“Yes?” he said into the microphone on the phone console. He hadn’t yet quite caught the hang of the newly installed “communications system,” so he said the word again, not certain she’d heard him the first time. “Yes?”
“There’s a gentleman from Her Majesty’s Government here to see you,” Lucy said.
“Which branch?” he asked.
“Customs and Excise,” Lucy said. She always sounded as if she were shrieking. Her shrill irritating voice sounded like a cross between an air raid siren and a banshee. Come to think of it, she sounded a great deal like Peggy Armstrong, one of his co-vice-consuls. Two singularly unattractive women. Here in Passports and Visas, Geoffrey was sure there was a conspiracy afoot to surround him with the plainest women in all the whole crumbling empire.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “he’ll just have to wait. I’ve someone with me at the moment.”
“I know,” Lucy said, “but he said it was urgent.”
“Just ask him to wait, won’t you?” Geoffrey said as pleasantly as he could manage, and smiled forbearingly at the girl sitting on the other side of his desk. “I shan’t be much longer.”
“He looks terribly impatient,” Lucy whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Geoffrey said, and clicked her off. “Now then,” he said, “as I understand this, Miss Randolph...”
“Randall. Elita Randall.”
“Sorry, I thought I’d...” He glanced at his note pad. “Randall it is, terribly sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Elita said.
“As I understand it,” Geoffrey said, and was momentarily distracted by her legs. Frightfully good-looking woman, this one. Girl, he supposed. Couldn’t be a day over seventeen, could she? “This... ah... friend of yours,” he said.
“Acquaintance, actually,” Elita said, aware of his wandering eyes, lifting herself slightly off the seat of the chair, and tugging at her mini. “I met him on a train, actually.”
“Ah, yes,” Geoffrey said, aware that he’d made her uncomfortable, cursing himself for it, and looking away in contrition, busying himself with the pad on his desk and the pencil in his hand. “And you say he’s British?”
“Well, his mother is.”
“Would you know her name?”
“I’m sorry.”
“How about his father? Is he British as well?”
“He’s Indian.”
“And his name?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“I see. Well, what’s this fellow’s name? The one you met on the train.”
“Krishnan Hemkar,” she said.
“Ah, Indian indeed,” he said. “How old is he?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“May I ask your age, Miss Randall?”
“Why do you need to know that?”
“Well, I don’t, actually. I was merely curious.”
“I’ll be twenty in February,” she said, somewhat defiantly.
Which meant she was scarcely four months past her nineteenth birthday. But whereas seventeen would have put her completely out of range, nineteen wasn’t totally unacceptable. On the other hand, he had dated nineteen-year-old American girls who wanted to discuss nothing but movie stars.
“Krishnan Hemkar,” he said, looking at the name he’d written on his pad. “And, of course, you don’t have his address or his tele...”
“No, I don’t.”
“Of course not, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?” he said, and smiled.
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”
“Would you know what sort of passport he might be holding?”
“Well, I know he was born in India... someplace near the Pakistan border. He told me the name of the town, but I can’t remember it.”
“Mmm,” Geoffrey said. “Would you know if he’s a British subject?”
“Well, he said his mother’s Brit...”
“Yes, I know, but...”
“And he told me he was raised in England. He came here when he was eighteen.”
“Would you know if he’s now an American citizen?”
“No, I’m sorry. He’s a doctor.”
“I see.”
He looked across the desk at her. Wide blue eyes beseechingly returning his gaze. Please help me find my lost Indian friend. But how?
“You see,” he said, “without knowing...”
“I just... it’s important that I locate him.”
“I’m sure, or you wouldn’t be going through all this trouble, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “let me run his name through the computer...”
“Oh, thank...”
“... when I get a free moment.”
Her face fell.
“If you’ll let me have a number where I can reach you...”
“When can you do that?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Run his name through the computer.”
“Well, I have someone waiting just now...”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I heard.”
“But my diary looks relatively clear afterwards, perhaps I can get to it sometime later this afternoon.”
“That would be very nice of you,” she said.
“Could I have the telephone number, please?” he said.
She gave him her mother’s number, watching as he wrote it onto his pad, making dead cert he was writing it down correctly, this Indian chap was obviously of some importance to her. She thanked him again, rose, smoothed the short wrinkled skirt over her thighs and her behind, told him she’d be home all afternoon if he found the information she needed, and he promised again to try to get to it this afternoon. He offered his hand in farewell. They shook hands briefly and she went out, the door whispering shut behind her. His heart was pounding. He went to the intercom on his desk, buzzed Lucy Phipps, and said, “What’s the gentleman’s name?”
“Sir?” Lucy said, sounding like a startled siren.
“The gentleman from H.M. Customs.”
“Joseph Worthy, sir.”
“Show the worthy gentleman in,” Geoffrey said, rather pleased with his own little joke, which of course Lucy Strident did not catch at all.
6
Sonny did not place the first of his three calls until three o’clock that Friday afternoon.
By that time, he knew exactly how he would kill the President.
Sitting on the bed in his room at the Hilton, he dialed the 800 number and listened while it rang on the other end. A recorded female voice told him he had reached Gem Inorganics in Lewiston, Maine, and then advised him which button to push for product pricing, product availability, or sales. He pressed the number-one button on his phone. A live woman said, “Gem Inorganics, how may I help you?”
“Can you tell me in what quantities you sell dimethylsulfoxide difluoride?” Sonny said.
“Do you have the catalogue number on that?” the woman said.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“Just a moment,” she said.
He waited.
“Dimethylsulfoxide dichloride?” she asked.
“Difluoride,” he said.
“Oh, yes, here it is,” she said. “That’s 37468 in the catalogue. The two-gram size is ninety-five dollars, and we’ve got it in stock. The ten-gram size is three hundred and fifty-two dollars...”
“Do you have that in stock?”
“Let me check that, sir.”
There was a pause. Scrolling her computer screen, he guessed.
“Yes, sir, we do.”
“Is there any limit on how many I can order?”
“However many you need, sir. On a ten-by-ten, we could probably do a special pricing for you.”
“I won’t need as many as that,” he said. “Can I order two of the ten-gram size?”