The steward, a young man with a pasty complexion, wearing blue bellbottoms and a white starched jacket with a blue dolphin embroidered over one pocket, asked O’Hara, ‘How do you like your coffee, sir?’
‘Black, please, brandy on the bottom.’
‘Aye aye, sir. The usual, Captain?’ be asked Howe. ‘Strong tea with a touch of vodka. Takes the edge off, y’know. Breakfast in fifteen minutes, please, Mr Lomax.’ Then to O’Hara: ‘Scrod and scrambled eggs, I believe scrod’s a favourite of yours, right, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, thanks. And I prefer simply O’ Hara, if you don’t mind. I’ve been out of the Navy almost six years now.’
‘You earned the rank, by God, sir. Be proud of it.’
‘I resigned the commission, Mr Howe.’
‘But you left honourably, Lieutenant. I’m a strong believer in titles, sir. Aboard this craft, we honour rank.’
The steward returned with the drinks.
‘This should do until we’ve had a chance to shower and dress. We can do our talking over breakfast, Lieutenant.’
A brass christening plate beside the hatch that led to the main salon identified the yacht as:
THE BLACK HAWK
· Catalina Is, Calif
Launched: October 9, 1921
Owner: Edward L. Doheny
The robber baron Edward Doheny? O’Hara wondered. Of course, stupid, what other Edward Doheny could afford a tub like this?
A crew of eighteen. Stateroom space for forty. And it could sleep about sixty ‘in a pinch,’ whatever the hell Howe might consider ‘a pinch’ to be.
The dining room, like the rest of the ship, had the look of a museum piece, its brass portholes and lanterns gleaming like golden Inca treasure, the solid mahogany panelling oiled and black with age, the floors daring to be scuffed. The silverware, like everything else aboard, was elegant, old and defied appraisal. The walls were covered with photographs in thin brass frames of Howe with almost everybody imaginable except God. Most of them, which appeared to have been taken in the thirties and forties, showed a r3uch younger, trimmer Howe.
‘I always enjoy reading your stuff, Lieutenant. A very natural style. Not too formal.’
‘1 write it the way I’d say it. An editor told me that once, and damned if he wasn’t right.’
‘Good advice. Who was the editor’
‘Ben Bradlee.’
‘Oh ... Well, have a seat, sir.’
Howe took a letter from his jacket and leaned it against the water glass in front of his plate.
Ah, he likes drama, O’Hara thought . The letter is obviously part of the script. A little mystery with the scrod.
‘I must admit,’ O’Hara said, ‘I know you only by reputation. Were you in the Navy?’
‘Measured and fitted and one foot in the door,’ Howe said. ‘A week before reporting for duty, some reckless son of a bitch shot me in the spine. A hunting trip dawn in Georgia. Told me I’d never stand again. The hell with doctors. Three things I have no use for, Lieutenant: doctors, cowards and crooked politicians. And nothing I respect more than a damn good reporter. It’s an honour to have you aboard, sir.’
He toasted O’Hara with his coffee mug and took a sip, staring across the brim with his relentless black eyes. O’Hara nodded, raised his mug and stared back. ‘I assume,’ he said finally, ‘that you didn’t bring me halfway around the world just to have breakfast with you.’
‘A proper assumption. I’ve heard you’re quick to get to the point.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve also heard that you’re tough, that you’re naïve, that you’re relentless, that you’re a pussycat, that you can be difficult, that you’re a dream to work with, that you’re honest to the bone, and that you’re a miserable, lyin’, no-good son of a bitch.
O’Hara laughed. ‘Well, either you’ve talked to a lot of folks or one poor slob who can’t make up his mind.’
It was Howe’s turn to laugh. ‘Also that you have a sense of humour. Three things that are real, sir: God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do the best we can about the third.’
‘I thought John Kennedy said that.’
Howe leaned across the table and winked. ‘I gave Johnny the line.’
Breakfast came, and when the steward had returned to the galley, Howe said, ‘You know a gentleman name of Anthony Virgil Falmouth?’
O’Hara laughed. ‘I didn’t know his middle name was Virgil. There’s a certain irony to that.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, Virgil was a poet. Tony Falmouth is an assassin. Somehow they just don’t equate.’
‘An assassin, you say?’
‘One of the best.’
‘You know that for a fact?’
Pause. O’Hara stared at Howe across the table, and finally said, ‘Yep.’
‘I see. And d’you trust him?’
‘Falmouth? Why?’
‘Believe me, I have good reason, Lieutenant. I appreciate the fact you might have some previous loyalties...’
O’Hara glanced at the letter and then looked down at his plate, moving things about, absently, with his fork. ‘There are no loyalties in Falmouth’s business,’ he said finally. ‘I suppose I trust Tony as much as anyone in the Game.’
‘The Game?’
‘The intelligence game.’
‘You think of it as a game, then?’
‘It’s what they call it. The Game. When you’re in it, it’s the Game. And he’s up to his ass in it. He’s a British agent. M16, Her Majesty’s Secret Service.’
‘Not anymore,’ Howe said.
He reached out and handed the letter, somewhat grandly, to O’Hara.
‘Good,’ O’Hara said, ‘I was wondering when we were getting around to this.’
It was addressed to Charles Gordon Howe, Esq., WCGH, Channel 6, Boston, Mass. And in the lower right hand corner, below the address: ‘For his eyes only.’ The back had been sealed with blue candle wax. There was no stamp.
‘Falmouth always did have a flair for the dramatic,’ O’Hara said.
Howe leaned across the table, his black eyes twinkling, and chuckled. ‘Did anyone ever call him Foulmouth? I can’t help thinking of the reference every time I hear the name.’
O’Hara continued to examine the letter. He said, without looking up, ‘I don’t think anyone’ sever said it out loud. It might be a bit reckless, insulting one of the most efficient killing machines on two legs.’
‘Oh?’ Howe leaned back, and after a moment he added, ‘Sounds like we’re talking about Billy the Kid.’
‘Tony Falmouth makes Billy the Kid look like Little Lord Fauntleroy.’
‘Oh?’ Another pause. ‘And yet you’d trust him?’
I’d trust him as much as any in the Game, which is a long way from saying “I trust him.” Trust is a negligible word in the Game. They buy it, sell it, trade it, negotiate it.’
‘And yet Falmouth gave me what I needed to get this Winter Man off your back,’ Howe said.
‘He wants something.’
‘You think that’s the only reason?’
‘I know it. Look, Tony saved my ass once. No reason for it. Except he earned himself some Green Stamps.’
‘And now he’s redeeming them, that it?’
‘Well, it probably seemed like a good idea to him at the time. If it happened again — say, tomorrow —he might take a slow boat to Bombay and send me a goodbye telegram when he got there.’
‘Cynical, sir. Downright cynical.’
‘Absolutely,’ O’Hara said. ‘The Game is a world of its own, the dirtiest of all possible worlds. Everything is a lie. Your proficiency depends on how well you lie. They may call it misdirection or put some other bureaucratic handle on it, but lying is what it’s all about. In the Game, an honest man is a dead man.’
‘And that’s why you got out?’
‘Let’s just say my string was getting short. Don’t get me wrong, Mr Howe, I’ve still got friends out there. They just aren’t the kind of folks you’d want to, y’know, sit around the fire toasting marshmallows with.’