Chapter 11

Meetings in High Places

July 1: London

Walking out the front door and straight to my rental seemed like it might have the potential to arouse suspicion so I went back out the way I came in, relocking the roof door behind me and climbing down the fire escape. The leap from the ladder to the top of the wall was not as simple in reverse—there was nothing to hold on to. I wobbled for a moment but managed to stick my landing, then hopped down, emerged from behind the trees, and headed back through the parking lot of the neighboring building. A couple of high school aged teens were sitting on the hood of a car in the lot, passing a blunt back and forth. Their smoke hung in the still air, smelling of sweet, flavored tobacco and pot. French rap music thumped and clattered from their car’s speakers. They didn’t seem to find it strange when I emerged from behind a tree. Adults are often more or less invisible to teenagers.

I walked a couple of blocks out of my way, looking for a grocery store. Near the station, I saw a large white building with a brutal red logo that screamed supermarket and stopped in for supplies. I had some thinking, some napping, and some research to do. Breaking into Bathmore’s apartment had been easy but I didn’t want to keep trusting to luck. I needed to make my next move based on solid information rather than intuition alone.

Back at my rental, a big tabby cat with the battered ears of a fighter followed me up the stairs. He meowed at the door like he owned the place so I opened it and stepped to the side as he pushed past me. I followed him in and watched him closely as he roamed the apartment, afraid he might decide to spray something. But he just went sniffing around for a few minutes, checking the international aromas of my suitcase, the dusty musk of a throw pillow, then finally settled in a sunspot on the sofa. I left the door open so he could get out if he wanted, put away the groceries, then sat back down in my chair by the window. A nap was the first order of business. I gazed out the window, letting my eyes grow unfocused, thinking over what I had found in Bathmore’s flat. There was something weird about the place, beyond the messiness and lack of any gesture toward personality or comfort—Bathmore was a musician but I hadn’t seen a single instrument and no stereo system. Maybe he had pawned them.

I woke up an hour and a half later. The cat was snoring. Stretched out, he took up more than half of the small IKEA sofa—a big fellow. I had never really owned a pet but I didn’t have anything against them. Growing up, I had lived on a farm. The animals there were not pets. I wondered if this cat belonged to the family below. Maybe he was tired of the toddler and just wanted some peace and quiet. I was fine with him hanging around.

I got up and made myself coffee and a sandwich, then settled in with my laptop at the tiny table in the kitchen to do some research. First, I wanted to get some information on Bathmore’s office. I pulled up the photo of the bill on my phone and then googled the address. It was on the border between two boroughs called Tower Hamlets and South Hackney about forty-five minutes away by train. I researched the area a bit. Tower Hamlets appeared to be fairly rough. It was the poorest borough in London and had a majority Muslim, immigrant population. Interestingly, at its southern end, along a meander of the Thames, the borough also encompassed the Isle of Dogs which was one of the fancier districts of London, with glittering skyscrapers providing luxury offices and housing to the wealthier residents of the city. Hackney seemed to be more gentrified but still ethnically diverse and lower middle class. Bathmore’s office was close to the Bethnal Green tube station in a two-story brick building on a street called Broadway Market. I wondered what Bathmore was doing with an office space in that part of London until I went back to my search results and came across several other businesses at the same address. They were all music teachers. Apparently the offices were set up as practice rooms. So Bathmore was teaching music to make ends meet. What, then, was the deal with the employment contract I found in his desk? I went back to the photos on my phone and looked at the contract again. The company was called Greenbriar Industries. I googled it and found the website.

Greenbriar was in the business of international real estate holding and development. They acquired land and built large subdivisions, apartment complexes, and resort hotels. The list of properties was long. I clicked through to the About page and found a list of top level managers as well as the board of directors. The CEO and Chairman of the board was named Morgan Jutting. Balding, maybe in his sixties, with a face like one of the thuggish, late Roman emperors—Titus, maybe, or Vespasian—he stared imperiously at the camera as if he was willing it to explode. I could easily imagine him carved in marble and scowling down from a tall plinth. Something about his name resonated. It pinged around in my brain, sinking down and then ricocheting back up attached to a memory: Julian Wolhardt, halfway across the planet and eight days in the past, explaining to me why someone might have gone to the trouble of stealing his notes. An English billionaire had offered a reward, Wolhardt had told me. The billionaire’s name, maybe not so coincidentally, was Morgan Jutting.

So, Bathmore had been a personal assistant working for Jutting’s company. It seemed clear, judging by his unpaid bills, that he was probably no longer employed as a PA at Greenbriar. Instead, he taught music lessons and flew across the world to break into houses. Jutting, according to Wolhardt, was also a devotee of the Enigma Variations mystery. I googled Jutting and found a lot of articles about his projects. Apparently, he had started out as a small time developer in the nineteen-eighties and had built his company up into a massively successful enterprise. I scrolled through the results. There were a lot of fawning interviews and puff pieces in business magazines and conservative newspapers. Worryingly, though, some key words and phrases kept popping up in descriptions of Jutting. The most common were ‘famously reclusive’ and ‘eccentric’. There were variations but they all pointed to him as a kind of present day Howard Hughes figure—averse to contact with outsiders, rarely leaving his house, running his business by issuing orders from behind closed doors. I started scrolling through photos of Jutting. He liked gray suits and solid colored ties. He wasn’t one to have his picture taken at parties or playing golf. Almost all the photos showed him ducking from a chauffeured car into his house or the glass and steel monolith in central London where Greenbriar headquarters was located. He was usually surrounded by a couple of bodyguards. There was also a young blond woman in most of the shots, following close behind Jutting. She wore chic suits, carried a large shoulder bag, and was nearly always on her phone. She had the alert face and harried body language of a personal assistant. As I scrolled back further the woman disappeared from the photos, replaced by a young man. I clicked to open one of the images, zoomed in. I don’t know why I was surprised to see Bathmore’s face emerge from the pixilated image. I looked at a few more. It was definitely him. So Bathmore had been Jutting’s PA but wasn’t anymore. Jutting was an Enigma fanatic who had offered a massive reward for a solution to the mystery. Bathmore stole Wolhardt’s notes. Somehow, Bathmore knew that I was on the case and had searched my house too. Things were getting interesting, threads were getting tangled, exposing relationships.

I didn’t like the fact that Bathmore knew who I was. Did Jutting know about me too? Was Bathmore still working for him but in an undercover role? I didn’t think so. The evidence of Bathmore’s money troubles and his low rent office didn’t point to any lucrative position serving Jutting. Also, if a guy like Jutting knew about a possible solution to the enigma and wanted it stolen he would have hired a professional. Breaking into Bathmore’s place had been worth the risk but now I needed to try to figure out what the information meant and how it tied together. My to do list had grown suddenly longer but that suited me fine. It meant I had some leads and some idea of how to pursue them. My first step would be getting in touch with Valerie again. I needed a contact in London and I was doing a favor for her family friend so the way I saw it, she still owed me.

The cat wandered into the kitchen and meowed at me, standing expectantly by the refrigerator. I gave him a little bowl of cream and he settled down to lap it up. He had me wrapped around what? His paw? His tail? Cats don’t have fingers. Anyway, he knew I was a sucker and was not going to be shy about exploiting it.

****

Six PM that same evening found me riding an elevator paneled in figured Hawaiian koa up to the rooftop bar of a hotel in central London. There were a couple of young finance types in the elevator with me wearing slick suits and smelling like cigars. Their voices were loud and deep. I tuned out their conversation, thinking about pieces of the puzzle I was trying to solve for Julian Wolhardt. We reached the tenth floor, the doors opened, and I followed them out into one of those environments that is designed to overwhelm. It almost seemed to belong in Los Angeles rather than London. There was outdoor seating overlooking three hundred sixty degrees of the London skyline, tropical hardwoods, fine fabrics, attractive young people making and serving the drinks. Walking into places designed for the rich, sometimes I felt like it was all one party with nodes scattered across the world. There seemed to be an international language of wealth, a knowing, almost obsequious dedication to providing sheltered environments. The places were like river rocks—all the sharp corners worn away, nothing to distract anybody’s attention from the game, the one real game of shuffling and trading bits of power.

I was meeting a woman named Clelia Nguyen—another friend of Valerie’s from the international boarding school and ivy league set who was now one of the many vice presidents at an investment bank in London. She had worked for Greenbriar years ago when it was smaller so might have some interesting anecdotes. I had found her photo on the bank’s website so I would have some notion of what she looked like. Scanning the bar, I saw someone who might be her hunched over a thick book. A mostly full glass of beer, fogged with condensation and showing little river-like trails where beads of water had gathered and gained enough mass to slide down the surface, was abandoned on the counter in front of her. The stool next to hers was empty.

“Clelia?” I asked.

She looked up, squinting through reading glasses. “Yes. Justin?” She pushed the glasses up, resting them on top of her head. Her hair was cut very short in a butch, military style which emphasized her round face and broad shoulders. She wore a clearly bespoke three piece suit in a gray barleycorn tweed. Her shoes were deer hide wingtips. I nodded and took the seat next to her.

“Sorry to interrupt your reading.”

“Just passing time. I got here early. I had a meeting with a client nearby.” I must have had some kind of look on my face because she made a quick, dismissive gesture, glancing around the bar. “Sorry, I don’t usually come to places like this but it was nearby and you’re a tourist so I thought you might like it.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Nice to see the city from this vantage. Although I won’t have much time for tourism while I’m here.” The bartender approached and I ordered a beer too then turned back to Clelia. “Thanks for giving me some of your time. I’m doing a job for a friend of Valerie’s and she offered to get me in touch with people who might be able to provide assistance. She has a wide net of acquaintances.”

“Indeed she does. I was surprised to hear from her. It’s been several years. Sounds like she’s doing well with her new gallery in LA. But I’m interested in your job. What is it you do? How can I help?”

I thought about how to explain it for a moment. “I guess you could say I’m a sort of private investigator. I help people find things that are missing when there’s not much hope of finding them through regular, official channels.”

“Fascinating. A Philip Marlowe type?”

“I guess so, yes. Without the misogyny.”

“Yes, the women were not treated kindly in Chandler’s books were they? A brilliant writer though. Well, speaking of misogynists, I gather you’re interested in Greenbriar and Mr. Jutting?” She said Jutting’s name with an obvious distaste.

“Yes. Jutting. He has some role in this mystery I’m unraveling so anything you can tell me about him would be helpful. Specifically the kind of thing I won’t find out by reading newspapers, magazines, or Wikipedia.”

Clelia nodded, wrinkling her eyes. “First off, he’s a recluse but you probably already know that.”

“Yes, that’s obvious from the press coverage.”

“Well, he wasn’t always that bad. When I worked at Greenbriar he still showed his face sometimes at meetings. He’s a smart guy. He has a way of boiling things down to their essence really quickly. It’s impossible to bullshit him. He doesn’t like women, especially women of my sort. If you are willing to play the traditional gender role, he’s more likely to at least leave you alone. All his top people are men. He’s never promoted a woman to senior leadership to my knowledge.”

“I noticed that when I looked at the Greenbriar website.”

“Yes. It’s why I left the company in the end. Anyway, gossip I’ve heard from friends who still work there says he’s gone a little funny. He was always weird but he’s become obsessed with the occult now, magic and alchemy and Gnosticism and all that. His reclusiveness and his interest in the occult seem to have grown together and reinforced each other. Like a feedback loop. He doesn’t trust anyone. He does this thing with his eyes like he’s trying to bore right through you. It freaks people out. He has meetings with strange people. He’s been neglecting the business—letting his lieutenants run the show. He almost never goes to the offices anymore. He works from home almost exclusively and takes all of his meetings there.”

“Interesting. People interested in the occult seems to be a theme in my life lately. Do you know about the Enigma Variations?”

“Elgar? I’ve heard of them but I don’t know how it relates?”

“There’s supposedly a secret message encrypted in the score. Elgar was into cryptography. Jutting offered a reward to anyone who can decode it.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know about that but it sounds like it fits in with the other things I’ve heard. He has always been interested in cryptography. You know he was a mason right?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, he was a member of the freemasons. Maybe high up in the hierarchy. But he had a rather public falling out with them. There were a lot of conspiracy theories about the masons going around. Some well-known books about their history, the Rosicrucians, and all that. They decided to open up and be more transparent. PR campaign in a way. Jutting didn’t like that. He thought they should stay closed off from the world. Have you seen the Greenbriar logo?”

“Yes, I saw it on their website.” I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured it—an infinity symbol with a kind of double cross rising above it. “It seemed odd. Does it mean something?”

“Yes. The alchemical symbol for sulphur. It symbolizes the infinite nature of the universe, protection, balance. It’s an old symbol used by medieval occultists.”

“Interesting.” I gazed out toward the London skyline. In the distance I could see the building they called the shard poking up silver against pale blue, like some doomsday rocket ready to carry away the chosen few to a new home. It made me think of the old Neil Young song After the Gold Rush. I let my eyes unfocus and the skyline blurred. I thought about mad Lester Dworkin and his Lovecraftian delusions. Was Jutting after the same thing? Did he also believe the hidden message was some sort of magical incantation? Was that why he offered the reward? And what was Bathmore playing at? Trying to get to it before Jutting did? I turned my gaze back to Clelia Nguyen. “Interesting and a little disturbing at the same time."

“Yes. Not just to you either. There is a bit of a whispering campaign making the rounds right now. People are saying Jutting has lost his touch. He’s leaving too many decisions to his underlings, letting poor decisions slip past. I’ve heard that Greenbriar is in trouble. Taking on too much debt and not meeting targets. There’s a massive resort development on the Amalfi coast that is far over budget and off schedule. They’re searching for investors to infuse some cash but nobody’s biting and they’re starting to get desperate.”

“That could be very useful information,” I said, nodding and thinking about Italy and a man there who owed me a favor.

After seeing Clelia Nguyen off in a taxi, I texted Ashna asking if she could find out where Jutting lived. It was the middle of the night in San Francisco but she was often awake at odd hours so I stood in the doorway of a shop for a few minutes, scrolling through headlines on my phone, hoping she would reply. She didn’t let me down. An address came pinging over the Atlantic ocean to appear on my phone followed quickly by another message:

—Who is Morgan Jutting and why are you going to his house? Fill me in when you get a chance—

I promised I would send her an update via email after taking a look at Jutting’s mansion. His London residence was in Kensington, close to Hammersmith in distance but very far away in socio-economic status.

I exited the tube at the High Street Kensington station and walked a couple of blocks to the address Ashna had sent. The street was empty and eerily quiet in the gathering dusk. I had been expecting something like one of the tacky tech billionaire mansions in the bay area I guess. Instead, I was facing a four story, white stone Italianate villa detached from its neighbors but only by about seven or eight feet on each side. It had the classic projecting eaves supported by plain corbels, pronounced, interlocking masonry blocks at the corners, and balustrades projecting from the upper stories—not an over the top show of wealth but still probably worth upwards of thirty million dollars given the neighborhood. It was only a few blocks from Kensington Palace. Lights were on inside, glowing through filmy voiles in the second floor windows. I thought I saw movement and quickly began walking again. At the end of the street, I turned and walked back toward the busy, tree-lined high street where double-decker busses roared by and the median was thick with parked bicycles. I needed to get into Jutting’s house. Petru Ortoli had paid me for recovering his painting but he had also told me to get in touch if I ever needed a favor. He had said he owed me a debt of more than money. I didn’t know if he meant it but I intended to find out. That favor could be just what I needed to get me in.