For answer, Joe removes from his pocket one of Mathew’s larger diamonds, and sets it on the table.
Jorge brightens. “Okay, Mr. Spork does business. It’s a great day! You tell me what you need.”
“Phones. Untraceable credit. Can your Danish ambassador get us identities to use today, right now?”
“Sure. I put money into accounts for you, you pay in stones. Family rate. Good for ever unless you are loud. You buy a Ferrari and crash it in Pall Mall, we got serious problem.” Jorge starts to laugh, then sees the speculation on Joe’s face as he wonders whether this might actually happen. “Oh, sheee-it. You look just like Mathew. Don’t do that, it freaks the crap out from me. Okay, what else?”
“Tell the Market I’m putting a job together.”
“Big job?”
“Biggest ever. No kidding, Jorge. Bigger than anything, ever. I need them, Jorge. And they need me. The Old Campaigners, even. All of them.”
“I don’t think they think they need you, Joe. I think maybe they think you can go to Hell.”
“Not for this job. I’m the only one who can do it.”
“What kind of job?”
“Security.”
“Getting around it?”
“Being it. Stopping an assassination.”
“Whose?”
“The universe.”
Jorge stares at him, then down at the diamond, then at Polly Cradle. She nods.
“The fucking universe is getting killed now?”
“Maybe.”
“Not just the world, which by the way would be completely enough.”
“The world to start with. Everyone on it.”
Jorge lets his head roll back and stares up at the ceiling as if exhausted. “This is bee-related, maybe?”
“Very much so.”
“Bee-related is not good. Word is out that anyone messing with bee situation will see the inside of some invisible shithole prison for terrorists. And you—you are very wanted, Joe. You’re maybe the bad guy. It happens that nice people go batshit sometimes. I have to think maybe I shouldn’t help you even this much, even for honour and family and shit. Even for very nice diamond.”
“You know the Ruskinites?”
“The asshole-monk-bastard-sadist-fuck Ruskinites?”
“Yes.”
“I know them to scrape off my fucking shoe.”
Joe grins. “They’re on the other side. They want me dead.”
Jorge nods. “Okay, then you’re maybe not entirely the bad guy.” He jiggles his head left and right, a man ducking punches. “Not the bad guy. But you’re playing in the fucking big leagues, even if there’s no end of the world, for sure. Dangerous shit.”
“Kings and princes, Jorge,” Joe says sonorously, in his best Mathew impression. In spite of himself, Jorge smiles.
“For sure, Joe. Kings and princes, I remember. But… seriously? The fucking universe?”
“Seems so.”
Jorge sighs. “Fuck me, Joe. You don’t come here for twenty years, now you want to save creation?”
“I am a Spork. We don’t do things small.”
“Yes. I guess you are.” Jorge rolls his huge head around his neck, and they can hear his neck clunk through the layers of flesh. “Fuck, Joe,” he says again, in a rather pensive way. And then, by way of agreement: “Fuck.”
In the daylight world, the Hon Don has left an envelope at the desk of the Pablum, along with stern instructions that the Prince is not to be allowed into the building. He has backed this order with some curiously aristocratic sort of slander such that the doorman’s eyes are both stern and admiring as he hands over the envelope. It contains some typed pages, a handwritten note with two addresses, and a set of house keys labelled as belonging to a third.
Momentum, Joe considers, is the vital thing. He has to keep moving, gathering momentum. Even a very small object, travelling at the right sort of speed, can deliver a considerable wallop.
He glances over at Polly Cradle. “You don’t have to do this one.”
She tuts. “On the contrary. This is the one you don’t have to do.”
He stares at her. Polly raises one eyebrow and continues. “I would go so far as to say that you can’t. God knows what will break loose in you. I like you crazy, Spork. I don’t want you catatonic.”
“But—”
“I will do this one, Joe. You will stand in the back and watch. Besides. It’s time you saw me at work.” She frowns. “Although… for this, I think I will want some additional muscle. No,” she adds, as he immediately opens his mouth to volunteer, “not that kind of muscle. Suasion.”
“Suasion?”
“I am an investigator, Joe Spork. Suasion is one of the things I do. Now: watch.”
He does.
Polly Cradle plays Jorge’s untraceable mobile telephone like a tin whistle. She is charming and plausible and ever so slightly needy. He remembers Mathew saying you can burgle a nice house with a ladder at noon so long as there’s a pretty girl in a ball dress holding it steady. Old ladies will approve your gallantry and coppers will stop to give you a hand. Polly has a sunny, hopeful manner and a gentle appeal which makes people want to help her out. She sets organisational structures against themselves, deftly squeezing between switchboards and departments into the gaps, and coming back with all their secrets.
Via the bored receptionist at Lambeth Palace, she gets access to an old cleric in Salisbury who handles accommodation for protected witnesses in canon law cases. The cleric has recently been asked to find a safe place for a woman of late middle age who is sought by unfriendly eyes. Polly absolutely refuses any information about that, scolding him politely for even mentioning it, and he basks in her discretion. A moment later she is talking to his assistant about some completely other matter, but somehow comes away with the name of a layman newly returned from Afghanistan and seeking to atone for his sins who has lately been charged with the protection of an old lady. A brief call to an old friend in the London Authority yields the man’s home phone number, where his wife is delighted to learn that her husband has won a substantial award for his service and concerned that he must be contacted immediately because he’s in Royston on business and can’t be reached.
This in turn yields a soldier’s pub called the Cross Keys which has rooms, and which is just across the road from where Harriet Spork is safely ensconced in a temporary apartment the Church has rented for her, guarded by lay brothers Sergeant Boyle and Corporal Jones, late of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service and now retired. Since they are Harriet’s protection and not her warders, and since while Polly may be formidable she is clearly not in Sergeant Boyle’s weight class, gaining entry is only a question of knocking.
“Mrs. Harriet Spork,” Polly Cradle says.
“Sister,” Harriet objects vaguely.
“I am Mary Angelica Cradle. We once made biscuits together. With Smarties.”
“Oh. Yes, dear. Of course.”
“I wish to confess to you, in the interests of full disclosure, that I ate about two-thirds of the Smarties during the cooking process.”
“Yes,” Harriet says again, with a slight smile. “I believe I knew that.”
“Also, I am engaged in a very satisfactory emotional and sexual relationship with your magnificent son. This relationship is not sanctioned by the ostensible rules of the Christian Communion, but falls into the category of committed partnerships tacitly approved as a modern prelude to possible marriage and procreation.”
Joe Spork tries not to swallow his tongue. One of the laymen slaps him cheerfully on the back. “You’re in serious trouble with that one, boy.”