Stone's Fall

'No. I do not know what you have seen, but you have seen only partial accounts. The profits or losses of one company mean nothing. Because they are part of a much greater whole which spreads throughout the world. Did you know that Ravenscliff controlled some six banks, in America and Europe? They were set up solely to organise financing for various deals. There are other accounts in other banks, dozens and dozens, under the control of the chief salesman, Xanthos, which exist solely to bribe foreign officials, buy presents, purchase favours.'

'I've met him,' I said.

'And no doubt found him a charming little fellow.'

'Ah, yes, I did. Are you going to tell me something different?'

'He is a crook. He pays bribes to whoever needs them. A pimp, who supplies prostitutes to willing civil servants when required. A thief, who steals the details of other companies' bids for contracts. A fraud, who falsifies details of his products' capabilities. Whatever is necessary to win an order, Mr Xanthos will do it. He's a trader from the bazaar, with an oriental regard for the truth. That was his value to Ravenscliff, who looked the other way, so he did not know how these orders came about. Ravenscliff took care of the big bribes. I could read it all, you know, they had a sort of signature, and I came to know the style of each of them by the end. Xanthos used several banks, mainly the Bank of Bruges in Belgium, but also one in Milan and others in Bucharest, Manchester, Lyon and Dusseldorf.'

'Are you sure?'

He did not answer. 'We started to unravel all this, thread by thread, but couldn't see the point of it. That was what was so puzzling. What was it all for? Why had he made everything so complicated? No one could discover it. Wilf Cornford wondered whether it was all the doing of Caspar Neuberger, the director of finance, who loves complexity for its own sake. But I wasn't satisfied, so I looked further.'

'I hope you are not going to stop telling me now.'

'I will tell you, if you truly wish.'

'I do.'

'You know what a submarine is?'

'Of course.'

'Beswick Shipyard developed one of the earliest that was in any way a practical weapon. The Americans were the first, but Beswick came soon after. For the most part, they were more of a danger to their own crew than to anyone else. But Beswick got a contract from the government to develop a new, radical design which could carry torpedoes – Beswick, as you may know, also owns the Gosport Torpedo Company and it was looking for new markets.

'The Royal Navy decided to buy some, and fund the development. The contract with the Government was that this should be entirely secret. And, above all, that there should be no sales, none at all, to foreign governments.'

'Not like the torpedo, then.'

'Precisely. They had learned their lesson. The Navy realised, even at that early stage, that this new vessel might become a formidable weapon. Ravenscliff gave his word. Six months later he was building a dockyard for the Russians, who were then our most bitter enemies, to build submarines, torpedoes and anything else they wanted. That was the moment his finances became opaque. And the reason: to conceal any sign of treason.'

I looked carefully at him. 'Are you serious? You don't mean to tell me that no one noticed? When was this?'

'At the start of the 1890s. Ravenscliff built up the Russian navy to the point that it could challenge the Royal Navy in the Black Sea. All this long before Britain and Russia became allies and when it was one of our most dangerous enemies. Did anyone notice? No. Nothing could be traced back to Ravenscliff at all. The money was raised through bond issues in Paris; the companies were registered in several different countries, with the shares owned by companies set up for the purpose, their owners in turn being hidden. There was not a single thing to suggest that Ravenscliff had anything to do with these factories.'

'So how did you discover it?'

'That is what we do. And, as is often the case, the weak spot was the human side of things. The expertise. You don't just build a factory, put in a bunch of illiterate peasants and start turning out complex weapons. You need people to train the workforce, to oversee things. Not many, the Russians already had many engineers. But they had little managerial expertise, and that was Ravenscliff's speciality. I found some of the people who had worked at the yard, and they all came from Beswick. Eventually, one – only one – told me the whole story.'

'And then you received a visitor.'