Free The Bancroft Strategy by Robert Ludlum Page B

sense, Will. What the hell are you trying to say?”
    â€œYou colored outside the lines for the last time,” said the aging manager, rumbling like a distant thunderstorm, “when you killed Khalil Ansari.”
    Â 
    Horace Linville watched Andrea closely as she read through the documents; whenever she lifted her eyes from the page they seemed tocatch his. Paragraphs were given over to the definition of terms, the detailing of contingencies. But the upshot was that the foundation’s charter mandated that a specified percentage of the board had to be members of the family, and so the sudden vacancy was to be filled by Andrea. The bequest was contingent upon her acceptance. An additional honorarium would come with her service as a trustee of the family-run foundation, a sum that would escalate with each year she served.
    â€œThe foundation has an extremely impressive record,” Linville said after a while. “As a trustee you’ll share a responsibility to make sure it continues to in the future. If you think you’re prepared for it.”
    â€œHow does anybody prepare for something like this?”
    â€œBeing a Bancroft is a good start.” Linville looked at her over half-moon glasses and gave her a lipless smile.
    â€œA Bancroft,” she echoed.
    He held out the pen. He had not just come to explain; he had come for her signature. In triplicate. Say yes.
    After he left, the signed document neatly tucked into his briefcase, Andrea found herself pacing, giddy yet apprehensive. She had gained an unimaginable prize, and yet felt weirdly bereft. There was logic to the illogic: Her life—the life that she had known, had struggled to shape—would change beyond recognition, and there was loss in that.
    Her eyes darted around the living room again. She had gussied up the Ikea lounger by putting a nice Berber weave on it. It looked posh, even though she had picked it up for a song at a flea market. The coffee table from Pier 1 looked like it cost at least twice what she paid for it. The wicker furniture—well, you could find that sort of thing in expensive houses in Nantucket, no?
    Never mind how Horace Linville saw it. How did she now see it? She’d told herself she was going for shabby chic. But, regarded without sentiment, maybe it really looked just shabby. Twelve million dollars. This morning, she had three thousand dollars in her savingsaccount. From the perspective of a financial professional—as a trade executed by a fund, as the valuation of a proposed deal, as a tranche of convertible debentures—twelve million wasn’t much. But as an actual chunk of cash in her actual bank account? It almost didn’t compute. She couldn’t even say the amount out loud. When she tried, speaking to Horace Linville, Esq., she started giggling, and had to choke it off with a pretend attack of coughing. Twelve million dollars. The sum now ran through her mind, like one of those catchy jingles one couldn’t drive from one’s head.
    A few hours ago, it was a source of satisfaction that she earned a salary of eighty thousand dollars—and had hopes to hit six figures before long. And now? She couldn’t fathom the sum. Not in the small private world of Andrea Bancroft. A stray fact drifted into her mind: The entire population of Scotland was about five million. She could—one of the silly thoughts that flitted through her consciousness like flies—give a couple of boxes of raisins to every single inhabitant of Scotland.
    She remembered freezing up when Linville placed the fountain pen in her hand. The long moments that elapsed before she inked her name to the documents. Why had it been so hard?
    She continued to pace, numb, exhilarated, and strangely agitated. Why had she found it so hard to say yes? Linville’s words returned to her: A Bancroft …
    Precisely what she had spent her life trying not to be. Which wasn’t to say the renunciation