a buff envelope into narrow strips. The closed-circuit TV was the modern
equivalent of the tickertape; and Laski felt like the worried broker in
an old movie about the 1929 crash. The set continuously screened market
news and price movements in equities, commodities, and currency. There
had been no mention of the oil license. Hamilton shares had dropped five
points on yesterday, and trading was moderate.
He finished demolishing the envelope and dropped the scraps into a metal
wastepaper basket. The oil license should have been announced an hour
ago.
He picked up the blue phone and dialed 123.
“At the third stroke, the time will be one, forty seven and fifty
seconds.” The announcement was more than an hour late. He dialed the
Department of Energy and asked for the Press Office. A woman told him:
“The Secretary of State has been delayed. The Press conference will
begin as soon as he arrives, and the announcement will be made
immediately he opens the conference”
The hell with your delays, Laski thought: I’ve got a fortune riding on
this.
He pressed the intercom. “Carol?” There was no reply. He bellowed:
“Carol!”
The girl poked her head around the door. “I’m sorry, I was at the filing
cabinet.”
“Get me some coffee.”
“Certainly.”
He took from his “in” tray a file headed: Precision Tubing-Sales Report,
1st Quarter. It was a piece of routine espionage on a firm he was
thinking of taking over. He had a theory that capital equipment tended
to do well when a slump was bottoming out. But does Precision have the
capacity for expansion? he wondered.
He looked at the first page of the report, winced at the sales
director’s indigestible prose, and tossed the file aside. When he took a
gamble and lost, he could accept it with equanimity. What threw him was
something going wrong for unknown reasons. He knew he would not be able
to concentrate on anything until the Shield business was settled.
He fingered the sharp crease of his trousers, and thought about Tony
Cox. He had taken to the young hoodlum, despite his obvious
homosexuality, because he sensed what the English called a kindred
spirit. Like Laski, Cox had come from poverty to wealth on
determination, opportunism, and ruthlessness. Also like Laski, he tried
in small ways to take the edge off his lower-class manners Laski was
doing it better, but only because he had been practicing longer.
Cox wanted to be like Laski and he would make it by the time he was in
his fifties, he would be a distinguished, gray-haired City gent.
Laski realized he did not have a single sound reason for trusting Cox.
There was his instinct, of course, which told him the young man was
honest with people he knew: but the Tony Coxes of this world were
practiced deceivers. Had he simply invented the whole thing about Tim
Fitzpeterson?
The television set screened the Hamilton Holdings price again: it was
down another point. Laski wished they wouldn’t use that damn computer
typeface, all horizontal and vertical lines: it strained his eyes. He
began to calculate what he stood to lose if Hamilton did not get the
license.
If he could sell the 510,000 shares right now, he would have lost only a
few thousand pounds. But it would not be possible to dump the lot at the
market value. And the price was still slipping. Say a loss of twenty
thousand at the outside. And a psychological setback–damage to his
reputation as a winner.
Was there anything else at risk? What Cox planned to do with the
information Laski had supplied was certain to be criminal. However,
since Laski did not actually know about it, he could not be convicted of
conspiracy.
There was still Britain’s Official Secrets Act-mild by East European
standards, but a formidable piece of legislation. It was illegal to
approach a civil servant and get from him confidential data. Proving
that Laski had done that would be difficult, but not impossible. He had
asked Peters whether he had a big day ahead, and Peters had said:
“One of the days.” Then Laski had said to Cox:
“It’s today.” Well, if Cox and Peters could be persuaded to testify,