Читать книгу Legacy - James Steel, James Steel - Страница 9

‘Alexander, this is your father.’

The upper-class growl was slurred by drink.

His father’s use of Alex’s full name was a danger signal. He was in a fighting mood, when the frustrations in his life boiled over and he picked fights with those closest to him to displace his anger.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Alex was at his desk in his family’s house in Fulham. He did a quick mental calculation: it was after lunchtime so his father must be drunk. He could picture him now, wearing his old tweed suit, sitting in his worn armchair in the drawing room of Akerley, the family house in Herefordshire, where he lived alone, looking out of the big bay window over the parkland.

Sir Nicholas Devereux was an ex-cavalry officer and an alcoholic. The Devereux had been loyal servants of the Crown since Guy D’Evreux had fought for the Conqueror at Hastings. There had been one of the family serving in the Household Division every year since Waterloo — until Alex left without a son to replace him. Membership of the family might have its privileges but it came with its burdens as well.

Alex knew where his father’s problems stemmed from: the source of all known evil — his grandmother. She was an intelligent, strong-minded woman trapped by social convention in the role of an aristocratic adornment. Her talents had turned sour and she took to displacing her personal disappointments on others, dismembering their characters with a cold sadism. Her acidic remarks had been fired at her son from the end of the long dining-room table for years, and had knocked his confidence to bits, driving him to drink and then to taking out his frustration violently on his wife. She had told Alex later that the first time he had beaten her had been on their wedding night.

Alex sometimes wondered if he was next in line for this legacy. Whether he would simply repeat the pattern of negative behaviour, transmitted down through the generations in a cycle of anger and destruction. The Devereux might be an ancient, landed family but the poison and the privilege seemed to go hand in hand.

However, it was one thing to understand his father’s problems, another entirely to deal with them. Alex’s upbringing had been a painful one, surrounded by the conflict between the Devereux’s supposed noble grandeur and wealth, and the crappy reality of the life around him — his father’s drinking bouts and his attacks on Alex’s mother. He remembered the fear that gripped him and his younger sister, Georgina, when the fights erupted. The two of them used to run off to a barn to hide until they guessed that their father had passed out. They had avoided those conflicts but George hadn’t got away from the problem entirely. Anorexia had forced her to leave Wycombe Abbey and she was now married to a similarly vain, flashy man, Rory, a barrister who drank too much.

Alex and George’s mother had struggled valiantly to keep their dysfunctional home together, until stomach cancer had overwhelmed her when Alex was in his early teens. Things had started to go downhill soon afterwards. The electricity had been cut off regularly, and he remembered overhearing the shouting matches between his father and suppliers in the courtyard when they turned up at the house demanding payment.

The most humiliating episode for Alex had been when he was summoned to a meeting with his housemaster at boarding school, who explained in the kindliest tones that he was going to have to leave because his fees hadn’t been paid. Alex had gone home for a week until another field had been sold off to pay the bill. He had burned with shame as he had walked into breakfast on his first day back amid the other boys’ taunts and jeers.

Despite all this, Alex had been brought up to be loyal and dutiful. Wellington was an army school and had drilled the service ethic into him — although he couldn’t help seeing the irony of its motto: ‘Sons of heroes.’ His father had insisted that Alex follow him into the Blues and Royals straight from Wellington, without going to university: ‘You don’t need any of that leftie claptrap.’

His father’s reputation and his own lack of a degree had been key factors in Alex not being promoted from major to colonel. He had thus faced the prospect of becoming that stock figure of quiet ridicule in English society: the passed-over major. A Tim-Nice-But-Dim, a try-hard who had never made it. Traditionally they were to be found in retirement in the provinces, living off their pensions, running village fêtes or gymkhanas.

His upbringing had left Alex with a brittle pride. This touchiness would not let him face the ignominy of hanging around the regiment to complete sixteen years’ service before picking up his pension, so he had left and joined the world of private military companies. He was a romantic and hated the idea of joining his former colleagues in the usual safe jobs they went on to — insurance broking or estate agency — and so he had turned to becoming the original freelancer.

His father had objected virulently, spitting out the word ‘mercenary’ with contempt. In response Alex was quietly and bitterly angry at him for having ruined his chance of serving his country as he’d hoped. An intense suppressed tension had existed between them ever since.

‘Hello, Dad,’ Alex said now in a controlled voice. He tried above all things not to lose his temper. His father was pathetic but he was still his father.

‘So, have you fixed that roof of yours then?’

The roof in the family home in Bradbourne Road was leaking. His father had a sixth sense for picking out the things that were bothering Alex most and challenging him on them. ‘Keeping you on your toes’, he called it.

Alex had been back in London a month now since his contract in Angola had ended. He had effectively put himself out of a job by finishing off the bandits who had plagued the Lucapa diamond mine since the end of the civil war.

Money was the other main issue chiselling away at Alex’s heart. He had no new assignments lined up and his usual contacts in the defence business had not been able to pass on even the hint of a new project. It usually took several months to get a contract sorted out and he was not sure how he was going to pay the bills and fix his leaking roof in the meantime.

Lists of figures would drift through his head at night. There was the exorbitant estimate to redo the roof, which, combined with all the other repairs to his crumbling home, was over six figures, and his neighbours were threatening legal action if he didn’t get on with it. He had also recently received letters from another firm of lawyers, threatening him over his father’s debts. The old man had obviously lost control of Akerley entirely, although Alex still didn’t know the full extent of the problem.

He took a deep breath and tried to fend off his father’s jab. ‘Well, I’m working on it. I’ve got some quotes—’

‘Working on it! What does that mean?’

‘It means I’m not there yet but I will be.’

‘Working on it, Alex, always working on it,’ Sir Nicholas chuckled with derision. ‘You see, you need to be a bit more bloody decisive, like me.’

‘Hmm,’ Alex muttered.

‘Now look, the dry rot is getting very bad in the north wing here, lot of the roof timbers are about to go. Seeing as you’re just back from Africa and flush with funds I expect that you can fork out a bit to help keep the place running.’

‘Dad, I need to get Bradbourne sorted out first.’

‘Bugger Bradbourne, child! What about looking after your alma mater!’ This was a well-worn argument. His father knew that the family pile was no longer sustainable since he had sold off most of the farmland around it, but had made it his cantankerous cause célèbre to die in the house he was born in.

Alex’s jaw tightened. He stood up and began pacing back and forth in the living room. He pressed the receiver hard against his head and his dark brows drew together.

‘Look, let’s just get to the point here, Dad. We need to sell Akerley. Without the land the house is just a liability — we’re living in the ruins of our history. We can’t go on as if we’re …’ he raised his free hand in exasperation, ‘… in the Middle Ages or something. You know we—’

‘And you know damn well that I never will, so don’t you start that cant again! If you were earning some decent bloody money as a colonel, instead of pissing around with nignogs in the bush, you might actually be able to start putting something back into this family!’

Alex stopped pacing; his shoulders heaved and he put his head down, his eyes closed, as he summoned up all his strength not to retaliate.

With forced calm he said: ‘I am trying my best, Dad.’

‘Trying won’t do, Alexander! If you weren’t such a fucking failure the family wouldn’t be in this bloody mess!’

‘I am not a fucking failure!’ His voice cracked into a shout of rage.

Provoked.

Exposed.

Defeated,

Humiliated.

He had failed.

He had been drawn into an argument, allowing his father to score the petty victory he had been looking for to make himself feel better.

Alex slammed the phone down but he could hear the braying, triumphant laugh all the way from Herefordshire. His father’s uncanny ability to zero in on his weakness had worked yet again.

Alex was shaking with anger as he walked to the back of the living room and stood with his hands on his hips, staring out of the window at the overgrown back garden. He did not see or hear anything else as the scene played itself over in his head.

Murderous fury consumed half of him; the rest was simply crushed by his father’s scorn and his own fear of what he was.

I am not a fucking failure!

The phone rang again.

He stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment and then snatched it off the cradle and barked, ‘Yes!’

‘Mr Devereux?’ asked a voice in a concerned tone.

Alex could not place the accent exactly, something Middle Eastern but with an American overtone.

He forced himself to sound more civil. ‘Yes, this is Alexander Devereux.’

‘My name is Mr Al-Khouri. I represent an organisation that is interested in doing some business with you, Mr Devereux.’

‘Yes?’ Alex replied cautiously.

‘I realise that you cannot talk on the phone but I would be interested to meet you tomorrow to outline a project.’

‘Right,’ Alex managed.

‘I have booked a table for tea at the Ritz at three o’clock tomorrow. Would that be acceptable?’

‘Fine …’ Alex said slowly, avoiding commitment as he desperately tried to think if he wanted to go. He knew he did not have any alternative, and the Ritz was about as unthreatening a place as one could meet in.

‘Very well, Mr Devereux. Just ask for my table, Mr Al-Khouri, and it’s jacket and tie,’ he said in a smug tone.

‘Right, OK. Thank you,’ Alex tried to end the conversation sounding as if he was in control.

As usual, Alex arrived early; army habits died hard.

He was wearing highly polished black Oxfords, his bespoke blue pinstripe suit with a crisply ironed white shirt, and his Cavalry and Guards blue and red striped tie.

He didn’t like being so obvious about his regiment — ‘cabbage’ was their derisory term for flaunting the connection too overtly — but this was business, and he knew it was one of the few British army symbols that foreigners in his line of work recognised and valued.

He walked up the side entrance steps on Arlington Street and was greeted by a smartly uniformed porter with white gloves tucked into one of the epaulettes of his overcoat.

He was shown along the broad entrance hall by an overly suave waiter in black tie and a white dinner jacket. The middle of the Palm Court tearoom was dominated by an enormous gilt urn decorated with palms. A lady in a sequined dress tinkled away at a piano on one side.

Alex cringed; the whole effect was one of stifling fussiness. The sparse clientele included grandmothers being taken out on their birthdays, aspirational fathers fulfilling their dreams by bringing cowed wives and children out for tea at the Ritz. Conversation was reduced to a subdued level by the formality.

‘Mr Al-Khouri is over there, sir,’ said the officious waiter, his arm extended grandly to point to a table in the far corner of the room. Alex straightened his shoulders and walked over slowly, eyeing his potential business partner carefully.

On first sight Mr Al-Khouri looked the epitome of a wealthy playboy: about thirty-five, blow-dried black hair, average height, slim build and cleanshaven. He was wearing a white shirt with a black Armani suit and tie.

The man stood up as Alex approached, all slick smiles and competitive bonhomie. ‘Mr Devereux. Please come, sit down, sit down.’

‘Alexander Devereux,’ said Alex unnecessarily, and gave his firmest handshake as he towered over the smaller man. It was all part of the male posturing, manoeuvring to show who was in charge.

‘Yes, yes. Kalil Al-Khouri. Thank you for coming, Mr Devereux. Tea for two, please.’ He signalled to the waiter hovering behind Alex. ‘Your finest Earl Grey,’ he added fastidiously.

‘A nice location.’ He swept his hand around the room.

‘Splendid,’ replied Alex.

‘I like to come to the Ritz when I am in town; it has a very … established feel. I do a lot of business in London.’ Kalil spread his hands and his voice dropped to a quieter conspiratorial tone. The word ‘business’ was deliberately vague, implying things far too important and secret to be spoken about in detail.

‘Right,’ Alex nodded, and waited for the posturing to stop.

‘So,’ Kalil tilted his head to one side, ‘my contacts tell me that you’ve been in Angola recently.’

Alex was not sure who Kalil’s contacts were but there was nothing secret in what he had said so far. Alex’s work was sanctioned tacitly by the Foreign Office so he had nothing to hide.

‘Yes, a contract on the Lucapa field in the north. Mine defence and security team training,’ said Alex.

‘And how did that go?’

‘It went well,’ he replied cautiously. ‘We had good support from the government,’ which was a lie, but he was always careful to sound positive about his employers. ‘We did a lot of clearing-up ops on the bandit groups in the area. Counterinsurgency, some armoured recce work.’ He wasn’t prepared to go into any more detail, and looked at Kalil, who was watching him carefully.

‘Well, that’s very much the line of work that we are interested in.’ He glanced around to see that the grandmother and her family two tables away were not taking notes. He steepled his fingers together and leaned towards Alex.

‘Can I confirm, in the first instance, that you would be free to be involved in a six-month project starting with immediate effect? The compensation package will be,’ again he paused for effect, ‘… extremely competitive.’

The waiter arrived with a triple-layered stand of cakes and a silver tea set on a tray. He fussed around laying them out and then left with a simpering smile.

Alex and Kalil resumed their conspiratorial huddle.

Alex nodded. ‘It would depend on the nature of the project, but yes, in theory, I would be available.’

‘Good.’ Kalil poured tea for them both and then sipped it slowly. Eventually he put his cup down and leaned over the table.

‘I represent a cartel of Lebanese diamond dealers,’ he continued quietly. ‘We are interested in hiring you to lead an operation involving a mechanised battle group in Africa. My understanding from your file is that this is your area of expertise?’

Alex stared him in the eye and nodded slowly.

Lebanese. They ran the diamond-trading networks in Africa and were famously secretive, but it sounded like a big job so in principle he was interested. The money would be good.

‘The cartel was extremely impressed with your file. You understand our position in the trade?’

‘In broad terms, yes.’ Alex had been involved in the business for long enough to have a good understanding of their role but he did not want to prevent any revelations so he held his hands out in a gesture inviting further comment.

‘We are the comptoirs — the middlemen on the ground — in Africa, who supply the markets in Amsterdam and the Far East. De Beers, Steinmetz and the rest have been getting very antsy about CSR and blood diamonds of late, but we’re not too angst-ridden about all that.’ He tossed his head dismissively.

Alex was pleased that Kalil was dropping the bullshit and speaking more openly.

Corporate Social Responsibility was a buzzword of all the multinationals. It was supposed to be about ethical behaviour towards indigenous peoples and the environment, and generally not behaving like rapacious capitalists. All well and good, but for small fry like Alex it meant that big firms were no longer prepared to operate in the sort of lawless areas where his skills would be in demand. He was not bothered to hear it denigrated.

‘I mean, we can’t afford to be.’ Kalil looked at Alex with his eyebrows raised to see if he was going to get precious.

Alex shrugged to indicate that he was not bothered about exact adherence to the codes of practice that the larger security firms followed these days. He was not in a position to be picky.

‘Let me be plain, Mr Devereux.’ Kalil took on a serious expression. ‘This operation would be illegal by all international law codes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about genocide, but it does involve an attack across sovereign borders. Not that that means squat in the parts of the world we’re talking about. It’s basically a dispute between two private enterprises over a diamond field in the Central African Republic. If you don’t feel comfortable in that situation, please tell me now.’

Alex looked at him. He didn’t know the man from Adam. Was he a plant sent to trap him into an admission of illegality? Was he wired? He couldn’t tell. He needed the money. He shrugged again.

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Don’t worry, Mr Devereux, the cartel is a bona fide organisation and we are as concerned to protect ourselves from outside scrutiny on this as you would be, so we are doing things very carefully. I think that is about as far as we can go on the operational details for now.’ He indicated the incongruous surroundings with an open gesture of both hands.

‘Tell me about your time in the army,’ he said, sitting back and switching topics. His hand hovered over the teacakes as he chose one. He ate it, catching the crumbs with one hand under his chin, as Alex detailed his career résumé.

‘I was commissioned into the regiment and served with them in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Bosnia. I trained for armoured recce with Striker, Spartan and Scimitar, and then main battle tanks with Challenger 2, so I am able to deal with all types of armoured warfare operations. We were also part of 5 Airborne when we were at Windsor so I have done paratrooper training and can handle infantry ops as well.’

‘And you left as a major?’

‘Yes.’

This was another tricky topic for Alex. He did not want to say that he could not face being a passed-over major.

‘The British Army is the best in the world,’ he went on, ‘but I wanted to get more action and independence so I went into the defence business …’ It was a downright lie but he was so used to telling it that he sounded like he meant it. What he had really wanted to do was to stay and serve his country as a colonel.

‘And have served with companies in Sierra Leone, Congo and Angola?’ Kalil dipped his head interrogatively.

‘Correct.’

Now that Kalil had dropped the act he seemed to be much more down-to-earth. Alex was not exactly warming to him but at least he thought he was someone he could do business with.

The chitchat continued until they had finished their cups of tea and then Kalil stood up, swept his hand through his hair, chucked a fifty-pound note dismissively on the table and led the way out.

As they walked to the hotel lobby Kalil’s quick eye caught the display of ‘Ritz Fine Jewellery’ cabinets arranged along one side. He stopped to look at the cases of rings, necklaces and brooches.

‘You see, this is what it’s all about.’ He pointed out a diamond pendant to Alex and spoke with sudden enthusiasm. ‘This is what we in the cartel do. This is a white diamond — yes?’

He looked at Alex, who bent down to inspect it and then nodded, wondering why he was asking such a question.

The immaculate sales manager stood up from her desk and came across to them. She was a suitably striking addition to the Ritz: tall, with long blonde hair and an elegant black dress.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ she asked Kalil in a voice as polished as one of her stones.

‘Hey, how are you?’ Kalil looked up, slightly startled, and fired off the standard American greeting rather defensively.

She had had enough American customers to know that the question was not meant to be answered and nodded in return as Kalil continued without pausing.

‘I’m looking for a coloured diamond. You gotta coloured diamond?’ His eyes were flicking over the displays.

‘We have some over here, sir.’ She led the way across to where a row of select-looking cabinets were set into the wall. The pieces in them sparkled alluringly under the lights.

‘We have a natural Vivid Yellow stone set in a necklace here and this is a natural Vivid Green stone in a ring.’

‘That’s it! OK, lemme do a price comparison. Can you get me a white stone the same carat as that, please?’

The manageress walked over to the cabinets in the middle of the room. Kalil’s black eyes flicked a quick glance over her svelte backside. He watched her intently as she paused to pull a pair of white cotton gloves onto her slender hands. She unlocked a cabinet, took out a ring, closed it carefully and walked back.

‘This is a one-carat white diamond.’ She held it up and it sparkled pure white light.

‘Can we compare it to the green one, please?’

She nodded obligingly and unlocked the cabinet on the wall. There was a soft peep of an alarm as it slid open.

‘Now, look at this, see?’ Kalil held the new ring up to Alex and turned it back and forth so that it caught the light. At first glance it appeared clear but as the light played on the facets it sparked green.

Alex had never had much interest in the aesthetics of diamonds before but he had to admit that it was captivating how the colour appeared from nowhere.

‘You see, same chemical structure as a diamond — it’s not an emerald — but totally different effect. They’re formed when the diamond is in the presence of radioactive minerals: uranium oxide, molybdenum, radon. You know, they get all hot and compressed in a kimberlite pipe, all that stuff,’ he said dismissively, assuming Alex knew the basics of diamond formation.

‘Hmm,’ Alex murmured with genuine interest, continuing to peer at the stone.

‘OK,’ Kalil held up the two rings and turned to the manageress. ‘What’s the price comparison between them?’

‘OK, well, this stone is—’

‘It’s a one-carat stone, ya?’

‘Yes, they are both one-carat stones. The value of this white diamond is eleven thousand.’

‘Dollars?’

‘Sterling.’

‘And the green diamond?’ Kalil held it up in anticipation of the punchline.

‘The value of this diamond is one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

‘You see …’ Kalil nodded and looked at Alex with a smug grin on his face.

‘OK, so we’re talking about a …’ Alex paused to do the maths, ‘… a fourteen times price differential.’

Kalil nodded again in satisfaction at having made his point.

‘OK. Thank you, ma’am.’ He handed the stones back to her. ‘We’re just looking around at the moment.’

He gave her his most charming smile and led the way out of the hotel and onto the darkened street. They stood under a streetlamp.

‘Ya, OK, so apologies about that. Got a little overexcited.’ Again the quick grin flashed. ‘But the point for us is this.’ He leaned towards Alex. ‘The field we’re gonna capture in Central African Republic produces green diamonds.’