“Can that actually happen?”
“Can and did,” Mr. Ludlum said. “My dear old mother was very prim and proper, but she had a coarse joke about Mr. Presley. She said he was Elvis the Pelvis and his twin brother would have been Enos the Penis. Do you get it, Finn?”
Finn nodded, thinking, I am being held prisoner and tortured by a man who believes I know where there’s a bomb factory and that Elvis Presley gobbled up his twin brother while still in his mother’s belly.
“I always found Elvis a trifle gay,” Mr. Ludlum said in a ruminative tone. “There are songs— ‘Teddy Bear’ is one, ‘Wooden Heart’ is another— where he sings in a kind of whispery falsetto. One can almost envision him prancing in the studio as he warbled, arms outstretched, fingers gently waving, perhaps in patent leather shoes. I never believed that story about Nick Adams, total rot, but the rhinestone outfits he wore toward the end ... and the scarves ... there were rumors of a girdle ... yes, there was something there, something we might call latent, and ...” He stopped, sighed, and briefly covered his face. When he lowered his hands he said, “Two of my men have left me, Finn. Scarpered. Did a bunk. Buggered off. I tried to persuade them to stay, but they feel our enemies are closing in. The putain de bougnoule, so to speak.”
He drooped one bloodshot eye in a wink.
“So our time has grown short. I’ll send you back to your quarters now to eat your breakfast, but think very carefully. I’m sure you don’t want to suffer any more discomfort. All we need to know is where you put the translation. And the key to the code itself, of course. We’ll want that. Doc, will you escort our young friend?”
Doc went to the door and gestured for Finn, who got up and joined him. “Are you going to be good?” Doc asked.
Finn, who was thinking of bacon and eggs with mushroomies and a plump banger as well, nodded that he would be good. Absolutely. He walked beside Doc to the kitchen, where the oldish man—Marm—was using tongs to put what looked like a perfectly fried sausage on a plate that already held two eggs (fried hard, just the way Finn liked them), four strips of bacon, mushrooms still sizzling in butter, and a slice of tomato. Finn veered toward the plate like a compass needle swinging to magnetic north. Doc pulled him back.
“Wait,” he said. “No grabbing, my son.” And to Marm: “I’ll take it from here. He’ll want you.”
Marm nodded, gave Finn a wink, and headed for Mr. Ludlum’s study.
Doc picked up the plate with its freight of cholesterol-loaded goodies, but as soon as Marm was gone, he put it down again and pulled Finn to the right, away from the pantry and the room beyond.
“Hey!” Finn said. “My breakfast!”
Doc’s hand clamped Finn’s elbow hard enough to hurt. He dragged Finn to a door between the sink and the refrigerator. They emerged in an alley. Finn smelled fresh air tanged with gasoline. The black tradesman’s van was there, the engine running. Mr. Weasel was behind the wheel. When he saw Doc and Finn, he went between the seats into the back. The rear doors flew open.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Pando said.
“No fear, he’ll be in the jakes doing a Number Two Toodle-oo,” Doc said.
“Yeah, but he don’t stay in there long these days, and he ain’t entirely stupid, even yet. Get in here, son.”
Finn had time for one amazed look at the thin slice of blue sky above the alley, then stumbled into the back of the van. His legs were stiff and he went sprawling, half in and half out. Pando grabbed him and hauled him the rest of the way. From his back pocket he pulled a black hood.
“Put this over your head. No argument. This ain’t the time.”
Finn pulled the bag over his head. His hands were trembling. One of the men—Doc, he thought—shouldered into him and he went down on his arse, head banging the side of the van hard enough to see stars inside the bag. The doors slammed shut.
“Go,” Doc snarled. “And mind you don’t get us into a haxcident.”
Finn heard Pando return to the driver’s seat and the squeak of springs as he sat down. The van started to move. There was a pause at the end of the alley, and then a hard right turn.
Doc thumped down beside Finn with a sigh. “Fuck me for a criminal,” he said.
Well, Finn thought, what else would you call yourself?
“Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?” The idea actually didn’t seem so bad. Not compared with being faceup on the drowning board.
Doc gave a brief grunt of what might have been laughter. “If I’d wanted you dead, I would have let you eat breakfast. The mushrooms were poisoned.”
“What—”
“Poison, poison! You never heard of it, you thick prat?”
“Where are you taking m—”
“Shut up.”
There was a left turn, a right, then some of both as they circled at least two roundabouts. There was a long pause—at a traffic light, Finn assumed—and Pando laid on the horn when the queue didn’t move quick enough to suit him.
“Belay that, you numpty,” Doc called. “Draw no attention.”
On they went. More lefts and rights. Then the van picked up speed, so they were on a faster road, but Finn didn’t hear enough noise to make him believe it was a motorway. Time passed. There was the click of a lighter, then the smell of cigarette smoke.
He don't let us smoke when we’re on a job,” Doc said.
Finn kept quiet. He was thinking about the poisoned mushrooms. If they had been poisoned.
Sometime later—maybe fifteen minutes, maybe twenty—Doc helped himself to a fresh fag and said, “He thinks he’s only lost two men, but the rest slipped away last night. Me ’n’ Pando were the last. Except for Marm. Marm won’t leave him.”
From up front Pando said, “Feckin’ Marm’s as crazy as he is.”
“We risked our lives to bring you out, Finn,” Doc said. “I don’t expect thanks, but that’s what we did.”
Finn thanked him anyway. His voice was trembling and his legs were shaking. Shake, shake, sugar, but you’ll never shake me, he thought. That was Elvis, “Stuck on You.” Finn wondered if his grandma knew Elvis had gobbled up his twin brother, Enos.
“Thank you so much.”
“I don’t know if you’re worth a shite farthing to anyone, but you don’t deserve to die just because he is the way he is now. Did you see that pamphlet he’s so proud of? Wrote it himself, didn’t he? But he wasn’t always that way. No. We did good work once upon a time, didn’t we, Pando?”
“Saved the fucking world in 2017,” Pando said, “and not more than a dozen people ever knew. But we knew, kid. We did.”
“The Feeney lad’s up to something,” Doc said. “That much I never doubted. You weren’t a part of it, but he wouldn’t let it go. Even though he don’t remember squat.”
“Is it—” Finn began.
“Shut up,” Doc said. “Just be a good little laddie and keep your goddamned mouth shut. Unless you want to get into worse trouble.”
From the front Pando said, “No, he wasn’t always this way. I remember ... ah, never mind. For half a crown I’d put a bullet in your goddamned head myself.”
~
TWO HOURS LATER—at least two—they came into another town, a biggish one from the sound of the cars and lorries and the voices Finn heard at stoplights. Voices and laughter, the sound strange to him.
At last the van pulled up and Doc yanked the bag from Finn’s head. “This is your stop, son. And this is for your trouble.” He stuffed something into the front pocket of Finn’s jeans. Then, suddenly—Doc didn’t seem to know he was going to do it until it was done—he kissed Finn on the forehead. “Keep me in your prayers. I’ll need a fuckload of them.”
He opened the back doors. Finn step-stumbled out. The van pulled away while Doc was still yanking the doors shut. Finn looked around like a man waking from a vivid dream. A bicyclist rang a bell and called, “Left, on your left!”