Loren slumped in his chair and looked at Roberta. “Your girl in London is in jail,” he said. “That’s all that comes of your goddamned subtlety.”

  “Don’t lay it on me,” she said curtly. “You knew what I was doing and approved everything.”

  Loren slumped further, as if he would disappear down inside his clothes. “If the attorney general wins this suit, what happens exactly?”

  “Some part of the XB stock held by the foundation will have to be sold, so the foundation can diversify its investments.”

  “Sold?”

  “At public sale. On the market. You have to figure that lots of investors will be interested. XB, which has always been a Hardeman family business, will become a publicly held corporation. Instead of ten or so stockholders, you’re going to have a thousand.”

  Loren sighed noisily. “Perino will get up in a stockholders meeting—that personable wop asshole—and charm those idiots into—”

  “Changing management,” said Roberta.

  Loren nodded. His eyes narrowed. “Only if his fuckin’ car’s a success.”

  5

  Henry Morris telephoned Cindy, saying he’d like to send her a fax. She said it was okay; no one was home but her. In a few minutes the fax came through on the machine in Angelo’s study. It was a report to Henry from Blakoff Security Agency—

  We have been able to obtain the following information concerning Professor Robert Carpenter.

  His salary as an assistant professor of art history is $56,000 per annum. Over the past two years, however, he has deposited several large checks, aggregating as much as a year’s salary.

  We were able to obtain the balance due on his Visa card. At present he owes Visa $6,325.87. We could not of course ascertain what he had charged.

  We were able also to obtain some information about his telephone calls. One number frequently called by him, both from home and from his hotels, is in the 313 area code. That seemed significant, since that is for the Detroit area. A simple check in a reverse directory turned up the information that the number is the residence number of one Loren Hardeman.

  6

  Robert Carpenter heard the knock on his door in the Hyatt Regency. Cindy! He needn’t dress. Wearing only his white briefs, he unlocked the door.

  It was pushed in hard, knocking him back.

  The man who stood before him was bigger than he was but much older—not a threat, Carpenter decided, as he guessed who the man was.

  He had decided wrong. The man kneed him in the crotch; and as he bent over in agony, the man grabbed him by the hair and drove his face down against an upraised knee. Carpenter felt his nose break. Released, he staggered back and dropped to the floor. “I guess you know who I am, Professor.”

  Carpenter nodded. He had guessed. Perino.

  He caught the blood from his nose in his hands. It escaped and dropped on his chest and belly. Perino went to the bathroom and came out, tossing him a towel. Carpenter caught his blood in the towel.

  “I have friends who’d be glad to give you a major headache,” said Perino. “You know the term?”

  Carpenter nodded.

  “Fuckin’ my wife. No, more than that—playing games with her affections. I don’t know … What’s the right thing to do with a guy like you?”

  “Mr. Perino. I love her!”

  “Sure. For how much money? How much has Loren paid you?”

  Carpenter covered his whole face with the towel.

  “I don’t care how much,” said Angelo.

  Carpenter looked up into the apparently calm face of Cindy’s husband. “How’d you find out?” he mumbled.

  “I didn’t. She did. Like every cockhound in the world, you overestimate yourself and underestimate the women you play around with.”

  “I swear I love her. I really do.”

  “Tell her about that. Explain the calls to Loren Hardeman.”

  Carpenter stared at the towel. His blood soaked it, but the bleeding was stopping. He coughed. “What can I say? What can I do?”

  Angelo saw the bottle of Scotch on the telephone table. Sure. For Cindy. He walked over and picked it up. He poured two stiff drinks and handed one to Carpenter.

  “I could arrange a major migraine for you, Professor,” he said. “Not here. Not now. Sometime, as a big surprise. But I think you’re just a cheap little piece of shit that got into something you couldn’t understand. Even Loren Hardeman”—Angelo nodded—“is a bigger man than you.”

  “A richer man than me,” said Carpenter.

  “So, a wanna-be,” said Angelo scornfully. “What do you want to be, Professor? The word on you is that you know your business. You just don’t know the business you’ve got yourself into.”

  Carpenter hung his head for a moment. “Can I get up?” he asked.

  “Sure. Go in the bathroom and wash your face. You behave yourself, and I’ll give you the name of a doctor who can put your nose back the way it was. He’s in Switzerland, and he’ll give you a new face entirely, if you want it.”

  Carpenter returned. He’d slapped cold water over his face. His nose was flattened. It was turning purple. “Oh, shit,” he muttered and sank down on the couch.

  “How’d you like a nice pill that will take away the hurt and guarantee long life?” asked Angelo.

  “What?”

  “Listen and repeat after me,” said Angelo.

  7

  Carpenter sat on the edge of his bed, still in nothing but his white shorts, his chest and belly still brown with his blood. He looked up at Angelo Perino and waited as the telephone rang.

  “H’lo.”

  “Roberta? Bob Carpenter.”

  “What’s the word, Carpenter?”

  “They’re having trouble with the batteries. The damned things explode.”

  “Solid batteries explode? The story was, they’re using solid batteries.”

  “Well, there’s some kind of problem. They’re still going to use the flywheel batteries, but with liquid batteries in the combination.”

  “And they explode?”

  “On impact. Not safe if the car hits something or gets hit. They ran a test car into a wall. The batteries exploded and shot battery acid fifty feet in the air. They’re trying to design some kind of armored container, but the thing will add too much weight to the car. They’re stymied.”

  “Doesn’t sound like anything we’ve heard.”

  “Okay. Who’s lying to who? Perino to Cindy? Or Cindy to me?”

  “Loren’s asleep. I’ll wake him up and tell him.”

  Carpenter hung up the telephone. Angelo handed him his Scotch.

  8

  Van’s cheeks were wet with tears as he clutched Anna to himself and kissed her on the forehead, the eyes, the cheeks, her mouth, her throat.

  “Is a man allowed to be a fool once in his life?” he asked her.

  “More than once,” she whispered.

  “We will fly to Amsterdam,” he said. “I have the tickets. I have your mother’s consent for you to go with me.”

  Anna ran her moist lips over his face. “Why Amsterdam?” she asked softly.

  “To see the diamonds,” he said. “With my father’s assistance, we will buy the diamonds for your engagement ring.”

  Anna smiled. “Van, you haven’t really proposed.”

  “I am!” he protested. “Anna, my beautiful, adorable girl, will you marry me?”

  She nodded. “Of course,” she said.

  “And forgive me for being a complete idiot?”

  “A complete victim,” she said. “Your grandfather Hardeman is an ogre, married to a witch. My father is going to destroy them both. Do you accept that, Van? That my father is going to destroy your grandfather?”

  “I cannot believe my mother came from the loins of that man,” said Van. “She is so kind, so gentle, so incapable of—” He stopped. “Well, Rebecca Mugrage is in Holloway Prison because—”

  “Because your mother is an effective woman, who gets what she wants,” said Anna. “My father is an effective man, who gets what he wants.”

  Van grinned. “God save us all, then, from little John Hardeman—the son of them both.”

  “Let’s let them have it, Van.”

  “What?”

  “The inheritance. You’re Loren the Fourth. But you don’t have to be. It’s been a curse. Let it pass to little John, the son of my father and your mother. You go on to Harvard Law. Let’s be independent of the inheritance from Number One.”

  Van shook his head. “I’ve never assumed I was going to inherit.”

  Anna kissed him. “Our secret,” she said. “Let them fight it out. It’s not our fight.”

  “It is not,” said Van solemnly. “Every one of them will—”

  “Not hate us,” said Anna. “Respect us, in the end.”

  “But there is going to be a war between our families,” said Van. “It’s gone on, generation after generation, and it is going to be resolved in somebody’s victory and somebody else’s defeat.”

  Anna drew up her shoulders and shrugged comfortably. “Nobody defeats my father.”

  XXXVII

  1993

  1

  In August, Angelo doubled the security force around the XB test track. He infuriated Loren and Beacon by denying them access to the track except in his presence. He took them in to see tests of the 000, but he kept all his personnel away from them. His team of young engineers was intensely loyal to Angelo Perino. None of them cared much for XB Motors. They understood that if the 000 failed they would be out of jobs, but they knew also that other jobs would be waiting for any man or woman who had worked on Angelo Perino’s electric car.

  The test cars still ran on Stallion chassis, to which it was simple to attach epoxy resin S Stallion bodies. This made the test cars roughly the same weight as the prototype 000 would be. Cindy came to Michigan and drove one of these cars. When Betsy flew in for a board meeting, Angelo took her out to drive one.

  “It’s exciting!” Betsy laughed. “Damn, it’s an exciting car!”

  Cindy was more analytical. “I’m not comfortable with the braking,” she told Angelo. “It’s like pushing a switch. It does what it’s supposed to do, but you don’t feel any back pressure from it.”

  “We’re working on that,” said Angelo. “Actually, when you press hard on the brake pedal you compress a spring that causes a series of switches to close. You do control the amount of braking power you apply, but you don’t feel comfortable when you don’t get the back pressure. We’re going to let the computer generate an artificial back pressure. Future drivers won’t expect back pressure from the brake pedal, but this generation does and won’t feel comfortable without it. One of ten thousand little problems we have to solve.”

  “The big question is, how far can you go on a charge?”

  “You could drive from New York to Washington without needing a charge, as it stands right now,” said Angelo.

  Cindy grinned. “By then you’d have to stop to pee anyway.”

  2

  The Amanda Finch nude of Professor Robert Carpenter was put on prominent display in VKP Galleries. Who it belonged to was immaterial; it was not for sale. Before long someone recognized him. Word spread in the art world that the professor was to be seen in the altogether, painted with Finch realism; and shortly visitors began to appear at the gallery, just to see the Finch of Carpenter. None of those visitors had the money to buy, even if the painting had been for sale; they only came to gawk; and academics, somewhat to Cindy’s surprise, turned out to be more than a little narrow minded. Some were scandalized.

  Carpenter disappeared for a few weeks. He was in fact at Yale New Haven Hospital, where he had his nose repaired. Angelo Perino paid for the surgery, on the condition that Carpenter continue to telephone Loren and Roberta, reciting disinformation supplied by Angelo.

  3

  For two full weeks in September a Michigan circuit court heard evidence and argument on the question of whether the Hardeman Foundation should diversify its investment portfolio. The attorney general argued that the foundation exposed itself and its charitable works to an unnecessary risk by investing its entire capital in the stock of one corporation—and that one a family corporation with almost no stockholders outside the family. Sixty percent of the stock was held by just five members of the Hardeman family: Mr. and Mrs. Loren Hardeman; Elizabeth Hardeman, Viscountess Neville; Anne Elizabeth Hardeman, Princess Alekhine; and Alicia Hardeman. Family ownership of XB Motors made the stock an even more risky investment. Added to that was the fact that XB Motors had committed itself heavily to the development of an experimental automobile, which might fail.

  Angelo Perino, president of XB Motors, was a witness on Wednesday morning of the second week.

  “Are you yourself an investor in XB stock, Mr. Perino?”

  “I am.”

  “What percentage of the stock do you own?”

  “I own two percent.”

  “What percentage of your personal net worth does that represent, Mr. Perino?”

  “I am not certain. I’d guess roughly ten percent.”

  “So, if the company fails, it will not bankrupt you?

  “That is correct.”

  “During the years you have been associated with the company in one way or another, how many radically new cars has it tried to produce?”

  “Depending on how you define the term ‘radically new,’ I’d say four.”

  “And they are…?”

  “The car we called the Betsy, one that we called the Stallion, the one that we called the S Stallion, or Super Stallion, and the car currently in development, called the Zero-Zero-Zero or the E Stallion, meaning Electric Stallion.”

  “Of those four cars, how many can you call successes?”

  “Just one. The Stallion has been a complete success. The Betsy and the S Stallion, no. How the Zero-Zero-Zero will do remains to be seen.”

  “If the new car fails, how will that impact the value of the stock in XB Motors, Incorporated?”

  “It will have a very serious negative impact.”

  On Friday, October 1, the court issued an order requiring the Hardeman Foundation to reduce its holdings in XB Motors stock by 75 percent and to invest the proceeds in diversified securities lawful for fiduciary investment under Michigan law.

  There was no market in XB Motors stock. It had always traded privately, among the very few people who owned any. A Detroit bank and a New York bank agreed to make a market for it. Before the court ordered a forced sale, the few shares that were sold by the estates of deceased employees were going for $775 to $800 a share. By the time the banks were ready to offer it, the bids varied from $550 to $600. To bolster the stock and to express confidence in it, Angelo bid $600 and bought $1,200,000 worth of it, so doubling his holdings. In two weeks the price rose to $675, and the stock began to sell, in dribs and drabs. By the end of the year the stock sold for $750 a share. The holdings of the Hardeman Foundation were down to 14 percent. Six percent more had to be sold to meet the requirement of the court order.

  There were 518 stockholders. One of them, with one hundred shares, was Tom Mason. Twenty-eight other stockholders were XB dealers.

  4

  Two families and their guests gathered for Christmas Eve, in two homes in Greenwich, overspilling into the nearby Hyatt Regency Hotel. The Christmas Eve dinner was at the Perino house, cooked and served by a catering team that set up six extra tables.

  Angelo and Cindy were host and hostess—he in black tie, she in a glittering white cocktail dress—receiving their guests before a twelve-foot Christmas tree.

  All of their children were there. John, who was twenty, had long since broken up with Buffy Mead but had invited Deirdre Logan, who was eighteen and conspicuously infatuated with him. Anna and Van were never apart. Morris was sixteen and anxious to show that he could drink champagne and not get giddy. Valerie was fourteen and as beautiful as Anna. Mary was just ten and a little overwhelmed by the party.

  The Viscount and Viscountess Neville flew in from London with all their children. Sally, from Betsy’s psychiatrist, was twelve and a shy little girl who wore eyeglasses. She remained slight and moved with the grace of the ballerina she was determined to become. John, the son Betsy shared with Angelo, was ten and knew he was handsome. Charlotte and George, Betsy’s Neville children, were seven and eight years old and determined not to go to bed before the party ended.

  Alicia was there with Bill Adams. Van was staying with her, as were Betsy’s children Sally and John.

  Max van Ludwige had flown over from Amsterdam with his wife, Gretchen.

  Amanda was there, as was Marcus Lincicombe and Dietz von Keyserling.

  Keijo Shigeto and Toshiko and their children were also taking part in the festivities.

  Jenny Perino was not able to travel up from Florida that Christmas.

  Alicia had invited Loren and Roberta, but they had sent their regrets. She had also invited Princess Anne and Prince Igor Alekhine, who had sent gifts but were not able to attend.

  The party was immensely confusing to the children, as it was to most of the adults.

  “I will be at your stockholders meeting,” Bill Adams said to Angelo. “I bought a few XB shares myself, recommended it to others, and will have their proxies. I have no doubt you will take over XB, lock, stock, and barrel. All you need is a successful car, and I have no doubt you’ll be able to deliver that.”

  “I have two months to get the last kinks out,” said Angelo.

  Not all the tables could be set up in one room. Just before everyone went scurrying around looking at place cards and trying to find his or her seat, Angelo and Cindy invited their guests to assemble in the living room. The caterers made sure everyone had champagne, even the youngest child.