Patricia smiled reassuringly, squeezed his hand once more, and said, “Well, it’s over. We were lucky, my dear, and we didn’t let it happen again.”
“No, we didn’t.” With his free hand, Sir Denis lubricated his dry mouth with wine.
“The point is,” Patricia said, returning to earnest seriousness, “Baron Chase is up to something.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”
“I suspect,” she said, “he’s planning to betray Amin in some way.”
“If so,” Sir Denis said, “he’s either a braver or a more foolhardy man than I am.”
“Please don’t repeat this,” she said, looking very tense and worried. “Not to anybody.”
“You have my word.”
“And don’t let him involve you. Whatever it is he’s doing, don’t let him convince you to help him.”
“Certainly not.”
“Do you know why he’s in London?” Then, obviously seeing the quandary in Sir Denis’s face—should he mention Grossbarger or lie to her?—she laughed and patted his hand, saying, “I know about Emil Grossbarger.”
“Good,” he said, smiling back, relieved.
She released his hand to sip wine, then didn’t take his hand again. “Officially,” she said, “he’s come here to talk with the Grossbarger Group—which of course means Grossbarger—”
“Of course.”
“—about the planes for the coffee airlift to Djibouti.”
Sir Denis lifted an eyebrow: so that was Chase’s story. “I see.”
She had been watching him keenly. Now she smiled again and said, “No, you don’t believe it, either.”
“I don’t?”
“It’s too small a mission,” she said. “Anyone could have done it. I could do it. Chase could even have done it with a phone call.”
“I agree.”
“But Grossbarger requested the meeting personally,” she said, “and asked for Chase.”
“Direct action,” Sir Denis commented admiringly.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” she said. “I think Chase is trying to make some sort of deal of his own with Grossbarger. Remember, in Uganda he wouldn’t tell you what his message to Grossbarger was?”
That was one of the things he’d babbled away about that first night. Wincing at the memory, he said, “Yes, of course I remember.”
“Well, somehow he did get his message through to Grossbarger, and Grossbarger is interested, and now they’re trying to work out some sort of deal together.”
“I daresay you’re right,” Sir Denis said; what he didn’t say was that he knew for a fact she was right. Wondering if she knew more than he did, he said, “What sort of deal do you think it is?”
Unfortunately, she shook her head. “I have no idea. Could it have something to do with coffee? But Grossbarger has other interests, hasn’t he?”
“Of course. Grossbarger is an investor, in whatever looks safe enough and profitable enough. The Grossbarger Group is venture capital at a very high level.”
“But he’ll talk with Baron Chase,” she said, frowning with the intensity of her bewilderment. “What on Earth could Chase be offering him?”
“I’ve asked myself that same question a dozen times,” Sir Denis said, “without finding a satisfactory answer.”
“Is he selling Uganda?” That had been said facetiously, but then she frowned again, saying, “I wonder. Is he selling Uganda?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Revolution,” she suggested. “Could Chase be talking to Grossbarger about financing a revolution? There’d certainly be profit in it if the revolution succeeded.”
Sir Denis shook his head. “I know Emil Grossbarger fairly well,” he said. “I imagine he’s capable of very many things, but he wouldn’t touch a revolution.”
“Not under any circumstances?”
“Not under any circumstances. Revolution is emotion, and Emil Grossbarger won’t put his money on another man’s emotion.”
Patricia laughed, in surprise as much as pleasure. “You read people very well,” she said. “I wonder what you think of me.”
“You know what I think of you,” he said, and was gratified to see that special sensual smile touch her lips.
The motherly waitress was bringing their food at last. Patricia said, “I’ve done enough shopping for today. After lunch, I’d love to go back to the hotel and just rest awhile, but I don’t want to run into Chase.”
“Come to my hotel,” he suggested, trying to be casual but already feeling the heat of arousal in his body.
“Delicious idea,” she said, smiling again in that same way.
The waitress walked off frowning, glancing back over her shoulder at the stylish young black woman and the distinguished elderly white man.
Anne wasn’t using the farm in Sussex that weekend, so on Saturday Sir Denis and Patricia drove down there in a rented Ford Escort. On the way, they talked together easily, comfortably, each dipping into that store of anecdote freshly available with the advent of a new partner. They touched on the question of Grossbarger and Chase only once, and glancingly, when Patricia said, “Why did you have to meet Chase at the airport?” He explained then his role in introducing the two men, and she said, “So you’re the go-between.”
“I suppose I am, in a way.”
“I’m surprised they wouldn’t tell you what it was all about.”
“They think I’m too sort of honest,” he said, with a self-deprecating smile.
She studied him sharply for a few seconds, then smiled, visibly relaxing, saying, “And of course they’re right.”
“Thank you,” he said.
At Foxhall (pronounced Foxell or, when the natives were trying for wit, Fossil) Sir Denis turned left onto the small macadam road, barely two lanes wide, that led after several miles to the farm. “That’s my land there,” he said, nodding at the freshly turned earth under the cloud-filled sky.
“You farm it?” She sounded amazed and delighted.
Unfortunately he had to say, “No, I lease most of the land to local men. All I keep for myself is the house and the woods.”
He had been hesitant at first about bringing her up here, but the closer they got to the place the more he knew he was doing the right thing. In the old days he’d had a great deal of pleasure and contentment here, but in the years since Alicia’s death the farm had taken on a different meaning in his life; it had become a solitary place, where he could work and read, but not particularly a place of joy or serenity. Introducing Patricia to the farm would shake it up, renew his relationship with it. And perhaps with himself.
Leading from the road to the house was a quarter-mile gravel lane between fields; the one on the left recently plowed, the one on the right still with its spring stubble of dead stalks and fresh weeds. At first the house was invisible, its presence indicated only by the cluster of evergreens at the end of the lane. standing there like a Swiss Guard in uniforms of dark green. The house itself stood in their midst, a low two stories, half-timbered, with beams of so dark a brown they seemed black against the white plaster. Faintly visible behind and to the left were a springhouse and the nearest barn, both lumpy humble structures of native stone.