Tony looked in his mirror as he accelerated away. Neither of them had seen him.

"Easy," Tony said aloud. He drove south.

The car was quite pleasant, with automatic gears and power-assisted steering. It had a tape deck. Tony sorted through the cassettes, found a Beatles cassette, and put it on. Then he lit a cigar.

In less than an hour he would be at the farm, counting the money.

Felix Laski had been well worth cultivating, Tony thought. They had met in the restaurant of one of Tony's clubs. The Cox casinos served the best food in London. They had to. Tony's motto was: if you serve peanuts, you get monkeys for customers. He wanted rich people in his gambling clubs, not yobboes asking for draft bitter and fivepenny chips. He did not like fancy food himself, but on the night he met Laski he was eating a vast, rare T-bone steak at a table near the financier's.

The chef was pinched from Prunier's. Tony did not know what he did to the steaks, but the result was sensational. The tall, elegant man at the next table had caught his eye: a fine-looking man for his age. He was with a young girl whom Tony instantly marked as a tart.

Tony had finished his steak, and was tucking into a mountain of trifle, when the accident happened. The waiter was serving Laski with canelloni, and somehow a half-full bottle of claret got knocked over. The tart squealed and jumped out of the way, and a few drops of wine spattered Laski's brilliant white shirt.

Tony acted immediately. He stood up, dropping his napkin on the table, and summoned three waiters and the maitre d'hotel. He spoke first to the waiter who had caused the mess. "Go and get changed. Pick up your cards on Friday." He turned to the others. "Bernardo, a cloth. Giulio, another bottle of wine. Monsieur Charles, another table, and no bill for this gentleman." Finally he spoke to the diners. "I'm the proprietor, Tony Cox. Please have your dinner on the house, with my apologies, and I hope you'll have the most expensive dishes on the menu, beginning with a bottle of Dom Perignon."

Laski spoke then. "These things can't be helped." His voice was deep and faintly accented. "But it is nice to have such a generous, old-fashioned apology." He smiled.

"It missed my dress," the tart said. Her accent confirmed Tony's guess about her profession: she came from the same part of London as he did.

The maitre d'hotel said: "M'sieur Cox, the house is full. There is no other table."

Tony pointed to his own table. "What's wrong with that one? Clear it, quickly."

"Please don't," Laski said. "We wouldn't like to deprive you."

"I insist."

"Then, please join us."

Tony looked at them both. The tart obviously didn't like the idea. Was the gent just being polite, or did he mean it? Well, Tony had almost finished, so if it didn't work out he could leave the table quite soon.

"I don't want to intrude-"

"You won't be," Laski said. "And you can tell me how to win at roulette."

"Right-oh," Tony said.

He stayed with them all evening. He and Laski got on famously, and it was made clear early on that what the girl thought did not count. Tony told stories of villainy in the world of gambling clubs, and Laski matched him, anecdote for anecdote, with tales of Stock Exchange sharp practice. It transpired that Laski was not a gambler, but that he liked to bring people to the club. When they went into the casino he bought fifty pounds' worth of chips and gave them all to the girl. The evening ended when Laski, by now quite drunk, said: "I suppose I should take her home and screw her."

After that they met several times-never by arrangement-in the club, and always ended up getting drunk together. After a while Tony let the other man know that he was gay, and Laski did nothing about it, from which Tony concluded that the financier was a tolerant heterosexual.

It pleased Tony to know that he could befriend someone of Laski's class. The scene in the restaurant was the easiest bit, and it was well rehearsed: the grand gestures, the posture of command, the heavy courtesy, and a conscious moderating of his accent. But to maintain the acquaintance with someone as brainy, as rich, and as used to moving in near-aristocratic circles as Laski was seemed quite an achievement.

It was Laski who made the first move toward a deeper relationship. They had been bragging-drunk in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and Laski had been talking about the power of money. "Given enough money," he said, "I can find out anything in the City-right down to the combination of the lock on the vault in the Bank of England."

Tony said: "Sex is better."

"What do you mean?"

"Sex is a better weapon. I can find out anything in London, using sex."

"Now that I doubt," said Laski, whose sexual urges were well under control.

Tony shrugged. "All right. Challenge me."

That was when Laski made his move. "The development license for the Shield oil field. Find out who's got it-before the government makes the announcement."

Tony saw the gleam in the financier's eye, and guessed that the whole conversation had been planned. "Why don't you ask me something difficult?" he countered. "Politicians and civil servants are much too easy."

"It will do," Laski smiled.

"Okay. But I've got to challenge you, too."

Laski's eyes narrowed. "Go on."

Tony said the first thing that came into his head. "Find out the schedule for deliveries of used notes to the currency destruction plant of the Bank of England."

"It won't even cost me money," Laski said confidently.

And that was how it had started. Tony grinned as he drove the Ford through South London. He did not know how Laski had managed to keep his half of the bargain; but Tony's side had been a doddle. Who has the information we want? The Minister. What's he like? The next thing to a virgin-a faithful husband. Is he getting his oats from the wife? Not much. Will he fall for the oldest trick in the game? Like a dream.

The tape ended, and he turned it over. He wondered how much money had been in the currency van-a hundred grand? Maybe even a quarter of a million. Much more than that would be embarrassing. You couldn't walk into Barclays Bank with sacks full of used fivers without arousing suspicion. About a hundred and fifty grand would be ideal. Five gees for each of the boys, a few more for expenses, and about fifty thousand surreptitiously added to the takings of various legitimate businesses tonight. Gambling clubs were very useful for concealing illicit income.

The boys knew what to do with five grand. Pay off a few debts, buy a secondhand car, put a few hundred in each of two or three bank accounts, give the wife a new coat, lend the mother-in-law a couple of bob, spend a night in the pub, and bang, it was all gone. But give them twenty thousand and they started to get silly ideas. When unemployed laborers and freelance odd-job men were heard to talk about villas in the South of France, the law began to get suspicious.

Tony grinned at himself. I should worry about having too much money, he thought. Problems of success are the kind I like. Don't count your chicks before you've laid them, Jacko sometimes said. The van might be full of wornout halfpennies for melting down.

Now that would be a chuckle.

He was nearly there. He started to whistle.