Venom Business Page 22

  “So?”

  “I wonder how she did it.”

  “Ask her,” Raynaud said.

  Pierce glanced at his watch. “I did. Michele, this is enough. Any more and I’ll have a stiff neck.”

  “But Dickie, it’s only been an hour.”

  “I’m getting a stiff neck already.”

  “But, Dickie—”

  “Call you early next,” Pierce said, standing up from the chair and stretching. “Really.”

  She paused, and dropped her arms. “All right,” she said. “If that’s what you want.” She turned to Raynaud. “I’ve been trying to get this finished for weeks. Richard never lets me finish it.”

  “That’s just the way Richard is,” Raynaud said.

  She nodded and packed up her paints.

  When they were alone, Richard said, “Nice girl, Michele. Keeps it warm for you. About once a month, we have a time together. Very artistic, that girl.”

  Pierce glanced at his watch and walked to the window. He stood there, staring out across the street, at the whitewashed houses of Belgravia, set back behind wrought-iron fences.

  “Shitty view from here,” he said. “Ought to move. Seriously, I’m worried about Dominique.”

  “Why?”

  “I keep wondering where she gets her stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “She’s an addict,” Richard said. “Heroin. She must have a supply somewhere.”

  “Not you?”

  “Hell, no.” He frowned, looking out the window. “And how does an addict and a prostitute get into England from France? I keep wondering about that, too.”

  “You asked her,” Raynaud reminded him.

  “Yes. She gave me a queer story about some powerful friend in Paris, who arranged it. Very mysterious story.”

  “Maybe it’s true.”

  “Maybe,” Pierce said doubtfully. “But I’d believe her more if she said she’d given a bit to the customs man at Heathrow. Hello. What’s this?”

  “What?”

  Pierce was pointing out the window. Raynaud, sitting on a couch across the room, could not see. He stood and came over.

  “Funny bloke in a car across the street,” Pierce said. “Looks like he has a—”

  The first gunshot shattered the glass in front of them. Raynaud grabbed Richard and pulled him down as the second and third shots crashed into the room. Broken glass fell down over their heads.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Pierce started to get up.

  “Don’t move!”

  Raynaud held him down. They waited.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Don’t get up. That’s what he’s waiting for.”

  They lay on the floor for a long time. Then Raynaud said, “Where was the car? I didn’t see it.”

  “Blue car. Across the street. Looked foreign: a Fiat or Renault or something.”

  “All right. You stay here. I’ll check from the bathroom.”

  “Son of a—”

  “Don’t move. Whatever you do, stay right here on the floor. Understand?”

  Richard was beginning to tremble. “All right.”

  Raynaud crawled out of the living room to the kitchen, then debated standing up. Not wise, he decided: there might be more than one. The rear of the house faced an alleyway; another man might be there. He crawled into the bedroom, and then the bathroom. Cautiously, he got up just as he heard the sound of an engine coming to life. He looked out and saw a blue car on the street below driving away. He squinted, and saw the license: XJ 1189.

  The car drove away without stopping. That meant it was probably one man. Just to be sure, he crawled back to the kitchen and peered cautiously out the window at the mews behind. Empty.

  He stood, stretched, and walked back into the living room. Richard was standing among the broken glass, brushing it off his sleeves.

  “Christ, what a mess,” he said. “You see who it was?”

  “No.”

  “Christ.” He bent over and gingerly rubbed his hair. Small bright flecks of glass fell to the floor. “Man could get hurt.”

  “Apparently that was the idea,” Raynaud said. He walked to the window and examined the shattered glass still in the frames. Three bullets had passed through; one of the holes was clean. He touched the cone-shaped depression and shook his head. A high-powered rifle, probably with a telescopic sight.

  “Where did the shots come from? Show me.”

  Pierce went to the window. “Down there,” he said, pointing across the street. “The car was parked there and there was a bloke leaning out with a brownish stick in his hands. At least, it looked like a stick.”

  “The man saw you?”

  “Obviously. I was staring at him for several seconds. It was strange, you see…a man in a car with a stick. Very odd.”

  “Yes,” Raynaud said, frowning.

  “You seem puzzled.”

  “I am.”

  “Come on, I need a drink. A big one. What puzzles you?”

  “I’m wondering,” Raynaud said, “why he missed.”

  “Thank you,” Pierce said. “Thanks very much.”

  “What I mean is that fellow had a high-powered rifle, and plenty of time to get off his shots. Also, he was cool—he didn’t take off as soon as he’d squeezed the trigger. He waited awhile.”

  “So what? Maybe he was stupid.”

  Raynaud shook his head and watched Richard pour the drinks.

  “No,” Raynaud said. “He wasn’t stupid.”

  He was thinking back over the incident. Richard had been standing by the window for several seconds. The first shot was fired, and there was a pause. Quite a long pause—long enough for Raynaud to cross the room and pull Richard down. How long would that be? Perhaps as long as three seconds, perhaps four.

  Then there had been two more shots in rapid succession, after Richard was down.

  Why had the man waited?

  There was only one logical answer: the man wasn’t really trying to kill Richard. Just to scare him. Or, to convince Raynaud…

  Raynaud watched Richard as he gulped back three fingers of scotch without ice, and shudder as the liquid hit his stomach.

  “Jesus,” Pierce said. “What a mess.”

  “You know who it was?”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the car.”

  “No. Never seen him before.”

  “Was he the same man who followed us the other night?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so.” He poured himself more scotch.

  Raynaud watched him. “Who’s after you, Richard?”

  “After me? Why should anybody be after me?” He laughed.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, neither do I.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Raynaud said.

  Pierce laughed. “Have another drink, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Raynaud shook his head. “Call the police.”

  Pierce put his glass down sharply. “The police? Why?”

  “Because,” Raynaud said, “someone has just tried to murder you, that’s why.”

  “I don’t think it’s serious,” Pierce said, turning away and lighting a cigarette. “The police aren’t necessary.”

  “Is there any reason why you don’t want the police called in?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Then call them.”

  “And have a bunch of muddy coppers tramping through the flat, acting very busy as they measure and take photographs? And have the reporters as well. The News of the World speculating on which of my lady friends planned it all?”

  “You think it was a woman?”

  “No. But other people might.”

  “Then it’s the publicity you’re worried about?”

  “I’m not worried,” Pierce said, “about anything. I just don’t want to be bothered, is all.”

  “If you’ll pardon my saying so, you’ve never been worried about a scandal
before.”

  Pierce sucked on his cigarette. “This is different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is, that’s all.”

  “But why?”

  “Look,” Pierce said, “I can’t explain it to you now. But there are very good reasons for avoiding the police and the publicity. Very important and immediate reasons.”

  Raynaud said, “Your business.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What about your business?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  Raynaud sat down and said, “If you don’t call the police, I will.”

  “Why, Charles?”

  “Because someone has tried to murder you. It’s unnatural—”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Pierce said. “If you want to call the police so fucking much—”

  He stopped, picked up the phone, and dialed swiftly.

  Strike one, Raynaud thought: for playing the song and dance about your business, for hesitating, for beating around the bush, and for not showing the slightest distress—not the least tremor of the hands holding the drink—at the attempted murder. Most people are terrified for hours after a murder attempt. They tremble; they can hardly talk; they mutter and mumble and move in a daze.

  And strike two, for knowing the telephone number of the police without looking it up or asking the operator. Nobody knew the number of the police. People simply didn’t carry that information around in their heads.

  Unless they expected the call.

  “Hello,” Richard said, “my name is Richard Pierce and I live at…”

  Raynaud turned away. This was getting crazier and crazier. Nothing made sense, anymore. Nothing at all.

  When the police came, Pierce seemed to lose all reluctance and hesitation to discuss the shooting. He described it vividly, with a wealth of detail—the kind of logical, clear detail that the average man cannot summon up after someone has shot at him.

  He also managed to make Raynaud a witness to the proceedings. He made certain the police got Raynaud’s name, age, passport number—the whole works. He did it in a casual way, but he did it effectively. The police grilled Raynaud for fifteen or twenty minutes, asking him what he had seen and what he had done. Raynaud told them everything, as it had happened.

  Except for the license number. That he held back.

  There were four policemen, who spoke in brisk, clipped accents. One was a photographer, who took several pictures. They departed in half an hour, after agreeing with Richard that there should be no publicity, that this was a matter for delicacy and tact.

  When they were gone, Pierce said, “Well now. Satisfied?”

  “Yes,” Raynaud said. There was nothing else to say.

  “How about a drink?”

  “I could use one.”

  “You know,” Richard said, “I got to thinking, while the police were here…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking that you were underpaid.”

  Raynaud shrugged. But in the back of his mind, a warning bell rang.

  “I was thinking that there might be considerable danger to yourself, as well. You are taking a risk. You should be well paid.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Two thousand a day,” Pierce said.

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  Raynaud said nothing. Pierce looked at the broken glass, the shattered window.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m afraid, Charles. Really afraid. I need help.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d better explain.”

  Pierce continued to stare at the window.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve kept information from you for too long. You deserve to know. But serious talk demands serious drinking. Are you game for a pub crawl?”

  “If you insist.”

  Pierce grinned. “I do,” he said.

  Pierce informed him before they started, with the air of a man about to climb Everest, that there were seven thousand pubs in London. They began at his local, a pub around the corner called the Monkey’s Paw. It was new inside, the decor modern and nondescript. Pierce mourned the passing of the old, dark-wood interior over a pint of best bitter. When they finished the drinks, they moved on, driving in Pierce’s Maserati.

  Raynaud let Pierce do the talking. He was being very oblique, choosing his words carefully. But Raynaud knew that later, with more liquor, Pierce would loosen up.

  “Let me ask you,” Pierce said, as he drove. “Why should I be interested in oil mining in the North Sea?”

  “Profit?”

  Pierce shook his head. “Not a chance. The big American combines are moving in there, along with the major English and Continental corporations. A small company like mine, even managed well, wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Then why?”

  “Preparations,” Pierce said. “Groundwork. I am building a reputation. As a matter of fact, the company is losing money at a fabulous rate. People don’t know that, of course. On the surface we are phenomenally successful. But I’ve poured more than a million pounds into Shore Industries in the last year alone.”

  “Expensive groundwork.”

  “Yes, expensive. But worth it.”

  “Why?”

  “All in good time,” Pierce said.

  He was obviously enjoying himself, spilling out details in bits and snatches, between drinks. At each pub, Pierce insisted they try a different drink, and Raynaud bravely drank them all: bitter, pale ale, brown ale, stout, half-and-half, Russian stout (the strongest beer in the world), a black-and-tan, a tot of straight, a lager and lime, a whisky mac, hard cider, Merrydown, a vodka lean.

  “There is an enterprise on the horizon,” Pierce said. “An enterprise which none of the American corporations can touch. It will be wholly English, very ambitious, and fabulously profitable. If it can be arranged.”

  “What kind of an enterprise?”

  “It is related to Shore Industries.”

  “I gathered.”

  “And the work Shore is doing. Drilling, testing, offshore siting. Logistics to isolated stations.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “That is the beauty of it,” Pierce said. “Nobody has followed me—so far.”

  They moved on, from pub to pub, long into the night. In the end, Raynaud remembered only the names: the Black Friar, the Cheshire Cheese, the King’s Head, the Hoop and Grapes, the Printer’s Devil, the Griffin, the Magpie and Stump.

  “You see,” Pierce said, “my father’s empire was based on rubber and tea. And the British Empire—it was all contingent on political stability. There has been no stability in Burma and Malaya; most of what he had and built up has been nationalized. The major profit-making enterprises are now mining operations in Commonwealth countries, particularly Australia. There’s a copper complex in Darwin which is highly lucrative.”

  “I see.”

  “But that was the old way,” Pierce said. “Very unimaginative. Simple exploitation of cheap labor and raw materials was fine in nineteen hundred, and even nineteen thirty. But it is not so good now, with all the bloody emerging nations. Not so good at all. Now, it is a question of manipulation of capital already accumulated. Manipulation to new and greater ends.”

  “Such as?”

  “Major, highly expensive, vastly complex technical feats which require organization, planning, and money.”

  “You are going to provide that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the technical feats?”

  Pierce looked around. “This pub bores me. Shall we move on?”

  There were others: Six Bells, Wellington’s, the Black Lion, the Prospect of Whitby, the Nag’s Head. They lingered at a few, like the Chelsea Potter, which claimed the largest variety of liqueurs and spirits, and the Admiral Codrington, which had more than one hundred kinds of whisky.

  “Charles,” Richard said, “a little while ago, I o
ffered you two thousand dollars a day.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  “Have you reached a decision?”

  “No,” Raynaud said.

  “Well,” Pierce said, “the offer still stands. You can have the money in cash, or in stock.”

  “Stock? In what?”

  “The corporation,” Pierce said, “that will build and operate the tunnel under the English Channel.”

  Raynaud said nothing. He permitted himself to show surprise, since Pierce seemed to expect it. He looked at Pierce and saw that Arriz had been correct, and Lucienne, in her sly way, had been correct. It made sense in an absurd sort of way; it was the kind of wild scheme that would appeal to Richard.

  “You’re kidding,” Raynaud said. “I’m not.”

  “A tunnel under the Channel? They’ve been trying to build one for two hundred years.”

  “And now they will.”

  “Beginning when?”

  “Work will start in July nineteen seventy-two. Completion twenty months later. Carrying automobiles and railroad cars. Transit time forty minutes, as compared to the current sea time of ninety minutes.”

  “It’s all arranged?”

  “Virtually.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means,” Pierce said, “that I began laying the groundwork two years ago. I established a company, built personnel, and made a reputation for myself in an allied field. Shore Industries is geared to shift over to construction of a Channel tunnel at a moment’s notice. We have experience, and we have subcontracting skill. We are in a perfect position to manage the entire operation.”

  “But you’re only a small—”

  “And we have capital.”

  “So?”

  He shook his head. “Dear boy, we can underbid anyone in the world. I am personally prepared to lose fifty million dollars on the enterprise, if necessary.”

  “For a piece of the action.”

  “For a very large piece of the action.”

  “How large?”

  “Twelve percent of corporation stock.”

  “What makes you think you can get it?”

  “When the time comes,” Pierce said, “only a few key people will be involved. A half-dozen corporations and their board chairmen. A handful of ministers on both sides of the Atlantic. Such men are, of course, beyond reproach in their judgment.”

  He smiled.

  “But not beyond purchase. I have already spent eight hundred thousand dollars in, uh, private transactions. I consider it money well spent.”