Paper Money by Ken Follett

Hamilton got in without speaking.
    As the car pulled away he made a decision. He would not go straight to the office. He said: “Take me to Nathaniel Fett—do you know where it is?”
    The chauffeur said: “Yes, sir.”
    They crossed Waterloo Bridge and turned into the Aldwych, heading for the City. Hamilton and Fett had both gone to Westminster School: Nathaniel Fett senior had known that his son would not suffer for his Jewishness there, and Lord Hamilton had believed that the school would not turn his son into an upper-class twit—his Lordship’s phrase.
    The two boys had superficially similar backgrounds. Both had wealthy, dynamic fathers and beautiful mothers; both were from intellectual households where politicians came to dinner; both grew up surrounded by good paintings and unlimited books. Yet, as the friendship grew, and the two young men went to Oxford—Fett to Balliol, Hamilton to Magdalen—the Hamilton house had suffered by the comparison. Derek came to see his own father’s intellect as shallow. Old man Fett would tolerantly discuss abstract painting, communism, and bebop jazz, then tear them to pieces with surgical accuracy. Lord Hamilton held the same conservative views, but expressed them in the thundering cliche’s of a House of Lords speech.
    Derek smiled to himself in the back of the car. He had been too hard on his father; perhaps sons always were. Few men had known more about political skirmishing: the old man’s cleverness had given him real power, whereas Nathaniel’s father had been too wise ever to wield real influence in affairs of state.
    Nathaniel had inherited that wisdom and made a career of it. The stockbroking firm which had been owned by six generations of firstborn sons named Nathaniel Fett had been changed, by the seventh, into a merchant bank. People had always gone to Nathaniel for advice, even at school. Now he advised on mergers, share issues, and takeovers.
    The car pulled up. Hamilton said: “Wait for me, please.”
    The offices of Nathaniel Fett were not impressive—the firm had no need to prove itself rich. There was a small nameplate outside a street door near the Bank of England. The entrance was flanked by a sandwich shop on one side and a tobacconist’s on the other. A casual observer might have taken it for a small, and none-too-prosperous, insurance or shipping company; but he would not have known how far the premises to either side were occupied by the one firm.
    The inside was comfortable, rather than opulent, with air-conditioning, concealed lighting, and carpets which had aged well and stopped short of the walls. The same casual observer might have thought that the paintings hanging on the walls were expensive. He would have been right and wrong: they were expensive, but they were not hanging on the walls. They were set into the brickwork behind armored glass—only the false frames actually hung on top of the wallpaper.
    Hamilton was shown straight in to Fett’s ground-floor office. Nathaniel was sitting in a club chair reading The Financial Times. He stood up to shake hands.
    Hamilton said: “I’ve never seen you sitting at that desk. Is it just for decoration?”
    “Sit down, Derek. Tea, coffee, sherry?”
    “A glass of milk, please.”
    “If you would, Valerie.” Fett nodded to his secretary and she went out. “The desk—no, I never use it. Everything I write is dictated; nothing I read is too heavy to hold in my hands; why should I sit at a desk like a clerk in Dickens?”
    “So it is for decoration.”
    “It’s been here longer than I. Too big to get out through the door and too valuable to chop up. I think they built the place around it.”
    Hamilton smiled. Valerie brought in his milk and went out again. He sipped and studied his friend. Fett and his office matched: both were small but not dwarfish, dark but not gloomy, relaxed without being frivolous. The man had heavy-rimmed glasses and brilliantined hair. He wore a club tie, a mark of