‘It’s in the safe. What’s the combination? Your birthday that was it, wasn’t it? December 6?’
‘I changed it.’
‘Your birthday?’
‘No, no. The combination, of course.’ He added sententiously, ‘The fewer who know the combination the better for all of us. Rudy and I are quite sufficient. It’s the drill, you know, that counts.’ He went into Rudy’s room and began to twist the knob four times to the left, three times thoughtfully to the right. His towel kept on slipping. ‘Besides, anyone can find out the date of my birth from my registration-card. Most unsafe. The sort of number they’d try at once.’
‘Go on,’ Beatrice said, ‘one more turn.’
‘This is one nobody could find out. Absolutely secure.’
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘I must have made a mistake. I shall have to start again.’
‘This combination certainly seems secure.’
‘Please don’t watch. You’re fussing me.’ Beatrice went and stood with her face to the wall. She said, ‘Tell me when I can turn round again.’ ‘It’s very odd. The damn thing must have broken. Get Rudy on the phone.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know where he’s staying. He’s gone to Varadero beach.’
‘Damn!’
‘Perhaps if you told me how you remembered the number, if you can call it remembering…’
‘It was my great-aunt’s telephone number.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘95 Woodstock Road, Oxford.’
‘Why your great-aunt?’
‘Why not my great-aunt?’
‘I suppose we could put through a directory enquiry to Oxford.’
‘I doubt whether they could help.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘I’ve forgotten that too.’
‘The combination really is secure, isn’t it?’
‘We always just knew her as great-aunt Kate. Anyway she’s been dead for fifteen years and the number may have been changed.’ ‘I don’t see why you chose her number.’
‘Don’t you have a few numbers that stick in your head all your life for no reason at all?’
‘This doesn’t seem to have stuck very well.’
‘I’ll remember it in a moment. It’s something like 7,7,5,3,9.’
‘Oh dear, they would have five numbers in Oxford.’
‘We could try all the combinations of 77539.’
‘Do you know how many there are? Somewhere around six hundred, I’d guess. I hope your cable’s not urgent.’
‘I’m certain of everything except the 7.’
‘That’s fine. Which seven? I suppose now we might have to work through about six thousand arrangements. I’m no mathematician.’ ‘Rudy must have it written down somewhere.’
‘Probably on waterproof paper so that he can take it in with him bathing. We’re an efficient office.’
‘Perhaps,’ Wormold said, ‘we had better use the old code.’ ‘It’s not very secure. However…’ They found Charles Lamb at last by Milly’s bed; a leaf turned down showed that she was in the middle of Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Wormold said, ‘Take down this cable. Blank of March blank.’
‘Don’t you even know the day of the month?’
‘Following from 59200 stroke 5 paragraph A begins 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 sacked for drunkenness on duty stop fears deportation to Spain where his life is in danger stop.’
‘Poor old Raul.’
‘Paragraph B begins 59200 stroke 5 stroke ‘Couldn’t I just say “he”?’ ‘All right. He. He might be prepared under these circumstances and for reasonable bonus with assured refuge in Jamaica to pilot private plane over secret constructions to obtain photographs stop paragraph C begins he would have to fly on from Santiago and land at Kingston if 59200 can make arrangements for reception stop.’
‘We really are doing something at last, aren’t we?’ Beatrice said. ‘Paragraph D begins stop will you authorize five hundred dollars for hire of plane for 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 stop further two hundred dollars may be required to bribe airport staff Havana stop paragraph E begins bonus to 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 should be generous as considerable risk of interception by patrolling planes over Oriente mountains stop I suggest one thousand dollars stop.’
‘What a lot of lovely money,’ Beatrice said.
‘Message ends. Go on. What are you waiting for?’
‘I’m just trying to find a suitable phrase. I don’t much care for Lamb’s Tales, do you?’
‘Seventeen hundred dollars,’ Wormold said thoughtfully.
‘You should have made it two thousand. The A. O. likes round figures.’ ‘I don’t want to seem extravagant,’ Wormold said. Seventeen hundred dollars would surely cover one year at a finishing school in Switzerland. ‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Beatrice said. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that you may be sending a man to his death?’ He thought, That is exactly what I plan to do.
He said, ‘Tell them at the Consulate that the cable has to have top priority.’
‘It’s a long cable,’ Beatrice said. ‘Do you think this sentence will do? “He presented Polydore and Cadwal to the king, telling him they were his two lost sons, Guiderius and Arviragus.” There are times, aren’t there, when Shakespeare is a little dull.’
A week later he took Beatrice out to supper at a fish-restaurant near the
harbour. The authorization had come, though they had cut him down by two hundred
dollars so that the A. O. got his round figure after all. Wormold thought of
Raul driving out to the airport to embark on his dangerous flight. The story was not yet complete. Just as in real life, accidents could happen; a character might take control. Perhaps Raul would be intercepted before embarking, perhaps he would be stopped by a police-car on his way. He might disappear into the torture-chambers of Captain Segura. No reference would appear in the press. Wormold would warn London that he was going off the air in case Raul was forced to talk. The radio set would be dismantled and hidden after the last message had been sent, the celluloid sheets would be kept ready for a final conflagration. Or perhaps Raul would take off in safety and they would never know what exactly happened to him over the Oriente mountains. Only one thing in the story was certain: he would not arrive in Jamaica and there would be no photographs. ‘What are you thinking?’ Beatrice asked. He hadn’t touched his stuffed langouste.
‘I was thinking of Raul.’ The wind blew up from the Atlantic. Moro Castle lay like a liner gale-bound across the harbour. ‘Anxious?’
‘Of course I’m anxious.’ If Raul had taken off at midnight, he would refuel just before dawn in Santiago, where the ground-staff were friendly, everyone within the Oriente province being rebels at heart. Then when it was just light enough for photography and too early for the patrol planes to be up, he would begin his reconnaissance over the mountains and the forest. ‘He hasn’t been drinking?’
‘He promised me he wouldn’t. One can’t tell.’
‘Poor Raul.’
‘Poor Raul.’
‘He’s never had much fun, has he? You should have introduced him to Teresa.’
He looked sharply up at her, but she seemed deeply engaged over her langouste.
‘That wouldn’t have been very secure, would it?’
‘Oh, damn security,’ she said.
After supper they walked back along the landward side of the Avenida de Maceo. There were few people about in the wet windy night and little traffic. The rollers came in from the Atlantic and smashed over the sea-wall. The spray drove across the road, over the four traffic-lanes, and beat like rain under the pockmarked pillars where they walked. The clouds came racing from the east, and he felt himself to be part of the slow erosion of Havana. Fifteen years was a long time. He said, ‘One of those lights up there may be him. How solitary he must feel.’
‘You talk like a novelist,’ she said.
He stopped under a pillar and watched her with anxiety and suspicion.