Читать книгу The Account - Roderick Mann - Страница 9

At the same time that Paul Eberhardt was heading for home, Robert Brand’s Gulfstream IV was landing in the rain at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Staring out of the window at the glistening runway Brand had begun to feel better. That morning, getting out of bed in Geneva, an attack of dizziness had made him sway on his feet. Alarmed, he had waited until noon and called his doctor in New York.

‘Look,’ Rex Kiernan said, ‘it’s probably nothing serious. Maybe you got up too quickly. How’s your hearing?’

‘Fine. Why?’

‘Could be an inner ear problem. Want me to recommend someone over there?’

‘I haven’t the time. Anyway, I’ll be home soon.’

‘You should slow down,’ Kiernan said. ‘I keep telling you that. What is it – a year since your attack? All that trauma? Takes time. At our age the body heals more slowly …’

In Robert Brand’s opinion he had slowed down since his heart attack. At that time Kiernan had advised complete rest.

‘This is your life we’re talking about,’ he said. ‘You’re sixty-three years old. You’ve been through a terrible experience. Why don’t you use that damn great yacht of yours and take a long cruise, do nothing for a few months?’

Brand had agreed that he would. But the month-long cruise of the Mediterranean with a couple of business friends had only served to increase his sense of loss.

Trapped in a sterile and unhappy relationship for many years, Robert Brand, a handsome, energetic man, had almost abandoned hope of ever enjoying a romantic and emotional relationship with a woman. Instead he had allowed himself a succession of brief affairs, most of them unsatisfactory. Then one evening, in the bar of the Athenaeum Hotel in London, he had been introduced to Jane Summerwood.

The attraction had been immediate. She had left with friends that evening, but he had managed to track her down. And, in the ensuing weeks, they had fallen in love.

Within three months he had made up his mind. He would ask his wife for a divorce – regardless of the consequences – and marry Jane, a decision hastened by the discovery that she was pregnant. He could still remember her face, flushed with happiness, when he took her down Bond Street to buy the engagement ring.

He had told only one person of his plan, his friend Bobby Koenig. Koenig had encouraged him. ‘Go for it,’ he said. ‘You have one life. Don’t waste it.’

A month later Jane was found dead in a London park. The police, with no clues, had put it down to another senseless random murder.

And within weeks Brand, almost immobilized with grief, suffered a heart attack. At first he was forced to rest, but then, ignoring Rex Kiernan’s warnings, he had plunged back into work. And, until that morning in Geneva, felt reasonably fit.

According to the latest Fortune magazine, he was now the sixth richest man in America. A workaholic, he spent most of his time on the top floor of the thirty-storey black glass building on Madison Avenue where the Brand Corporation was based. There, he put in a fourteen-hour day, overseeing a business empire with interests in oil, shipping, hotels, food processing and drugs.

‘The Man Who Has Everything’, Business Week dubbed him in a piece that was laudatory but glaringly short of facts, for Brand never gave interviews and provided no biography for inquisitive journalists. Even the accompanying photograph was an old one.

Brand knew that success usually came either through an accident of birth or the sheer power of will. But in his case it was both. At twenty-two, with $50 million inherited from his father, he had tasted the heady fruits of power and found them to his liking.

Calculating risks to the nth degree he flew in and out of the world’s capitals making deals and increasing his fortune. He took gambles that even the biggest banks balked at. With the Pacific Rim booming, he waited until Indonesia’s currency became convertible and then invested heavily, knowing the country was rich in natural resources. Within two years his investment had tripled. He then moved into the Finnish market, which was underpriced, and doubled his money within a year. Then, anticipating the dollar’s fall, he invested heavily in other currencies.

Since Jane’s death, however, he found himself deriving less and less satisfaction from the mere making of money. He wanted someone, or something, to change his life, to set him on a new course.

Speeding down the neon-lit autoroute into Paris he lay back against the chill leather of the limousine and closed his eyes. He realized he had never felt so lonely in his life.

Georges di Marco awoke suddenly. He glanced at the clock by his bedside. It was 2.30 a.m. He had been asleep less than two hours. Touching his forehead he realized it was damp with perspiration. The dream. It was always the same. Ghosts from the past, jeering, pointing fingers. And money, stacks of it, scattering in the wind as he tried to count it. He sat up, switching on the bedside light. I’m an old man, he thought; I should be sleeping soundly. My conscience should be clear. Instead I awake in dread.

For a moment, as a spasm of nausea assailed him, he feared he might be sick, and reached for a handkerchief. What’s the matter with me? he thought, on the edge of panic. Why is this happening? He took a drink of water from the glass on his bedside table.

I must tell someone, he decided. That man with the Federal Banking Commission – Albert-Jean Cristiani – I will call him. Take him to dinner. Ask his advice. Produce the diary, perhaps. He will know what I should do. He will realize I am an honourable man.

He bunched the pillows beneath his head. Switching off the light he closed his eyes, hoping for sleep.