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Popular tradition has it that the Cagots and their descendants had no earlobes. To this day, in the more traditional Basque villages, girls of five and six years of age have their ears pierced and wear earrings. Without knowing the source of the tradition, the mothers respond to the ancient practice of demonstrating that their girls have lobes in which to wear earrings.
Today the Cagots have disappeared, having either withered and grown extinct, or slowly merged with the Basque population (although this last suggestion is a risky one to advance in a Basque bar), and their name has all but fallen from use, save as a pejorative term for bent old women.
The young poet whose sensitivity had been cauterized by events chose Le Cagot as his pen name to bring attention to the precarious situation of contemporary Basque culture, which is in danger of disappearing, like the suppressed bards and minstrels of former times.
A little before six, Pierre tottered down to the square of Etchebar, the cumulative effect of his day’s regularly spaced glasses of wine having freed him from the tyranny of gravity to such a degree that he navigated toward the Volvo by means of tacking. He had been sent to pick up two ensembles which Hana bad ordered by telephone after asking Hannah for her sizes and translating them into European standards. After the dresses, Pierre was to collect three dinner guests from the Hôtel Dabadie. Having twice missed the door handle, Pierre pulled down the brim of his beret and focused all of his attention on the not-inconsiderable task of getting into the car, which he eventually accomplished, only to slap his forehead as he remembered an omission. He struggled out again and delivered a glancing kick to the rear fender in imitation of M’sieur Hel’s ritual, then he found his way to the driver’s seat again. With his native Basque mistrust for things mechanical, Pierre limited his gear options to reverse and low, in which he drove with the throttle wide open, using all the road and both verges. Such sheep, cows, men, and wobbly Solex mopeds as suddenly appeared before his bumper he managed to avoid by twisting the wheel sharply, then seeking the road again by feel. He abjured the effete practice of using the foot brake, and even the emergency brake he viewed as a device only for parking. As he always stopped without depressing the clutch, he avoided the nuisance of having to turn off the engine, which always bucked and died as he reached his destination and hauled back on the brake lever. Fortunately for the peasants and villagers between the château and Tardets, the sound of the Volvo’s loosened body clattering and clanking and the roar of its engine at full speed in low gear preceded Pierre by half a kilometer, and there was usually time to scurry behind trees or jump over stone walls. Pierre felt a justified pride in his driving skills, for he had never been involved in an accident. And this was all the more notable considering the wild and careless drivers all around him, whom he frequently observed swerving into ditches and up on sidewalks, or crashing into one another as he roared through stop signs or up one-way streets. It was not so much the maladroit recklessness of these other drivers that disturbed Pierre as their blatant rudeness, for often they had shouted vulgar things at him, and he could not count the number of times he had seen through his rearview mirror a finger, a fist, or even a whole forearm, throwing an angry figue at him.
Pierre brought the Volvo to a bucking and coughing stop in the center of the Place of Tardets and clawed his way out. After bruising his toe against the battered door, he set about his commissions, the first of which was to share a hospitable glass with old friends.
No one thought it odd that Pierre always delivered a kick to the car upon entering or leaving, as Volvo-bashing was a general practice in southwestern France, and could even be encountered as far away as Paris. Indeed, carried to cosmopolitan centers around the world by tourists, Volvo-bashing was slowly becoming a cult activity throughout the world, and this pleased Nicholai Hel, since he had begun it all.
Some years before, seeking a car-of-all-work for the château, Hel had followed the advice of a friend and purchased a Volvo on the assumption that a car so expensive, lacking in beauty, comfort, speed, and fuel economy must have something else to recommend it. And he was assured that this something else was durability and service. His battle with rust began on the third day; and little errors of construction and design and set-up (misaligned wheels that wore out his tires within five thousand kilometers, a windshield wiper that daintily avoided contact with the glass, a rear hatch catch so designed as to require two hands to close it, so that loading and unloading was a burlesque of inefficient motion) required that he return the automobile frequently to the dealer some 150 kilometers away. It was the dealer’s view that these problems were the manufacturer’s and the manufacturer’s view that the responsibility lay with the dealer; and after months of receiving polite but vague letters of disinterested condolence from the company, Hel decided to bite the bullet and set the car to the brutish tasks of transporting sheep and bringing equipment up rough mountain roads, hoping that it would soon fall apart and justify his purchase of a vehicle with a more reliable service infrastructure. Sadly, while he had found no truth in the company’s reputation for service, there was some basis for the car’s claim to durability and, while it always ran poorly, it always ran. Under other circumstances, Hel would have viewed durability as a virtue in a machine, but he could find little consolation in the threat that his problems would go on for years.
Having observed Pierre’s skills as a chauffeur, Hel thought to shorten his torment by allowing Pierre to drive the car whenever he chose. But this plot was foiled because ironic fate shielded Pierre from accidents. So Hel came to accept his Volvo as one of the comic burdens of life, but he allowed himself to vent his frustration by kicking or bashing the car each time he got in or out.
It was not long before his caving associates fell into the practice of bashing his Volvo whenever they passed it, at first as a joke and later by habit. Soon they and the young men they traveled with began to bash any Volvo they passed. And in the illogical way of fads, Volvo-bashing began to spread, here taking on an anti-Establishment tone, there a quality of youthful exuberance; here as an expression of antimaterialism, there as a manifestation of in-cult with-itness.
Even owners of Volvos began to accept the bashing craze, for it proved that they traveled in circles of the internationally aware. And there were cases of owners secretly bashing their own Volvos, to gain unearned reputations as cosmopolites. There were persistent, though probably apocryphal, rumors that Volvo was planning to introduce a prebashed model in its efforts to attract the smart set to an automobile that had sacrificed everything to passenger safety (despite their use of Firestone 500 tires on many models) and primarily appealed to affluent egotists who assumed that the continuance of their lives was important to the destiny of Man.
After his shower, Hel found laid out in the dressing room his black broadcloth Edwardian suit, which had been designed to protect either guests in simple business suits or those in evening wear from feeling under— or overdressed. When he met Hana at the top of the principal staircase, she was in a long dress of Cantonese style that had the same social ambiguity as his suit.
“Where’s Le Cagot?” he asked as they went down to a small salon to await their guests. “I’ve felt his presence several times today, but I haven’t heard or seen him.”
“I assume he is dressing in his room.” Hana laughed lightly. “He told me that I would be so taken by his new clothes that I would swoon amorously into his arms.”
“Oh, God.” Le Cagot’s taste in clothes, as in most things, ran to operatic overstatement. “And Miss Stern?”
“She has been in her room most of the afternoon. You evidently gave her rather a bad time during your chat.”
“Hm-m-m.”
“She’ll be down shortly after Pierre returns with clothes for her. Do you want to hear the menu?”
“No, I’m sure it’s perfect.”
“Not that, but adequate. These guests give us a chance to be rid of the roebuck old M. Ibar gave us. It’s been hanging just over a week, so it should be ready. Is there something special I should know about our guests?”
“They are strangers to me. Enemies, I believe.”
“How should I treat them?”
“Like any guest in our house. With that particular charm of yours that makes all men feel interesting and important. I want these people to be off balance and unsure of themselves. They are Americans. Just as you or I would be uncomfortable at a barbecue, they suffer from social vertigo at a proper dinner. Even their gratin, the jetset, are culturally as bogus as airlines cuisine.”
“What on earth is a ‘barbecue’?”
“A primitive tribal ritual featuring paper plates, elbows, flying insects, encrusted meat, hush puppies, and beer.”
“I daren’t ask what a ‘hush puppy’ is.”
“Don’t.”
They sat together in the darkening salon, their fingers touching. The sun was down behind the mountains, and through the open porte fenêtres they could see a silver gloaming that seemed to rise from the ground of the park, its dim light filling the space beneath the black-green pines, the effect rendered mutable and dear by the threat of an incoming storm.
“How long did you live in America, Nikko?”
“About three years, just after I left Japan. In fact, I still have an apartment in New York.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit New York.”
“You’d be disappointed. It’s a frightened city in which everyone is in hot and narrow pursuit of money: the bankers, the muggers, the businessmen, the whores. If you walk the streets and watch their eyes, you see two things: fear and fury. They are diminished people hovering behind triple-locked doors. They fight with men they don’t hate, and make love to women they don’t like. Asea in a mongrel society, they borrow orts and leavings from the world’s cultures. Kir is a popular drink among those desperate to be ‘with it,’ and they affect Perrier, although they have one of the world’s great waters in the local village of Saratoga. Their best French restaurants offer what we would think of as thirty-franc meals for ten times that much, and the service is characterized by insufferable snottiness on the part of the waiter, usually an incompetent peasant who happens to be able to read the menu. But then, Americans enjoy being abused by waiters. It’s their only way of judging the quality of the food. On the other hand, if one must live in urban America—a cruel and unusual punishment at best—one might as well live in the real New York, rather than in the artificial ones farther inland. And there are some good things. Harlem has real tone. The municipal library is adequate. There is a man named Jimmy Fox who is the best barman in North America. And twice I even found myself in conversation about the nature of shibui —not shibumi, of course. It’s more within the range of the mercantile mind to talk of the characteristics of the beautiful than to discuss the nature of Beauty.”
She struck a long match and lighted a lamp on the table before them. “But I remember you mentioning once that you enjoyed your home in America.”
“Oh, that was not New York. I own a couple of thousand hectares in the state of Wyoming, in the mountains.”
“Wy-om-ing. Romantic-sounding name. Is it beautiful?”
“More sublime, I would say. It’s too ragged and harsh to be beautiful. It is to this Pyrenees country what an ink sketch is to a finished painting. Much of the open land of America is attractive. Sadly, it is populated by Americans. But then, one could say a similar thing of Greece or Ireland.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve been to Greece. I worked mere for a year, employed by a shipping magnate.”
“Oh? You never mentioned that.”
“There was nothing really to mention. He was very rich and very vulgar, and he sought to purchase class and status, usually in the form of spectacular wives. While in his employ, I surrounded him with quiet comfort. He made no other demands of me. By that time, there were no other demands he could make.”
“I see. Ah—here comes Le Cagot.”
Hana had heard nothing, because Le Cagot was sneaking down the stairs to surprise them with his sartorial splendor. Hel smiled to himself because Le Cagot’s preceding aura carried qualities of boyish mischief and ultra-sly delight.
He appeared at the door, his bulk half-filling the frame, his arms in cruciform to display his fine new clothes. “Regard! Regard, Niko, and burn with envy!”
Obviously, the evening clothes had come from a theatrical costumer. They were an eclectic congregation, although the fin-de-siècle impulse dominated, with a throat wrapping of white silk in place of a cravat, and a richly brocaded waistcoat with double rows of rhinestone buttons. The black swallowtail coat was long, and its lapels were turned in gray silk. With his still-wet hair parted in the middle and his bushy beard covering most of the cravat, he had something the appearance of a middle-aged Tolstoi dressed up as a Mississippi riverboat gambler. The large yellow rose he bad pinned to his lapel was oddly correct, consonant with this amalgam of robust bad taste. He strode back and forth, brandishing his long makila like a walking stick. The makila had been in his family for generations, and there were nicks and dents on the polished ash shaft and a small bit missing from the marble knob, evidences of use as a defensive weapon by grandfathers and greatgrandfathers. The handle of a makila unscrews, revealing a twenty-centimeter blade, designed for foining, while the butt in the left hand is used for crossed parries, and its heavy marble knob is an effective clubbing weapon. Although now largely decorative and ceremonial, the makila once figured importantly in the personal safety of the Basque man alone on the road at night or roving in the high mountains.
“That is a wonderful suit,” Hana said with excessive sincerity.
“Is it not? Is it not?”
“How did you come by this… suit?” Hel asked.
“It was given to me.”
“In result of your losing a bet?”
“Not at all. It was given to me by a woman in appreciation for… ah, but to mention the details would be ungallant. So, when do we eat? Where are these guests of yours?”
“They are approaching up the allée right now,” Hel said, rising and crossing toward the central hall.
Le Cagot peered out through the porte fenêtre, but he could see nothing because evening and the storm had pressed the last of the gloaming into the earth. Still, he had become used to Hel’s proximity sensitivity, so he assumed there was someone out there.
Just as Pierre was reaching for the handle of the pull bell, Hel opened the door. The chandeliers of the hall were behind him, so he could read the faces of his three guests, while his own was in shadow. One of them was obviously the leader; the second was a gunny CIA type, Class of ‘53; and the third was an Arab of vague personality. All three showed signs of recent emotional drain resulting from their ride up the mountain road without headlights, and with Pierre showing off his remarkable driving skills.
“Do come in,” Hel said, stepping from the doorway and allowing them to pass before him into the reception hall, where they were met by Hana who smiled as she approached.
“It was good of you to accept our invitation on such short notice. I am Hana. This is Nicholai Hel. And here is our friend, M. Le Cagot.” She offered her hand.
The leader found his aplomb. “Good evening. This is Mr. Starr. Mr. … Haman. And I am Mr. Diamond.” The first crack of thunder punctuated his last word.
Hel laughed aloud. “That must have been embarrassing. Nature seems to be in a melodramatic mood.”
Part Three
Château d’Etchebar
Today the Cagots have disappeared, having either withered and grown extinct, or slowly merged with the Basque population (although this last suggestion is a risky one to advance in a Basque bar), and their name has all but fallen from use, save as a pejorative term for bent old women.
The young poet whose sensitivity had been cauterized by events chose Le Cagot as his pen name to bring attention to the precarious situation of contemporary Basque culture, which is in danger of disappearing, like the suppressed bards and minstrels of former times.
* * *
A little before six, Pierre tottered down to the square of Etchebar, the cumulative effect of his day’s regularly spaced glasses of wine having freed him from the tyranny of gravity to such a degree that he navigated toward the Volvo by means of tacking. He had been sent to pick up two ensembles which Hana bad ordered by telephone after asking Hannah for her sizes and translating them into European standards. After the dresses, Pierre was to collect three dinner guests from the Hôtel Dabadie. Having twice missed the door handle, Pierre pulled down the brim of his beret and focused all of his attention on the not-inconsiderable task of getting into the car, which he eventually accomplished, only to slap his forehead as he remembered an omission. He struggled out again and delivered a glancing kick to the rear fender in imitation of M’sieur Hel’s ritual, then he found his way to the driver’s seat again. With his native Basque mistrust for things mechanical, Pierre limited his gear options to reverse and low, in which he drove with the throttle wide open, using all the road and both verges. Such sheep, cows, men, and wobbly Solex mopeds as suddenly appeared before his bumper he managed to avoid by twisting the wheel sharply, then seeking the road again by feel. He abjured the effete practice of using the foot brake, and even the emergency brake he viewed as a device only for parking. As he always stopped without depressing the clutch, he avoided the nuisance of having to turn off the engine, which always bucked and died as he reached his destination and hauled back on the brake lever. Fortunately for the peasants and villagers between the château and Tardets, the sound of the Volvo’s loosened body clattering and clanking and the roar of its engine at full speed in low gear preceded Pierre by half a kilometer, and there was usually time to scurry behind trees or jump over stone walls. Pierre felt a justified pride in his driving skills, for he had never been involved in an accident. And this was all the more notable considering the wild and careless drivers all around him, whom he frequently observed swerving into ditches and up on sidewalks, or crashing into one another as he roared through stop signs or up one-way streets. It was not so much the maladroit recklessness of these other drivers that disturbed Pierre as their blatant rudeness, for often they had shouted vulgar things at him, and he could not count the number of times he had seen through his rearview mirror a finger, a fist, or even a whole forearm, throwing an angry figue at him.
Pierre brought the Volvo to a bucking and coughing stop in the center of the Place of Tardets and clawed his way out. After bruising his toe against the battered door, he set about his commissions, the first of which was to share a hospitable glass with old friends.
No one thought it odd that Pierre always delivered a kick to the car upon entering or leaving, as Volvo-bashing was a general practice in southwestern France, and could even be encountered as far away as Paris. Indeed, carried to cosmopolitan centers around the world by tourists, Volvo-bashing was slowly becoming a cult activity throughout the world, and this pleased Nicholai Hel, since he had begun it all.
Some years before, seeking a car-of-all-work for the château, Hel had followed the advice of a friend and purchased a Volvo on the assumption that a car so expensive, lacking in beauty, comfort, speed, and fuel economy must have something else to recommend it. And he was assured that this something else was durability and service. His battle with rust began on the third day; and little errors of construction and design and set-up (misaligned wheels that wore out his tires within five thousand kilometers, a windshield wiper that daintily avoided contact with the glass, a rear hatch catch so designed as to require two hands to close it, so that loading and unloading was a burlesque of inefficient motion) required that he return the automobile frequently to the dealer some 150 kilometers away. It was the dealer’s view that these problems were the manufacturer’s and the manufacturer’s view that the responsibility lay with the dealer; and after months of receiving polite but vague letters of disinterested condolence from the company, Hel decided to bite the bullet and set the car to the brutish tasks of transporting sheep and bringing equipment up rough mountain roads, hoping that it would soon fall apart and justify his purchase of a vehicle with a more reliable service infrastructure. Sadly, while he had found no truth in the company’s reputation for service, there was some basis for the car’s claim to durability and, while it always ran poorly, it always ran. Under other circumstances, Hel would have viewed durability as a virtue in a machine, but he could find little consolation in the threat that his problems would go on for years.
Having observed Pierre’s skills as a chauffeur, Hel thought to shorten his torment by allowing Pierre to drive the car whenever he chose. But this plot was foiled because ironic fate shielded Pierre from accidents. So Hel came to accept his Volvo as one of the comic burdens of life, but he allowed himself to vent his frustration by kicking or bashing the car each time he got in or out.
It was not long before his caving associates fell into the practice of bashing his Volvo whenever they passed it, at first as a joke and later by habit. Soon they and the young men they traveled with began to bash any Volvo they passed. And in the illogical way of fads, Volvo-bashing began to spread, here taking on an anti-Establishment tone, there a quality of youthful exuberance; here as an expression of antimaterialism, there as a manifestation of in-cult with-itness.
Even owners of Volvos began to accept the bashing craze, for it proved that they traveled in circles of the internationally aware. And there were cases of owners secretly bashing their own Volvos, to gain unearned reputations as cosmopolites. There were persistent, though probably apocryphal, rumors that Volvo was planning to introduce a prebashed model in its efforts to attract the smart set to an automobile that had sacrificed everything to passenger safety (despite their use of Firestone 500 tires on many models) and primarily appealed to affluent egotists who assumed that the continuance of their lives was important to the destiny of Man.
* * *
After his shower, Hel found laid out in the dressing room his black broadcloth Edwardian suit, which had been designed to protect either guests in simple business suits or those in evening wear from feeling under— or overdressed. When he met Hana at the top of the principal staircase, she was in a long dress of Cantonese style that had the same social ambiguity as his suit.
“Where’s Le Cagot?” he asked as they went down to a small salon to await their guests. “I’ve felt his presence several times today, but I haven’t heard or seen him.”
“I assume he is dressing in his room.” Hana laughed lightly. “He told me that I would be so taken by his new clothes that I would swoon amorously into his arms.”
“Oh, God.” Le Cagot’s taste in clothes, as in most things, ran to operatic overstatement. “And Miss Stern?”
“She has been in her room most of the afternoon. You evidently gave her rather a bad time during your chat.”
“Hm-m-m.”
“She’ll be down shortly after Pierre returns with clothes for her. Do you want to hear the menu?”
“No, I’m sure it’s perfect.”
“Not that, but adequate. These guests give us a chance to be rid of the roebuck old M. Ibar gave us. It’s been hanging just over a week, so it should be ready. Is there something special I should know about our guests?”
“They are strangers to me. Enemies, I believe.”
“How should I treat them?”
“Like any guest in our house. With that particular charm of yours that makes all men feel interesting and important. I want these people to be off balance and unsure of themselves. They are Americans. Just as you or I would be uncomfortable at a barbecue, they suffer from social vertigo at a proper dinner. Even their gratin, the jetset, are culturally as bogus as airlines cuisine.”
“What on earth is a ‘barbecue’?”
“A primitive tribal ritual featuring paper plates, elbows, flying insects, encrusted meat, hush puppies, and beer.”
“I daren’t ask what a ‘hush puppy’ is.”
“Don’t.”
They sat together in the darkening salon, their fingers touching. The sun was down behind the mountains, and through the open porte fenêtres they could see a silver gloaming that seemed to rise from the ground of the park, its dim light filling the space beneath the black-green pines, the effect rendered mutable and dear by the threat of an incoming storm.
“How long did you live in America, Nikko?”
“About three years, just after I left Japan. In fact, I still have an apartment in New York.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit New York.”
“You’d be disappointed. It’s a frightened city in which everyone is in hot and narrow pursuit of money: the bankers, the muggers, the businessmen, the whores. If you walk the streets and watch their eyes, you see two things: fear and fury. They are diminished people hovering behind triple-locked doors. They fight with men they don’t hate, and make love to women they don’t like. Asea in a mongrel society, they borrow orts and leavings from the world’s cultures. Kir is a popular drink among those desperate to be ‘with it,’ and they affect Perrier, although they have one of the world’s great waters in the local village of Saratoga. Their best French restaurants offer what we would think of as thirty-franc meals for ten times that much, and the service is characterized by insufferable snottiness on the part of the waiter, usually an incompetent peasant who happens to be able to read the menu. But then, Americans enjoy being abused by waiters. It’s their only way of judging the quality of the food. On the other hand, if one must live in urban America—a cruel and unusual punishment at best—one might as well live in the real New York, rather than in the artificial ones farther inland. And there are some good things. Harlem has real tone. The municipal library is adequate. There is a man named Jimmy Fox who is the best barman in North America. And twice I even found myself in conversation about the nature of shibui —not shibumi, of course. It’s more within the range of the mercantile mind to talk of the characteristics of the beautiful than to discuss the nature of Beauty.”
She struck a long match and lighted a lamp on the table before them. “But I remember you mentioning once that you enjoyed your home in America.”
“Oh, that was not New York. I own a couple of thousand hectares in the state of Wyoming, in the mountains.”
“Wy-om-ing. Romantic-sounding name. Is it beautiful?”
“More sublime, I would say. It’s too ragged and harsh to be beautiful. It is to this Pyrenees country what an ink sketch is to a finished painting. Much of the open land of America is attractive. Sadly, it is populated by Americans. But then, one could say a similar thing of Greece or Ireland.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve been to Greece. I worked mere for a year, employed by a shipping magnate.”
“Oh? You never mentioned that.”
“There was nothing really to mention. He was very rich and very vulgar, and he sought to purchase class and status, usually in the form of spectacular wives. While in his employ, I surrounded him with quiet comfort. He made no other demands of me. By that time, there were no other demands he could make.”
“I see. Ah—here comes Le Cagot.”
Hana had heard nothing, because Le Cagot was sneaking down the stairs to surprise them with his sartorial splendor. Hel smiled to himself because Le Cagot’s preceding aura carried qualities of boyish mischief and ultra-sly delight.
He appeared at the door, his bulk half-filling the frame, his arms in cruciform to display his fine new clothes. “Regard! Regard, Niko, and burn with envy!”
Obviously, the evening clothes had come from a theatrical costumer. They were an eclectic congregation, although the fin-de-siècle impulse dominated, with a throat wrapping of white silk in place of a cravat, and a richly brocaded waistcoat with double rows of rhinestone buttons. The black swallowtail coat was long, and its lapels were turned in gray silk. With his still-wet hair parted in the middle and his bushy beard covering most of the cravat, he had something the appearance of a middle-aged Tolstoi dressed up as a Mississippi riverboat gambler. The large yellow rose he bad pinned to his lapel was oddly correct, consonant with this amalgam of robust bad taste. He strode back and forth, brandishing his long makila like a walking stick. The makila had been in his family for generations, and there were nicks and dents on the polished ash shaft and a small bit missing from the marble knob, evidences of use as a defensive weapon by grandfathers and greatgrandfathers. The handle of a makila unscrews, revealing a twenty-centimeter blade, designed for foining, while the butt in the left hand is used for crossed parries, and its heavy marble knob is an effective clubbing weapon. Although now largely decorative and ceremonial, the makila once figured importantly in the personal safety of the Basque man alone on the road at night or roving in the high mountains.
“That is a wonderful suit,” Hana said with excessive sincerity.
“Is it not? Is it not?”
“How did you come by this… suit?” Hel asked.
“It was given to me.”
“In result of your losing a bet?”
“Not at all. It was given to me by a woman in appreciation for… ah, but to mention the details would be ungallant. So, when do we eat? Where are these guests of yours?”
“They are approaching up the allée right now,” Hel said, rising and crossing toward the central hall.
Le Cagot peered out through the porte fenêtre, but he could see nothing because evening and the storm had pressed the last of the gloaming into the earth. Still, he had become used to Hel’s proximity sensitivity, so he assumed there was someone out there.
Just as Pierre was reaching for the handle of the pull bell, Hel opened the door. The chandeliers of the hall were behind him, so he could read the faces of his three guests, while his own was in shadow. One of them was obviously the leader; the second was a gunny CIA type, Class of ‘53; and the third was an Arab of vague personality. All three showed signs of recent emotional drain resulting from their ride up the mountain road without headlights, and with Pierre showing off his remarkable driving skills.
“Do come in,” Hel said, stepping from the doorway and allowing them to pass before him into the reception hall, where they were met by Hana who smiled as she approached.
“It was good of you to accept our invitation on such short notice. I am Hana. This is Nicholai Hel. And here is our friend, M. Le Cagot.” She offered her hand.
The leader found his aplomb. “Good evening. This is Mr. Starr. Mr. … Haman. And I am Mr. Diamond.” The first crack of thunder punctuated his last word.
Hel laughed aloud. “That must have been embarrassing. Nature seems to be in a melodramatic mood.”
Part Three
Seki
Château d’Etchebar
From the moment the y had the heart-squeezing experience of driving with Pierre in the battered Volvo, the three guests never quite got their feet on firm social ground. Diamond had expected to get down to cases immediately with Hel, but that clearly was not on. While Hana was conducting the party to the blue-and-gold salon for a glass of Lillet before dinner, Diamond held back and said to Hel, “I suppose you’re wondering why—”
“After dinner.”
Diamond stiffened just perceptibly, then smiled and half-bowed in a gesture he instantly regretted as theatrical. That damned clap of thunder!
Hana refilled glasses and handed around canapés as she guided the conversation in such a way that Darryl Starr was soon addressing her as “Ma’am” and feeling that her interest in Texas and things Texan was a veiled fascination with him; and the PLO trainee called Haman grinned and nodded with each display of concern for his comfort and well-being. Even Diamond soon found himself recounting impressions of the Basque country and feeling both lucid and insightful. All five men rose when Hana excused herself, saying that she had to attend to the young lady who would be dining with them.
There was a palpable silence after she left, and Hel allowed the slight discomfort to lie there, as he watched his guests with distant amusement.
It was Darryl Starr who found a relevant remark to fill the void. “Nice place you got here.”
“Would you like to see the house?” Hel asked.
“Well… no, don’t trouble yourself on my account.”
Hel said a few words aside to Le Cagot, who then crossed to Starr and with gruff bonhomie pulled him from his chair by his arm and offered to show him the garden and the gun room. Starr explained that he was comfortable where he was, thank you, but Le Cagot’s grin was accompanied by painful pressure around the American’s upper arm.
“Indulge my whim in this, my good friend,” he said.
Starr shrugged—as best he could—and went along.
Diamond was disturbed, torn between a desire to control the situation and an impulse, which he recognized to be childish, to demonstrate that his social graces were as sophisticated as Hel’s. He realized that both he and this event were being managed, and he resented it. For something to say, he mentioned, “I see you’re not having anything to drink before dinner, Mr. Hel.”
“That’s true.”
Hel did not intend to give Diamond the comfort of rebounding conversational overtures; he would simply absorb each gesture and leave the chore of initiation constantly with Diamond, who chuckled and said, “I feel I should tell you that your driver is a strange one.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He parked the car out in the village square and we had to walk the rest of the way. I was sure the storm would catch us.”
“I don’t permit automobiles on my grounds.”
“Yes, but after he parked the car, he gave the front door a kick that I’m sure must have dented it.”
Hel frowned and said, “How odd. I’ll have to talk to him about that.”
At this point, Hana and Miss Stern joined the men, the young woman looking refined and desirable in a summer tea dress she had chosen from those Hana had bought for her. Hel watched Hannah closely as she was introduced to the two men, grudgingly admiring her control and ease while confronting the people who had engineered the killing of her comrades in Rome. Hana beckoned her to sit beside her and managed immediately to focus the social attention on her youth and beauty, guiding her in such a way that only Hel could sense traces of the reality vertigo the girl was feeling. At one moment, he caught her eyes and nodded slightly in approval of aplomb. There was some bottom to this girl after all. Perhaps if she were in the company of a woman like Hana for four or five years… who knows?
There was a gruff laugh from the hall and Le Cagot reentered, his arm around Starr’s shoulders. The Texan looked a bit shaken and his hair was tousled, but Le Cagot’s mission was accomplished; the shoulder holster under Starr’s left armpit was now empty.
“I don’t know about you, my friends,” Le Cagot said in his accented English with the overgrowled r of the Francophone who has finally conquered that difficult consonant, “but I am ravenous! Bouffons! I could eat for four!”
The dinner, served by the light of two candelabra on the table and lamps in wall sconces, was not sumptuous, but it was good: trout from the local gave, roebuck with cherry sauce, garden vegetables cooked in the Japanese style, the courses separated by conversation and appropriate ices, finally a salad of greens before dessert of fruit and cheeses. Compatible wines accompanied each entrée and relevé, and the particular problem of game in a fruit sauce was solved by a fine pink wine which, while it could not support the flavors, did not contradict them either. Diamond noted with slight discomfort that Hel and Hana were served only rice and vegetables during the early part of the meal, though they joined the others in salad. Further, although their hostess drank wine with the rest of them, Hel’s glass was little more than moistened with each bottle, so that in total he drank less than a full glass.
“You don’t drink, Mr. Hel?” he asked.
“But I do, as you see. It is only that I don’t find two sips of wine more delicious than one.”
Padding with wines and waxing pseudopoetic in their failure to describe tastes lucidly is an affectation of socially mobile Americans, and Diamond fancied himself something of an authority. He sipped, swilled and examined the pink that accompanied the roebuck, then said, “Ah, there are Tavels, and there are Tavels.”
Hel frowned slightly. “Ah… that’s true, I suppose.”
“But this is a Tavel, isn’t it?”
When Hel shrugged and changed the subject diplomatically, the nape of Diamond’s neck horripilated with embarrassment. He had been so sure it was Tavel.
Throughout dinner, Hel maintained a distant silence, his eyes seldom leaving Diamond, though they appeared to focus slightly behind him. Effortlessly, Hana evoked jokes and stories from each of the guests in turn, and her delight and amusement was such that each felt he had outdone himself in cleverness and charm. Even Starr, who had been withdrawn and petulant after his rough treatment at Le Cagot’s hands, was soon telling Hana of his boyhood in Flatrock, Texas, and of his adventures fighting against the gooks in Korea.
At first Le Cagot attended to the task of filling himself with food. Soon the ends of his wrapped cravat were dangling, and the long swallowtailed coat was cast aside, so by the time he was ready to dominate the party and hold forth at his usual length with vigorous and sometimes bawdy tales, he was down to his spectacular waistcoat with its rhinestone buttons. He was seated next to Hannah, and out of the blue he reached over, placed his big warm hand on her thigh, and gave it a friendly squeeze. “Tell me something in all frankness, beautiful girl. Are you struggling against your desire for me? Or have you given up the struggle? I ask you this only that I may know how best to proceed. In the meantime, eat, eat! You will need your strength. So! You men are from America, eh? Me, I was in America three times. That’s why my English is so good. I could probably pass for an American, eh? From the point of view of accent, I mean.”
“Oh, no doubt of it,” Diamond said. He was beginning to realize how important to such men as Hel and Le Cagot was the heraldry of sheer style, even when faced by enemies, and he wanted to show that be could play any game they could.
“But of course once people saw the clear truth shining in my eyes, and hear the music of my thoughts, the game would be up! They would know I was not an American.”
Hel concealed a slight smile behind a finger.
“You’re hard on Americans,” Diamond said.
“Maybe so,” Le Cagot admitted. “And maybe I am being unjust. We get to see only the dregs of them here: merchants on vacation with their brassy wives, military men with their papier-mâché, gum-chewing women, young people seeking to ‘find themselves,’ and worst of all, academic drudges who manage to convince granting agencies that the world would be improved if they were beshat upon Europe. I sometimes think that America’s major export product is bewildered professors on sabbaticals. Is it true that everyone in the United States over twenty-five years of age has a Ph.D?” Le Cagot had the bit well between his teeth, and he began one of his tales of adventure, based as usual on a real event, but decorated with such improvements upon dull truth as occurred to him as he went along. Secure in the knowledge that Le Cagot would dominate things for many minutes, Hel let his face freeze in a politely amused expression while his mind sorted out and organized the moves that would begin after dinner.
Le Cagot had turned to Diamond. “I am going to shed some light upon history for you, American guest of my friend. Everyone knows that the Basque and the Fascists have been enemies since before the birth of history. But few know the real source of this ancient antipathy. It was our fault, really. I confess it at last. Many years ago, the Basque people gave up the practice of shitting by the roadside, and in doing this we deprived the Falange of its principal source of nourishment. And that is the truth, I swear it by Methuselah’s Wrinkled B—”
“Beñat?” Hana interrupted, indicating the young girl with a nod of her head.
“—by Methuselah’s Wrinkled Brow. What’s wrong with you?” he asked Hana, his eyes moist with hurt “Do you think I have forgotten my manners?”
Hel pushed back his chair and rose. “Mr. Diamond and I have a bit of business to attend to, I suggest you take your cognac on the terrace. You might just have time before the rain comes.”
As they stepped down from the principal hall to the Japanese garden, Hel took Diamond by the arm. “Allow me to guide you; I didn’t think to bring a lantern.”
“Oh? I know about your mystic proximity sense, but I didn’t know you could see in the dark as well.”
“I can’t. But we are on my ground. Perhaps you would be well advised to remember that.”
Hel lighted two spirit lamps in the gun room and gestured Diamond toward a low table on which there was a bottle and glasses. “Serve yourself. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He carried one of the lamps to a bookcase filled with pull drawers of file cards, some two hundred thousand cards in all. “May I assume that Diamond is your real name?”
“It is.”
Hel searched for the proper key card containing all cross references to Diamond. “And your initials are?”
“Jack O.” Diamond smiled to himself as he compared Hel’s crude card file with his own sophisticated information system, Fat Boy. “I didn’t see any reason to use an alias, assuming that you would see a family resemblance between me and my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Don’t you remember my brother?”
“Not offhand.” Hel muttered to himself as he fingered through a drawer of cards. As the information on Hel’s cards was in six languages, the headings were arranged phonetically. “D. D-A, D-AI diphthong, DAI-M… ah, here we are. Diamond, Jack O. Do have a drink, Mr. Diamond. My filing system is a bit cumbersome, and I haven’t been called on to use it since my retirement.”
Diamond was surprised that Hel did not even remember his brother. To cover his temporary confusion, he picked up the bottle and examined the label. “Armagnac?”
“Hm-m-m.” Hel made a mental note of the cross-reference indices and sought those cards. “We’re close to the Armagnac country here. You’ll find that very old and very good. So you are a servant of the Mother Company, are you? I can therefore assume that you already have a good deal of information about me from your computer. You’ll have to give me a moment to catch up with you.”
Diamond carried his glass with him and wandered about the gun room, looking at the uncommon weapons in cases and racks along the walls. Some of these he recognized: the nerve-gas tube, air-driven glass sliver projectors, dry-ice guns, and the like. But others were foreign to him: simple metal disks, a device that seemed to be two short rods of hickory connected by a metal link, a thimblelike cone that slipped over the finger and came to a sharp point. On the table beside the Armagnac bottle he found a small, French-made automatic. “A pretty common sort of weapon among all this exotica,” he said.
Hel glanced up from the card he was reading. “Oh yes, I noticed that when we came in. It’s not mine, actually. It belongs to your man, the bucolic tough from Texas. I thought he might feel more relaxed without it.”
“The thoughtful host.”
“Thank you.” Hel set aside the card he was reading and pulled open another drawer in search of the next “That gun tells us rather a lot. Obviously, you decided not to travel armed because of the nuisance of boarding inspections. So your lad was given the gun after he got here. Its make tells us he received the gun from French police authorities. That means you have them in your pocket.”
Diamond shrugged. “France needs oil too, just like every other industrial country.”
“Yes. Ici on n’a pas d’huile, mais on a des idées.”
“Meaning?”
“Nothing really. Just a slogan from French internal propaganda. So I see here that the Major Diamond from Tokyo was your brother. That’s interesting—mildly interesting, anyway.” Now that he considered it, Hel found a certain resemblance between the two, the narrow face, the intense black eyes set rather close together, the falciform nose, the thin upper lip and heavy, bloodless lower, a certain intensity of manner.
“I thought you would have guessed that when you first heard my name.”
“Actually, I had pretty much forgotten him. After all, our account was settled. So you began working for the Mother Company in the Early Retirement Program, did you? That is certainly consonant with your brother’s career.”
Some years before, the Mother Company had discovered that its executives after the age of fifty began to be notably less productive, just at the time the Company was paying them the most. The problem was presented to Fat Boy, who offered the solution of organizing an Early Retirement Division that would arrange for the accidental demise of a small percentage of such men, usually while on vacation, and usually of apparent stroke or heart attack. The savings to the Company were considerable. Diamond had risen to the head of this division before being promoted to conducting Mother Company’s control over CIA and NSA.
“…so it appears that both you and your brother found a way to combine native sadism with the comforting fringe benefits of working for big business, he for the army and CIA, you for the oil combines. Both products of the American Dream, the mercantile mumpsimus. Just bright young men trying to get ahead.”
“But at least neither of us ended up as hired killers.”
“Rubbish. Any man is a killer who works for a company that pollutes, strip-mines, and contaminates the air and water. The fact that you and your unlamented brother killed from institutional and patriotic ambush doesn’t mean you’re not killers—it only means you’re cowards.”
“You think a coward would walk into your lair as I have done?”
“A certain kind of coward would. A coward who was afraid of his cowardice.”
Diamond laughed thinly. “You really hate me, don’t you?”
“Not at all. You’re not a person, you’re an organization man. One couldn’t hate you as an individual; one could only hate the phylum. At all events, you’re not the sort to evoke such intense emotions as hate. Disgust might be closer to the mark.”
“Still, for all the disdain of your breeding and private education, it is people like me—what you sneeringly call the merchant class—who hire you and send you out to do their dirty work.”
Hel shrugged. “It has always been so. Throughout all history, the merchants have cowered behind the walls of their towns, while the paladins did battle to protect them, in return for which the merchants have always fawned and bowed and played the lickspittle. One cannot really blame them. They are not bred to courage. And, more significantly, you can’t put bravery in the bank.” Hel read the last information card quickly and tossed it on the stack to be refiled later. “All right, Diamond. Now I know who you are and what you are. At least, I know as much about you as I need to, or choose to.”
“I assume your information came from the Gnome?”
“Much of it came from the person you call the Gnome.”
“We would give a great deal to know how that man came by his intelligence.”
“I don’t doubt it. Of course, I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. But the fact is, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“But you do know the identity and location of the Gnome.”
Hel laughed. “Of course I do. But the gentleman and I are old friends.”
“He’s nothing more or less than a blackmailer.”
“Nonsense. He is an artisan in the craft of information. He has never taken money from a man in return for concealing the facts he collects from all over the world.”
“No, but he provides men like you with the information that protects you from punishment by governments, and for that he makes a lot of money.”
“The protection is worth a great deal. But if it will set your mind at rest, the man you call the Gnome is very ill. It is doubtful that he will live out the year.”
“So you will soon be without protection?”
“I shall miss him as a man of wit and charm. But the loss of protection is a matter of little importance to me. I am, as Fat Boy must have informed you, fully retired. Now what do you say we get on with our little business.”
“Before we start, I have a question I want to ask you.”
“I have a question for you as well, but let’s leave that for later. So that we don’t waste time with exposition, allow me to give you the picture in a couple of sentences, and you may correct me if I stray.” Hel leaned against the wall, his face in the shadows and his soft prison voice unmodulated. “We begin with Black Septembrists murdering Israeli athletes in Munich. Among the slain was Asa Stern’s son. Asa Stern vows to have vengeance. He organizes a pitiful little amateur cell to this end—don’t think badly of Mr. Stern for the paucity of this effort; he was a good man, but he was sick and partially drugged. Arab intelligence gets wind of this effort. The Arabs, probably through an OPEC representative, ask the Mother Company to erase this irritant. The Mother Company turns the task over to you, expecting you to use your CIA bully boys to do the job. You learn that the revenge cell—I believe they called themselves the Munich Five—was on its way to London to put the last surviving members of the Munich murder away. CIA arranges a spoiling action in Rome International. By the way, I assume those two fools back in the house were involved in the raid?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re punishing them by making them clean up after themselves?”
“That’s about it.”
“You’re taking the risks, Mr. Diamond, A foolish associate is more dangerous than a clever opponent.”
“That’s my concern.”
“To be sure. All right, your people do a messy and incomplete job in Rome. Actually, you should be grateful they did as well as they did. With a combination of Arab Intelligence and the CIA competence, you’re lucky they didn’t go to the wrong airport. But that, as you have said, is your concern. Somehow, probably when the raid was evaluated in Washington, you discovered that the Israeli boys were not going to London. They carried airline tickets for Pau. You also discovered that one of the cell members, the Miss Stern with whom you just took dinner, had been overlooked by your killers. Your computer was able to relate me to Asa Stern, and the Pau destination nailed it down. Is that it?”
“That roughly is it.”
“All right. So much for catching up. The ball, I believe, is in your court.”
Diamond had not yet decided how he would present his case, what combination of threat and promise would serve to neutralize Nicholai Hel. To gain time, he pointed to a pair of odd-looking pistols with curved handles like old-fashioned dueling weapons and double nine-inch barrels that were slightly flared at the ends.
“What are these?”
“Shotguns, in a way of speaking.”
“Shotguns?”
“Yes. A Dutch industrialist had them made for me. A gift in return for a rather narrow action involving his son who was held captive on a train by Moluccan terrorists. Each gun, as you see, has two hammers which drop simultaneously on special shotgun shells with powerful charges that scatter loads of half-centimeter ball bearings. All the weapons in this room are designed for a particular situation. These are for close work in the dark, or for putting away a roomful of men on the instant of break-in. At two meters from the barrel, they lay down a spread pattern a meter in diameter.” Hel’s bottle-green eyes settled on Diamond. “Do you intend to spend the evening talking about guns?”
“No. I assume that Miss Stern has asked you to help her kill the Septembrists now in London?”
Hel nodded.
“And she took it for granted that you would help, because of your friendship for her uncle?”
“She made that assumption.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I intend to listen to your proposal.”
“My proposal?”
“Isn’t that what merchants do? Make proposals?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a proposal.”
“What would you call it?”
“I would call it a display of deterrent action, partially already on line, partially ready to be brought on line, should you be so foolish as to interfere.”
Hel’s eyes crinkled in a smile that did not include his lips. He made a rolling gesture with his hand, inviting Diamond to get on with it.
“I’ll confess to you that, under different conditions, neither the Mother Company nor the Arab interests we are allied with would care much one way or another what happened to the homicidal maniacs of the PLO. But these are difficult times within the Arab community, and the PLO has become something of a rallying banner, an issue more of public relations than of private taste. For this reason, the Mother Company is committed to their protection. This means that you will not be allowed to interfere with those who intend to hijack that plane in London.”
“How will I be prevented?”
“Do you recall that you used to own several thousand acres of land in Wyoming?”
“I assume the tense is not a matter of grammatical carelessness.”
“That’s right. Part of that land was in Boyle County, the rest in Custer County. If you contact the county clerk offices, you will discover that there exists no record of your having purchased that land. Indeed, the records show that the land in question is now, and has been for many years, in the hands of one of Mother Company’s affiliates. There is some coal under the land, and it is scheduled for strip-mining.”
“Do I understand that if I cooperate with you, the land will be returned to me?”
“Not at all. That land, representing as it does most of what you have saved for your retirement, has been taken from you as a punishment for daring to involve yourself in the affairs of the Mother Company.”
“May I assume you suggested this punishment?”
Diamond tipped his head to the side. “I had that pleasure.”
“You are a vicious little bastard, aren’t you. You’re telling me that if I pull out of this affair, the land will be spared from strip-mining?”
Diamond pushed out his lower lip. “Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t make an arrangement like that. America needs all its natural energy to make it independent from foreign sources.” He smiled at this repetition of the worn party line. “Then too, you can’t put beauty in the bank.”
He was enjoying himself.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Diamond. If you intend to take the land and destroy it, no matter what I do, then what leverage does that give you over my actions?”
“As I said, taking your land was in the nature of a warning shot across your bow. And a punishment.”
“Ah, I see. A personal punishment. From you. For your brother?”
“That’s right.”
“He deserved death, you know. I was tortured for three days. This face of mine is not completely mobile even now, after all the operations.”
“He was my brother! Now, let’s pass on to the sanctions and penalties you will incur, should you fail to cooperate. Under the key group KL443, Code Number 45-389-75, you had approximately one-and-a-half-million dollars in gold bullion in the Federal Bank of Zurich. That represented nearly all the rest of what you intended to retire on. Please note the past tense again.”
Hel was silent for a moment. “The Swiss too need oil.”
“The Swiss need oil too,” Diamond echoed. “That money will reappear in your account seven days after the successful accomplishment of the hijacking by the Septembrists. So you see, far from interrupting their plans and killing some of their number, it would benefit you to do everything in your power to make sure they succeed.”
“And presumably that money serves also as your personal protection.”
“Precisely. Should anything happen to me or my friends while we are your guests, that money disappears, victim of an accounting error.”
Hel was attracted to the sliding doors giving out on his Japanese garden. The rain had come, hissing in the gravel and vibrating the tips of black and silver foliage. “And that is it?”
“Not quite. We are aware that you probably have a couple of hundred thousand here and there as emergency funds. A psychological profile of you from Fat Boy tells us that it is just possible that you may put such things as loyalty to a dead friend and his niece ahead of all considerations of personal benefit. All part of being selectively bred and tutored in Japanese concepts of honor, don’t you know. We are prepared for that foolish eventuality as well. In the first place, the British MI-5 and MI-6 are alerted to keep tabs on you and to arrest you the moment you set foot on their soil. To assist them in this task, the French Internal Security forces are committed to making sure you do not leave this immediate district. Descriptions of you have been distributed. If you are discovered in any village other than your own, you will be shot on sight. Now, I am familiar with your history of accomplishments in the face of improbable odds, and I realize that, for you, these forces we have put on line are more in the nature of nuisances than deterrents. But we are going through the motions nonetheless. The Mother Company must be seen to be doing everything in Her power to protect the London Septembrists. Should that protection fail—and I almost hope it does—then the Mother Company must be seen to mete out punishment—punishment of an intensity that will satisfy our Arab friends. And you know what those people are like. To satisfy their taste for revenge, we would be forced to do something very thorough and very… imaginative.”
Hel was silent for a moment. “I told you at the outset of our chat that I had a question for you, merchant. Here it is. Why did you come here?”
“After dinner.”
Diamond stiffened just perceptibly, then smiled and half-bowed in a gesture he instantly regretted as theatrical. That damned clap of thunder!
Hana refilled glasses and handed around canapés as she guided the conversation in such a way that Darryl Starr was soon addressing her as “Ma’am” and feeling that her interest in Texas and things Texan was a veiled fascination with him; and the PLO trainee called Haman grinned and nodded with each display of concern for his comfort and well-being. Even Diamond soon found himself recounting impressions of the Basque country and feeling both lucid and insightful. All five men rose when Hana excused herself, saying that she had to attend to the young lady who would be dining with them.
There was a palpable silence after she left, and Hel allowed the slight discomfort to lie there, as he watched his guests with distant amusement.
It was Darryl Starr who found a relevant remark to fill the void. “Nice place you got here.”
“Would you like to see the house?” Hel asked.
“Well… no, don’t trouble yourself on my account.”
Hel said a few words aside to Le Cagot, who then crossed to Starr and with gruff bonhomie pulled him from his chair by his arm and offered to show him the garden and the gun room. Starr explained that he was comfortable where he was, thank you, but Le Cagot’s grin was accompanied by painful pressure around the American’s upper arm.
“Indulge my whim in this, my good friend,” he said.
Starr shrugged—as best he could—and went along.
Diamond was disturbed, torn between a desire to control the situation and an impulse, which he recognized to be childish, to demonstrate that his social graces were as sophisticated as Hel’s. He realized that both he and this event were being managed, and he resented it. For something to say, he mentioned, “I see you’re not having anything to drink before dinner, Mr. Hel.”
“That’s true.”
Hel did not intend to give Diamond the comfort of rebounding conversational overtures; he would simply absorb each gesture and leave the chore of initiation constantly with Diamond, who chuckled and said, “I feel I should tell you that your driver is a strange one.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He parked the car out in the village square and we had to walk the rest of the way. I was sure the storm would catch us.”
“I don’t permit automobiles on my grounds.”
“Yes, but after he parked the car, he gave the front door a kick that I’m sure must have dented it.”
Hel frowned and said, “How odd. I’ll have to talk to him about that.”
At this point, Hana and Miss Stern joined the men, the young woman looking refined and desirable in a summer tea dress she had chosen from those Hana had bought for her. Hel watched Hannah closely as she was introduced to the two men, grudgingly admiring her control and ease while confronting the people who had engineered the killing of her comrades in Rome. Hana beckoned her to sit beside her and managed immediately to focus the social attention on her youth and beauty, guiding her in such a way that only Hel could sense traces of the reality vertigo the girl was feeling. At one moment, he caught her eyes and nodded slightly in approval of aplomb. There was some bottom to this girl after all. Perhaps if she were in the company of a woman like Hana for four or five years… who knows?
There was a gruff laugh from the hall and Le Cagot reentered, his arm around Starr’s shoulders. The Texan looked a bit shaken and his hair was tousled, but Le Cagot’s mission was accomplished; the shoulder holster under Starr’s left armpit was now empty.
“I don’t know about you, my friends,” Le Cagot said in his accented English with the overgrowled r of the Francophone who has finally conquered that difficult consonant, “but I am ravenous! Bouffons! I could eat for four!”
The dinner, served by the light of two candelabra on the table and lamps in wall sconces, was not sumptuous, but it was good: trout from the local gave, roebuck with cherry sauce, garden vegetables cooked in the Japanese style, the courses separated by conversation and appropriate ices, finally a salad of greens before dessert of fruit and cheeses. Compatible wines accompanied each entrée and relevé, and the particular problem of game in a fruit sauce was solved by a fine pink wine which, while it could not support the flavors, did not contradict them either. Diamond noted with slight discomfort that Hel and Hana were served only rice and vegetables during the early part of the meal, though they joined the others in salad. Further, although their hostess drank wine with the rest of them, Hel’s glass was little more than moistened with each bottle, so that in total he drank less than a full glass.
“You don’t drink, Mr. Hel?” he asked.
“But I do, as you see. It is only that I don’t find two sips of wine more delicious than one.”
Padding with wines and waxing pseudopoetic in their failure to describe tastes lucidly is an affectation of socially mobile Americans, and Diamond fancied himself something of an authority. He sipped, swilled and examined the pink that accompanied the roebuck, then said, “Ah, there are Tavels, and there are Tavels.”
Hel frowned slightly. “Ah… that’s true, I suppose.”
“But this is a Tavel, isn’t it?”
When Hel shrugged and changed the subject diplomatically, the nape of Diamond’s neck horripilated with embarrassment. He had been so sure it was Tavel.
Throughout dinner, Hel maintained a distant silence, his eyes seldom leaving Diamond, though they appeared to focus slightly behind him. Effortlessly, Hana evoked jokes and stories from each of the guests in turn, and her delight and amusement was such that each felt he had outdone himself in cleverness and charm. Even Starr, who had been withdrawn and petulant after his rough treatment at Le Cagot’s hands, was soon telling Hana of his boyhood in Flatrock, Texas, and of his adventures fighting against the gooks in Korea.
At first Le Cagot attended to the task of filling himself with food. Soon the ends of his wrapped cravat were dangling, and the long swallowtailed coat was cast aside, so by the time he was ready to dominate the party and hold forth at his usual length with vigorous and sometimes bawdy tales, he was down to his spectacular waistcoat with its rhinestone buttons. He was seated next to Hannah, and out of the blue he reached over, placed his big warm hand on her thigh, and gave it a friendly squeeze. “Tell me something in all frankness, beautiful girl. Are you struggling against your desire for me? Or have you given up the struggle? I ask you this only that I may know how best to proceed. In the meantime, eat, eat! You will need your strength. So! You men are from America, eh? Me, I was in America three times. That’s why my English is so good. I could probably pass for an American, eh? From the point of view of accent, I mean.”
“Oh, no doubt of it,” Diamond said. He was beginning to realize how important to such men as Hel and Le Cagot was the heraldry of sheer style, even when faced by enemies, and he wanted to show that be could play any game they could.
“But of course once people saw the clear truth shining in my eyes, and hear the music of my thoughts, the game would be up! They would know I was not an American.”
Hel concealed a slight smile behind a finger.
“You’re hard on Americans,” Diamond said.
“Maybe so,” Le Cagot admitted. “And maybe I am being unjust. We get to see only the dregs of them here: merchants on vacation with their brassy wives, military men with their papier-mâché, gum-chewing women, young people seeking to ‘find themselves,’ and worst of all, academic drudges who manage to convince granting agencies that the world would be improved if they were beshat upon Europe. I sometimes think that America’s major export product is bewildered professors on sabbaticals. Is it true that everyone in the United States over twenty-five years of age has a Ph.D?” Le Cagot had the bit well between his teeth, and he began one of his tales of adventure, based as usual on a real event, but decorated with such improvements upon dull truth as occurred to him as he went along. Secure in the knowledge that Le Cagot would dominate things for many minutes, Hel let his face freeze in a politely amused expression while his mind sorted out and organized the moves that would begin after dinner.
Le Cagot had turned to Diamond. “I am going to shed some light upon history for you, American guest of my friend. Everyone knows that the Basque and the Fascists have been enemies since before the birth of history. But few know the real source of this ancient antipathy. It was our fault, really. I confess it at last. Many years ago, the Basque people gave up the practice of shitting by the roadside, and in doing this we deprived the Falange of its principal source of nourishment. And that is the truth, I swear it by Methuselah’s Wrinkled B—”
“Beñat?” Hana interrupted, indicating the young girl with a nod of her head.
“—by Methuselah’s Wrinkled Brow. What’s wrong with you?” he asked Hana, his eyes moist with hurt “Do you think I have forgotten my manners?”
Hel pushed back his chair and rose. “Mr. Diamond and I have a bit of business to attend to, I suggest you take your cognac on the terrace. You might just have time before the rain comes.”
As they stepped down from the principal hall to the Japanese garden, Hel took Diamond by the arm. “Allow me to guide you; I didn’t think to bring a lantern.”
“Oh? I know about your mystic proximity sense, but I didn’t know you could see in the dark as well.”
“I can’t. But we are on my ground. Perhaps you would be well advised to remember that.”
Hel lighted two spirit lamps in the gun room and gestured Diamond toward a low table on which there was a bottle and glasses. “Serve yourself. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He carried one of the lamps to a bookcase filled with pull drawers of file cards, some two hundred thousand cards in all. “May I assume that Diamond is your real name?”
“It is.”
Hel searched for the proper key card containing all cross references to Diamond. “And your initials are?”
“Jack O.” Diamond smiled to himself as he compared Hel’s crude card file with his own sophisticated information system, Fat Boy. “I didn’t see any reason to use an alias, assuming that you would see a family resemblance between me and my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Don’t you remember my brother?”
“Not offhand.” Hel muttered to himself as he fingered through a drawer of cards. As the information on Hel’s cards was in six languages, the headings were arranged phonetically. “D. D-A, D-AI diphthong, DAI-M… ah, here we are. Diamond, Jack O. Do have a drink, Mr. Diamond. My filing system is a bit cumbersome, and I haven’t been called on to use it since my retirement.”
Diamond was surprised that Hel did not even remember his brother. To cover his temporary confusion, he picked up the bottle and examined the label. “Armagnac?”
“Hm-m-m.” Hel made a mental note of the cross-reference indices and sought those cards. “We’re close to the Armagnac country here. You’ll find that very old and very good. So you are a servant of the Mother Company, are you? I can therefore assume that you already have a good deal of information about me from your computer. You’ll have to give me a moment to catch up with you.”
Diamond carried his glass with him and wandered about the gun room, looking at the uncommon weapons in cases and racks along the walls. Some of these he recognized: the nerve-gas tube, air-driven glass sliver projectors, dry-ice guns, and the like. But others were foreign to him: simple metal disks, a device that seemed to be two short rods of hickory connected by a metal link, a thimblelike cone that slipped over the finger and came to a sharp point. On the table beside the Armagnac bottle he found a small, French-made automatic. “A pretty common sort of weapon among all this exotica,” he said.
Hel glanced up from the card he was reading. “Oh yes, I noticed that when we came in. It’s not mine, actually. It belongs to your man, the bucolic tough from Texas. I thought he might feel more relaxed without it.”
“The thoughtful host.”
“Thank you.” Hel set aside the card he was reading and pulled open another drawer in search of the next “That gun tells us rather a lot. Obviously, you decided not to travel armed because of the nuisance of boarding inspections. So your lad was given the gun after he got here. Its make tells us he received the gun from French police authorities. That means you have them in your pocket.”
Diamond shrugged. “France needs oil too, just like every other industrial country.”
“Yes. Ici on n’a pas d’huile, mais on a des idées.”
“Meaning?”
“Nothing really. Just a slogan from French internal propaganda. So I see here that the Major Diamond from Tokyo was your brother. That’s interesting—mildly interesting, anyway.” Now that he considered it, Hel found a certain resemblance between the two, the narrow face, the intense black eyes set rather close together, the falciform nose, the thin upper lip and heavy, bloodless lower, a certain intensity of manner.
“I thought you would have guessed that when you first heard my name.”
“Actually, I had pretty much forgotten him. After all, our account was settled. So you began working for the Mother Company in the Early Retirement Program, did you? That is certainly consonant with your brother’s career.”
Some years before, the Mother Company had discovered that its executives after the age of fifty began to be notably less productive, just at the time the Company was paying them the most. The problem was presented to Fat Boy, who offered the solution of organizing an Early Retirement Division that would arrange for the accidental demise of a small percentage of such men, usually while on vacation, and usually of apparent stroke or heart attack. The savings to the Company were considerable. Diamond had risen to the head of this division before being promoted to conducting Mother Company’s control over CIA and NSA.
“…so it appears that both you and your brother found a way to combine native sadism with the comforting fringe benefits of working for big business, he for the army and CIA, you for the oil combines. Both products of the American Dream, the mercantile mumpsimus. Just bright young men trying to get ahead.”
“But at least neither of us ended up as hired killers.”
“Rubbish. Any man is a killer who works for a company that pollutes, strip-mines, and contaminates the air and water. The fact that you and your unlamented brother killed from institutional and patriotic ambush doesn’t mean you’re not killers—it only means you’re cowards.”
“You think a coward would walk into your lair as I have done?”
“A certain kind of coward would. A coward who was afraid of his cowardice.”
Diamond laughed thinly. “You really hate me, don’t you?”
“Not at all. You’re not a person, you’re an organization man. One couldn’t hate you as an individual; one could only hate the phylum. At all events, you’re not the sort to evoke such intense emotions as hate. Disgust might be closer to the mark.”
“Still, for all the disdain of your breeding and private education, it is people like me—what you sneeringly call the merchant class—who hire you and send you out to do their dirty work.”
Hel shrugged. “It has always been so. Throughout all history, the merchants have cowered behind the walls of their towns, while the paladins did battle to protect them, in return for which the merchants have always fawned and bowed and played the lickspittle. One cannot really blame them. They are not bred to courage. And, more significantly, you can’t put bravery in the bank.” Hel read the last information card quickly and tossed it on the stack to be refiled later. “All right, Diamond. Now I know who you are and what you are. At least, I know as much about you as I need to, or choose to.”
“I assume your information came from the Gnome?”
“Much of it came from the person you call the Gnome.”
“We would give a great deal to know how that man came by his intelligence.”
“I don’t doubt it. Of course, I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. But the fact is, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“But you do know the identity and location of the Gnome.”
Hel laughed. “Of course I do. But the gentleman and I are old friends.”
“He’s nothing more or less than a blackmailer.”
“Nonsense. He is an artisan in the craft of information. He has never taken money from a man in return for concealing the facts he collects from all over the world.”
“No, but he provides men like you with the information that protects you from punishment by governments, and for that he makes a lot of money.”
“The protection is worth a great deal. But if it will set your mind at rest, the man you call the Gnome is very ill. It is doubtful that he will live out the year.”
“So you will soon be without protection?”
“I shall miss him as a man of wit and charm. But the loss of protection is a matter of little importance to me. I am, as Fat Boy must have informed you, fully retired. Now what do you say we get on with our little business.”
“Before we start, I have a question I want to ask you.”
“I have a question for you as well, but let’s leave that for later. So that we don’t waste time with exposition, allow me to give you the picture in a couple of sentences, and you may correct me if I stray.” Hel leaned against the wall, his face in the shadows and his soft prison voice unmodulated. “We begin with Black Septembrists murdering Israeli athletes in Munich. Among the slain was Asa Stern’s son. Asa Stern vows to have vengeance. He organizes a pitiful little amateur cell to this end—don’t think badly of Mr. Stern for the paucity of this effort; he was a good man, but he was sick and partially drugged. Arab intelligence gets wind of this effort. The Arabs, probably through an OPEC representative, ask the Mother Company to erase this irritant. The Mother Company turns the task over to you, expecting you to use your CIA bully boys to do the job. You learn that the revenge cell—I believe they called themselves the Munich Five—was on its way to London to put the last surviving members of the Munich murder away. CIA arranges a spoiling action in Rome International. By the way, I assume those two fools back in the house were involved in the raid?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re punishing them by making them clean up after themselves?”
“That’s about it.”
“You’re taking the risks, Mr. Diamond, A foolish associate is more dangerous than a clever opponent.”
“That’s my concern.”
“To be sure. All right, your people do a messy and incomplete job in Rome. Actually, you should be grateful they did as well as they did. With a combination of Arab Intelligence and the CIA competence, you’re lucky they didn’t go to the wrong airport. But that, as you have said, is your concern. Somehow, probably when the raid was evaluated in Washington, you discovered that the Israeli boys were not going to London. They carried airline tickets for Pau. You also discovered that one of the cell members, the Miss Stern with whom you just took dinner, had been overlooked by your killers. Your computer was able to relate me to Asa Stern, and the Pau destination nailed it down. Is that it?”
“That roughly is it.”
“All right. So much for catching up. The ball, I believe, is in your court.”
Diamond had not yet decided how he would present his case, what combination of threat and promise would serve to neutralize Nicholai Hel. To gain time, he pointed to a pair of odd-looking pistols with curved handles like old-fashioned dueling weapons and double nine-inch barrels that were slightly flared at the ends.
“What are these?”
“Shotguns, in a way of speaking.”
“Shotguns?”
“Yes. A Dutch industrialist had them made for me. A gift in return for a rather narrow action involving his son who was held captive on a train by Moluccan terrorists. Each gun, as you see, has two hammers which drop simultaneously on special shotgun shells with powerful charges that scatter loads of half-centimeter ball bearings. All the weapons in this room are designed for a particular situation. These are for close work in the dark, or for putting away a roomful of men on the instant of break-in. At two meters from the barrel, they lay down a spread pattern a meter in diameter.” Hel’s bottle-green eyes settled on Diamond. “Do you intend to spend the evening talking about guns?”
“No. I assume that Miss Stern has asked you to help her kill the Septembrists now in London?”
Hel nodded.
“And she took it for granted that you would help, because of your friendship for her uncle?”
“She made that assumption.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I intend to listen to your proposal.”
“My proposal?”
“Isn’t that what merchants do? Make proposals?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a proposal.”
“What would you call it?”
“I would call it a display of deterrent action, partially already on line, partially ready to be brought on line, should you be so foolish as to interfere.”
Hel’s eyes crinkled in a smile that did not include his lips. He made a rolling gesture with his hand, inviting Diamond to get on with it.
“I’ll confess to you that, under different conditions, neither the Mother Company nor the Arab interests we are allied with would care much one way or another what happened to the homicidal maniacs of the PLO. But these are difficult times within the Arab community, and the PLO has become something of a rallying banner, an issue more of public relations than of private taste. For this reason, the Mother Company is committed to their protection. This means that you will not be allowed to interfere with those who intend to hijack that plane in London.”
“How will I be prevented?”
“Do you recall that you used to own several thousand acres of land in Wyoming?”
“I assume the tense is not a matter of grammatical carelessness.”
“That’s right. Part of that land was in Boyle County, the rest in Custer County. If you contact the county clerk offices, you will discover that there exists no record of your having purchased that land. Indeed, the records show that the land in question is now, and has been for many years, in the hands of one of Mother Company’s affiliates. There is some coal under the land, and it is scheduled for strip-mining.”
“Do I understand that if I cooperate with you, the land will be returned to me?”
“Not at all. That land, representing as it does most of what you have saved for your retirement, has been taken from you as a punishment for daring to involve yourself in the affairs of the Mother Company.”
“May I assume you suggested this punishment?”
Diamond tipped his head to the side. “I had that pleasure.”
“You are a vicious little bastard, aren’t you. You’re telling me that if I pull out of this affair, the land will be spared from strip-mining?”
Diamond pushed out his lower lip. “Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t make an arrangement like that. America needs all its natural energy to make it independent from foreign sources.” He smiled at this repetition of the worn party line. “Then too, you can’t put beauty in the bank.”
He was enjoying himself.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Diamond. If you intend to take the land and destroy it, no matter what I do, then what leverage does that give you over my actions?”
“As I said, taking your land was in the nature of a warning shot across your bow. And a punishment.”
“Ah, I see. A personal punishment. From you. For your brother?”
“That’s right.”
“He deserved death, you know. I was tortured for three days. This face of mine is not completely mobile even now, after all the operations.”
“He was my brother! Now, let’s pass on to the sanctions and penalties you will incur, should you fail to cooperate. Under the key group KL443, Code Number 45-389-75, you had approximately one-and-a-half-million dollars in gold bullion in the Federal Bank of Zurich. That represented nearly all the rest of what you intended to retire on. Please note the past tense again.”
Hel was silent for a moment. “The Swiss too need oil.”
“The Swiss need oil too,” Diamond echoed. “That money will reappear in your account seven days after the successful accomplishment of the hijacking by the Septembrists. So you see, far from interrupting their plans and killing some of their number, it would benefit you to do everything in your power to make sure they succeed.”
“And presumably that money serves also as your personal protection.”
“Precisely. Should anything happen to me or my friends while we are your guests, that money disappears, victim of an accounting error.”
Hel was attracted to the sliding doors giving out on his Japanese garden. The rain had come, hissing in the gravel and vibrating the tips of black and silver foliage. “And that is it?”
“Not quite. We are aware that you probably have a couple of hundred thousand here and there as emergency funds. A psychological profile of you from Fat Boy tells us that it is just possible that you may put such things as loyalty to a dead friend and his niece ahead of all considerations of personal benefit. All part of being selectively bred and tutored in Japanese concepts of honor, don’t you know. We are prepared for that foolish eventuality as well. In the first place, the British MI-5 and MI-6 are alerted to keep tabs on you and to arrest you the moment you set foot on their soil. To assist them in this task, the French Internal Security forces are committed to making sure you do not leave this immediate district. Descriptions of you have been distributed. If you are discovered in any village other than your own, you will be shot on sight. Now, I am familiar with your history of accomplishments in the face of improbable odds, and I realize that, for you, these forces we have put on line are more in the nature of nuisances than deterrents. But we are going through the motions nonetheless. The Mother Company must be seen to be doing everything in Her power to protect the London Septembrists. Should that protection fail—and I almost hope it does—then the Mother Company must be seen to mete out punishment—punishment of an intensity that will satisfy our Arab friends. And you know what those people are like. To satisfy their taste for revenge, we would be forced to do something very thorough and very… imaginative.”
Hel was silent for a moment. “I told you at the outset of our chat that I had a question for you, merchant. Here it is. Why did you come here?”