But Ryderbeit, like the banker, did not seem to be listening. He had taken out his cigar case, and without offering it to their host, or even asking his permission, was busy igniting one of his coronas.
Packer asked wearily, in English, ‘What’s your view, Sammy?’
‘I got no views, soldier. It’s none of my business.’ He drew on his cigar, leaned back and breathed two blue tendrils of smoke through his nostrils. ‘Remember, you’re my bossman,’ he added, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. ‘You take the decisions, not me.’
Packer had an angry suspicion that Ryderbeit was enjoying his discomfiture. He stood up and dropped the papers and pen on to the desk in front of the banker. ‘I want an extra paragraph inserted on all six copies. Exactly the same wording as the last-but-one, but substituting my full name for that of Monsieur Pol here.’
He heard Ryderbeit’s cackle from behind him. ‘Good on you — you devious Welsh bastard! I once trusted the fat sod with a couple of billion US and finished up as a fucking seamstress for the Reds.’
The banker was looking at Pol. The Frenchman appeared quite unmoved. He gave a little nod. ‘Do as Monsieur Packer instructs.’
The banker hesitated. ‘It will necessitate a certain delay. In the meantime I will arrange for you to be photographed and fingerprinted.’ He had pressed a button with his foot, and the elderly man appeared without a sound, closing the door as though it might break in his hand. He stood slightly stooped over the desk, while the banker murmured rapid instructions, then handed him Packer’s documents. The man left, without glancing once at the other three.
The banker now handed another set of documents to Ryderbeit, who began to study them with threatening concentration, his good eye squinting along each line of elegant typescript, while his dead one stared dully at the carpet and his cigar smouldered down between his fingers. He read them altogether three times, before accepting the gold pen; but although he seemed in a mood to haggle, he was evidently content. Pol knew Ryderbeit well enough not to chance his hand too far.
Ryderbeit finally signed, six times, in a slow careful hand, like a schoolboy’s. From where Packer was sitting he could not read any of the details, but their layout looked similar to his own, except for one important difference. Pol’s signature was missing. Ryderbeit tossed the gold pen in the air, caught it, threw it at the banker, who dropped it under the desk; then leaped up and gave a whooping cry. ‘Now Samuel D. Ryderbeit is going to start living!’
Packer looked at him, with a trace of envy. ‘You got the lot?’
‘The lot.’ Ryderbeit brought his hands together with a loud smack, while his cigar lay smoking unnoticed under his chair. ‘A hundred thousand beautiful British pounds transferred into Swiss francs.’ He reached the desk in a single stride and slapped the documents down in front of the banker.
‘All nice and wrapped up, eh, Sammy?’ Packer’s voice was cold and steady. ‘And no strings?’
Ryderbeit whirled round. ‘Trouble, soldier?’
‘Curiosity. A hundred thousand, just like that, without lifting a finger. Nobody’s that generous — not even Uncle Charlie here.’
Ryderbeit’s eye glinted nastily. ‘I say, soldier, none of your fucking business.’
‘It is my fucking business,’ said Packer. ‘From now on everything we do, right down to the smallest detail, is all my fucking business. What’s more, I’m going to make it my further fucking business to find out.’
Ryderbeit hesitated, then returned to his chair and retrieved his cigar. He looked up at Packer with a crooked leer. ‘All right, you bastard. I get twenty-five thousand on the nail. Another twenty-five when the deal’s set up. And fifty thou’ when we’re home and dry. Okay?’
‘No strings, no conditions?’ said Packer.
Ryderbeit raised his hands, palms upwards. ‘All clean as a nun’s knickers. And rich and fancy-free to boot.’ He looked round as the elderly retainer beckoned to them from the door.
The three of them followed him into a small white room with a plastic curtain, like a cubicle in a doctor’s surgery. The Polaroid pictures were taken by remote control, from an eye in the wall; then they each filed ceremoniously past a desk, where they pressed their fingertips on to a spongy black pad, then splayed them out on a set of headed documents, adding their signatures to each, before being given a towel and shown into a washroom, equipped with a patent destigmatizing lotion.
Back in the banker’s inner sanctum, a fresh set of documents lay on the desk. The banker again handed them first to Pol. The Frenchman merely glanced at the added paragraph, before again scribbling his signature at the bottom of each sheet, and passing them across to Packer. Their eyes did not meet.
Packer satisfied himself that the wording was correct, then signed too: with a detached, passionless precision, surprised that his hand remained steady. His past dealings with bank managers had been mundane, awkward, sometimes unpleasant. This experience now left him with a sense of unreality: it reminded him of the bad old days when, after a heavy night, he used to wake early to find that he was still drunk; and, as then, when he now stood up, the floor did not feel entirely firm under his feet.
There was a final formality, when the banker unlocked a drawer
