Alejandro Vallecillo from the Puerto Rican Economic Development Agency — reconciled in the months since his initial phone call to dealing with Randall as an equal — moved into the Plaza several days in advance of the signing and Randall spent the larger part of that week shuttling between there and the company’s lawyers up on E 42nd Street. He looked in on the conference rooms first thing every morning and again before he left for home at night. The Plaza’s management was installing extra telephone lines in the main room and bringing sofas and armchairs into the rooms opening off it.
(Maur Dubin, to the best of Randall’s knowledge, was in Miami, recuperating, otherwise he might have wanted a say in it too.)
The night before the ceremony he worked so late he did not even bother with the cab home, but took the room the hotel offered, going to bed with the curtains open as an added precaution against oversleeping.
He need not have worried. He was up and dressed at five-thirty, standing by the window, watching the mist on the East River slowly recede to offer up, like something long buried in desert sand, the monument that was the Long Island Ferry Terminal. By seven he was down in the conference rooms for the flowers being delivered direct from the market: orchids and amaryllises and royal poincianas, deep, deep red with here and there a white and yellow throat.
The baskets of fruit were brought up from the cold store an hour later to give them time to achieve room temperature. An icebox arrived, already stocked with juices and sodas. (The champagne, he had decided, should remain in the care of the sommelier until the moment that the pen nibs were unsheathed.) The DeLorean legal team arrived and set up base in the side room nearest the door.
At nine o’clock to the second the Puerto Rican delegation came into the room, headed by Vallecillo. Bringing up the rear was a small, barrel-chested man with white hair swept back from a high forehead, the governor, Romero-Barcelo himself. Without being asked or directed he took a seat at the head of the conference table, the window at his back. The seat facing him — and the strengthening sun, unless the blinds were tilted to repel (Randall would make damn sure that they were) — was, for the time being, empty.
‘Perhaps,’ Randall said, once he had made sure that everyone had the necessary papers in front of them, ‘you would like some coffee?’
Coffee, the governor indicated with a dip of his head, would be most welcome. It came, it went. Pages were turned, cross-referenced with earlier drafts. The room turned blue with smoke then grey. The chair at the far end of the table remained empty at ten. It remained empty at eleven. Half past.
Romero-Barcelo beckoned to Vallecillo, seated nearest to him on the right, who listened stony-faced for several moments before coming down the room and taking Randall by the upper arm into one of the side rooms.
‘What the hell is going on here?’
‘I’m sure there is a very good explanation,’ Randall said.
‘There had better be.’
They left the room together. Vallecillo returned to the governor’s right hand. A quarter of an hour passed. The governor shaped as though to push back his seat.
‘What about lunch?’ Randall said and before anyone could react had crossed the room and picked up a phone. ‘I’ll ring down.’
‘Mr Randall,’ said the woman on the other end of the line. ‘This is a coincidence. I just had a call come in for you, long distance. It is a very poor line. One moment while I try to connect you.’
There was a sound as of the phone being immersed in a tub of suds, which cleared then to leave a voice, that voice. ‘Edmund, is that you?’
Randall was conscious that the governor was watching him. The entire room was watching him. He faced away, endeavouring to keep his voice low and steady.
‘Where are you?’
‘Ireland.’
‘Ireland?’ It came out strangulated. ‘But Ireland’s off, you told me: “Ireland’s off”.’
‘Not the south, the north.’ There was a warble on the line — something moving on the Atlantic seabed perhaps — swallowing what he said next. He repeated it, louder. ‘I’m in Belfast.’
It was as though someone had tossed a grenade into the room. Randall instinctively hunched his shoulders, pulling the phone closer to his chest, trying to absorb the impact.
‘John,’ he managed at length, ‘I have the governor here.’
‘And I have the British secretary of state for North Ireland here. He has already put a proposal before the cabinet in London. We are going to make an announcement tomorrow. We’re building the factory here.’
Randall could nearly not take it all in. ‘We’re building it in Borinquen.’ But even as he was saying it he knew it was no longer true.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before now,’ DeLorean went on, ‘but I couldn’t risk a single word of it leaking out for fear of the whole deal collapsing.’
‘But what do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to get on the first flight you can over here.’
‘I meant’ — Randall’s voice now was scarcely more than a whisper — ‘about the Puerto Ricans.’
‘Tell them they just didn’t move fast enough. This is the deal we need,’ DeLorean said and with another deep-sea warble was gone.
Randall replaced the receiver carefully then turned back to face the room again. Everyone around the table appeared to have lit a fresh cigarette. From the looks of the smoke billowing out, possibly two or three apiece.
The governor for the first time addressed him directly. ‘Well?’
‘If you could excuse me a minute,’ Randall said and let himself out into the corridor. The elevators were directly facing; the doors of the one farthest left opened the instant he pressed the call button. He rode all the way down to zero then walked quickly across the lobby and out, down the steps, on to the sidewalk. Breathe, breathe, breathe. He spotted the bar on the opposite corner of the street. He didn’t even bother with the walk sign but stepped on to the road, taking his chances with the buses and the cabs and the cars.
Once inside (because even if he had willed it nothing that day would have hit him) he set a ten-dollar bill on the counter and pointed to the Polish vodka, that being more or less the first thing that caught his eye.
‘Double,’ he said, and when that was gone pointed a second time: same again.
Then he walked back out on to the street, through the traffic, up the steps and across the hotel lobby to the elevator, reached out his finger to press up. Missed.
*
He got on a flight that same evening and, the following morning, having slept off in the intervening hours the effects of the previous day’s vodkas (of which there had been several more after his extended dressing down by Romero-Barcelo), picked up another flight on a plane a quarter the size from a corner of Heathrow so remote and dismal it seemed to belong not just to a different airport but a different decade entirely.
An hour and a half later that plane came in to land on a runway bordered on one side by fields and on the other by a military base of a kind he had hoped never to see again when he flew out of Tan Son Nhat for the last time.
DeLorean had told him that a member of the secretary of state’s team would be in the arrivals hall to meet him and sure enough when he came through from the baggage claim a large sad-looking man, in an even larger, sadder-looking suit, stood holding a piece of paper with Randall’s name written on it in blue.
Randall stopped before him and held out his hand. ‘Jennings?’
‘McAuley, Mr Jennings is out in the car.’ The man bypassed Randall’s hand and reached down instead for his bag, affording Randall a glimpse of his gun, an old-fashioned pistol, holstered beneath his left arm.