Free Blood Stones by Evelyn Anthony Page A

he said.
    â€˜Bloody impossible,’ Andrews said shortly.
    â€˜You’ll bring it off,’ James piped up.
    â€˜Ah, the wonder boy.’ Kruger stopped and faced him. ‘How come you managed to crawl up Julius’s ass without anyone noticing?’
    Wasserman laughed; it was not so much a laugh as an old man’s cackle, malicious and dry. ‘Now, Dick, don’t be like that. You had your chance, like James here. Good luck to you, my boy.’ He patted James on the shoulder. ‘You’ll need it, won’t he, eh?’ He laughed again.
    â€˜You’ll need a bloody miracle,’ Kruger snapped. ‘If you make a mess of it, Hastings old son, Julius’ll chew your balls clean off. That’s if you’ve got any left when Ivan Karakov’s finished with you!’ He turned and walked away. The old man looked after him and shrugged. Andrews looked embarrassed, James Hastings showed nothing except that he was white-faced, and Wasserman knew what that meant in some men.
    â€˜Don’t pay any attention to him,’ he said. ‘He don’t mean anything nasty; just forget it. He’s edgy, that’s all.’
    James gave him a look that was quite impassive; his colour was still very pale.
    â€˜Most people are edgy when they know they’re past it,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a ring, David; perhaps we could have lunch before you go back? Fine, I’ll do that then. Come on, Ray. Let’s go and see what Reece has to suggest.’
    Reece stood up as they came into his office. It was furnished in ultra-modern style, with sepia-coloured walls and white wood furniture. There was a large reproduction of a Chagall abstract and a small drawing, which Hastings recognized as an original by Paul Klee; those two pictures and some framed photographs of his family were the only decorations in the office. Functional was the word that leaped to the mind; efficient, up to date, expensive, and quite without atmosphere. But the room wasn’t a reflection of Reece’s personality. The key to that lay somewhere in those two paintings and those dumpy figures in the photographs on his desk. As they sat down, James identified him as the sullen little boy with a little girl standing, he guessed, between their parents; the background was indeterminate, the group was windblown, and Reece’s father looked self-conscious in a panama hat. Reece wasn’t married, and that was all anybody knew about his personal life. A negative. James took a cigarette from the onyx box and looked into the man’s dark, flat eyes. God, he was a creepy little bastard.
    â€˜Mr Hastings, I think we’ll have a general run-through with your side of the problem first. Then we’ll deal with Mr Andrews; is that all right?’ He looked from one to the other and smiled. He knew them very well, these two men, and his summing up had decided their present assignments, though they would never know it. He had first advised Heyderman to watch Hastings; Reece could smell ambition, and it was so strong in Hastings that it stank in Reece’s nostrils the moment they met. He had an animal instinct for certain things; he knew if someone was afraid, and how far they could be pushed. That had been very useful on occasions when he had been left to distance the company from some awkward situation. He knew when threats were useless, and it was necessary to use other means, like money or promotion to close a mouth or stifle a pang of conscience. Hastings would have very little conscience. There wasn’t much he’d balk at, if the prize was big enough, and that was why the Chairman had selected him to take on Karakov; he’d chosen him because Reece said he was the man, and Julius trusted Reece’s judgement as much as he did his own. Reece knew this, and he was very gratified. If you happened to be a small man, and not much to look at, and with certain things to hide, it was