Goldfarb pulled the telephone away from his ear and briefly closed his eyes as the voice over the line metallically filled the elegant office. «What kind of talk is that?» roared the caller. «This great country could be in a big national crisis, and you got nothin’ to offer but ‘presents’ that don’t make no sense? Well, lemme tell ya, Mister Big Linebacker, the man in Langley, Virginia, who you can’t talk to nohow, says you better come up with somethin’ on this Thunder Head and come up quick! I mean none of us want to live in Palermo, you know what I mean?»
«Redundancy aside, ‘Per cento anno, signore’» said Goldfarb. «We’ll be in touch.» The CIA consultant replaced the telephone, leaned back in his swivel chair, and sighed audibly as he addressed the attractive couple in front of his desk. «Why me, oh Lord, why me?» he asked, shaking his head. «You’re positive you’re right?»
«I wouldn’t put it so strongly, Hyman,» replied the woman in a clipped British accent that bespoke several generations of expensive breeding. «No, we’re not positive, I don’t think anybody could be, but if there is a Thunder Head, he’s simply nowhere to be found, as you so clearly explained to the gentleman on the phone.»
«I used your words, of course,» added Goldfarb. «And I question the title of ‘gentleman.’»
«With good reason, I suspect,» said the woman’s male companion, also obviously British. «We employed Plan C. We were Cambridge-based anthropologists studying a great if diminished tribe whose ancestors were brought over to the Crown by Walter Raleigh in the early seventeenth century. If there really is a Thunder Head, by all logic he should have rushed forth to claim the Crown’s recognition, as well as the long-buried remittance, which at the time was no doubt minor, but by any standard an enormous sum today. He didn’t; therefore, our conclusion: he doesn’t exist.»
«But the brief to the Supreme Court does,» insisted the consultant. «It’s crazy.»
«Simply incredible,» agreed the Englishman. «Where do we go from here, Hyman? I gather you’re ‘under the gun,’ as we used to say in Her Majesty’s Secret Service, although I always thought it was a rather banal expression conveying more melodrama than was necessary.»
«It both is and it isn’t,» said Goldfarb. «We’re dealing with an off-the-wall megillah, but it’s still an extremely dangerous situation… What are those judges thinking of?»
«Justice and the law, I daresay,» offered the woman. «At a cost we all recognize as beyond the extraordinary. Regardless, dear Hy, and forgive me for saying it, but the man on the phone you say is no gentleman is basically correct. Whoever’s hiding behind the mantle of this Thunder Head—or whoever they are—that’s the key.»
«But Daphne, by your own admission, you can’t find him.»
«Then perhaps we didn’t look hard enough, Hyman. Eh, Reggie?»
«Dear girl! We trekked all over that blasted backwater bog with horrible lodgings and no civilized facilities, I remind you, and got absolutely nowhere. No one made any sense at all!»
«Yes, I know, dear, but there was one who didn’t want to make sense, do you recall my mentioning it?»
«Oh, him,» replied the Englishman, his tone dismissing the memory. «Nasty young fellow, quite sullen, really.»
«Who?» Goldfarb instantly sat forward.
«Not sullen, Reggie, simply uncommunicative, incoherent, actually, but he understood everything we were saying. It was in his eyes.»
«Who was he?» pressed the CIA consultant.
«An Indian brave—that’s the word, I think—in his early twenties, I’d judge. He claimed not to understand English very well and just shrugged and shook his head when we asked him several questions. I didn’t think much about it at the time—the young are so hostile these days, aren’t they?»
«He was indecently dressed, if I do say,» interrupted Reginald. «Hardly more than a loincloth, really. Rather disgusting. And when he leaped up on that horse, I can tell you he betrayed a definite lack of equestrian skill.»
«What are you talking about?» asked a bewildered Goldfarb.
«He fell off,» answered Daphne. «Dressage is hardly his strong suit.»
«Wait a minute, wait a minute!» Goldfarb’s broad chest was halfway across the desk. «You say you didn’t think much about this, this young Indian at the time, but you’re thinking about him now. Why?»
«Well, in light of the circumstances, dear Hy, I’m trying to think of everything.»
«What you mean is he may know something he didn’t want to tell you?»
«It’s only a possibility—»
«Do you think you could find him again?»
«Oh, yes. I saw which tepee he came out of, which one belonged to him.»
«Tepee? They live in tepees?»
«Well, naturally, Hyman,» replied Reginald. «They’re Indians, chap. Redskins, as you say in your cinema.»
«There’s also a rotten whitefish somewhere,» said Goldfarb, picking up the telephone and dialing. «Tepees! Nobody sleeps in tepees anymore!… Don’t unpack,» he added to the couple, instantly shifting his attention back to the phone. «Manny?… Reach ‘The Shovel’ and get over to the field. You’re taking the Lear out to the state of Nebraska.»
The young Indian brave, naked but for an odd-looking short leather skirt, stood outside the large decorated tepee and shouted. «I want my clothes back, Mac! You can’t do this. I’m sick of it—we’re all sick of it! We don’t sleep on dirt in these dumb tents and we don’t burn our hands trying to cook over campfires and we do use toilets, not the goddamn woods! And while I’m at it, you can take that miserable, distempered nag and ship him back to Geronimo! I hate horses and I don’t ride—none of us do, for God’s sake. We drive Chevys and Fords and a couple of old Cadillacs, but not horses!… Mac, are you listening to me? Come on, Mac, answer me!… Look, we appreciate the money and your good intentions—even the nutty clothes from that costume factory in Hollywood, but it’s all gone too far, can’t you see that?»