Dunbar Page 18

  “You should have secured the shares earlier,” said Abby bitterly.

  “Don’t lecture me on my business,” said Dick, with a touch of menace. “If you start a buyout too early it drives the price up, and you end up with every arbitrage vulture in London and New York tearing the heart out of your profits. Anyhow, we had five of the best brokerage houses buying the stock gradually on our behalf. We were supposed to have it all locked down by the middle of your Board meeting, but yesterday one fucking house after another was saying it didn’t have the stock ready yet, or that it hadn’t been able to acquire enough of it. I think the fuckers sold it to Cogniccenti. Some asshole must have told him where to go shopping.”

  “Someone in your organization?”

  “Abby, like I said, the office was full of grown men in tears: they were crying over their Christmas bonuses. We’ve put three months of work into this Eagle Rock deal. Everyone in the office is one hundred percent committed.”

  “This is a king-sized fuck-up,” said Abby.

  “Calm down,” said Dick. “We still have options. We can keep on trying to get all the scraps we can, and we can run a counter-ad, appealing to the loyalty of the old Dunbar shareholders. The brokerage firms had a lot of shares, but a lot more are still out there in Shareholder Land, in the hands of millions of ordinary people. The trouble is we’ll have to renegotiate our credit to make a better offer than Unicom.”

  “Well, get on it,” said Abby.

  “I’m on it.”

  —

  Dunbar was reluctant to knock on Florence’s door, in case she was still asleep. When he had dropped in on her after saying good-bye to Wilson, she had apologized and said that she was feeling a little nauseous and would rather stay in bed. Resting her hands on her abdomen, she said that she was having cramps, which he tactfully assumed meant she was getting her period and that he should ask no further questions. She had said she wanted to get a good night’s sleep since there was so much going on the next day.

  There was still time to let her rest a little longer. She wasn’t even going to the meeting, after all, and Wilson wasn’t picking him up for an hour or so. In the meantime he would busy himself getting ready. He spread out his white shirt and dark gray suit, his maroon tie with a subtle diamond pattern of its own color, and his gold cufflinks: the sort of clothes he had worn for decades but which now felt strange and slightly comical.

  As he stood under the shower a few minutes later, it seemed enough to let the water, like rain on a hillside, form its own streams as it ran down his body. It seemed enough to do nothing. He was feeling a kind of unprecedented calm. Unicom might devour the company, his daughters might take it private, and it might remain intact and be run by its loyal senior management; just for the moment he was at ease with all the possible outcomes. He felt that this resignation to fate was at once hidden and obvious, like the tears that he could feel stinging the corners of his eyes but that were invisible among the streams of water rushing over his face. He was crying out of gratitude, and he was grateful to be crying. He didn’t even care if he became the kind of foolish old man who cried all the time; it was such a relief to stop trying to control himself anymore. He had imagined that his life’s work was to build one of the most powerful organizations in the world, but now he felt that it had all really been leading to the rehabilitation of his innocence. It was a seemingly circular journey that had forced him to crawl through a second childhood, but had then unexpectedly continued backward, through his Cumbrian ordeal, to something more like a second birth. An apparently circular pattern had opened up at the last moment into a new realm in which everything seemed to be perfect just as it was.

  Some residual practicality eventually allowed Dunbar to turn off the shower, step out, and wrap himself in a towel. Walking slowly back into the bedroom, he glanced at the clothes on the bed but was unable to take seriously the idea that he should start getting dressed. Instead, he subsided into the armchair in the corner of the room, between the window and the chest of drawers, astonished, at his age, to be experiencing something for the first time.

  There was a knock on the door and, before he had time to answer it, Florence came into his room in her dressing gown, walked unsteadily over to the bed, and sank down onto the mattress. Her face was astonishingly pale and she was clearly struggling to master her physical state.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said, with some difficulty, “I wouldn’t normally barge in on you like this, but I’ve been feeling really terrible. I don’t know what’s wrong; I’ve been vomiting. In fact, I’m going to have to move into one of the children’s rooms; mine needs clearing up. I couldn’t control it. It’s not really fair on…”

  Florence broke short her sentence and leant forward over her folded arms, groaning with pain.

  “Jesus,” said Dunbar, sitting down next to her and putting his arm across her stooped back. “We must call a doctor.” He clasped her shoulder, as much to reassure himself as Florence.

  “I’ve already called him,” she gasped. “Do you mind letting him in?”

  “Of course not,” said Dunbar.

  “Oh, God,” said Florence, lurching forward and retching.

  “My darling,” said Dunbar. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Lie here, lie here, I’ll get a bowl,” said Dunbar.

  He got up, his heart beating wildly. As he looked down he saw with horror that the mess on the carpet was red with blood. He reeled from the room, feeling a wave of wild panic and passionate opposition—if there was a God and he let Florence come to any serious harm, he was no better than a criminal lunatic.

  Where was the doctor? Where was the bloody doctor?

  —

  Kevin had invited himself to breakfast to “go over some security issues” and it was logical to assume that he was the person ringing the doorbell, but J was busy preparing his muscle-building, energy-boosting patent smoothie, and it would have taken four strong men to stop him from setting those rotary blades in motion. He also took the time to switch on the kettle before ambling over to the front door of his studio flat and welcoming Kevin, over the whine of the blender and the incipient rumble of the heating water, into its plain interior. Only one object decorated the white walls of the room: a gently curved black samurai sword resting on almost invisible nails over the pallet bed on the far side of the room.

  “Wotcha, mate!” said Kevin, with a geniality that immediately made J suspicious. He was clearly about to make some unpleasant request, or deliver some harsh news.

  “How’s it going?” said J, returning to the kitchen counter and switching off the blender at the very moment that the kettle reached its shuddering climax and clicked itself off. J savored the faultless efficiency and effortless synergy. Ever since he had been with Megan, everything was just flowing so beautifully. It was like perfect sex, or like perfect intuition, when you could shoot through a partition at the exact right point and hear the body fall on the other side.

  He didn’t much care what that sour old fuck Kevin had come to complain about; tomorrow he would be flying to Maui on a private jet with Megan and catching mangos as they fell from the trees. As he savored his feeling of superiority, as well as the no less delicious prospect of the giant energy boost he was about to get from combining a pint of fresh black coffee with a pint of pale green protein, a slight change of light on the bulging stainless steel surface of the kettle caught his attention. He could see a strangely enlarged reflection of Kevin’s hand reaching inside his brown leather coat, and with that battle alertness he had just been reflecting on, he knew that Kevin was reaching for a weapon.

  Spinning round, he swung the kettle upward through the air, splashing Kevin in a ribbon of boiling water from his wrist to his face, and at the same time kicking him between the legs as hard as possible. As Kevin lurched forward, J brought the kettle down on the crown of his head, grabbed his right arm, and twisted it until the gun fell from his hand. He kicke
d the pistol across the floor to the corner of the room and, after punching Kevin in the side of the head, walked over to the bed and took the curved black sword from its hanging place on the wall.

  Kevin, to give him his due, was a warrior and despite severe burns, partial blinding, and two disabling blows, was back on his feet and had managed to grab a knife from the magnetic strip above the cooker. J threw aside the scabbard of the sword and walked toward his opponent with the blade drawn back and ready to strike.

  “Man, I knew you were jealous,” said J, “but I didn’t know you were crazy.”

  “Jealous?” Kevin said, sucking in his pain. “She’s the one who fucking sent me here.”

  “Take back that dirty lie,” said J.

  “It’s true, mate. She said you were blackmailing her and that she wanted you dead.”

  “No,” shouted J. “No!”

  Even as he tried to deny it, J knew that Kevin was telling the truth. The only thing he could trust in this world of shit was the weapon he was holding in his hands.

  “No!” he shouted, one more time, slicing through Kevin’s neck.

  J cleaned the blade of his sword with a tea cloth folded neatly by the sink. As he slid the sword back into its scabbard, he emptied his mind of every thought except revenge.

  —

  “You should go to your meeting,” said Florence.

  “I’m not leaving you,” said Dunbar. “Wilson can go to the meeting for me.”

  “I’m not leaving either of you until we know what’s going on,” said Wilson.

  “We’ve got an ambulance that is currently six minutes away,” said the doctor.

  “Oh, stop being so loyal, both of you,” said Florence, but even as she tried to sound carefree and practical, she was forced to turn away again and vomit into a bowl already full of blood and bile. “Apart from anything else,” she added, “I don’t want anyone to see me in this state.”

  “Can I stay, at least?” said Chris, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his hand resting on the outline of her leg. “You forget,” he said, smiling, “we went round Mexico together twice, I’m used to seeing you like this.”

  “This is different,” said Florence, showing her fear for the first time, “It’s as if I’m vomiting myself. I’ve never felt this sick before.”

  When she saw the expression on her father’s face, Florence immediately regretted giving in to the relief of talking directly to Chris.

  “For God’s sake,” shouted Dunbar to the doctor, as if he might relent under enough emotional pressure and reveal that he had a solution after all. “Can’t you do something?”

  “This is not an average house call,” said the doctor drily. “When the ambulance arrives we’re going to administer a powerful antiemetic, get started on an activated charcoal lavage, and send the blood sample and the skin sample from the puncture wound to the emergency pathology lab. She’ll be in the intensive care unit of the Presbyterian Hospital within half an hour, getting some of the best medical treatment available anywhere in the world. It would be helpful to the patient if we could all stay calm.”

  Dunbar stared at the doctor dumbly.

  “Intensive care unit,” he repeated in a hoarse whisper.

  —

  Megan sat in the back of her car, vaguely waiting for Abby to come out of her building, and urgently waiting for a text from Kevin. They had agreed on a code. An hour after his breakfast meeting with J, she had texted an innocent request for him to meet her at the Dunbar Building after the Board meeting. If he had successfully dealt with J, he would reply, “Understood”; if there was some kind of problem or delay he would reply, “I’ll be there.” Instead, there was no reply at all.

  She refused to worry, she simply refused to, but her anxiety, unlike so many of the employees in her compliant entourage, refused her refusal and took control of her imagination. What if Kevin and Jesus had agreed to collaborate in some way? They were brothers in arms, after all. Who knew what weird bonds developed among men who had been officially sanctioned to maim, kill, and torture? What if J had prevailed? Would she be able to persuade him that Kevin had been acting out of insane jealousy and that she was going to light a thousand candles to thank God for sparing J’s precious life?

  “Hi,” said Abby, startling Megan out of her thoughts. “What a dreadful fucking day…”

  “Oh, hi, it’s great to see you, too,” said Meg, grabbing at sarcasm to stop herself from drowning in the torrent of questions that had been sweeping her away before her sister’s arrival.

  “I’m sorry,” said Abby, “but I’ve had such an annoying conversation with Dick Bild this morning. He’s totally screwed up. He hasn’t been able to secure the shares we had lined up. We’re going to have to borrow more money, which will eat into our profits…”

  “We might as well not go to the fucking meeting at all,” said Megan, alarmed by her sudden indifference to making money, compared to her terror of being imprisoned.

  “For God’s sake, Meg,” Abby began, but a glance at her sister’s clenched profile silenced her. She had hardly ever seen Megan frightened and she had never seen her in despair; now both emotions were combined in a single rigid stare. She transferred her exasperation to the driver.

  “What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  —

  “This should be fun,” said Cogniccenti, switching on his computer. “I’ve set up a connection with a new member of the Board, whose anonymity I’ll protect by simply calling him ‘Dr. Bob.’ ”

  “That asshole,” said Dick Bild, “what the fuck is he doing on the Board?”

  “The girls have put him there as a reward for certain favors.”

  “Percocet Extra Strength favors, or Dunbar Trust favors?”

  “I imagine the prescriptions flowed pretty freely, but he also played a key part in Dunbar’s fall from power.”

  “Not key enough,” said Bild. “I hear the old man arrived back in the city last night. Even Victor used to avoid locking antlers with Henry Dunbar. I guess that’s why we’re listening in. See if he’s still got the old mojo.”

  “Mojo?” said Cogniccenti. “The guy was certifiably insane until two days ago. Without you the Eagle Rock bid is already dead in the water. What’s he going to do, make a stirring speech explaining to the Board that it’s their fiduciary responsibility to turn down a twenty-two percent premium so they can spend the rest of their lives being sued by angry shareholders?”

  Steve put a couple of bottles of cold Japanese beer on the table; as if the two men were settling down to watch a football game.

  “It’s a done deal, Dick,” said Steve, leaning forward to raise the volume on his computer: “just enjoy the show.”

  “No,” said Dunbar. “Not Florence.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the doctor, more stunned than usual by the inadequacy of his words.

  “We must give her new organs,” said Dunbar, “put her on some machines while they’re being replaced. Take mine, if you can’t get others soon enough. I know they’re old, but they still work.”

  Dunbar peeled off his jacket and slipped the tie from his neck.

  “Mr. Dunbar…” the doctor began.

  “It’s not natural for her to die first,” said Dunbar, unbuttoning his collar. “It should be the other way round. Take anything she needs: heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, eyes, whatever might save her life.”

  “Mr. Dunbar, there’s nothing we can do,” said the doctor, putting a restraining hand on Dunbar’s arm. “I’m sorry. The whole body is septic, the new organs would just start to fail as soon as we put them in.”

  Florence had been poisoned with Abrin, a toxin for which there was no antidote, combined in this case with other poisons to make her death more certain and more painful. Her system was being purged and her blood changed, which would give her a little more time, but her body was already caught up in an irreversible process of collapse.

  Dunbar continued to unbutton his shirt un
til it was open to the waist.

  “What are you doing?” asked Florence, waking from the heavy sedation she was under.

  “I want to donate…”

  “Oh, Daddy,” said Florence, her eyes filling with tears.

  Dunbar reached out and clasped Florence’s hand. With a mixture of relief and dread, he realized that he could not feel the anesthetic numbness that had spread over him when he was told that Catherine was not going to “make it.” There were no battlements left around his heart to postpone his surrender to sorrow and desolation. Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly? And yet he had felt blessed for the first time only the day before. There was something obscene about the indiscriminate clarity of his new mind. If only he had gone with Florence to Wyoming, if only he had renounced his power a little sooner. Now he was like a man whose sight has been restored just in time to be wheeled in front of The Flaying of Marsyas, unable to move, unable to leave, knowing he will never see the other galleries again.

  “We’ll be right outside,” said the doctor to Florence, “just press this button if you need any help.”

  Florence nodded, but said nothing, as if she only had a certain number of words left and meant to use them carefully. Once the doctor and the nurses had left the room, she managed to speak again.

  “It’s not that I’m frightened of dying,” she said. “It’s more that I’m upset about the other people it will hurt…and the waste of love.”

  She glanced over to Chris for a moment, as if to ask for his forgiveness on behalf of all the people who would be hurt by her death.