‘Say who he was talking to? Japs, Frogs, Chinese? Didn’t just sit there and talk to the flowers, did he?’
‘Not as such, Andy. There were clues.’
‘Give ’em to me -‘ licking his thumb again, a small slurp.
‘ “Harry, you’ll have to protect me on this one, but the brilliance of the oriental mind is a total revelation to me, plus the French aren’t far behind.”‘
‘Say what kind of oriental?’
‘Not as such.’
‘Japanese? Chinese? Malaysian?’
‘Andy, I fear you are trying to put thoughts into my head which were not there before.’
No sound except for the shriek of traffic, the clank and heave of air-conditioners, the canned music to drown the clank and heave. Latin voices yelling above the music. Osnard’s ballpoint speeding over the pages of his notebook.
‘And Marco didn’t like you?’
‘He never did, Andy.’
‘Why not?’
‘Palace courtiers don’t like Turco tailors enjoying one-to-one pow-wows with their bosses, Andy. They don’t like, “Marco, Mr Pendel and I haven’t spoken for an age and we’ve got a lot to catch up with, so be a good lad and go and stand the other side of that mahogany door till I give you a shout -” do they?’
‘Is he a poof?’
‘Not so far as my knowledge extends, Andy, but I haven’t asked him and it’s not my business.’
‘Take him out to dinner. Show him a time, give him a cut rate on a suit. Sounds like the sort o’ chap we ought to have on our side. Anything about traditional anti-Yankee feeling raising its head among the Japs?’
‘Zero, Andy.’
‘Japs as the world’s next superpower?’
‘No, Andy.’
‘Natural leader o’ the emerging industrial states? – still no? Jap-Yank animosity? – Panama’s got to choose between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea? – Pres feels like the ham in the sandwich – that type o’ thing? – no?’
‘Nothing above the normal in that regard, Andy, not on Japan, no. Well, there was just the one reference, Andy, now that it comes back to me.’
Osnard brightened.
‘ “Harry,” he says to me, “all I pray is, that I never-never never again have to sit down in a room with Japs one side of the table and Yanks the other because keeping the peace between them puts years onto my life, as you can see from my poor grey hairs,” although I’m not sure that hair’s all his own, to be frank. I think it’s helped.’
‘Chatty, was he?’
‘Andy, it was pouring out of him. Once he’s got that screen round him there’s no holding him. And if he ever gets onto Panama as all the world’s pawn, it’s the morning gone.’
‘How about his missing hours in Tokyo?’
Pendel was shaking his head. Gravely. ‘I’m sorry, Andy. There we have to draw a veil,’ he said, and turned his head towards the window in stoical refusal.
Osnard’s pen had stopped in mid-caress. The Coca-Cola sign across the road switched him on and off.
‘Hell’s the matter with you?’ he demanded.
‘He’s my third President, Andy,’ Pendel replied to the window.
‘So?’
‘So I won’t do it. I can’t.’
‘Can’t do what, fuck’s sake?’
‘Reconcile it with my conscience. Grass.’
‘Are you out o’ your mind? This is gold-dust, man. We’re talking major, major bonus. Tell me what Pres said to you about his missing Japanese hours while he was trying on his bloody knickers!’
It took Pendel much heart-searching to overcome his reticence. But he managed it. His shoulders fell, he loosened, his gaze returned to the room.
‘ “Harry,” he says to me, “if your customers ever ask you why I had such a light schedule in Tokyo, you’re please to tell them that while my wife was inspecting a silk factory with the Empress I was having myself my first ever piece of Japanese tail” – which is not an expression I would use, Andy, as you know, neither in the shop, nor in the home -“because in that way, Harry, my friend,” he says to me, “you will raise my stock in certain circles here in Panama, while putting other elements off the scent regarding the real nature of my activities and the highly secret talks I was conducting on the side, for the ultimate good of Panama despite what many may think.”‘