Paper Money

25

Felix Laski sat in his office, watching a television screen and tearing a buff envelope into narrow strips. The closed-circuit TV was the modern equivalent of the ticker tape; and Laski felt like the worried broker in an old movie about the 1929 crash. The set continuously screened market news and price movements in equities, commodities, and currency. There had been no mention of the oil license. Hamilton shares had dropped five points on yesterday, and trading was moderate.

He finished demolishing the envelope and dropped the scraps into a metal wastepaper basket. The oil license should have been announced an hour ago.

He picked up the blue phone and dialed 123. "At the third stroke, the time will be one, forty-seven, and fifty seconds." The announcement was more than an hour late. He dialed the Department of Energy and asked for the Press Office. A woman told him: "The Secretary of State has been delayed. The Press conference will begin as soon as he arrives, and the announcement will be made immediately after he opens the conference."

The hell with your delays, Laski thought: I've got a fortune riding on this.

He pressed the intercom. "Carol?" There was no reply. He bellowed: "Carol!"

The girl poked her head around the door. "I'm sorry, I was at the filing cabinet."

"Get me some coffee."

"Certainly."

He took from his "in" tray a file headed PRECISION TUBING-SALES REPORT, 1ST QUARTER. It was a piece of routine espionage on a firm he was thinking of taking over. He had a theory that capital equipment tended to do well when a slump was bottoming out. But does Precision have the capacity for expansion? he wondered.

He looked at the first page of the report, winced at the sales director's indigestible prose, and tossed the file aside. When he took a gamble and lost, he could accept it with equanimity. What threw him was something going wrong for unknown reasons. He knew he would not be able to concentrate on anything until the Shield business was settled.

He fingered the sharp crease of his trousers, and thought about Tony Cox. He had taken to the young hoodlum, despite his obvious homosexuality, because he sensed what the English called a kindred spirit. Like Laski, Cox had come from poverty to wealth on determination, opportunism, and ruthlessness. Also like Laski, he tried in small ways to take the edge off his lower-class manners: Laski was doing it better, but only because he had been practicing longer. Cox wanted to be like Laski, and he would make it-by the time he was in his fifties, he would be a distinguished, gray-haired City gent.

Laski realized he did not have a single sound reason for trusting Cox. There was his instinct, of course, which told him the young man was honest with people he knew: but the Tony Coxes of this world were practiced deceivers. Had he simply invented the whole thing about Tim Fitzpeterson?

The television set screened the Hamilton Holdings price again: it was down another point. Laski wished they wouldn't use that damn computer typeface, all horizontal and vertical lines: it strained his eyes. He began to calculate what he stood to lose if Hamilton did not get the license.

If he could sell the 510,000 shares right now, he would have lost only a few thousand pounds. But it would not be possible to dump the lot at the market value. And the price was still slipping. Say a loss of twenty thousand at the outside. And a psychological setback-damage to his reputation as a winner.

Was there anything else at risk? What Cox planned to do with the information Laski had supplied was certain to be criminal. However, since Laski did not actually know about it, he could not be convicted of conspiracy.

There was still Britain's Official Secrets Act-mild by East European standards, but a formidable piece of legislation. It was illegal to approach a civil servant and get from him confidential data. Proving that Laski had done that would be difficult, but not impossible. He had asked Peters whether he had a big day ahead, and Peters had said: "One of the days." Then Laski had said to Cox: "It's today." Well, if Cox and Peters could be persuaded to testify, then Laski would be convicted. But Peters did not even know he had given away a secret, and nobody would think of asking him. Suppose Cox was arrested? The British police had ways of squeezing information out of people, even if they did not use baseball bats. Cox might say he got the information from Laski; then they would check Laski's movements on the day, and they might discover he had taken coffee with Peters…

It was a pretty distant possibility. Laski was more worried about finishing off the Hamilton deal.

The phone rang. Laski answered: "Yes?"

"It's Threadneedle Street-Mr. Ley," Carol said.

Laski rutted. "It's probably about the Cotton Bank. Put him on to Jones."

"He's been through to the Cotton Bank, and Mr. Jones has gone home."

"Gone home? All right, I'll take it."

He heard Carol say: "I have Mr. Laski for you now."

"Laski?" The voice was high-pitched, the accent an aristocratic drawl.

"Yes."

"Ley here, Bank of England."

"How are you?"

"Good afternoon. Now look here, old chap"-Laski rolled his eyes at this phrase-"you've made out rather a large check to Fett and Company."

Laski paled. "My God, have they presented it already?"

"Yes, well, I rather gathered the ink was still wet. Now the thing is, it's drawn on the Cotton Bank, as you obviously know, and the poor little Cotton Bank can't cover it. Do you follow me?"

"Of course I follow you." The bloody man was talking as if to a child. Nothing annoyed Laski more. "Clearly, my instructions as to the arrangements for providing these funds have not been followed. However, perhaps I can plead that my staff might well have thought they had a little time to spare."

"Mmm. It's nice, really, to have the funds ready before you sign the damn thing, you know, just to be safe, don't you think?"

Laski thought fast. Damn, this need not have happened if the announcement had been made on time. And where the devil was Jones? "You may have guessed that the check is payment for a controlling interest in Hamilton Holdings. I should think those shares would stand as security-"

"Oh, dear me, no," Ley interrupted. "That really wouldn't do. The Bank of England is not in business to finance speculation on the stock market."

Maybe not, Laski thought; but if the announcement had been made, and you knew that Hamilton Holdings now had an oil well, you wouldn't be making this fuss. It occurred to him that perhaps they did know, and Hamilton had not got the oil well, hence the phone call. He felt angry. "Look, you're a bank," he said. "I'll pay you the rate for twenty-four-hour money-"

"The Bank is not accustomed to being in the money market."

Laski raised his voice. "You know damn well I can cover that check with ease, given a little time! If you return it, my reputation is gone. Are you going to ruin me for the sake of a lousy million overnight and a foolish tradition?"

Ley's voice went very cold. "Mr. Laski, our traditions exist specifically for the purpose of ruining people who sign checks they cannot honor. If this draft cannot be cleared today, I shall ask the payee to represent. That means, in effect, that you have an hour and a half in which to make a cash deposit of one million pounds at Threadneedle Street. Good day."

"Damn you," Laski said, but the line was dead. He cradled the receiver, cracking the plastic of the phone. His mind raced. There had to be a way of raising a million instantly… didn't there?

His coffee had arrived while he was on the phone. He had not noticed Carol come in. He sipped it, and made a face.

"Carol!" he shouted.

She opened the door. "Yes?"

Red-faced and trembling, he threw the delicate china cup into the metal wastepaper basket, where it shattered noisily. He bellowed: "The bloody coffee is cold!"

The girl turned around and fled.