‘Harry Pendel, you leave my husband alone this minute,’ she protested gaily, sweeping in from nowhere with a great vase of lilies in her arms. ‘He’s all mine and you don’t alter that suit by one gorgeous stitch. It’s the sexiest thing I ever saw. I’m going to elope with him all over again right now. How’s Louisa?’
They met in a neon-lit twenty-four-hour café beside the run down oceanic railway terminus that was now an embarkation point for day-trips on the Canal. Osnard sat slumped at a corner table wearing a Panama hat. An empty glass of something stood at his elbow. In the week since Pendel had last seen him he had put on weight and years.
‘Tea or one o’ these?’
‘I’ll take the tea, please, Andy, if you don’t mind.’
‘Tea,’ Osnard told the waitress rudely, passing a hand heavily through his hair. ‘And another o’ these.’
‘Thick night then, Andy.’
‘Operational.’
Through the window they could contemplate the decaying hardware of Panama’s heroic age. Old railway passenger cars, the upholstery ripped out of them by rats and vagrants, brass table lamps intact. Rusted steam engines, turntables, carriages, tenders left to rot like the toys of a spoilt child. On the pavement, backpackers huddled under awnings, fought off beggars, counted sodden dollars, tried to decipher Spanish signs. It had been raining most of the morning. It was raining still. The restaurant stank of warm gasoline. Ships’ horns moaned above the din.
‘It’s a chance meeting,’ Osnard said, through a sup-pressed burp. ‘You were shopping, I was checking boat times.’
‘Whatever was I buying?’ Pendel asked, mystified.
‘Fuck do I care?’ Osnard took a swig of brandy while Pendel sipped his tea.
Pendel driving. They had agreed on the four-track because of the CD plates on Osnard’s car. Wayside chapels marking places where spies and other motorists had been killed. Worried ponies with huge burdens driven by patient Indian families with bundles on their heads. A dead cow sprawled at a crossroads. A swarm of black vultures fighting for the best bits of it. A rear-wheel puncture announced by one deafening round of gunfire. Pendel changing the wheel while Osnard in his Panama hat squatted sullenly on the verge. A roadside restaurant out of town, hardwood tables under plastic awnings, chicken roasting on a barbecue. The rain stopped. Violent sunshine beat on an emerald lawn. Parrots screamed red-and-green murder from a bell-shaped aviary. Pendel and Osnard sat alone except for two heavy men in blue shirts at a table the other side of the wooden deck.
‘Know ’em?’
‘No, Andy, I’m pleased to say I don’t.’
And two glasses o’ house white to wash their chicken down – hang on, make it a bottle, then fuck off and leave us in peace.
‘They’re jumpy is what they are,’ Pendel began.
Osnard had propped his head between the splayed fingers of one hand while he took notes with the other.
‘There’s half a dozen of them round the General all the time, so I’m not getting him alone. There was a colonel there, tall fellow, kept drawing him aside. Getting him to sign things, murmuring in his ear.’
‘See what he signed?’ Osnard moved his head slightly to relieve the pain.
‘Not while I’m fitting, Andy.’
‘Catch any murmurs?’
‘No, and I don’t think you’d have caught many either, not while you were down there on your knees.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘ “General,” I said, “if it’s not convenient or I’m hearing what I oughtn’t, tell me is all I ask. I’ll not be offended, I’ll come back another day.” He wouldn’t have it. “Harry, you’ll be pleased to stay right here where you belong. You’re a raft of sanity in a storm-swept sea.” “All right, then,” I said, “I’ll stay.” Then his wife comes in and nothing is said. But there are looks that are worth a million words, Andy, and this was one of them. What I call a highly meaningful and pregnant look between two people who know each other well.’
Osnard writing at no great speed. ‘”The General in charge o’ Southern Command exchanged a pregnant look with his wife.” That should put London on red alert,’ he remarked sourly. ‘General take a swipe at the State Department at all?’