False Impression (6 page)

‘I never
received the report,’ said Fenston brusquely.

‘And indeed,’
said Anna, still looking at Leapman, ‘the chairman acknowledged such, when his
office returned the form I attached to that report.’

‘I never saw
it,’ repeated Fenston.

Which he
initialled,’ said Anna, who opened her file, extracted the relevant form and
placed it on the desk in front of Fenston.

He ignored it.

‘The least you
should have done was
wait
for my opinion,’ said
Fenston, ‘before allowing a copy of a report on such a sensitive subject to
leave this office.’

Anna still
couldn’t work out why they were spoiling for a fight.

They weren’t
even playing good cop, bad cop.

‘I waited for a
week, chairman,’ she replied, ‘during which time you made no comment on my
recommendations, despite the fact that I will be flying to London this evening
to keep an appointment with Lady Victoria tomorrow afternoon. However,’ Anna
continued before the chairman could respond, ‘I sent you a reminder two days
later.’ She opened her file again, and placed a second sheet of paper on the
chairman’s desk. Once again he ignored it.

‘But I hadn’t
read your report,’ Fenston said repeating himself, clearly unable to depart
from his script.

Stay calm, girl,
stay calm, Anna could hear her father whispering in her ear.

She took a deep
breath before continuing. ‘My report does no more, and certainly no less, than
advise the board, of which I am a member, that if we were to sell the Van Gogh,
either privately or through one of the recognized auction houses, the amount
raised would more than cover the bank’s original loan, plus interest.’

‘But it might
not have been my intention to sell the Van Gogh,’ said Fenston, now clearly
straying from his script.

Tou would have
been left with no choice, chairman, had that been the wish of our client.’

‘But I may have
come up with a better solution for dealing with the Wentworth problem.’

‘If that was the
case, chairman,’ said Anna evenly, ‘I’m only surprised you didn’t consult the
head of the department concerned, so that, at least as colleagues, we could
have discussed any difference of opinion before I left for England tonight.’

‘That is an
impertinent suggestion,’ said Fenston, raising his voice to a new level. ‘I
report to no one.’

‘I don’t
consider it is impertinent, chairman, to abide by the law,’ said Anna calmly.
‘It’s no more than the bank’s legal requirement to report any alternative
recommendations to their clients.

As I feel sure
you realize, under the new banking regulations, as proposed by the IRS and
recently passed by Congress...’

‘And I feel sure
you realize,’ said Fenston, ‘that your first responsibility is to me.’

‘Not if I
believe that an officer of the bank is breaking the law,’

Anna replied,
‘because that’s something I am not willing to be a party to.’

‘Are you trying
to goad me into firing you?’ shouted Fenston.

‘No, but I have
a feeling that you are trying to goad me into resigning,’ said Anna quietly.

‘Either way,’ said
Fenston, swivelling round in his chair and staring out of the window, ‘it is
clear you no longer have a role to play in this bank, as you are simply not a
team player – something they warned me about when you were dismissed from
Sotheby’s.’

Don’t rise,
thought Anna. She pursed her lips and stared at Fenston’s profile. She was
about to reply when she noticed there was something different about him, and
then she spotted the new earring. Vanity will surely be his downfall, she
thought as he swivelled back round and glared at her. She didn’t react.

‘Chairman, as I
suspect this conversation is being recorded, I would like to make one thing
absolutely clear. You don’t appear to know a great deal about banking law, and
you clearly know nothing about employment law, because enticing a colleague to
swindle a naive woman out of her inheritance is a criminal offence, as I feel
sure Mr Leapman, with all his experience, of both sides of the law, will be
happy to explain to you.’

‘Get out, before
I throw you out,’ screamed Fenston, jumping up from his chair and towering over
Anna. She rose slowly, turned her back on Fenston and walked towards the door.

‘And the first
thing you can do is clear your desk because I want you out of your office in
ten minutes. If you are still on the premises after that, I will instruct
security to escort you from the building.’

Anna didn’t hear
Fenston’s last remark as she had already closed the door quietly behind her.

The first person
Anna saw as she stepped into the corridor was Barry, who had clearly been
tipped off. The whole episode was beginning to look as if it had been
choreographed long before she’d entered the building.

Anna walked back
down the corridor with as much dignity as she could muster, despite Barry
matching her stride for stride and occasionally touching her elbow. She passed
an elevator that was being held open for someone and wondered who. Surely it
couldn’t be for her. Anna was back in her office less than fifteen minutes
after she’d left it. This time Rebecca was waiting for her. She was standing
behind her desk clutching a large brown cardboard box.

Anna walked
across to her desk, and was just about to turn on her computer when a voice
behind her said, ‘Don’t touch anything.

Your personal
belongings have already been packed, so let’s go.’

Anna turned
round to see Barry still hovering in the doorway.

‘I’m so sorry,’
said Rebecca. ‘I tried to phone and warn you, but...’

‘Don’t speak to
her,’ barked Barry, just hand over the box.

She’s outta
here.’ Barry rested the palm of his hand on the knuckle of his truncheon. Anna
wondered if he realized just how stupid he looked. She turned back to Rebecca
and smiled.

‘It’s not your
fault,’ she said as her secretary handed over the cardboard box.

Anna placed the
box on the desk, sat down and pulled open the bottom drawer.

‘You can’t
remove anything that belongs to the company,’ said Barry.

‘I feel
confident that Mr Fenston won’t
be wanting
my
sneakers,’ said Anna, as she removed her high-heeled shoes and placed them in
the box. Anna pulled on her sneakers, tied the laces, picked up the box and
headed back into the corridor. Any attempt at dignity was no longer possible.
Every employee knew that raised voices in the chairman’s office followed by
Barry escorting you from the premises meant only one thing: you were about to
be handed your pink slip. This time passers-by quickly retreated into their
offices, making no attempt to engage Anna in conversation.

T
he head of
security accompanied his charge to an office at the far end of the corridor
that Anna had never entered before. When she walked in, Barry once again
positioned himself in the doorway.

It was clear
that they’d also been fully briefed, because she was met by another employee
who
didn’t even venture ‘good morning’ for
fear it would
be reported to the chairman. He swivelled a piece of paper around that
displayed the figures $9,116 in bold type.

Anna’s
monthly salary.
She signed on the dotted line without comment.

“The money will
be wired through to your account later today,’ he said without raising his
eyes.

Anna turned to
find her watchdog still prowling around outside, trying hard to look menacing.
When she left the accounts office,

Barry
accompanied her on the long walk back down an empty corridor.

When they
reached the elevator, Barry pressed the down arrow, while Anna continued to
cling onto her cardboard box.

They were both
waiting for the elevator doors to open when American Airlines Flight 11 out of
Boston crashed into the ninety fourth floor of the North Tower.

Ruth Parish
looked up at the departure monitor on the wall above her desk. She was relieved
to see that United’s flight 107 bound for JFK had finally taken off at 1.40 pm.
Forty minutes behind schedule.

Ruth and her partner
Sam had founded Art Locations nearly a decade before, and when he left her for
a younger woman Ruth ended up with the company – by far the better part of the
bargain.

Ruth was married
to the job, despite its long hours, demanding customers and planes, trains and
cargo vessels that never arrived on time. Moving great, and not so great, works
of art from one corner of the globe to the other allowed her to combine a
natural flair for organization with a love of beautiful objects – if sometimes
she saw the objects only for a fleeting moment.

Ruth travelled
around the world accepting commissions from governments who were planning
national exhibitions, while also dealing with gallery owners, dealers and
several private collectors, who often wanted nothing more than to move a
favourite painting from one home to another. Over the years, many of her
customers had become personal friends. Rut not Bryce Fenston. Ruth had long ago
concluded that the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ were not in this man’s
vocabulary, and she certainly wasn’t on his Christmas card list. Fenston’s
latest demand had been to collect a Van Gogh from Wentworth Hall and transport
it, without delay, to his office in New York.

Obtaining an
export licence for the masterpiece had not proved difficult, as few
institutions or museums could raise the sixty million dollars necessary to stop
the painting leaving the country.

Especially after
the National Galleries of Scotland had recently failed to raise the required 7
pounds 5 pencemillion to ensure that Michelangelo’s Study of a Mourning Woman
didn’t leave these shores to become part of a private collection in the States.

When a Mr
Andrews, the butler at Wentworth Hall, had rung the previous day to say that
the painting would be ready for collection in the morning, Ruth had scheduled
one of her high security air-ride trucks to be at the hall by eight o’clock.
Ruth was pacing up and down the tarmac long before the truck turned up at her
office, just after ten.

Once the
painting was unloaded, Ruth supervised every aspect of its packing and safe
dispatch to New York, a task she would normally have left to one of her
managers. She stood over her senior packer as he wrapped the painting in
acid-free glassine paper and then placed it into the foam-lined case he’d been
working on throughout the night so it would be ready in time. The captive bolts
were tightened on the case, preventing anyone breaking into it without a
sophisticated socket set. Special indicators were attached to the outside of
the case that would turn red if anyone attempted to open it during its journey.
The senior packer stencilled the word ‘FRAGILE’ on both sides of the box and
the number ‘47’ in all four corners. The customs officer had raised an eyebrow
when he checked the shipping papers, but as an export licence had been granted,
the eyebrow returned to its natural position.

Ruth drove
across to the waiting 747 and watched as the red box disappeared into the vast
hold. She didn’t return to her office until the heavy door was secured in place.
She checked her watch and smiled. The plane had taken off at 1.40 pm.

Ruth began to
think about the painting that would be arriving from the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam later that evening to form part of the Rembrandt’s Women exhibition
at the Royal Academy.

But not before
she had put a call through to Fenston Finance to inform them that the Van Gogh
was on its way.

She dialled
Anna’s number in New York, and waited for her to pick up the phone.

There was a loud
explosion, and the building began to sway from side to side.

Anna was hurled
across the corridor, ending up flat on the canvas as if she’d been floored by a
heavyweight boxer. The elevator doors opened and she watched as a fireball of
fuel shot through the shaft, searching for oxygen. The hot blast slapped her in
the face as if the door of an oven had been thrown open. Anna lay on the
ground, dazed.

Her first
thought was that the building must have been struck by lightning, but she
quickly dismissed that idea as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. An eerie
silence followed and Anna wondered if she had gone deaf, but this was soon
replaced by screams of ‘Oh, my God!’ as huge shards of jagged glass, twisted
metal and office furniture flew past the windows in front of her.

It must be
another bomb, was Anna’s second thought.
Everyone who had
been in the building in 1993 retold stories of what had happened to them on
that bitterly cold February afternoon.
Some of them were apocryphal,
others pure invention, but the facts were simple. A truck filled with explosives
had been driven into the underground garage beneath the building. When it
exploded, six people were killed and over a thousand injured. Five underground
floors were wiped out, and it took several hours for the emergency services to
evacuate the building. Since then, everyone who worked in the World Trade
Center had been required to participate in regular fire drills. Anna tried to
remember what she was supposed to do in such an emergency.