10

Norfolk

It was shortly after ten a.m., some two hours since the attack. Ambulances came and went in utter confusion along country lanes built for horses and carts. Spectators from nearby villages stood beneath umbrellas and some macabre souls took photographs, despite the entreaties of military policemen. Physicians in wet white coats, an Anglican priest, a group of taciturn military investigators, the inevitable reporters, the general ghouls attendant on every bloodletting – it was a crowded circus, and Pagan, whose chest pain flared despite a recent ingestion of Pethidine in the fast car from London, was filled with several feelings at the same time, all of them cheerless.

Rain fell bleakly. Foxie had his collar turned up and looked like a gambler praying for a winner in the last race of a long, losing day.

“I’m angry,” Pagan said quietly.

When Frank’s words emerged like sand through a clenched fist, Foxworth knew Pagan was going into his dragon-like mode. Even the way his breath hung on the chill wet air suggested fire. The business in the hotel last night with the Cuban-American woman and the man known as Rafael Rosabal, who had turned out to be a member of Castro’s government, was another problem. Something there cut deeply into Frank, and Foxie wasn’t sure what. Pagan had reacted oddly to Foxie’s information about Rosabal, as if he were pretending not to listen at all. Was the woman an old love, a potent ghost still? Foxworth was a tireless observer of the signs in Pagan’s personal landscape, and he’d developed an ability to read most of them – and even love a number of them – but every now and then Frank vanished inside himself and became camouflaged at the heart of his own terrain. Now was one such moment.

“We have half the police force of the country looking for Ruhr – and he pulls this off anyway,” Pagan said. “A fucking cruise missile!”

A savage little pulse worked in Pagan’s jaw. “You know what makes it even worse? We’ve got a couple of eyewitnesses among the soldiers who saw his face clearly before he put on his gas mask. You know what that means? He wanted people to see him. He wanted to be noticed. He’s like a bloody actor who just happened to do a quick stint in the sticks here. He wants audience appreciation even in the miserable provinces! Jesus Christ! The man’s bored with all his years of anonymity and now he’s got a taste of fame and he loves it. Vanity, Foxie. He’s suddenly got theatre in his blood. I want him. I want that bastard.”

Foxie surveyed the team of experts that was sifting through the wreckage of the two helicopters. Here and there, in ditches, under trees, hidden by long grass, lay bodies that hadn’t yet been taken away. It was a sickening scene. Foxie thrust his hands in the pockets of his raincoat and thought how infrequently he’d seen Frank Pagan this upset. Sirens cut through the rain, flashing lights glimmered feebly. It was a miserable day with a grey sky that might last forever.

“The missile didn’t have a warhead,” Foxworth remarked. A small consolation. “Without the nuclear hardware it’s only a bloody twenty-odd foot cylinder of metal.”

“With dangerous potential,” Pagan said. He was watching a soldier being raised on a stretcher; the boy’s leg was missing below the knee. Pagan turned his face to the side. There had been a royal battle in this quiet spot whose only usual violence was that of an owl setting upon a fieldmouse, talons open, a quick dying squeal by moonlight.

An official limousine approached the crossroad and squeezed with some authority between parked ambulances. Martin Burr got out followed by the Home Secretary, Sir Frederick Kinnaird. Both men made their way over the damp road to where Pagan stood.

Pagan had no great fondness for the Home Secretary, nor any specific reason for his dislike except that he was not enamoured of politicians in general. They inspired in him the same kind of confidence as used-car salesmen. Vote for me, my Party has been driven only by an old lady and then only on Sundays and never more than thirty miles an hour. Burr did the introductions. Hands were duly pumped. Burr opened a small umbrella and shared it with Sir Freddie. This made Pagan conscious of his damp woollen overcoat and Italian shoes that leaked rainwater.

“Is it as ghastly as it looks?” Freddie Kinnaird asked.

It was on the tip of Frank Pagan’s tongue, a mischief; he wanted to say No, it’s been a lovely party but we’ve run a bit low on the canapés, Freddie, my old sunshine. But he merely gestured toward the demolition site.

“A cruise missile was taken, I understand,” Kinnaird said.

Pagan noticed Kinnaird’s black coat with the slick velvet collar; an exquisite silk tie went well with his striped shirt, made for him in Jermyn Street, no doubt. Kinnaird said something about how the missile had been on its way to Tucson, Arizona, there to be destroyed under the terms of the Russian-American treaty. He spoke in a drawling way, as if his every word were precious, to be lingered over. Now and again he shoved a strand of thin, sandy hair out of his eyes.

Pagan said, “We assume the missile was driven to an airfield nearby and flown out. There are about half a dozen airstrips in this vicinity left over from World War Two, most of them private flying clubs now. I’ve got men checking them out. If the missile hasn’t been flown from the area, it wouldn’t be too hard to hide. An underground tunnel, a warehouse, a bus garage.”

“To where could the missile be flown?” Kinnaird asked.

“Anybody’s guess,” Pagan said. “I hope we’ll have an answer soon. The RAF has been conducting an air search, but since they haven’t told us anything, it means they don’t have a thing to report. Otherwise they’d be crowing.”

Kinnaird said, “I understand one would need a fair-sized transport plane to carry the missile. Surely that shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”

Foxworth replied, “And it wouldn’t be, except for two things, Home Secretary. The rotten weather and the fact that there’s an enormous amount of air traffic in this part of the world. London’s only one hundred miles away, and the pattern of traffic there and throughout the Home Counties in general is horrendous. The system is overloaded.”

“Why steal a missile without a warhead anyway?” the Home Secretary wanted to know.

Nobody had an answer to Sir Freddie’s question. Rain fell on Burr’s black umbrella. The Commissioner asked, “What about the dead terrorists?”

“We’re still working on ID,” Pagan replied. “We’ve got four of the buggers. Two died in the assault. Another two inside the chopper.” He was impatient suddenly. He was very fond of Martin Burr, and admired him, but he disliked the way Big Shots drove up from London to ask what progress had been made when it was damned obvious that men were bleeding to death and ambulances slashing through the rain and the whole scorched, smoking landscape looked as if a meteor had struck it.

“Rather fond of helicopters, aren’t they?” Freddie Kinnaird said. “What do we know about this one?”

Pagan had one of those quirky little urges to unbutton his overcoat and show Sir Freddie that, contrary to anything he might have read in the tabloids lately, there was no Superman costume under his shirt. He restrained himself and said, “We’re running checks. We know it was a Cobra and the markings had been painted black. Beyond that, nothing yet. We’re working on it. We assume it was the same aircraft used in Shepherd’s Bush. But that’s just an assumption, and practically worthless.” Pagan had a difficult moment keeping anger and bitterness from his voice. The idea of a second chopper attack, and the sheer murderous arrogance behind it, rattled him.

“Sorry, by the by, to hear about your gun wound. Bloody tragic business in Shepherd’s Bush.” There was the famous Kinnaird touch, palm open on Pagan’s shoulder, a slightly distant intimacy, as if between nobility and the common man there might be only the merest suggestion of physical contact. It was all right for their lordships to fuck the serving wenches but not altogether good form to become too intimate with the footmen.

Pagan walked toward the wreckage of the Cobra. The dead terrorists were covered with sheets of plastic, under which charred faces might be seen opaquely, as if through filthy isinglass. Men with protective gloves picked through debris cool enough to handle. Pagan watched for a moment. From a mess such as this, hard information would emerge only slowly – a fingerprint here, an engine identification number there, maybe a scorched photograph in a wallet. It would take a long time for this chaos to yield anything useful.

Now Foxie approached the smoking rubble in a hurried way. “Just got a message from a place called St Giles, Frank. It sounds quite interesting. It’s only a few miles from here.”

“I’d welcome anything that gets me the hell out of here,” Pagan said.

“I’ll fetch the car,” and Foxie was gone again, nimbly skirting the small fires that still flickered here and there in the gloom.

The airfield beyond the hamlet of St Giles had once been a run-down place, redolent of robust pilots with waxen moustaches dashing off in Spitfires to defeat the Hun, but the old hangars had been painted bright blue and the control tower refurbished in a similar shade. Somebody had taken some trouble and expense to tart the place up. A red windsock flapped damply. A sign attached to the tower said East Anglia Flying Club in bright letters. Small planes, chained to the ground for protection against the wind, were scattered around the edges of the runway.

Foxworth and Pagan got out of the car. It was a dreary open space, exposed to the elements. A thin wet mist had formed in the wooded land beyond the hangars where a group of men stood around a Range Rover. Pagan walked the runway, Foxie following. At a certain point, Pagan stopped and kneeled rather cautiously to the tarmac, dipping his finger into a slick of fresh oily fluid; it was some kind of hydraulic liquid, viscous and green, rain-repellent. He wiped his hands together and walked until he reached the copse of beech trees.

Three men stood near the blue Range Rover, the doors of which hung open. Pagan recognised Billy Ewing, the Scotsman who worked at the SATO office in Golden Square. The other two were uniformed men, probably local. Billy Ewing, who had a small red nose and blue eyes that watered no matter the season, had a handkerchief crumpled in the palm of one hand as he always did. He had allergies unknown to the medical profession. His life was one long sniff.

“We haven’t touched a thing, Frank,” Ewing said in a voice forever on the edge of a sneeze. “It’s just the way we found it.”

The Rover was hidden, although not artfully concealed. Whoever had stashed it here between the trees had done so in haste, or else didn’t give a damn about discovery. Pagan looked inside. Boxes of cartridges lay on the floor, a discarded shotgun, two rocket launchers, three automatic pistols; quite a nice little arsenal. He looked at the instrument panel. The vehicle had clocked a mere three hundred and seven miles. It still smelled new.

Billy Ewing coughed and said, “An old geezer who was illegally fishing a local stream says he heard a bloody great roar this morning and when he looked up he saw – and here I quote – ‘a monster hairyplane near a half-mile long’ rising just above him. Scared him half to death, he says. If you need to talk to him, Frank, you’ll find him at a pub in St Giles where he went to take some medication for his fright.”

As he listened to Ewing, Pagan reached inside the rear of the vehicle. Lying across the back seat was a wine-coloured scarf of the kind worn by schoolkids as part of a uniform. He removed the scarf. A small threaded motif ran through it, the stylised letters MCS. The last two might have stood for Comprehensive School.

“What do you make of it?” Foxie asked.

Pagan didn’t reply. An odd little feeling worked inside him, something vague moving towards the light, but as yet indefinable. He held the garment to his nose. There was a fading scent of rose.

“Belongs to a girl,” he said. “Unless boys are wearing perfumes these days.”

“You’ll find a few,” Ewing remarked in the manner of a philosopher resigned to paradoxes. “It’s a funny world these days, Frank.”

“What’s the scarf doing in this particular car?” Foxworth asked.

The feeling coursed through Pagan again, creating an uneasiness. “My guess is Ruhr left it there deliberately,” he said.

“Why? You think he’s thumbing his nose at you, Frank?”

Pagan gazed through the beech trees. Ruhr’s disturbed mind, the surface of which Pagan had barely scratched during their interviews, seemed to present itself in a solid flash of light, like a hitherto unknown planet drifting momentarily close to earth. “It’s possible. I think he’s got himself a bloody hostage and wants me to know it. He likes the idea of turning the screw.”

Pagan shrugged; how could he know for sure? The flash of light had gone out and Ruhr’s mind was once again a darkened planetarium. “Let’s find out what MCS stands for,” he said. “Then call in the fingerprint boys and have them go over this car.”

Foxworth shivered as the wind rose up and roared through the beech trees, tearing leaves from branches. He wasn’t happy with this deserted airfield, or the spooky beeches, or the girl’s scarf. Nor was he exactly overjoyed to see Frank slyly swallow another painkiller, which he did like a very bad actor, turning his face to one side and smuggling the narcotic into his mouth.

“Keep an eye on things here for a while, Billy,” Pagan said.

“Will do,” the Scotsman answered, and sneezed abruptly into his hankie.

Pagan and Foxworth walked back to their car. The red windsock filled with air, rising quickly then subsiding in a limp, shapeless manner.

Cabo Gracias a Dios, Honduras

The mid-morning was infernally humid; even the sea breezes, sluggish and sickly, couldn’t dispel the stickiness. The man who stood on a knoll overlooking the ocean wore very black glasses and a battered Montecristo Fini Panama hat; he carried an aerosol can of insecticide with which he periodically buzzed the mosquitoes that flocked constantly around him.

The man was Tomas “La Gaviota” Fuentes, a Cuban-American whose nickname, The Seagull, came from his amazing ability to fly seaplanes. Storms, whirlpools, hurricanes – Fuentes flew and landed his planes regardless. He had a madman’s contempt for whatever inclement weather the gods sent down.

Fuentes looked along the beach, watching a score of fighter planes come in pairs at 1500 feet, then drop to 1200, at which point they strafed the sands, firing at bulls eyes painted in the centre of white banners. The planes, a mixture of Skyhawks, Harriers, and F-16s gathered from a variety of locations, used the inert practice ammunition known in the trade as blue slugs. Many of the banners remained undisturbed as the aircraft completed the run and veered left. Then fifty amphibious craft, each containing fifteen armed men, rolled with the tide towards the beaches. Every day the men practised wading ashore, hurrying over the sands to the cover of trees, where they disappeared swiftly and quietly.

La Gaviota took off his hat and cuffed sweat from his brow. This place was the asshole of the world. He turned away from the beach and strutted towards his large tent. Despite the fan powered by a generator, stifling air blew in self-perpetuating circles; hell wasn’t, as a certain clown of a French philosopher had claimed, other people. Real hell was a canvas tent in a Central American republic surrounded by hungry dung-flies as big as wine bottles.

He poured himself a cold beer from an icebox and gulped it down quickly. He was a big man and all muscle; even the way his forehead protruded suggested an outcropping of muscle rather than bone. Each of his hands spanned twelve inches and he wore size thirteen army boots. He crumpled the can like tissue paper and turned on his radio, which was tuned to a country station beamed out of El Paso. It wasn’t great reception, but better than nothing.

The flap of his tent opened just as he shut his eyes and listened to the sweet pipes of Emmylou Harris singing “Feeling Single, Seeing Double”. The visitor was Fuentes’ second in command, a lackey Harry Hurt had sent from Washington. His name was Roger Bosanquet and he was some kind of limey, with an accent you could spread on a scone.

“They’re getting better,” Fuentes said. “They’re not perfect, but they’re improving.” Here Fuentes added the words “old bean”, which he imagined was the way Englishmen addressed one another at every level of society. His attempt at an Oxford accent was appalling. Bosanquet always responded with a polite half-smile.

Bosanquet said, “The infantry coming ashore performed with precision. They can’t possibly be faulted. The pilots, however, were not as accurate as they should have been. They need a little more time.” He had received training at an army school in England – from which establishment he’d been expelled for reasons Fuentes didn’t know, though he had absolutely no doubt the crime was faggotry. All Englishmen were faggots. It was a law of nature.

Fuentes made the basic mistake of seeing only Bosanquet’s manicured manners and his quiet subordination. He missed a certain hardness that lay in the Englishman’s blue eyes. Nor did he notice the determined way Bosanquet sometimes set his jaw. He consistently underestimated the Englishman, whom he considered a boniato, a thickhead. But at some other level, one Fuentes did not care to acknowledge, he envied Bosanquet his education and training. His cool. His class.

“They don’t have more goddam time,” Fuentes said. “The clocks are running, yame, and they’re running just a little too damn fast. The aircraft are supposed to destroy Castro’s defensive positions on the beach before the landings, correct? And if they don’t, then the poor bastards coming ashore are walking into a slaughterhouse. Correct?”

Bosanquet wiped his brow with a red bandanna. He had served with Latin Americans like Fuentes before now and he disliked their sudden passions; they were brave soldiers but lacked detachment. It couldn’t be expected, of course. Impatience and irrationality were programmed into them. They loved theatrics. They threw fits. They were unpredictable. They were not, when all was said and done, Anglo-Saxon. Bosanquet, who had done many dirty deeds for Harry Hurt in his life and who was here in this stinking place to provide a counterweight to Fuentes (and make confidential reports to Harry) spoke in a reasonable way. “With a little more accuracy on behalf of the planes, everything will work out superbly.”

“Cojones! Castro’s apes will shoot those poor bastards in the boats like coconuts on the midway,” Fuentes snarled.

“Only if Castro’s apes get the chance,” Bosanquet said quietly. “And we don’t believe they will, do we? All we are doing here is to prepare our men for a contingency that isn’t going to arise. Besides, it keeps them from getting bored.”

Fuentes, calmer now, mumbled and shrugged. He was into a second beer now, a Lone Star. Like all demanding leaders of men, he always thought the worst of his subordinates. They were misconceived sons of whores and yet he prayed, as any stage director will, that all would somehow be well on opening night, lines would not be fluffed, and some generous magic would inhabit his actors and raise them to the status of gods. In truth, he was reasonably pleased with his forces, but he was damned if he’d ever admit this. You didn’t go round handing out Oscars before the performance.

He pulverised a mosquito on his green baize cardtable. He imagined squelching Fidel in just such a way: schlurp – out came the blood of Cuba.

Bosanquet opened an attaché case that contained several cashier’s cheques and negotiable bonds. Fuentes looked at the stash for a second. He imagined depriving Bosanquet of the loot and making off into the hills, there to vanish and live a life of debauchery eating the pussy of coffee-coloured maidens. It was a temptation easily ignored. Fuentes had been in the Cuban Air Force until 1959; he’d been promoted to the rank of Major in the US Marines following some heroic feats of flying against Castro during the Bay of Pigs. But there was no way he could fit into an American officers’ mess. He looked wrong and his accented speech was rough and his manners were uncouth, which added to his resentment of somebody like the well-spoken Bosanquet who always seemed to know the correct thing to say. But you couldn’t fault Fuentes when it came to loyalty to his superiors. Besides, Harry Hurt wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to cross. Fuentes had the feeling Hurt wasn’t acting alone, that a powerful, wealthy organisation existed around him, and Harry was just another ghost in a mighty machine.

Fuentes popped a third beer and tossed the aluminium tab into the blades of the fan which sucked it in, rattled it, then ejected it. “You got a lot of bread there, Roger,” he said.

Bosanquet shut the case. “Today’s the day we spend it.”

Fuentes wondered how much longer a man might live in such a shitpile as this. After his retirement from the Marines he’d purchased a six-hundred-acre spread in Texas, between Amarillo and McLean, where he raised Aberdeen-Angus cattle and studied military history in his spare time. Sometimes he thought he should just have stayed home. But lonely old soldiers, like trout, were suckers for old lures. It wasn’t even the money. What it really came down to was a break in the predictable tedium of life in the Texas Panhandle. Back home he had nothing but cows. Down here he had an army to drill – mainly Cuban boys recruited with great secrecy from the exile communities in New Jersey and California. A few had come from Florida, but Fuentes had not concentrated on recruiting there for the simple reason that he believed there were just too many big flapping mouths in Miami. He also had some Mexican mercenaries and a handful of Bolivians who all claimed to have been with Che at the end and who believed Fidel had conspired in Guevara’s killing. In addition, he had about twenty Americans who had been in Vietnam, at least half a dozen of whom were CIA operatives in undercover roles. There was a considerable amount of hardware too: automatic weapons; grenades; rocket-launchers; a seemingly endless supply of ammunition; and the twenty fighter-planes the amazing Hurt had somehow managed to acquire in the military bazaars of the world. The F-16s had been built in Pakistan, the Skyhawks originated in South America, the Harriers, though American-made, had been bought through South African sources.

Fuentes hated Castro for the way he’d kicked ass at the Bay of Pigs. One of those bruised asses had been Fuentes’ own. Cuba without Castro was Tomas Fuentes’ dream. He had no idea who would take over the country after Fidel because this was information he’d never been given, nor did he particularly need it. He assumed that the next president and his government would have the support of both the Americans, which in Tomas’ mind meant the CIA and some powerfully rich individuals, friends of Harry Hurt and certain important factions inside the Cuban armed forces. What did it matter? Nobody could be worse than Castro. Fuentes would do his own job, and do it to the best of his ability, and the politicians would take over when all the dust had settled.

“Listen,” said Roger Bosanquet.

Tommy Fuentes tilted his head. There was the sound of a small plane overhead. Fuentes stepped out of the tent. The plane, a Lear jet, approached from Nicaragua. It flew toward the airstrip that Fuentes and his army had hacked out of this godless landscape. The plane came in low and silvery-gold, touched down, bounced, then ran smoothly the length of the runway. Fuentes, with Bosanquet trotting at his back, walked down the hillside to the tarmac.

The Lear rolled to the place where Fuentes and Bosanquet stood. When it stopped completely the side-door opened, the gangway slithered down into place, and two men – so similar in height and appearance they might have been twins – stepped out into the insufferable weather. Both wore floral shirts and sunglasses and brand hew white linen pants and they looked like novice fishermen of the kind you find drifting in the coastal waters of Florida under the questionable tutelage of some self-appointed, dope-smoking guide. They were called Levy and Possony, and they spoke English with Eastern European accents, developed in the 1960s in Prague where they’d been dazzling physics students together at the University, brighter than all the other students and most of the professors too. They had lived for years in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and then at a secret research institute in the Negev, where they’d been regarded as scientific treasures of a kind – even if they’d been rewarded on the same salary scale as basic civil servants. It was commonly assumed, and quite wrongly, that they were too obsessed by their little world of scientific exploration to have any interest in material possessions. What was overlooked was the simple fact that Levy and Possony, after lives of poverty and wearisome antisemitism in Eastern Europe, followed by emigration to a strange land inhabited by people who spoke a language the two Czechs never mastered, longed desperately for something bright in their lives. Tired of penury in pursuit of science, weary of scratching around for grants, fed up with the bulk of their salary cheques being gobbled by patriotic taxes, they both desired less spartan lifestyles – even, to be honest, with a touch of sin thrown in.

Levy and Possony had come to the attention of the Society in the person of Harry Hurt, who saw in them middle-aged geniuses endangered by sexual dehydration and monotony. Neither was married; both were very horny in a manner befitting secular monks who had toiled for many arduous years in the rarified, lonely atmosphere of higher physics. Levy and Possony, like two figs, were wonderfully ripe for picking, and Harry Hurt, who had all the charm of an open cheque-book, plucked them carefully by moonlight, giving them money, briefcases of the stuff, vacations at glamorous resorts in exotic places where access to women was made easy for them. Possony had taken to Brazilian ladies and Levy to fellatio in a hot tub. Then a little indoctrination about how Castro loathed the existence of Israel and was practically an honorary Palestinian – wouldn’t it be wonderful and, yes, patriotic, to help bring down a regime such as Fidel’s? Levy and Possony, anxious only that nobody be hurt on account of their participation – an assurance gladly given by Harry Hurt, who would have assured Khaddafi a Nobel Peace Prize to get what he wanted – had their consciences swiftly appeased and agreed to a form of defection. In return for what Hurt needed, Levy and Possony would spend very pleasurable lives in some tropical paradise. They would be provided with new passports under new names, and they would be rich. And, if some future urge seized them to return to research, Hurt would cheerfully provide the means.

Now, Levy and Possony shook hands with Fuentes and ignored Bosanquet completely, as if they had intuited his lower standing. They had about them the contempt of tenants of ivory towers for those who toil in the cellars and workhouses of the world. Possony wore thick-lensed glasses through which his eyes, enlarged, unblinking, appeared to miss nothing. Levy, on the other hand, had a certain myopic uncertainty about him which suggested brilliance held in some delicate neurotic balance.

“Only mad dogs and Englishmen,” said Bosanquet, gesturing at the raging sun. It was his little turn at wit, but it went unappreciated. Noel Coward had never played in Cabo Gracias a Dios.

“We have the merchandise,” Levy said. “You have the money?”

Bosanquet opened the case. Possony counted the bonds and cheques which he did with irritating slowness, like an old-fashioned accountant who has forgotten to pack his abacus.

“Everything is in order,” Possony said.

“Now the merchandise,” Fuentes said.

“On board the plane,” said Levy.

All four men went up the gangway. The Lear jet was air-conditioned, a blessed oasis. Fuentes glanced into the cockpit where pilot and co-pilot sat. They wore holstered pistols. Levy led the way to a compartment at the rear. He unlocked a door, switched on a light. An unmarked wooden crate, measuring some six feet by four, stood in the lit compartment. There were no markings on the box.

“This is it,” said Possony. “The material is completely configured to the specifications supplied by Mr Hurt.”

“Therefore accurate?” Fuentes asked.

Levy clapped the palm of his hand across his forehead, rolled his eyes and said, “What am I hearing?”

It was clear to Fuentes that he’d somehow insulted Levy, though he wasn’t sure how.

Possony, less histrionic than Levy, said, “Accurate? Laser technology, Mr Fuentes. The finest electron microscopes. We’re not making imitation Swiss watches to sell on 47th Street.”

Fuentes shrugged. He glanced at Bosanquet, who was obviously amused by Fuentes’ moment of discomfort. Possony took the attaché case from Bosanquet’s hand and said, “Now have the merchandise removed from the plane so we can leave. Nothing personal, you understand. But obviously we’re in a hurry to get the hell out of here.”

Paris

The hotel with the unlisted telephone number was small and expensive, hidden behind chestnut trees on a side street in the Latin Quarter. The private dining-room, panelled and hung with heavy curtains and eighteenth-century oils, was located on the second floor, a gloomy room, discreet in a manner peculiarly French.

Five men sat round the table, the surface of which had been carved with the initials of various luminaries who had eaten in this room. Victor Hugo had been here, and so had Emile Zola, and Albert Camus had dropped in now and again for an aperitif after a soccer game. The literary credentials didn’t impress the five diners, none of whom had much of an appetite. A particularly delicious terrine de foie de canard had barely been touched. A good bottle of Saint Emilion had gone practically unnoticed and the consommé, decorated with a delicate lacework of leeks and – a jaunty nouvelle cuisine touch – yellow squash cut in florets, was ignored.

When the last waiter had departed, Enrico Caporelli sat very still for a while. Beyond the heavy curtains could be heard the traffic of the fifth arrondissement, but it was a world away. Caporelli tasted his wine, pushed the glass aside, sipped a little coffee, which was roasted Kenyan and excellent. Sheridan Perry lit a cigarette and Harry Hurt, a fervent anti-smoker, fanned the polluted air with his napkin. Across the table from Caporelli was Sir Freddie Kinnaird; on Kinnaird’s right sat the German, Kluger, his face sombre.

“First Magiwara, then Chapotin,” Caporelli said quietly as he finished his coffee. He glanced across the room at Freddie Kinnaird, then at Kluger, then Perry. Why was he drawn back, time and again, to the face of Sheridan Perry? Did he think, at some level beyond precise language, that Perry was behind the murders? Admittedly, Sheridan lusted after the Directorship. But lust was a long bloodstained step removed from two brutal murders, or three, if you counted Chapotin’s young fluffball, who, it appeared, had connections with the English aristocracy.

“Why?” Caporelli asked. “Why those two? Did they have something in common we don’t know about? Were they involved in something that went very wrong for them? What made them candidates for death?”

Nobody answered. Some silences are polite, others awkward, but this particular expanse of quiet had running through it, at deep levels, many different tides and currents. Mistrust, anxiety, fear. Caporelli looked inside his coffee cup. He shivered very slightly and thought Somebody is walking on your grave, Enrico.

Superstitious nonsense, you peasant! Some things you just don’t lose. Your background, the way you were raised in the hills with simple people who crossed themselves whenever there was an eclipse of the moon or a calf was born with three legs. All the money and the smart tailors hadn’t erased the old ways. You still tossed spilled salt over your shoulder and avoided the space under ladders and you gave black cats a very wide berth.

“Has anybody noticed anything unusual?” Caporelli asked. “Any cars following them around? Strange people prowling? Perhaps phone calls with no voices at the end of the line?”

Nobody had witnessed anything out of the ordinary. No strange cars, no stalkers, no late night callers.

“How did these killers know the whereabouts of Chapotin and Magiwara? How did they know not only places but times?” Caporelli asked. “Neither victim led a public life, after all. They were not common names in the society columns. They were private people.”

Harry Hurt sipped some mineral water. “Here’s one possibility. Our Society came into existence because of the Mafia. We all know this. Had our Sicilian brethren shown more restraint and less taste for lurid publicity, we’d still be their bankers. However we went separate ways. Our predecessors, men of some vision, appropriated certain funds many many years ago and followed their own star. The Mafia, which was making more money then than all the Governments of the free world combined, didn’t notice that we had ‘misjudged’ the stock market to the tune of some, ahem, 22.5 million dollars. To them this was mere pocket money. To the Society it was a fresh start.”

“We know the history,” Caporelli said.

Hurt raised an index finger in the air. “Let me finish, Enrico. Suppose some young mafioso, a kid, a soldier, wants to make his name. Suppose he delves. Suppose he sees in some dusty old ledgers figures that don’t add up – what then? Would he want revenge? Would he want to wipe out the Society?”

Caporelli was sceptical. “First he’d want the money back. Then and only then he’d blow a few heads away. He wouldn’t shoot first. He’d want to know where the cash was kept before he stuck us in front of a firing-squad.”

Hurt shrugged. “I’m only looking at possibilities, Enrico, not writing in concrete. Here’s another one. Say an agent of Castro’s intelligence service is behind the murders. A goon from G-2 or whatever the hell it’s called. Somebody who has heard of our scheme. Perhaps somebody who has been spying on Rosabal.”

Caporelli frowned. “For argument’s sake, let’s say Rosabal has indeed been followed by an agent of Castro – which, I may add, I discount. The stakes are too high for him to behave like such an amateur. But so what? Where could Rosabal lead such a spy? This agent might see Rosabal and me drinking tea in Glasgow or beer in a hotel in Saint Etienne – but what good would that do for the spy? Rosabal knows only me. He has no idea of the Society’s existence. How could he lead some fidelista directly to our membership? No, Rosabal’s not the poisoned apple.”

Sheridan Perry sipped Saint Emilion with the air of a man who has been told he should appreciate fine wines but doesn’t quite enjoy the taste. “We’ve always taken great precautions about secrecy. We’ve always protected our own identities. Security has been high on our agenda at all times.”

Freddie Kinnaird said, “Not high enough, it seems. For example, none of us has felt the apparent need for a bodyguard.”

“It suddenly seems like a terrific idea,” Hurt said.

Caporelli stood up. He walked to the window, parted the curtains a little way, looked out. Lamps were lit along the pavements; it was a particularly romantic scene, he thought, the pale orbs of light obscured by chestnut branches, a soft breeze shuffling leaves along the gutters. A pair of lovers walked so closely together they appeared to have shed their separate identities and fused here in the Parisian twilight.

All this talk of a mafioso, bodyguards – it left him cold. It didn’t come to the point. He lowered the curtains, fastidiously made sure the two hems met and no exterior light penetrated, then turned to look at the faces around the table.

“We’ve been ruptured,” he said quietly. “And we must at least consider the unpleasant possibility that somebody in our own membership …” Caporelli poured himself more coffee. He couldn’t finish the sentence. The faces in the dining-room were each in some way defiant or incredulous. “From within or without, the fact is, our security is broken. Somebody knows who we are, and is set on our destruction. I don’t think we’re going to reach a conclusion no matter how long we sit round this table tonight, my friends. We’ll argue, and throw possibilities back and forth, but nothing will be accomplished in this manner.”

“So what are you saying?” Perry asked. His thick eyebrows came together to create one unbroken line of fur above his tiny eyes.

Caporelli gazed at the American for a time. Again he wondered if Sheridan were capable of making a destructive play for control of the Society; and, if so, was he doing it without the complicity of his friend Hurt? Was there a rift between the two? Had Perry’s greed and ambition created an abyss across which Hurt was neither allowed nor prepared to walk?

“I am saying this, Sheridan,” Caporelli remarked. “I am saying that we attend to personal security by hiring bodyguards. I am saying we adhere to no regular schedule. I am saying that we change cars and travel plans as often as we can. Secrecy is a prerequisite of survival. In short, we take precautions, as many as we possibly can. And we are very careful of how we communicate with one another.”

This last statement fell into the room like a stone dropped from a great height. It was unpleasant. The Society had always existed on the basis of mutual trust. Now it was being undermined. Caporelli imagined he could hear old beams creak and rocks crumble in the deep shafts.

“And does all this affect our Cuban undertaking?” Perry asked. “Do we cancel that project for starters?”

Suddenly agitated, Freddie Kinnaird made a ball of his linen napkin, which he brushed against his lips. “Have you lost your mind? The cruise missile was successfully stolen this morning and is presently in transit, and since the British police are practically without clues, I don’t see any reason to cancel. The investigation, headed by a policeman called Frank Pagan, falls into my domain. When Pagan knows anything, I know it too. A rather lovely arrangement altogether. If Pagan goes too far, I can find a way to tug gently on his rein. Besides, if we take the precautions Enrico has suggested, I think we will see a general improvement in our mood. Prudence, my dear fellow, wins in the end. And whoever has taken to attacking our little Society will be flushed out finally.”

Kinnaird’s expression was that of a voracious estate agent who has just placed an island paradise in escrow and whose plans include casinos, resorts, colossal hotels, and as much sheer, silken sin as anybody could stand.

Kluger lit a cigar. He blew a ring of blue smoke and said, “I personally do not believe that anyone in this room is a traitor.” There was authority and finality in the German’s tone, as if he had access to information denied everyone else. “I think we have been too lax, too complacent, in our security and now we are paying a price. The solution, as Enrico tells it, is very simple. We continue to go about our business – but with this difference. Extreme precautions, gentlemen. Sooner or later, the culprit will appear in broad daylight. Sooner or later.”

Kluger stood up. He filled a glass with brandy and extended his hand across the table. The toast was made, glasses clinked together, faces, formerly glum, forced smiles. Cuba was there for the taking. The show would go on regardless.

“To the success of friendship,” said Sir Freddie Kinnaird.

It was early evening by the time the members left the dining-room. The last wistful twilight had gone, and the cafés were bright now, the night life restless as ever, beautiful social moths flitting after this piece of gossip or fearful of missing that particular face. Nothing had been solved in the hotel, but a slightly uncertain consensus had been reached that no Society member was responsible for the killings.

Arrangements pertaining to bodyguards were discussed, recommendations made. Sir Freddie Kinnaird knew of a reliable agency in London; Harry Hurt spoke well of an outfit in Dallas. And Enrico Caporelli, who had an apartment and a great many connections here in Paris, had already made a phone call and had been promised a carload of armed protectors who would arrive outside in ten minutes or so.

The mood, if not exactly terrific, was not as sombre as it had been before, and the news of Gunther Ruhr’s successful theft took the hard edge off grief. The possibility of Cuban profits had instilled a small delight that, in the hours ahead, would grow until dead members were almost forgotten.

The five men stepped out of the hotel together. They were to be met by their security people outside a well-lit café across the street. They walked very close to a couple of strolling gendarmes; an illusion of protection until the real thing arrived. Kluger was attracted by a girl at a pavement café but decided to be abstemious, despite the luscious red gloss of her parted lips.

All five men crossed the street at a traffic signal. Kluger, puffing on the remains of his cigar, lagged a few feet behind, turning now and again to observe the lovely girl. He could not have seen the truck until the last possible moment; perhaps not even then. It struck him, tossed him ten or eleven feet forward; then ensnared his limp body under the front axle and dragged it another fifty or sixty feet before final release. Kluger rolled over and over towards the gutter, his coat torn, his arms broken, his face devoid of any resemblance to its former self.

The truck driver’s name was Luiz Dulzaides, a forty-nine-year-old long-distance driver from Madrid. His eight-wheel rig came to a halt inside the plate-glass window of a large pharmacy, after it ploughed through colognes and powders and perfumes and demolished a menagerie of soft-toy animals. Dulzaides, tested by the police, had drunk the equivalent of three bottles of wine that day. He’d never heard of Herr Kluger, had no recollection of seeing him at the pedestrian crossing, no memory of striking him. Dulzaides was too drunk to stand upright. He was removed in a police car. Caporelli and the two Americans answered the usual routine questions of the gendarmes while Kinnaird, the most public of the members, feared adverse publicity and slipped easily into the large crowd of spectators that had assembled at the scene.

Officially, it was an accident. After all, Dulzaides was blind drunk; was that disputable? Statements were taken, a report filed, a dossier opened and closed.

Enrico Caporelli and the others repaired for drinks to the Ritz, conveyed there in a chalk-white Cadillac driven by two armed men. Freddie Kinnaird joined them there. Each member was sceptical about the matter of the accident; but what was there to say? The police were convinced, the witnesses many, and Dulzaides’ blood alcohol level was undeniably dangerous. Perhaps an accident; perhaps not. If an accident, then it was an ironic one given the recent circumstances surrounding the Society.

In the morning Caporelli, who wanted the chance to speak with a sober Dulzaides and perhaps check the man’s background, the veracity of his story, telephoned the jail where the driver had been taken. He was informed by a cold voice that Monsieur Dulzaides had, hélas, died of heart failure at four-twenty a.m. and the body had already been claimed by relatives. Like garbage under a violent sun, it had been removed quickly from the premises.