“No more of those headlines? ‘Pound Soars,’ ‘Pound Plummets’? That’s all the papers said, every day I was there. You could get positively giddy.”
“Newspapers,” Sir Denis said, with a wry smile and shake of the head.
“Did you ever hear,” she asked him, “the description of who reads which London papers?”
“No, I don’t believe I have.”
Frowning ahead at the road, her expression that of an earnest student, she said, “The Times is read by the people who run the country, the Observer by the people who think they run the country, the Guardian by the people who think they ought to run the country, the Express by the people who think the country ought to be run the way it used to be run, the Telegraph by the people who think it still is, and the Sun is read by people who don’t care who runs the country, just so she has big tits.”
His heightened sexual awareness at her use of that ultimate word almost—but not quite—overpowered Sir Denis’s polite response: the chuckle, the nod, and, “Very good. Very accurate.”
“I have cousins in Fulham,” she said. “They keep me up-to-date.”
So they chatted, and Sir Denis learned that Patricia Kamin had been for a while an attaché at the Ugandan Embassy in London, that her cousins had left Uganda at independence in 1962, and that she herself seemed unusually sophisticated on the question of national allegiance. Sir Denis at one point asked, “You don’t find it… difficult to work with the current government?”
She shrugged. “Why? At bottom, all governments are the same bureaucracy. If you learn how to do an acceptable job while letting your boss take all the credit, you can work for any government in the world.”
He laughed again, and saw that they were driving up a wooded hill, though still in the middle of the city. “Where are we going?”
“The Presidential Lodge. Since this is a more informal occasion than last time, President Amin wants you to be his guest in his home.”
That should have been flattering; but instead was frightening. Trying to hide his real fear with the display of a false trepidation, Sir Denis said, “I hardly think I deserve such an honor.”
“British modesty,” she said, quite openly laughing at him. “The rest of the world will never get the hang of it.”
“Not at all modest,” he said modestly, unable to keep from a modest simper.
Her own simper was downright suggestive. “I bet you have no reason to be modest at all,” she said.
His room was spacious and bright, but erratically furnished with too many contrasting items; Europe, Africa, and Arabia clashed in the pictures and tapestries and ornate mirrors, in the unusually tall kingsize bed covered with a gaudy cotton throw, in the wooden rocking chair painted a refreshingly straightforward white, in the cheap-looking frosted-glass light fixture in the middle of the ceiling. Heavy dark-green draperies were open at one end of the room, revealing glass sliding doors and a small concrete-railed terrace, on which stood two chrome-and-plastic lawn chairs.
Showered, changed, fortified with a whisky from his flask washed down with water from the bottle on the dresser, Sir Denis stepped out onto the terrace and looked at the hillside before him, dappled with bright swaths of color over pockets of darkness, alive with the late-afternoon songs of birds. Below, through the foliage, he could see the green, the church, the tall pink building. Idly, he wondered what that was.
Something made him turn, and the sight of a person in his room, through the glass doors, startled him so thoroughly that he grasped the concrete rail for support. But then, heart still pounding, he recognized the man as Baron Chase, and the expression on his face as a smile. Sir Denis made as though to reenter the room, but Chase came forward, gesturing to him to stay where he was.
Sir Denis had earlier pulled the glass door almost completely closed behind himself. Now Chase slid it open, stepped out onto the terrace, and said, “Forgive me, Sir Denis, I hope I didn’t startle you.”
“Not at all.”
“I knocked, but I’m afraid you couldn’t hear me out here.”
“Not to worry.”
Chase slid the door shut. “I’ve learned since our last meeting,” he said, as though casually, “we have a mutual friend.”
“Oh?”
“Emil,” Chase said, with a faint knowing smile.
Sir Denis had been so appalled at the idea that he and a man like Chase could have acquaintances—hardly friends—in common that it took him several embarrassing seconds to realize Chase meant Emil Grossbarger, who at lunch in London had said Chase wanted to make some sort of obscure deal. Then, even more embarrassingly, in his surprise he started to blurt the name out: “Emil Gross—!”
“Yes,” Chase said, so quickly and with such intensity and such a sudden feral glare that Sir Denis blinked and clamped his teeth shut. That had been a look at the real Baron Chase.
Who immediately dove out of sight again, like a submarine. His surface placid, Chase gazed out over the hillside, saying, “A beautiful city, Kampala. Probably the loveliest in the empire. What Saigon was for the French.”
“It’s fortunate in its setting.”
“If in nothing else,” Chase said wryly.
“I was wondering,” Sir Denis said. “What’s that pink building down there?”
“State Research Bureau,” Chase said, without inflection.
“What’s that?”
“Statistical section. You know, red tape.”
“Ah. Red tape in a pink building, how appropriate.”
“Isn’t it? Care for a walk on the grounds?”
Having understood—though belatedly—that Chase had spoken so indirectly about Emil Grossbarger because he expected that even on this terrace the bugging equipment might still pick up their words, Sir Denis now further understood that a walk on the grounds was the way to avoid eaves-droppers, so he immediately said, “Delighted.”
“Good. Come along, then.”
There were paths among the twisted branches, the great glossy leaves, the brazenly colorful and sweet-smelling flowers. Chase and Sir Denis strolled along, incongruously once or twice passing soldiers in field uniform and armed with machine pistols, for whom, apparently, the color of their skins was bona fide enough. Sir Denis waited for Chase to mention Emil Grossbarger, but for a long time the man merely chatted inconsequential things: air travel, the climate in London and in Uganda, the current trade problems between Uganda and Kenya. Knowing that Sir Denis now domiciled permanently in São Paulo, Chase also questioned him rather closely about Brazil, explaining he was thinking about various parts of the world in which he might “retire.” “Parts of the world other than Africa,” he said at one point, with his characteristic self-mocking smile.
Having already played the fool once today, on the terrace, Sir Denis refused to bring up the topic of Emil Grossbarger himself. His companion apart, the walk on the hillside was extremely pleasant, in this area too wild to be a park but too tame to be jungle. From time to time the pink building downslope was visible through the branches and blooms, its windows sparkling in the sun. The air was soft-scented and delicious, the light clear without glare, the rich earth underfoot padded with the mulch of centuries. The pink building formed a fanciful backdrop to a lovely soothing setting.
Chase said, “I understand you’ve met Patricia Kamin.”
“What? Oh, yes, she drove me in from the airport.”