CHAPTER
NINETEEN: CONVERSATIONS
Satisfaction is a marvellous condition, where colours shine brighter, and blood runs a great deal faster, and Hunter once again danced up to the serried rows of newspapers at the Notting Hill Gate station newsagent to buy his morning Financeday. The day was sunny and warm, his flat was spotless after a deft blitz by Veronica, gone half an hour since after dusting and polishing and cleaning in a way to make Elaine seemed positively scruffy, and the outlook was brilliant - lunch with Alice Carew, more tender loving care overnight, and a chance to massacre the Home Secretary on the morrow before breaking Cradock on the world and attaining instant stardom. Life was good, and he was a winner.
He opened the paper and stopped short, did a double-take, and had great difficulty in restraining himself from cheering dementedly. Financeday had again done him proud - the front page splashed Wonders' planned link with Elektron, and a three column piece across the bottom of the page mapped out cross-party plans to oust Jim Small, with big Hunter bylines on both. Hunter flipped quickly to Financeday's share price pages and crowed again. Wonders was rocketing, and the paper's market commentary predicted that bid news would trigger further strong gains. He was rotating higher and higher in a virtuous circle - Hunter stories were generating Hunter gains, and the road ahead looked to be paved ever more thickly with gold.
Financeday's newsroom gave him a matching welcome. Martin Scott and Mike Naismith both rose to advance and greet him in an unparallelled show of respect, every reporter in sight seemed to be trying to catch his eye, and all the Financeday secretaries were drooling. Wealth coloured the air - every Financeday employee with two pennies to rub together held a position in Wonders, and Hunter was the man to lead them all to glory.
Scott's manner was positively deferential. ‘Can we count on follow-ups?’
Hunter nodded judiciously. ‘I'll try my best.’ He was already planning to call Ned Harris to try and tempt out a bitchy reaction to Morrissey's deal with Melnikov, and Jack Yeats should be sizzling nicely at Number Ten. Both tales were rolling stories, both would stay nicely in play just by touching base with opposing protagonists in turn. Sometimes reporting can be a piece of cake.
He dangled out a line to Harris' office, then a second to Number Ten, and made for the newsroom coffee machine. Harris and Yeats were both busy, but both would bite sooner or later during the course of the day. Meanwhile he could relax, make eyes at a Financeday girl or two, and savour the sweet taste of success.
However whilst Hunter was taking life easy, Alice Carew was making an alarmed call to Arabella Cosgrave. She had been gossipping with Veronica Finch, and had a distinct impression that Veronica had both moved in on Hunter, and intended mopping him up. She had a feeling that she had been outflanked and outsmarted by a stupid creature with more curves than sense, and it was really very provoking.
‘What am I going to do?’ Her voice was strained, and she looked around nervously every few moments. She was sitting at her boss' desk, using his telephone whilst he was gone for a meeting, and private calls were strictly taboo. ‘I'm suposed to be having lunch with him, but I don't think I can face him if he had moved that girl into his flat.’
Arabella cooed comfortingly. She had been nibbling at a late breakfast, planning a cosy little lunch at home for Jack and Lord Archell, who were cooking up some massive deal, and want to hammer it out well away from prying City eyes. ‘Don't worry about it, sweetie.’ Her voice was soothing. ‘She won't last. Richard was just a soft touch. She probably sobbed at him.’
‘You don't think I should cancel?’
‘No.’ Arabella glanced at her watch, reflecting that single girls could sometimes be a pain. Time was moving on, and she had yet to brief Maria, her housekeeper. ‘Don't let on that you know anything about it. He's not going to tell you about her, and I don't suppose he'll tell her about you. Just be your most gorgeous.’
‘You're sure?’ Alice had a gut feeling that she could outclass Veronica any day of the week, but a girl needed reassurance from time to time.
‘Look your best, and enslave him.’ Arabella paused. She really must be moving along. ‘What are you wearing?’
Alice got to her feet. She had talked for as long as she dared, and must be getting back to her desk. She caught sight of her reflection in the glass panelled office door, and squared her shoulders. ‘The same brown silk that I wore on Sunday. I thought it might touch a soft spot.’
‘Brilliant.’ Arabella beamed. Alice could really be very bright when all was said and done. ‘Be a little shy, but bold at the same time. Richard likes to fish in deep still waters.’ She giggled. ‘We'll have you both to dinner next week, and Jack and I will help you work on him. The other girl won't stand a chance.’
Hunter was sipping coffee meanwhile. His phone rang, and he picked the receiver up lazily - one should never show too much enthusiasm when counterparties should be doing the courting. But the voice was elderly, and slightly aetherial.
‘Mr. Hunter, I think we must meet again.’
Alertness instantly swept laziness away, and Hunter gripped his telephone tightly. Cradock's voice held a note of strain, and it was an alarm bell. ‘When?’
‘Today, I think.’ Cradock paused. ‘Have you completed your draft?’
‘I'll bring it with me.’
‘Can you be at Green Park underground, the parkside entrance, at three?’
Hunter glanced at his watch and grunted an affirmation. He was due to meet Alice at one. Now he would have to mop up both Harris and Yeats before he left. He listened, waiting for further instructions, realised that the line had gone dead, and began to punch out Harris' number. It was time to get moving, and sharpish.
Harris' secretary was charm itself, but rather evasive. ‘Mr. Harris is tied up at the moment. I'm sure he'll call you soon.’
Hunter was in no mood for fobs. He clutched at inspiration, snapping his words. ‘I've got to get this away by lunchtime. Tell him Morrissey is bragging about sharpening an hatchet.’
He heard Harris guffaw: it was plain that Croesus had been listening. ‘Wrong tack, Richard. You're barking up the wrong tree.’
Hunter immediately modifies snappishness to respectful affability. Harris' intervention suggested that something had changed. Perhaps he had switched directions, perhaps he would unveil a whole juicy new instalment. He fires a ranging question. ‘Are you still long on calls?’
Harris sounded amused. ‘I'm still raking in cash.’
Hunter took a deep breath. All Financeday, from Charlie Archell downwards, was now riding on his coat-tails, and timing might hammer a hard line between fortune and failure. ‘Are you still going to bale out?’
‘Maybe.’
Hunter's mind whirled into overdrive. Harris was tacking at speed, and he must stay inside the wind. ‘What about Melnikov? Is he still a crook?’
‘Maybe.’
Hunter bit his lip. Monosyllabic evasions were no basis for any kind of story. ‘Come on, Ned.’
Harris chuckled. ‘My man in Financeday says you're all punting the stock.’
Hunter bridles. ‘So are you.’
‘True, but I'm a professional.’ Harris chuckled again - he was plainly enjoying himself greatly. ‘Maybe my friends in Moscow were a bit bitchy about him.’
‘You mean he's not a crook?’
‘Maybe we misjudged him.’
This was a wholly new game, and Hunter knew he must tread as lightly as a hunting cat. He hesitated. ‘Do you mean you'll stay with it?’
‘With Wonders?’ Harris paused. ‘Maybe.’
Hunter was baffled.
‘Well, it's possible I got it wrong.’ Harris paused again, as though weighing his words. ‘We took another look at the deal, and we began to wonder about what was coming out of Moscow, so we took fresh soundings, and we found a bit of a power struggle - people spinning porkies. That changed our perceptions quite a bit, and we realised that we'd built ourselves quite a tidy position, so we decided to sit tight.’
‘Tidy?’ Now Hunter was on tenterhooks. Harris was not only talking a completely new language, but also sounded as though he might well have cut a deal with Morrissey. Voltes might have faced, and Wonders could be shining even brighter. He must know more. ‘Would you stick with it?’
‘Why not?’
‘Chums with Bill?’
‘Morrissey's a very smart manager.’ Harris' voice was unctious. ‘You can quote me on that.’
Hunter lets out his breath in a long sigh of joy. This was a scooplet to shine Hunter even brighter and send Wonders spinning even higher, and he was already both sketching his follow-up piece in his mind, and counting mushrooming profits. He would deftly flag Harris changing direction, and roses would bloom everywhere.
But Harris was still speaking, and unction had now swollen into a positive river of self-satisfaction. ‘We'll probably be so busy counting our profits that we'll also take a break on politicking.’
Hunter swallowed hard. Things had begun to move so fast, and change so rapidly, that he was having trouble keeping his feet on the ground. He made a questioning noise - it was all that he could manage.
Harris paused for a moment before replying. ‘Maybe we'll kiss and make up with Jim.’
Hunter had difficulty taking in what he was hearing. ‘What about your putsch?’
‘Seemed your story made him see the light.’
‘Really?’ Hunter filled with the glow of a man helping to shape history. ‘My story?’
‘Politics is the art of the pragmatic.’ Harris sounded like a cat eating cream. ‘We waved a stick, he saw the light. Call Jim Yeats - he should already be talking peace and reconciliation.’ He paused again, for rather longer this time, and now his tone turned harder, and even subtly menacing. ‘And don't forget - I want Cradock to call me before he does anything stupid.’
The telephone disconnected, and Hunter realised that he was listening to a void. He sat, still holding his receiver, and stared at the blank screen in front of him, caught between euphoria and alarm. Harris had presented him with a double scoop. But he had also hinted a threat, and danger, undefined but all the more menacing for its vagueness, clouded the air. Peril prowled, and he needed to be wary.
He was lost for a moment, spinning both stories in his mind as he struggled to keep this new anxiety at bay, and then returned to reality. Time was rolling on. He must talk to Yeats, secure confirmation from Number Ten, and bash out both pieces at speed before heading for lunch. Cradock would only explode into life when he meets the Home Secretary, and meanwhile Harris could stuff his threats.
Jack Yeats was positively affable, providing immediate confirmation. ‘Ned's right. Jim was rather worried when he read your story about unhappy backbenchers, so he made a few calls. People expressed concerns about what they saw as a lack of commitment to sterling, and he took them aboard.’
Hunter frowned. Butcher and Harris and friends have been plotting blood and assassination, and here Number Ten was waving the whole business away as though it had never amounted to anything more than a very small storm in a doll's teacup. ‘Everybody loves everybody else again?’
‘Oh, Richard.’ Yeats' voice was chiding. All risks of any return to the Treasury had receded, the sun was shining, and he was taking the afternoon off for a leisurely round of golf with a man from the Wall Street Journal. ‘Politics is a world of mirrors, where nothing is ever quite the way you think it is. We're really a very united government, a big, happy family, deep, deep down. We have tiffs from time to time - people sometimes get the wrong end of a stick. But we always manage to sort things out in the end.’
He hung up with a light laugh, but Hunter smiled to himself grimly. Cradock was coming, and some things might prove unsortable. He squared up to his keyboard, and began to bash his copy out at speed.
However whilst Hunter might have dismissed Harris' remark about Cradock as merely a vague menace, two other men were planning much more concrete action.
‘They're meeting this afternoon.’ The voice was male, abrupt and harsh. ‘Cradock just called him.’
‘Get rid of them.’ The second voice was clipped, with a military sharpness, but also sounded weary.
‘Both of them?’ The harsh voice sounded surprised.
‘One of them, both of them, do what you have to do.’ The man with the clipped voice was seated in a small office, ramrod straight in dark suit, spotless white shirt and regimental tie, military to his roots. A second man, chubby, smoking a cigar and florid in a check suit of a kind popular with racetrack bookies, sat facing him. ‘Just don't lose them again.’
The chubby man made a face. ‘I'm not sure we can afford Hunter.’
‘You don't have much choice.’ The military man looked fierce. ‘This was our first lead since the Russians debugged him. We might not get another chance. We must get Cradock away today. Hunter might get caught in the cross-fire.’
The chubby man shrugged. ‘We'll pay for Cradock.’
The military man smiled thinly. ‘I'll bill you for Hunter.’ He paused. ‘We don't usually have any problems collecting our debts.’
Ben Butcher, the man with the cigar, winced. ‘I don't suppose that you do.’ He sighed, and blew a couple of small and rather doleful smoke rings. Expensive bills might seem painful, but inaction would surely trigger very much greater peril. He was exhausted after a night spent negotiating peace terms with Number Ten, but it was no time to waver. A boil must be lanced, and action must be immediate.
Meanwhile Hunter wrote both his stories in record time, signed them off to the newsdesk, and was out of the Financeday building before anyone could entrap him. Harris backing the Wonders' board might well make the front again, whilst reconciliation along the corridors of power would make a meaty little piece as well. He should be able to count on a couple of bylines, he was lunching with Alice Carew, Cradock was moving, and the day was a glory.
He travelled to the Foreign Office by cab, and Alice was already waiting on the pavement outside, a dream girl, in the same brown silk dress as at their first encounter. She smiled as the cab drew into the curb, a tall girl with lustrous dark hair and luminous eyes and the face of a mediaeval madonna, and Hunter's heart leaped within him, because suddenly it was a magic moment.
He paid the cab driver, and they stood looking at each other, and her smile was warm, and enfolding, and she held out her hands to him, and it was a moment of truth. This was a girl in a million, a girl to be proud of, a girl to win, and cherish for life.
They walked to the Institute of Directors, still holding hands, and Alice smiled at him from time to time as he outlined his conversations with Harris and Yeats, and Hunter felt as though he was floating on a golden cloud. Alice was a girl for a lifetime, for domesticity, and children and settling down, and he was astonished, because it was many, many years since he had entertained this kind of dream.
They swept up the steps to the Institute of Directors, and Hunter swelled with pride as men stared at Alice in open admiration. Nobody had ever admired Elaine with such respect, though one or two might have stared at her with lust, and nobody could be expected to respect Veronica at all. Alice was a winner, and they would travel together into a future lined with triumphs.
The Institute diningroom was half empty, a very fitting place for a tryst, and the manager was plainly impressed. He insisted on fussing over them personally, hiding them behind a huge potted palm where they could be quite private, though not before several more men had stared with open envy, and a couple of women diners had inspected Alice with the cool admiration that successful women grant their betters.
Hunter was charming and urbane. He talked Alice into lunching on lobster salad, with an accompanying glass of chablis, and Alice smiled at him and reflected to herself that Arabella was really rather a shallow girl, because only somebody rather silly could have ditched someone as nice as Hunter for a man as arrogant and loud and aggressive as Jack Cosgrave. Of course Jack was rich, with his big house in Kensington, not to mention a weekend retreat in the Chilterns, and a holiday villa in Spain, but wealth was not everything. Perhaps a good soulmate could persuade Hunter to give up commenting, and start making a place for himself in the world. She judged that he might make a good merchant banker, with a nice home somewhere central, a couple of boys at Eton, and maybe a couple of girls at the French Lycee, a country home somewhere between London and Dover – because Alice had studied at the Sorbonne and spoke fluent French, and maybe a holiday home somewhere along the Loire Valley, and she smiled, because she had a feeling that she could be the making of him, if only she could send Veronica packing.
But Veronica was never mentioned. Hunter did wonder momentarily how he would move her out, because it was plain now that he must dump her soon. But it was not something pressing. He would let her stay on for a day or two, until Cradock made it into print, and then the poor girl would be on a plane. However he would feel no remorse, because life was a hard slog. Veronica would have to be resilient, and find her future elsewhere.
However whilst Hunter dreamed of building a future based on Cradock, Charlie Archell was shaping rather different plans. He was lunching at Jack Cosgrave's Kensington home with Lady Archell - better known as Bess to her friends - to ensure privacy, because the IT deal was still wide open, and he needed to firm up financing details whilst ministers make decisions. But now he was confident that he could use Hunter to tuck Jim Small into his bag, because he would have the PM across a barrel.
The Cosgrave's Filipina housekeeper served poached salmon and asparagus, and both Archell and Cosgrave took pains to keep their conversation deliberately light, because they were socialising ahead of negotiating. Jack retailed an indiscretion by a banker with more libido than sense, and Charlie countered by describing Hunter's narrow escape from Treasury entrapment.
Arabella listened closely, because Hunter's prospects were plainly on the up and up. She knew that Alice fancied him, and she had a fondness for match-making.
‘Poor Richard,’ she cooed. ‘He's needs a good woman. He has such a soft heart.’
Archell smiled urbanely. Hunter needed rehoming. Cosgrave signalled to the housekeeper to serve dessert - creme a l'anglaise dotted with wild strawberries from the Cosgrave's country estate. He was impatient to talk business, but knew that must not rush - Charlie Archell was a prize catch, and must be played with loving care.
The Filipina brought coffee and brandy, and Arabella and Bess Archell prepared to withdraw. Now it was time for the men to discuss serious matters, and they would have a good gossip in the conservatory.
Cosgrave poured two very large measures as Archell ran through his financing needs. The IT deal would be big, a licence to print money, and a banking plum. Merchant bankers from New York to Nagasaki would drool with envy.
However Archell only sipped at his glass. Jack might be keen, but deals needed partners. He stared at Cosgrave over the rim of his glass and decided to be direct. ‘Do you think Richard would make a good banker?’
Cosgrave's celebratory smile stiffened a little, and his eyebrows furrowed with surprise. He waited, switching instantly from celebration mode to caution. Archell plainly had something up his sleeve. Strings might well be attached.
Archell tried again. He needed an honest opinion, without having to show too much of his hand. ‘Top table material?’
Cosgrave nodded warily. Now Archell was talking as though he wanted to put a man on his board, and scouting dangerous ground. Perhaps Financeday was planning to enter banking.
‘Could go far?’
Cosgrave nodded again. Hunter was a bright boy, but not that bright. Not as bright as himself, anyway.
Archell swirled his glass around again, and mused for a moment. Cosgrave was being a pain, and he must open his book, even if it meant leading the bidding. He cleared his throat. ‘We've got a problem, Jack. Richard’s got something coming up that could put a knife to Jim’s throat.’
Cosgrave began to see light. ‘How sharp?’
Archell did not flinch. ‘Very sharp indeed. He’s uncovered some nasty skeletons from the past. Terry Manning wants to go banco, and blood may flow.’
Cosgrave was silent for a moment.This was the first time he had ever heard of Hunter possessing real political power. Then he spoke slowly, because he had many irons in many fires, and some were heating on government coals. ‘You want to trade him with Jim?’
Archell nodded. ‘I want to find him a good home.’
Now Cosgrave understood completely. ‘You want to muzzle and rehome him.’
‘Somewhere very nice indeed.’
‘City fat cat?’
‘Merchant banker.’
Both men beamed at each other, because now all tension had dissipated. A favour was being sought, and a price would have to paid, and quantum was the only question.
Archell drained his glass. ‘He could cut his teeth on the IT deal.’
Cosgrave reacheed for his decanter. ‘Package him with your financing and we'll make him senior account executive.’
‘Climbing the ladder?’
‘Boardroom inside twelve months.’
‘Top whack?’
Cosgrave ran Financeday's operations quickly through his mind. This was a time to seek a grand slam. He beamed a sharklike merchant banker beam.
‘We’ll push him past seven big ones at the end of his first year if you throw in your pension funds ...’
Financeday's pension funds were very big business, and presently managed by Cosgrave's main City rival. A pool waited to be scooped.
Archell beamed. ‘Lock stock and barrel.’
Cosgrave filled both glasses, and the two men raised them high. They were binding a union of minds and resources, with Hunter as seal, and all would prosper. He made a note to brief Arabella, without giving away too many details. Alice Carew was a nice girl, one of the best, and a happy match would both tie Hunter tight, and help pave a golden Cosgrave path to glory.