He’d chosen Beverley Hills as the location for his head office at the request of his third wife. She was thirty years younger than him, had been in the same school year as his daughter. She was also a professional blonde, a fitness instructor with one of those toned L.A bodies he loved to bounce about in the sack. At least he’d loved it at the start. Now they’d been together a few years the blowjobs had all but dried up and she was getting more and more reluctant to submit to his sexual power games. He was beginning to wonder whether to move on to wife number four. No hurry though, the cute little Mexican housekeeper, Juanita, was quite content to flick up the back of her skirt, let him satisfy his more unconventional urges. As long as he kept up the steady flow of expensive gifts.
He pulled onto the freeway and drove hard, along the broad boulevard, then took the turning for the coast road. He needed to let off steam. Get away from the irritations of the office. The inability of his staff to do even the simplest task grated. He checked himself. That wasn’t fair. His staff were good, loyal, reliable. It had been a mistake to employ Monsieur Blanc, that was all. His deputy director had suggested it and the man had been highly recommended. Not for the first time in his professional life, Harvey was reminded you could only rely on your own judgement. Don’t trust another person’s opinion. He couldn’t work out if Monsieur Blanc’s delaying tactics were a ploy to squeeze more money out of him or if the guy was just incompetent. Neither did a great deal to endear the man.
He parked the SUV beside a deserted stretch of highway and climbed out, looking over the ocean. The sea was a deep azure blue, white horses riding high on the waves, a fine spray coming off. No way of getting to the water, you’d have to jump out over the rocks and let yourself fall twenty feet. Looked like there was quite a current judging by the swell. A difficult climb back up to the coast road.
That decided it. Harvey pulled off his clothes and threw them in the back of the car, stood for a moment in his shorts, enjoying the warm sun on his sixty-year-old body. He walked calmly to the edge and jumped outwards. A shallow dive, in case of rocks below the surface, then a one-hour swim straight out into the ocean. Another hour to come back, depending on the current. This was his kind of work out. An unknown test for the body, a check he still had the strength and stamina he’d enjoyed in his youth. The water felt good, he could work the tension loose from his muscles, enjoy the sense of freedom he’d known as young man, swimming for California State.
And it helped him to think. The solitude focused his mind. He sensed Monsieur Blanc needed some kind of ultimatum but Harvey didn’t like to make threats. He was a man of action. No point in threatening someone, better just to get on with it. Leave the consequences as a clear warning to others.
The climb back up the rocks hurt. More than once his limbs, aching from the sustained strain of swimming against the current, threatened to relinquish their grip on the narrow ledges and cracks. He didn’t let them, willed them to pull him up the steep rock face. Exhausted but satisfied, he rolled over the top and stretched out in the sun beside his car. Two more days, that was all he was going to give Monsieur Blanc. He’d fly the company jet to London and if the man didn’t have the ten devices he’d be finished.
Harvey breathed deeply, got reluctantly into the mollycoddling car. Maybe he should just buy a second-hand army jeep. The physical effort had left him drained, but not so much he wasn’t going to try his luck with Juanita at the pool house when he got home.
19
A thousand miles away, under the dreary grey sky of a South London suburb, Jack unlatched the rotten garden gate and headed up the path to the front door. The house was looking worse than when he’d left two years ago. More paint peeling off the window ledges, a couple more tiles loose on the mossy roof. Other houses in the street seemed smarter, newly renovated into flats for young families. His dad’s dilapidated 1930s semi looked plain sorry for itself.
He leant on the buzzer, casting a quick glance round the garden, overgrown and untidy. He prayed his father was having a good day. If it was a good day there was a chance he’d have got out of bed, might even have showered and brushed his teeth. A bad day and he wouldn’t even make it to the door. Probably just be lying passed out in the hallway, surrounded by cans of cheap lager.
He’d told Amanda he’d meet her back in Cambridge. He wasn’t quite ready to introduce her to his father, wasn’t quite sure he’d ever be ready for that but especially not at this early stage. And he wasn’t exactly proud of the house his father had moved them to in his mid-teens either, the state it had fallen into.
Still no answer. He refused to remove his finger from the doorbell, knowing full well how much the sound of it irritated his father. Eventually a thumping down the stairs, a shadowy form through the glass. Door open, face unshaven, hair skew-whiff, but other than that perfectly presentable. Well, as presentable as anyone wearing a dressing gown over Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt could look.
“Jack.” He said, scratching his head as if trying to remember something. “Shouldn’t you be at Oxford?”
Jack sighed, “Cambridge dad. I’m studying at Cambridge. Thought I’d pay you a visit.” He pushed past him into the house.
“How you doing these days?” He asked, casting a critical eye about the place. The rooms could do with an airing, but other than that it wasn’t too untidy. The furniture his mother had chosen before she left was still wrapped in plastic packaging in the living room, the hallway his dad had started to paint a lurid orange in one of his drunken stupors still half painted in lurid orange.
“I see you haven’t finished redecorating,” Jack said. His dad closed the front door. “No son, been busy with a new job, would you believe it,” Jack wouldn’t believe it, but he didn’t bother saying so.
“Can I get you a drink?” He opened the fridge and pulled out a couple of beers. Jack checked his watch. nine am. He shook his head.
“Bit early for me dad, thanks. I’ll put a brew on.”
“Please yourself,” his father said, looking about in a draw for a bottle opener. He couldn’t find one and cracked the top off with his teeth instead. Two swallows and the bottle was emptied. He belched. “I’ll have a cuppa too lad if you don’t mind. Don’t suppose you bought any milk?” Jack shook his head.
“There should be some of the powdered stuff in the cupboard.” Jack pulled a jar of Carnation milk from the cupboard, the label stained and yellow with age. He heaped two teaspoons of the creamy white powder into the tea. One or two flecks of white swirled on the surface, unwilling to dissolve.
“What’s this new job then dad?” He asked, passing him the mug. His dad looked at him cautiously, his bloodshot eyes focussing, taking in his appearance for the first time. Jack was still wearing the ill-fitting suit MI6 had loaned him and full-on Robinson Crusoe beard. Looked pretty pale too. He wanted to ask if anything was the matter, but worried he might sound like a hypocrite. After all, he hadn’t asked how the boy was at any point during the last two years.
“Come upstairs, I’ll show you.” He said, “Mind the ash tray on your way up.” Jack stepped over a plate piled with fag ash on the third step and followed his father into the spare room.
“This is mission control.” His dad announced proudly. A desk was set up by the window, two more on either side. Four screens on the main desk and two computer towers beneath it. Every available surface was covered in a jumble of notebooks and pens, textbooks and ashtrays. Empty bottles of beer lay carelessly discarded and copies of the Financial Times were strewn over the floor. Jack looked at one of the screens. It showed the FTSE 100, share prices on a live feed. Another screen showed oil futures, Bloomberg updates in one corner, Reuters in another.