Blood Stones (44 page)

‘Nobody will believe you,' she said. ‘My father had nothing to do with it.'

‘No,' the older woman sneered. ‘But it'll be his word against ours. Just think about that. Now get out. Get out of my flat! There's nothing you can do to us.'

She rushed to the door and flung it open. ‘Out!' she shouted.

Stella looked at her. ‘If you weren't so sick, I'd feel sorry for you.'

She heard the front door slam like a bomb burst behind her. In the corridor, waiting for the lift to take her down, she leant against the wall because her legs were trembling.

My father had nothing to do with it
. And the retort, spat like snake's venom,
No. But it'll be his word against ours …

The lift stopped, and she stepped inside.

A man said, ‘Good-morning. Ground floor?'

‘Yes,' Stella nodded. ‘Yes, ground floor please.'

Reece had acted on his own initiative.
He just had to protect the great Mr Julius, his hero
…
I'll say your father
told
him to get rid of your black
– The vicious face swam in front of her eyes.
I'll swear it, and I'll make Piet swear it too
.

She heard the man beside her say again, ‘Ground floor?' and realized he was holding the door open for her. ‘Oh thanks.'

They walked out together through the lobby and on to the Marylebone Road. The sun was shining. He smiled at her, and hurried off. She stood by the kerb. Several taxis with their orange lights glowing slowed as they approached but she didn't move. Her father had not been responsible for Jacob's death. She stood breathing in the fumes of London traffic and said out loud in a great sigh, ‘Thank God. Oh, thank God.' She wasn't saying it to Jacob.

James woke very early. It was the morning of the Board meeting. He pulled back the curtains and looked out. It was still semi-dark. Street lights were still on, and they showed puddles of rain shining in the gutter and sheening the pavements. It had rained hard during the night. He had moved out of their bedroom, into one of the spare rooms on the floor above. The house had been so full of Elizabeth that he took to spending two or three nights a week at the Lansdowne Club. Kind friends asked him away for weekends. He couldn't bear to sleep in their old bedroom. Her clothes were in the cupboards, some make-up was left in the bathroom cabinet. He imagined her scent lingered in the air. Gradually he had forced himself to behave rationally. He stopped staying in his club, moved everything upstairs and resumed living in their house. He had already decided to sell it after Christmas. The day he called in the estate agents he would have accepted that the marriage was over. He had stopped writing or trying to make contact with Elizabeth after his lunch with her father. Lasalle was coming over from Paris. That had bitten deeply into him. Elizabeth knew the score. If he was what she wanted, so be it.

He remembered that other Board meeting at the end of the summer. Coming home in high excitement because he had been given the assignment in Paris, he'd said to her, ‘I could be in line for the top job.' And he knew that now he was. He had his role in the coming fight worked out. He didn't have to get dirty hands or kick his Managing Director when he was down. Others would do it for him. When it was all over, he'd pick up the prize.

He worked through till ten-thirty. Ruth was in and out of the office, trying to conceal her own excitement. Just before he left for the Boardroom on the top floor, she came up and said, ‘Good luck, Mr Hastings.'

He said, ‘I think it's Mr Harris who's going to need the luck. Thanks anyway.'

He met Kruger in the passage; they shared the lift without speaking. Inside the Boardroom Reece came up to them. He ignored Kruger.

‘Can I have a word, Mr Hastings?'

‘Yes, of course.' James hadn't expected that. He followed Reece to the far side of the room. He smiled and nodded briefly at David Wassserman who was already sitting down in his place.

‘What can I do for you?'

‘Mr Julius wants to know where you stand.' The voice was very low.

James stiffened. He had always disliked the man. ‘It's a bit late to ask that, isn't it? We start in a few minutes.'

‘What do I tell him?' Reece demanded. ‘The timing doesn't matter. It's the advantage that counts.'

‘Tell him,' James answered, ‘that he has my support. Which means I'll abstain. Excuse me.'

He turned away, moving to his place at the table. Ray Andrews came in. He looked grim. Then Arthur Harris, followed by Johnson, the mining engineer, tanned by the West African sunshine. He'd been called back from a site in Angola.

Harris looked round and said with a quiet smile, ‘Good-morning.' Then he took his place.

There was a pause. Wasserman sipped water and scribbled something on the pad in front of him.

‘It's late,' Harris remarked. ‘Julius must have been held up in traffic.'

Reece's chair scraped back. He knew instinctively when Heyderman arrived. Julius looked as fit and bronzed as always. James watched him, admiring the authority, the power that surrounded him like an aura. Mentally and physically he towered over them all, dominating the room even before he opened the meeting. Then it began.

Routine business, some directors' reports, reference to minutes of the last meeting. Tension was building up; Heyderman was orchestrating it like a showman.

He sat back in his chair, sank his water in a gulp, and then said in a loud clear voice, ‘I think I speak on behalf of the whole Board in congratulating James on the way he concluded a very difficult negotiation with Karakov International. We all know Ivan,' he glanced round for confirmation. ‘It needed a very skilful touch to make him see reason. He's signed a new agreement with us, on the same terms, and we're all one happy family again. I think it appropriate that we pass a resolution formally congratulating James on his achievement. I propose it, who would like to second?'

Wasserman raised his hand. The move had caught Arthur Harris off guard. Dick Kruger reddened, but said nothing.

‘Carried unanimously,' Julius announced. ‘Good.'

He poured a whisky from his personal decanter and filled it with water. He put the glass down and stared straight at Arthur Harris.

‘It's time now to come to the most important item on the agenda. Ray Andrews' report on the negotiations in Moscow. It's very detailed and long, but I'm sure you've all had time to read your copies. Right. As I see it, there are certain very important points which Ray might like to explain.'

‘Yes,' Kruger spoke up. ‘I should think so. I read it as containing an oblique attack on Arthur. It needs a hell of a lot of explanation if you ask me.'

Arthur Harris said quietly, ‘I don't think we should start by saying damaging things. Ray is quite free to allege what he likes. I've read the report and I'm quite prepared to answer for my decisions. And to ask him a few questions.'

He gave Andrews a hostile stare.

‘Ray,' Julius addressed him, ‘you say that you carried out the negotiations with the Moscow representative right up until he asked for a specific guarantee from Arthur as Chief Executive?'

‘I did,' Ray Andrews answered.

‘You also state that, without that guarantee, the Russians wouldn't consider an agreement.'

‘They made that plain. They wanted a commitment from us to finance the Baikal de-pollution project. That was the price for agreeing to sell their diamonds exclusively through our organization. They knew they were in a strong position, that we needed them to maintain our monopoly, and they had an outlet big enough through Karakov to do it without us. And even destabilize the whole industry in the long term. That's why they insisted on Arthur's personal guarantee.'

‘Even though they knew it was personal, and not binding on the Board?' That was Dick Kruger again. ‘Or didn't you think to point that out?' Andrews didn't look near him. He spoke directly to Heyderman. ‘I made certain my counterpart, Borisov, knew that. He was looking for integrity, not just legality. I believed he was getting it when I brought back the guarantee and the document for signature which had been drawn up. I believed that it was a valid document backed by the Managing Director's word of honour.'

James fiddled with his pencil and pad. This was becoming lethal.

‘This agreement,' Arthur interposed. ‘The terms were literally dictated by the Russians, isn't that correct? Interest-free loans, development of the Archangel mines, and, above all, an open-ended commitment to de-pollute the enormous water mass at Baikal. A project in which we had no possible commercial interest and which would have involved us in incalculable cost. If it could even be done. Isn't that what they demanded?'

Slowly Ray turned to face him. ‘Those were the terms, yes.'

‘They could almost be described as blackmail,' Harris said quietly. ‘They held a gun to our head and expected me to pull the trigger.'

‘That was not how I understood it,' Andrews said. ‘I negotiated in good faith. I put that agreement forward believing it to be an honest document. If I'd known that an escape clause was being inserted, I would have approached the problem quite differently.'

Julius sipped whisky. ‘How differently?'

‘I wouldn't have presented it,' was the answer. ‘I would never have tried to cheat them. I would have gone on trying to find a compromise, keeping the talks going. I don't say I would have succeeded, but the door would have been open. As things are, they see Diamond Enterprises as a company whose word can't be trusted.'

He turned to look at Arthur Harris.

‘All you had to do was be honest with me, even if you couldn't be honest with them. I believed then, and I still do, that I could have negotiated a satisfactory deal. All the more so, since Karakov lost credibility They'd have dropped the Baikal commitment without him as a bargaining point.'

‘You talk about honesty,' Arthur said angrily. ‘You impugn me to justify yourself. You allowed this Russian to drive you into a corner and I was expected to agree to conditions that nobody could justify without some safeguard. If you call that dishonest, then you have no sense of loyalty or responsibility to the company or the colleagues you've worked with all these years.'

Andrews flushed a deep red. He turned right round to face Arthur.

‘I've worked for this company for over twenty years. It's because I have a sense of loyalty and responsibility that I placed this report before the Chairman and the Board. Because you didn't deal honestly with me, as your representative and negotiator, you put me in an impossible position, and seriously damaged the credibility of Diamond Enterprises with the Moscow government. As they see it, we can't be trusted.'

There was a long silence. Arthur had turned a sallow grey. Then Julius spoke.

‘It seems to me,' he said, ‘that we have reached the heart of the problem. Let me set it out as I see it. Andrews got an agreement on terms that you accepted in principle without detailed reference to the Board. You gave a broad outline, which appeared, on the face of it, to be stiff but acceptable. This was not the true picture of the commitment. That, as you've admitted, was unacceptable commercially, so you inserted a clause that invalidated the investment in Baikal without informing the Board or Andrews. As a result of this deception, the negotiations were broken off, and the logical outcome should have been an alliance between Karakov International and the Russians that could have broken our monopoly and flooded the markets within five years. Just because,' he glared at Arthur, ‘Hastings brought off a brilliant
coup
in Paris, that scenario was avoided. But it doesn't excuse you. We will have to re-open negotiations with Moscow, but from a serious disadvantage. Ray, I have to ask you a difficult question. Do you believe that the Russians will invite us back with Arthur as Managing Director of the London office?'

Ray Andrews didn't hesitate.

‘No,' he said. ‘Our only hope is a fresh start.' He picked up his glass of water and drained it.

James was watching Julius Heyderman; a faint flush had come up under his collar and there was the touch of a smile at each side of his mouth. He's going for the kill, James decided. The room was so quiet you could have heard the dust settle. Heyderman turned to Reece.

‘Reece, where's that confidential report we got from our Moscow Embassy this morning? Give it to me, I'll read it out.'

‘This is the one, Mr Julius.'

‘Thank you.' Julius looked up briefly. ‘I made private representations to our Ambassador, who is known to me personally, and, in reply to my letter, he sent the following. I quote.'

He didn't even need glasses to read it.

‘“My dear Julius, etc. etc., I have made discreet enquiries as you requested, and I can confirm that, after the dismissal of D. V. Borisov, and the appointment of a new Director of Mineral Development, a Gregor Leontov, the Government is prepared to consider reopening negotiations to the preliminary stage with your company. Only the chronic shortage of foreign currency and the need to find a profitable outlet for their extensive diamond mining operations have overcome a strong reluctance to deal with Diamond Enterprises under any circumstances. One condition was made very clear. Mr Arthur Harris must not be involved in any part of future negotiations. They were adamant on this point. I hope this is of some help, etc. etc.”'

He let the papers fall on the desk.

‘This seems to confirm what Ray has just said. Beyond any argument. They won't touch us with a bloody barge pole so long as you, Arthur, remain as Managing Director!'

Slowly, Arthur stood up.

‘Are you attacking me directly, Julius? I want to be clear about this. You are supporting Andrews and accusing me of negligence and dishonesty and being a liability to the company?'