Long Time Coming (5 page)

‘The reward, if I succeed.’ He smiled. ‘Tempted?’

‘What’s it got to do with me?’

‘I need a young pair of legs – and lungs. I need someone to help me. You’re a bright boy, currently with time on your hands. I’ll offer you ten per cent to do some running around – and whatever else crops up – on my behalf. Twisk will cover all our expenses. What do you say?’

‘I say I’d need to know a lot more about this before I could consider getting involved.’

‘And there’s the painting to finish, of course.’ He held my gaze, letting me see and understand that he would regard turning him down as somehow unmanly. The offer was also a dare. Did I have what it took? ‘Listen to me, Stephen. I’ll tell you everything you need to know
if
you agree to help me. Not otherwise. And even that probably won’t be everything you
want
to know.’

‘What makes you think I want to know anything, Eldritch?’

‘The fact that you came here tonight. The fact that I would, in your shoes. The money would clinch it, of course, as it always has for me. But perhaps you’re above such things. Or perhaps not.’ He raised his glass, as if about to propose a toast. ‘Yes or no, Stephen. Which is it to be?’

It is a bright spring morning in Antwerp. The SS
Uitlander
, a double-funnelled four-masted liner, stands loading at the Quai Van Dyck. Stevedores are busy transferring cargo from the sheds that flank the dockside railway line, watched by passers-by on the terrace above. Gulls wheel and shriek in the clear, cool air. Sunlight sparkles on the rippling waters of the Scheldt. It is a scene that could have been witnessed on countless occasions in recent decades, outwardly calm and seemingly orderly. It is the last day of April and the
Uitlander
sails for New York on the morrow. It has made the crossing many times, as one of the Red Star Line’s best-equipped ships. But Red Star are no longer its owners and no one will be joining the voyage for pleasure or leisure. Since the outbreak of war between Germany and the British and French in September 1939, U-boat attacks have made transatlantic travel hazardous as well as expensive, though many, for various reasons, have been willing to pay for their passage and take their chances. And this, though no one here knows it, is one of the very last such chances. In eleven days, the German army will cross the Belgian border. In less than a month, King Leopold will have surrendered. The world is about to change.

A man who has been in conversation with an officer on the fore-deck of the
Uitlander
concludes their exchanges with a handshake and heads down the gangway to the wharf. He is slim and smartly
dressed in a brown and gold pinstripe suit, a grey fedora shading his eyes. He looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties, a pencil moustache adding a note of maturity to his open, confident features. There is something more than confidence in the way he carries himself, however. The flick of the wrist as he raises his cigarette to his lips and the hint of a swagger in his gait suggest cocksureness amounting to arrogance.

As he reaches the wharf, he glances up, as if studying the manoeuvrings of the crane currently lowering a large crate into the hold of the vessel he has just left. But his gaze is actually directed elsewhere, to a man of about his own age, dressed in similar style – though it would be clear to a discerning observer that he has used a cheaper tailor – who is leaning against the railings up on the terrace, watching the loading operations. They acknowledge each other with a nod. A moment passes, sufficient for both to draw reflectively on their cigarettes. Then the man on the wharf taps himself on the chest with his thumb and points to the terrace. He will join the other. They have something to discuss.

Eldritch Swan was neither pleased nor surprised to see Pieter Verhoest that morning. He had half expected the fellow to be loitering around the quay, reassuring himself that all was going according to plan. Swan would have much preferred to ignore him, but knew he could not afford to do so. Verhoest must be given no cause to doubt his terms were being complied with.

He was thin, alert and slope-shouldered, a year or so Swan’s junior. His luxuriant blond hair was currently concealed beneath his hat, tilted forward against the riverside breeze. He was irritatingly good-looking and the predatory gleam in his pale-blue eyes escaped many, Swan not among them. He spoke English, French and Dutch with equal facility and gave no impression of underestimating himself. He was, in short, a man Swan instinctively disliked as well as distrusted. And Swan suspected the feeling was mutual.

‘Verhoest,’ Swan greeted the other off-handedly as he joined him by the railings.

‘Meneer Swan.’ The courtesy was undisguisedly sarcastic. ‘A fine morning.’ The beaming smile seemed hardly more genuine.

‘Indeed. You’re here to take the air?’

‘Yes. Also checking that loading is on schedule.’

‘I’m assured it is.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Tomorrow we’ll be on the high seas.’

‘I look forward to it. Belgium’s too … small for me.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll find the United States … suitably large.’

‘Yes. I’m sure I will.’ Verhoest slipped a small flask out of his coat pocket and unscrewed the cap. ‘Some brandy for you, Swan? To toast our voyage to the New World?’

‘No, thanks. Too early for me.’

‘As you please.
Prost!
’ Verhoest took a sip. ‘I never drank a drop till I went to the Congo, you know. But the things I saw there … and the fevers I caught …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s served me well, though. The Congo. Better than I ever hoped.’

‘What will you do in America?’ Swan asked, daring the other man to proclaim some imaginative vision of a new life beyond the Atlantic.

‘I’ll think about it on the crossing. You?’

‘I’ll go on working for Mr Meridor.’

‘Ah. Our … benefactor. Meneer Meridor. We have a lot to be grateful to him for, you and I. First-class liner tickets. United States visas. He’s a generous man.’

‘Very.’

‘For a Jew.’ Verhoest’s smile vanished. ‘I expect he’ll go on being generous, don’t you?’

It was a more or less open declaration that a feather-bedded exit from Europe would not be the last reward Verhoest expected for keeping to himself all he knew about Isaac Meridor’s diamond dealings in the Congo. Blackmailers always came back for more, of course. It was in their nature. There was only one sure way to stop them.

‘Tell Meneer Meridor, would you, Swan, that I have some … ideas for investments … I’d like to put to him … during the voyage.’

‘I’ll be sure to.’ Swan smiled tightly. ‘Well, I must get on. There’s a good deal still to attend to. You’ll have to excuse me.’

‘Certainly. Until tomorrow, then.’

Swan nodded. ‘Until tomorrow.’

A quarter of an hour later, Swan was sitting on a number 2 tram, rattling along the streets of Antwerp, bound for the Gare Centrale. He gazed out benevolently at the shop fronts and wandering specimens of humanity as the tram wound its way through the old town, bidding them all a private adieu. He had enjoyed his few years in Antwerp. He had no wish to leave. But the international situation – and his employer’s particular need to place himself beyond Hitler’s reach – left him no choice in the matter. It was time to go. Part of him wanted to head for England. This was the old country’s hour of need. And he was a patriot of sorts. But another part saw following Meridor to New York as much the better bet. Life in the diamond merchant’s household had been duller since the departure of his wife and daughter the previous autumn. The pair had been despatched to New York as soon as war broke out. Swan missed the daughter, Esther, in particular, and had good reason to believe she missed him. It would be a pleasure, a very distinct pleasure, to see her again. It might also be financially beneficial to his future, something he always tried to look to.

The tram reached Meir, the main shopping street, and stopped beneath the Gratte-Ciel, Antwerp’s one and only skyscraper, to take on passengers – women with children, laden bags and harassed looks; men in frayed suits with pipes and rumpled copies of the
Gazet van Antwerpen
: a random sample of the city’s populace, going about their business, conspiring to pretend, as best they could, that the war was not about to come to their door.

One passenger, who looked thoroughly inconspicuous in a shabby jacket and trousers, tieless dark shirt and flat cap, took the seat next to Swan and mumbled an apology for falling against him as the tram started away with a jolt.

‘That’s quite all right,’ said Swan. He had no doubt the other man would understand English, for they had met before. He and
Smit, who was almost certainly born with some other surname, had entered into a confidential agreement which was shortly to be implemented. Their meeting that morning, though it might have appeared to be, was not a matter of chance.

‘Is there anything I can do for you, meneer?’ Smit asked in an undertone.

‘Yes,’ Swan replied.

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes.’

Smit nodded. ‘It will be done.’

‘Thank you.’ Swan leant up and pressed the bell. ‘Excuse me, will you? I’m getting off at the next stop.’

‘
Tot ziens, meneer
.’

As Swan moved towards the door, he saw from the corner of his eye Smit slide across the seat he had just vacated. The plain brown envelope he had left behind was neatly pocketed before any other passenger could have noticed it. The deal was done.

Swan walked the rest of the way to the Gare Centrale. He never ceased to be impressed by the magnificence of the structure, standing like some Baroque cathedral at the end of Avenue de Keyser. It was where he had arrived, tired and uncertain of what lay in store for him, at the outset of his engagement as Meridor’s secretary. Even in his distracted state, he had been amazed by the scale and grandeur of the station. Later, he had realized that its construction, like so much else in the city, had been financed from the riches of Belgium’s vast African colony: the Congo. Meridor would not have become a wealthy man without that resource to draw upon, and Swan would not have become a wealthy man’s well-rewarded employee. Above the entrance to the Zoo, next to the station, stood a statue of an African boy on a dromedary, gazing down at the comings and goings of his latter-day imperial masters. But the statue was too high for anyone to be sure of the expression on the boy’s face.

The Gare Centrale itself was not Swan’s destination today. He was heading for the diamond district – the complex of streets to the
south and west of the station, where Isaac Meridor and his kind held tight commercial sway. Their clients tended to come and go by train and had no wish to wander the streets of Antwerp with pocketfuls of diamonds. Meridor was a founding member of the Beurs voor Diamanthandel, housed in grandiose neoclassical premises close to the station’s side-entrance. Swan was not a member of any kind, of course, and stepped no further inside than the reception desk. But he was a familiar face, well known as Meridor’s secretary. A message was swiftly passed to the great man up on the dealing floor. And, hardly less swiftly, he descended.

Isaac Meridor disdained the overt orthodox costume of many of his fellow Jewish diamond dealers. True, he was heavily bearded and usually dressed in black, but there was nothing otherwise to distinguish him from the rest of the city’s business community. Indeed, the three-piece suits he favoured, with the usual addition of a gleaming loop of gold watch-chain, were very much the Antwerpian norm. He only wore the yarmulke on Fridays and attended synagogue more out of habit and convention than anything else.

He was a short, stout man in his mid-sixties, balding and bland-faced, but possessed of a mischievous gaze and a ready smile that were the keys to his genius as a bargainer. He was everyone’s friend, blessed with an elephantine memory and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the small and lucrative world he moved in. His reputation was for fairness and reliability, an irony Swan secretly found hilarious. Meridor was in reality a ruthless manipulator of other people’s credulity. His most precious gift was his opacity. No one ever saw through him. Unless he wanted them to.

‘What you must understand about diamonds, Eldritch,’ he had said once during Swan’s first few months as his secretary, ‘is that they have no value except what we in the trade can persuade people to believe they have. It is a confidence trick, you see? Like so much commerce. It is all about confidence. Which some call trust. And I call … opportunity.’

*

Meridor the confident opportunist signalled with a bob of the head for Swan to accompany him outside. They stood in the sunshine by the columned entrance to the Bourse, Meridor puffing cigar smoke into air already made smoky by the arrivals and departures of trains on the elevated tracks opposite. The noise of trains and trams and carts and cars was cacophonous. It was so hard for them to hear each other speak that they could be sure no one could conceivably
over
hear them.

‘All is well at the quay, Eldritch?’ Meridor asked in his thick, gravelly voice.

‘Everything’s loaded.’

‘Good.’

‘Except …’

‘What we will bring ourselves. Yes, yes.’ A flap of his cigar-hand indicated that Meridor quite understood that. ‘And our friend?’

‘It’s arranged.’

‘Also good.’

‘You realize—’

‘Of course. Of course.’ Another flap. ‘He brings it on himself. I recommend … an early lunch. Champagne to settle your nerves. Yes, yes. I very much recommend it. Then you can take the afternoon off. You will need to pack, of course. So, where shall we go? The Café des Arts?’

The decision apparently made, Meridor set off along the street. Swan followed. ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘I—’

‘I know what you think, Eldritch. That we are too drastic with him. But he will not let go unless I … remove him. You see? In business, you must know when to attack and when to retreat. Our friend is outmatched. As the Belgian army is by the German. So, I deal with the two threats very differently. But enough of that. We will enjoy our lunch and talk of other things. It will be our last lunch in this city. For many years, I fear. When we return, it will be a different place, I think. Very different. But not us, eh?’ Meridor laughed throatily, as if to defy the unpredictability of the near future. ‘We will be exactly the same.’