A Twist in the Tale

“If that remains the case, sir, this very day I shall give instructions to our Ambassador to close our Embassy in Bern and I shall declare your Ambassador in Lagos persona non grata.”

For the first time the chairman raised his eyebrows.

“Furthermore,” continued Ignatius, “I will hold a conference in London which will leave the world’s press in no doubt of my Head of State’s displeasure with the conduct of this bank. After such publicity I feel confident you will find that many of your customers would prefer to close their accounts, while others who have in the past considered you a safe haven may find it necessary to look elsewhere.”

The Minister waited but still the chairman did not respond.

“Then you leave me no choice,” said Ignatius, rising from his seat.

The chairman stretched out his hand, assuming that at last the Minister was leaving, only to watch with horror as Ignatius placed a hand in his jacket pocket and removed a small pistol. The two Swiss bankers froze as the Nigerian Minister of Finance stepped forward and pressed the muzzle against the chairman’s temple.

“I need those names, Mr. Gerber, and by now you must realize I will stop at nothing. If you don’t supply them immediately I’m going to blow your brains out. Do you understand?”

The chairman gave a slight nod, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. “And he will be next,” said Ignatius, gesturing toward the young assistant, who stood speechless and paralyzed a few paces away.

“Get me the names of every Nigerian who holds an account in this bank,” Ignatius said quietly, looking toward the young man, “or I’ll blow your chairman’s brains all over his soft pile carpet. Immediately, do you hear me?” Ignatius added sharply.

The young man looked toward the chairman, who was now trembling but said quite clearly, “Non, Pierre, jamais.”

“D’accord,” replied the assistant in a whisper.

“You can’t say I didn’t give you every chance.” Ignatius pulled back the hammer. The sweat was now pouring down the chairman’s face and the young man had to turn his eyes away as he waited in terror for the pistol shot.

“Excellent,” said Ignatius, as he removed the gun from the chairman’s head and returned to his seat. Both the bankers were still trembling and quite unable to speak.

The Minister picked up the battered briefcase by the side of his chair and placed it on the glass table in front of him. He pressed back the clasps and the lid flicked up.

The two bankers stared down at the neatly packed rows of hundred-dollar bills. Every inch of the briefcase had been taken up. The chairman quickly estimated that it probably amounted to around five million dollars.

“I wonder, sir,” said Ignatius, “how I go about opening an account with your bank?”

A LA CARTE

ARTHUR HAPGOOD WAS demobbed on November 3, 1946. Within a month he was back at his old workplace on the shop floor of the Triumph factory on the outskirts of Coventry.

The five years spent in the Sherwood Foresters, four of them as a quartermaster seconded to a tank regiment, only underlined Arthur’s likely postwar fate, despite having hoped to find more rewarding work once the skirmishes were over. However, on returning to England he quickly discovered that in a “land fit for heroes” jobs were not that easy to come by, and although he did not want to go back to the work he had done for five years before war had been declared, that of fitting wheels on cars, he reluctantly, after six weeks on the dole, went to see his former works’ manager at Triumph.

“The job’s yours if you want it, Arthur,” the works’ manager assured him.

“And the future?”

“The car’s no longer a toy for the eccentric rich or even just a necessity for the businessman,” the works’ manager replied. “In fact,” he continued, “management are preparing for the ‘two-car family.’”

“So they’ll need even more wheels to be put on cars,” said Arthur forlornly.

“That’s the ticket.”

Arthur signed on within the hour and it was only a matter of days before he was back into his old routine. After all, he often reminded his wife, it didn’t take a degree in engineering to screw four knobs onto a wheel a hundred times a shift.

Arthur soon accepted the fact that he would have to settle for second best However, second best was not what he planned for his son.

* * *

Mark had celebrated his fifth birthday before his father had even set eyes on him, but from the mo

ment Arthur returned home he lavished everything he could on the boy.

* * *