A knight can be used to simultaneously threaten two widely spaced units. (This is called a ‘fork’.) If one of these threats is against a king the other piece must inevitably be lost.
Saturday, October 12th
The grey stones of the Cenotaph shone in the hard wintry sunlight as I surrendered my Home Office pass and stepped into Whitehall. In Horse Guards Avenue and right along to the Thames Embankment, hollow tourist buses were parked and double-parked.
The red-cloaked Horse Guards sat motionless clutching their sabres and thinking of metal polish and sex. In Trafalgar Square pigeons were enmeshed in the poisonous diesel gauze.
A cab responded to my wave by carving abruptly through the traffic.
I said: ‘Henekey’s, Portobello Road.’
‘Portobello Road,’ said the cab driver, ‘where the beatniks go?’
‘Sounds like it,’ I said. The driver jammed the flag down and pulled abruptly back into the traffic. A man in a Mini shouted, ‘You stupid bastard!’ at my driver and I nodded agreement.
Henekey’s is a great barn of a place, bare enough not to be spoiled by the odd half-glass of best bitter being spilled across the floor; cashmere, suede, straw, leather and imitation leather jostle, jabber and posture with careful narcissism. I bought a double Teacher’s and edged through the crowd.
A girl with Edwardian hair and science-fiction breasts produced a Copenhagen teapot from a huge straw basket. ‘… I said you’re a bloody old robber …’ she was saying to a man with a long beard and a waisted denim jacket, who said, ‘Academic training is the final refuge of the untalented.’ The girl put the teapot away, fluttered her big sooty eyes and said, ‘I wish you’d told the silly old——that.’ She retied the belt of her leather coat and took a packet of Woodbines from the man’s jacket pocket.
‘I’ll throttle him,’ she said. ‘He is the biggest …’ she described the man in Chatterleyan terms while the unacademic man held a pint glass of stout to his lips and studied his reflection with loving skill.
I sipped my drink and watched the door. There was still no sign of Sam. Behind me the man with the denim and beard was saying ‘… I’ll tell you who I feel like when I smoke it. I feel like Hercules, Jason, Odysseus, Galahad, Cyrano, D’Artagnan and Tarzan with a football-pool cheque in my pocket.’ The sooty-eyed girl laughed and tapped her straw bag to be sure the teapot was still there. The bearded man looked at me and said, ‘You waiting for Samantha Steel?’
‘Could be,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said, studying my clothes and face carefully. ‘He said you’d look a bit square.’
‘I’m as square as a cube root,’ I said. The sooty girl had a high-pitched giggle.
‘Here’s an oblong for you,’ said the bearded man. He gave me an envelope. Inside was a sheet of paper with ‘Dear Mr Kadaver, All the papers must be at our Berlin office by Monday A.M. or we can’t guarantee delivery.’ There was a signature that I couldn’t decipher.
‘What did he look like, the man who gave you this?’ I asked.
‘Like Martin Bormann,’ said the bearded man. He laughed briefly and plucked the paper from my hand. ‘I said I’d destroy this for him because we don’t want it getting in the wrong hands.’
‘What is it?’ said the sooty girl.
‘——off,’ said the bearded man. ‘This is business.’ He folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into his denim pocket. ‘Here’s your tart now,’ he said affably to me. Samantha was twisting her head trying to see me across the room.
Samantha said ‘Hello David’ to the bearded man and ‘Hello Hettie’ to the sooty girl who was studying Sam’s leather boots too carefully even to notice. Then she said ‘Hello’ to about a dozen other poets, painters, writers, art directors (with organizations known only by their initials), and occasionally a model or a photographer. No one was introduced as a secret agent; not even David.