Power Play

2

The first member of the quartet received his letter at nine-fifteen exactly on Saturday.

Although Howell’s bank did not open for business on Saturdays, it was Richard Howell’s practice as its chairman and managing director, to spend a couple of hours there checking through the mail and attending to any small matters of business that might have been overlooked during the week.

It was only a half hour’s drive from the Chelsea mews flat he shared with his second wife to the small private car park that belonged to the bank. A uniformed commissionaire was there to let him in. Harry Rogers had been with the bank since the end of the Second World War, in which he had lost his right arm. He was due for retirement at the end of the year—something he wasn’t looking forward to, despite the generous pension he knew he would receive. He liked working at Howell’s. For one thing, it gave him something to boast about when he joined his pals at the Dog and Duck on Friday nights. There were very few people who didn’t recognise the Howell name; the merchant bank was famous for its meteoric expansion and profitability under the chairmanship of Richard Howell. It was regularly quoted in the financial press as an example to others of its kind; and those financial correspondents who in the early days had dubbed him as “reckless” and “lucky” now described him as “a man with diabolically keen financial insight; an innovator and a challenger.” Howell’s had been behind several of the more dazzling takeovers in the City in recent years, and the clients who came to them tended to stay.

At just turned thirty, Richard Howell still had the same relentless energy and drive he had when he first entered the bank, but now it was tempered by caution and a discreet amount of guile.

He was a man whose photograph regularly appeared both in the financial pages, and more latterly in those gossip columns that focused on media personalities, but very few people looking at those photographs would have recognised him in the street. No photograph could convey that restless, highly strung energy that became so evident when one met him face to face. He was not a particularly tall man; just a little over five foot ten, with a smooth cap of straight dark hair and the olive-tinged skin that was his Jewish heritage.

Several generations ago the Howells had anglicised their name and given up their Jewish faith; judiciously they had married into the lower and even sometimes upper echelons of the British aristocracy, but every now and again a Howell was born who looked remarkably like the Jacob Howell who had first founded their empire.

Richard Howell had the sculptured, pared-down face of an ascetic. His eyes were a very intense shade of blue, and they burned like the incessant fires of ambition that burned inside him. He knew quite well where it came from; this desire to build and go on building. His father and his grandfather had both been ambitious men in their different ways. It was unfortunate that in his father’s case that ambition had not led on to success but to death! But that was behind him now.

His first wife had accused him of being a workaholic, and he had denied it. Workaholics were driven purely by the pedestrian need to work; Richard wanted more; he was and always had been driven by a particular purpose, and yet now that that purpose had been achieved he couldn’t stop.

Inside his traditional striped shirt and Savile Row suit was a man who was basically a gambler. But unlike those men who must win and lose fortunes across the baize-covered tables of the world’s casinos, he had had the good fortune to be granted an entrée into the most exclusive of all the world’s gambling circles—the world of high finance.

Richard picked up the letter and studied the heading thoughtfully. Minesse Management. He knew of them, of course; there was talk in the City that it wouldn’t be long before they went public, but privately he doubted it. Pepper Minesse would never give up her empire to others, no matter how many millions going public might earn her.

Richard had seen her once, briefly, at a cocktail party he had attended with his second wife. There had been something elusively familiar about her, but though he searched his memory all night, he hadn’t been able to recognise what. It had annoyed him, because he prided himself on having a good memory for faces, and hers was so strikingly beautiful that he couldn’t imagine how, having seen it before, he could possibly have forgotten where. In fact, he could have sworn that he hadn’t, and yet…and yet that elusive, faint tug on his memory told him that somewhere he had. Linda, his second wife, worked for one of the independent television companies. Like him, she was career-orientated. Pepper Minesse had been at the party with one of her clients.

Richard Howell wasn’t a man who had a bias against successful women, and Pepper Minesse had intrigued him. She had built up her business from nothing and no one seemed to know anything about where she had come from or what she had been doing before she signed on her first client, other than that she had once worked for the American entrepreneur Victor Orlando. She was a woman who was skilled at appearing to be completely open and yet at the same time remaining conversely secretive about her past and her private life.

Richard tapped the envelope thoughtfully on his desk. It wasn’t all that unusual for him to receive correspondence from people he did not know; it happened all the time. Howell’s bank was known to be extremely discreet about dealing with its clients’ affairs.

He opened the letter and read it, then got out his diary. There was nothing booked in for Monday afternoon. He made a pencil note in it. The letter intrigued him. Pepper Minesse: he was looking forward to meeting her. It could be very…interesting.

He went through the rest of his mail and then his phone rang. He picked it up and heard the voice of his wife. They had arranged to spend the weekend with friends and she was just telephoning to remind him.

“I’ll be home in half an hour.” That would just give them time to make love before they set out. The adrenalin bounced round his veins, released by the intrigue and anticipation of Pepper’s letter. It was always like this—the merest hint of a new deal, a new game, always gave him a sexual boost.

Linda was the perfect wife for him; when he wanted sex she was both receptive and inventive; when he didn’t, she didn’t pester him. As far as he was concerned they had an ideal relationship. His first wife…He frowned, not wanting to think about Jessica. Linda had accused him once of wanting to pretend that his first marriage had never happened. She put it down to his Jewish blood and his inherited need to preserve old-fashioned values, and he hadn’t argued with her. How could he? His marriage to Jessica was something he couldn’t discuss with anyone, even now. He felt the beginnings of anger build up inside him, draining his physical desire, and checked them automatically. Jessica was in the past, and she was better left there.

Alex Barnett received his letter when the postman dropped it off halfway through Saturday morning. His wife Julia picked it up from the hall carpet and carried it through to the sunny sitting room at the back of the house where they breakfasted in leisurely relaxation on weekend mornings.

Alex looked quickly at her as she came in, dreading seeing the now familiar signs of the depression which so often seized her. This morning there was no sign of it. She was still buoyed up by the visit from the adoption authorities. He and Julia had everything that an ambitious couple could want. Everything, but for one thing…

At thirty, Alex Barnett was known as one of the most forward-thinking and successful men in his field. The computer age had still been at the toddler stage when he took over his father’s sewing machine factory. From sewing machines to computers had been quite a leap, but he had made it safely, and although the big boys tended to look askance at some of his innovations, he held a very generous share of the market.

In less than six weeks’ time he would hear from the Government whether they intended to accept his tender and install his terminals in British embassies throughout the world. The contract was far more important to him than he had allowed anyone else to know. Their sales had slipped slightly recently—not enough to cause concern, yet enough for him to realise that they badly needed the profits from this Government contract to finance new development.

That was the key to success in the computer world, and it was a young man’s business; at thirty, Alex already felt years older than most of his design staff.

“Anything interesting in the post?” he asked as Julia walked into the room.

They had bought the house four years ago when he first became successful. They had been spending a weekend in the Cotswolds, celebrating both their wedding anniversary and the success of his new computer. They had seen the house and the “For Sale” board, and both of them had known immediately that it was just what they were looking for.

They had always planned to have a family. Alex was an only one himself and so was Julia. Children were important to them both, and this was a house specifically designed for a family. It had large private gardens, surrounded by shrubbery, and a paddock large enough for a couple of ponies. The village was only ten minutes away by car, and there were enough good private schools locally for their children to attend as day pupils.

They had managed to buy the house at a good price, and Julia had given up her job to settle down to the business of renovating and furnishing it, and of course, getting pregnant.

Only she hadn’t; and since the news last month that the second in-vitro fertilisation attempt had failed, Julia had developed a brittle gaiety that scraped on Alex’s raw nerves like wire.

What made it worse, according to her, was that he could have children, but she could not be their mother. He had tried to reassure her that she was more important to him than any potential child they might or might not have, but she wasn’t willing to be reassured, so they had come back to the possibility of adoption; something they had discussed and eventually discounted in the early days after they had first discovered Julia couldn’t conceive.

But now they had tried every alternative avenue, and none of them had worked.

The strain of the last few years with their hopes and bitter disappointments had scarred them both, but Julia more so than Alex. She had pinned everything on the in-vitro fertilisation working, and when it had failed, nothing had been able to rouse her from her depression.

But now at last she seemed to be recovering slightly. She was smiling at him as she handed him the mail.

“There’s a letter from the adoption people. A social worker will be coming to interview us soon to find out if we’re suitable candidates to adopt.”

She paused beside his chair to read through the letter again. The sunlight caught her blonde hair and Alex reached up to push it back off her face. He had fallen in love with her the moment he saw her, and he still loved her. Her unhappiness was his, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to give her the child she so desperately wanted.

“Mm…what’s this?” she asked him, holding out a cream envelope. He took it from her, his eyebrows lifting slightly as he studied the insignia.

“Minesse Management—those are the people who sign up sports stars to endorse sports equipment and the like. It’s very big business.”

“Why are they writing to you?”

“I don’t know…perhaps they’re arranging some sort of pro-am tournament and they want us to participate.” Alex opened the letter, read it and then handed it to her.

“Well, it doesn’t tell you much at all, does it?” she commented.

“No, not really.”

“Will you go and see them?”

“I don’t see why not. Advertising is always useful, although of course it depends how much it’s going to cost. I’ll give them a ring on Monday morning and see what it’s all about…” Alex stretched back in his chair, his muscles tautening, then laughed as he saw the expression in Julia’s eyes. They had always had a good sex life, although neither of them had really enjoyed those years when they had had to make love to a timetable in the hope that Julia might conceive.

“I thought you were due to play a round of golf.”

“Perhaps I’d rather just play around?” he teased her, ducking out of the way as she flapped the newspaper threateningly in his direction and then grabbing her in his arms. Even without children they had so much, but Alex sensed that Julia would never give up; they had come too far down the road to go back.

But if they weren’t accepted by the adoption people? He shivered suddenly and looked into his wife’s face. She was thinner and there were tiny lines drawn on her skin by tension. She had invested so much hope in this test-tube thing; they both had, and he had feared that she might have a complete breakdown when their last attempt failed.

She was so fragile, so vulnerable; he could feel her bones through her skin. A wave of love and compassion washed through him. He buried his face in the smooth warmth of her throat and said gruffly, “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

They went upstairs hand in hand, Julia praying that he wouldn’t sense her reluctance. Since it had been confirmed that their final attempt to conceive via the in-vitro fertilisation method had failed she had completely lost interest in sex. Sex, like marriage, was ordained for the procreation of children; knowing that there would be no children robbed the act of its pleasure; of that glowing excitement she had felt in those early days when every act of love had been enough to make her climax wildly, elated by the knowledge that this joyous climactic act was the start of human life.

That joy had faded over the years, but she had still enjoyed sex; still welcomed Alex’s body within hers, but now suddenly there seemed no point any more. No matter how many times he made love to her she would not conceive his child.

Upstairs in their room as Alex took her in his arms she closed her eyes so that he couldn’t look into them and see her rejection.

Simon Herries, Member of Parliament for the Conservative constituency of Selwick, on the northern borders between England and Scotland, received his letter just before eleven o’clock on Saturday morning.