upwards towards his hidden gun. It was a middle-aged woman in a tweed suit. Cramer let his hand fall to his side, cursing himself under his breath. If he carried on like this, he’d be a nervous wreck by the end of the week.
Vander Mayer’s office was at the far end of the corridor. Cramer waited outside with Allan while Martin and Su-ming went in. Through the open door Cramer could see a brunette, her hair tied back in a ponytail, sitting behind a teak desk. Su-ming was talking to her while Martin prowled around the office. Martin turned and nodded to Allan and he ushered Cramer inside. Cramer saw a second desk as he walked into the office. It was unoccupied.
A door led through to Vander Mayer’s private office and Su-ming motioned for him to go through. The inner office was much bigger, and furnished in much the same way as the flat in Chelsea Harbour — oak floorboards, polished to a deep shine, a simple black oak desk and steel and leather furniture. The desk was bare except for a personal computer, but one wall was lined with television monitors which showed share prices and news wires from around the world, and below them was a bank of fax and telex machines.
‘We’re going to wait outside,’ said Allan. He looked at his watch. ‘The Russian won’t be here for a couple of hours. We’ll search him before we let him in to see you, but be prepared, okay?’
Cramer gave Allan a Boy Scout salute. ‘Dib, dib, dib,’ he said.
‘I’ll give you dib, dib, dib if he pulls out a gun and shoots you,’ said Allan. He made a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot Cramer in the face. ‘Be on your feet when he comes into your office. It’s much harder to draw your weapon when you’re sitting.’
Allan and Martin closed the door behind them, leaving Cramer and Su-ming alone. Cramer stood behind the chair and rested his elbows on it. He nodded at the monitors. ‘What exactly does he do, your boss?’
‘I thought the Colonel had told you.’
‘An arms dealer, he said. ‘So what’s all the financial stuff for?’
Su-ming leaned against the desk and studied the monitors. ‘Mr Vander Mayer has many investments and he prefers to handle them himself.’
‘He doesn’t trust anyone else to touch his money, is that it?’
Su-ming looked at him over her shoulder and flashed him a thin smile. ‘It’s not a question of trust. No one can do it better than him.’
‘So how much is he worth?’
Su-ming shrugged noncommittally and turned away from him again. ‘He is a very rich man.’
‘Rich? Or rich rich?’
‘Very rich.’
‘Millions or billions?’
‘That depends on which currency you’re using.’ She pushed herself away from the desk and went over to the telex machine. She toyed with the keys. ‘Is money that important to you, Mike Cramer?’
Cramer sat down in the chair and tried to open the drawers. They were locked. Cramer wondered whether they were always locked or if they’d been locked because he was using the office. ‘No. Money’s never really mattered to me. Is that what drives him?’
Su-ming stopped playing with the telex keys. ‘I suppose so.’
‘So tell me, what does he do? He has these offices, he has three jets, but I can’t get a feel for what it is exactly that he does.’
‘He puts deals together. Say you’re running a country in Africa and you want to buy armoured vehicles. And suppose you can’t buy direct from the manufacturers. Then you’d have to go through a middle-man. Someone like Mr Vander Mayer.’
‘Why couldn’t I buy from the manufacturer?’
‘It could be that the country of origin preferred not to trade with you.’
‘Because I’m a dictator?’
‘Whether someone is a dictator or a leader is often a matter of semantics. When Saddam Hussein was in favour, governments all around the world were more than happy to trade with him.’
‘Then he invaded Kuwait.’
‘And suddenly he became
‘Vander Mayer’s still dealing with Iraq?’
Su-ming nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘You don’t see anything wrong with that?’
‘He’s a businessman. More than that, he’s a realist.’
Cramer ran his finger along the edge of the desk. Like the furniture in Vander Mayer’s flat, it was spotless. ‘What sort of arms does he sell?’
Su-ming turned to face him. ‘Anything.’
‘Anything?’
‘You sound surprised. Arms are a commodity, like anything else. There are sellers and there are buyers.’
‘Jets?’
‘Yes.’
‘Missiles?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he doing much business with Russia?’
‘Quite a bit.’
‘Is that why he wanted you to learn Russian?’
‘It gives him an advantage during negotiations. They don’t expect an Oriental to speak their language.’
Cramer swivelled his chair around so that he could look out of the window. ‘I suppose there’s a lot of Russian equipment going cheap following the break-up of the Soviet bloc.’
‘They’re desperate for foreign currency. And that’s one thing that Mr Vander Mayer has a lot of.’
‘Do you know what this Russian is trying to sell?’ He swivelled around and could see from the look on her face that she did.
‘Mr Vander Mayer said I wasn’t to say.’
‘But it’s a weapon?’
‘In a way. It depends how you use it. In the right hands, a pencil can be a weapon, or it can be used to write a poem.’
Cramer laughed. ‘Give me a break, Su-ming. You don’t believe that fortune cookie philosophy. A bomb’s a bomb. A gun’s a gun. You’ve heard that other great saying, “It isn’t guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people.” Well that’s crap, kid. Guns kill people. Guns and bombs and missiles and grenades. And I don’t like the way I’m being used. I don’t like it one bit.’
Su-ming studied him silently as if embarrassed by his outburst. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know you’re just doing as you’re told.’
She nodded. ‘Like you, I’m following orders.’
Cramer slumped back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Where did I go wrong? I spend my life training with weapons and I end up with nothing. He sells the stuff and makes millions.’
‘You choose your own life,’ said Su-ming.
Cramer sighed. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’ He put his hands behind his neck and interlinked his fingers. ‘So, what do I do?’
Su-ming took the itinerary from her handbag and looked at it. ‘We wait here until five o’clock.’
‘Can’t I do a deal or two while I’m here? Maybe I could sell a few F-16s, what do you think?’
Su-ming studied him with amusement. ‘I think, Mike Cramer, that I shall miss your sense of humour when this is all over. That’s what I think.’
Dermott Lynch dropped Marie off at the front entrance to the huge News International complex. A line of sixty-foot delivery trucks were queuing up to enter the site, in preparation for the evening’s print run. The throbbing diesel engines vibrated up through his seat. He drove alongside the high brick wall which surrounded the newspaper offices and printworks and parked next to an old warehouse which had been converted into upmarket apartments. All the old ironware which had once been used to haul sacks and crates up to the storage areas on the upper floors
