When Jonathan had signed everything the requisite number of times in the requisite places, he put down his pen with a small slap and glanced at Roper as if to say, “That’s that.”
But Roper, until recently so forthcoming, seemed not to see him, and as they walked back to the cars he strode ahead of everyone, contriving to suggest that the real business lay ahead, which was by now Jonathan’s view as well, for the close observer had entered a state of readiness that exceeded anything he had experienced. Seated between his captors, watching the lights slip by, he was gripped by a stealth of purpose that was like a new-found talent. He had Tabby’s cash, and it amounted to a hundred and fourteen dollars. He had the two envelopes that he had prepared while he was sitting in the lavatory. In his head he had the numbers of the containers, the number of the waybill and even the number of the cubist mountain, for a battered black plate had dangled over it like a cricket scoreboard at cadet school: consignment number 54 in a warehouse underneath the Eagle sign.
They had reached the waterfront. Their car pulled up for the Arab student to get out. He vanished into the darkness without a word.
“We’re reaching crunch time, I’m afraid,” Jonathan announced calmly. “In about thirty seconds I shan’t be responsible for the consequences.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Frisky breathed. The car in front was already accelerating.
“It’s due about now, Frisky. The choice is yours.”
“You filthy bugger,” said Tabby.
Making signs with his hands and yelling “Pedro,” Frisky induced the driver to flash his headlights at the car ahead, which stopped again. Langbourne leaned his head out of his window to shout what the fuck’s the matter now? A lighted petrol station winked across the road.
“Tommy here’s got his tummy again,” Frisky said.
Langbourne turned back into the car to consult Roper, then reappeared. “Go with him, Frisky. Don’t let him out of your sight. Move it.”
It was a new petrol station, but the plumbing was not up to the standard of the rest. One tiny stinking unisex cubicle with no seat was the best it could offer. While Frisky waited outside the door, Jonathan made energetic noises of distress and, once more using his bare knee as a rest, wrote his last message.
The Wurlitzer bar at the Riande Continental Hotel in Panama City is very small and pitch dark, and on Sunday nights it is presided over by a matronly round-faced woman who, when Rooke was able to make her out in the gloom, bore an odd similarity to his wife. And when she saw that he was not the kind who needed to talk, she filled a second saucer of nuts and left him to sip his Perrier in peace while she resumed her horoscope.
In the lobby, American soldiers in fatigues dawdled in glum groups amid the colorful bustle of nocturnal Panama. A short staircase led to the door of the hotel casino, with its courteous notice forbidding the carrying of arms. Rooke could make out ghostly figures playing baccarat and yanking at one-armed bandits. In the bar, not six feet from where he sat, reposed the magnificent white Wurlitzer organ itself, reminding him of cinemas in the days of his childhood, when an organist in a radiant jacket emerged from the dungeons on his white dreamboat, playing songs an audience could hum.
Rooke took little real interest in these things, but a man who is waiting without hope must have something to distract him, or he becomes too morbid for his health.
At first he had sat in his room, keeping close to the telephone because he was afraid the clatter of the air conditioner would drown its ring. Then he switched off the air conditioner and tried opening the French windows to his balcony, but the din from the Via España was so frightful that he quickly closed them again and lay on the bed and stewed for an hour without air from either the balcony or the air conditioner, but he became so drowsy that he nearly nodded off. So he phoned the switchboard and said he was going down to the poolside now and they should hold any call that came for him till he got there. And as soon as he reached the poolside he gave the maître d’ ten dollars and asked him to alert the concierge and the telephone exchange and the doorman to the fact that Mr. Robinson of room 409 was dining at the poolside, table 6, should anyone inquire.
Then he sat and stared at the illuminated blue water of the empty pool, and at the empty tables, and upward at the windows of the surrounding high-rise buildings, and across to the house telephone on the poolside bar, and at the boys at the barbecue who were cooking his steak, and at the band that was playing rumbas just for him.
And when his steak came he washed it down with a bottle of Perrier water because, although he reckoned he had as good a head as the next man, he would as soon have gone to sleep on sentry duty as drink alcohol while he was playing the thousand-to-one chance that a blown joe would somehow get through the lines.
Then around ten o’clock, as the tables began to fill, he feared that the effect of his ten dollars might be wearing off. So, having called the switchboard on the house line, he took himself to the bar, where he now sat. And that was where he was when the barmaid who looked like his wife put down the telephone and smiled sadly at him.
“You Mr. Robinson, 409?”
Rooke was.
“You got a visitor, darling. He very personal. very urgent. But he a man.”
He was a man, he was a Panamanian, he was small and Asian and silk-skinned, with heavy eyelids and a black suit and an air of sanctity. His suit was polished to a regimental brightness, like the suits worn by office messengers and undertakers. His hair was waved, his dimpled white shirt was spotless and his visiting card, which was made in the form of a sticky label to be fixed beside your telephone, announced him in Spanish and English as Sánchez Jesús-Maria Romarez II, driver of limousines day and night, English spoken but not, alas, as well as he would wish, señor; his English, he would say, was of the people but not of the scholar—a deprecating smile to heaven—and had been acquired mostly from his American and British clients, though fortified, it was true, by his early attendances at school, though these, alas, had been fewer than he would have wished, for his father was not a rich man, señor, and neither was Sánchez.
At which sad admission, Sánchez fixed his gaze dotingly on Rooke and got down to business.
“Señor Robinson. My friend. Please, sir, Forgive.” Sánchez put a pudgy hand inside the breast of his black suit. “I have come to collect you five hundred dollar. Thank you, sir.”
Rooke by now was beginning to fear he was being set up as the victim of an elaborate tourist trap, of which the upshot would be that he was to purchase pre-Colombian artifacts, or a night with the wretched man’s sister. But instead Sánchez handed him a thick envelope with the word Crystal embossed on the flap, over what appeared to be a diamond. And from it Rooke drew a handwritten letter from Jonathan in Spanish, wishing the bearer joy of the enclosed one hundred dollars and promising him five hundred more if he would personally deliver the enclosed envelope into the hands of Señor Robinson at the Riande Continental Hotel in Panama City.
Rooke held his breath.
In his secret elation, a new fear had taken hold of him: namely that Sánchez had dreamed up some idiot plan to keep him on the hook in order to increase the reward—for instance, by dumping the letter in a safe-deposit for the night, or entrusting it to his chiquita to keep under her mattress in case the gringo attempted to wrest it from him by force.
“So where’s the second envelope?” he asked.
The driver touched his heart. “Señor, it is right here in my pocket. I am an honest driver, sir, and when I saw the letter lying on the floor in the back of the Volvo, my first thought was to drive full speed onto the airfield regardless of regulations and restore it to whichever of my noble clients had been so careless as to leave it there, in the hope but not necessarily the expectation of compensation, for the clients in my car were not of the quality of the clients of my colleague Domínguez, in the car in front. My clients, if I may say so, sir, without disrespect to your good friend, were altogether of a humbler nature—one was so
insulting as to refer to me as a Pedro. But then, sir, as soon as I had read the inscription on the envelope, I recognized that my loyalties lay elsewhere. . . .”
Sánchez Jesús-Maria obligingly suspended his narrative while Rooke went to the concierge’s desk and cashed five hundred dollars’ worth of traveler’s checks.
26
At Heathrow it was eight in the morning of a sodden English winter’s day, and Burr was wearing his Miami clothes. Goodhew, at the arrivals barrier, wore a raincoat and the flat cap he used for bicycling. His features were resolute, but his eyes were over-bright. The right eye, Burr noticed, had developed a slight twitch.
“Any news?” Burr demanded when they had barely shaken hands.
“What of? Who? They tell me nothing.”
“The jet. Have they tracked it yet?”
“They tell me nothing,” Goodhew repeated. “If your man presented himself in shining armor at the British Embassy in Washington, I would hear nothing. Everything’s handed down through channels. The Foreign Office. Defence. The River House. Even Cabinet. Everyone’s a halfway house to someone else.”
“That’s twice they’ve lost that plane in two days,” Burr said. He was heading for the cab rank, spurning trolleys, lugging his heavy suitcase by hand. “Once is carelessness, twice is deliberate. It left Colón at nine-twenty at night. My boy was on it, so was Roper, so was Langbourne. They’ve got AWACs up there, radar on every atoll, you name it. How can they lose a thirteen-seater jet?”
“I’m out of it, Leonard. I try to keep an ear to the ground, but they’ve taken the ground away. They keep me busy all day long. You know what they call me? The Comptroller of Intelligence. With a p. They thought I would appreciate the ancient spelling. I’m surprised to learn that Darker has a sense of humor.”
“They’re throwing the book at Strelski,” Burr said. “Irresponsible handling of informants. Exceeding his brief. Being too nice to the Brits. They’re practically accusing him of Apostoll’s murder.”
“Flagship,” Goodhew muttered under his breath, like a rubric. A different coloring, Burr noticed. High points of red on the cheeks. A mysterious whiteness round the eyes.
“Where’s Rooke?” he asked. “Where’s Rob? He should be back by now.”
“On his way, I hear. Everybody on his way. Oh, yes.”
They joined the taxi queue. A black cab pulled up; a police-woman told Goodhew to get a move on. Two Lebanese tried to push ahead of him. Burr blocked their way and opened the cab door. Goodhew began reciting as soon as he had sat down. His tone was remote. He might have been reliving the traffic accident he had so narrowly missed.
“Devotion is old hat, my master tells me over the smoked eel. Private armies are loose cannons on the deck, he tells me over the roast beef. The small agencies should keep their autonomy, but hence-forth they must accept parental guidance from the River House. A new Whitehall concept has been born. Joint Steering is dead. Long live Parental Guidance. Over the port we talk about how to streamline, and he congratulates me and tells me I’m to be put in charge of streamlining. I shall streamline, but I shall do it under parental guidance. That means, to suit Darker’s whim. Except.” He leaned suddenly forward, then turned his head and stared at Burr full face. “Except, Leonard. I am still secretary of Joint Steering and shall remain so until my master in his wisdom deems otherwise or I resign. There are sound men there. I’ve been counting heads. We mustn’t condemn the barrel because of a few bad apples. My master is persuadable. This is still England. We are good people. Things may go amiss from time to time, but sooner or later honor prevails and the right forces win. I believe that.”
“The weapons on the Lombardy were American as forecast,” Burr said. “They’re buying Best Western, with a bit of British where it’s any good. And training in it. And demonstrating it to their customers up at Fabergé.”
Goodhew turned stiffly back to the window. Somehow he had lost the freedom of his movements. “Countries of origin provide no clue,” he retorted with the exaggerated conviction of someone defending a feeble theory. “It’s the peddlers who do the mischief. You know that perfectly well.”
“There were two American trainers up at the camp, according to Jonathan’s notes. He’s only talking about officers. He suspects they’ve got American NCOs as well. High-powered identical twins, they were, who had the bad manners to ask him his business. Strelski says they must be the Yoch brothers from Langley. Used to work Miami, recruiting for the Sandinistas. Amato spotted them in Aruba three months back, drinking Dom Pérignon with Roper while he was supposed to be selling farms. Exactly one week later, Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw, our distinguished knight, starts buying American instead of East European and Russian with Roper’s money. Roper never hired American trainers before; he wouldn’t trust them. Why’s he got them there? Who are they working for? Who are they reporting to? Why’s American Intelligence got so sloppy suddenly? All these radar windows appearing everywhere? Why didn’t their satellites report all that military activity up on the Costa Rican border? Combat helicopters, war wagons, light tanks? Who’s talking to the cartels? Who told them about Apostoll? Who said the cartels could have their fun with him and deprive Enforcement of their supersnitch while they’re about it?”
Still staring out of the window, Goodhew was refusing to listen. “Take one crisis at a time, Leonard,” he urged in a clenched voice. “You’ve got a boatful of arms, never mind where they come from, headed for Colombia. You’ve got a boatful of drugs headed for the European continent. You’ve got a villain to catch and an agent to save. Go for your objectives. Don’t be distracted. That’s where I went wrong. Darker . . . the list of backers . . . the City connections . . . the big banks . . . the big financial houses . . . Darker again . . . the Purists . . . Don’t be sidetracked by all that: you’ll never get there; they’ll never let you touch them, you’ll go mad. Stick to the possible. The events. The facts. One crisis at a time. Haven’t I seen that car before?”
“It’s the rush hour, Rex,” said Burr gently. “You’ve seen them all.” And then, just as gently, like a consolation to a beaten man: “My boy pulled it off, Rex. He stole the crown jewels. Names and numbers of the ships and containers, location of the Colón warehouse, waybill numbers, even the boxes they’ve stored the dope in.” He patted his breast pocket. “I didn’t signal it through; I didn’t tell a soul. Not even Strelski. There’s Rooke and me and you and my boy. We’re the only ones who know. This isn’t Flagship, Rex. This is still Limpet.”
“They’ve taken my files,” Goodhew said, not hearing again. “I kept them in the safe in my room. They’ve gone!”
Burr looked at his watch. Shave at the office. No time to go home.
Burr is calling in promises. On foot. Working the Golden Triangle of London’s secret overworld—Whitehall, Westminster, Victoria Street. In a blue raincoat borrowed from a janitor, and a paper-thin fawn suit that looks as though he has slept in it, which he has.
Debbie Mullen is an old friend from Burr’s River House days. They went to the same secondary school and triumphed in the same exams. Her office is down one flight of steps, behind a blue-painted steel door marked NO ENTRY. Through glass walls, Burr can watch clerks of both sexes laboring at their screens and talking on telephones.
“Well, look who’s been on holiday,” says Debbie, eyeing his suit. “What’s up, Leonard? We heard they were taking down your brass plate and sending you back across the river.”
“There’s a container ship called the Horatio Enriques, Debbie, registered Panama,” says Burr, allowing his native Yorkshire accent to thicken, in order to emphasize the bond between them. “Forty-eight hours ago she was berthed in Colón Free Zone, bound for Gdansk, Poland. My guess is she’s already in international waters, headed for the Atlantic. We have information she’s carrying a suspect load. I want her tracked and listened to, but I don’t want you to put out a search request.” He gave her his old smile. “It’s owing to my source, you see, Deb. Very
delicate. Very top secret. It’s got to be all off the record. Can you be a pal and do that for me?”
Debbie Mullen has a pretty face and a way of laying the knuckle of her right forefinger against her teeth when she ponders. Perhaps she does this to conceal her feelings, but she cannot conceal her eyes. First they open too wide, then they focus on the top button of Burr’s disgraceful jacket.
“The Enrico what, Leonard?”
“Horacio Enriques, Debbie. Whoever he is. Panama registered.”
“That’s what I thought you said.” Removing her gaze from his jacket, she delves in a tray of red-striped folders till she comes to the one she is looking for and hands it to him. It contains a single sheet of blue paper, embossed and crested and of appropriate ministerial weight. It is headed “The Horacio Enriques” and consists of one paragraph of overlarge type:
The above-named vessel, the subject of a highly sensitive operation, is likely to come to your notice while changing course without apparent reason or performing other erratic maneuvers at sea or in harbor. All information received by your section which relates to her activities, whether from overt or secret sources, will be passed SOLELY AND IMMEDIATELY to H/Procurement Studies, the River House.
The document is stamped TOP SECRET FLAGSHIP GUARD.
Burr hands the folder back to Debbie Mullen and pulls a rueful smile.
“Looks as though we’ve crossed the wires a bit,” he confesses. “Still, it all goes into the same pocket in the end. Have you got anything on the Lombardy while I’m about it, Debbie, also hanging about in those waters, most likely at the other end of the Canal?”
Her gaze has returned to his face and stayed there. “You a Mariner, Leonard?”
“What would you do if I said yes?”
“I’d have to telephone Geoff Darker and find out whether you’d been telling porky-pies, wouldn’t I?”
Burr is really stretching his charm. “You know me, Debbie. Truth’s my middle name. How about a floating gin palace called the Iron Pasha, property of an English gentleman, four days out of Antigua headed west? Anybody been listening to her at all? I need it, Debbie. I’m desperate.”