Dalton inclined his head, said nothing.
“Fine. Taking all of this into account, we have learned to greatly value those… assets… that we have managed to maintain in diverse parts of the world. One of those assets — and in this matter I speak with the utmost faith in your patriotism and your discretion, Micah, the utmost faith — one of those assets has been for many years and remains to this day a highly placed figure in a company known as FrancoVentus Mondiale. You are familiar with this firm?”
“I have heard of it.”
“Yes. You have. Unfortunately, due to a regrettable laxity on the part of some people in a company known as Red Shift Laser Acoustics in Simi Valley, trusted ex-Agency people who had provided an encrypted server that was acting as a blind relay for sensitive communications from this asset in Paris, an employee of Red Shift became convinced that some irregularities had occurred. In a misguided access of patriotic fervor, she attempted to draw some official attention to this matter. An attempt was made to discourage her — in some ways a heavy-handed attempt. I name no names. She made the decision to contact more inappropriate agencies. Steps were taken to minimize this developing problem, but in one of those odd and untimely coincidences in which covert history is rich, her husband was killed in a genuinely accidental — I stress the truth of this — accidental crash of a light plane. This event triggered an extremely paranoid reaction and persuaded the individual to illegally acquire evidentiary material with the clearly stated intention of sharing it with a local investigative reporter. This rash decision would have, if exposed in a national forum, led to the slight but real possibility that our asset in Paris might have come under some vague suspicion. Since this asset was in a position to share with us critical information regarding the development of North Korean and Chinese missile-propulsion systems — FrancoVentus has long been illegally sharing this sort of technology with our competition around the world, overtures had already been made to Hussein’s regime in Iraq at the time — well, it seemed advisable, although deeply regrettable, that steps be taken to prevent this person from following through on her attempts to destabilize a very important element in our general struggle against the forces of totalitarian extremism around the globe.”
Here he reached a natural pause during which he looked at Dalton as if to judge whether his points had been well taken.
“So I lay this before you, out of a sense of grateful obligation for your recent exertions on behalf of your country, and with the greatest regard for your loyalty and your love of freedom. I find it strangely lyrical that such far-reaching and supranational matters should in some way be played out in a field of sweetgrass in southeastern Colorado or in a rather garish double-wide trailer in the suburbs of Simi Valley. Or even here, in this paradisiacal enclave on the shores of the blue Pacific. I’ll say good bye to you now, Mr. Dalton, and once again allow me to express our deepest sympathy for the loss of your lovely wife.”
17
Dalton was lying on his black leather couch in the living room of his stark, inhumanly stark, upstairs flat in Wilton Row, the room lit only by burning candles. Dalton, shirtless, wearing a pair of faded jeans and one white sock, was listening to the torrential rain drumming against his windows and rattling the roof tiles while diligently working his way through a third bottle of Bollinger.
The doorbell chimed in the hall.
He got up, steadied himself with a hand on the back of the couch, and negotiated the long hallway with care — the walls had a tendency to blur and waver and the floor was for some reason not quite level. He keyed the intercom button and said something that he hoped was intelligible into the mike. A disembodied female replied.
“Micah, it’s Mandy. I know it’s late—”
“Not at all, my dove. I was just—”
“May I come up?”
“Up? Up here? Of course. Here you go—”
He leaned his forehead against the intercom casing and fumbled with the button for a while, his heavy lids closing, then he pushed himself off the wall and maneuvered his meticulous way back into the kitchen, where, after a few minor mischances, he managed to get some coffee brewing; coffee, since Mandy, like all right-thinking people, detested tea — an insipid footwash, she had once called it. The pot was filling nicely and he stood there watching it for a time, idly wondering where the thumping sound was coming from.
“Micah, it’s me. Open up.”
That voice — it was oddly familiar.
Could it be Mandy Pownall?
At the door?
He decided to look.
It was.
She stood there in the hallway, her arms full of papers and boxes, her face pale in the soft glow of the hallway light. She was wearing a black silk Dragon Lady number and was done up perfectly, hair piled up into a kind of silvery tiara, a pale elegant face, slightly drawn, her lips outlined in black, her eyes shadowy, with a greenish light in them.
“Oh, bloody hell, Micah. You’re completely potted.”
“Am I?”
She swept past him and went down the hall with her burden of papers and boxes, trailing the scent of frangipani and musk. He watched her as she walked away and reminded himself that, first of all, he was drunk, quite triumphantly drunk, and therefore quite out of the running, and, second, that this was Mandy Pownall, the Virgin Queen of London Sector and old enough to be his… his aunt.
He followed her down the hall, using the wall to guide him, and found her behind his granite countertop, searching for coffee cups, straining to reach an upper shelf. The black kimono rode up her thighs and Dalton could see that she was wearing stockings and a garter belt. Seamed stockings at that.
She turned and saw him staring at her legs.
“Oh stow that, boyo. You’re no use to anyone right now.”
“I have been known to rise to that sort of challenge.”
“Not with me, you manky git. Have some coffee.”
“I do not desire coffee,” he said, with some precision. “I will however have some more Bolly.”
He looked around, blinking.
The bottle was nowhere to be seen.
“What have you done with my Bolly?”
Mandy set a cup of black coffee down in front of him. He eyed it as if it were a beaker of bunker sea oil.
“Drink it.”
“I would rather set my nose hairs on fire.”
She reached for a candle and held it up to his nose. “Here you go, then.”
He waved it off, and sat heavily down on one of the bar stools.
“To what do I owe…?”
“Serena Morgenstern told me you’ve been hiding out up here for two whole days, getting yourself as pissed as a lord.”
“Bright girl. Clever. Notices things. I was going to say ‘perspicacious,’ but I didn’t think I could manage it.”
“You look like hell.”
“You, on the other hand, look like Hedy Lamarr.”