Fortune of Fear Read online

  There had been two more stops after the bank.

  The first had been at the Zurich agency for an Amsterdam precious-and-semiprecious-stone firm. It was run by the cousin of the head of the Zorich Banking Corporation Gold Department.

  “I want,” I had said, “a big sackful of junk stones.”

  He had not minded at all being dragged out of bed at three in the morning for a sale of just junk stones. He even called the janitor and asked him where he kept the trash bins.

  For a thousand US dollars I got the prettiest bag of discarded baubles you ever saw. It was the first time I learned that emeralds can be so worthless they are sold by the pound, that diamonds can be so synthetic they can’t even be used in costume jewelry and that paste rubies can be so bad you can’t even put them in stage regalia. But they glittered.

  They were vital to my plans.

  He poured them into a fancy sack with a rival company’s name on it, I paid him and he went happily back to bed and I went to my last stop, the airport.

  The charter jet people didn’t the least mind getting a pilot and copilot up out of bed and the hangar crew didn’t the least mind getting a hopped-up Grumman Gulfstream on the line for immediate launch.

  And here I was, streaking for Istanbul with the vital certificates chained to my wrist and the bag of junk stones under my feet, looking down at the Alps, where I had not been dumped, so rosy in the glow of dawn.

  A telephone was at my elbow in the jet. I picked it up. I got the taxi driver in Afyon right away. My Gods, but things were going smooth. Not even a foul-up in Turkish phone connections.

  “Meet me at the airport in Istanbul,” I said.

  “What flight?” he said.

  “My flight,” I said. “You think I’d stoop to travel by commercial jet? My own flight, Ahmed. I own the whole (bleeped) world!”

  PART THIRTY-SEVEN

  Chapter 9

  It was an eager and walking-on-air-type Gris who stepped out of the jet at Yesilkoy Airport, Istanbul.

  Immigration stamped me into Turkey without noticing Sultan Bey had not left.

  Customs took one look at the wrist cuff and chain, ignored the guns, and sped me on through into the country. They knew me, anyway.

  And there amidst the colorful airport throng was Deplor from the Planet Modon, alias Ahmed, the taxi driver.

  “Jeez!” he said in gangster English, “you look like you et fifty canaries, boss.”

  “At one gulp,” I said. “Lead on, lead on, for we have lots to do. There are going to be some changes made!”

  A lot of people didn’t know it yet, but this was just the start of fatal days for them. I had plans!

  We battered our way out of the crowded airport and then battered our way along the seventeen miles which led to the city. The minarets which made a masonry forest all along the Golden Horn had never looked so good. Roaring along, we soon sped through the breach made in the city wall to accommodate the car traffic and began our tortuous course through narrow, noisy streets. Ignoring the protests of how close we came to pointed-toed slippers, giving vendors’ carts the necessary bumps and sounding our horn continuously to clear the way, at length we drew up before our first destination: the Piastre Bankasi.

  I trod like a conqueror across the tile floor. I pushed the lowly clerk aside who would have inquired my business. I stalked into the office of Mudur Zengin, czar of the biggest bank chain in Turkey.

  Fat and immaculate and manicured, dressed in a pinstripe Western suit of charcoal gray, he looked up from his mother-of-pearl inlaid desk to see who it was tracking up his priceless Persian carpet.

  He wasn’t used to having people with crossed bandoliers and a shotgun coming in for business conferences. Maybe it was that he was short-sighted—his glasses had fallen off—and seeing the bearskin coat thrown over the shoulders, mistook me for a bear.

  “Allah!” he said.

  I advanced. I unsnapped the case and opened it. I riffled 515 engraved certificates under his nose.

  “O Allah, I was going to say. Sit down!”

  He found his pince-nez glasses, polished them and put them on. He evidently didn’t need glasses to see money. He only needed them to see people. He peered at me. “Aha,” he said. “You must be Sultan Bey. You do business, I believe, with our Afyon branch. The Zorich Banking Corporation said you were coming but we did not expect you so soon. Now, what can we do for you?”

  “A safe-deposit box,” I said, “that nobody can get into but me. Nobody.”

  Buzzers buzzed and guards paraded. We were shortly in the safe-deposit department.

  “Two combinations,” said Mudur Zengin. “The latest thing. One is yours and one is ours. Only you can appear. No one else can sign the card. Your photograph appears on it and the guards will look at you for sight recognition.”

  I was shortly in a private cubicle with the box. I laid the precious certificates in it. I laid the gold-sale original receipt on top. I then took out five certificates, each a half a million dollars. It hurt to do so but I did it. There were still 510 of them left in the box.

  I rejoined Mudur Zengin. He was polishing his hands. I ended that by pushing a certificate into them. “I want this in cash,” I said.

  He stared at it. “Cash?”

  He suddenly pushed me into his office. He sat me down in the most comfortable chair. He would not hear a word until a clerk brought in kahve on a silver tray. It was like Switzerland all over again except that there it had been chocolate.

  Having ascertained if my kahve was sweet enough, if it was just the right temperature, if I was warm enough and if the cushions were soft, he got down to business. “You had better tell me your banking problems, Sultan Bey. I was a friend of your father’s, the great revolutionary hero.” That was the traditional lie because I doubt if he had ever met the original Voltar surveyor. “I consider your problems as though they were my own. So speak.”

  I told him I owed the credit companies and had to go see them and pay them off and try to cancel their cards.

  He was snapping his fingers toward the door. A clerk appeared with a tweed overcoat and a homburg hat.

  “You need,” said Mudur Zengin, “professional guidance. Credit companies are a bit tricky. I would never forgive myself if you went wrong.”

  We went out and got into the taxi and then we began our rounds. First was American Oppress.

  “Cancel your card?” screamed the manager. “Never! Suppose you canceled ours and left just one other in force! It would be discriminatory. We would sue you for an attempt to ruin our reputation! Sultan Bey, as a leading citizen with unlimited credit, you have a socio-economic responsibility to support the institutions of the world!”

  The American Oppress manager was raving so that his staff was peeking in, keeping clubs handy in case we upset him further.

  “Leave this to me,” whispered Mudur Zengin.

  He went over and soothingly stroked the shoulder of the manager. He whispered to him and then the man nodded and smiled.

  “Come,” said Mudur Zengin and hurried me out.

  We went to Dunner’s Club. It was the same. We went to Masker-Charge. It was the same. We went to the Istanbul lair of Start Blanching and the act repeated. We kept on, credit card company by credit card company. All the same. We finally only had one left.

  “What are you telling them?” I asked him.

  “Very simple,” said Mudur Zengin. “I am telling them that I will start for you a bills-paying account at the bank. You should not bother yourself with these trifles. All you have to do is put half a million in the account and they will send their bills to it and the bank will pay. They need never come near you again.”

  Wonderful! Just what I wanted. Never to see those dogs again. And I was laughing to myself. I had a plan that never, never, never in the future would any credit card ever be used!

  We went to the final one, Squeeza. This was the touchy one. Krak held their card. If I canceled it, she would find out t
he moment she tried to make another purchase on it: they would fly into her face and throw things. And the Countess Krak would then get suspicious and she might take it into her head to look me up. Later, I could have her done away with, when Lombar sent the word it was now okay to kill Heller. But to prematurely face the Countess Krak was above my stamina utterly. I could not close off the use of that one card.

  Sure enough, the Squeeza manager met us with a triumphant smile. “Aha! Sultan Bey! Your concubine is keeping up the tradition expected of a citizen like you. She is buying, buying, buying in New York—by WATS line, no doubt. Splendid, Sultan Bey. Splendid!”

  I looked at Mudur Zengin. He looked taken aback. Obviously, this was a new factor entering the scene that he hadn’t taken into banker planning.

  I said, “There’s a special account being set up at the bank for all the credit companies; I am sure there will be no problem.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said the Squeeza manager. “Our company is different. It prides itself on individualism. That is why we charge such high penalties a month. In fact, I was just looking at your account when the secretary saw you get out of your cab—we knew, of course, that you just landed here from Zurich in the private jet and took twenty-one and a half minutes getting in from the airport to the bank—and in just twenty-two hours from now, your bills go under the usual 100-percent-per-month delinquent penalty as allowed by the new underprivileged-creditors law. So are you going to pay this bill or do we foreclose on the villa?”

  I felt faint.

  Mudur Zengin supported me to keep me from falling. He said, “I will give you a bank draft right now for the bill, manager.”

  “Aha!” said Squeeza’s man on the job. “We will accept that this time as a favor to you. But we cannot keep accepting it.”

  “There must be some way,” said Mudur Zengin.

  “Well, yes, there is,” said the Squeeza manager. “If you give us just one of those Zorich Banking Corporation certificates to hold—assigned to us merely as collateral and still yours—we will promise faithfully not to charge you any penalties and not to foreclose on your villa unless delinquency exceeds it in any given quarter.”

  “That’s a good deal,” Mudur Zengin whispered to me.

  I sighed. What else could I do? I hauled out one precious certificate and passed it over.

  “As a matter of fact,” said the Squeeza manager, “I had the contract and receipt for it all made out. Right here. Please sign.”

  It appeared in the small print that the certificate was theirs if a delinquency occurred at the end of any quarter. But I would keep that from happening. I signed. Mudur Zengin made out a draft on the bank and paid the current bill.

  “Now, remember that at Squeeza,” said the manager, taking the bank draft and putting it with the papers in a safe with teeth, “you must hereafter personally pay the bill in person. It is one of the rules of our owner, Grabbe-Manhattan Bank of New York.”

  Oho! A Rockecenter company! No wonder it was run so efficiently!

  “Only if our customers come in and fawn at the door monthly can we guarantee we are doing a proper job of world reform, teaching the lessons of slavery and thrift,” the manager said. “And remember our motto, ‘Buy, buy!’”

  I chose to take it as a cue. I left hurriedly.

  Thank Gods, including Allah, I had the credit companies off my neck!

  And there were changes still to come. Gods help those who had been badgering me and tormenting me. Money is POWER and revenge is sweet! They would suffer far more than they had made me suffer. Including Krak and Heller!

  PART THIRTY-EIGHT

  Chapter 1

  Mudur Zengin, back in his office, was a very persuasive man. He no more than got his hat and coat off, with me ensconced in his most comfortable chair, than he began to pace back and forth on his priceless Persian rug, now and then tossing his fat hands into the air and gazing up toward Allah with his jowls shaking.

  “Whatever is wrong now?” I said at last in some alarm.

  He stopped. “The crime rate! Have you seen that it has trebled in the last three months compounded quarterly? The very thought of you, the son of my oldest friend, lying prostrate beside the road with your skull caved in by robbers . . .” And once more he began pacing and throwing his hands up into the air.

  I readjusted the FIE shotgun across my knees. “I’m well armed.”

  “O Allah,” he said, looking up, “listen to the folly and recklessness of youth, youth that does not realize there are evil men all about, sneaking up, with intentions and designs that no mere bullet can stop.”

  He halted. He held his chin in hand. “Bank guards. If I gave him all my bank guards . . . No. That would not solve it.”

  “Maybe you better tell me about your problem,” I said.

  “Cash,” he said. “You are about to ask for cash. No, don’t deny it. You are going to hand me one of those certificates and request I give you half a million dollars’ worth of cash.”

  “That was the idea I had in mind,” I said.

  “Ah, youth, the folly of youth. Allah, hear him!” He came to a stop before me. “Are you aware that five hundred thousand US dollars converts into FIFTY THOUSAND one-thousand-Turkish-lira notes? Are you aware of the fact that that many notes—notes, mind you—of the largest denomination now available, would fill a trunk THIS big?” And he sketched it out between the floor and air with his fat hands. “It means you would have to roll a wheelbarrow around all the time, even into the shower! And you would get tired of that and buy a donkey and a cart to carry it. Donkeys are not honest! I can’t have the son of my boyhood friend, my very best and closest friend, suffering the indignity of racing over hill and dale chasing a donkey. The indignity of it!” He resumed his pacing and the throwing up of the hands.

  I saw what he meant. I would look pretty silly chasing a donkey all day and all night. They’re treacherous, too. They lie in wait and kick.

  “Then what do I do?” I said.

  “I knew you would agree,” said Mudur Zengin. He plucked the four one-half-million-dollar certificates out of my pocket very smoothly. He laid them on his desk and sat down.

  “This one,” he stated, “we will use in part to open the credit-card-company pay-bills account. “These,” he held up the other three, “we will put totally into a fluid cash-drawing account. Now, I will inform the Piastre Bankasi Afyon Branch to hand you any amount in Turkish lira that you wish at any one time. You can also walk up to the teller here and make a like request. . . .”

  “Wait!” I cried. “I want no checking account. They could forge my signature like that! And somebody could come in disguised. . . .”

  “No, no,” he said. “Hear me out. The tellers will be informed that only you may draw it, only you can sign for it and only I will make the accounting. And when you’ve used it up, you can simply come up to Istanbul and give me another certificate.”

  Oh, did I smell a big, juicy rat. I must have looked it.

  Mudur Zengin, now in his chair, gave me a very level stare. In a voice entirely unrelated to the one just used, he said in cold banker tones, “The Swiss only gave you ten percent per annum. I can get you thirty percent on short-term loans, even more.”

  I thought I knew what was coming. He was going to suggest I give him the whole box full. I started to speak to check this obvious raid.

  He held up his hand to cut me off. “They could easily have given you thirteen to eighteen percent. But never mind. Your income on Swiss interest is more than two million dollars a month so leave them there. The main advantage is that it is safe. You owe about a third of a million to the credit companies which I guaranteed to pay off, and that includes the draft I paid Squeeza. I do not like to even seem to interfere between you and that concubine. But my advice to you is that you cease to use credit cards and make her come to you for cash. And you leave me the remaining one million, seven hundred thousand to handle. I doubt you can spend as much as you think around Afyo
n. But even if you go to a million lira a week—which is about ten thousand dollars US, and I can’t imagine how you could squander that much—we can manage your dollars left in these four certificates in such a way that they increase and do not diminish.”

  “Fact?” I said, incredulous.

  “I’m glad we have agreed,” he said. “You handle it this way and I doubt you’ll have to open that safe-deposit box again this year. Or in any year, for that matter, unless you decide to buy Turkey.”

  I really was blinking. There was a lot I didn’t know about banking!

  He pushed a buzzer. “I had these papers prepared while we were gone. I knew you would take the advice of an old friend.”

  The clerk brought them in. The clerk also brought a bale. It was huge. It was Turkish 100-lira notes. There was also a very heavy bank bag full of coins, of 2.50£T, 1£T and 50, 25, 10 and 5 kuruş.

  “Turkish money,” said Zengin, “still buys plenty, if you lay off the imports. Inflation has been reversing itself the last two years. Domestic cigarettes are now ten lira a pack and a cup of kahve is back to seven. I can’t imagine how you could get rid of this bale and that bag in one week, but there it is, your first week’s allowance: a million Turkish lira—$10,000 US. You are a Turkish millionaire and will be one every week if you choose. Sign here.”

  The guy wasn’t a crook after all! He was really helping me out! He’d make his own whack for the bank but I was richer than ever!

  I signed.

  Trying to struggle out of that office, the string of the heavy bale cutting my fingers and the bag of coins pulling my wrist out of joint, I felt wealthier than Croesus and Midas combined!

  And a rich Gris was a very dangerous Gris, as people were about to discover.

  PART THIRTY-EIGHT

  Chapter 2