The Lazarus Vault Part 16

He picked up a gilded letter-opener and spun it on its point on the desk. 'And there is business. Always business. I understand your thoughts must be with your mother, but I need you here. Now.'

Ellie waited.

'Michel Saint-Lazare was delighted to win the Talhouett auction. The company are not so pleased. The management refuse to accept our nominee to the board, or give us any access to the company. So Michel has decided to launch a bid for outright control.'

'A hostile takeover?'

'It will be a monumental battle. Both the French and German governments own stakes. If the French sell to us, the Germans will refuse; if the Germans sell, the French won't. In fact, probably neither of them will do business with us, because they will suspect us of being a Trojan horse for the other. Between them, they own 40 per cent of the company. That makes it difficult for us. All the cards must fall our way. But Michel is determined.

'We need you for this, Ellie. Your mother's condition could last for months and you cannot put your life on hold all this time. It goes on.'

He pressed the letter-opener into the desk, pushing a dent in the leather blotter. 'It would be difficult, I think, to keep working for Monsalvat if your mother remains in Newport.'

A week later she got a reply. The message was so well hidden she almost missed it: slipped into the folds of a free newspaper handed to her on the street as she walked towards the Barbican. The distributor thrust it into her chest; then, when she took it, held on a moment longer, so she was forced to look up. The yellow cap was pulled low over his face, but she recognised Harry's worried features below it. The next moment, he spun away to press another newspaper on an unwilling commuter. She looked out for him again the next day, but he wasn't there.

Two nights later, she got off the bus on the Fulham Road and walked back to the corner, checking to make sure no one was following. Old Church Street, the message had said, though there was no church Ellie could see: only an antiques shop and a plain brick wall disappearing around the corner. But there was a churchyard, an orphaned parcel of land long since forgotten. Ellie had seen it from the top deck of the bus, behind the wall she was now approaching.

Paint peeled from a green door in the wall: it looked as though it must have rotted shut years ago, but when Ellie pushed, it opened with barely a squeak. Ahead of her, a dozen rows of gravestones stood half-sunk into the soil, like some Neolithic monument.

'I'm sorry we couldn't find somewhere more convivial.'

In other circ.u.mstances, a lone figure loitering in the shadows of an abandoned graveyard would have made her jump. Today, she was too tired. Harry stood against the wall where the bus pa.s.sengers couldn't see him, watching through the arms of a moss-covered cross. He beckoned her over.

'Are you trying to scare me?'

He shook his head. 'You have no idea how difficult it's been. Blanchard has you covered every second you're out of the office. Seems to know where you're going even before you step out the door.'

'That's not hard. I go to the office, I go home. That's about it.'

Ellie thought back, trying to picture any unexpected coincidences, recurring faces. As ever, Harry sounded like a polite, soft-spoken lunatic. Except now, she thought, I have to believe him.

If he was right, she didn't have much time. 'Tell me about my father. Did he work for Monsalvat?'

Harry scratched a hunk of moss off the cross, exposing the white stone underneath. His finger came away black.

'He didn't get the job. In Brussels, I told you that I belong to an organisation. Call it a brotherhood, though we've nothing against women. We've been fighting a war against Monsalvat, on and off for almost nine hundred years.'

It was an extraordinary statement, but all Ellie could think to say was, 'The bank's only existed since the sixteenth century.' Only.

'As a bank. As an ent.i.ty, it goes much further back. Saint-Lazare de Morgon, who founded the bank, was a descendant of a Norman warlord called Lazar de Mortain. Even by medieval standards, he was a particularly vile piece of work.'

'Why did my father apply for a job there?'

'He was reconnoitring. You remember I told you he died trying to break into the vaults?'

'It's not the sort of thing you forget.'

'Nine hundred years ago, Lazar de Mortain stole something that belonged to our brotherhood. So far as we know it's still there, locked deep in the vault.'

Ellie remembered the vault shuddering as the train roared past. She imagined the bright headlamp reaching round the corner. A figure caught in its beam, no time to react. The screech of steel, burning metal, an impact. Sometimes, when she was working late and the office was quiet, she could feel the floor shiver, echoing the faint rumble far below.

'Monsalvat, for all its lip-service to the modern world, is effectively a feudal household. Michel Saint-Lazare's the king, and Blanchard his loyal seneschal. He's also Saint-Lazare's nephew, did you know that?'

Ellie shook her head.

'Saint-Lazare can't have children. We met up with him once, left him paralysed from the waist down.' Absentmindedly, Harry played with the b.u.t.ton on his overcoat.

Something Blanchard had said popped into her mind, that night after the opera. You don't need any protection with me. She tried to imagine these old men so much money, so much power yet denied the most basic, creative power of all.

'What about Talhouett? What have they got to do with you?'

'With us, nothing. They're just what they seem, a mid-ranking European industrial concern. But, by an accident of history, they own something that belongs to us.'

Ellie remembered his question in the park in Brussels, and Blanchard interrogating her after the due diligence. 'Mirabeau.'

'You don't need to know what it is. But somehow Saint-Lazare found out about it. When we heard he was prowling around Talhouett, we sent someone in to find out what he knew.'

Ellie saw a shadow move on one of the gravestones. Perhaps she wasn't too tired to be frightened after all. But it was only a squirrel.

'It went wrong. One man died, another got captured. He's dead too.'

'Captured by ...?'

'Blanchard? Saint-Lazare?' Harry shrugged. 'Doesn't matter. Blanchard's got a henchman who probably did the dirty work, a nasty chap called Destrier.'

'I've met him.'

A bus rumbled by on the Fulham Road. The lights of its upper deck seemed to hover in the night, men and women floating past with no conception of what was happening in the darkness below.

'Why did Blanchard recruit me?' Ellie asked.

'We don't know. We didn't think he knew you existed, or we'd have protected you better. We never meant for you to get mixed up in this. But now that you have ... d.a.m.n.'

He'd twisted the b.u.t.ton on his coat so hard the threads had snapped. He looked at it ruefully.

'That was new last Christmas.'

Ellie didn't care about his coat. She didn't care about a nine hundred year-old knight, or a brotherhood who wanted to bring down the bank.

'What do you want me to do?'

Never ask a question if you don't already know the answer, they'd taught on her negotiating course. But you always knew. Even speaking to Mrs Thomas in the thicket in Switzerland, she'd known what was coming. It was as if, in the intake of breath, you could hear the words that would re-emerge.

'We want you to break into the vault.'

'What's in it?'

He dropped the b.u.t.ton into his pocket. 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

'You want me to risk my life for it, but you won't tell me what it is?'

'I can't.' Harry shoved his hands in his pockets. 'When you've got it when you're safe I'll show you everything.'

'But my dad knew what it was.'

'Your father had devoted his life to it.'

She tried a different tack, pretending she hadn't already decided. 'You said you didn't want me mixed up with this.'

So often, she'd thought there was something incurably apologetic about Harry: the downturned mouth, the jowly face and eyes that drifted naturally towards his shoes. But there was nothing apologetic when he next spoke: only hard inevitability.

'You're already mixed up. I'm trying to get you out.'

XXVI.

France, 1136 The next two months are the happiest of my life.

We head south, towards the lands of the King of France. Nowhere's safe for us, but at least that'll be dangerous for Guy's men too. After two days we sell our horses. It's a wrench, surrendering my status so soon after I won it, but they're too easily recognised and we attract too many looks. We might just pa.s.s as a knight and his lady, but people will wonder where our servants and baggage have gone. They'll remember us.

On foot, we're almost invisible. As spring turns to summer, the people of Christendom pour on to the roads in their thousands. You could travel from Canterbury to Compostela and never be alone. After the first week, when every b.u.mp in the road has me looking over my shoulder for the dust of galloping hooves, the crowds start to relax me. The more people who see us, the fewer who'll notice.

You can see the change in both of us. I grow my hair long, and let my beard grow out. Ada's beauty's harder to disguise, but after two months her skin is harder and darker. We present ourselves as husband and wife, and live accordingly. After so long lurking in shadows, it's a joy to have it out in the open. It feels right, honest. I can almost forget that Ada has a real husband.

She never talks about him, but there's a look she has whenever we pa.s.s a church, a quietness, that reminds me she took a vow before G.o.d. It still binds her, however much I wish it away.

For a time, when we stop being children, we wish the world could be other than it is that wounds could heal without scars, that every love could be a first love, that past sins could be undone with a single confession. I learned the truth when I was young: we can never shed our sins and regrets, only acc.u.mulate more, a burden that we grow and carry until our deaths. The best we can do is learn to live with ourselves, to accommodate our pasts.

At the shrine of Our Lady of Tours, I give Ada a wooden brooch, two birds drinking from a cup. I can't marry her, but I get down on my knees and promise her, 'I'll always love you, I'll always protect you.'

But summer fades. One day, I realise the road isn't as busy as it was the week before. It's easier to find s.p.a.ce at the pilgrim hostels and almshouses; the queues at the town gates aren't as long. Travellers have begun to return home for the harvest, to wipe the dust off their shoes and lay up stores for winter. The questions that I've kept firmly over the horizon now seem urgent. When everyone goes home, where will we go? How will we support ourselves? We've stretched the money from the horses as far as we could, but it's almost gone. On the road, it's easy to pretend to be a glovemaker and his wife from London, but that won't feed us through the winter. Ada can sew and weave, but so can every woman. The only trade I know is fighting.

It's late August when the answer comes to me. We're in Burgundy, near Dijon; dusk is falling, earlier and earlier these days. We arrive at an inn. Usually we avoid them because of the cost, but it's been raining all day and we slept under a hedge last night. Pa.s.sing the door, I notice a tall blue shield painted with a golden star leaned against the wall. When I've haggled with the innkeeper for a bed and some food, I ask him about it.

'Etienne de Luz.' He jerks his thumb to the back room, where I can hear laughter and singing from behind a curtained door. 'The Count of Dijon is holding a tourney in three days at La Roche.'

The innkeeper slouches off to attend to something. Ada grabs my wrist. She can see what I'm thinking.

'It's too dangerous.'

'No one will recognise me. We're a long way from Normandy.'

That's not what she means. 'Men die in the tourney all the time.'

I know she's right. There are no blunted edges and filed-down points in the tourney. When lances shatter, splinters fill the air like swarms of arrows. But next morning, after a long night arguing with Ada, I'm standing in the stableyard when Etienne de Luz comes to get his mount.

It's obvious at once that he's no warrior. For a start, he's fully armed: a real fighter would save his strength for combat. His gleaming hauberk and jewelled scabbard can't hide the fact that his mail coat only has a single layer of rings, and his sword would probably snap in a strong wind. But the men who trail out of the tavern behind him look useful enough.

I step in front of him. 'I hear you're taking a company to the tournament at La Roche.'

He looks me up and down, then turns to his seneschal. He wants a second opinion. He's vain, but he knows his limitations.

The seneschal sees enough to be interested. 'What can you do?'

I look around the yard. My eye alights on a dove, perched on the edge of the roof, pecking grubs out of the thatch.

'Give me a spear.'

The seneschal obliges. I heft it in my hand, testing the weight, finding the balance. It doesn't have the poise of a Welsh javelin, but it will have to do.

I crouch, take a half-step back, and let fly. The javelin strikes the dove clean in the breast and goes through, burying itself in the thatch. Blood stains the white feathers. Etienne and his seneschal look impressed.

Guy would say it's hardly a knightly skill. But on the tournament field, all that matters is how many bodies you bring in.

'Can you do that on horseback?'

I don't tell him how the dove got there that I snared her last night in the stables and tethered her to the roof-beam with a loop of thread; that I've paced out the distance exactly. The storyteller doesn't have to tell his audience everything.

'Give me a horse, and I'll show you what I can do.'

XXVII.

London If it wasn't for what came afterwards, the next month would have been the hardest of Ellie's life. Every morning she was up at five, at her desk half an hour later chewing on a cereal bar and digesting the overnight news stories. At eight she met with Blanchard and the rest of the bid team, then straight on to twelve hours of meetings, conference calls, emails and spreadsheets. Every night at nine a taxi came to ferry her to the hospital, where she'd spend an hour at her mother's bedside: at least, having gone private, there were no restrictions on visiting hours. Then another taxi home, poring over the messages coming in on her phone, and perhaps a final hour's work before two or three in the morning.

She lived in darkness, a world of constant night where she never seemed to sleep. She began walking to the office again, even when it rained, just for ten minutes in the open air. Soon she came to recognise the people who were up at that hour: the streetsweeper on the corner of Gresham Street, making the world new again; the newspaper delivery driver who honked as he drove past; the newsagent lifting the shutter on his shop who never looked at her. Sometimes she remembered to be careful, to watch for following footsteps or shadows in doorways. Most of the time she was too tired to think of it.

She was in limbo, a tight-stretched canvas on which other men wrote their desires. Some days she thought it would tear her in two. She couldn't leave Blanchard, not while her mother lay sick in his hospital; she couldn't ignore Harry. She didn't even know if she was still going out with Doug. She'd told him about her mother, much later than she should have, garbling the story to hide the fact she'd been in Switzerland for Christmas. He'd wanted to go down and visit, but Ellie told him not to. She could tell he was hurt he started to say something about the state of their relationship, but bit it back. After that, he called once a week to ask how her mother was doing, but otherwise left her alone. The calls were so formal, so measured, she sometimes wondered if she'd broken up with him in a sleep-deprived moment and forgotten it.

As the month wore on, Blanchard began to give her unusual new a.s.signments. One night, she found herself outside an office block in Wapping slipping a stiff-backed envelope through a letterbox. Two days later, a newspaper not usually known for its business coverage printed a story about the Finance Director of Talhouett UK. Under the headline BANKER SPANKER it described, with excellently reproduced photo-graphs and eyewitness testimony, the Soho habits he hadn't thought to reveal to his wife. He threatened to sue, then resigned to spend more time with his family.

Another day, Ellie spent a morning sitting in the lobby of a hotel on Knightsbridge, watching for the trustee of a well-known pension fund. When he arrived, she followed him into the lift. By the time he reached the seventh floor he owned a new Gucci briefcase so heavy that simply carrying it left him lopsided. A week later, his fund announced that it would use its shareholding to vote in favour of the Saint-Lazare takeover.

If Ellie had stopped to think, she might have considered the implications of what she was doing. But she didn't. Her working mind had become a balance sheet: things that progressed the takeover; things that impeded it. Cause and effect barely entered the equation; right and wrong not at all. She was too tired.

At least she didn't have to travel much. Talhouett's headquarters and most of its business were on the continent, but a quirk of history had left its princ.i.p.al share listing in London. There was only one trip, and like most of her travels, it happened unexpectedly, when Blanchard stormed into her office one afternoon. Ellie had never seen him look so furious.

He knows, she thought. Harry, Newport, everything.

She shuffled papers and tried to look cool. 'What is it?'

'A white knight.' He slammed a folder on her desk. 'What do you know about the Koenig Group?'

Ellie swallowed as she tried to pull her thoughts together. 'They're private equity, aren't they? Mainly infrastructure and communications deals.'

'They have tabled a friendly offer for Talhouett. The management is keen even the German government may consider supporting the bid. One of their politicians thinks we are the unacceptable face of global capitalism.' He pulled a face.

'That makes no sense.' Ellie frowned. 'We're already offering more than the accretion/dilution numbers say. Koenig don't have any complementary businesses to create synergies, and if the German government are on board they won't let them sack workers or break up the company. What's in it for them?'

'This is not a coincidence, Ellie. Michel Saint-Lazare has enemies: one of them has put Koenig up to this. We must go to Paris at once.'