The Doll’s House (7 page)

‘Who's prepared to pay?' Rilke demanded. He sipped mineral water and wiped his lips with a silk handkerchief. He was a fastidious man.

‘I've spoken to the Libyans,' was the answer. ‘They'll finance the operation to the extent of buying the cover and meeting the costs of setting it up. I asked for four million in sterling and they didn't hesitate.'

There was a hiss of breath among them, a movement of surprise. He really had them now.

‘They've agreed to pay this out?' Daniel knew the Libyan set up better than anyone in the room. Gaddafi gave money like turning on a tap and letting it run, but he wanted value for it.

‘Yes,' Harry nodded. ‘For the services we can offer, it was cheap at the price. I did some negotiating in advance on behalf of the rest of you. One hundred thousand in sterling paid into individual numbered accounts in this delightful city. That's the retainer. Afterwards we'd get paid by results. All subject to the risk and complexity of the job involved. I think I got a bloody good deal.'

Vassily Zarubin laughed. He hadn't smiled before, but then he laughed. ‘I think so too. I like it.'

‘Rilke?' Harry asked.

The German pinched his lip; he had irritating mannerisms, Harry noted.

‘In principle, yes, but I want to know a lot more of what's involved. What's the cover that's going to cost so much money?'

‘We'll come to that in a moment. Werner – how do you feel about it?'

Werner had been turning the pencil over and over in his fingers. He looked at Oakham. Suddenly the pencil snapped.

‘What a fool I've been,' he muttered. ‘All those years wasted. All for nothing. What use would I be to anyone now?'

‘We need brains, sophistication. I can hire muscle, Werner, but you're still in your job and you can get information to us that might be very useful. You'll run on for another year; that's the plan anyway. If we're given a high-level target, you have access to embassies and ministries all over the world. You could draw the map for us. Believe me, we need you. Are you interested?'

The man was shaken, angry and frightened. He needed gentle handling.

‘Yes,' he answered. ‘Yes, I am interested. You're right. I am owed something. I'm going to think of myself now.'

‘Good,' was the calm response accompanied by an approving smile.

‘Daniel?'

The Israeli shrugged. He glanced at the blonde woman and she stared coldly back at him.

‘One condition,' he said. ‘I don't go to the Middle East. Otherwise yes, what have I got to lose?' He answered his own question. ‘Nothing I'm not going to lose already, if you're right about the lousy British. I'll join you, Mr Oakham.'

‘Harry,' he invited and gave him the welcome-to-the-family grin he'd given Werner. ‘Monika?'

She was likely to be the most difficult. The fires weren't burned out in her, they still smouldered. She just might tell them all to go to hell and stalk out, the Red Brigade fist metaphorically clenched in the air.

‘What would I have to do?' she demanded. ‘I've got money, I can earn as much as that retainer if I want.'

Not quite, Oakham judged, but he wasn't going to argue. He just nodded and said, ‘No doubt, but you've got to be alive and there's not much chance of that without protection. If you join, you'd use your old skills. We all remember Julius Ritterman.'

She preened in front of them. It was a clever thing to say. It established her status. Julius Ritterman was found strangled in a flat in Munich. A tall blonde girl had been seen dining with him in a smart restaurant. ‘Death to the Capitalist Swine' had been scrawled in red ink and the paper stuffed into his mouth. He had been president of a leading West German Investment Bank.

‘That would be amusing,' she showed her white teeth in a smile. ‘I've been very bored. Men can be very boring. Count me in, Mr Oakham.'

‘I'm delighted.' He was gallant, making a tiny bow towards her. ‘And now, if Jan will set it up, I'll show you the cover and explain it as we go along. Anyone like some coffee?'

Nobody did. They were poised, intent on the next phase.

Jan switched on the video. The room was very quiet except for the slight whirr of the machine. Oakham commented.

‘What you're seeing is an estate agent's video of a property that's for sale in England.'

A handsome, red-brick Tudor mansion came on the screen, set in a rolling park. There were shots of the interior, designer decorated, a luxurious indoor swimming pool. More exteriors, including a fine lake. Rilke was scowling, Vassily Zarubin's face was a mask, Werner was fiddling with the broken pencil ends.

‘The asking price is three million,' Oakham explained.

Werner spoke up. ‘It's a hotel, it says so. I don't understand.'

‘It's going to be our headquarters,' Harry's voice was level. ‘A well-established luxury hotel. Would anyone think of looking for our organization in a place like that? And it's got all the potential we need. The extra million is for contingencies. What the Libyans want is training facilities for some of their specialist groups. The IRA have expressed interest through them. There are others – you know them.' He shrugged, dismissing speculation. ‘We'd provide that service, but our main activity is carrying out high-risk operations that nobody wants to touch themselves. That's where the money lies. Nice place, isn't it? I quite fancy living there. We'd be very comfortable, don't you think?'

Rilke muttered, ‘It's brilliant cover. Mad, but brilliant. Did you think of this?'

Oakham nodded. ‘Yes. I know the place. I was born in that part of the world. And the beauty of it is, it's a legitimate business. We'll all have positions on the administrative staff – I'll settle the details later – we'll be salaried employees of the consortium that has bought the hotel. All taxes paid up, proper accounts, whiter than white. No fiddling with anything that could catch the Revenue's eye.'

The video ran on, lingering over the grounds, the different aspects of the house. Jan had suppressed the sound-track.

Daniel asked, ‘We don't know anything about hotels. What about staff?'

‘They stay on,' Harry answered. ‘That's part of the deal. Don't worry about details, it'll be worked out.'

‘Documentation for us? Who's going to provide that?' Zarubin demanded.

‘You are,' Harry said. ‘Use your own facilities; you know best how to cover your tracks.'

Rilke nodded in agreement.

‘The facilities need extending, if we're going to run courses,' the Russian remarked. Training, physical as well as mental, was his speciality. ‘You could build an assault course – there's enough land?'

‘There are over two hundred acres,' Harry assured him. ‘Some hotels run war games at weekends. It's quite a popular pastime. We'd do the same. One for the customers and one for real. But I emphasize again, that's secondary, not primary. I said yes because my contact seemed so keen on the idea. But it's got to be very selective and very limited. If we pull off one or two big operations, we can phase that out completely.'

‘I'd be happier,' Daniel put in. ‘I like the country hotel, it's very good for me, I'd be safer there than in my lousy room in London. But having people come and go who know about us – I don't like it.'

Harry Oakham smiled at him. It was not friendly. He was rocking the boat; it wasn't the moment to cast doubts.

‘You've been on the run too long,' he said. ‘It's made you nervous.'

Daniel's face reddened. ‘Cautious,' he snapped back. ‘Nobody's been after
your
hide.'

‘They will be,' was the answer. ‘But they won't know where to find it. Or yours. Opt out if you don't like the deal, but make up your mind now!'

The Israeli didn't hesitate. He had no option and that grinning bastard knew it. He hated the English, he thought. Smug, superior, still carrying colonialism in their hearts …

‘I'm in. I said so,' he stated.

‘Good.' Oakham relaxed, beaming friendliness at him. Daniel was not deceived. He looked round at them. The video had run its length. Jan switched off the machine.

‘Any more questions?' he invited.

‘How long before we become operational?' Rilke asked.

He was excited and committed. There was a gleam in the cold eyes. His mother could have a luxury flat, all the comforts again.

‘Three months. I'll have everything ready in three months. Jan and I are flying back after this meeting. He'll be the co-ordinator. He'll keep in touch with all of you. But I'll expect you to join me in England exactly three months from today. Now, why don't we have a drink to celebrate? Champagne?'

‘Why not?' Werner threw the pencil ends aside. He smiled at Harry. ‘I stay where I am and feed you information when you need it. When they do throw me out I'll be a rich man. I'll drink to that.'

Bottles were brought up and opened. There was an air of excitement; old enemies found themselves on the same side. Zarubin downed his drink. Oakham leaned over and filled it up again.

‘Here's to the future,' he said. ‘From now on, it's going to be rich with promise. Especially rich. I give you all a toast. To Doll's House Manor Hotel!'

Harry Oakham stopped the car at the pub just off the main Ipswich road at Higham. He looked up at the sign; it brought back memories. The Swan. Swans used to process majestically down the river at Dedham when he was a boy. The village children threw bits of bread, scared to come too close to the fierce, hissing creatures. Harry fed them by hand. They didn't frighten him.

The pub was gloomy, with a low ceiling and black painted beams. There was the familiar smell of beer and tobacco smoke and a faint whiff of frying coming from the back.

The Lounge Bar was full of locals, eating chicken and chips or shovelling down plates of a revolting mess calling itself chilli con carne. Harry had eaten the real dish in Mexico. He ordered a simple Ploughman's lunch: a hunk of fresh white bread, Cheddar cheese, butter and pickled onions. He shoved the limp lettuce leaf and tasteless tomato wedge to one side. The real ale was very good and strong. He let the taste lie on his tongue. There was a group of tourists perched at the bar. They'd be on their way to his old village, to see the place immortalized by Constable. It had changed dramatically in the last ten years, he knew. It was peppered with antique shops and tea rooms, crammed with cars. It had been a quiet place when he was a boy, growing up in the old rectory. His grandfather had been the vicar of Dedham, the younger son who had followed the tradition that consigned the second born to the Army or the Church as a career. Harry remembered him vaguely. He was very old and inclined to wander round the village at odd hours. Someone always gently guided him home. Harry's father had bought the rectory when the Church Commissioners sold it just before the last war.

His widowed mother had offered it to him before she put it on the open market. But Peggy had refused to move from Woking.

I
'
m not going to be buried alive in the country! What would I do all day?
He could hear her saying it. Judith had been brought up in Devonshire; she was a country girl who loved to ride and walk the dogs. He'd given her Labrador away after she died. He couldn't look after it properly and it needed someone to love it and make up for losing Judith. No, he'd agreed, Peggy wouldn't fit into village life, he hadn't bothered to argue. It was all part of that terrible initial mistake. So the rectory was sold. Times had changed and now only his cousins were left. They had turned the big house into flats and lived on the top floor. He hadn't seen them for years. Sometimes a Christmas card arrived, and he sent one back if he remembered. That side of his life ended effectively when Judith died. She would have been the link with his past.

He'd taken her to see the family tombs in Dedham churchyard one hot summer day after they'd been to Morning Service. His mother liked to go to church. And he'd pointed out where his father and grandparents were buried, and the older gravestones, weather-worn with time. It had been a scorching August that year. She was bare-legged and bronzed, her blonde hair bleached to silver gold. He remembered how she held on to his arm and shivered.

‘I hate graveyards,' she'd said suddenly. ‘I'm cold, darling … Let's go.' She was so soon to lie there herself.

The deal was done. The contracts had been exchanged and the Doll's House Manor Hotel now belonged to a consortium based in Switzerland. There'd been some publicity about the sale in the Sunday newspapers. Harry had welcomed the discreet publicity. He knew country people well enough to expect rumours and gossip to circulate for a time about the new owners. But it wouldn't last long.

There was no talk of planning permission for a golf course or anything that might lead to local opposition. It was all very quiet and dignified.

Armed with his list of associates, Oakham had met his Libyan contact on the river boat plying to the Tower of London one evening after he got back from Geneva.

He hadn't queried anything when he saw the names. The banker was very experienced on covering deposits abroad so that they couldn't be traced. He believed in legitimacy up front.

The sum needed to improve and equip the hotel for its special purpose would come to Oakham through a firm of reputable London accountants who thought they were working for the Swiss consortium in Basle.

Oakham was the middleman. The bills were submitted to the accountants and settled by them. Not one penny would slip into anyone's pocket
en route
. Harry was determined about that. You didn't cheat men like the banker's boss, and live to enjoy it.

Harry went up to the bar to pay his bill. The landlord glanced at him with sly curiosity. He wasn't a tourist. He could have been anything in his shabby tweed jacket and twill trousers.