‘You know a lot do you, you ungrateful young pup, about running a criminal enterprise? You’re both, I’m sure, deeply knowledgeable about trading in options and futures in the collateralization of debt and what to do when an entire country threatens to default.’
‘No,’ said Vague Henri.
‘Then shut up.’ IdrisPukke turned to Cale. ‘Do you think I’d steal from you or do you a bad turn?’
‘No.’
‘So we’re agreed. Ten per cent. You’ll be very rich if Cadbury is telling the truth, or half the truth.’
‘Now you’ve hurt my feelings,’ said Cadbury.
‘You know those boys Kitty had in Memphis? Did he bring them here?’
‘Nothing to do with me, that stuff.’
‘It is now. I want you to find them and let them go. Give them fifty dollars each.’
‘Fifty dollars for a rent boy?’
Cadbury could see immediately that Cale was not in the mood to be disagreed with. ‘All right, I’ll see to it but it’ll come out of your share.’ But he couldn’t leave it. ‘You can’t do anything for them. Not now. This is what they’re used to. They’ll spend the money and end up with Peanut Butter or Butt-Naked. They’ll be worse off than they were with Kitty. Either leave them as they are or take care of them.’
‘Do I look like somebody’s mother? The four of us did all right. Riba’s practically the Queen of the Russians. And now the three of us are rich. Give them the money and let them go. Then it’s up to them.’
On his way home, Cadbury thought about what Cale wanted. What he said about Riba was true enough. Cadbury had seen her looking gorgeous at some social thrash Kitty had sent him to, to have a word with some Fauntleroy or other who was late with his payments and who had important information Kitty wanted, much more important than the piffling three thousand that was owed. He’d seen Riba at high table. She was something to look at in her red gown, hair piled up like a loaf. But as to Cale and the others being all right, you just had to look at the state of them.
18
Vague Henri and Cale had made one further condition, of a kind: Cadbury had to kill the two men who had beaten the boys so badly. Cadbury was going to do this anyway because he’d been told they were looking for a chance to take over Kitty’s operation themselves, but it wouldn’t do any harm to let Cale think he’d conceded something.
‘It’ll have to be quick,’ he told the three boys. ‘I only torture people when I really need to know something: if you want them to suffer you must do it yourself.’
Quick would be all right, they said.
That night the two men were tied up and when they demanded to know what would happen to them Cadbury said, ‘You must die and not live.’ The next day, along with Kitty the Hare, their bodies were taken to be buried in the rubbish tips at Oxyrinchus.
Meanwhile, in the civilized places a few hundred yards away, Vipond was in the ascendant. Now that he was in possession of Kitty’s red books, and the money secrets inside them, the doors that were once closed to him were now opening.
Conn Materazzi, whose cold disdain for the King made him ever more agreeable in his admirer’s adoring eyes, was now in command of ten thousand household Switzers, soldiers of considerable skill and reputation. He was opposed in his rise by the Swiss chancellor, Bose Ikard, but not because of his youth and inexperience. In fact, such things were last of all on his mind: the alternative to Conn could only be drawn from the Swiss aristocracy, who may have been older but were generally not very bright and had considerably less military training than the young man. What alarmed Ikard was the influence this gave to Vipond and his no less dangerous half-brother. He feared any power moving into their hands because all that concerned them was what was good for the self-serving war-mongering Materazzi and not what was good for anyone else. Vipond would have understood his fears but would have pointed out that for the foreseeable future their mutual interests lay in opposing the Redeemers. But Ikard feared war more than anything while Vipond thought it was inevitable.
In fact Bose Ikard and Vipond, and even IdrisPukke, were not so different, in that they were experienced enough to be suspicious of decisive action in war or anything else. Life had taught them to spin everything out until the last minute, then appear to agree to some major concession and then, when all seemed to be decided, find some way to spin things out again.
‘The trouble with decisive agreement, just as with decisive battles,’ lectured Vipond to Cale, ‘is that they decide things and logic dictates that there must be an extremely good chance of them being decided against you. When anyone talks to me about a decisive battle I’m inclined to have him locked up. They’re an easy solution and easy solutions are usually wrong. Assassinations, for example, never change history – not really.’
‘The Two Trevors tried to assassinate me at the Priory. It would have changed things if they had,’ said Cale.
‘You must take a more nuanced view. What would it have changed?’
‘Well, Kitty the Hare would still be alive and you wouldn’t have his money and his secrets.’
‘I don’t consider Kitty’s death to have been an assassination – by which I mean the pursuit of impersonal political ends by an act of personal violence. Kitty’s death was just common murder. If you want to make something of yourself you must stop slaughtering people, or at least stop slaughtering them for purely private reasons.’
Cale was always reluctant not to have the last word with anyone, even Vipond – but his head ached and he was tired.
‘Leave the boy alone, he’s not well,’ said IdrisPukke.
‘What do you mean? The boy knows I’m only giving him the benefit of my experience.’ He smiled at Cale. ‘Pearls beyond price.’ Cale smiled back despite himself.
‘I wanted to talk to you about a difficult matter: Conn Materazzi won’t have you on his staff.’
A puzzled silence from Cale. ‘Never crossed my mind he would.’
‘His dislike of you is quite understandable,’ said Vipond. ‘Nearly everyone takes exception to you.’
‘He dislikes me even more since he was in my debt,’ said Cale, referring to his long regretted rescue of Conn from the crushed and gasping piles of the dead at Silbury Hill.
‘He’s grown up a good deal since then. Transformed, I’d say. But he won’t be doing with you at any price. We need you to be advising him and very badly. But he’s adamant against even my considerable temper when I don’t get my own way on something so important. Why?’
‘No idea. Ask him.’
‘I have.’
Cale sat in silence.
‘Moving on,’ continued Vipond, after a moment. ‘On balance, we’ve decided not to tell anyone about the likelihood of the Redeemers beginning their attack through the Arnhemland desert.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I believe you. But the problem is that if we warn the Axis and they do something about it by reinforcing the border next to the Maginot Line the Redeemers will have to re-think everything. If I understand you correctly,’ he did, this was merely flattery, ‘the Redeemers’ entire strategy for the war depends on a swift breakthrough there.’
‘So?’
‘If that entry is blocked, they’ll have to think again.’
‘Yes’
‘Would you say a long delay?’
‘Probably.’
‘Perhaps another year if they must miss the summer and autumn. They won’t attack in the winter.’
‘They probably won’t.’
‘If you say so. But you agree that blocking Arnhemland now will probably delay the war for a year?’
‘Probably.’
‘Well, we can’t afford that. By we I mean the Materazzi and you.’