What is it? This can't wait until Tuesday, I want to see you right
away. That's impossible, he laughed, lightly, confidently.
It's only five days. Five days is too long. Tell me now, he invited.
What is it All right, she said deliberately, and the vicious streak of
Persian cruelty was in her voice. I want a divorce, Duncan, and I want
control of my shares in Christy Marine again.
There was a long, hissing crackling silence on the line, and she waited,
the way the cat waits for the first movement of the crippled mouse.
This is very sudden. His voice had changed completely, it was bleak and
flat, lacking any timbre or resonance.
We both know it is not/ she contradicted him.
You have no grounds. There was a thin edge of fear now.
'Divorce isn't quite as easy as that, Chantelle. How is this for
grounds, Duncan? she asked, and there was a spiteful sting in her voice
now. If you aren't here by noon tomorrow, then my auditors will be in
Leadenhall Street and there will be an urgent order before the courts.
She did not have to go on, he spoke across her and there was a note of
panic in his voice. She had never heard it before. He said, You are
right. We do have to talk right away., Then he was silent again,
collecting himself, and his voice was once more calm and careful when he
went on, I can charter a Falcon and be at Nice before midday.
Will that do? I'll have the car meet you she said, and broke the
connection with one finger. She held the bar down for a second, then
lifted her finger.
I want to place an international call/ she said in her fluent rippling
French when the operator answered. I do not know the number, but it is
person to person. Doctor Samantha Silver at the University of Miami.
There is a delay of more than two hours, madame.
Tattendrai, she said, and replaced the receiver.
The Bank of the East is in Curzon Street, almost opposite the White
Elephant Club. It has a narrow frontage of bronze and marble and glass,
and Nicholas had been there, with his lawyers, since ten o'clock that
morning. He was learning at first hand the leisurely age-old ritual of
oriental bargaining.
He was selling Ocean Salvage, plus two years of his future labour - and
even for seven million dollars he was beginning to wonder if it was
worth it - and it was not a certain seven million either. The words
tripped lightly, the figures seemed to have no substance in this
setting. The only constant was the figure of the Prince himself, seated
on the low couch, in a Savile Row suit but with the fine white cotton
and gold-corded headdress framing his dark handsome features with
theatrical dash.
Beyond him moved a shadowy, ever-changing backtime that ground of
unctuous whispering figures. Every time Nicholas believed that a point
had been definitely agreed, another rose-pink or acid-yellow Rolls-Royce
with Arabic script number-plates would deposit three or four more
dark-featured Arabs at the front doors and they would hurry through to
kiss the Prince on his forehead, on the bridge of his nose and on the
back of his hand, and the hushed discussion would begin all over again
