“Well, him to me, really. I just listened.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. No, Friday. Came and saw me in my room. Ten to one. Just putting on my mac. ‘What are you doing for lunch?’ Thought he was going to invite me. ‘Well, just a vague date at my club,’ I said. ‘Nothing I can’t cancel.’ So he said, ‘Good. Cancel it.’ So I canceled. Then we talked. In the lunch hour. In my office. Nobody around. Not even a glass of Perrier or a dry biscuit. Good tradecraft, though. Geoffrey always had good tradecraft.”
He grinned again.
“And he said?” Goodhew prompted.
“He said”—Palfrey took a huge breath, like somebody about to do a length under water—“he said it was time for good men to come to the aid of the party. Said the Cousins wanted a clear run on the Limpet thing. They could take care of their Enforcement people all right, but they counted on us to take care of ours. Wanted to be sure I was aboard.”
“And you said?”
“I was. Hundred percent. Well, I am. Aren’t I?” He bridled. “You’re not suggesting I should have told him to stuff it, are you? Christ!”
“Of course I’m not, Harry. You must do what is best for you. I understand that. So you said you were aboard. What did he say then?”
Palfrey relapsed into an aggressive sullenness. “He wanted a legal reading of the River House’s demarcation deal with the Burr agency by Wednesday five p.m. The deal I drafted for you. I undertook to provide it.”
“And?”
“That’s all there is. Wednesday five p.m. is my deadline. The Flagship team will be holding a meeting the next morning. He’ll need time to study my report first. I said, No problem.”
The abrupt halt, on a high note, accompanied by a lifting of the brows, gave Goodhew pause. When his son made the same gesture, it meant that he was concealing something. Goodhew had a similar suspicion about Palfrey.
“Is that all?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Was Darker pleased with you?”
“Very, as a matter of fact.”
“Why? You’d only agreed to obey orders, Harry. Why should he be pleased with you? Did you agree to do something else for him?” Goodhew had the strange sense that Palfrey was urging him to press harder. “Did you tell him something perhaps?” he suggested, smiling in order to make confession more attractive.
Palfrey gave an anguished grin.
“But, Harry—what could you possibly have told Darker that he didn’t know already?”
Palfrey was really trying. It was as if he was taking repeated runs at the same hurdle, determined to clear it sooner or later.
“Did you tell him about me?” Goodhew suggested. “You couldn’t have done. It would have been suicide. Did you?”
Palfrey was shaking his head. “Never,” he whispered. “Scout’s honor, Rex. Wouldn’t cross my mind.”
“Then what?”
“Just a theory, Rex. Presumption, that’s all. Hypothesis. Law of probabilities. Not secrets, nothing bad. Theories. Idle theories. Chitchat. Pass the time of day. Chap standing in my room. Lunchtime. Staring at me. Got to tell him something.”
“Theories based on what?”
“The submission I prepared for you. About the sort of criminal case against Roper that would stick under English law. I worked on it in your office. You remember.”
“Of course I remember. What was your theory?”
“There was this American secret annex that got it all going, prepared by their Enforcement people in Miami. The summary of evidence to date. Strelski, that the chap? Roper’s original pitch to the cartels, the broad elements of the deal, all very shrouded, very top secret. Yours and Burr’s eyes only.”
“And your eyes too, of course,” Goodhew suggested, pulling back from him in a presentiment of disgust.
“I played this game, you see. The one you can’t help playing when you read a report like that. Well, we all do, don’t we? Can’t help it. Natural curiosity. Can’t stop your mind going . . . spot the snitch. These long passages with only three chaps in the room. Two sometimes. Wherever they were, there was always this reliable source peaching on them. Well, I know modern technology is the cat’s whiskers, but this was ridiculous.”
“So you spotted the snitch.”
Palfrey looked really proud, like a man who has finally put his courage together and done his duty for the day.
“And you told Darker whom you’d spotted,” Goodhew suggested.
“The Greek chap. Hand in glove with the cartels and ratting on them to Enforcement as soon as their backs were turned. Apostoll. Lawyer, just like me.”
Informed by Goodhew that same night of Palfrey’s indiscretion, Burr faced the dilemma every agent-runner dreads most.
His first response typically was from the heart. He drafted an urgent personal signal to Strelski in Miami, saying he had reason to believe that “unfriendly Purists are now conscious of the identity of your Brother Michael.” He changed “conscious” to “witting” out of deference to the American espiocrats’ jargon and sent it. He forbore from suggesting that the leak was British. Strelski could work that out for himself. His duty by Strelski done, the descendant of Yorkshire handloom weavers sat stoically in his attic room, staring through the skylight at the orange Whitehall sky. No longer was Burr eating out his heart for a sign, any sign, of his agent. Now it was his duty to decide whether to pull his agent out or swallow the risk and carry on. Still pondering, he ambled down the long corridor and perched himself, hands in pockets, on the radiator in Goodhew’s office, while the pigeons argued on the parapet.
“Shall we do worst case?” Goodhew suggested.
“Worst case is, they put Apo under a bright light and he tells them he had orders from us to discredit Corkoran as a signer,” said Burr. “Then they target my boy as the new signer.”
“Who is they in this scenario, Leonard?”
Burr shrugged. “Apo’s clients. Or the Purists.”
“But good heavens, Leonard. Pure Intelligence is on our side. We have our differences, but they wouldn’t endanger our source merely because of a turf war between . . .”
“Oh yes they would, Rex,” Burr said kindly. “That’s who they are, you see. That’s what they do.”
Once again Burr sat in his room, contemplating his choice alone. A gambler’s green desk lamp. A weaver’s skylight to the stars.
Roper: two more weeks and I can have you. I’ll know which ship, I’ll know the names and numbers and the places. I’ll have a case against you that not all your privilege and your smart insider friends and not all the legal sophistry in the business can buy off.
Jonathan: the best joe I ever had, the only one whose code I never cracked. First I knew you as an inscrutable face. Now I know you as an inscrutable voice: Yes, fine, thanks, Leonard. . . . Well, Corkoran does suspect me, but poor chap, he can’t quite work out what he suspects me of. . . . Jed? Well, she is still in favor, so far as one can judge, but she and Roper are such behaviorists, it’s jolly hard to tell what goes on underneath. . . .
Behaviorist, thought Burr grimly. My God, if you’re not a behaviorist, who is? What about your little spot of temperament at Mama Low’s?
The Cousins will do nothing, he decided in a spurt of optimism. An agent identified is an agent gained. Even if they succeed in identifying Jonathan, they’ll sit on their thumbs and wait to see what he produces.
The Cousins are sure to act, he told himself, as the pendulum swung the other way. Apostoll is their expendable asset. If the Cousins want to deserve favor with the cartels, they’ll make them a present of Apostoll. If they think we’re getting too close for comfort, they’ll blow Apostoll and deprive us of our source. . . .
Chin in hand, Burr gazed up at the skylight, watching the autumn dawn appear between the torn ridges of cloud.
Abort, he decided. Spirit Jonathan to safety, change his face, give him yet another name, put up the shutters and go home.
And spend you
r life wondering which of the six ships currently on charter to Ironbrand contain the arms haul of a lifetime?
And where the exchange of merchandise took place?
And how hundreds, perhaps thousands of millions of pounds’ worth of bearer bonds vanished without trace into the well-tailored pockets of their anonymous bearers?
And how tens of tons of top-grade refined cocaine at airstrip prices went conveniently missing somewhere between the west coast of Colombia and the Free Zone of Colón, to resurface in sensibly controlled quantities, never too much at a time, on the joyless streets of Middle Europe?
And Joe Strelski and Pat Flynn and Amato and their team? All their miles in the saddle? For nothing? Handed to Pure Intelligence on a plate? Not even to Pure Intelligence, but to some sinister brotherhood within it?
The secure phone rang. Burr grabbed the receiver. It was Rooke, reporting from Curaçao on his field handset.
“The man’s jet landed here an hour ago,” he announced, with his built-in reluctance to mention names. “Our friend was of the party.”
“How did he look?” Burr asked eagerly.
“Fit. No scars that I could see. Nice suit. Smart shoes. Had a crusher either side of him, but that didn’t seem to cramp his style. Pink of condition, if you ask me. You said to ring you, Leonard.”
Burr stared round him at the maps and sea charts. At the aerial photographs of tracts of jungle ringed in red. At the heaps of files littering the old deal desk. He remembered all the months of labor, now hanging by a thread.
“We stay with the operation,” he said.
He flew to Miami next day.
21
The friendship between Jonathan and Roper that, as Jonathan now realized, had been budding throughout the weeks at Crystal burst into flower the moment the Roper jet cleared Nassau International Airport. You might have thought the two men had agreed to wait for this shared moment of release before they acknowledged their good feelings for each other.
“Christ,” Roper shouted, gleefully unfastening his seat belt. “Women! Questions! Kids! Thomas, good to have you aboard. Megs, bring us a pot of coffee, darling. Too early for shampoo. Coffee, Thomas?”
“I’d love some,” said the hotelier. And added winningly: “After Corky’s performance last night, I could do with rather a lot of it.”
“Hell was all that stuff about you having a Roller?”
“I’ve no idea. I think he must have decided I was going to steal yours.”
“Ass. Sit over here. Don’t lurk across the aisle. Croissants, Megs? Red jelly?”
Meg was the stewardess, from Tennessee.
“Mr. Roper, now when did I ever forget the croissants?”
“Coffee, hot croissants, bread rolls, jelly, all round. Get that feeling sometimes, Thomas? Free? No kids, animals, servants, investors, guests, inquisitive women? Got your world back? Free to move? Weight on your back, women are, if you let ’em. Happy bunny today, Megs?”
“Sure am, Mr. Roper.”
“Where’s the juice? Forgotten the juice. Typical. Sacked, Megs. Fired. Better leave now. Jump.”
Unperturbed, Meg set out their two breakfast trays, then brought the fresh orange juice and coffee and hot croissants and red jelly. She was a woman of about forty with the trace of a harelip and a bruised but gallant sexuality.
“Know something, Thomas?” she asked. “He always does this to me. It’s like he has to psych himself up before he earns his next million. Do you know I have to make the red jelly. I sit home, I make red jelly for him. That’s all I do when we’re not flying. Mr. Roper won’t eat anybody’s red jelly but mine.”
Roper let out a raw laugh. “Next million? Hell are you talking about, woman? Million wouldn’t pay for the soap on this plane! Best red jelly in the world. Only reason she’s still here.” He crushed a bread roll in his fist, using all his fingers at once. “Good living’s a duty. Whole point of it all. Living well’s the best revenge. Who said that?”
“Whoever he was, he got it absolutely right,” said Jonathan loyally.
“Set a high standard, let chaps strive for it. Only way. Turn the money over, world goes round. You worked in smart hotels. You know the score. Jelly’s off, Megs. Fizzy. Right, Thomas?”
“To the contrary, it’s to die for,” Jonathan replied firmly, with a wink for Meg.
Laughter all round. The Chief is on a high; so is Jonathan. Suddenly they seem to have everything in common, including Jed. Gold lace lines the cloudbanks, sunlight streams into the plane. They could be on their way to heaven. Tabby is in the tail seat. Frisky has placed himself forward by the bulkhead, covering the pilots’ doors. Two MacDanbies sit in the middle of the plane, tapping at their laptop computers.
“Women ask too many questions, right, Megs?”
“Not me, Mr. Roper. Never.”
“Remember that hooker I had, Megs? Me sixteen, her thirty, remember?”
“I surely do, Mr. Roper. She gave you your first lesson in life.”
“Nervous, you see. Virgin.” They were eating side by side, able to confide without the threat of eye contact. “Not her. Me.” Another shout of laughter. “Didn’t know the form, so I played the earnest-student type. Decided she had to have a problem: ‘Poor you, where did it all go wrong?’ Thought she was going to tell me her old dad had the big C and her mum had run off with the plumber when she was twelve. Looks at me. Not a friendly look at all. ‘What’s your name?’ she says. Little Staffordshire terrier. Broad-arsed. Five foot nothing. ‘I’m Dicky,’ I said. ‘Now you listen to me, Dicky,’ she says. ‘You can fuck my body, and that’ll cost you a fiver. But you can’t fuck my mind, because that’s private.’ Never forgot it, did I, Megs? Marvelous woman! Should have married her. Not Megs. The tart.” His shoulder nudged up against Jonathan’s again. “Want to know how it works?”
“If it’s not a state secret.”
“Fig leaf operation. You’re the fig leaf. Straw man, the Germans call it. Joke is, you’re not even straw. You don’t exist. All the better. Derek Thomas, merchant venturer, regular guy, quick on his feet, personable, wholesome. Decent record in commerce, no skeletons, good airs. It’s Dicky and Derek. Maybe we’ve done deals before. Nobody’s business but ours. I go to the clowns—the brokers, the venture boys, flexible banks—and I say: ‘Got a very smart cookie here. Brilliant plan, quick profits, needs backing, mum’s the word. It’s tractors, turbines, machine parts, minerals, it’s land, it’s what the hell. Introduce you to him later if you’re good. He’s young, he’s got the connections, don’t ask where, very resourceful, politically hip, good with the right people, opportunity of a lifetime. Didn’t want you missing out. Double your money in four months max. You’ll be buying paper. If you don’t want paper don’t waste my time. We’re talking bearer bonds, no names, no pack drill, no connection with any other firm including mine. It’s another trust-Dicky deal. I’m in but I’m not there. Company’s formed in an area where no accounts need to be prepared or filed, so British connection, not our colony, somebody else’s mess. When the deal’s done, company ceases trading, pull the plug on it, close the accounts, see you sometime. Very tight circle, few chaps as possible, no silly questions, take it or leave it, want you to be one of the few.’ All right so far?”
“Do they believe you?”
Roper laughed. “Wrong question. Does the story play? Can they sell it to their punters? Do they like the cut of your jib? Are you a pretty face on the prospectus? Play our cards right, answer’s yes every time.”
“You mean there’s a prospectus?”
Roper let out another rich laugh. “Worse than a bloody woman, this chap!” he told Meg contentedly as she poured more coffee. “Why, why, why? How, when, where?”
“I never do that, Mr. Roper,” said Meg severely.
“You never do, Megs. You’re a good scout.”
“Mr. Roper, you are patting my behind again.”
“Sorry, Megs. Must have thought I was at home.” Back to Jonathan. ?
??No, there’s no prospectus. Figure of speech. By the time we’ve printed the prospectus, with any luck we won’t have a company.”
Roper resumed his briefing, and Jonathan heard him and replied to him from within the cocoon of his other meditations. He was thinking of Jed, and his images of her were so vivid it was a wonder that Roper, sitting a few inches from him, did not receive some telepathic inkling of them. He felt her hands on his face while she studied him, and he wondered what she saw. He remembered Burr and Rooke in the training house in London, and as he listened to Roper describing the energetic young executive Thomas, he realized that once again he was conniving in the manipulation of his character. He heard Roper say Langbourne had gone ahead to smooth the way, and wondered whether this might be the moment to warn him that Caroline was betraying the cause behind his back and so earn further credit in Roper’s estimation. Then he decided Roper knew this anyway: how else would Jed have been able to tax him with his sins? He pondered, as he pondered constantly, the intractable mystery of Roper’s notions of right and wrong, and he remembered how, in Sophie’s judgment, the worst man in the world was a moralist who gained stature in his own eyes by disregarding his perceptions. He destroys, he makes a great fortune, so he considers himself divine, she declared in angry mystification.
“Apo will recognize you, of course,” Roper was saying. “The bloke he met at Crystal—used to work at Meister’s—chum of Dicky’s. No problem there that I can see. Anyway, Apo’s the other side.”
Jonathan turned quickly to him, as if Roper had reminded him of something.
“I wanted to ask you, actually, who is the other side? I mean, it’s great to be selling, but who’s the buyer?”
Roper let out a false shout of pain. “We’ve got one, Megs! Doubts me! Can’t leave a good thing alone!”
“Now, I don’t blame him one bit, Mr. Roper. You can be very mean when you want to be. I’ve seen it before, you know I have. Mean and devious, and very, very charming.”
Roper dozed, so Jonathan obediently dozed too, listening to the chirrup of the MacDanbies’ laptops over the roar of the engines. He woke, Meg brought the ritual champagne and smoked-salmon canapés, there was more talk, more laughter, more doze. He woke again, to find the plane circling above a Dutch toy town shrouded in a white heat haze. Through the haze he saw the slow bursts of artillery fire as the flare stacks of Willemstad’s oil refinery burned off their surplus gas.