Hard news - Jeffery Deaver [60]
His eyes fell on her camera.
“You have a press pass or something?”
She showed him her Network ID. He scanned her up and down again, a CAT scan of her soul. “You’re young.”
“Younger than some. Older than others.”
He gave that a curly smile and said, “I was young when I got started in business.”
“What did you do?”
He gazed at the model. “That was my contribution to the shipping industry and the aesthetics of the sea. She isn’t beautiful; she isn’t a stately ship.”
“I think she looks pretty nifty.”
Frost said, “‘And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill/But O for the touch of a vanished hand/And the sound of a voice that is still.’ Tennyson. Nobody knows poetry anymore.”
Rune knew some nursery rhymes and some Shakespeare but she remained silent.
He continued, “But that ship made money hand over fist for a lot of people.” He lifted a heavy decanter and started pouring two glasses of purple liquor, as he asked, “Would you like some port?”
She accepted the glass and sipped. It was cloying as honey and tasted like cough medicine.
“I started out as a ship’s chandler. Do you know what that is?”
“A candle maker?” Rune shrugged.
“No, a provisioner. A supplier. Anything a captain wanted, from a ratchet to a side of beef, I would get it. I started when I was seventeen, rowing out to the ships as soon as they dropped anchor, even before the agents arrived or they’d started off-loading. I gave them cut prices, demanded half as a deposit, gave them fancy-looking receipts for the cash and always returned with what they wanted or a substitute that was better or cheaper.”
“I was wondering, sir—” she began.
Frost held up a hand. “Listen. This is important. During the thirties I moved into the shipping side of the business.”
Rune didn’t see what was important but she let him talk.
And talk he did. Fifteen minutes later she’d learned about his growing fortune in the shipping business. He was talking about ship propellers he’d designed himself. “They called them Frost Efficiency Screws. I got such a kick out of that! Efficiency Screws! So my ships could make the run from the Strait of Hormuz around the horn to the Ambrose Light in thirty-three days. I had the fastest oil carriers in the world. Thirty-three days.”
Rune said, “If I could ask you a few questions. About the Hopper killing.”
“There’s a point I’m trying to make.”
“Sorry.”
“I got out of shipping. I could see what would happen to oil. I could see the balance of trade shift. I didn’t want to leave my ships; oh, that hurt me. But you have to think ahead. Did you hear about the buggy-whip manufacturers who went out of business when autos were developed? You know what their problem was? They didn’t think of themselves as being in the accelerator business. Ha!” He loved the story, had probably told it a thousand times. “So what did I go into?”
“Airlines?”
Frost laughed derisively. “Public transportation? Regulations ad nauseam. I thought about it but I knew that it would take one Democrat, two at the most, to ruin the industry. No, I diversified—financial services, mining, manufacturing. And I became the fourth-richest man in the world … You’re skeptical. I can see that. You’ve never heard of me. Some old crackpot, you’re thinking, who’s lured me in here for who knows what nefarious prospects. But it’s true. In the seventies I had three billion dollars.” He paused. “And those were the days when a billion meant something.”
He sat forward and Rune sensed he was getting to his long-awaited point.
“But what could I do with money like that? Provide for my wife and children. Buy comfortable shoes, a good set of golf clubs, a warm coat, an apartment where the plumbing worked. I don’t smoke; rich food makes me ill. Mistresses? I was contentedly married for forty-one years. I put my children through school, set up trust funds for the grandchildren, though not very fat ones, and …” He smiled, significantly. “… I gave most of the rest away. Hence, you.”
“Me? What exactly does all that have to do with the Lance Hopper killing?”
Frost