“Three vital questions,” Joe agreed, wondering where he was going with this.
“But not ones that are exercising the Nine Men. With them, political concerns trump economic ones. They are not the same, though they’re intertwined. I can’t tell you more than I have and that’s already too much, Joe. I won’t tell you what their plan was—maybe still is—for me. It’s too burdensome for any pair of ears, even yours.”
Joe sensed from the firm way Kingstone closed his jaw and looked into the distance that he was not prepared to reveal more and Joe was not prepared to ask him. Once again, Joe feared for him. The man, it seemed, still had an image of himself as a victim. Joe had caught that same blend of defiance and despair on the faces of martyrs in lugubrious dark oil paintings as the masked executioner approached, lighted torch in hand. And here was the British bobby standing by, as impotent as the inevitable priest performing his incantations at a safe distance in the background. Joe longed to snatch the mask from the tormentor’s face and look into the features below. He was in the mask-snatching business. He knew well that it was in the black concealing silk that the horror lay. The man beneath, ugly enough no doubt, could well be known to the victim and despised by him.
“What influence are they using? What threats or incentives are they holding over your head? Can you tell me that much? It might help. I am still, after all, tasked with your protection for this next bit.”
“The usual winning combination. Carrot—to be served up back home in the States. I will not reveal the nature of this and it would not be of much use to you to know. And stick, a sample of which you have already witnessed. Person or persons unknown, as you’d say, have been threatening me—and the one I had thought dear to me—with torture and death. Their acts are ruthless, carried out at second or third hand and never attributable to the inner circle that decrees them. They can hire the best. But the men who pull the triggers and chop off the toes do not know for whom they are acting. These tools—accidents and suicides a specialty—are well chosen, effective and well rewarded. And they get away with it—unless they have the bad luck to come up against Sandilands.”
“Or be employed by Sandilands,” said Joe, with a smile. “You could be describing my Branchmen and—speaking of hired killers—how on earth did William Armiger manage to get himself in on the Nine Men’s act? Before you ask—no, it wasn’t Bill who told me about your meeting. He doesn’t know that he was spotted and we haven’t discussed it. Your officer,” he added carefully, “is the soul of discretion.”
“Ah. Interesting! I had assumed Armiger was the source of your information. I was always prepared for his loyalties to be stretched once we were back in the old country. Glad to hear he’s remained discreet. It confirms my original assessment of the man. I wasn’t going into that snake pit by myself, Sandilands. I’d used Armiger on several occasions. He’d been recommended by his boss. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI seems to see him as an up-and-coming man. His subsequent behaviour and his personality appealed to me. He passes in all kinds of society, from ballroom to barroom. He can foxtrot with a Daughter of the American Revolution in Washington one day and win a spitting contest on a Bronx sidewalk the next. And, you know, Joe—they’re both the real Armiger. We got on just fine.”
“He sees the potential in getting close to the man who’s close to the president?” Joe asked bluntly.
“Of course he does. That’s well understood. But I felt safer with William at my back. I made it a condition of membership that I took Armiger along with me. As he’d come over on a boat—even though it was a passage in first class on a transatlantic liner some six years ago—it qualified him for the deal. What really recommended him to them was his own status—the one he’d carved out for himself in the world of Law and Order. They see such an organisation as a potential tool in their armoury. An arms-carrying, legally and democratically appointed force with a man of theirs at or near the top? Well, you can imagine how useful that might be to them. Seed corn of the very best kind! These men think twenty years into the future. Armiger earned his own counters.” He smiled. “Picked up the old game pretty quickly too.”
Joe was about to quibble, Which old game would that be? Treachery or Nine Men’s Morris? but he bit back the words. He was becoming increasingly weary with hearing the recitation of Bill Armitage’s dubious qualities and with the revelations of shady international manipulation, which would always remain outside his sphere of influence and his understanding. Instead he commented, “I’m assuming that these top-drawer villains—the Nine Men—are beyond even the long arm of the Law?”
“They are. They’re connected. I told you so. I shall have to find my own way of dealing with them. But that’s not to say we can’t go for the second layer—the ones who carry out their wishes. I’d relish that! I’m not talking about the lower orders: gun-toters and neck-crackers like that pair of bozos we trapped down by the lake. I mean the people who make their arrangements, phone calls on their behalf, who spy on the targets, gather information, ease their path …”
“Their adjutants?”
“That’ll do.”
“Like—Natalia?” Joe held his breath, reluctant to probe an open wound, even though he suspected that wound still contained lethal shrapnel.
“Like Natalia,” Kingstone said heavily. “I never did get to hear her reasons.”
“She’d been spying on you for some time, do you reckon?”
“Not spying on. Worse than that. Knowing and betraying. Being close. I had thought—loving. But I was wrong. You can’t make people fall in love so I’m assuming they got hold of her some time after that performance in New York when it was quite clear I was knocked sideways. Perhaps she was already with them,” he said thoughtfully. “She easily acquired the kind of contacts they like, travelling around the world meeting the cream of society. I never asked her and she never told me. It always seemed like water under the bridge.”
“But what if the stream were still flowing?” Joe dared to ask quietly. The senator may have had his eyes opened but his emotions were still raw, he reckoned. “It would certainly be interesting to see a list of her … um … the relationships she established over the years.”
“You’d need to ask Julia the names of her conquests. I think when Natalia got her instructions she faked up a row with me, swept out and disappeared. Then they were free to threaten me. She’d been kidnapped, I was told. Her life depended on me and my performance. I gave them what for. What do they do next? Pile on more pressure. It’s well established. A newspaper cliché, because it darned well works! What happens in kidnappings to create terror? You send a bit of the victim’s anatomy through the post implying that the rest will follow in small instalments until death occurs. What I didn’t know was that Natalia was acting as advisor behind the scenes.”
“ ‘Someone’s got into my head,’ I think you said.”
“The someone had got into my life! She was informing whoever was overseeing the business about my habits and preferences. Right down to the chocolates. Did she get Julia to put those in my room, do you suppose?” He asked the question brusquely. “I had thought better of her.”
“I was wondering how far you thought you could trust Julia. She showed a certain regard—even warmth—for you,” Joe said speculatively, casting a fly on the water.