Yes, it was coming back, but he needed much more precise information than this before he could decide what to do.
He assembled his small change in neat piles and dialled the London number of the ancient banking house of Fattorini.
'David Audley for Matthew Fattorini, please.'
'Will you hold the line please, Mr. Audley.' Polite voice, polite pause for checking Matthew's personal list. 'I'm putting you through now,
dummy5
A shorter pause—'Hello, David! I thought you were in Washington.'
'You know too much, Matthew. I was, but now I'm not . . .
And I need to pick your brains.'
'Pick away, dear man—brains, pockets, it's all the same—
empty.'
Since Matthew Fattorini was certainly one of the shrewdest men in London, and would be one of the richest there before he retired, that was a mild departure from the truth, thought Audley.
'Gold, Matthew.'
'Uh-huh. Buying or selling?'
'Neither.'
'Pity. Lovely stuff, gold. Price is just about to go down, too.'
'I want information, Matthew.'
'Don't we all, dear man! But if you want to know whether the Portuguese are going to sell some more of their reserves —
and they've got at least 800 tons still— or how much the Russians are going to sell for that US grain, you've come to the wrong man—sorry.'
'Not that sort of information. Historical information.'
Silence. Audley fed the coin box again.
'What sort of history, David?'
'Sixteenth, seventeenth century.'
Another moment of silence. 'Wouldn't be Cromwell's gold by dummy5
any chance, would it, David?'
Audley grinned into the mouthpiece. 'I told you, you know too much, Matthew.'
'Read the papers, that's all. Lots of interesting things in the papers—you should know, you spend most of your time keeping the best stories out of 'em. But still lots of interesting things. Some of 'em very nearly true, too.'
'Like a ton of gold? Can that be on the level, Matthew?'
'Why not, David? Ton of gold weighs the same as a ton of wheat. It's just worth more—and easier to move, that's all.'
'Did they ship that sort of cargo from America?'
'In the seventeenth century? Dear man, that was the main cargo from the Spanish American colonies for years—gold and silver, plus gems and spices. I know for a fact that California was producing up to eighty tons a year in the 1850s, and Australia even more. If you think of all the gold-producing areas in the Americas— well, Francis Drake picked up tons of the stuff, gold and silver, in that one raid of his in the 1570s. And that must have been all from the current year's ore, they wouldn't have left the previous year's production just lying around, would they now?'
'But in one shipment, Matthew?'
'You mean all their eggs in one basket? Yes, I see. ...'
'And with pirates and bad weather—'
'Ah—now you're being deceived by your own historical propaganda. The English—and the French and the Dutch too dummy5
—always dreamed of Spanish treasure ships, but they very rarely captured one. They travelled in convoy, for a start. And there were very few men of Drake's calibre . . . which was of course why the Spaniards made such a fuss about him.
Besides, this shipment of yours was much later—in the 1620s or 30s, if I remember right, wasn't it? That is the one we're talking about, I presume?'
The mixture of disinterested interest and casual helpfulness was almost perfectly compounded, thought Audley.
'You wouldn't have a personal interest in Charlie Ratcliffe's credit, would you, Matthew?'
'Hah! Now who knows too much for his own good, eh?'
Matthew chuckled briefly. 'But as it happens—no. I'm not a crude money-lender. And if I was . . . there are some people I wouldn't lend money to.'
'But there are people who might?'
