The Man from Lisbon, page 17
“They can print these notes? These exact notes?” Alves held up the document.
“Well, I don’t know as to exactness—”
“They must be the same notes … there must be no room for discovery by an outsider of any differences. The notes must be duplicates—the point of the entire process, if you recall, was to hide the fact that new money is being printed. Thus, there must be no differences of any kind. … None.” Fighting against his impatience, Alves tweezed his lower lip between two fingers and pulled a lengthy, thoughtful face.
“Only the original printer,” Hennies said sourly, “can possibly produce the same banknotes. Are you telling us, Reis, that your great chums at the Bank of Portugal didn’t tell you that? Incredible!” He snorted. “Did you think these firms just pass the plates around among themselves, like some bloody great club? My God, use your heads, gentlemen.” He turned back to gaze out at Rossio Square. The constant rumble of traffic filtered into the room.
In the silence that followed, Alves’ mind raced, smashing against the walls of his sudden confidence, demolishing them. Damn … God damn … Master of the situation, he felt sickness growing in his belly. He lit a cigarette. Any printer, any printer at all, but the same one … only the same printer, who customarily printed the notes, who had the long standing personal relationship with the bank, might destroy his perfect plan—might purposely, or even casually, check with the bank and expose the entire scheme. … What in the name of God to do?
Hennis broke the silence. “Well,” he intoned imperiously, “well?”
“Well what, Adolf?” Marang wet his lips, peered at his moist fingertips.
“Well, who in hell printed the bleeding notes?” He stood up, plucked a flower from a vase on the credenza, inserted it in his buttonhole. “Reis?”
“The bank stipulated I must not go to the same printer.” His mouth was dry. He felt his heart jump.
“That makes no sense,” Hennies said. “They want the same note, they must know that only one printer can do it.”
But who was the printer? Alves shrugged, cleared his throat.
“I agree … there is obviously some mistake.”
“Well, there is nothing to do but go to Waterlow in England. The largest printers in the world. Surely, I have heard that they do some Portuguese notes.” Marang was full of surprises, Alves reflected, and now he was rescuing the project, like a messenger from a benevolent deity. “I beg to differ with Hennies here, but I expect that Waterlow and Sons, Limited, does indeed have the facilities and resources to literally duplicate these notes. … They are a most remarkable firm, so terribly English, so thorough, absolutely dependable and unimpeachable in every way. And they do a large banknote business. Very aggressive, men in every capital, always looking for the new piece of business.”
“How is it you are so well informed?” Arnaldo was jotting down notes on his pad.
“My interests are very diversified. More information than you can imagine passes through The Hague.”
“Waterlow it is, then,” Alves said.
“What else is there?” José asked brightly. “Looks to me like we’re off to London. … I was right, negocio da China!” He clapped his hands and stood. “Agreed?”
“There is one more point,” Alves said. “A small financial consideration. Herr Hennies …”
“Another thousand pounds.”
“You are joking!”
“No, as it happens, I am not. And it is a very great bargain—after all, your contribution, as we agreed, was to be financial.”
“Corrupt! Corrupt and greedy, your friends at the bank. …” Hennies stuffed his hands in his pockets, stumped back to the window. “This could never happen in Germany.”
Marang laughed. José caught Alves’ eye, grinned.
“Don’t be absurd,” Marang said. “As you perfectly well know, bribes are the lubricant of all great business deals.”
“Ja, ja,” Hennies groaned. He reached for his checkbook.
Alves slumped back in his chair, removed his spectacles, rubbed his tired eyes. He folded the document and returned it to his briefcase. Hard work was an understatement.
By evening his spirits had recovered from the unexpected shock of the afternoon. All would be well: luck had been with him, as it had so often in the past. At such times you could almost believe you were especially blessed. With Maria, abroad socially for the first time since the birth of the most recent son, he arrived at Silva’s for dinner in high spirits, which began to ebb the moment he saw Greta Nordlund at the large table, laughing close to José’s ear, candlelight casting shadows across the wall behind them. She was all in white, ghostly with her pale skin and pale hair, breasts low and pointed beneath the clinging gown. Her nipples caught the material, stretched it as she moved. Why did José have to constantly combine business and pleasure?
Arnaldo and José fussed over Maria with countless inquiries as to her health, the new baby’s health, the health of her parents.
Alves watched Greta’s wide thin mouth as she talked, her eyes flickering across his wife’s face, her jewelry, the style of her dress, the color of her nails. She was asking Maria about the children, and Maria immediately began to recount the day’s events, animatedly, her smile open and genuine. He watched his little wife from the corner of his eye, loving her, wanting to protect her, somehow, from this curiously unsettling Northern woman.
Hennies provided champagne, and the dinner of cosido and roast pork moved slowly ahead. Greta ate ravenously while Maria talked, picked at her food. “I must watch my figure,” Alves heard her say, and Greta joked, “I’m sure the men in your life do all the figure watching that is necessary.” Maria laughed happily, replied that there were no men in her life, only one man. Greta nodded. “Of course, I understand. This is no place for confidences, is it?” Maria smiled, not understanding. Inexplicably, Greta caught his eye. Did she wink, or was it his imagination?
Later José leaned across the table toward him, the candle guttering between them. “Lovely, isn’t she?” He chortled, blowing the candle out. “Delicious, seductive, worldly. A tigress, she claws me. …”
“Don’t be obscene, José,” Alves whispered. “They might hear you.”
José leaned sideways, nibbled at Greta’s earlobe. She shivered, put her cheek against his. “Behave, my darling.” Maria looked away self-consciously. “You see, you are embarrassing Senhora Reis. … You should be ashamed.” She gently pushed him away.
Marang plucked at his sleeve.
“Yes,” Alves said. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
“I was merely telling Arnaldo and Adolf some of what I know about the Waterlow firm. Perhaps you would enjoy hearing it.”
When he drank, Marang developed a kind of lisp. It was vaguely amusing. Alves listened attentively for the next hour as the dinner moved sluggishly to a close. Maria was still talking about the children, then he heard Greta ask about the great adventure at the High Bridge and that story was told in elaborate detail.
The night outside was unusually balmy. When the taxis arrived back at the Avenida Palace the intention to have a nightcap was replaced by the idea for a stroll along the Avenida da Liberdade. Alves resisted: “Surely, my love, you are tired from such a long evening. Perhaps we should say good night …”
“Oh, no. Alves, please,” she said, taking his hand. “I don’t want it to end yet. I’m fine and Greta is a good friend … let’s walk with her. Please.”
He shrugged. “Whatever you wish, of course.”
“What a lovely avenue,” Greta cried as she thrust her arm through his. Four abreast, with Maria holding Alves’ other arm and José on the far side of Greta, they marched along beneath the moon and the swaying palms.
“A mile long, a hundred yards wide,” José said, gesturing expansively, “Palms, Judas trees … Originally the entire avenue was built with walls sealing it off from the rest of the city. So the shy ladies of Lisbon could promenade and take the air and not be seen. Can you believe it?” He cackled, stomping his feet.
“José is drunk,” Alves said to no one in particular.
“How times change,” José cried, gasping. “And the ladies! How they have changed. …”
Alves felt Greta squeeze his arm. Maria hummed happily to herself. His head ached.
In bed that night, long after they had left the merrymakers at the Avenida Palace and taken a taxi back to their tight-fitting flat, Alves lay awake, his eyes blinking against the darkness. Maria had drifted off to sleep, smiling in his arms, leaving him keyed up, trying to organize his thoughts and marshal the events of the day. He still shuddered from the mixup over the printing companies. … How could he have left such a gap, after all the care he’d taken with the documents, the plan as a whole? He grimaced, swung his legs out of the bed, straightened his nightshirt and padded out to the kitchen. He heated the remnants of the coffee, lit a cigarette and sat down at the table. The printing company—what an insane mistake! But, still, Marang had saved the day and the crisis had passed.
Marang had proved most informative on the subject of the printing firm. He had, Alves supposed, that kind of mind, encyclopedic, orderly. Over the dinner, even with José’s shenanigans and the attention he’d paid to Greta and Maria, Alves had absorbed what Marang had been saying.
Waterlow and Sons was the largest single printing company in the world. Central to its existence was the banknote division, which supplied money, meeting the most exacting standards imaginable, to governments of many nations. The first Waterlow—Walran had been his name—had come to Canterbury early in the seventeenth century, a silk weaver. Two centuries later James Waterlow, a scrivener, had revolutionized his trade: a man with a new idea, which involved using lithography and printing to produce the legal documents that had always in the past been copied, laboriously, by hand. James founded the firm in 1811, taking his sons in as partners. Alfred, Walter, Sydney and Albert. Business grew dramatically with the growth of the vast railway system, which required millions of timetables, millions of tickets, millions of stock certificates. …
Marang’s natural tendency toward gossip exhibited itself when he turned to the personalities that emerged with the firm’s prominence among printers.
“The English,” he had said, meticulously licking champagne from his mustache, “are even more obsessed with appearances than our good Dutch elders. Just look beneath the smooth surface of the English aristocracy, look past Cambridge and Ascot and the City and cricket at Lords … and you find something else, something that gives the lie to that carefully nurtured look of things. The Waterlow family, for example, always had its factions, its rivalries, brother against brother, cousin against cousin. …”
The company split into two printing firms, at first dividing the available business, then competing bitterly for it.
“Both firms were doing wonderfully well,” Marang continued, malice darting across the words, a smile of ironic observation on his narrow face, “at which time greed appeared on the scene. In this case it was Alfred’s grandson William Alfred Waterlow who came to the conclusion that the printing of currency—or banknotes, paper money—was too lucrative to be left to the other Waterlow firm.
“It was nineteen-fourteen, which would have made William about forty-two, forty-three. … And that was when he remarked to my friend that, by God, why should the other Waterlows be printing all the money? Of course he couldn’t have known what a quagmire he was venturing upon. …”
1914. He had been meeting Maria at the beach, a mere boy with boyhood ending. José was back from his escapades, about to set out on the road to more. … Hennies had just become a Swiss and set sail from Rio on the S.S. Principessa Mafaldo, embarking on his third identity. Arnaldo, like himself, had been a child with little notion of the world beyond school, home, the neighborhood in Lisbon.
And Sir William, by then the new president of the Federation of Master Printers of Great Britain, one of the eighty-one ancient guilds of the City of London, was bulling his way into the enormously competitive banknote business.
Sir William began by raiding Waterlow and Sons, Ltd., and came away with a substantial prize—an order for one hundred million British Treasury one-pound notes: Waterlow Brothers and Layton was on its way in the banknote business.
By 1919 it had become apparent to Waterlow and Sons that Waterlow Brothers and Layton had become a major force in the field of banknote printing, with their sights set on acquiring even more international business what with all the new countries created by the war’s end. Therefore Waterlow and Sons suggested a merger with Waterlow Brothers and Layton, bringing the family together again and ending ruinous price-cutting competition. The merger was announced in January 1921. Sir Philip Waterlow, Sydney’s son, became chairman of the new firm, with his son Edgar and Sir William named managing directors.
The word in the City was that Sir William was outgunned on a stock-ownership basis and accepted the subordinate position—with much private bad grace—with the bleak assumption that his second cousin Edgar was bound to succeed his father, Sir Philip, in the top spot. “Stiff upper lip, one of those very, very English things,” Marang said, shaking his head disdainfully. “A bitter and nasty pill that the right kind of Englishman swallows and ignores. Such absurd pretense! They are more enwrapped in vengeance than any race of people since the Borgias. You know what an English financier once said to me over whisky and soda in his club? I’ve never forgotten it. He said, ‘A gentleman never gets angry. He gets even.’ Now that, my friends, is why the sun never sets on the Union Jack!”
But, Marang went on, winding slyly on through the complexities of his story, the slimy underside of the banknote business eventually changed all that, saved Sir William’s future.
The facts were that Thomas de la Rue and Waterlow and Son had been in secret agreement to share British government printing projects. To keep the price at a comfortably profitable level, bidding for the jobs had become perfunctory, markedly unenthusiastic. Regardless of the printer, the profits were split two ways.
“The problem arose, you see,” Marang said, eyes shining at the small but intrigued audience, “when Sir Philip welshed on his part of the deal—just once. Thomas de la Rue did not receive their cut. And they sued because they didn’t get their share of a deal that was utterly unethical in the first place! So English! Righteous indignation among thieves, nothing more nor less!”
Marang leaned forward, eyes glittering. “There was,” he whispered eagerly, “more to come. …”
Sir William snooped around and discovered two interesting facets of the situation that had not yet come to light. First, many of Sir Philips’ directors had had no knowledge of the arrangement, and, second, Sir Philip had been keeping the shared profits for himself personally instead of putting them back into the firm. “These discoveries made for some animated discussions in the board room—legendary in the City,” Marang clucked. “Laughter behind their backs … but the Waterlow clan is reported to be most decidely thick when it comes to poking fun at themselves. The results were typically upper class: Sir Philip was allowed to get off by merely retiring to the country, chastened, yes, but very well off. The de la Rue lads were bought off for thirty thousand pounds—and the suit never went to court.” He peered at their faces, one by one, enjoying the spotlight. What a mind! Alves reflected. What a resource this Dutchman was!
“Edgar, the heir presumptive, was passed over for the simple reason that he had known of his father’s misconduct … and had not reported it to his fellow directors. And Sir William, back from beyond, was reborn as chairman and, with Edgar, joint managing director.”
Inevitably, the great firm was split, both emotionally and strategically, at the top levels. Sir William knew that Edgar would be ever alert to an opportunity to bring him down. Since he realized he could not trust his cousin, Sir William accepted the inadvisability of confiding in him certain key aspects of the firm’s business. The important thing was to keep the other nine Waterlow directors on his side.
Toward the end Sir William acquired the entirety of the Crown’s postage-stamp printing business. Shortly thereafter he secured the rights to print all of Latvia’s currency. The word in the city was that Waterlow’s profits were doubling as 1924 entered its last month.
With his various successes in tow Sir William’s ambition had taken wings. Once he’d gained his knighthood, he wanted very badly to become Lord Mayor of London. He had laid the groundwork with considerable care. He served as chairman of the City of London School Committee, then as alderman for the Cornhill Ward of the London Corporation, which made him a Magistrate of the City of London, a post that had traditionally been a steppingstone to the Lord Mayoralty.
The rise of Sir William caused Edgar more irritation than he could rationally describe, though he was reported to have tried to do it justice in the upstairs rooms at the Cheddar Cheese on more than a few occasions. The problem was, as he admitted from behind dark scowls, that there was no arguing with the insufferable, self-righteous prig’s success. …
Before breakfast Maria saw to it that Alves’ bag, old and with a broken belt that commemorated his travels through Africa, was packed for the long train trip to The Hague. Although he’d managed only a couple hours of sleep, he was buoyant. It was all coming together. Today. He fought the excitement in his breast. But it was there; he couldn’t resist it. He had been waiting all these months, all that time in the Oporto jail. And now his plans had gone right. Men more experienced with sophisticated financial dealings than he had seen the documents and been convinced. It was a wonderful morning. …
The children, with their nurse, had already kissed their father goodbye and gone off for the morning. The baby lay in Maria’s arms and sucked, gurgling happily, on her dark, swollen nipple. Milk dribbled down his tiny array of chins. “Quite gay, wasn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled at him. “And such impressive men—all working for you. Well, I was so proud!”
