Grantchester Grind

'Him? You call an ex-Attorney fucking General over here a good source? Those shysters can't barely spell their names they're so dumb.'

'Sure Don't have to spell what Karl K. and Ross Skundler signed their sworn names to,' said Schnabel. 'Just read it out and you'll go down twelve to twenty. Stateside more like ninety-nine and some. They've got a containment unit for RICOs, place called Marian. Real safe down there. No one gets you till the morticians are sent for.'

There was a long silence while Edgar Hartang digested this information and felt sick. 'What's with this Rico?' he asked.

'Racketeering and Incitement to Corruption Act. But you know that, Mr Hartang. Like tiny mesh for big fishes and you don't ever come out.'

Hartang said nothing. He was thinking of a way out.

'Another thing I have to advise. I wouldn't be thinking of taking a powder.'

'Powder? What the fuck you talking about, powder?'

'Like trying to leave the country. There's too much known about another sort of powder. Like the talcum you flew in from Venezuela June fifteenth 1987. Or the load shipped out of Ecuador to Miami November eleven '89. Like it's all here and no loopholes. So if you are thinking of Learing it some place, don't. Ross Skundler saw that situation coming and he bought himself some more life insurance. Like a miniature video in your bathroom so he knows who he's working for. Bald guy without glasses, uncircumcised, got a mole on his right shoulder, appendix scar, gives himself a hand job with pictures of little boys. You know anyone like that, Mr Hartang? Because if you do, you'd better pay your forty million and be thankful.'

'Forty million? Jesus.' He paused and looked venomously at the lawyer. 'Schnabel, just who are you working for? Me or fucking them?'

Schnabel sighed. It was always like this with mobsters. Consequences had to be spelt out for them when they were in deep shit. 'Mr Hartang,' he said patiently, 'I am working for myself and you have hired me to lay it on the line so you can make a rational choice. If you want me to feed you a weather report says it's going to be sunshine all day and every day for ever and ever and only rain nights, that's fine with me only I lose a valuable client whose doing all the time he's got left and I don't earn my regular fees when he's in trouble again. That is how it is. I just want you to make a rational decision is all. I've given you the information. You make a choice. I cannot do it for you.'

'You have,' said Hartang bitterly. 'Like forty fucking million and you call that a rational choice?'

'Matter of fact, no. I call it a necessity. Like of life.'

'Shit,' said Hartang, with his usual economy.

'And just one more thing, Mr Hartang,' said Schnabel. 'A minor matter but it's down in black and white. You ever been in Damascus, Syria? Khartoum, Sudan? That neck of the woods?'

A grunt from Hartang signified that he could have been.

'Ever had drinks with a guy called Carlos?'

'Of course I've had drinks with hundreds of guys called Carlos. I do business with South America. You think I can avoid having drinks with Carloses?'

'Just enquiring, Mr Hartang. Abu Nidal mean anything to you? Like you bank-rolled one or two of their operations for insurance in the Arab world? You got friends in mighty strange places but I don't think they'll help you in this situation.'

'So what exactly are you trying to tell me, Schnabel? Tell it like it is.'

'Like it is is this,' said Schnabel. 'You pay the forty million plus all costs, you buy yourself immunity in London. Money comes in and no one asks why. Bank of England is happy you're such a big investor in Britain. Chancellor of the Exchequer is in love with you because you pay some taxes and everyone loves you because you're respectable and have helped a Cambridge college out. Even Bolsover loves you, and that's difficult with what you've called him. You pay our fees and we all love you. Right?' He paused for a moment and then went on. 'But you take the talcum route and nobody is going to love you. British Government, the United States Attorney General and the FBI and of course the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, but you knew that, didn't you, Mr Hartang? You've made enemies, and with friends like Carlos and Abu Nidal you could be in worse places than Marian, Illinois. There's some story going the rounds the Israelis have the idea you've been buying insurance with some bad guys, and a bomb explodes in Tel Aviv. With the video Ross Skundler took you can have all the plastic surgery in the world, and that includes a sex-change operation, and they're still going to get you. Mossad, Mr Hartang, Mossad.'

The sweat was pouring down Hartang's face now. He took another pill and Schnabel went on. 'Just a rumour of course and maybe there's no truth in it but if there is, I'd say you're in deeper shit than you know. I don't say it is but rumour has it that way. And if you don't believe me, you take a look out the window at the two cars out there, because one thing is as certain as death itself, those guys aren't Transworld groupies, you better believe me.'

By the time he left the building Schnabel felt good. 'He's paying,' he told Feuchtwangler and Bolsover when he got back to the office. 'Through the nose. Those two cars and the private heavies in them were a good idea of yours, Bolsover. I have to hand it to you. Put them down to the bastard's expenses.'

'What's all this about Skundler's video?' asked Feuchtwangler. 'First I heard of it.'

But Schnabel only smiled enigmatically and was thoughtful. 'Let's go some place for coffee,' he said. 'I think our own position needs considering.'

Feuchtwangler and Bolsover nodded. The same thought had crossed their minds. They went out into the street and took a taxi.

'The point we've got to bear in mind is that we are dealing with a man who's lost all sense of reality,' said Schnabel.

'Genius tends to,' said Feuchtwangler. 'And financially, that's what he is. He's got more money than sense and he's lost what little sense he ever possessed. He has become a no-hoper and a loner.'

'Precisely my point. And the investigation of his affairs isn't going to stop with him. He's involving us. All right, we merely represent him legally but the shit about to hit the fan is likely to cover us too. I think we are going to have to start our own negotiations with certain influential authorities ourselves.'

'He'll kill us if he finds out,' said Bolsover.

Schnabel shook his head. 'He isn't going to find out, and he's going to be too scared to think at all clearly.'

'In short we are going to trade. I take it that is your proposition,' said Feuchtwangler.

'We are going to cover ourselves and, if my conversations with Lord Tankerell are anything to go by, and I think they are, the situation can be contained without too much trouble. Which is what I told Hartang just now.'

'You old fox, you've started negotiations already,' Bolsover said.

But Schnabel only smiled enigmatically again.

There was hardly a flicker of a smile on the Praelector's face when Mr Retter and Mr Wyve brought him the news. 'Forty million pounds? Are you absolutely sure? It's quite extraordinary. Transworld Television must be coining it.'

'I think you could almost literally put it like that,' said Mr Wyve, 'and Edgar Hartang is, without any qualifications, filthy rich.'

'And to think that it all comes from television programmes about whales and dolphins,' said the Praelector. 'I saw the most interesting programme the other day about bears in Alaska. They wade out into rivers and catch leaping salmon. One would not think a bear had so much quickness of eye and hand. Or should I say paw? Most remarkable. But then so many wonders of nature depend on something approaching brilliance in the most unexpected places. I once read Darwin, and while I found it hard going, I think I learnt what he meant by the survival of the species.'

'That,' said Mr Retter as they walked solemnly but with joy in their hearts across the Fellows' Garden, 'that is a quite remarkable old gentleman. I use the word in its best sense. Did you notice how tactfully he had forgotten everything that madman Kudzuvine had said onto the tape recorder. And he read both affidavits most carefully too and yet he has put all the filth out of his mind. It has been a privilege to have worked with him.'