“Bethany?”
Her mouth quirks for a moment, whether in annoyance or approbation he cannot tell. “Not me. Bethany is still in the control room arranging a night of intense confusion at the London traffic-management centre, which will alas preclude the charming Mr. Titwhistle from locating you by speed-enforcement camera. Tomorrow will not be a good day to drive in London. No, I do some investigative work. However, at present I am here for menial tasks. I have, for example, more coffee. And sandwiches. Would you like a sandwich?”
It’s a perfectly innocent question. It must be the faint sound of her stocking as she removes her toe from his thigh and puts her feet neatly together which makes the word “sandwich” sound rude. Joe has never found it so before. He tries it now, in his mouth.
“Sandwich.” No. Nothing rude about that. He tries again. “Saaan-d-witt-cha.” Yes, that’s more like it. He gives it a couple more goes.
“Yes,” the bold receptionist says, “a sandwich. In this case, avocado and bacon between two slices of granary bread. I can also arrange for other,” she smiles at him, “sandwiches.”
“Anything goes,” Joe says, and watches the words spiral out of his mouth and settle. I am a berk.
“Yes,” she says brightly, “it often does, with sandwiches. I, however, hold very clear beliefs on this subject. I do not believe in allowing tomato to soak into the bread, for example. Tomato, in a sandwich, should be applied latest of all ingredients and sealed between pieces of lettuce or salami, to prevent,” and here she purses her lips, “leakage.”
There it is again. A perfectly ordinary word, but she’s done something to it. A shiver passes down Joe’s spine. Leakage.
It ought to be a disgusting expression, but actually, as it passes her front teeth, which are briefly exposed as she enunciates the second syllable, it becomes a vibrant, enticing notion. This is not slurry from a rusted pipe, this is the beads of honey emerging languorously from a slice of baklava. Joe shuts his eyes for a second to stop himself from staring at her mouth. Red lips. Pale, sharp teeth. Very precise diction. The tip of her tongue. What a woman. For the second time tonight, he is rescued by Mercer.
“I see you’ve found Polly.”
“Oh, um, yes.”
“Polly, were you listening in?”
Polly nods at a notepad on her desk, covered in scribbles and question marks. “Of course.”
“Any thoughts?”
“What’s a book?”
“I had hoped for something a bit more—”
“Mercer. Seriously. What is a book? Is it a collection of papers bound like something by Dickens? Or is it a gathering of information, an archive? In this context, particularly, it seems to me it’s the latter. Joe’s book wasn’t just paper, it was an ignition key. The book gives control of the machine—except, somehow, it doesn’t. There’s a missing page or a cog or another volume. I don’t know. The point is, they thought they’d have it all by now and they don’t. So they need Joe.”
Joe finds himself thinking of the Recorded Man again. The book of someone’s life, of their every waking sense. He shivers.
Mercer nods, conceding Polly’s point. “Well, they need Joe for something. By the way, did I hear you mention more coffee?”
“Indeed you did.”
“Is it the particularly aggressive kind?”
“It has potential in that direction.”
“You could coach it?”
“I believe so.”
“And then we can get to the business of seriously examining what’s going on while Joe catches another forty winks.”
“Ideal.”
“Then by all means, Polly, please do.”
“I shall.”
And off she goes, leaving Joe to wonder whether she is Mercer’s girlfriend, and when his tongue will cease to adhere to the roof of his mouth, and whether it is obvious that he finds this woman frantically attractive, albeit for no doubt complex and inappropriate reasons owed in part to his state of fight-flight agitation.
“You still want to leave?” Mercer demands.
“No.”
“Good. Then come back in here and let’s go through it in detail, please.” He pauses. “Joe? I can almost certainly get you out of this. It’s going to be okay. But it’s going to get harder from here and you have to do what I say and live very, very small for a while. Maybe even take a holiday. All right?”
Holiday. He has an image of Polly in the shade of a beach umbrella. “All right.”
It is all right. Mercer always gets him out of it. Mercer always can. And with the bold receptionist somewhere around, Joe Spork feels suddenly very content in the Raspberry Room of Noblewhite Cradle.
VII
Cuparah;
dinner with the Opium Khan;
close encounters with insects and bananas.
In the fitful dreams of Edie Banister, crazy old punk lady and dogbearing fugitive, the broad black deck of Cuparah is slick with brine, and she reels as another wave strikes the bow. The ship yaws hugely, lurching in the swell. Edie swallows bile, but even the sense of imminent vomiting can’t dampen her delight.
Cuparah is a submarine.
More than that, it is a Ruskinite submarine, a nacred, seaswell ghost which cuts through one wave and plays on the next. The shape is functional—a whale-ish blunt-headed shape, swirled with weird water patterns for camouflage, asymmetrical and misleading—but every detail is splendid. The conning tower is swept back dramatically, not bolted on but seemingly grown from the body, and inside, a stair unfolds from the main body to the hatchway which makes the tower look like the entrance to a ballroom. The hatch itself is trimmed on the underneath with oiled brown leather, tooled with the names of the men who built it, and despite years of use the principal odour wafting from below is leather and varnish: warm, living smells.
“For Christ’s sake, get up here and in,” Amanda Baines says. Corporal Albert Pritchard—known mostly as Songbird, and last seen gasping in Mrs. Sekuni’s Number 4 wristlock—gamely grips Edie by the shoulder and buttock and boosts her over the guard rail to the hatch. Songbird is one of Edie’s lads, a team of veteran uglies who will support her by breaking heads and blowing things up should she require it. The others are already on board and no doubt arguing over bunks.
Edie peers down into the depths of Cuparah. There’s red light in the depths, and a cool scent of unwashed male rises out of the dark. Curiously, her nausea ebbs. She climbs down inside the hatch, and Songbird follows.
“Welcome aboard,” Amanda Baines says, passing Edie a waxed canvas grip filled with something heavy and soft. Behind her, the rest of Songbird’s squad nod greetings and grin shyly. Edie’s command. Her boys. Lethal and wicked and noble as the day.
Edie nods, stares at the narrow gang and breathes in the air. A Ruskinite, draped in black, hurries past with a strange brass tool in one hand and a concentrated expression on his face. As he passes through a hatch, she sees in the cabin beyond a familiar bank of valves and vacuum tubes. Of course. What could be more mobile, or more difficult to destroy, than a submarine code-breaking station?
The dead man’s hatches between compartments are fitted out in brass, and the cut steel is scrolled with elegant spirals and curlicues, a maker’s mark stamped into the upper left quadrant. Mockley fecit. “Mockley made me.” Edie grins. Nice to know who created the machine on which your life depends. She trusts Mockley, and hence also Cuparah. When she looks up, she finds a wide sky above her, a beautiful illusion of clouds and air. Cuparah is a thing to lift the heart, even down here in the dark beneath the waves.