 900; he checked the airspeed, lowered a little more flap, corrected a yaw. Funny, he thought, the runway seemed a fraction further from the house than usual. He decided he must be more tired than he realized. He pressed the undercarriage button and felt the clunk of the three wheels locking; the three green lights on the instrument panel showed him they had locked safely into place.

He lined the aircraft up exactly on the centre of the runway and pushed the throttle lever further in; he gave a little more flap and eased the throttle a fraction further, until he was happy with his approach.

The altimeter read 200, 150, 100; he was almost onto the runway, still perhaps a fraction high. He pulled the nose up and gave still more flap, and they began to drop a fraction faster. Now he was completely satisfied. The altimeter read fifty, then something, something he knew was not right: the huge shadows to his right. ‘It couldn’t be! — impossible—’ Before he had time to think further, the right-hand wing of the Piper ripped into the pine trees, and snapped off halfway down. The plane dropped onto its starboard side, hit the grass with the stump of the wing tip from which petrol was gushing, and cartwheeled at eighty miles an hour towards the trees. It slammed into a clump of six trees close together and exploded on impact, setting the whole forest on fire. Somewhere, still strapped in his seat in the midst of the blazing mess, remained the seventeenth Viscomte Lasserre.