"This weekend?"
"I need to talk to him. It"s a personal matter."
"Couldn"t you have rung?" she enquired, eyes even more startled than before.
"I"m afraid not." I fell back on the Official Secrets Act. "It wouldn"t have been prudent secure," I explained, with innuendo. "Not on the telephone. We"re not allowed to."
"Wfc"
"The people who"ve been working for Lord Brinkley."
We ascended to a long drawing room with high red walls and gilt mirrors and the smell of Aunt Imelda"s Willowbrook: potpourri and honey.
"I"ll put you in here," she announced, showing me a smaller room that was a replica of the first. "He should be home by now. Can I fix you a drink? You are good. Then read his newspaper or something."
Left alone, I made a discreet optical reconnaissance of my surroundings. One antique bombe desk, locked. Photographs of Etonian sons and Central African leaders. A resplendent Marechal Mobutu in uniform: Pour Jacques, man amifidele, 1980. The door opened. Lady Kitty strode to a sideboard and extracted a frosted silver c.o.c.ktail shaker and one gla.s.s.
"That common little secretary of his," she complained, mimicking a proletarian accent: ""Jack"s in a meeting, Kitty." G.o.d, I hate them. What"s the point of being a peer if everybody calls you Jack? You can"t tell them or they take you to a tribunal." She arranged herself carefully on the arm of a sofa and crossed her legs. "I told her it"s a crisis. Is it?"
"Not if we can catch it in time," I replied consolingly.
"Oh we shall. Brinkley"s frightfully good at all that. Catch anything any time. Who"s Maxie?"
There are occasions in a part-time secret agent"s life when only the lie direct will suffice.
"I"ve never heard of Maxie."
"Of course you have, or you wouldn"t be putting on that silly frown. Well, I"ve got my shirt riding on him, whether you"ve heard of him or not." She plucked meditatively at the bosom of her designer blouse. "Such as it is, poor thing. Are you married, Bruno?"
Go for another forthright denial? Or remain as close to the truth as security permits?
"I am indeed" to Hannah, not Penelope.
"And have you simply oodles of marvelous babies?"
"I"m afraid not yet" apart from Noah.
"But you will. In the fullness of time. You"re trying day and night. Does the wife work?"
"She certainly does."
"Hard?"
"Very."
"Poor her. Did she manage to come with you this weekend, while you were devilling for Brinkley?"
"We weren"t really having that sort of weekend," I replied, forcing away images of Hannah seated naked beside me in the boiler room.
"Was Philip there?"
"Philip?"
"Yes, Philip. Don"t be arch."
"I"m afraid I don"t know a Philip."
"Of course you do. He"s your Mr. Big. Brinkley eats out of his hand."
Which is precisely Brinkley"s problem, I thought, grateful to have my expectations confirmed.
"And Philip never leaves telephone messages. None of you do. "Just say Philip rang," as if there was only one Philip in the whole world. Mow tell me you don"t know him."
"I"ve already said I don"t."
"You have and you"re blushing, which is sweet. He probably made a pa.s.s at you. Brinkley calls him the African Queen. What languages do you interpret?"
"I"m afraid that"s something I"m not allowed to say."
Her gaze had settled on the shoulder-bag that I had placed beside me on the floor.
"What are you toting in there, anyway? Brinkley says we"re to search everybody who comes into the house. He"s got a battery of CCTVs over the front door and brings his women through the back so that he doesn"t catch himself napping."
"Just my tape recorder," I said, and held it up to show her.
"What for?"
"In case you haven"t got one."
" We"re in here, darling!"
She had heard her husband before I had. Bounding to her feet she whisked her gla.s.s and the shaker into the sideboard, slammed it shut, squirted something into her mouth from an inhaler in her blouse pocket and, like a guilty schoolgirl, attained the door to the large drawing room in two wide strides.
"His name"s Bruno," she declaimed gaily to the approaching footsteps. "He knows Maxie and Philip and pretends he doesn"t, he"s married to a hard-working woman and wants babies but not yet, and he"s got a tape recorder in case we haven"t."
My moment of truth was at hand. Lady Kitty had vanished, her husband stood before me, attired in a sharp double-breasted navy pinstripe suit, wasted in the latest thirties fashion. Not a hundred yards away, Hannah was waiting for the summons. I had pre-typed the number of her cellphone into my own. In a matter of minutes, if all went to plan, I would be presenting Jack Brinkley with the evidence that, contrary to whatever he might think, he was about to undo all the good work he had done for Africa over the years. He looked first at me, then carefully round the room, then at me again.
"This yours?" He was holding my business card by one corner as if it was sopping wet.
"Yes, sir."
"You"re Mr. Who exactly?"
"Sinclair, sir. But only officially. Sinclair was my alias for the weekend. You"ll know me better by my real name, Bruno Salvador. We"ve corresponded."
I had decided not to mention his Christmas cards because they weren"t personalised, but I knew he"d remember my letter of support to him, and clearly he did, because his head lifted and, being a tall man, he did what judges on the bench do: peered down at me over the top of his horn-rimmed spectacles to see what he"d got.
"Well then, let"s get rid of that thing first, shall we, Salvador?" he suggested and, having taken my recorder from me and made sure there was no tape in it, gave it back to me, which I remember was the nearest we got to a handshake.
He had unlocked his bombe desk and sat himself sideways to it. He was examining his own letter to me, with the handwritten PS saying how much he hoped we might meet one day, and -since he was at that time a Member of Parliament what a pity I wasn"t living in his const.i.tuency, with two exclamation marks, which always made me smile. From the jovial way he read it, it could have been a letter to himself, and one he was happy to receive. And when he"d finished, he didn"t stop smiling, but laid it before him on the desk, implying he might need to dip into it later.
"So what"s your problem exactly, Salvador?"
"Well, it"s your problem, sir, actually, if you"ll pardon me. I was just the interpreter."
"Oh really? Interpreting what?"
"Well, everyone really, sir. Maxie obviously. He doesn"t speak anything. Well, English. Philip doesn"t speak much Swahili. So I was caught in the crossfire, so to speak. Juggling the whole thing. Above and below the waterline."
I smiled deprecatingly to myself, because I rather hoped that by now he"d have received some word of my achievements on his behalf, which when you put them end to end were considerable, whether or not I"d ended up on the wrong side of the fence, which was what I wanted to explain to him as part of my personal rehabilitation in his eyes.
" Waterline? What waterline?"
"It was Maxie"s expression, actually, sir. Not mine. For when I was in the boiler room. Listening in to the delegates" conversations while they recessed. Maxie had a man called Spider." I paused in case the name rang a bell, but apparently it didn"t. "Spider was this professional eavesdropper. He had a lot of antiquated equipment he"d cobbled together at the last minute. A sort of DIY kit. But I don"t expect you were aware of that either."
"Aware oiwhat exactly?"
I began again. There was no point in holding back. It was even worse than I feared. Philip hadn"t told him a fraction of the story.
"The whole island was bugged, sir. Even the gazebo on the hilltop was bugged. Whenever Philip reckoned we"d reached a critical moment in negotiations, he"d call a recess, and I"d dive down to the boiler room and listen in, and relay the gist to Sam upstairs so that Philip and Maxie would be ahead of the game next time we convened. And take advice from the Syndicate and Philip"s friends over the sat-phone when they needed it. Which was how we focussed on Haj. He did. Philip. Well, with Tabizi"s help, I suppose. I was the unwitting instrument."
And who is Haj, if I may ask?"
It was shocking but true. Exactly as I had predicted, Lord Brinkley had no notion of what had been perpetrated under his aegis not even in his role as the only man who could say yes.
"Haj was one of the delegates, sir," I said, adopting a softer approach. "There were three. Two militia chiefs warlords, if you like and Haj. He"s the one who gouged you for an extra three million dollars," I reminded him, with a rueful smile that he seemed to share: and so he should, given the moral outrage he had expressed so clearly over the satellite telephone.
"The other two chiefs being who?" he enquired, still puzzled.
"Franco, the Mau Mau man, and Dieudonne, who"s a Munya-mulenge. Haj doesn"t have a militia as such, but he can always rustle one up any time he needs one, plus he"s got a minerals comptoir in Bukavu, and a beer business, and a bunch of hotels and nightclubs, and his father Luc is a big player in Goma. Well, you know that, don"t you?"
He was nodding, and smiling in a way that told me we were connecting. In any normal situation, I reckoned, he would by now be pressing a b.u.t.ton on his desk and sending for the luckless executive responsible for the c.o.c.k-up, but since he showed no sign of doing that, but to the contrary had folded his hands together under his chin in the manner of somebody settling down for a good long listen, I decided to take the story from the top, rather as I had done with Hannah, though in a much condensed form and with a lot less concern for the sensibilities of my distinguished audience, and perhaps too little, as I began to fear when we approached the devastating moment of truth regarding Haj"s maltreatment.
"So where does all this lead us, in your opinion?" he asked, with the same confiding smile. "What"s your bottom line here, Salvador? Do we take it straight to the Prime Minister? The President of the United States? The African Union? Or all of them at once?"
I permitted myself a consoling laugh. "Oh I don"t think that"s necessary, sir. I don"t think we need take it that far at all, frankly."
"I"m relieved."
"I think it"s just a case of calling a halt immediately, and making absolutely sure the halt happens. We"ve got twelve full days before they"re due to go in, so there"s plenty of time. Stop the war plan, stand the Mw.a.n.gaza down until he can find proper, ethical supporters well, like yourself, sir tear up the contract "
"There"s a contract, is there?"
"Oh indeed there is! A really shady one, if I may say so, sir. Drafted by Monsieur Jasper Albin of Besancon whom you have used in the past, and whom presumably your people decided to use again and rendered into Swahili by none other than my humble self."
I was getting a bit carried away by now. I suppose the notion that Hannah and I would any minute be emerging from the shadows and leading normal lives was going to my head.
"Do you happen to have a copy of this contract?"
"No, but I"ve seen it, obviously. And committed chunks of it to memory, which with me is well, pretty much automatic, to be frank."
"And what makes you think it"s shadyT "It"s fake. Look, I"ve seen contracts. It"s hypothetical. It pretends to be about agriculture but actually it"s about supplying weapons and materiel to start a small war. But who ever heard of a small war in the Congo? You might as well be a little bit pregnant," I ventured boldly, quoting Haj, and was encouraged by a knowing smile from my host. "And the profits from the minerals, I mean the People"s Portion, so-called -are a straight swindle," I went on. "A fraud, frankly. There"s nothing in it for the People at all. No People"s Portion, no profits for anyone except your Syndicate, the Mw.a.n.gaza and his henchmen."
"Terrible," Lord Brinkley murmured, shaking his head in commiseration.
"I mean, don"t get me wrong, sir. The Mw.a.n.gaza is a great man in many respects. But he"s old. Well, old for the job, forgive me. He"s already looking like a puppet. And he"s compromised himself so much that I just don"t see how he can possibly cut free. I"m really sorry, but it"s true, sir."
"Oldest story in the game."
After which we traded a few examples of African leaders who had shown signs of early greatness, only to go to the bad a few years later, although I privately doubted whether Mobutu, featured on the desk behind him, had ever qualified for this league. It did, however, pa.s.s through my mind that if, down the line, Lord Brinkley thought fit to reward me for my timely intervention, and incidentally keep me on side while he was about it, a job in his organisation might be the answer for both of us, because, my goodness, did they need somebody to sweep out that stable!
His next question therefore took me considerably aback.
"And you"re quite sure you saw me that night."
"What night is this, sir?"
"Whenever you say it was. Friday evening, am I right? I lost the thread for a moment. You saw me on Friday evening in Berkeley Square. In a house."
"Yes."
"Remember what I was wearing?"
"Smart casual. Fawn slacks, the soft suede jacket, loafers."
"Remember anything about the house apart from the number which you didn"t get, or you"ve forgotten?"
"Yes. I do. Everything."
"Describe it, will you? In your own words."
I started to, but my head was reeling and I was having difficulty picking out salient features on demand. "It had this big hall with a split staircase "
"Split?"
"and eagles over the doors "
"Live eagles?"
"There were all sorts of people there apart from you. Please don"t pretend you weren"t there, sir. I spoke to you. I thanked you for your stand on Africa!"
"Can you name a few?"
I named them, if not with my usual aplomb. I was brewing up, and when I start to brew up, it"s hard to get a grip on myself. The corporate raider known as Admiral Nelson on account of his eyepatch: I got him. The famous TV presenter from the world of pop: I got him too. The belted young n.o.bleman who owns a chunk of the West End. The exiled African former finance minister. The Indian clothing billionaire. The supermarket tyc.o.o.n who had recently acquired one of our great national dailies "as a hobby". I was breaking up but kept trying.