watched the coast, watched the boats, searching for what he knew had to be there.
Searched, then, with a sinking heart, he saw it.
Two boats, the size of launches, broke from the green-fringed islands. They could have been fishing boats, only these launches were faster, sharper, lighter, keener. The two boats chugged out to sea, then headed south. Abe, holding his position in the eye of the sun, his stomach churning with a feeling that he couldn’t put into words, turned to follow.
It was 31 May 1926.
Willard stood, face washed and shoes shined, in Ted Powell’s eighteenth-storey office. The banker was on the telephone and held up a finger, indicating that Willard should neither move nor speak. The call ran on for six minutes before Powell hung up. He stared at Willard.
‘It’s eight-thirty,’ he said.
‘You said I should come by first thing.’
‘We start at eight.’
‘Oh.’
‘Never mind. Tomorrow. I’ll show you around.’
Brusque and unfriendly, Powell shot his newest recruit around the premises. Powell never knocked on any door. He just threw them open and snapped out the name of each department or office as he did so. ‘Typing Pool’, ‘Mail Room’, ‘Mr Barker and Mr Grainger, in charge of our trade finance operation’, ‘Legal’, ‘Letters of Credit’, ‘Settlements’, and so on. Powell Lambert occupied four floors of its building. Although Willard saw everything at too great a speed to take it in, he was given the impression of a purposeful, dynamic, dedicated business enterprise. The more routine areas of the bank – the Typing Pool, the bay where the settlement clerks went about their business – were neat but functional. The parts of the bank open to clients or reserved for senior officers were kept immaculate and expensive: thick carpets, colonial period clocks, large mahogany desks, crystal light fittings.
The only time when Powell slowed down was in the Investment Bureau. The Bureau was lavishly furnished. It would have given off the air of a gentlemen’s club, except that the undercurrent of a steely dedication to making money was stronger there than anywhere. Desks sat at long distances from each other across a wide green carpet. Young men, a couple of them no older than Willard, murmured into phones or sat at one another’s desks calmly chatting. Unlike the less favoured areas, Willard witnessed no stiffening into silence when Powell walked in. He greeted his employees by their first names. They greeted him back, not bothering to rise, not ending their phone calls, sometimes greeting him with nothing more than a look and a nod.
Willard felt the difference in atmosphere instantly. If he’d ever imagined working behind a desk, then this was the sort of desk he’d like to occupy. Thus far on his tour, he had felt the cold chains of his contractual imprisonment rattling louder and louder with each new depressing stride. Here, it was different, brighter, hopeful. He looked up expectantly and Powell seemed to confirm his rising hope.
‘Every part of Powell Lambert is important,’ said Powell, ‘but the Investment Bureau is worth everything else in the bank put together – good morning, Freddie. D’you get your revenge on the golf course, then? Ha! Thought as much. This is where the substantial profit-making activities of the firm are concentrated.’ As he spoke those words, ‘substantial profit-making activities’, Powell’s face screwed up as though he were speaking of something sacred. He paused, before adding in a different tone, ‘That loan of ours.’
‘Yes?’
‘If you are ever to pay it off, it will be through your ability to earn exceptional returns on assets entrusted to you by the firm.’
‘Gosh, you’d give me a chance in Investments one day?’
‘I didn’t say that. Your record in the moving picture business does not inspire confidence.’
Willard winced. He felt the crushing weight of his debt, his failure in the movies, of his father’s doubts. Then, noticing that there was a part of the top, twentieth, floor that they had not visited, tried to win back some credit for himself by pointing it out.
‘What’s through there, Ted? Anything important?’
‘That depends on what you consider important.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s lifting machinery. It drives the elevators. It means you are not obliged to climb seventeen flights of stairs on your way in to work. Does that strike you as important?’
‘No.’
Powell made no answer, except to say, ‘You will start out in Trade Finance. Downstairs.’
He strode downstairs, and marched Willard along a corridor to a door, marked ‘Trade Finance’. He flung it open. Inside was a good-sized room, thirty foot by twenty, mahogany panelled to waist-height, painted dirty cream above. A big map of the United States was the only decoration, aside from a large black-and-white clock set in a frame of dark wood. The room was less bleak than the factory-conditions of the Typing Pool, but a long way from the studied luxury of the Investment Bureau. Looking at his new workplace, Willard felt his throat tighten with nerves.
There were five desks, plus a circular well-shaped one in the middle. A secretary sat in the middle of the circular one. Four young men sat at theirs, on the phone, bent over paperwork, or yawning and reaching for coffee. But as soon as Powell’s frame was visible in the doorway, everything changed. The yawning man reached for his pen instead of his coffee. The secretary rolled her chair closer to Powell. The man on the phone finished his call. The room went still.
‘Trade Finance,’ said Powell, ‘our main activity. This is the engine room of Powell Lambert, an important place. And these are your colleagues.’ Powell grinned meaninglessly, letting his grin linger as his eyes patrolled. ‘Hughes, McVeigh, Claverty, Ronson.’ Powell named the four men in turn, jabbing at them with his finger as though they were bullocks at market. He didn’t look at the secretary, let alone give her a name. ‘You’ll get on with them all. They’ll tell you what to do. If you have any questions…’ Powell tailed off, as though already bored.
‘If I have any questions, I’ll come to you. Sure. Thanks for the introduction, Ted.’
Powell’s gaze flicked sharply around to Willard.
‘If you have any questions, you will not so much as think of disturbing me with them. These men here will sort you out.’
‘Certainly. Sorry. Of course.’
‘And you will not call me Ted.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Powell, I thought you said I should call you…’
‘When I said that, Thornton, you were not my employee.’
‘Yes, Mr Powell.’
The silence lasted a second or two longer than it should have done.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing, sir. Thank you.’
Willard went to the empty desk and sat down.
Down in the swampy heat and dirt roads of southern Georgia, a little red-headed kid, aviation crazy as he was, got an envelope through the post. The letter contained a movie poster signed by Willard T. Thornton. It wasn’t Lundmark’s battered old poster, but a brand new one, large and glossy, with an extravagant signature in thick blue pencil that came pretty near to deleting the smaller figure of Willard’s leading lady and co-star. Along with the poster there was a short note in a separate envelope addressed to Captain Rockwell. Brad didn’t know where to find Abe, but he put the envelope aside in case.
And