‘Teddy, I think what you’re trying to pull here is a very old confidence trick. You’re telling me “Fly, fly, all is known” and reckoning you’ll move into my house while I’m on my way to the airport.’
‘Are you working for the Yanquis? The certain people in government wouldn’t like that. An Englishman trespassing on their preserves, they’d take a strong line. It’s different if they do it themselves. They’re betraying their own country. That’s their choice, they were born here, it’s their country, they can do what they like with it, they’ve worked their way. But for you to come here as a foreigner and betray it for them would be extremely provocative. There’s no knowing what they might do.’
‘Teddy, you are right. I’m proud to say I am working for the Yanquis. The General in charge of Southern Command likes a plain single-breasted with the extra trousers and what he calls the vest. The Chargé, he’s a mohair tux and a tweed jacket for his holidays in North Haven.’
Pendel stood up and felt the backs of his knees trembling against his trousers.
‘You don’t know anything bad about me, Teddy. If you did, you wouldn’t be asking. And the reason you don’t know anything bad is that there isn’t anything to know. And while we’re on the subject of money, I’d be grateful if you’d pay for that nice jacket you’re wearing so that Marta can clear her books.’
‘How you can fuck that faceless halfbreed is beyond me.’
Pendel left the Bear as he had found him, head back, beard up, reading what he had written in his newspaper.
Arriving home, Pendel is pained to be greeted by an empty house. And this is my reward for a day’s hard toil? he demands of the empty walls. A man with two professions, working himself to a shadow, must bring his own food home in the evenings? But there are consolations. Louisa’s father’s briefcase is once more lying on her desk. Popping it open, he takes out a hefty office diary with Dr E. Delgodo done in black Gothic lettering on the cover. Next to it nestles a file of correspondence marked ‘Engagements’. Ignoring distractions, including the imminent threat of exposure by the Bear, Pendel wills himself once more to become all spy. The overhead light is on a dimmer switch. He turns it to full. Pressing Osnard’s cigarette lighter to one eye, he closes the other and squints through the tiny peephole while trying to keep his nose and fingers out of the way of the lens.
‘Mickie rang,’ Louisa said in bed.
‘Rang where?’
‘Me. At the office. He’s going to kill himself again.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘He says you’ve gone mad. He says somebody’s stolen your head.’
‘That’s nice then.’
‘And I agreed,’ she said, putting out the light.
It was Sunday night and their third casino but Andy still hadn’t put God to the test which was what he had promised Fran he was going to do. She had barely seen him all weekend, apart from a few stolen hours of sleep and a bout of frenzied early-morning lovemaking before he hurried back to work. The rest of his weekend had been spent in the Embassy with Shepherd in his Fair Isle pull-over and black plimsolls bringing hot towels and cups of coffee. Or so at least Fran had pictured it. It wasn’t kind of her to put Shepherd in black plimsolls because she had never seen him wearing them. But she remembered a physical training instructor at boarding school who had worn them and Shepherd had the same servile enthusiasm.
‘Heavy batch o’ BUCHAN stuff,’ Andy had explained cryptically. ‘Got to knock it into report form. All a bit tense and get-it-to-us-by-yesterday.’
‘When do the Buchaneers have the benefit?’
‘London’s pulled down the shutters. Too hot for local consumption till the analysts have run it through the sheep-dip.’
And so matters had rested till two hours ago when Andy had swept her off to an amazingly expensive restaurant on the waterfront where, over a bottle of expensive champagne, he had decided it was time to put God to the test.
‘Picked up a legacy from an aunt last week. Piddling sum. No good to anyone. Get God to double it. Only way.’