A Woman Involved. John Davis Gordon
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Max’s real name. It was not very unusual that he should have had two nationalities. But why the false American passport? It had a good number of immigration stamps in it, but mostly Max had used the German passport. Morgan had made a list of every entry and exit stamp in eyery passport, and had arranged them in date order. Max had travelled a good deal. South America, United States, Europe. Morgan could not remember the date when God’s Banker had been found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge but Max had been to England several times every year.
The will. It left everything to ‘my darling wife, Anna Louise Hapsburg, on condition that she does not remarry nor cohabit with any man …’
What did all that mean? Morgan knew nothing about wills, but were those conditions legally enforceable? When would she get the inheritance? – only after she had not remarried nor cohabitated? How long would she have to wait to prove her virtue? And if, having inherited, she then remarried or commenced to live in sin, would she then be disinherited?
But it showed an insecure, jealous man – who would try to intimidate his wife. Was such a man to be believed if he claimed to have something that could destroy the Roman Catholic Church? Or was he so unstable that he invented his story? The bastard had once concocted a terrifying case against him …
Morgan stared across the room.
No. She believed it. And so did the British who had sent him here. And the Americans. And the Russians.
Attached to the will was a schedule of principal assets. The man was extremely wealthy. Real estate, shares, bonds. There was a list of safety-deposit boxes, and the banks in which they were. Banks in Miami, Venezuela, Liechtenstein, and London.
Morgan squeezed his eyes.
But the microfilm or file probably was not in any of those banks. It was probably in one of the other banks listed on the page that she had torn from the notebook. And even if he found out which banks those were, how do you get into a man’s safety-deposit box?
He sighed, and picked up the keys again.
Some of them had numbers stamped on them, some of them were blank. Some of the box numbers mentioned in the will corresponded with numbers on keys. So, at least some of the keys were eliminated. But that didn’t help much.
And then the cash. Twenty thousand dollars.
That was a lot of money to Jack Morgan, but not to Max Hapsburg. Why shouldn’t he keep twenty thousand bucks in his safe, in case he had to jump on an aeroplane suddenly?
Yes, but twenty thousand? All in used fifty-dollar bills? It made a bulky wad. Why not travellers cheques? In case he had to run and be anonymous? Not leave a trail of travellers cheques and credit card deals for the authorities to follow?
That left the newspaper and magazine cuttings.
They all concerned the Third World debt. Max was mentioned in several pieces. In short, most Third World countries, including Grenada, were in serious trouble because they had borrowed so heavily at high interest rates. They could not repay their loans, partly because of mismanagement, waste and corruption, and partly because the commodities which they produced had recently dropped drastically in value. The dollar was too high, the interest rates too high; the loans were now crushingly burdensome and the terms should be renegotiated. Some debtor countries were threatening to declare themselves bankrupt, to form a cartel, defy the banks and refuse to pay; but saner countries, and leading figures like Max Hapsburg, had dissuaded them from this suicidal course for the time being. There were lists of big banks and the frightening amounts they had loaned and could not recover. The overall picture was frightening; if the crisis was not resolved, if the debtor countries did not repay the loans, many big Western banks would go bankrupt. So millions of depositors would lose their money, the bankrupt banks would have to call in the other loans they had made so many industries would go bankrupt too, so millions of workers would become unemployed and unable to repay their debts – in short, there would be an international depression which would make the Wall Street crash of 1929 look like a Sunday-school picnic. And the inherent political dangers were spelled out.
If the debtor countries did not improve their economies, if the masses were kept poor, as in most of South America, if a strong, sensible middle class did not emerge, these countries were vulnerable to communist-inspired revolution. Russia stood to gain everything from this economic crisis. If the Western banks collapsed because of the Third World debt, it could bring about the collapse of the capitalist system the Russians were working for. And, in the final result, it was the capitalist system which was to blame. Greed. The banks were to blame, for greedily lending vast sums of money at high interest rates to these corrupt banana republics during the good times of high commodity prices …
Morgan stared across the gloom. Outside were the sounds of war. ‘I’d rather die like God’s Banker … ’
So banking, high finance, had something to do with this Nazi secret that could destroy the Roman Catholic Church, to quote Anna, this important institution that could destabilize the West, to quote Brink-Ford. And so Vatican banking might be involved. And God’s Banker hanging from Blackfriars Bridge might look like suicide, but obviously Anna knew he had been murdered …
Murdered by whom? By Max Hapsburg?
By the Vatican? He could hardly believe that.
And murdered for what? What had God’s Banker gone to London for? For the secret which Max Hapsburg possessed? The same secret that was now locked in Anna’s head?
He sighed in frustration. This was all conjecture. Maybe God’s Banker had nothing to do with it, maybe she had used it as a figure of speech.
But no, he did not believe that either. Not in the context. The murder of God’s Banker had everything to do with this.
And, looking at the facts so far, he had no doubt that she was in grave danger of being murdered too. And not necessarily by the Russians alone.
In the afternoon the 82nd paratroopers and the Caribbean Peace-keeping Force began to arrive at the new airport, the planes coming in under heavy sniper fire. In Saint George’s the helicopter gunships and fighter planes were still taking on the anti-aircraft guns of Fort Frederick and Fort Ruppert. In the medical schools the American students were still nailed down, mattresses stuffed in windows, the bullets crashing and smashing and ricocheting about them. In the late afternoon the Rangers fought their way to the True Blue campus and cleared a landing zone for helicopters on the basketball court and started evacuating them. And darkness came down on the thudding and the smoke and the dust and the cracking of the guns.
The sounds of war awoke Anna. She sat up. He said:
‘It’s all right, they won’t bomb us by mistake. It’ll all be over soon.’
She was wide awake. And full of hard distrust again. She said:
‘And then what happens? They’re going to fly us out of here by helicopter onto the aircraft carrier?’
‘Right.’
‘And then what is going to happen to the civilians?’
‘They’ll go wherever they want, once order is reestablished. Most of them will come back here.’
‘And me?’
He hated this subterfuge. He said, ‘We’re going to live happily ever after, Anna.’
She was incredulous.
‘Nonsense!’ She pointed at the sea. ‘Once we’re safely out of here, they’ll fly me to America! And then they question me, don’t they? About the same thing the Russians wanted …’ She cried at him: ‘Well, I’m not going, Jack! I’ll scream bloody blue murder if they try to take me!’
His nerves were going. ‘Anna? –’
‘You don’t deny it, do you?