“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.”
Sir Wilfred went on to explain that Lord Biffen lived in the Dordogne, the social leader of a gaggle of geriatric tax avoiders who infested that section of France, to the disgust and discomfort of the local peasants. The Biffens were typical of their sort: Irish peerage that every other generation stiffened its sagging finances by introducing a shot of American hog-butcher blood. The gentleman had overstepped himself in his lust to avoid taxes and had got into a shady thing or two in free ports in the Bahamas. That had given the government a hold on him and on his British funds, so he was most cooperative, remaining in France when he was ordered to, where he exercised his version of the shrewd businessman by cheating local women out of antique furniture or automobiles, always being careful to intercept his wife’s mail to avoid her discovering his petty villainies. “Silly old fart, really. You know the type. Outlandish ties; walking shorts with street shoes and ankle stockings? But the wife and daughters, together with the establishment here, are of some occasional use to us. What do you think of the old girl?”
“A little obsessed.”
“Hm-m. Know what you mean. But if you’d gone twenty-five years getting only what the old fellow had to offer, I fancy you’d be a little sperm mad yourself. Well, shall we join them?”
After breakfast the next morning. Sir Wilfred sent the ladies away and sat back with his last cup of coffee. “I was on the line with the masters this morning. They’ve decided to go along with you—with a couple of provisos, of course.”
“They had better be minor.”
“First, they want assurance that this information will never be used against them again.”
“You should have been able to give them that assurance. You know that the man you call the Gnome always destroys the originals as soon as the deal is made. His reputation rests on that.”
“Yes, quite so. And I shall undertake to assure them on that account. Their second proviso is that I report to them, telling them that I have considered your plan carefully and believe it to be airtight and absolutely sure not to involve the government directly.”
“Nothing in this business is airtight.”
“All right. Airtight-ish, then. So I’m afraid that you will have to take me into your confidence—familiarize me with details of dastardly machinations, and all that.”
“Certain details I cannot give you until I have gone over your observation reports on the Septembrists. But I can sketch the bold outlines for you.”
Within an hour, they had agreed on Hel’s proposal, although Sir Wilfred had some reservations about the loss of the plane, as it was a Concorde, “…and we’ve had trouble enough trying to ram the damned thing down the world’s throat as it is.”
“It’s not my fault that the plane in question is that uneconomical, polluting monster.”
“Quite so. Quite so.”
“So there it is, Fred. If your people do your part well, the stunt should go off without the Mother Company’s having any proof of your complicity. It’s the best plan I could work up, considering that I’ve had only a couple of days to think about it. What do you say?”