Hyena Dawn (25 page)

Everyone was staring at her now. Her hatred of Jay Golden was legendary. Rumour had it that they’d been lovers and he’d dropped her like a lead balloon.

‘
Jay Golden, like Bernard Aschaar, is amoral and ruthless. He doesn’t give a damn. He’ll bring down the South African government and finance a bloody revolution, then he’ll flood the market with gold, depress the prices and destroy the rest of us. After that he’ll create a scarcity and send the gold price through the roof. He’ll become one of the most powerful men of this century, along with Bernard Aschaar. Do you want to die knowing you made all that possible, Tony? For heaven’s sake, if you sell your mines to Goldcorp they’ll have seventy-five per cent control of the Far East Rand goldfields - and then there are their other goldmines, their Russian interests, Australia . . . Give me two years, Tony. Then I’ll make you a decent offer for your mines, and so will many of the people in this room.’

Tony got up and stormed out of the room. For a moment no one said a word, then they all began to rise. Sonja held up her hand.

‘
Wait. I know Tony Rudd. He’ll come back in here with an answer. He always does, he’s a gentleman at heart.’

The way she said the word ‘gentleman’ seemed to imply that if any one of them left the room he certainly wasn’t worthy of that title. They all sat watching the wall clock, knowing that if Tony Rudd sold out they would be finished - and not just financially. They were all men who made their living out of gold, it was a way of life to them. Take it away, and they would be nothing.

The door swung open and they all turned as Tony Rudd walked back into the room, still as angry as when he had left.

‘
You win, damn you. I won’t sell for two years, that I promise. But when those two years are up, on that day I sell to the highest bidder.’

There was muffled applause from the table, but it stopped when Tony Rudd held up his hand.

‘
Don’t thank me, thank Sonja Seyton-Waugh. I’m doing this for her, not for any of you. And I’m not doing it for the memory of my grandfather, either. This business is people and Sonja’s one of the best. Just make sure you keep her ahead of Jay Golden for chairmanship of the committee. As I’m sure you all know, this is my last year.’

Tony Rudd smiled at Sonja and she beamed with satisfaction, then stood up to rousing applause.

‘
Gentlemen, Mr Rudd has given us a chance, and we must capitalise on it. This meeting is over. Let us make sure that no one outside this room ever knows it took place . . .’

At precisely 11 a.m. the following day, the official meeting of the members of the CMC took place. The doors of the main boardroom were closed and two armed guards stood outside. As it happened, the meeting turned out to be a relatively short one and ended just after two. The guards had noticed nothing particularly unusual happening inside the boardroom, just the usual bouts of shouting and table-banging.

Two members of the CMC left the meeting looking more irritated than usual - in fact they appeared to be purple with rage. They charged through the doors, down the steps and into a waiting Rolls-Royce without bothering to say goodbye to anyone.

‘
The first meeting we go to without the old man and it’s a complete fuck-up. They were ready for us.’ Jay was shaking with rage, he had wanted to attack Sonja Seyton-Waugh physically. ‘I can tell you, Bernard, when we have control they’ll suffer for this. Especially that bitch.’

‘
She hates you with good cause. Don’t ever forget that.’ Older and more experienced, Bernard had suppressed his anger in the meeting, and Jay’s hot-headed behaviour had annoyed him; it reflected badly on the Goldcorp Group. In his pocket was an envelope that had been pushed into his hand by Tony Rudd as he left the meeting. He was confident about its contents and this considerably helped him to relax. The price had been high, but worth it.

‘
In six months’ time, at the Kimberley meeting, we’ll have them eating out of the palms of our hands, Jay. We’ll have more power than all of them put together. We’ll contest Sonja Seyton- Waugh’s presidency and you’ll be elected in her place. I’ll make sure that your father is present at that meeting. It’ll be your crowning glory.’

Short-lived glory, thought Bernard with a private sneer. He reached into his pocket and took out Rudd’s envelope. He opened it slowly, relishing the satisfaction its contents gave him.

‘
Do you want to hear the best piece of news in the history of the Goldcorp Group, Jay?’ Bernard held up the letter, embossed with the Rudd group crest.

‘
Is that the agreement from Rudd to sell?’

‘
Yes. Rudd told me he would give us his acceptance after today’s meeting. We offered him more than fifty per cent of what he’s worth, no one else could have done that, and he knows it.’

‘
Let me read it.’

Jay read slowly. Bernard noticed his breathing change. ‘Jesus. Do you think the fucker’s finally found out that we’ve been pumping his son full of drugs for the past five years!’

Bernard tore the letter out of Jay’s trembling hands. He read it for himself: an outright refusal to sell. No, Tony Rudd couldn’t have known that they’d been supplying his son Robard with drugs; the connections they’d used had been the very best, and only a genius could have traced the payments back to Goldcorp. Bernard knew how desperate Rudd had been to sell. What in hell could have changed his mind?

The letter explained that Rudd would sell in two years’ time to the highest bidder. That was bad news. By that time the gold price could have rocketed, and Rudd Exploration Company shares along with it. Bernard knew the Rudd Company owned important mining rights that they had not exploited on the Far East Rand; Tony Rudd didn’t fully appreciate the value of these options, and he didn’t have enormous research facilities at his disposal, like Goldcorp. If he had, he would have known that those options were worth more than all his existing mines put together . . . But in two years’ time Tony Rudd probably
would
know. Then he would never sell for the price they were offering now.

Bernard felt the bitterness in his stomach. He had put years of work into this deal - years ensuring that Tony Rudd did not have an heir.

They had moved in on Robard Rudd stealthily. He had been a typical spoilt young man, with too much money and not enough wisdom. They discovered that he lived in a luxurious Paris apartment with a girlfriend, and the girlfriend had proved cooperative. It hadn’t taken long. In fact after a short time the operation had actually become self-financing, for the moment Robard became a heroin addict he started to pay enormous amounts of money for the drug he craved. Fortunately he went overboard faster than they anticipated, and even the expensive clinics Tony had sent him to had not been able to cure him. If they wanted to, they could kill him now, in less than a week. Bernard knew he must resist the temptation to kill Robard off as revenge for Tony’s having held up the deal. It would be a dangerous coincidence - and it could get both Bernard and Jay into big trouble with Max Golden.

Right now, Bernard had other problems to solve, and one was sitting right next to him.

‘
Jay, you know what happens if you don’t become chairman of the CMC in the next two years?’

‘
Only too well. My father won’t pass the Goldcorp Group into my hands because I’ll have failed the test he set me. My stepbrother Ludwig will get control.’

This scenario was familiar to Bernard. Ludwig Golden was the product of Max Golden’s second marriage to Laura. As his first wife, Jay’s mother, lay dying, he had promised that the company would go to her son - but Max Golden was no fool, and he had added a proviso that her son should prove worthy of the task. Ludwig Golden, the son of his second marriage, was a self-made multi-millionaire at the age of twenty-eight. Bernard knew that if Ludwig took over the Goldcorp Group, he, Bernard Aschaar, was finished.

‘
As I see it, we have only one option remaining to us.’

‘
To acquire Sonja Seyton-Waugh’s Waugh Mining?’

‘
Exactly. To force that bitch to sell out to us. We could do it. The only problem is that she seems to be resisting our blackmail campaign. If she’s the one who’s got her hands on those photographs, she might be tempted to nail you - she could put you away with that evidence. Provided she had the guts to use it, of course. She’d never admit to the public what you did to her. We know she’s never told anyone about it. I think we can deal our ace.’

‘
Our ace?’

‘
The other photographs we took that night, Jay. The ones where you forced her to pose on her own.’

‘
I’d forgotten about them!’

‘
They weren’t stolen from the safe, they were in another file.

We could suggest she sell, or that we’ll send a couple of glossy prints to
Lord
.’

Jay laughed, and Bernard began to relax again. The plan could work.
Lord
was a man’s magazine that revelled in getting wealthy and famous women to take their clothes off.

‘
Bernard, you’re a genius. But first we have to get the other film and photos back. We can’t go ahead till we’ve got those.’

‘
We proceed as follows. Through our other companies we buy aggressively into the stock of all the companies and mines belonging to Waugh Mining. Finance won’t be a problem, we can use the funds we had earmarked for the Rudd acquisition.

‘
When we get the film and pictures back, we use a third party to blackmail Sonja Seyton-Waugh, and she hands over ten per cent of her fifty-one per cent controlling stock. She won’t know it’s us, and she won’t know that we’ve bought up all her other stock. Then we move in and fire her as chairwoman, and install you in her place.’

‘
Bernard, you’re a genius.’

The atmosphere was electric. The intimidating power emanated from a single source, the silver-haired man whose head rested on the white desk top, as if he had suddenly fallen asleep.

Bernard and Jay sat facing the desk, a discreet distance away. Looking down through the window they could see the mine dumps, and queues of cars heading through the early morning sunshine, towards the centre of Johannesburg. Neither of them spoke, for that was the unwritten rule.

An immaculately dressed butler came into the room and served them all coffee. He didn’t have to ask who wanted what because he had known each of the men for so long. That was why he was paid more than many company directors - his life had been dedicated to the service of the man whose head lay on the desk, in the enormous top-floor office suite of the Goldcorp Group.

Having put down the paper-thin white porcelain cups, the butler left the room as quietly as he had entered. Just as he was about to disappear through the door he heard the familiar voice of his employer.

‘
Thank you, Raleigh. We are not to be interrupted on any account.’

‘
Very good, sir.’

The butler closed the door behind him and wondered, not for the first time, if his employer was psychic. It had become a sort of game between them both: Raleigh would often come into the office to adjust a piece of furniture, tidy up or deliver some correspondence, while his master was asleep - but he had never yet been able to leave the room undetected, and he could swear that he had never seen the man open his eyes.

The silver grey locks rose up from the desk and for a brief moment Jay and Bernard glimpsed the face beneath them before Max Golden got up and walked over to the giant plate-glass window. Sunlight caught the side of his heavily lined face. People said that Max Golden was Jewish, but that was only part of the truth. His ancestors had been Cossacks and had ridden in the Czar’s cavalry; he himself still rode every day - his only relaxation. The two men seated behind him admired the straightness of his back, the ease with which he moved, even though he was over seventy.

Without warning he turned to face them. His brilliant blue eyes surveyed them cursorily, reading their feelings exactly.

‘
My decision is not negotiable. It was reached because of your singular incompetence, Jay, and nothing that has happened since