Then he realized he’d put his foot in it. It was Serrin, her husband, who should have been showing her around town. Furthermore not mentioning Serrin was an implicit criticism that he wouldn’t be thoughtful enough to do so. Irritated at his clumsiness Michael tried to extricate himself from the faux pas.
“After all, he knows this city a lot better then old Serrin,” he continued. “He’s lived here eight years or so. Knows it inside out.”
“It’s all right, I know what you meant,” Kristen said coolly. “Serrin’s not a very worldly person, not really, for all he thinks he knows about things. But I saw a lot of the museums and galleries and I’d never been to places like that, and I did get to go to the best bagel shop in the universe.”
Her face cracked in a grin, and Michael reflected that when she smiled she did look very pretty, not because her smile might have graced the cover of some fashion tridzine, but because every gram of her spirit was in it.
“Better than the mock caviar,” he said ruefully.
“The vodka’s great though,” she said, the smile taking on a wicked aspect. “Can we get another?”
Michael looked at the bags he was carrying. He’d spent enough to make a return to the freebie counter entirely reasonable.
“If I bring you back drunk in the middle of the day Serrin will never let me hear the end of it,” he chuckled. “Can’t have you consorting with an ex, you know. Even one who only existed as a technical formality”
“Actually,” she said archly, “I think that’s a very English thing.”
He laughed out loud. The Cape Town Street kid was doing a creditable impression of being very worldly indeed, even if her husband wasn’t, despite his many years of traveling the globe.
Just before the second vodka, as they stood inhaling the splendid, biting aroma that rose even from the near-
frozen liquid. Kristen finally decided to confide her concern.
“I can see why Serrin’s here, but I don’t feel very useful,” she said. “I don’t even really understand exactly what’s happening, you know?”
“Neither do we.”
“Yes, but I don’t even know why I don’t know why.”
Michael looked at her standing there for all the world like a very serious child who has gazed up at the stars and thought to herself, “What is it with all this infinity and eternity stuff?” He wasn’t in love with her and never had been, but he could easily understand how any other man might be.
“In a nutshell,” he began, taking a deep breath, “some joker-some extraordinarily talented joker-says he’s going to frag up every computer system on the planet and gives every indication that he’s more than capable of fulfilling such a threat. He leaves an icon, a calling card, which is the most famous fraud in Christianity. He names himself after the greatest genius in the world’s history. I’m asked to find out all I can and maybe find him. I no sooner start making attempts to do so than an awful lot of people start getting very interested in that. One of them sends our party guest last night. One of them tracks Geraint and ends up dead at the hands of jesuits. At first I didn’t know what the image meant, the face of a black woman, but now it looks as if some very weird occult or religious stuff is involved. And that’s what Serrin’s helping me with. And, oh, we have seven days before our joker pulls his party piece-the systems crash and the world grinds to a halt. Okay?”
He had hardly paused for breath and did so now, gulping down big lungfuls prior to swallowing the vodka. It hurt the throat and brought tears to his eyes and he shook himself in a shivery spasm right afterward, but ten seconds later his throat was warm, his stomach glowed, and he felt wonderful. Kristen had done the same, but somehow managed the operation without the cough and sharp intake of breath.
“All right.” she said with that same serious-child look. “I don’t know much about Jesuits. Where I came from there were Sunnis and Shi’as, and a few Rastas, and the Dutch Reformed Church, of course, and some Hindus, and a few others as well. But I never heard of any black woman in Christianity.”
Just for an instant a chill ran down Michael’s spine, and if he’d been the kind to pay more attention to intuitions-endowed with Geraint’s Celtic genes, perhaps-he’d have stayed with the sensation. But he put it down to the vodka, which had made him just a little light-headed, and he missed it. People do sometimes. They miss things because what they know prevents them from seeing what else is there. Brains are designed to keep information out, and they’re good at that.
Besides that, his stomach was running interference on his brain in any event. Being the last to get up meant scrounging up breakfast from what little was left by the time he got to the kitchen, so he hadn’t really eaten, save the tiny scraps of caviar with some sour cream and crackers. He rummnaged in one of the bags.
“Let’s wander outside and eat these saffron biscuits,” he said conspiratorially, and the serious child he’d been looking at turned into the larder-raiding variety. They made a swift exit back out into the bustling street to open the packet.
It was half-past four and Geraint had already retrieved his overcoat from the antique hatstand and was ready to leave with his familiar red box, when a bulky figure entered his office. Since he came in without knocking, it could only be one person.
“Llanfrechfa, glad I caught you,” the portly man grunted. He parked his spreading rear in Geraint’s own chair in an appropriating gesture. Geraint knew at once that this was going to be bad news. His boss, the Earl of Manchester, usually summoned him to his own offices. If he came to Geraint’s, then there was trouble to be shared or delegated, It might be gout, it might be one of his wives demanding more maintenance for the noble offspring, it might be anything-but it would be trouble. Geraint sat down opposite him, dutifully.
“Wanted a word,” the man continued. Geraint’s heart sank. That was a code, long-established through use. It meant it was serious trouble and he was the cause.
“If it’s about last night-” he began.
“Bugger last night!” the Earl said. “Not important. The Commissioner of Police hasn’t had to smooth anything over for some time, not since that idiot Earl and the scoutmaster, so it won’t cause many ripples. Not, however, that I suggest you involve yourself in such nocturnal alarums and excursions on a regular basis,” he finished in finger-wagging mode.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Geraint said fervently, making sure he got the “sir” into the conversation right at the start.
“But it is about last night, in a manner of speaking.” The Earl stopped there, and began the ritual of lighting one of his implausibly large cigars. Even in Havana, nimble-fingered artisans must have been appalled at the prospect of rolling one of these monstrosities Bizet’s famous heroine would have had thighs like a Sumo wrestler’s had she been obliged to roll such cigars all her life. Geraint could do nothing but wait.
Cunning old swine, he thought. It’s absolutely deliberate, leaving me to stew in my own anxiety until he chooses just the right moment to dump ten tons of stinking drek on me. Full-blown ministers need that kind of talent, I’ve learned.
“There are certain foreign interests to whom HMG does not wish to cause unnecessary offense at this particular moment in time.” the Earl said slowly. Again he paused, using his free hand to check the time on the pocket-watch he fished out of his waistcoat pocket. Geraint waited further for the punchline.
“Those interests are unhappy regarding the nature of certain enquiries you and a certain associate appear to be pursuing,” the Earl went on. “It gives them offense, I regret to say. And His Majesty’s Government does not wish that to happen. And of course I am a servant of HMG, even as you are.”
And of course we both know the other hold you have on me, Geraint added to himself. But he chanced something anyway.
“May I respectfully enquire as to whether you are familiar with the nature of the problem that has led to our undertaking certain enquiries?” he said, using the intractably long-winded language that was the lingua franca of professional British politicians.