Closed Circle (45 page)

"He asked me to give it to Diana," I explained. "A message from him to his daughter."

"Saying what?"

"I don't know."

Faraday squinted at the seal. "You haven't opened it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

I shrugged. "You wouldn't understand."

Faraday raised one eyebrow, as if in reluctant agreement, then tore the flap of the envelope open, drew out a sheet of writing paper and unfolded it. "Charnwood's hand, unquestionably," he murmured. "No address. Just a date. The tenth of November. The day before '

"What does it say?" Vasaritch broke in.

"I'll read it, shall I?" Faraday replied in a soothing tone. "No doubt it contains what we want amidst the other patrimonial blessings. "My dear Diana, Tomorrow I am to meet Horton in Phoenix Park to surrender the records of the Concentric Alliance. When you learn this, you will probably assume I insisted on meeting him rather than you in order to avoid accounting to you in person for the things I have done. But I am not quite so craven. My real reason is to keep you out of danger, of which there may be a great deal. Whatever happens tomorrow and I fear the worst you should know that I loved your mother very much. Alas, I also brought about her death. Unintentionally, it is true. Indirectly, as one of the unpredictable consequences of war. But it was a war set in motion by an organization I created and controlled. Thus I cannot evade the charge. It has long hung heavy around my neck. A few weeks ago, I travelled to County Cork and stood on the Old Head of Kinsale, gazing out at the stretch of ocean where the Lusitania sank and your mother's body may still lie. I confessed to her then what I must admit to you now. Why I " '

"The money!" shouted Vasaritch suddenly, shattering the strange spell Charnwood's words had cast on the room. "What does he say about the money? I do not want to hear about Old Heads of Kinsale."

Faraday looked at him with the merest flicker of contempt, then sighed and said: "I believe we're coming to the point. Shall I continue?" Met only by a glare, he looked back at the letter and resumed. "Why I did it. Why I conceived and executed a plan to precipitate a European war. For profit, as my co-conspirators believed? Not fundamentally. To see if it could be done, I suppose. To discover whether, by one calculated intervention in the course of events, I could alter history and determine the future. Your mother's death was my answer. I altered many things. I changed the lives of millions. But I determined nothing. I precipitated my own wife's destruction. And what was my reward? To watch a pack of greedy " Faraday cleared his throat. "To watch a pack of greedy fools grow rich," he read expressionlessly.

"He calls us fools?" spluttered Vasaritch.

"Sticks and stones," Faraday replied. There isn't much more. It must hold the key. "I gave them wealth and power; too much of both. I watched them abuse my gifts. And I saw their avarice -which was only a mirror of mine reflected in you. That was the hardest to bear. That was what finally persuaded me to take back what I had given. Losing money is as easy as making it, if you know how. For the past two years, I have systematically wasted as much money as they would entrust to me on worthless assets and doomed investments. I have thrown most of their wealth away .. ." Faraday's voice faltered. "And much of their power with it.. . The Great Depression .. . has been the means .. . to my end." '

Silence fell, filled by our mutual disbelief. Charnwood had neither lost the money nor hidden it. He had destroyed it. He had fed it, pound by pound, into the hungry jaws of universal insolvency. And all that remained was a confetti-cloud of waste-paper shares and bankrupt stock.

Several seconds passed, then the letter slipped from Faraday's fingers and fluttered to the floor. He leaned slowly back against the wall behind him, sighed heavily and closed his eyes. "Gone," he murmured. "All gone."

"It can't be," said Vasaritch, his deep voice tolling like a bell.

"But it can," Faraday responded. "I thought those accounts were ... doctored, concocted. Now I see ... they are deadly accurate."

"He kept some. I know it. I know how he thought."

"It seems you didn't."

With an oath, Vasaritch snatched up the letter. "There must be more," he growled. But his eyes, as they scanned the page, told a different story. With another oath, he screwed the letter into a ball, staring ahead as if he could see Charnwood's face before him, then let it fall at his feet. "Why did he do it? Why?"

"He's told us why."

"What is there to be done?"

"Nothing." Faraday pushed himself upright and tugged at the lapels of his coat. "We must go."

"Go?"

"We have the records. There is nothing else. Anonymity is our only consolation."

"Hold on," put in Quincy, rising from the bed. "What about my fee?"

"Commission," corrected Faraday. "No principal; no percentage."

"That's not what we agreed. There wasn't any mention of '

"Settle for it, Mr. McGowan," said Faraday, laying a cautionary hand on his shoulder. "Be grateful for it."

"Grateful? I'll be damned if '

"Damned is better than dead. If we had found the money, we could not have allowed either you or Horton to remain alive."

"What?"

"Rich people attract blackmailers. One fee would never have been enough for you."

"We should kill them anyway," snarled Vasaritch. "They know too many names." He turned and shouted for Milan. A second later, he appeared in the doorway, his huge shadow stretching towards us.

"No," said Faraday. This is not Ireland. This is a first-class hotel we have been seen entering in a country where I am widely known and you, General, are highly conspicuous."

"I do not care!"

"But I do. The risks would have been worth taking for what we hoped to find. But we have found nothing. And nothing is what these two gentlemen will remember of our dealings. Isn't it, Horton? No names. No facts. No fantasies of re-writing history."

"None at all," I replied, looking at Faraday and Vasaritch in turn to underline my sincerity.

"McGowan?"

A second or two passed during which it seemed Quincy might contest the point. Then he caught my eye and said: "The same goes for me."

"Good. Should you ever change your minds, the sort of back-alley misadventure that befell Duggan might well befall you. He made the mistake of failing to forget what he knew. Don't make the same mistake, will you?"

"No," I said emphatically. "We won't."

Quincy flopped back down onto the bed and shook his head dolefully. Faraday nodded and turned away. But Vasaritch was not satisfied. He stepped forward, closed his right hand round Quincy's chin and jerked it painfully up, then brought his left hand down onto the crown of his head like the opposing jaw of a vice. "I did not say you could sit down, Mr. McGowan," he rasped.

"I ... I'm sorry. I didn't mean '

"What will you remember?"

"Nothing. Not.. . Not a god-damn thing."

Vasaritch held him for several more breathless seconds, then said: "There is cowardice in your eyes, Mr. McGowan. The cowardice of a fat Bulgar peasant." I saw Quincy flinch as Vasaritch spat into his face. Then he was thrown flat across the bed like a discarded fish as the general turned on his heel and strode from the room, Milan stepping hurriedly aside to make way for him. "We go," he bellowed over his shoulder.

"Excuse us, gentlemen," said Faraday, following at a slower pace. "Let us hope we never meet again."

A second later, I heard the outer door close. Silence briefly possessed the room. Then a ship's hooter sounded through the window, rattling the sash. And Quincy rose unsteadily to his feet, manipulating his jaw as if afraid it were broken.

"Untie me, for God's sake!"

"Oh ... OK. Of course." He crouched behind me and began fumbling with the knots. For several minutes, neither of us spoke. Neither of us, indeed, seemed to want to speak. What, after all, was there to say? The records had gone. The proof had vanished. And the money did not exist. While we, somewhat to my surprise, were still alive.

At last, my hands were free. Shooing Quincy impatiently away, I bent forward and set to work on my ankles. He rose and lurched towards the door, then noticed the letter, lying in a crumpled ball on the floor. He sat down glumly beside it with his back against the wall, slowly flattened the letter out, then read it, his lips miming the words as he did so.

"Is there anything Faraday didn't read out?" I asked, as I tugged through the last twists of the knot.

"See for yourself," said Quincy distractedly. He passed it across to me and my eye went instantly in search of the last phrase I had heard. "The Great Depression has been the means to my end." There it was. With just one paragraph beneath.

"What of the diverted capital I told you we were to live off? It is gone, all gone. There was always less of it than I led you and Vita to believe. And now there is none. The little that remained in August I have since disposed of. Why? Because sitting here to gloat over the discomfiture of my enemies has afforded me none of the satisfaction I had hoped for. And because I cannot allow the arrogance of youth to feed on the cowardice of old age any longer. I have shaped you too much in my own likeness, Diana. I have made you a party to one murder and quite possibly the perpetrator of another. I do not know if you meant to kill Wingate. His death may truly have been an accident. Only you can say. But I cannot take the chance, do you see? I cannot risk you becoming worse than me. I owe your mother that at least. If you killed Wingate for the sake of a privileged future, then I must ensure that you killed him in vain. I must see to it that you do not profit by following the example I set. I must end what I began. Thus your future, if it is to be privileged, will not be so because of any bequest from me. My only gift to you is priceless: a new beginning, untrammelled by my tainted wealth. Use it wisely, my child. And may God bless you. I remain, Your ever loving father."

"Cold comfort for all of us, eh?" said Quincy as I looked up. "No nest egg for Diana and Vita to peck at. No way out of servitude to brother Theo for me."

I stared coldly at him, folded the letter as best I could, then slipped it into my pocket and began rubbing some life back into my shins and ankles.

"I bet you think I've been a damned fool."

"So you have. And worse." I stood up, stamping away the pins and needles. "But what does it matter now?"

"Not a whole lot, I suppose." He stayed where he was, slumped against the wall, frowning at the failure of his hopes and schemes, a figure at once abject and contemptible. He seemed almost to be on the verge of tears, the billowing confidence I had put my trust in crushed into lumpen self-pity.

I wanted to be out of his sight and hearing, as far as possible from this cigar-stale scene of his disappointment and my defeat. I was sorry and angry and bitter. But most of all, somewhere so deep it dragged down every other emotion, somewhere shamefully close to the core of my being, I was relieved it was over. "Where's my ticket?" I asked abruptly.

"Mmm?" said Quincy, speaking as if from a great distance.

"My ticket."

"Oh.. . In the drawer of the, er, bedside cabinet."

I stumbled to the cabinet and slid the drawer open. There it was, wedged beneath a United States passport. One first-class berth in my name on the 5.5. Leviathan, bought when Quincy thought he could afford to be extravagant. I stuffed it into my pocket behind Charnwood's letter and glanced at my watch. It was all right. There was time enough. I was not going to be left behind.

"You're .. . still going, then?"

"Why not?"

"No reason, I suppose. But... what will you say ... to Diana?"

"What do you think?"

"I ... I don't .. ." He gazed pleadingly up at me. "I can't pay you now, of course, but.. . why inflict the truth on her? Why not tell her what we agreed? You're never going to see her again. Whereas Vita and me.. . There's no sense muddying the water, is there?"

"We agreed nothing. You dictated terms. Those terms no longer apply. As to what I'll tell Diana .. ." I stood by the door, looking down at him. "I haven't made up my mind. You and Vita can while away your days aboard the Olympic wondering what I've said. I hope the uncertainty agrees with you." I turned to go, then pulled up. There was one last thing that needed saying, one final condemnation he did not deserve to be spared. "Do you know the worst of it, Quincy? I think your plan might have worked. I think we might actually have got away with it. But you threw the chance away. And it'll never come again. Cheating me was no big deal. But you managed to betray how many did you say it was? more than a hundred thousand Americans. Mull that over back in Pittsburgh. Remember it, whenever you're tempted to tell brother Theo what to do with his job. Because you won't tell him. You'll never tell him. Vasaritch was right. There is cowardice in your eyes. And it'll always be there."

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

I stood on the boat deck as the Leviathan backed slowly out of Ocean Dock and turned to head down Southampton Water. The sky was one low unbroken dome of grey, the sea dark and oily, the gulls strangely silent as they swooped and hovered in the fitful breeze. The vast ship was more than three quarters empty according to the purser, but seemed wholly so to me, desolate and despairing as the tugs nudged it on its way. There were no fanfares, no crowds, no streamers. This was a chill and furtive leave-taking, late November in spirit as well as fact.

Worse lay in wait along the Itchen Quays, sliding into view as we passed the mouth of the river. The Empress of Britain was in port, pale as a remembered ghost, solid as the rails I leant against. Summer was long gone. And so was the friend I had stood beside half a world and four months away.

"Well, that tears it, doesn't it?" he seemed to say once more.

"We knew it was coming," I murmured in reply. "Or, rather, we should have known."

My mood had not changed since leaving Quincy's suite at the South Western. It had merely intensified. I was free and I was alive. It should have been enough to make a man like me happy, let alone content. But I had held history in my hands and seen it snatched away. I had been tempted by a fleeting touch of God-like power. Comfort and wealth seemed now the pettiest of ambitions. It would not last. I knew that. Guy Horton would soon be reclaimed by his true self. But, for the moment, he felt the loneliest man in the world. On the emptiest ship. And the widest sea.