the strings he had pulled.
It was a war record beyond reproach, an essential stepping stone toward the prize, playing the long game. The question was just how deep the dream ran in his father. After all his work—all the planning, the foresight—was he really going to throw it away now?
In his heart Manfred knew there was only one answer, though for a moment he doubted the assumption—the moment his father strode back into the drawing room from the garden. He walked straight up to Manfred, his eyes blazing, and slapped him hard across the face.
‘You stupid boy,’ he spat.
Manfred could only think how much worse his reaction would have been if he’d been told the whole truth.
His father walked to the sideboard, helped himself to a cigarette and lit it with a trembling hand.
‘This fisherman, Labarde, does he have a telephone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes,’ said Richard.
His father made for the door.
Richard intercepted him. ‘What are you going to do, George?’
‘What you should have done in the first place—pay him off.’
‘I don’t know about this one.’
‘Name me one man who couldn’t be bought?’
‘Then let me handle it,’ said Richard. ‘For your own sake, you should stay out of it.’
It was a good point, though not the real reason Richard didn’t want him speaking to Labarde.
‘You should have come to me,’ snapped his father as soon as Richard had left the room.
‘Come to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Since when have I ever been able to come to you?’
His father glared at him.
‘It’s true,’ Manfred went on. ‘You know it is.’
He lit a cigarette. His father wandered to the French windows and looked out over the garden. They both smoked in silence.
His father turned. ‘He’s with you for ever now—Richard, I mean. You know that, don’t you? This is his ticket.’
It hadn’t occurred to Manfred before that Richard might have an agenda all of his own. And he drew comfort from it. If he’d done wrong, it was because his hand had been guided by a man thinking only of himself.
At that moment, Richard returned to the drawing room.
‘He wants two hundred thousand dollars for the document. Tonight.’
‘Two hundred thousand!?’
‘It’s cheap at that price,’ said George Wallace. ‘Though I daresay it’s doubled since you tried to steal it from him.’
‘Where are we going to find that kind of money on a Saturday?’ said Richard.
‘After everything else you’ve arranged,’ snarled Manfred’s father, ‘I can’t imagine it poses too much of a problem.’
Thirty-Six
Hollis had come prepared with two handkerchiefs. By midday, when the first cars started to arrive, one was already sodden from mopping his brow, and he’d laid it on a nearby hedge to dry in the sun; the second was well on its way to reaching its saturation point.
Another car tried to park on the verge and he moved it on.
Christ, it was hot, the windless heat roasting him in his uniform.
‘Ambulance! Ambulance!’
The urgent call came from behind him and he spun round.
Abel triggered the shutter of the Speed Graphic. ‘That’s great,’ he said, appearing from behind the camera. ‘I can just see it on the front page of the
‘Very funny.’
‘Jesus, Tom, you look like you just went twelve rounds with Rita Hayworth.’
Easy for him to say in his sleeveless open-necked shirt and his cotton slacks.
‘So, how’s it going?’ asked Abel.
‘How’s what going?’
