She giggled. “Great,” she said. “Great idea. Mystery Man himself. Come on, then, Mr. Keith Brown.”
She took him to Tramps, where she was evidently well known. Johnny Gold rose from his door-side table as they entered and greeted her effusively with kisses on both cheeks. He shook hands with Shannon as she introduced him. “Nice to see you, Keith. Have a good time.”
They dined at the long row of tables running parallel to the bar, and started by ordering the house lobster cocktail in a hollowed-out pineapple. Seated facing the room, Shannon glanced around at the diners; most, from their long hair and casual dress, could be placed in show business or on its fringes. Others were evidently young-generation businessmen trying to be trendy or make a model or an actress. Among the latter he spotted a face he knew across the room, with a group, out of Julie’s vision.
After the lobster Shannon ordered “bangers and mash” and, excusing himself, got up. He strolled slowly out of the door and into the center lobby as if on his way to the men’s room. Within seconds a hand fell on his shoulder, and he turned to face Simon Endean.
“Are you out of your mind?” grated the City hard boy.
Shannon looked at him in mock surprise, a wide-eyed innocent. “No. I don’t think so. Why?” he asked.
Endean was about to tell him, but checked himself in time. His face was white with anger. He knew his boss well enough to know how Manson doted on his supposedly innocent little girl, and knew roughly what his reaction would be should he ever hear about Shannon taking her out, let alone climbing into bed with her.
But he was checkmated. He assumed Shannon was still unaware of his own, real name, and certainly of Manson’s existence. To bawl him out for dining with a girl called Julie Manson would blow both his own concern and Manson’s name, together with both their roles as Shannon’s employer. Nor could he tell Shannon to leave her alone, for fear Shannon would consult the girl and she would tell him who Endean was. He choked back his anger.
“What are you doing here?” he asked lamely.
“Having dinner,” said Shannon, appearing puzzled. “Look, Harris, if I want to go out and have dinner, that’s my affair. There’s nothing to be done over the weekend. I have to wait till Monday to fly to Luxembourg.”
Endean was even angrier. He could not explain that Shannon’s slacking on the job was not what concerned him. “Who’s the girl?” he asked.
Shannon shrugged. “Name’s Julie. Met her in a café two days ago.”
“Picked her up?” asked Endean in horror.
“Yes, you might say that. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. But be careful about girls, all girls. It would be better if you left them alone for a while, that’s all.”
“Harris, don’t worry about my security. There won’t be any indiscretions, in bed or out. Besides, I told her my name was Keith Brown; I’m on leave in London and I’m in the oil business.”
For answer Endean spun round, snapped at Paolo to tell the group he was with that he had been called away, and headed for the stairs to the street before Julie Manson could recognize him.
Shannon watched him leave. “Up yours,” he said quietly, “with Sir Bloody James Manson’s biggest drill.”
On the pavement outside, Endean swore quietly. Apart from that, he could only pray that Shannon had been telling the truth about the Keith Brown business and that Julie Manson would not tell her father about her new boyfriend.
Shannon and his girl danced until shortly before three and had their first quarrel on the way back to Shannon’s flat. He had told her it would be better if she did not tell her father she was going out with a mercenary, or even mention his name. “From what you have already told me about him, he seems to dote on you. He’d probably send you away somewhere, or have you made a ward of court.”
Her response had been to start teasing, keeping a straight face and saying she would be able to handle her father, as she always had, and in any case being made a ward of court would be fun and would get her name in all the papers. Besides, she argued, Shannon could always come and get her, fight his way out, and elope with her.
Shannon was not sure how serious she was and thought he might have gone too far in provoking Endean that evening, although he had not planned on meeting him, anyway. They were still arguing when they reached the living room of his flat.
“Anyway, I’m not being told what I’ll do and what I won’t do,” said the girl as she dropped her coat over the armchair.
“You will be by me,” growled Shannon. “You’ll just keep damn silent about me when you’re with your father. And that’s that.”
For answer the girl stuck her tongue out at him. “I’ll do what I damn well like,” she insisted and, to emphasize her words, stamped her foot. Shannon got angry. He picked her up, spun her around, marched her to the armchair, sat down, and pulled her over his knee. For five minutes there were two conflicting sounds in the sitting room, the girl’s protesting squeals and the crack of Shannon’s hand. When he let her up she scuttled into the bedroom, sobbing loudly, and slammed the door.
Shannon shrugged. The die was cast one way or the other, and there was nothing he could do about it. He went into the kitchen, made coffee, and drank it slowly by the window, looking out at the backs of the houses across the gardens, almost all dark as the respectable folk of St. John’s Wood slept.
When he entered the bedroom it was in darkness. In the far corner of the double bed was a small hump, but no sound, as if she were holding her breath. Halfway across the floor his foot scuffed against her fallen dress, and two paces farther he kicked one of her discarded shoes. He sat on the edge of the bed and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he made out her face on the pillow, eyes watching him.
“You’re rotten,” she whispered.
He leaned forward and slipped a hand into the angle of her neck and jaw, stroking slowly and firmly.
“No one’s ever hit me before.”
“That’s why you’ve turned out the way you have,” he murmured.
“How is that?”
“A spoiled little girl.”
“I’m not.” There was a pause. “Yes, I am.”
He continued caressing her.
“Cat.”
“Yes.”
“Did you really think Daddy might take me away from you if I told him?”
“Yes. I still do.”
“And do you think I’d really tell him?”
“I thought you might.”
“Is that why you got angry?”
“Yes.”
“Then you only smacked me because you love me?”
“I suppose so.”
She turned her head, and he felt her tongue busily licking the inside of his palm.
“Get into bed, Cat, darling. I’m so randy I can’t wait anymore.”
He was only half out of his clothes when she threw the bedsheets back and knelt on the mattress, running her hands over his chest and muttering, “Hurry, hurry,” between kisses.
You’re a lying bastard, Shannon, he thought as he lay on his back, feeling this avid and infatuated young girl go to work on him.
There was a light gray glow in the east over Camden Town when they lay still two hours later. Julie was curled up in the crook of his arm, her varied appetites for the moment satisfied.
“Tell me something,” she said.
“What?”
“Why do you live the way you do? Why be a mercenary and go around making wars on people?”
“I don’t make wars. The world we live in makes wars, led and governed by men who pretend they are creatures of morality and integrity, whereas most of them are self-seeking bastards. They make the wars, for increased profits or increased power. I just fight the wars because it’s the way I like to live.”
“But why for money? Mercenaries fight for money, don’t they?”
“Not only the money. The bums do, but when it comes to a crunch the bums who style themselves mercenaries usually don??
?t fight. They run away. Most of the best ones fight for the same reason I do; they enjoy the life, the hard living, the combat.”
“But why do there have to be wars? Why can’t they all live in peace?”
He stirred and in the darkness scowled at the ceiling. “Because there are only two kinds of people in this world: the predators and the grazers. And the predators always get to the top, because they’re prepared to fight to get there and consume people and things that get in their way. The others haven’t the nerve, or the courage, or the hunger or the ruthlessness. So the world is governed by the predators, who become the potentates. And the potentates are never satisfied. They must go on and on seeking more of the currency they worship.
“In the Communist world—and don’t ever kid yourself into thinking the Communist leaders are peace-loving—the currency is power. Power, power, and more power, no matter how many people have to die so they can get it. In the capitalist world the currency is money. More and more money. Oil, gold, stocks and shares, more and more, are the goals, even if they have to lie, steal, bribe, and cheat to get it. These make the money and the money buys the power. So really it all comes back to the lust for power. If they think there’s enough of it to be taken, and it needs a war to grab it, you get a war. The rest, the so-called idealism, is a load of cock.”
“Some people fight for idealism. The Vietcong do. I’ve read it in the papers.”
“Yeah, some people fight for idealism, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of them are being conned. So are the ones back home who cheer for war. We’re always right, and they’re always wrong. In Washington and Peking, London and Moscow. And you know what? They’re being conned. Those GIs in Vietnam, do you think they die for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? They die for the Dow Jones Index in Wall Street, and always have. And the British soldiers who died in Kenya, Cyprus, Aden. You really think they rushed into battle shouting for God, king, and country? They were in those lands because their colonel ordered them there, and he was ordered by the War Office, and that was ordered by the Cabinet, to keep British control over the economies. So what? They went back to the people who owned them in the first place, and who cared about the bodies the British army left behind? It’s a big con, Julie Manson, a big con. The difference with me is that no one tells me to go and fight, or where to fight, or which side to fight on. That’s why the politicians, the Establishments, hate mercenaries. It’s not that we are more lethal than they are; in fact we’re a damn sight less so. It’s because they can’t control us; we don’t take their orders. We don’t shoot the ones they tell us to shoot, and we don’t start when they say, ‘Start,’ or stop when they say, ‘Stop.’ That’s why we’re outlaws; we fight on contract and we pick our own contracts.”
Julie sat up and ran her hands over the hard, scarred muscles of his chest and shoulders. She was a conventionally raised girl and, like so many of her generation, could not understand even a tiny fraction of the world she saw about her.
“What about the wars when people fight for what they know is right?” she asked. “I mean, what about fighting against Hitler? That was right, wasn’t it?”
Shannon sighed and nodded. “Yes, that was right. He was a bastard all right. Except that they, the big shots in the Western world, sold him steel up to the outbreak of war and then made more fortunes making more steel to crush Hitler’s steel. And the Communists were no better. Stalin signed a pact with him and waited for capitalism and Nazism to destroy each other so he could take over the rubble. Only when Hitler struck Russia did the world’s so-called idealistic Communists decide Nazism was naughty. Besides, it cost thirty million lives to kill Hitler. A mercenary could have done it with one bullet costing less than a shilling.”
“But we won, didn’t we? It was the right thing to do, and we won.”
“We won, my little darling, because the Russians, British, and Americans had more guns, tanks, planes, and ships than Adolf. That’s why, and that’s the only reason why. If he had had more, he’d have won, and you know what? History would have written that he was right and we were wrong. Victors are always right. There’s a nice little adage I heard once: ‘God is on the side of the big battalions.’ It’s the gospel of the rich and powerful, the cynical and the gullible. Politicians believe in it; the so-called quality newspapers preach it. The truth is, the Establishment is on the side of the big battalions, because it created and armed them in the first place. It never seems to occur to the millions of readers of that garbage that maybe God, if there is one, has something to do with truth, justice, and compassion rather than sheer brute force, and that truth and justice might possibly be on the side of the little platoons. Not that it matters. The big battalions always win, and the ‘serious’ press always approves, and the grazers always believe it.”
“You’re a rebel, Cat,” she murmured.
“Sure. Always have been. No, not always. Since I buried six of my mates in Cyprus. That was when I began to question the wisdom and integrity of all our leaders.”
“But, apart from killing people, you could die yourself. You could get killed in one of these futile wars.”
“Yes, and I could live on, like a battery hen, in one of these futile cities. Filling in futile forms, paying futile taxes to enable futile politicians and state managers to fritter it away on electorally useful white elephants. I could earn a futile salary in a futile office and commute futilely on a train, morning and evening, until a futile retirement. I prefer to do it my way, live my way and die my way.”
“Do you ever think of death?” she asked him.
“Of course. Often. Don’t you?”
“Yes. But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
“Death’s not so bad. You get used to the idea when it has come very close and passed by many times. Let me tell you something. The other day I was clearing out the drawers in this place. There was some newspaper, a year old, at the bottom of one. I saw a piece of news and began to read it. It dated from the winter before last. There was this old man, see? He lived alone in a basement. They found him dead one day, a week or so after he died. The coroner was told no one ever came to see him and he couldn’t get out much. The pathologist said he had been undernourished for at least a year. You know what they found in his throat? Bits of cardboard. He had been nibbling bits of cardboard from a cereal package to try and get nourishment. Well, not me, baby. When I go, I’ll go my way. I’d prefer to go with a bullet in my chest and blood in my mouth and a gun in my hand; with defiance in my heart and shouting, ‘Sod the lot of you,’ than to flicker out in a damp basement with a mouthful of cardboard.
“Now go to sleep, love. It’s dawn already.”
twelve
Shannon arrived in Luxembourg just after one on the following Monday and from the airport took a taxi to the Banque de Crédit. He identified himself as Keith Brown by using his passport and asked for the £5000 that should be waiting for collection by him.
After a delay while the telex room was checked, the credit was discovered. It had just come through from Zurich. Instead of drawing the whole sum in cash, Shannon took the equivalent in Luxembourg francs of £1000 and signed a form making over the balance of £4000 to the bank. In exchange for this he was given a certified bank check for the equivalent of £4000.
He had time for a quick lunch before making his way to the Hoogstraat, where he had an appointment with the firm of accountants Lang and Stein.
Luxembourg, like Belgium and Lichtenstein, maintains a system of offering to the investor a highly discreet and even secretive service in banking and the operation of companies into whose affairs a foreign police force has the greatest difficulty in trying to pry. By and large, unless a company registered in Luxembourg can be shown to have broken the laws of the archduchy or can be proved beyond doubt to have been involved in international illegal activities of a highly unpleasant nature, foreign police inquiries as to who owns or controls such a company will be met with a stoic refusal to cooper
ate. It was this kind of facility that Shannon sought.
His interview, arranged by phone three days earlier, was with Mr. Emil Stein, one of the partners in the highly respectable firm. For the occasion Shannon wore a newly acquired charcoal-gray suit, white shirt, and school tie. He carried a briefcase and the Times under one arm. For some reason, the carrying of this newspaper always seems to impress Europeans with the idea that the bearer is a respectable Englishman.
“Over the forthcoming few months,” he told the gray-haired Luxembourger, “a group of British associates, of whom I am one, wish to engage in commercial activities in the Mediterranean area, possibly Spain, France, and Italy. For this purpose we would like to establish a holding company in Luxembourg. As you may imagine, being British citizens and residents and doing business in several European countries with differing financial laws could prove very complicated. From a tax standpoint alone, a holding company in Luxembourg seems to be advisable.”
Mr. Stein nodded, for the request was no surprise. Many such holding companies were already registered in his tiny country, and his firm received such requests every day.
“That should present no problem, Mr. Brown,” he told his visitor. “You are aware of course that all the procedures required by the Archduchy of Luxembourg must be complied with. Once that is done, the holding company may hold the majority of shares in an array of other companies registered elsewhere, and after that the company affairs remain entirely private from foreign tax investigations.”
“That’s very kind of you. Perhaps you would outline the essentials of starting such a company in Luxembourg,” said Shannon.
The accountant could reel off the requisites in a few seconds. “Unlike the situation in Britain, all limited-liability companies in Luxembourg must have a minimum of seven shareholders and a minimum of three directors. However, quite often the accountant asked to help in setting the company up takes the chairmanship of the directors, his junior partners are the other two, and his staff becomes shareholders, each with a purely nominal number of shares. In this manner the person wishing to establish the company is merely the seventh shareholder, although by virtue of his greater number of shares he controls the company.