Gold Read online

  ‘It took you long enough to decide.’

  ‘I said you wouldn’t doubt it; I didn’t say I was so sure.’

  ‘Terms?’ he said.

  She made an impatient, flicking-away motion with her hand. ‘You’re not in a boardroom now: you’re with your estranged wife trying to patch up a marriage and you don’t patch up marriages by imposing conditions and regulations.’

  ‘What is it you want, then?’

  ‘Honesty,’ she said, simply. ‘Not like the last attempt, when it was too late. If you meet anyone else again, I want to know. I’m not going to be put on trial, compared one to the other. You’ll have to make up your mind. And stick with it. I’m not going to go through anything like this again. It’s bloody near crucified me and it’s going to take me a long time to forget, even though I’m going to try.’

  ‘Are you doing this because you want to? Or because you think it’s the way to put Paul back on track?’

  ‘How long do you think he would be fooled by a bullshit arrangement like that?’

  ‘Long enough, if he were only here for the holidays.’

  She looked steadily at him and for a long time she didn’t speak. Then she said, ‘I made all sorts of resolutions. I wasn’t going to make any concessions or let you know what it’s been like, what it’s really been like, and now I’m with you I can’t go through with it! I tried not to want you. I tried to think myself out of love and to do what Daddy wants and get a divorce and start all over again, but I can’t. I’m not doing this for Paul. I’m not doing it for anyone, except myself. For Christ’s sake, come back home.’

  She stood looking at him, near to tears, and Collington gazed back, momentarily unable to react to what she had said. He had come not knowing what to expect, but certainly it hadn’t been this. Not so abruptly, anyway. He moved at last, reaching out for her, and she came to him, buried her head into his chest, the emotion vibrating through her.

  ‘I gave in,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘I wanted to make you beg, but in the end I couldn’t do it.’

  He eased her head back from him so that he could kiss her. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For having me back.’

  They made love there, on the floor, entangled in pushed-apart clothing and furniture legs. He rolled on to his back, keeping her on top of him and they collided with a wine table, skidding it into a bureau against the wall. She tensed, tightening around him, and said, ‘The servants will come in.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’m not ready yet.’

  ‘I am!’ she said, trying to hold the rise in her voice, and then she fell over him, nibbling at his neck and saying, ‘James, oh James’ over and over again. They stayed enmeshed, uncaring about discovery. She moved slightly off him to make herself more comfortable and said, ‘Don’t ever do anything like it again, will you? I thought I’d lost you and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said, meaning it.

  ‘I’ve done nothing for the past four months, except think of us. And do you know what I realised?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How limited you are.’

  He twisted his head to look at her. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘I’m not criticising,’ she said hurriedly, feeling out and putting her finger to his lips. ‘But think about it. You don’t do anything except business. And earn money. Even Daddy’s got that stupid museum, but you’ve got nothing. You don’t play golf or sail …’ She jerked her head towards the pool. ‘Or even swim, particularly well.’

  ‘So the affair was a surrogate hobby.’

  ‘I’m not attaching labels to it. But why go on, so hard? Why be there, every morning at eight, if there’s nothing for you to do? And if there are so many people to look after things, why don’t you get home until eight at night?’

  ‘Habit, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘But you don’t have to any more. Would Europe be any less efficient or America not work so well, if you didn’t keep flying off every five minutes?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he admitted.

  ‘You’re a marvel, James. A legend. People write about you in magazines and newspapers and millions of people must read it and envy you. But you haven’t enjoyed a bit of it, have you?’

  She was exaggerating, Collington thought – but not much. He wondered if there had been a similar conversation to this all those years ago, when Walter Simpson had taken to staying longer and longer in England with his first wife and almost lost the company.

  ‘I’ll take a long break when Paul gets here.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about a three- or four-week vacation. I was talking about all the time.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  They finally moved apart and Hannah said, ‘Now let’s go to bed and do it properly.’

  ‘Wasn’t that proper?’ he asked. He felt very relaxed and contented to be back with her.

  ‘It was highly improper,’ she giggled, as they climbed the circular staircase that went around the edge of the vestibule. ‘What do you think Daddy would say if he heard his daughter had got laid beneath the card table?’

  Collington laughed with her. ‘Probably that you were being raped and what else could you expect, from someone with my background.’

  He undressed her and they came together again, unhurriedly this time, enjoying the feel and touch of each other’s bodies.

  ‘Daddy will be disappointed when I tell him,’ she said, pulling her mouth away from his neck. ‘He actually asked me if we were getting back together, after the dinner party.’

  Collington had been letting his mind drift. He began to concentrate on what she was saying. How close had the man been to using the information about Ann, Collington wondered.

  ‘They’re getting married, he and Janet,’ Hannah continued. ‘We had lunch a couple of days ago, especially for her to tell me.’

  ‘Have you been seeing a lot of her?’

  ‘Maybe once a week,’ said Hannah. ‘I quite like her. I think her politics are cock-eyed, like Daddy’s, but she’s a straightforward lady. I think they’ll be very happy.’

  Collington didn’t reply, his mind still preoccupied with Metzinger’s enquiry. It would have been a natural enough question for a father to ask of a daughter going through a separation, but Collington looked for hidden reasons in everything Metzinger did.

  ‘Should I do anything about my shares?’ she said.

  ‘What shares?’

  ‘I’m not sure, precisely,’ said Hannah. ‘Janet was very proud about how Daddy is looking after her. She said that upon his advice she was having her mining portfolio adjusted by Jan Wassenaar – giving him the power of attorney, apparently.’

  She sensed his physical reaction and pulled away, to look up at him. ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, irritated. ‘I don’t think there is any reason to worry about your holdings.’

  ‘If you say so,’ she accepted immediately.

  ‘And Hannah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t tell your father yet, about our getting back together.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ She propped herself up on her elbow and looked straight at him.

  ‘I just don’t want him to know. Not yet.’

  She waited for him to say more but when he didn’t she said, ‘Sometimes I think you and he behave towards each other like a couple of kids.’

  ‘Just don’t tell him, for the moment. Please,’ said Collington.

  ‘Kids!’ she said again, exasperated.

  Before he began the enquiry, Collington accepted the possibility of his being over-cautious. He hadn’t been cautious enough about Simpson, and for that he considered the investigation justified. But there was further cause, beyond that. His examination of Simpson’s holdings – and therefore his widow’s inheritance – might have
been too late to prevent Metzinger’s boardroom coup, but it had been recent enough for Collington to remember the general state of the portfolios. And his recollection was that there was no need for any adjustment, in the mining shares least of all. Since the postponement of the gold sales, they had gone up four points.

  He had summoned the files from records by mid-morning, concentrating first upon the mines and then scrutinising every holding that Janet Simpson possessed. And by mid-afternoon had confirmed his original impression. Her portfolios had been meticulously created by her late husband and there wasn’t the slightest need for her to do anything but accept the dividends. Certainly there was no need for the sort of movement indicated by going beyond a broker, nor to vest power of attorney in Jan Wassenaar who wasn’t, Collington noted from the files in front of him, her normal lawyer anyway.

  It was the link between the woman and Wassenaar that intrigued him most of all. They had combined, with Metzinger and de Villiers, to defeat him once before. And they appeared to be combining again. But for what? He went through the Simpson file again and then that of the corporation lawyer, adding and subtracting and re-allocating, trying to hypothesise a share grouping that could be used in some board manœuvre. Finally he abandoned the effort, pushing the folders away. There was nothing, Collington decided; absolutely nothing.

  He had been doodling all the while on a jotting pad, isolating words that didn’t link. There was Janet Simpson’s name and Wassenaar’s and lawyer and broker. Around broker he assembled a pattern, festooning it with whorls and curlicues and then he began to concentrate solely upon that word. It didn’t fit: it jarred the picture. Why had Janet Simpson bypassed a broker and gone to a lawyer?

  It was an impulsive reflection, coming from nothing but instinct, but the more he considered it the more it seemed worthwhile pursuing. He thought of using Geoffrey Wall, but changed his mind, wanting no traceable association with the company.

  Instead he used the lawyer whom he had briefed for his separation from Hannah, using the reconciliation as the initial reason for the interview and then supplementing the fee the man would have earned for the abandoned divorce action with a different brief. In three days, with the lawyer acting as nominee for the enquiry, Collington got confirmation of his hunch. Precise figures were difficult, because brokers in Pretoria and Cape Town and Johannesburg were showing the same discretion as the lawyer. But there had been firm indications – two brokers even offering contracts – that approximately 66,000 shares in the SAGOMI parent company and in the mining division were shortly being offered for sale, through a base vendor in Zurich.

  Collington went back to his statistics and at first considered there had been a mistake. The combined holdings on the South African exchange of major and subsidiary shares held by Janet Simpson and Wassenaar only came to 46,200. Then he remembered the original power struggle and added Metzinger’s South African holdings. The total came to 66,200.

  Collington rose from his desk, standing against the office window with its view of the capital. It was unquestionably another manœuvre. But to what purpose? From the figures Collington knew all three were retaining their ‘A’ and Preferential shares, disposing only of the ordinary ones. And the ordinary holdings were ineffective either at parent board level or in any of the subsidiary mining companies. Their only worth was their monetary value. And at the moment, because they were mining shares, that monetary value was greater than any other that they held. Which made it nonsense to sell. The illogicalities echoed in Collington’s head: compared to this, the solving of the mystery of the gold shipment from Amsterdam had been easy. Turning his thoughts outside South Africa, Collington remembered the Zurich vendor and this time his action wasn’t dictated by instinct, but by practical business deduction.

  No South African broker had been able to provide a date for the disposal, but Collington recognised a time limit of sorts and decided he could not risk going personally either to London or New York. He used the telephone from the Parkstown house, not confident of the security of the SAGOMI switchboard, holding the connection to England and America for over an hour while he painstakingly briefed lawyers to carry out exactly the same investigation there as he had instigated in Pretoria. By the week’s end, he had replies from both countries. It was a pointless calculation, but he did the sum anyway, intent upon every last detail. Metzinger’s holdings in their publicly quoted parent company and their mining divisions throughout the world amounted to 97,000. Wassenaar had 84,000 shares, and Janet Simpson 72,000. And the total number of shares being offered, on value drop orders in Pretoria, London and New York, was 253,000. Collington didn’t need a calculator to make the addition.For two further days he tried to reach anything but the obvious conclusion, but couldn’t. It had to be a conspiracy. There was no way he could work out how they intended to achieve it, but clearly the three of them were gambling on a share drop and were mounting a bear operation to sell high and buy back low on a falling market, to make a killing when the value rose again.

  The decision to oppose them was automatic. And probably, he thought in passing, illegal. The difficulty was in assessing the gap through which they intended letting the shares drop, so that he could accurately place his automatic purchase orders to intercept them on the way down. A prudent businessman is satisfied with a profit of one per cent. But there was nothing prudent about what the Afrikaners were attempting, so he estimated they were reckoning on a higher return than that. For a long time he played with figures, going as high as ten and coming back as low as one and then accepted there was no way any sort of intelligent assessment could be made: it was as great a gamble as sticking a pin in a race card and picking a 100-to-l winner. Having thought of ten as his maximum, Collington compromised and determined upon five.

  Although he was domiciled predominantly in South Africa, Collington’s mind still worked in sterling. On the quoted price of the shares on the three main exchanges, the total value being offered was £9,500,000. In London, Pretoria and New York he placed automatic purchase orders for all SAGOMI and mining division shares that dropped five points below their quotation, all on a ten per cent margin. That meant that if £9,500,000 were offered, he immediately spent £950,000 and then had twenty-eight days to raise the remainder of the purchase price. Through London merchant banks he arranged stand-by credit of £15,000,000 to support his personal fortune, offered against his shareholding in SAGOMI and its other divisions and the property he personally owned in South Africa and London.

  On paper, it seemed perfectly simple. But Collington recognised the danger. Other ordinary shareholders might be influenced by what the Afrikaners intended and sell at the same time. And his instructions to the brokers meant he would pick up those shares as well. Collington accepted that he was ridiculously exposed, in a position he would normally have dismissed as insane, even with his tendency to take risks.

  Collington used the benefit of the time differences between South Africa and the other countries, and the evening he got authority for his credit arrangements and certificated confirmation of the purchase orders was the first time he had returned to Parkstown before nine.

  ‘I thought we’d talked about your working less,’ protested Hannah mildly.

  ‘This is unusual but necessary,’ said Collington.

  ‘And I suppose next week there will be something else that’s unusual but necessary,’ she said.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Collington, sincerely.

  Brigitte re Jong worked with dogged persistence to get past the middle management barrier to the directors and officials of the gold mining companies who might have some knowledge of government thinking and be able to give an indication of when the gold release would start again. And while she waited for appointments to be confirmed, she toured bullion brokers, ostensibly to buy any few ounzes that might be available but also in the hope of picking up some rumour.

  Leonov had established a liaison system with Moscow through Angola, and she learned from that source t
hat they had succeeded in amassing two and a half tonnes in short-term futures from brokers, but at a swingeing premium.

  The communication was at a fixed time, so Leonov scheduled meetings with Krotkov immediately afterwards.

  ‘Any news?’ demanded the KGB chief, before the other man had closed the door behind him.

  ‘General expectation that there will be a release soon. No one knows the date.’

  ‘Two and a half tonnes to go then?’ said Krotkov.

  ‘I can probably bluff, for that amount,’ said Leonov. ‘I calculate I’ve got four to five weeks before it becomes critical.’

  ‘Something has to happen in that time,’ insisted Krotkov, angrily. ‘It’s just got to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leonov, cynically. ‘But what?’

  In final desperation, Metzinger cabled Ann Talbot in London, demanding that she contact him. He waited four days for the call and when it didn’t come decided positively that she was running away. Stupid little bitch. He’d warned her what would happen and he’d meant it. Disclosing the divorce material to Hannah would be the coup de grâce, after manipulating Collington’s disgrace at the shareholders’ meeting. Metzinger was annoyed he couldn’t do it at once. But it would be foolish to hurry. He had all the time in the world. Stupid little bitch, he thought again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sidney Englehart was a worried man. It would have been an exaggeration to label him a buck-passer, someone who attempted to avoid responsibility; if that had been the case he wouldn’t have made section head and run covert operations so successfully for the past three years. Rather he was careful, a Washington professional who knew how important it was to watch his back. The foul-ups before his appointment had helped. Nervous of the inefficiency that was being exposed publicly, there had been an official policy to reduce the number of clandestine activities. Less operations meant less chances of screwing up. Which suited Englehart just fine. So did the edict on things that were sanctioned. They had to be planned meticulously and executed with the same care, the criterion being to abort up to the last moment if success began to look doubtful.