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“Can it be arranged? Do… I can’t think of an old saying for it just now. Yes, it can be arranged. This is like the old days, eh?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You’re taking me with you, of course.”
“No. It’s not your kind of thing.”
“Holà! Don’t let the gray in my beard fool you. A boy lives inside this body! A very mean boy!”
“It’s not that. If this were breaking into a prison or blowing away a guardpost, there is no one I’d rather have with me. But this won’t be a matter of courage. It must be done by craft.”
As was his custom when in the open air, Le Cagot had turned aside and unbuttoned his trousers to relieve himself as he talked. “You don’t think I am capable of craft? I am subtlety itself! Like the chameleon, I blend with all backgrounds!”
Hel could not help smiling. This self-created folk myth standing before him, resplendent in rumpled fin-de-siècle evening clothes, the rhinestone buttons of his brocade waistcoat sparkling in the sun, his beret tugged low over his sunglasses, his rust-and-steel beard covering a silk cravat, the battered old makila under his arm as he held his penis in one hand and sprayed urine back and forth like a schoolboy—this man was laying claim to being subtle and inconspicuous.
“No, I don’t want you to come with me, Beñat. You can help most by making the arrangements I asked for.”
“And after that? What do I do while you are off amusing yourself? Pray and twiddle my thumbs?”
“I’ll tell you what. While I’m gone, you can press on with preparations for the exploration of your cave. Get the rest of the gear we need down into the hole. Wet suits. Air tanks. When I get back, we’ll take a shot at exploring it from light to light. How’s that?”
“It’s better than nothing. But not much.”
A serving girl came from the house to tell Hel that he was wanted in the château.
He found Hana standing with the telephone in the butler’s pantry, blocking the mouthpiece with her palm. “It is Mr. Diamond returning your call to the United States.”
Hel looked at the phone, then glanced down to the floor. “Tell him I’ll get back to him soon.”
They had finished supper in the tatami ’d room, and now they were watching the evening permutations of shifting shadow through the garden. He had told her that he would be away for about a week.
“Does this have to do with Hannah?”
“Yes.” He saw no reason to tell her the girl was dead.
After a silence, she said, “When you get back, it will be close to the end of my stay with you.”
“I know. By then you’ll have to decide if you’re interested in continuing our life together.”
“I know.” She lowered her eyes and, for the first time he could remember, her cheeks colored with the hint of a blush. “Nikko? Would it be too silly for us to consider becoming married?”
“Married?”
“Never mind. Just a silly thought that wandered through my mind. I don’t believe I would want it anyway.” She had touched on the idea gingerly and had fled instantly from his first reaction.
For several minutes, he was deep in thought. “No, it’s not all that silly. If you decide to give me years of your life, then of course we should do something to assure your economic future. Let’s talk about it when I return.”
“I could never mention it again.”
“I realize that, Hana. But I could.”
Part Four
St. Jean de Luz/Biarritz
Heathrow
Middle Bumley
“I’m afraid so.”
“You’re taking me with you, of course.”
“No. It’s not your kind of thing.”
“Holà! Don’t let the gray in my beard fool you. A boy lives inside this body! A very mean boy!”
“It’s not that. If this were breaking into a prison or blowing away a guardpost, there is no one I’d rather have with me. But this won’t be a matter of courage. It must be done by craft.”
As was his custom when in the open air, Le Cagot had turned aside and unbuttoned his trousers to relieve himself as he talked. “You don’t think I am capable of craft? I am subtlety itself! Like the chameleon, I blend with all backgrounds!”
Hel could not help smiling. This self-created folk myth standing before him, resplendent in rumpled fin-de-siècle evening clothes, the rhinestone buttons of his brocade waistcoat sparkling in the sun, his beret tugged low over his sunglasses, his rust-and-steel beard covering a silk cravat, the battered old makila under his arm as he held his penis in one hand and sprayed urine back and forth like a schoolboy—this man was laying claim to being subtle and inconspicuous.
“No, I don’t want you to come with me, Beñat. You can help most by making the arrangements I asked for.”
“And after that? What do I do while you are off amusing yourself? Pray and twiddle my thumbs?”
“I’ll tell you what. While I’m gone, you can press on with preparations for the exploration of your cave. Get the rest of the gear we need down into the hole. Wet suits. Air tanks. When I get back, we’ll take a shot at exploring it from light to light. How’s that?”
“It’s better than nothing. But not much.”
A serving girl came from the house to tell Hel that he was wanted in the château.
He found Hana standing with the telephone in the butler’s pantry, blocking the mouthpiece with her palm. “It is Mr. Diamond returning your call to the United States.”
Hel looked at the phone, then glanced down to the floor. “Tell him I’ll get back to him soon.”
* * *
They had finished supper in the tatami ’d room, and now they were watching the evening permutations of shifting shadow through the garden. He had told her that he would be away for about a week.
“Does this have to do with Hannah?”
“Yes.” He saw no reason to tell her the girl was dead.
After a silence, she said, “When you get back, it will be close to the end of my stay with you.”
“I know. By then you’ll have to decide if you’re interested in continuing our life together.”
“I know.” She lowered her eyes and, for the first time he could remember, her cheeks colored with the hint of a blush. “Nikko? Would it be too silly for us to consider becoming married?”
“Married?”
“Never mind. Just a silly thought that wandered through my mind. I don’t believe I would want it anyway.” She had touched on the idea gingerly and had fled instantly from his first reaction.
For several minutes, he was deep in thought. “No, it’s not all that silly. If you decide to give me years of your life, then of course we should do something to assure your economic future. Let’s talk about it when I return.”
“I could never mention it again.”
“I realize that, Hana. But I could.”
Part Four
Uttegae
St. Jean de Luz/Biarritz
The open fi shing boat plowed the ripple path of the setting moon, quicksilver on the sea, like an effect from the brush of a kitsch watercolorist. The diesel motor chugged bronchially and gasped as it was turned off. The bow skewed when the boat crunched up on the pebble beach. Hel slipped over the side and stood kneedeep in the surging tide, his duffel bag on his shoulder. A wave of his hand was answered by a blurred motion from the boat, and he waded toward the deserted shore, his canvas pants heavy with water, his rope-soled espadrilles digging into the sand. The motor coughed and began its rhythmic thunking, as the boat made its way out to sea, along the matte-black shore toward Spain.
From the brow of a dune, he could see the lights of cafés and bars around the small harbor of St. Jean de Luz, where fishing boats heaved sleepily on the oily water of the docking slips. He shifted the weight of the duffel and made for the Café of the Whale, to confirm a telegraph order he had made for dinner. The owner of the café had been a master chef in Paris, before retiring back to his home village. He enjoyed displaying his prowess occasionally, particularly when M. Hel granted him carte blanche as regards menu and expense. The dinner was to be prepared and served in the home of Monsieur de Lhandes, the “fine little gentleman” who lived in an old mansion down the shore, and who was never to be seen in the streets of St. Jean de Luz because his physiognomy would cause comment, and perhaps ridicule, from ill-brought-up children. M. de Lhandes was a midget, little more than a meter tall, though he was over sixty years old.
Hel’s tap at the back door brought Mademoiselle Pinard to peer cautiously through the curtain, then a broad smile cracked her face, and she opened the door wide. “Ah, Monsieur Hel! Welcome. It has been too long since last we saw you! Come in, come in! Ah, you are wet! Monsieur de Lhandes is so looking forward to your dinner.”
“I don’t want to drip on your floor, Mademoiselle Pinard. May I take off my pants?”
Mademoiselle Pinard blushed and slapped at his shoulder with delight. “Oh, Monsieur Hel! Is this any way to speak? Oh, men!” In obedience to their established routine of chaste flirtation, she was both flustered and delighted. Mademoiselle Pinard was somewhat older than fifty—she had always been somewhat older than fifty. Tall and sere, with dry nervous hands and an unlubricated walk, she had a face too long for her tiny eyes and thin mouth, so rather a lot of it was devoted to forehead and chin. If there had been more character in her face, she would have been ugly; as it was, she was only plain. Mademoiselle Pinard was the mold from which virgins are made, and her redoubtable virtue was in no way lessened by the fact that she had been Bernard de Lhandes’s companion, nurse, and mistress for thirty years. She was the kind of woman who said “Zut!” or “Ma foi!” when exasperated beyond the control of good taste.
As she showed him to the room that was always his when he visited, she said in a low voice, “Monsieur de Lhandes is not well, you know. I am delighted that he will have your company this evening, but you must be very careful. He is close to God. Weeks, months only, the doctor tells me.”
“I’ll be careful, darling. Here we are. Do you want to come in while I change my clothes?”
“Oh, Monsieur!”
Hel shrugged. “Ah well. But one day, your barriers will fall, Mademoiselle Pinard. And then… Ah, then…”
“Monster! And Monsieur de Lhandes your good friend! Men!”
“We are victims of our appetites, Mademoiselle. Helpless victims. Tell me, is dinner ready?”
“The chef and his assistants have been cluttering up the kitchen all day. Everything is in readiness.”
“Then I’ll see you at dinner, and we’ll satisfy our appetites together.”
“Oh, Monsieur!”
They took dinner in the largest room of the house, one lined with shelves on which books were stacked and piled in a disarray that was evidence of de Lhandes’s passion for learning. Since he considered it outrageous to read and eat at the same time—diluting one of his passions with the other—de Lhandes had struck on the idea of combining library and dining room, the long refectory table serving both functions. They sat at one end of this table, Bernard de Lhandes at the head, Hel to his right. Mademoiselle Pinard to his left. Like most of the furniture, the table and chairs had been cut down and were somewhat too big for de Lhandes and somewhat too small for his rare guests. Such, de Lhandes had once told Hel, was the nature of compromise: a condition that satisfied no one, but left each with the comforting feeling that others had been done in too.
Dinner was nearly over, and they were resting and chatting between courses. There had been Neva caviar with blinis, still hot on their napkins, St. Germain Royal (de Lhandes found a hint too much mint), suprême de sole au Château Yquem, quail under the ashes (de Lhandes mentioned that walnut would have been a better wood for the log fire, but he could accept the flavor imparted by oak cinders), rack of baby lamb Edward VII (de Lhandes regretted that it was not cold enough, but he realized that Hel’s arrangements were spur of the moment), riz à la grècque (the bit too much red pepper de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s place of birth), morels (the bit too little lemon juice de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s personality), Florentine artichoke bottoms (the gross unbalance between gruyère and parmesan in the mornay sauce de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s perversity, for the error had been mentioned before), and Danicheff salad (which de Lhandes found perfect, to his slight annoyance).
From each of these dishes, de Lhandes took the smallest morsel that would still allow him to have all the flavors in his mouth at once. His heart, liver, and digestive system were such a ruin that his doctor restricted him to the blandest of foods. Hel, from dietary habit, ate very little. Mademoiselle Pinard’s appetite was good, though her concept of exquisite table manners involved taking minute bites and chewing them protractedly with circular, leporine motions confined to the very front of her mouth, where her napkin often and daintily went to brush thin lips. One of the reasons the chef of the Café of the Whale enjoyed doing these occasional suppers for Hel was the great feast his family and friends always enjoyed later that same night.
“It’s appalling how little we eat, Nicholai,” de Lhandes said in his surprisingly deep voice. “You with your monk’s attitude toward food, and I with my ravished constitution! Picking about like this. I feel like a rich ten-year-old in a luxurious bordello!”
Mademoiselle Pinard went behind her napkin for a moment.
“And these thimblesful of wine!” de Lhandes complained. “Ah, that I have descended to this! A man who, through knowledge and money, converted gluttony into a major art! Fate is either ironic or just, I don’t know which. But look at me! Eating as though I were a bloodless nun doing penance for her daydreams about the young curé!”
The napkin concealed Mademoiselle Pinard’s blush.
“How sick are you, old friend?” Hel asked. Honesty was common currency between them.
“I am finally sick. This heart of mine is more a sponge than a pump. I have been in retirement for—what? Five years now? And for four of them I have been of no use to dear Mademoiselle Pinard—save as an observer, of course.”
The napkin.
The meal ended with a bombe, fruit, glacés variées —no brandies or digestifs —and Mademoiselle Pinard retired to allow the men to chat.
De Lhandes slid down from his chair and made his way to the fireside, stopping for breath twice, where he occupied a low chair that nevertheless left his feet straight out before him.
“All chairs are chaises longues for me, my friend.” He laughed. “All right, what can I do for you?”
“I need help.”
“Of course. Good comrades though we are, you would not come by boat in the dead of night for the sole purpose of disgracing a supper by picking at it. You know that I have been out of the information business for several years, but I have orts and bits left from the old days, and I shall help you if I can.”
“I should tell you that they have got my money. I won’t be able to pay you immediately.”
De Lhandes waved a dismissing hand. “I’ll send you a bill from hell. You’ll recognize it by the singed edges. Is it a person, or a government?”
“Government. I have to get into England. They’ll be waiting for me. The affair is very heavy, so my leverage will have to be strong.”
De Lhandes sighed. “Ah, my. If only it were America. I have something on America that would make the Statue of Liberty lie back and spread her knees. But England? No one thing. Fragments and scraps. Some nasty enough, to be sure, but no one big thing.”
“What sort of things have you?”
“Oh, the usual. Homosexuality in the foreign office…”
“That’s not news.”
“At this level, it’s interesting. And I have photographs. There are few things so ludicrous as the postures a man assumes while making love. Particularly if he is no longer young. And what else have I? Ah… a bit of rambunctiousness in the royal family? The usual political peccadillos and payoffs? A blocked inquiry into that flying accident that cost the life of… you remember.” De Lhandes looked to the ceiling to recall what was in his files. “Oh, there’s evidence that the embrace between the Arab oil interests and the City is more intimate than is generally known. And there’s a lot of individual stuff on government people—fiscal and sexual irregularities mostly. You’re absolutely sure you don’t want something on the United States? I have a real bell ringer there. It’s an unsalable item. Too big for almost any use. It would be like opening an egg with a sledge hammer.”
“No, it has to be English. I haven’t time to set up indirect pressure from Washington to London.”
“Hm-m-m. Tell you what. Why don’t you take the whole lot? Arrange to have it published, one shot right after the other. Scandal after scandal eroding the edifice of confidence—you know the sort of thing. No single arrow strong enough alone, but in fascine… who knows? It’s the best I can offer.”
“Then it will have to do. Set it up the usual way? I bring photocopies with me? We arrange a ‘button-down’ trigger system with the German magazines as primary receivers?”
“It’s not failed yet. You’re sure you don’t want the Statue of Liberty’s brazen hymen?”
“Can’t think of what I’d do with it.”
“Ah well, painful image at best. Well… can you spend the night with us?”
“If I may. I fly out of Biarritz tomorrow at noon, and I have to lie low. The locals have a bounty on me.”
“Pity. They ought to protect you as the last surviving member of your species. You know, I’ve been thinking about you lately, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. Not often, to be sure, but with some intensity. Not often, because when you get to the bang or whimper moment of life, you don’t spend much time contemplating the minor characters of your personal farce. And one of the difficult things for egocentric Man to face is that he is a minor character in every biography but his own. I am a bit player in your life; you in mine. We have known one another for more than twenty years but, discounting business (and one must always discount business), we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another’s minds and emotions. I have known you, Nicholai, for half a day. Actually, that’s not bad. Most good friends and married couples (those are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles. So… I’ve known you for half a day, my friend, and I have come to love you. I think very highly of myself for having accomplished that, as you are not an easy man to love. Admire? Yes, of course. Respect? If fear is a part of respect, then of course. But love? Ah, that’s a different business. Because there is in love an urge to forgive, and you’re a hard man to forgive. Half saintly ascetic, half Vandal marauder, you don’t make yourself available for forgiveness. In one persona, you are above forgiveness; in another, beneath it. And always resentful of it. One has the feeling that you would never forgive a man for forgiving you. (That probably doesn’t mean much, but it rolls well off the tongue, and a song must have music as well as words.) And after my twelve hours of knowing you, I would capsulize you—reduce you to a definition—by calling you a medieval antihero.”
Hel smiled. “Medieval antihero? What on earth does that mean?”
“Who has the floor now, you or I? Let’s have a little silent respect for the dying. It’s part of your being Japanese—culturally Japanese, that is. Only in Japan was the classical moment simultaneous with the medieval. In the West, philosophy, art, political and social ideal, all are identified with periods before or after the medieval moment, the single exception being that glorious stone bridge to God, the cathedral. Only in Japan was the feudal moment also the philosophic moment. We of the West are comfortable with the image of the warrior priest, or the warrior scientist, even the warrior industrialist. But the warrior philosopher? No, that concept irritates our sense of propriety. We speak of ‘death and violence’ as though they were two manifestations of the same impulse. In fact, death is the very opposite of violence, which is always concerned with the struggle for life. Our philosophy is focused on managing life; yours on managing death. We seek comprehension; you seek dignity. We learn how to grasp; you learn how to let go. Even the label ‘philosopher’ is misleading, as our philosophers have always been animated by the urge to share (indeed, inflict) their insights; while your lot are content (perhaps selfishly) to make your separate and private peace. To the Westerner, there is something disturbingly feminine (in the sense of yang-ish, if that coinage doesn’t offend your ear) in your view of manhood. Fresh from the battlefield, you don soft robes and stroll through your gardens with admiring compassion for the falling cherry petal; and you view both the gentleness and the courage as manifestations of manhood. To us, that seems capricious at least, if not two-faced. By the way, how does your garden grow?”
“It’s becoming.”
“Meaning?”
“Each year it is simpler.”
“There! You see? That goddamned Japanese penchant for paradoxes that turn out to be syllogisms! Look at yourself. A warrior gardener! You are indeed a medieval Japanese, as I said. And you are also an antihero—not in the sense in which critics and scholars lusting for letters to dangle after their names use (misuse) the term. What they call antiheroes are really unlikely heroes, or attractive villains—the fat cop or Richard III. The true antihero is a version of the hero—not a clown with a principal role, not an audience member permitted to work out his violent fantasies. Like the classic hero, the antihero leads the mass toward salvation. There was a time in the comedy of human development when salvation seemed to lie in the direction of order and organization, and all the great Western heroes organized and directed their followers against the enemy: chaos. Now we are learning that the final enemy is not chaos, but organization; not divergence, but similarity; not primativism, but progress. And the new hero—the antihero—is one who makes a virtue of attacking the organization, of destroying the systems. We realize now that salvation of the race lies in that nihilist direction, but we still don’t know how far.” De Lhandes paused to catch his breath, then seemed to be ready to continue. But his glance suddenly crossed Hel’s, and he laughed. “Oh, well. Let that be enough. I wasn’t really speaking to you anyway.”
“I’ve been aware of that for some time.”
“It is a convention in Western tragedy that a man is permitted one long speech before he dies. Once he has stepped on the inevitable machinery of fate that will carry him to his bathetic denouement, nothing he can say or do will alter his lot. But he is permitted to make his case, to bitch at length against the gods—even in iambic pentameter.”
“Even if doing so interrupts the flow of the narrative?”
“To hell with it! For two hours of narcosis against reality, of safe, vicarious participation in the world of action and death, one should be willing to pay the price of a couple minutes worth of insight. Structurally sound or not. But have it your way. All right. Tell me, do the governments still remember ‘the Gnome’? And do they still scratch the earth trying to find his lair, and gnash their teeth in frustrated fury?”
“They do indeed, Maurice. Just the other day there was an Amérlo scab at home asking about you. He would have given his genitals to know how you came by your information.”
“Would he indeed? Being an Amérlo, he probably wasn’t risking much. And what did you tell him?”
“I told him everything I knew.”
“Meaning nothing at all. Good. Candor is a virtue. You know, I really don’t have any very subtle or complicated sources of information. In fact, the Mother Company and I are nourished by the same data. I have access to Fat Boy through the purchased services of one of their senior computer slaves, a man named Llewellyn. My skill lies in being able to put two and two together better than they can. Or, to be more precise, I am able to add one and a half plus one and two thirds in such a way as to make ten. I am not better informed than they; I am simply smarter.”
Hel laughed. “They would give almost anything to locate and silence you. You’ve been bamboo under their fingernails for a long time.”
“Ha, that knowledge brightens my last days, Nicholai. Being a nuisance to the government lackeys has made my life worth living. And a precarious living it has been. When you trade in information, you carry stock that has very short shelf life. Unlike brandy, information cheapens with age. Nothing is duller than yesterday’s sins. And sometimes I used to acquire expensive pieces, only to have them ruined by leakage. I remember buying a very hot item from the United States: what in time became known as the Watergate Cover-up. And while I was holding the merchandise on my shelf, waiting for you or some other international to purchase it as leverage against the American government, a pair of ambitious reporters sniffed the story out and saw in it a chance to make their fortunes—and voilà! The material was overnight useless to me. In time, each of the criminals wrote a book or did a television program describing his part in the rape of American civil rights, and each was paid lavishly by the stupid American public, which seems to have a peculiar impulse toward having their noses rubbed in their own shit. Doesn’t it seem unjust to you that I should end up losing several hundred thousand worth of spoiled stock on my shelves, while even the master villain himself makes a fortune doing television shows with that British leech who has shown that he would sniff up to anybody for money, even Idi Amin? It’s a peculiar one, this trade I’m in.”
“Have you been an information broker all your life, Maurice?”
“Except for a short stint as a professional basketball player.”
“Old fool!”
“Listen, let us be serious for a moment. You described this thing you’re doing as hard. I wouldn’t presume to advise you, but have you considered the fact that you’ve been in retirement for a time? Is your mental conditioning still taut?”
“Reasonably. I do a lot of caving, so fear doesn’t clog my mind too much. And, fortunately, I’ll be up against the British.”
“That’s an advantage, to be sure. The MI-5 and —6 boys have a tradition of being so subtle that their fakes go unnoticed. And yet… There is something wrong with this affair, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. There’s something in your tone that disturbs me. Not quite doubt, but a certain dangerous fatalism. Have you decided that you are going to fail?”
Hel was silent for a time. “You’re very perceptive, Maurice.”
“C’est mon métier.”
“I know. There is something wrong—something untidy—about all this. I recognize that to come back out of retirement I am challenging karma. I think that, ultimately, this business will put me away. Not the task at hand. I imagine that I can relieve these Septembrists of the burden of their lives easily enough. The complications and the dangers will be ones I have dealt with before. But after that, the business gets tacky. There will be an effort to punish me. I may accept the punishment, or I may not. If I do not, then I shall have to go into the field again. I sense a certain—” He shrugged, “—a certain emotional fatigue. Not exactly fatalistic resignation, but a kind of dangerous indifference. It is possible, if the indignities pile up, that I shall see no particular reason to cling to life.”
De Lhandes nodded. It was this kind of attitude that he had sensed. “I see. Permit me to suggest something, old friend. You say that the governments do me the honor of still being hungry for my death. They would give a lot to know who and where I am. If you get into a tight spot, you have my permission to bargain with that information.”
“Maurice!—”
“No, no! I am not suffering from a bout of quixotic courage. I’m too old to contract such a childhood disease. It would be our final joke on them. You see, you would be giving them an empty bag. By the time they get here, I shall have departed.”
“Thank you, but I couldn’t do it. Not on your account, but on mine.” Hel rose. “Well, I have to get some sleep. The next twenty-four hours will be trying. Mostly mind play, without the refreshment of physical danger. I’ll be leaving before first light.”
“Very well. For myself, I think I shall sit up for a few more hours and review the delights of an evil life.”
“All right. Au revoir, old friend.”
“Not au revoir, Nicholai.”
“It is that close?”
De Lhandes nodded.
Hel leaned over and kissed his comrade on both cheeks. “Adieu, Maurice.”
“Adieu, Nicholai.”
Hel was caught at the door by, “Oh, Nicholai, would you do something for me?”
“Anything.”
“Estelle has been wonderful to me these last years. Did you know her name was Estelle?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, I want to do something special for her—a kind of going-away present. Would you drop by her room? Second at the head of the stairs. And afterward, tell her it was a gift from me.”
Hel nodded. “It will be my pleasure, Maurice.”
De Lhandes was looking into the fading fire. “Hers too, let us hope,” he muttered.
Hel timed his arrival at the Biarritz airport to minimize the period he would have to stand out in the open. He had always disliked Biarritz, which is Basque only in geography; the Germans, the English, and the international smart set having perverted it into a kind of Brighton on Biscay.
He was not five minutes in the terminal before his proximity sense intercepted the direct and intense observation he had expected, knowing they would be looking for him at all points of departure. He lounged against the counter of the bar where he was taking a jus d’ananas and lightly scanned the crowd. Immediately, he picked up the young French Special Services officer in civilian clothes and sunglasses. Pushing himself off me bar, he walked directly toward the man, feeling as he approached the lad’s tension and confusion.
“Edxuse me, sir,” Hel said in a French larded with German accent. “I have just arrived, and I cannot discover how to make my connection to Lourdes. Could you assist me?”
The young policeman scanned Hel’s face uncertainly. This man filled the general description, save for the eyes, which were dark-brown. (Hel was wearing noncorrective brown contact lenses.) But there was nothing in the description about his being German. And he was supposed to be leaving the country, not entering it. In a few brusque words, the police agent directed Hel to the information office.
As he walked away, Hel felt the agent’s gaze fixed on him, but the quality of the concentration was muffled by confusion. He would, of course, report the spotting, but without much certainty. And the central offices would at this moment be receiving reports of Hel’s appearance in half a dozen cities at the same time. Le Cagot was seeing to that.
As Hel crossed the waiting room a towheaded boy ran into his legs. He caught up the child to keep him from falling.
“Rodney! Oh, I am sorry, sir.” The good-looking woman in her late twenties was on the scene in an instant, apologizing to Hel and admonishing the child all at the same time. She was British and dressed in a light summer frock designed to reveal not only her suntan, but the places she had not suntanned. In a babble of that brutally mispronounced French resulting from the Britisher’s assumption that if foreigners had anything worth saying they would say it in a real language, the young woman managed to mention that the boy was her nephew, that she was returning with him from a short vacation, and that she was taking the next flight for England, that she herself was unmarried, and that her name was Alison Browne, with an e.
“My name is Nicholai Helm.”
“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Hel.”
That was it. She had not heard the m because she was prepared not to. She would be a British agent, covering the action of the French.
Hel said he hoped they would be sitting together on the plane, and she smiled seductively and said that she would be willing to speak to the ticket agent about that. He offered to purchase a fruit juice for her and little Rodney, and she accepted, not failing to mention that she did not usually accept such offers from strange men, but this was an exception. They had, after all, quite literally run into one another. (Giggle.)
While she was busy dabbing her handkerchief at Rodney’s juice-stained collar, leaning forward and squeezing in her shoulders to advertise her lack of a bra, Hel excused himself for a moment.
At the sundries shop he purchased a cheap memento of Biarritz, a box to contain it, a pair of scissors, and some wrapping paper—a sheet of white tissue and one of an expensive metal foil. He carried these items to the men’s room, and worked rapidly wrapping the present, which he brought back to the bar and gave to Rodney, who was by now whining as he dangled and twisted from Miss Browne’s hand.
“Just a little nothing to remind him of Biarritz. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Well, I shouldn’t. But as it’s for the boy. They’ve called twice for our flight. Shouldn’t we be boarding?”
Hel explained that these French, with their anal compulsion for order, always called early for the planes; there was no rush. He turned the talk to the possibility of their getting together in London. Dinner, or something?
At the last moment they went to the boarding counter, Hel taking his place in the queue in front of Miss Browne and little Rodney. His small duffel bag passed the X-ray scanner without trouble. As he walked rapidly toward the plane, which was revving up for departure, he could hear the protests of Miss Browne and the angry demands of the security guards behind him. When the plane took off, Hel did not have the pleasure of the seductive Miss Browne and little Rodney.
From the brow of a dune, he could see the lights of cafés and bars around the small harbor of St. Jean de Luz, where fishing boats heaved sleepily on the oily water of the docking slips. He shifted the weight of the duffel and made for the Café of the Whale, to confirm a telegraph order he had made for dinner. The owner of the café had been a master chef in Paris, before retiring back to his home village. He enjoyed displaying his prowess occasionally, particularly when M. Hel granted him carte blanche as regards menu and expense. The dinner was to be prepared and served in the home of Monsieur de Lhandes, the “fine little gentleman” who lived in an old mansion down the shore, and who was never to be seen in the streets of St. Jean de Luz because his physiognomy would cause comment, and perhaps ridicule, from ill-brought-up children. M. de Lhandes was a midget, little more than a meter tall, though he was over sixty years old.
* * *
Hel’s tap at the back door brought Mademoiselle Pinard to peer cautiously through the curtain, then a broad smile cracked her face, and she opened the door wide. “Ah, Monsieur Hel! Welcome. It has been too long since last we saw you! Come in, come in! Ah, you are wet! Monsieur de Lhandes is so looking forward to your dinner.”
“I don’t want to drip on your floor, Mademoiselle Pinard. May I take off my pants?”
Mademoiselle Pinard blushed and slapped at his shoulder with delight. “Oh, Monsieur Hel! Is this any way to speak? Oh, men!” In obedience to their established routine of chaste flirtation, she was both flustered and delighted. Mademoiselle Pinard was somewhat older than fifty—she had always been somewhat older than fifty. Tall and sere, with dry nervous hands and an unlubricated walk, she had a face too long for her tiny eyes and thin mouth, so rather a lot of it was devoted to forehead and chin. If there had been more character in her face, she would have been ugly; as it was, she was only plain. Mademoiselle Pinard was the mold from which virgins are made, and her redoubtable virtue was in no way lessened by the fact that she had been Bernard de Lhandes’s companion, nurse, and mistress for thirty years. She was the kind of woman who said “Zut!” or “Ma foi!” when exasperated beyond the control of good taste.
As she showed him to the room that was always his when he visited, she said in a low voice, “Monsieur de Lhandes is not well, you know. I am delighted that he will have your company this evening, but you must be very careful. He is close to God. Weeks, months only, the doctor tells me.”
“I’ll be careful, darling. Here we are. Do you want to come in while I change my clothes?”
“Oh, Monsieur!”
Hel shrugged. “Ah well. But one day, your barriers will fall, Mademoiselle Pinard. And then… Ah, then…”
“Monster! And Monsieur de Lhandes your good friend! Men!”
“We are victims of our appetites, Mademoiselle. Helpless victims. Tell me, is dinner ready?”
“The chef and his assistants have been cluttering up the kitchen all day. Everything is in readiness.”
“Then I’ll see you at dinner, and we’ll satisfy our appetites together.”
“Oh, Monsieur!”
* * *
They took dinner in the largest room of the house, one lined with shelves on which books were stacked and piled in a disarray that was evidence of de Lhandes’s passion for learning. Since he considered it outrageous to read and eat at the same time—diluting one of his passions with the other—de Lhandes had struck on the idea of combining library and dining room, the long refectory table serving both functions. They sat at one end of this table, Bernard de Lhandes at the head, Hel to his right. Mademoiselle Pinard to his left. Like most of the furniture, the table and chairs had been cut down and were somewhat too big for de Lhandes and somewhat too small for his rare guests. Such, de Lhandes had once told Hel, was the nature of compromise: a condition that satisfied no one, but left each with the comforting feeling that others had been done in too.
Dinner was nearly over, and they were resting and chatting between courses. There had been Neva caviar with blinis, still hot on their napkins, St. Germain Royal (de Lhandes found a hint too much mint), suprême de sole au Château Yquem, quail under the ashes (de Lhandes mentioned that walnut would have been a better wood for the log fire, but he could accept the flavor imparted by oak cinders), rack of baby lamb Edward VII (de Lhandes regretted that it was not cold enough, but he realized that Hel’s arrangements were spur of the moment), riz à la grècque (the bit too much red pepper de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s place of birth), morels (the bit too little lemon juice de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s personality), Florentine artichoke bottoms (the gross unbalance between gruyère and parmesan in the mornay sauce de Lhandes attributed to the chef’s perversity, for the error had been mentioned before), and Danicheff salad (which de Lhandes found perfect, to his slight annoyance).
From each of these dishes, de Lhandes took the smallest morsel that would still allow him to have all the flavors in his mouth at once. His heart, liver, and digestive system were such a ruin that his doctor restricted him to the blandest of foods. Hel, from dietary habit, ate very little. Mademoiselle Pinard’s appetite was good, though her concept of exquisite table manners involved taking minute bites and chewing them protractedly with circular, leporine motions confined to the very front of her mouth, where her napkin often and daintily went to brush thin lips. One of the reasons the chef of the Café of the Whale enjoyed doing these occasional suppers for Hel was the great feast his family and friends always enjoyed later that same night.
“It’s appalling how little we eat, Nicholai,” de Lhandes said in his surprisingly deep voice. “You with your monk’s attitude toward food, and I with my ravished constitution! Picking about like this. I feel like a rich ten-year-old in a luxurious bordello!”
Mademoiselle Pinard went behind her napkin for a moment.
“And these thimblesful of wine!” de Lhandes complained. “Ah, that I have descended to this! A man who, through knowledge and money, converted gluttony into a major art! Fate is either ironic or just, I don’t know which. But look at me! Eating as though I were a bloodless nun doing penance for her daydreams about the young curé!”
The napkin concealed Mademoiselle Pinard’s blush.
“How sick are you, old friend?” Hel asked. Honesty was common currency between them.
“I am finally sick. This heart of mine is more a sponge than a pump. I have been in retirement for—what? Five years now? And for four of them I have been of no use to dear Mademoiselle Pinard—save as an observer, of course.”
The napkin.
The meal ended with a bombe, fruit, glacés variées —no brandies or digestifs —and Mademoiselle Pinard retired to allow the men to chat.
De Lhandes slid down from his chair and made his way to the fireside, stopping for breath twice, where he occupied a low chair that nevertheless left his feet straight out before him.
“All chairs are chaises longues for me, my friend.” He laughed. “All right, what can I do for you?”
“I need help.”
“Of course. Good comrades though we are, you would not come by boat in the dead of night for the sole purpose of disgracing a supper by picking at it. You know that I have been out of the information business for several years, but I have orts and bits left from the old days, and I shall help you if I can.”
“I should tell you that they have got my money. I won’t be able to pay you immediately.”
De Lhandes waved a dismissing hand. “I’ll send you a bill from hell. You’ll recognize it by the singed edges. Is it a person, or a government?”
“Government. I have to get into England. They’ll be waiting for me. The affair is very heavy, so my leverage will have to be strong.”
De Lhandes sighed. “Ah, my. If only it were America. I have something on America that would make the Statue of Liberty lie back and spread her knees. But England? No one thing. Fragments and scraps. Some nasty enough, to be sure, but no one big thing.”
“What sort of things have you?”
“Oh, the usual. Homosexuality in the foreign office…”
“That’s not news.”
“At this level, it’s interesting. And I have photographs. There are few things so ludicrous as the postures a man assumes while making love. Particularly if he is no longer young. And what else have I? Ah… a bit of rambunctiousness in the royal family? The usual political peccadillos and payoffs? A blocked inquiry into that flying accident that cost the life of… you remember.” De Lhandes looked to the ceiling to recall what was in his files. “Oh, there’s evidence that the embrace between the Arab oil interests and the City is more intimate than is generally known. And there’s a lot of individual stuff on government people—fiscal and sexual irregularities mostly. You’re absolutely sure you don’t want something on the United States? I have a real bell ringer there. It’s an unsalable item. Too big for almost any use. It would be like opening an egg with a sledge hammer.”
“No, it has to be English. I haven’t time to set up indirect pressure from Washington to London.”
“Hm-m-m. Tell you what. Why don’t you take the whole lot? Arrange to have it published, one shot right after the other. Scandal after scandal eroding the edifice of confidence—you know the sort of thing. No single arrow strong enough alone, but in fascine… who knows? It’s the best I can offer.”
“Then it will have to do. Set it up the usual way? I bring photocopies with me? We arrange a ‘button-down’ trigger system with the German magazines as primary receivers?”
“It’s not failed yet. You’re sure you don’t want the Statue of Liberty’s brazen hymen?”
“Can’t think of what I’d do with it.”
“Ah well, painful image at best. Well… can you spend the night with us?”
“If I may. I fly out of Biarritz tomorrow at noon, and I have to lie low. The locals have a bounty on me.”
“Pity. They ought to protect you as the last surviving member of your species. You know, I’ve been thinking about you lately, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. Not often, to be sure, but with some intensity. Not often, because when you get to the bang or whimper moment of life, you don’t spend much time contemplating the minor characters of your personal farce. And one of the difficult things for egocentric Man to face is that he is a minor character in every biography but his own. I am a bit player in your life; you in mine. We have known one another for more than twenty years but, discounting business (and one must always discount business), we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another’s minds and emotions. I have known you, Nicholai, for half a day. Actually, that’s not bad. Most good friends and married couples (those are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles. So… I’ve known you for half a day, my friend, and I have come to love you. I think very highly of myself for having accomplished that, as you are not an easy man to love. Admire? Yes, of course. Respect? If fear is a part of respect, then of course. But love? Ah, that’s a different business. Because there is in love an urge to forgive, and you’re a hard man to forgive. Half saintly ascetic, half Vandal marauder, you don’t make yourself available for forgiveness. In one persona, you are above forgiveness; in another, beneath it. And always resentful of it. One has the feeling that you would never forgive a man for forgiving you. (That probably doesn’t mean much, but it rolls well off the tongue, and a song must have music as well as words.) And after my twelve hours of knowing you, I would capsulize you—reduce you to a definition—by calling you a medieval antihero.”
Hel smiled. “Medieval antihero? What on earth does that mean?”
“Who has the floor now, you or I? Let’s have a little silent respect for the dying. It’s part of your being Japanese—culturally Japanese, that is. Only in Japan was the classical moment simultaneous with the medieval. In the West, philosophy, art, political and social ideal, all are identified with periods before or after the medieval moment, the single exception being that glorious stone bridge to God, the cathedral. Only in Japan was the feudal moment also the philosophic moment. We of the West are comfortable with the image of the warrior priest, or the warrior scientist, even the warrior industrialist. But the warrior philosopher? No, that concept irritates our sense of propriety. We speak of ‘death and violence’ as though they were two manifestations of the same impulse. In fact, death is the very opposite of violence, which is always concerned with the struggle for life. Our philosophy is focused on managing life; yours on managing death. We seek comprehension; you seek dignity. We learn how to grasp; you learn how to let go. Even the label ‘philosopher’ is misleading, as our philosophers have always been animated by the urge to share (indeed, inflict) their insights; while your lot are content (perhaps selfishly) to make your separate and private peace. To the Westerner, there is something disturbingly feminine (in the sense of yang-ish, if that coinage doesn’t offend your ear) in your view of manhood. Fresh from the battlefield, you don soft robes and stroll through your gardens with admiring compassion for the falling cherry petal; and you view both the gentleness and the courage as manifestations of manhood. To us, that seems capricious at least, if not two-faced. By the way, how does your garden grow?”
“It’s becoming.”
“Meaning?”
“Each year it is simpler.”
“There! You see? That goddamned Japanese penchant for paradoxes that turn out to be syllogisms! Look at yourself. A warrior gardener! You are indeed a medieval Japanese, as I said. And you are also an antihero—not in the sense in which critics and scholars lusting for letters to dangle after their names use (misuse) the term. What they call antiheroes are really unlikely heroes, or attractive villains—the fat cop or Richard III. The true antihero is a version of the hero—not a clown with a principal role, not an audience member permitted to work out his violent fantasies. Like the classic hero, the antihero leads the mass toward salvation. There was a time in the comedy of human development when salvation seemed to lie in the direction of order and organization, and all the great Western heroes organized and directed their followers against the enemy: chaos. Now we are learning that the final enemy is not chaos, but organization; not divergence, but similarity; not primativism, but progress. And the new hero—the antihero—is one who makes a virtue of attacking the organization, of destroying the systems. We realize now that salvation of the race lies in that nihilist direction, but we still don’t know how far.” De Lhandes paused to catch his breath, then seemed to be ready to continue. But his glance suddenly crossed Hel’s, and he laughed. “Oh, well. Let that be enough. I wasn’t really speaking to you anyway.”
“I’ve been aware of that for some time.”
“It is a convention in Western tragedy that a man is permitted one long speech before he dies. Once he has stepped on the inevitable machinery of fate that will carry him to his bathetic denouement, nothing he can say or do will alter his lot. But he is permitted to make his case, to bitch at length against the gods—even in iambic pentameter.”
“Even if doing so interrupts the flow of the narrative?”
“To hell with it! For two hours of narcosis against reality, of safe, vicarious participation in the world of action and death, one should be willing to pay the price of a couple minutes worth of insight. Structurally sound or not. But have it your way. All right. Tell me, do the governments still remember ‘the Gnome’? And do they still scratch the earth trying to find his lair, and gnash their teeth in frustrated fury?”
“They do indeed, Maurice. Just the other day there was an Amérlo scab at home asking about you. He would have given his genitals to know how you came by your information.”
“Would he indeed? Being an Amérlo, he probably wasn’t risking much. And what did you tell him?”
“I told him everything I knew.”
“Meaning nothing at all. Good. Candor is a virtue. You know, I really don’t have any very subtle or complicated sources of information. In fact, the Mother Company and I are nourished by the same data. I have access to Fat Boy through the purchased services of one of their senior computer slaves, a man named Llewellyn. My skill lies in being able to put two and two together better than they can. Or, to be more precise, I am able to add one and a half plus one and two thirds in such a way as to make ten. I am not better informed than they; I am simply smarter.”
Hel laughed. “They would give almost anything to locate and silence you. You’ve been bamboo under their fingernails for a long time.”
“Ha, that knowledge brightens my last days, Nicholai. Being a nuisance to the government lackeys has made my life worth living. And a precarious living it has been. When you trade in information, you carry stock that has very short shelf life. Unlike brandy, information cheapens with age. Nothing is duller than yesterday’s sins. And sometimes I used to acquire expensive pieces, only to have them ruined by leakage. I remember buying a very hot item from the United States: what in time became known as the Watergate Cover-up. And while I was holding the merchandise on my shelf, waiting for you or some other international to purchase it as leverage against the American government, a pair of ambitious reporters sniffed the story out and saw in it a chance to make their fortunes—and voilà! The material was overnight useless to me. In time, each of the criminals wrote a book or did a television program describing his part in the rape of American civil rights, and each was paid lavishly by the stupid American public, which seems to have a peculiar impulse toward having their noses rubbed in their own shit. Doesn’t it seem unjust to you that I should end up losing several hundred thousand worth of spoiled stock on my shelves, while even the master villain himself makes a fortune doing television shows with that British leech who has shown that he would sniff up to anybody for money, even Idi Amin? It’s a peculiar one, this trade I’m in.”
“Have you been an information broker all your life, Maurice?”
“Except for a short stint as a professional basketball player.”
“Old fool!”
“Listen, let us be serious for a moment. You described this thing you’re doing as hard. I wouldn’t presume to advise you, but have you considered the fact that you’ve been in retirement for a time? Is your mental conditioning still taut?”
“Reasonably. I do a lot of caving, so fear doesn’t clog my mind too much. And, fortunately, I’ll be up against the British.”
“That’s an advantage, to be sure. The MI-5 and —6 boys have a tradition of being so subtle that their fakes go unnoticed. And yet… There is something wrong with this affair, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. There’s something in your tone that disturbs me. Not quite doubt, but a certain dangerous fatalism. Have you decided that you are going to fail?”
Hel was silent for a time. “You’re very perceptive, Maurice.”
“C’est mon métier.”
“I know. There is something wrong—something untidy—about all this. I recognize that to come back out of retirement I am challenging karma. I think that, ultimately, this business will put me away. Not the task at hand. I imagine that I can relieve these Septembrists of the burden of their lives easily enough. The complications and the dangers will be ones I have dealt with before. But after that, the business gets tacky. There will be an effort to punish me. I may accept the punishment, or I may not. If I do not, then I shall have to go into the field again. I sense a certain—” He shrugged, “—a certain emotional fatigue. Not exactly fatalistic resignation, but a kind of dangerous indifference. It is possible, if the indignities pile up, that I shall see no particular reason to cling to life.”
De Lhandes nodded. It was this kind of attitude that he had sensed. “I see. Permit me to suggest something, old friend. You say that the governments do me the honor of still being hungry for my death. They would give a lot to know who and where I am. If you get into a tight spot, you have my permission to bargain with that information.”
“Maurice!—”
“No, no! I am not suffering from a bout of quixotic courage. I’m too old to contract such a childhood disease. It would be our final joke on them. You see, you would be giving them an empty bag. By the time they get here, I shall have departed.”
“Thank you, but I couldn’t do it. Not on your account, but on mine.” Hel rose. “Well, I have to get some sleep. The next twenty-four hours will be trying. Mostly mind play, without the refreshment of physical danger. I’ll be leaving before first light.”
“Very well. For myself, I think I shall sit up for a few more hours and review the delights of an evil life.”
“All right. Au revoir, old friend.”
“Not au revoir, Nicholai.”
“It is that close?”
De Lhandes nodded.
Hel leaned over and kissed his comrade on both cheeks. “Adieu, Maurice.”
“Adieu, Nicholai.”
Hel was caught at the door by, “Oh, Nicholai, would you do something for me?”
“Anything.”
“Estelle has been wonderful to me these last years. Did you know her name was Estelle?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, I want to do something special for her—a kind of going-away present. Would you drop by her room? Second at the head of the stairs. And afterward, tell her it was a gift from me.”
Hel nodded. “It will be my pleasure, Maurice.”
De Lhandes was looking into the fading fire. “Hers too, let us hope,” he muttered.
* * *
Hel timed his arrival at the Biarritz airport to minimize the period he would have to stand out in the open. He had always disliked Biarritz, which is Basque only in geography; the Germans, the English, and the international smart set having perverted it into a kind of Brighton on Biscay.
He was not five minutes in the terminal before his proximity sense intercepted the direct and intense observation he had expected, knowing they would be looking for him at all points of departure. He lounged against the counter of the bar where he was taking a jus d’ananas and lightly scanned the crowd. Immediately, he picked up the young French Special Services officer in civilian clothes and sunglasses. Pushing himself off me bar, he walked directly toward the man, feeling as he approached the lad’s tension and confusion.
“Edxuse me, sir,” Hel said in a French larded with German accent. “I have just arrived, and I cannot discover how to make my connection to Lourdes. Could you assist me?”
The young policeman scanned Hel’s face uncertainly. This man filled the general description, save for the eyes, which were dark-brown. (Hel was wearing noncorrective brown contact lenses.) But there was nothing in the description about his being German. And he was supposed to be leaving the country, not entering it. In a few brusque words, the police agent directed Hel to the information office.
As he walked away, Hel felt the agent’s gaze fixed on him, but the quality of the concentration was muffled by confusion. He would, of course, report the spotting, but without much certainty. And the central offices would at this moment be receiving reports of Hel’s appearance in half a dozen cities at the same time. Le Cagot was seeing to that.
As Hel crossed the waiting room a towheaded boy ran into his legs. He caught up the child to keep him from falling.
“Rodney! Oh, I am sorry, sir.” The good-looking woman in her late twenties was on the scene in an instant, apologizing to Hel and admonishing the child all at the same time. She was British and dressed in a light summer frock designed to reveal not only her suntan, but the places she had not suntanned. In a babble of that brutally mispronounced French resulting from the Britisher’s assumption that if foreigners had anything worth saying they would say it in a real language, the young woman managed to mention that the boy was her nephew, that she was returning with him from a short vacation, and that she was taking the next flight for England, that she herself was unmarried, and that her name was Alison Browne, with an e.
“My name is Nicholai Helm.”
“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Hel.”
That was it. She had not heard the m because she was prepared not to. She would be a British agent, covering the action of the French.
Hel said he hoped they would be sitting together on the plane, and she smiled seductively and said that she would be willing to speak to the ticket agent about that. He offered to purchase a fruit juice for her and little Rodney, and she accepted, not failing to mention that she did not usually accept such offers from strange men, but this was an exception. They had, after all, quite literally run into one another. (Giggle.)
While she was busy dabbing her handkerchief at Rodney’s juice-stained collar, leaning forward and squeezing in her shoulders to advertise her lack of a bra, Hel excused himself for a moment.
At the sundries shop he purchased a cheap memento of Biarritz, a box to contain it, a pair of scissors, and some wrapping paper—a sheet of white tissue and one of an expensive metal foil. He carried these items to the men’s room, and worked rapidly wrapping the present, which he brought back to the bar and gave to Rodney, who was by now whining as he dangled and twisted from Miss Browne’s hand.
“Just a little nothing to remind him of Biarritz. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Well, I shouldn’t. But as it’s for the boy. They’ve called twice for our flight. Shouldn’t we be boarding?”
Hel explained that these French, with their anal compulsion for order, always called early for the planes; there was no rush. He turned the talk to the possibility of their getting together in London. Dinner, or something?
At the last moment they went to the boarding counter, Hel taking his place in the queue in front of Miss Browne and little Rodney. His small duffel bag passed the X-ray scanner without trouble. As he walked rapidly toward the plane, which was revving up for departure, he could hear the protests of Miss Browne and the angry demands of the security guards behind him. When the plane took off, Hel did not have the pleasure of the seductive Miss Browne and little Rodney.
Heathrow
Passengers passing through customs were directed to enter queues in relation to their status: “British Subjects,” “Commonwealth Subjects,” “Common Market Citizens,” and “Others.” Having traveled on his Costa Rican passport, Hel was clearly an “Other,” but he never had the opportunity to enter the designated line, for he was immediately approached by two smiling young men, their husky bodies distorting rather extreme Carnaby Street suits, their meaty faces expressionless behind their moustaches and sunglasses. As he always did when he met modern young men, Hel mentally shaved and crewcut them to see whom he was really dealing with.
“You will accompany us, Mr. Hel,” one said, as the other took the duffel from his hand. They pressed close to him on either side and escorted him toward a door without a doorknob at the end of the debarkation area.
Two knocks, and the door was opened from the other side by a uniformed officer, who stood aside as they passed through. They walked without a word to the end of a long windowless corridor of institutional green, where they knocked. The door was opened by a young man struck from the same mold as the guards, and from within came a familiar voice.
“Do come in, Nicholai. We’ve just time for a glass of something and a little chat before you catch your plane back to France. Leave the luggage, there’s a good fellow. And you three may wait outside.”
Hel took a chair beside the low coffee table and waved away the brandy bottle lifted in offer. “I thought you had finally been cashiered out, Fred.”
Sir Wilfred Pyles squirted a splash of soda into his brandy. “I had more or less the same idea about you. But here we are, two of yesterday’s bravos, sitting on opposite sides, just like the old days. You’re sure you won’t have one? No? Well, I imagine the sun’s over the yardarm somewhere around the world, so—cheers.”
“How’s your wife?”
“More pleasant than ever.”
“Give her my love when next you see her.”
“Let’s hope that’s not too soon. She died last year.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. Is that enough of the small talk?”
“I should think so.”
“Good. Well, they dragged me out of the mothballs to deal with you, when they got word from our petroleum masters that you might be on your way. I assume they thought I might be better able to handle you, seeing that we’ve played this game many times, you and I. I was directed to intercept you here, find out what I could about your business in our misty isle, then see you safely back on a plane to the place from whence you came.”
“They thought it would be as easy as that, did they?”
Sir Wilfred waved his glass. “Well, you know how these new lads are. All by the book and no complexities.”
“And what do you assume, Fred?”
“Oh, I assume it won’t be quite that easy. I assume you came with some sort of nasty leverage gained from your friend, the Gnome. Photocopies of it in your luggage, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Right on top. You’d better take a look.”
“I shall, if you don’t mind,” Sir Wilfred said, unzipping the bag and taking out a manila folder. “Nothing else in here I should know about, I trust? Drugs? Subversive or pornographic literature?”
Hel smiled.
“No? I feared as much.” He opened the folder and began to scan the information, sheet by sheet, his matted white eyebrows working up and down with each uncomfortable bit of information. “By the way,” he asked between pages, “what on earth did you do to Miss Browne?”
“Miss Browne? I don’t believe I know a—”
“Oh, come now. No coyness between old enemies. We got word that she is this moment sitting in a French detention center while those gentlemen of Froggish inclination comb and recomb her luggage. The report we received was quite thorough, including the amusing detail that the little boy who was her cover promptly soiled himself, and the consulate is out the cost of fresh garments.”
Hel couldn’t help laughing.
“Come. Between us. What on earth did you do?”
“Well, she came on with all the subtlety of a fart in a bathosphere, so I neutralized her. You don’t train them as you did in the old days. The stupid twit accepted a gift.”
“What sort of a gift?”
“Oh, just a cheap memento of Biarritz. It was wrapped up in tissue paper. But I had cut out a gun shape from metal foil paper and slipped it between the sheets of tissue.”
Sir Wilfred sputtered with laughter. “So, the X-ray scanner picked up a gun each time the package passed through, and the poor officials could find nothing! How delicious: I think I must drink to that.” He measured out the other half, then returned to the task of familiarizing himself with the leverage information, occasionally allowing himself such interjections as: “Is that so? Wouldn’t have thought it of him.” “Ah, we’ve known this for some time. Still, wouldn’t do to broadcast it around.” “Oh, my. That is a nasty bit. How on earth did he find that out?”
When he finished reading the material. Sir Wilfred carefully tapped the pages together to make the ends even, then replaced them in the folder. “No single thing here sufficient to force us very far.”
“I’m aware of that, Fred. But the mass? One piece released to the German press each day?”
“Hm-m. Quite. It would have a disastrous effect on confidence in the government just now, with elections on the horizon. I suppose the information is in ‘button-down’ mode?”
“Of course.”
“Feared as much.”
Holding the information in “button-down” mode involved arrangements to have it released to the press immediately, if a certain message was not received by noon of each day. Hel carried with him a list of thirteen addresses to which he was to send cables each morning. Twelve of these were dummies; one was an associate of Maurice de Lhandes who would, upon receipt of the message, telephone to another intermediary, who would telephone de Lhandes. The code between Hel and de Lhandes was a simple one based upon an obscure poem by Barro, but it would take much longer than twenty-four hours for the intelligence boys to locate the one letter in the one word of the message that was the active signal. The term “button-down” came from a kind of human bomb, rigged so that the device would not go off, so long as the man held a button down. But any attempt to struggle with him or to shoot him would result in his releasing the button.
Sir Wilfred considered his position for a moment. “It is true that this information of yours can be quite damaging. But we are under tight orders from the Mother Company to protect these Black September vermin, and we are no more eager to bring down upon our heads the ire of the Company than is any other industrial country. It appears that we shall have to choose between misfortunes.”
“So it appears.”
Sir Wilfred pushed out his lower lip and squinted at Hel in evaluation. “This is a very wide-open and dangerous thing you’re doing, Nicholai—walking right into our arms like this. It must have taken a great deal of money to draw you out of retirement.”
“Point of fact, I am not being paid for this.”
“Hm-m-m. That, of course, would have been my second guess.” He drew a long sigh. “Sentiment is a killer, Nicholai. But of course you know that. All right, tell you what. I shall carry your message to my masters. We’ll see what they have to say. Meanwhile, I suppose I shall have to hide you away somewhere. How would you like to spend a day or two in the country? I’ll make a telephone call or two to get the government lads thinking, then I’ll run you out in my banger.”
“You will accompany us, Mr. Hel,” one said, as the other took the duffel from his hand. They pressed close to him on either side and escorted him toward a door without a doorknob at the end of the debarkation area.
Two knocks, and the door was opened from the other side by a uniformed officer, who stood aside as they passed through. They walked without a word to the end of a long windowless corridor of institutional green, where they knocked. The door was opened by a young man struck from the same mold as the guards, and from within came a familiar voice.
“Do come in, Nicholai. We’ve just time for a glass of something and a little chat before you catch your plane back to France. Leave the luggage, there’s a good fellow. And you three may wait outside.”
Hel took a chair beside the low coffee table and waved away the brandy bottle lifted in offer. “I thought you had finally been cashiered out, Fred.”
Sir Wilfred Pyles squirted a splash of soda into his brandy. “I had more or less the same idea about you. But here we are, two of yesterday’s bravos, sitting on opposite sides, just like the old days. You’re sure you won’t have one? No? Well, I imagine the sun’s over the yardarm somewhere around the world, so—cheers.”
“How’s your wife?”
“More pleasant than ever.”
“Give her my love when next you see her.”
“Let’s hope that’s not too soon. She died last year.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. Is that enough of the small talk?”
“I should think so.”
“Good. Well, they dragged me out of the mothballs to deal with you, when they got word from our petroleum masters that you might be on your way. I assume they thought I might be better able to handle you, seeing that we’ve played this game many times, you and I. I was directed to intercept you here, find out what I could about your business in our misty isle, then see you safely back on a plane to the place from whence you came.”
“They thought it would be as easy as that, did they?”
Sir Wilfred waved his glass. “Well, you know how these new lads are. All by the book and no complexities.”
“And what do you assume, Fred?”
“Oh, I assume it won’t be quite that easy. I assume you came with some sort of nasty leverage gained from your friend, the Gnome. Photocopies of it in your luggage, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Right on top. You’d better take a look.”
“I shall, if you don’t mind,” Sir Wilfred said, unzipping the bag and taking out a manila folder. “Nothing else in here I should know about, I trust? Drugs? Subversive or pornographic literature?”
Hel smiled.
“No? I feared as much.” He opened the folder and began to scan the information, sheet by sheet, his matted white eyebrows working up and down with each uncomfortable bit of information. “By the way,” he asked between pages, “what on earth did you do to Miss Browne?”
“Miss Browne? I don’t believe I know a—”
“Oh, come now. No coyness between old enemies. We got word that she is this moment sitting in a French detention center while those gentlemen of Froggish inclination comb and recomb her luggage. The report we received was quite thorough, including the amusing detail that the little boy who was her cover promptly soiled himself, and the consulate is out the cost of fresh garments.”
Hel couldn’t help laughing.
“Come. Between us. What on earth did you do?”
“Well, she came on with all the subtlety of a fart in a bathosphere, so I neutralized her. You don’t train them as you did in the old days. The stupid twit accepted a gift.”
“What sort of a gift?”
“Oh, just a cheap memento of Biarritz. It was wrapped up in tissue paper. But I had cut out a gun shape from metal foil paper and slipped it between the sheets of tissue.”
Sir Wilfred sputtered with laughter. “So, the X-ray scanner picked up a gun each time the package passed through, and the poor officials could find nothing! How delicious: I think I must drink to that.” He measured out the other half, then returned to the task of familiarizing himself with the leverage information, occasionally allowing himself such interjections as: “Is that so? Wouldn’t have thought it of him.” “Ah, we’ve known this for some time. Still, wouldn’t do to broadcast it around.” “Oh, my. That is a nasty bit. How on earth did he find that out?”
When he finished reading the material. Sir Wilfred carefully tapped the pages together to make the ends even, then replaced them in the folder. “No single thing here sufficient to force us very far.”
“I’m aware of that, Fred. But the mass? One piece released to the German press each day?”
“Hm-m. Quite. It would have a disastrous effect on confidence in the government just now, with elections on the horizon. I suppose the information is in ‘button-down’ mode?”
“Of course.”
“Feared as much.”
Holding the information in “button-down” mode involved arrangements to have it released to the press immediately, if a certain message was not received by noon of each day. Hel carried with him a list of thirteen addresses to which he was to send cables each morning. Twelve of these were dummies; one was an associate of Maurice de Lhandes who would, upon receipt of the message, telephone to another intermediary, who would telephone de Lhandes. The code between Hel and de Lhandes was a simple one based upon an obscure poem by Barro, but it would take much longer than twenty-four hours for the intelligence boys to locate the one letter in the one word of the message that was the active signal. The term “button-down” came from a kind of human bomb, rigged so that the device would not go off, so long as the man held a button down. But any attempt to struggle with him or to shoot him would result in his releasing the button.
Sir Wilfred considered his position for a moment. “It is true that this information of yours can be quite damaging. But we are under tight orders from the Mother Company to protect these Black September vermin, and we are no more eager to bring down upon our heads the ire of the Company than is any other industrial country. It appears that we shall have to choose between misfortunes.”
“So it appears.”
Sir Wilfred pushed out his lower lip and squinted at Hel in evaluation. “This is a very wide-open and dangerous thing you’re doing, Nicholai—walking right into our arms like this. It must have taken a great deal of money to draw you out of retirement.”
“Point of fact, I am not being paid for this.”
“Hm-m-m. That, of course, would have been my second guess.” He drew a long sigh. “Sentiment is a killer, Nicholai. But of course you know that. All right, tell you what. I shall carry your message to my masters. We’ll see what they have to say. Meanwhile, I suppose I shall have to hide you away somewhere. How would you like to spend a day or two in the country? I’ll make a telephone call or two to get the government lads thinking, then I’ll run you out in my banger.”
Middle Bumley
Sir Wilfred’s immaculate 1931 Rolls crunched over the gravel of a long private drive and came to a stop under the porte cochère of a rambling house, most of the charm of which derived from the aesthetic disorder of its having grown without plan through many architectural impulses.
Crossing the lawn to greet them were a sinewy woman of uncertain years and two girls in their mid-twenties.
“I think you’ll find it amusing here, Nicholai,” Sir Wilfred said. “Our host is an ass, but he won’t be about. The wife is a bit dotty, but the daughters are uniquely obliging. Indeed, they have gained something of a reputation for that quality. What do you think of the house?”
“Considering your British penchant for braggadocio through meiosis—the kind of thing that makes you call your Rolls a banger—I’m surprised you didn’t describe the house as thirty-seven up, sixteen down.”
“Ah, Lady Jessica!” Sir Wilfred said to the older woman as she approached wearing a frilly summer frock of a vague color she would have called “ashes of roses.” “Here’s the guest I telephoned about. Nicholai Hel.”
She pressed a damp hand into his. “So pleased to have you. To meet you, that is. This is my daughter, Broderick.”
Hel shook hands with an overly slim girl whose eyes were huge in her emaciated face.
“I know it’s an uncommon name for a girl,” Lady Jessica continued, “but my husband had quite settled on having a boy—I mean he wanted to have a boy in the sense of fathering a son—not in the other sense—my goodness, what must you think of him? But he had Broderick instead—or rather, we did.”
“In the sense that you were her parents?” Hel sought to release the skinny girl’s hand.
“Broderick is a model,” the mother explained.
Hel had guessed as much. There was a vacuousness of expression, a certain limpness of posture and curvature of spine that marked the fashionable model of that moment.
“Nothing much really,” Broderick said, trying to blush under her troweled-on makeup. “Just the odd job for the occasional international magazine.”
The mother tapped the daughter’s arm. “Don’t say you do ‘odd jobs’! What will Mr. Hel think?”
A clearing of the throat by the second daughter impelled Lady Jessica to say, “Oh, yes. And here is Melpomene. It is conceivable she might act one day.”
Melpomene was a substantial girl, thick of bosom, ankle, and forearm, rosy of cheek, and clear of eye. She seemed somehow incomplete without her hockey stick. Her handshake was firm and brisk. “Just call me Pom. Everyone does.”
“Ah… if we could just freshen up?” Sir Wilfred suggested.
“Oh, of course! I’ll have the girls show you everything—I mean, of course, where your rooms are and all. What must you think?”
As Hel was laying out his things from the duffel bag, Sir Wilfred tapped on the door and came in. “Well, what do you think of the place? We should be cozy here for a couple of days, while the masters ponder the inevitable, eh? I’ve been on the line to them, and they say they’ll come up with a decision by morning.”
“Tell me, Fred. Have your lads been keeping a watch on the Septembrists?”
“On your targets? Of course.”
“Assuming that your government goes along with my proposal, I’ll want all the background material you have.”
“I expected no less. By the bye, I assured the masters that you could pull this off—should their decision go that way—with no hint of collusion or responsibility on our part. It is that way, isn’t it?”
“Not quite. But I can work it so that, whatever their suspicions, the Mother Company will not be able to prove collusion.”
“The next best thing, I suppose.”
“Fortunately, you picked me up before I went through passport check, so my arrival won’t be in your computers and therefore not in theirs.”
“Wouldn’t rely on that overly much. Mother Company has a million eyes and ears.”
“True. You’re absolutely sure this is a safe house?”
“Oh, yes! The ladies are not what you would call subtle, but they have another quality quite as good—they’re totally ignorant. They haven’t the slightest idea of what we’re doing here. Don’t even know what I do for a living. And the man of the house, if you can call him that, is no trouble at all. We seldom let him into the country, you see.”
Crossing the lawn to greet them were a sinewy woman of uncertain years and two girls in their mid-twenties.
“I think you’ll find it amusing here, Nicholai,” Sir Wilfred said. “Our host is an ass, but he won’t be about. The wife is a bit dotty, but the daughters are uniquely obliging. Indeed, they have gained something of a reputation for that quality. What do you think of the house?”
“Considering your British penchant for braggadocio through meiosis—the kind of thing that makes you call your Rolls a banger—I’m surprised you didn’t describe the house as thirty-seven up, sixteen down.”
“Ah, Lady Jessica!” Sir Wilfred said to the older woman as she approached wearing a frilly summer frock of a vague color she would have called “ashes of roses.” “Here’s the guest I telephoned about. Nicholai Hel.”
She pressed a damp hand into his. “So pleased to have you. To meet you, that is. This is my daughter, Broderick.”
Hel shook hands with an overly slim girl whose eyes were huge in her emaciated face.
“I know it’s an uncommon name for a girl,” Lady Jessica continued, “but my husband had quite settled on having a boy—I mean he wanted to have a boy in the sense of fathering a son—not in the other sense—my goodness, what must you think of him? But he had Broderick instead—or rather, we did.”
“In the sense that you were her parents?” Hel sought to release the skinny girl’s hand.
“Broderick is a model,” the mother explained.
Hel had guessed as much. There was a vacuousness of expression, a certain limpness of posture and curvature of spine that marked the fashionable model of that moment.
“Nothing much really,” Broderick said, trying to blush under her troweled-on makeup. “Just the odd job for the occasional international magazine.”
The mother tapped the daughter’s arm. “Don’t say you do ‘odd jobs’! What will Mr. Hel think?”
A clearing of the throat by the second daughter impelled Lady Jessica to say, “Oh, yes. And here is Melpomene. It is conceivable she might act one day.”
Melpomene was a substantial girl, thick of bosom, ankle, and forearm, rosy of cheek, and clear of eye. She seemed somehow incomplete without her hockey stick. Her handshake was firm and brisk. “Just call me Pom. Everyone does.”
“Ah… if we could just freshen up?” Sir Wilfred suggested.
“Oh, of course! I’ll have the girls show you everything—I mean, of course, where your rooms are and all. What must you think?”
As Hel was laying out his things from the duffel bag, Sir Wilfred tapped on the door and came in. “Well, what do you think of the place? We should be cozy here for a couple of days, while the masters ponder the inevitable, eh? I’ve been on the line to them, and they say they’ll come up with a decision by morning.”
“Tell me, Fred. Have your lads been keeping a watch on the Septembrists?”
“On your targets? Of course.”
“Assuming that your government goes along with my proposal, I’ll want all the background material you have.”
“I expected no less. By the bye, I assured the masters that you could pull this off—should their decision go that way—with no hint of collusion or responsibility on our part. It is that way, isn’t it?”
“Not quite. But I can work it so that, whatever their suspicions, the Mother Company will not be able to prove collusion.”
“The next best thing, I suppose.”
“Fortunately, you picked me up before I went through passport check, so my arrival won’t be in your computers and therefore not in theirs.”
“Wouldn’t rely on that overly much. Mother Company has a million eyes and ears.”
“True. You’re absolutely sure this is a safe house?”
“Oh, yes! The ladies are not what you would call subtle, but they have another quality quite as good—they’re totally ignorant. They haven’t the slightest idea of what we’re doing here. Don’t even know what I do for a living. And the man of the house, if you can call him that, is no trouble at all. We seldom let him into the country, you see.”