Paper Money by Ken Follett Page B

Stephen said: "Big one today."
     
    "Makes no difference to us," Ron said sourly.
     
    He looked back at his mirror. The loading was finished.
     
    Stephen said to Max: "The gaffer here likes Westerns."
     
    "Yeah?" Max was interested. He had not been here before, and the clerk
    in striped trousers did not look like a John Wayne fan. "How do you
    know?" he asked.
     
    "Watch. Here he comes."
     
    The clerk came to Ron's window and said: "Move Max spluttered and tried
    to cover his laughter.
     
    Stephen went around to the back of the van and got in. The clerk locked
    him in.
     
    The three bank employees disappeared into the elevator. Nothing happened
    for two or three minutes; then the steel door lifted. Ron fired the
    engine and drove into the tunnel. They waited for the inner door to
    close and the outer one to open.
     
    Just before they pulled away, Max said into the microphone: "So long,
    Laughing Boy."
     
    The van emerged into the street.
     
    The motorcycle escort was ready. They took up their positions, two in
    front and two behind, and the convoy headed east.
     
    At a large road junction in East London, the van turned onto the All.
     
    It was watched by a large man in a gray coat with a velvet collar, who
    immediately went into a phone booth.
     
    Max Fitch said: "Guess who I just saw."
     
    "No idea."
     
    "Tony Cox."
     
    Ron's expression was blank. "Who's he when he's at home?"
     
    "Used to be a boxer. Good, he was. I saw him knock out Kid Vittorio at
    Bethnal Green Baths, it must be ten year ago. Hell of a boy."
     
    Max really wanted to be a detective, but he had failed the police force
    intelligence test and gone into security. He read a great deal of crime
    fiction, and consequently labored under the delusion that the CID's most
    potent weapon was logical deduction. At home he did things like finding
    a lipstick-smeared cigarette butt in the ashtray and announcing grandly
    that he had reason to believe that Mrs. Ashford from next door had been
    in the house.
     
    He shifted restlessly in his seat. "Them cases are what they keep old
    notes in, aren't they?"
     
    "Yes," Ron said.
     
    "So we must be going to the destruction plant in Essex," Max said
    proudly. "Right, Ron?"
     
    Ron was staring at the outriders in front of the van and frowning. As
    the senior member of the team, he was the only one who got told where
    they were going. But he was not thinking of the route, or the job, or
    even Tony Cox the ex-boxer.
     
    He was trying to figure out why his eldest daughter had fallen in love
    with a hippie.
     
    Felix Laski office in Poultry did not display his name anywhere. It was
    an old building, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with two others of
    different design. Had he been able to get planning permission to knock
    it down and build a skyscraper, he could have made millions. Instead it
    stood as an example of the way his wealth was locked up. But he reckoned
    that, in the long term, peer pressure would blow the lid off planning
    restrictions; and he was a patient man where business was concerned.
     
    Almost all of the building was sublet. Most of the tenants were minor
    foreign banks who needed an address near Threadneedle Street, and their
    names were well displayed. People tended to assume that Laski had
    interests in the banks, and he encouraged this error in every way short
    of outright lying. Besides, he did own one of the banks.
     
    The furnishings inside were adequate but cheap: solid old typewriters,
    shop-soiled filing cabinets, secondhand desks, and the threadbare
    minimum of carpet. Like every successful man in middle age, Laski liked
    to explain his achievement in aphorisms: a favorite was "I never spend
    money.
     
    I invest." It was truer than most dicta of its kind.
     
    His one home, a small mansion in Kent, had been rising in value since he
    bought it shortly after the war; his meals were often expense-account
    affairs with business prospects; and even the paintings he owned-kept in
    a