It was Arctic cold in England and throughout most of Europe that February. Eight inches of snow fell on London and a few flakes had even dusted the French Riviera. The cold and damp penetrated everywhere, including the panelled conference room/office of Wudu, Ltd., where Durant had hauled a three-bar electric fire out of a closet and stuck it in the false fireplace to supplement the building’s inadequate central heating.
Enno Glimm sat in one of the twin wingback chairs that flanked the fireplace. Above its mantel hung a large oil portrait of Mrs. Arthur Case Wu (the former Agnes Goriach) and the two sets of Wu twins.
The seated 14-year-old twin girls looked both worldly and a trifle mischievous. Their standing 17-year-old brothers, Arthur and Angus, wore identical half-smiles that made them look faintly sinister. The artist had brilliantly caught the mother’s handsome features, regal bearing and even the sparkle in her huge gray eyes that suggested she was thinking of something bawdy.
Enno Glimm ignored the portrait and remained hunched-over in the wingback chair, toasting his palms before the electric fire and frowning, as if sorry that he had let Durant relieve him of the black double-breasted cashmere overcoat.
Durant guessed the coat had cost at least a thousand pounds or, more likely, three thousand deutsche marks. After hanging it on the overly elaborate coatrack that had been carved out of black walnut, supposedly in 1903, Durant went over to the other wingback chair, sat down, crossed his legs and waited for Glimm to say whatever he had come to say.
Glimm was still toasting his palms when, without looking at Durant, he said, “Mr. Wu won’t be joining us?” This time he made Artie Wu’s surname sound like the vieux in Vieux Carré and even gave it a passable French pronunciation.
“He’s away,” Durant said. “A family matter.”
Glimm looked up at the portrait with pale gray eyes that Durant thought weren’t much darker or warmer than sleet. “Someone is ill?” Glimm asked, coating the question with just the right amount of concern.
“His sons are having a problem at school,” Durant said.
“Neglecting their studies?”
“Something like that.”
“Their school is here — in London?”
“Why?” Durant asked, turning the one-word question into a warning and possibly a threat.
It made Glimm smile. “You think I’m a kidnapper — a terrorist maybe?”
“I don’t know what you are,” Durant said. “Maybe we should get to that.”
“Listen. When I deal with a business, any business, I like to deal with its principals, its top guys, the yes-or-no people. In this case, you and Voo. So after I fly into Heathrow last night in the snowstorm—”
“From where?”
Glimm ignored the question. “—and check into the Connaught, where they’ve got rooms going begging, I decide to take a little walk, snow or no snow, and have a look at Eight Bruton Street, Berkeley “Square, London Doubleyou One, heart of Mayfair and all that. I wanta make sure Voodoo, Limited’s a real business and not just some combination Xerox copy shop and accommodation address — know what I mean? And if it is real, then I’ll walk in the next morning unannounced and unexpected.”
“And possibly unwelcome.”
“We’ll see,” Glimm said. “Anyhow, when I walk into your pretty little reception room out there, the first thing I notice is there’s no pretty little receptionist to go with it. Then I notice some dust on her desk — not much, but enough to tell me she hasn’t been to work in a week or ten days. But so what? Maybe she’s out sick in bed with a doctor.”
Durant smiled faintly. “A temporary indisposition.”
“Just like I thought. And since there’s nobody to receive me, I knock on the door that says Private and wait while all those locks and dead bolts and chains are shot back and undone. Finally, the door opens and I see some guy wearing way too much tan for February — a guy who’s six-three or — four and carries maybe one-seventy-five or — eighty pounds, if that. This is a guy who’ll never see forty again and probably not even forty-five, but who’s got the moves of somebody in their twenties. Okay. Their late, late twenties. And right away I know I’m in the presence of none other than that fucking Durant, which is what everybody I talked to calls you.”
“My references,” Durant said. “And bona fides.”
Glimm nodded.
“Name two,” Durant said.
“Ever know a Manila police captain called Cruz?”
“I knew a police lieutenant called Hermenegildo Cruz.”
“He got promoted,” Glimm said. “What about a Maurice Overby in Amman?”
Something changed in Durant’s expression — a certain tightening around the mouth. But then it went away and he said, “What’s Overby doing in Jordan?”
“He claims he’s there to analyze the BYK’s personal security system.”
“All by himself?”
“He says his principal resource asset, whatever that means, is Dr. Booth Stallings, the world-famous expert on terrorism that I never heard of. You ever hear of him?”
Durant only nodded.
Glimm permitted himself another small smile. “I notice you don’t ask what BYK stands for. I don’t know and have to ask Overby. He’s down there in Amman, Jordan, and I’m calling from — well, it doesn’t matter where — and Overby goes all snotty over the phone and tells me BYK stands for Brave Young King, which is what he and all the other old Middle East hands call King Hussein.” Glimm paused. “Even though the King’s not all that young anymore, is he?”
“Overby told you he’s an old Middle East hand?” Durant said.
“You saying he’s not?”
“I’m saying it’s just another fascinating and heretofore undisclosed chapter in Mr. Overby’s life.”
“Okay. So he’s a liar. Who the hell cares about Overby? What about you? You ever been there — the Middle East? I mean on business?”
“Beirut,” Durant said.
“When?”
“A few years ago.”
“A few years ago was when it was still kinda hairy, right?”
Durant only shrugged and waited for what came next, which he assumed would be the sell. Instead, it turned out to be a silence that went on and on until it had Glimm crossing and uncrossing his legs and even shifting a little in the wing-back chair. Because silences had never bothered Durant, he waited it out with a small polite smile, and Glimm finally ended it with yet another question. “What were you doing there — in Beirut?”
“Looking for something,” Durant said.
“Find him?”
“I don’t think I said ‘him.’ ”
“Okay. Him? Her? It?”
“We found what we were looking for.”
“ ‘We’ meaning you and Mr. Voo, right?” Glimm said and, not waiting for confirmation, hurried on, his manner and tone brusque and just shy of rude. “What you guys went looking for in Beirut was somebody fairly important’s dead body. I hear this somebody fairly important’s widow wants to collect on her missing-and-presumed-dead husband’s million-dollar life policy, but doesn’t want to wait around seven years — or whatever it is — till he’s declared legally dead. And her dead husband — or whoever he’s working for — must’ve been paying one hell of a premium if the insurance company agreed to waive its act-of-war and insurrection rider, which it sure as hell did or the widow wouldn’t’ve hired you and Voo to go find proof he was dead — or maybe buy it from somebody.”
“Tell me something,” Durant said. “Since you don’t really have any trouble with your w’s, why mess up Mr. Wu’s name? Is it a test? A sales gimmick? Or just your notion of cute and clever?”
A grin made a quick white slash across Glimm’s bony face. His pale eyes crinkled with pleasure or perhaps even delight and Durant prepared himself for a chuckle that never came. But Glimm still wore the pleased look when he said, “It’s a test.”