Ghost listened intently. John Rupert said merely, ‘Expand.’
‘Well...’ I collected a few thoughts. ‘When I came to you... sought you out... I knew the names of three of the Traders, and I didn’t tell you them because...’
‘Because,’ Ghost said disapprovingly, as I hesitated, ‘you sentimentally wanted to save them from prosecution as they hadn’t killed you when they had the opportunity. Correct?’
‘I guess so.’
‘And?’
‘And that was fact, but what I can tell you now is inference and supposition.’
‘Glad to have them,’ John Rupert said with mock formality. ‘Fire away.’
‘You may ridicule...’
‘Leave that to us.’
‘The Unified Traders...’ I said slowly. ‘Well, these Unified Traders, it seems to me, are more amateur than professional. That’s to say, they’re dishonourable enough in intent, but not slick or hard enough in performance. For instance, leaving their folder of essential information lying about for so long was plain stupid, so was engaging Kris to collect it. On the surface it seemed a reasonable quid pro quo, as Kris would have done more or less anything in exchange for a chance to fly through a hurricane.’
John Rupert nodded.
I said, ‘Caspar Harvey and Robin Darcy are very long-time colleagues, and apart from Harvey’s barley and Darcy’s turf farm, they are both used to handling things in small packets. Harvey sells birdseed and Darcy sells vacuum-packed exotic mushrooms. Darcy set up a small mushroom operation on Trox Island, but I was told, second-hand, by full-scale mushroom growers, that the Trox operation was too small to succeed. In the end it was used, as I told you before, to frighten away the whole population of the island. But it was their ability to think small that started them off, I reckon, on arranging the introduction of buyers to sellers of tiny amounts of radioactive materials.’
John Rupert said, ‘I suppose if you put enough small packets together you get a haystack.’
‘Or a bomb,’ said Ghost.
‘Or enough of a bomb,’ I said mildly, ‘to raise the bargaining power of that amount. But I don’t think the Traders actually handle the uranium or plutonium themselves. It’s very dangerous stuff. But they do have small-scale know-how.’
I stopped, but both men wanted more.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘and frankly I’m guessing, that Darcy recruited Caspar Harvey as a Trader, and Harvey drew in Oliver Quigley and George Loricroft... and for a while the middlemen operation ran smoothly and immensely profitably with the three Traders across the Atlantic, each of the group of six acting on the old musketeers’ principle of “All for one and one for all”.’
Ghost, his eyes shrewdly narrowed, asked ‘Why did the original Traders need more recruits? Why didn’t Darcy and Harvey keep the proceeds to themselves?’
‘I think...’ I found all my thoughts coming out as speculations. ‘I think Harvey found Loricroft had a gift for sniffing out the truffles. George Loricroft has travelled all over Europe — and especially throughout Germany — telling his wife lies about the local weather to explain why he hadn’t been where he was supposed to have been, and always treating her as an idiot, and in fact it’s possible that all those places he lied about were trading posts. They were nearly all in Germany, and as Loricroft is internationally known as a racehorse trainer, there is nowhere in the world more suitable or less conspicuous for him to trade and exchange information than on racecourses.’
I looked down at my shoes, dodging their undoubted incredulity, but I’d gone too far to withdraw.
‘I told you I could remember only Hippostat as a word in the heading of one of the letters, but I know another. It came to me when I wasn’t concentrating... it just drifted back from my subconscious memory.’
Ghost said impatiently, ‘What is it?’
‘Well...’ I looked up, ‘it’s Rennbahn. It’s Baden-Baden Rennbahn.’
John Rupert smiled vividly. ‘And do you know what Rennbahn means?’
‘Racecourse,’ I said. ‘I’ve looked it up. Baden-Baden Racecourse. It was written in German script in a letter in another language that I didn’t know.’
‘We have German dictionaries downstairs, and every other sort of dictionary you care to mention,’ John Rupert said. ‘Would you remember any more if you... er... browsed?’
I said doubtfully, ‘I don’t know.’
‘We can try.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Ghost said, ‘tell us about the other two Traders in Florida, Robin Darcy’s colleagues.’
‘They’re in the Cayman Islands, not Florida,’ I explained, and described Michael and Amy Ford. ‘And they may be in the game because of idealism or political motives... I simply can’t tell, but they also may be the original Traders. In any case, they are, I’d say, the richest of the whole group.’
‘Why do you think so?’ Ghost wanted to know.
‘I stayed in their house... and Amy’s aeroplane, that we ditched in the hurricane, that plane was a perfect beauty. They said Amy had sold it to Darcy.’
‘But you doubt it?’ John Rupert asked.
‘Well, I do, yes. But that’s only an impression. None of them seemed to be terribly upset by losing it. I don’t know about insurance. None of them mentioned it.’
There was a pause. John Rupert then said, ‘Is that the lot?’ and prepared to rise, and I said with diffidence, ‘One more thing...’
‘Yes?’ He relaxed in his chair, attention unending.
I picked at my fingers. ‘Well... it’s only that the Unified Trading Company doesn’t have a boss. They don’t have a hierarchy.’
‘Are you sure?’ John Rupert enquired doubtfully. ‘Every organisation I’ve ever dealt with has had a hierarchy.’
‘I’m sure,’ I nodded. ‘In an ordinary company, the lower members report upwards, and then receive their instructions from above. But in the Unified Trading Company they each act on their own ideas and report afterwards what they’ve done. They act first and tell the others after. As a result they duplicate some things and omit others entirely, and they get in a muddle.’
Both John Rupert and Ghost were showing more and more doubt.
‘If both of you had been for a long time accustomed to rule,’ I said, ‘which of you would make the decisions?’
They answered quickly and in unison, ‘I would.’
‘Who would?’ I asked. ‘Which of you would give commands?’
‘I would.’ They answered as one again, but more slowly, and then both of them looked thoughtful.
‘The Traders so far identifiable,’ I remarked, ‘have each run their own business, and are accustomed to command. Michael Ford owned and ran a chain of profitable gymnasiums. His wife Amy made a fortune from video rental stores. Robin Darcy farms turf, which in Florida is like growing gold. Caspar Harvey too is a farmer, but also makes trillions out of birdseed. Both George Loricroft and Oliver Quigley are racehorse trainers and both succeed only by controlling their workforce. All of those six people are accustomed to making the decisions. They’re not used to being told what to do. Also they don’t like being told what to do, so they do what they think is best, independently. And because of that, things, overall, go wrong.’
‘It’s an interesting theory,’ Ghost said.
‘For instance,’ I said, ‘Robin Darcy expected Kris to be able to pick up the folder without difficulty because he’d left it in a desk, but someone else, unknown to him, had removed the desk and installed a safe, using Darcy’s own password. Like I said, they get things wrong, and Kris didn’t find the folder at all.’
I was fast running out of energy and felt sore along the protesting ribs. More than ready to leave, I asked, ‘Is there anything else I can do? If not...’