O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [62]
“What my father needs now is the final, elusive piece of the puzzle to create a Chesapeake monopoly of warships, cargo ships, and passenger ships so every boatyard on the bay will be under contract to him.”
“Stop the babble,” he said. “You’re extremely clever, Amanda, but this goes totally beyond the scope of your comprehension.”
“Dutchman’s Hook is full up,” Amanda continued. “There’s no room to expand. Nor will the state of Maryland allow any expansion. The Maryland Select Commission has filed a confidential but strong report that the waste from Kerr and Sparrow’s Point could be endangering the oyster and crab beds for commercial fishing.”
“Are you going to tell me how you’ve come upon all this?”
“Matthew Fancy had a shrewd mind and made a very good teacher,” she answered.
Horace slowly poured himself a tall glass of water and asked for leave to light a cigar, then sat back, both enchanted and apprehensive. Then he arose, clasped his hands behind him, and walked away, his back to her. She followed him.
“The Kerr balance sheet has a building surplus. Suppose Kerr were to buy out a solid old yard, one that could put Kerr into the cargo- and passenger-ship business in direct competition with Belfast and the River Clyde in Scotland?”
“You have amazed me today,” Horace said. “But I’ve worked my way through all of this for years. There is no such yard, unless I go to sleep tonight with a molar under my pillow and the tooth fairy gives me one.”
“There is one in Hampton Roads,” Amanda said.
Horace allowed himself a deep sigh, turned, and patted her cheek. This was a wonderful new Amanda, but thank God this ridiculous game was over. Now let her down easily, he told himself. Do not bruise her dignity.
They ventured to the leather armchair part of the office. “I’m taken in by all this and I see it as an important moment for us. It’s going to take a while for it to sink it. You’ve given me a four-year education in less than an hour. But Hampton Roads is a naval facility, lock, stock, and barrel. There are some small yards still operating under a grandfather clause since the Revolution, but none of sufficient size for Kerr’s needs.”
“Wouldn’t the Constable Works fill the old dinner pail?”
“Hugh Constable has a tradition of building beautiful bay steamers, coastal boats, personal pleasure yachts. And Hugh Constable would never sell or merge.”
“They’re in trouble,” Amanda shot back.
A first drop of real blood fell, and Horace Kerr smelled it. “How’s that?”
“Twenty years ago Matthew Fancy worked out an option for Constable on the adjoining South Basin, and although they used some of it as an auxiliary, it’s never been really developed. Hugh Constable has gotten a recent itch to go into ocean passenger liners. He renewed the option for the South Basin for another fifty years, but it cost him millions. He started to build a pair of dry docks that would hold twenty-thousand-ton ships, then found himself financially squeezed.”
“There is no possible way Hugh Constable could have been seeking financing without me knowing about it.”
“That is because they have done the bulk of their banking through England and some European principalities. They bought the South Basin option for several million, took further loans to dredge their channels, and badly misjudged the engineering needed. Halfway through the construction of the first dry dock, they were squeezed so badly they had to put up their private preferred stock as collateral.”
“How do you know this?”
“My brother, who is never mentioned here by name, happens to hold a seat in Lloyd’s.”
“I don’t want to hear a goddamned thing about Upton!”
“Fine, then that’s it.”
“Your mother told you this! Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Mother knew nothing of this. When she made her first trip to England eight years ago, she brought home a letter to me from Upton. We write regularly to each other.”
“Where the hell does he send letters to you?”
“To Willow.”
“Behind my back!”
“It could not have been otherwise. He is my brother and I have a right to love him.