For The Love Of Money - Brian Doswell (speed reading book .TXT) 📗

warm. The stall owner had claimed that it was a hundred and fifty years old, to which Sue nodded but seriously doubted. She also doubted it would get used for coffee but it made an ideal ornament for her ‘cuisine fermière’. Lucy bought several pieces of lace including a very flimsy nightgown which she promised Andrew she would wear later that evening. George had demanded a cat-walk show but Sue had snarled at him and he quickly changed his mind. Lucy had laughed along with the others, knowing full well that George was a pussycat really. She was becoming more concerned about Sue who had insisted that Lucy try the thing on when they returned and had spent overlong tinkering with the laces and smoothing down the fine linen over Lucy’s body.
Andrew had found a long straight road to try out the Porsche and with non-existent French Sunday afternoon traffic around he had enjoyed putting his foot to the floor. He had stopped for a coffee in a village called Ambillou, less interested in the coffee than sitting outside the café bar and admiring the sleek lines of the car. His table conversation which centred on his enthusiasm for the finesse of his drive fell on deaf ears, but he failed to notice.
George saved his news for the cheese course.
Dinner was a simple dish of beef stew with potatoes and beans, served in deep bowls and accompanied by more crisp French bread. Andrew had expected something more elaborate in such a grand setting but was more than content with the rich flavours of the beef sauce into which Sue had put a mixture of black olives and anchovies.
The maid cleared the plates and brought a cheese board to the table. Sue sliced a sliver of a local blue and a triangle of goat’s cheese before passing the board to Lucy.
George left the table to open a second bottle of red and when he came back, he rested his elbow on the back of his chair, bottle in one hand and corkscrew in the other.
“I apologise for being a bit on the dull side last night.” He held up a hand to refute anticipated cries of “No George”, unfortunately no one argued with him. He continued, “I’ve been tossing over this thing with Sir William’s Fine Homes, etc. He seems to know what he’s up to so I’ve decided to go along with him. I’ve also taken the liberty of counting you in Andrew, so after dinner we can go up to my study and I’ll wire an advance bonus of two million into your account. We meet with him on Wednesday morning to sign up for the shares. There will be five shareholders, you, me and Sir William, plus two others whose names he wants to keep quiet until we hand over our cheques. Now then, is that worth a bottle of champers or shall I stick to the home brew?”
Lucy grabbed Andrew arm in excitement. “Champers for me please, George.” She felt Andrew stiffen or did she imagine it.
Sue jumped up from the table to hug George. “Well done you old sod. I knew you would find a way to sort it out. Looks as though it’s time for some more shopping Lucy. Where shall we go? How about Paris, we could get the TGV and be there well before lunch.”
Sue agreed, but harboured a twitch about spending time in communal changing rooms with Sue.

§§§§§

Later, in bed together, Lucy asked Andrew about the investment deal. “Two million is an awful lot of money. Are you sure that it’s OK? George seems to have railroaded it a bit.”
Andrew pulled Lucy towards him, “I trust George, I have to. I know he can be a bit of a risk taker but he didn’t get where he is today etc. etc. And, he’s never let me down.”
“Does that mean he’s clever or just lucky?”
“Good question. Now how does this lace thing come undone?”


FUTURES

Garry Whitaker waited in Starbucks until eight and then walked across to the office carrying a Styrofoam cup in one hand and his distinctive Wilkinson’s laptop in the other. It was a full week since Chrissie had met him in the coffee shop and he missed their morning banter. As usual, he had listened to the news during his commute on the train from Denham, another oil tanker had been hijacked somewhere around the Horn of Africa. This was the third one to be taken by pirates in the last ten days. Shipping insurance was bound to be affected again and the price of oil would almost certainly be fragile during the morning while the market decided what to make of it. He planned to contact a friend at Lloyds Shipping Register later in the morning to see what the inner circle had to say about the effect these pirates were having on premiums. Chrissie normally had a good handle on these things but it seemed as though she had been hijacked herself into the new Futures team under the equally new Andrew McAllister.
Most of the Wilkinson’s people understood that Andrew McAllister and George Padworth had known each other for some years but the sudden and unannounced appointment of a ‘European Desk’ had surprised them all. Chrissie had been head of Pan-European Pharmaceuticals as he had been head of Pan-European Petrochemicals. It appeared as if Andrew McAllister was now somewhere between him and George in the Wilkinson’s hierarchy. Gary had briefly considered asking HR if they were going to put out a circular announcing the new appointment, but then he decided that if that was what George wanted, well so be it. Thus far, nothing had changed in his team.
The thing that worried Gary most was the change that he was beginning to detect in Chrissie. He and Chrissie had been close in a working sense and he had a huge regard for her knowledge of the pharmaceutical market. She had pulled off some master strokes especially the deal with the pirate web site and the BASF report, but now it seemed that her mind was elsewhere, almost as though McAllister had bewitched her. It was obvious that McAllister had his eyes locked into Chrissie’s ample cleavage from morning till night. Who bewitched whom, he wondered? Chrissie had only been an Exec since the beginning of the year and she was still a bit in awe of the high-powered circle she now mixed with. Gary could easily see how McAllister’s attention could be misread.
Gary had been at the last Christmas party in Balls Brothers wine bar, when George had promoted Chrissie to the Exec level. The place had been in uproar for the rest of the evening with champagne for everyone, all on George’s tab. Everyone liked Chrissie, although to be fair, she had worried some when she first joined. The problem was that she was just too good looking; tall, light brown, almost blonde hair, eyes so deep you could swim in them and a figure to die for. The girls were all jealous of her and the boys all voted her the girl they would most like to spend a week with on a desert island. But, that all seemed a long time ago. Chrissie had worked hard and hammered on the proverbial glass ceiling until the whole thing shattered around her. She deserved to be head of Pan-European Pharmaceuticals, her team adored her and she was obviously George’s current protégé, or had been until McAllister showed up.
Gary’s secondary worry stemmed from the rumours wafting upwards from his team, who shared the open plan office on the fourth floor with Chrissie’s team. The word was that she had missed two team meetings in a row; that she was rarely in her office during working hours and after working hours she was always to be found in Balls Brothers with McAllister.
Chrissie, on the other hand, was flying.
She and James had driven home to the New Forest after George’s annual end-of-season garden party. In the car together they had laughed about Andrew McAllister’s attention to her bust line. It happened all the time. She was proud of her figure and James had become accustomed to the way other men ogled his wife’s figure, especially at parties when the booze was flowing. They had been married for ten years and, with the children, James Junior and Naomi, they were a pretty solid family. James worked from home as a design consultant and Stephanie, their au pair, looked after the children which allowed Chrissie to leave home at the crack of dawn and get back, eventually. In many ways, the very nature of her job depended on the social interaction between business colleagues. Fortunately the City, in its own way, closed the doors on most of the after-hours socialising at eight o’clock sharp and Chrissie was usually home around nine.
It seemed that the thing everyone agreed on was that McAllister’s forte was listening. McAllister listened to Chrissie. Chrissie was exceedingly flattered by it and was pleased to explain it in detail to her long suffering husband James. James was beginning to wonder if Chrissie had any other topic of conversation. ‘I was talking to Andrew about this and I was talking to Andrew about that.’ What happened to the rest of the world?

§§§§§

It was shortly after Andrew McAllister returned from George’s place in the Loire Valley that he called Chrissie into his office.
“Hi Chrissie, pull up a chair. I’ve just had a call from an old pal in Rome. He’s a media hound, works for Italian television on their news desk. He told me that Medicato’s research centre in Milan are about to release some new trials data on anti-retro-viral HIV stuff. He reckons it will be red hot and Medicato’s shares will sky-rocket. Now, it’s common news that Medicato are under the cosh, subject to a hostile bid from Roche. If this info is true, there’s a deal in there somewhere. How would you like a trip to Rome to have dinner with my old television buddy Arturo? See what you can find out.”

§§§§§

The following morning Chrissie parked her BMW at Gatwick before checking onto the Easy Jet flight to Rome. Grey autumnal English skies gradually turned to azure blue as the Boeing 737 flew south over France towards the navigation beacon at Ajaccio on the island of Corsica and then a long slow left turn to line up on runway 07 at Fiumicino airport, on the coast, a few miles north of Ostia and west of Rome. As an Exec, Wilkinson’s would normally have paid for her to fly first class but this was the first available flight of the day and Chrissie was eager to follow McAllister’s lead. Her dark blue cabin bag, bought especially to match her BMW, contained her laptop, toothbrush and a change of clothes which she hoped she would not need as she planned to get the late evening flight from Rome back to London.
Arturo Scarlatti was waiting in the Arrivals Lounge with ‘Wilkinson’s’ written in pencil on a crumpled sheet of paper.
Chrissie had not known quite what to expect but was far from surprised when Arturo, media hound and old pal of Andrew, turned out to be ‘tall dark and handsome’ and drove an old but most desirable Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa with the top down along the autostrada into Rome as though the hounds of hell were at his heels. On the outskirts of the city, Arturo took a slip road off the autostrada into lush green countryside and then another turn past high iron gates into the grounds of a villa that had once been a grand private home but was now a very expensive restaurant.
Arturo had booked a table