At present the millibar pressure of 1002, looked bound for a fizzle-out, but then so had Odin not so very long ago.
An announcer was explaining how modern methods of storm prediction saved money and lives. Preparedness, he said, couldn’t deflect a storm but it could lessen some of its effects. Knowing in advance was invaluable.
A world-weary businessman standing beside me, shot glass with ice in hand, looked with cynicism at real advances in atmospheric technology, and in boredom said, ‘So what else is new?’
Doppler radar was new, I thought, and research had led to new satellites and computer generated 3-D models... and there were idiots like hurricane hunters who flew into hurricane eyes and all but drowned. All those tremendous efforts had been made so that bored cynical businessmen could keep their gin and tonics dry.
Special Services collected me from there, offering armchairs, things to eat, newspapers with crosswords, London area telephone calls. I punched in my grandmother’s number and, as I’d rather hoped, found my call answered by Jett, who’d started her week there and sounded relieved to hear my voice.
‘Where did you get to last night?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Kris says he has been looking for you everywhere. I was talking to him just ten minutes ago. He thought you might be here.’
‘And I don’t suppose,’ I said regretfully, ‘that he was at all pleased with me.’
‘I wouldn’t have told you, but no, he was very very angry. So where are you, anyway?’
I thought: if I can swim through a hurricane I can find my way through a labyrinth. I’d begun to understand where I was going, and I felt a shade reckless and light-headed.
‘Wait for me,’ I said, smiling, ‘forsaking all others...’
‘You’ll be lucky!’
‘Keep thee only unto me.’ Why in hell, I thought, did I ever say that?
‘For as long as we live? Do you know what you’re quoting from?’
I answered her this time with conviction, ‘For better or worse.’
‘Are you sure?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Or it this just a joke?’
‘No one jokes about marriage on a Monday morning. No or yes?’
‘Then... yes.’
‘Good! Tell my gran that this time it’s for keeps... and... er... if I solve that crossword I’ll be back later this week.’
‘Perry! Is that all? It’s not enough.’
‘Take care of yourselves, both of you,’ I said, and put down the receiver as she said protestingly, ‘Perry!’ not wanting me to go.
Did I mean it, I thought wildly? Did one really coolly suggest marriage on a Monday morning? Was it a stupid impulse or a forever sort of thing? Impulses like that, I answered myself, that seemed to come from nowhere, they weren’t really impulses at all, they were decisions already made but waiting for an opportunity to be spoken aloud.
While I day-dreamed about Jett John Rupert and Ghost travelled to Heathrow, found their way to the business centre, and both, from their expressions, were unprepared for the grandeur of my grandmother’s cape-coat and the tidiness, strength of purpose and revived power of Stuart, P.
I smiled. How did they think I had ever climbed the meteorology ladder? And, thinking about ladders, were my publisher and my ghost writer on rungs going up or going down?
On the telephone I had promised them an interesting package if they would drive to Terminal 4, and when they arrived I gave them the German orders and invoices, and also fresh copies I’d just made on the machines all around us.
I said, ‘These copies are enough to madden Oliver Quigley and Caspar Harvey, the Traders who are searching for them day and night. The originals were the collected works of George Loricroft, Trader deceased. He collected these orders from customers who met him for the purpose on racecourses, mainly in Germany. If he hadn’t died he would have distributed these orders, one by one, to those who could either fill the order themselves, or pass it to someone who could. I suppose the contents of these folders are always fluid — I should think the number of buy or sell items is sometimes small, but this time, by good luck, there are fourteen.’ I briefly paused. ‘Belladonna Harvey’, I said, ‘doesn’t know what’s going on. Nor does my fellow meteorologist, Kris Ironside. If you have any influence at all with whoever you call in to unzip the Traders, see if you can keep those two out of trouble.’
My ‘authorities’ said they would try: but even if they succeeded, I thought, I’d lost two friends for ever.
I looked at John Rupert and at Ghost with respect and growing affection. Few enough people gave their time as they did, living double lives without recognition. Ghost, as if feeling for me something of the same emotion at the same time, said he hoped we really would, one day, get to writing Storm.
‘You’d better, after that huge advance,’ John Rupert said with irony.
Ghost, with a sudden urge, broke all secret-operative rules. ‘Perry,’ he said, his face full of private liking and professional indiscretion. ‘Feel better. Your friends aren’t likely to be prosecuted. Nor are Harvey or Quigley, unless they do something foolish. Our superior officer has decided to leave those two in place to start again. What we actually stalk the Traders for is what you’ve just given us, the written lists of the materials they are currently expecting their clients to buy and sell. If we manage to acquire a list — like this one, pure gold — we send each order, each component of the package, to our counterparts in Germany or wherever the activity is taking place, and they prosecute or close down or use whatever force they like. We, John Rupert and I and some others, we see our job as identifying Traders (or whatever they happen to be calling themselves this year, this month, whatever) and then from that identification we set out to obtain or copy their requisitions, preferably without them knowing. Very often, like we’ll do this time, we leave the Traders in place and active, so we can steal from them again. Those German letters you’ve found for us will put all those people who wrote them, who aimed to buy or sell — it will put all those people in court or out of business, some in a violent way, and it will collect and put into safe storage the materials they were offering for sale. Acquiring papers like those you have just given us, that is our job. That’s how we choke off acts of terrorism, even before the terrorists get as far as their own detailed planning stage. You can’t make a nuclear bomb if you can’t get the hot stuff.’
He stopped, but not from regret at what he’d said: more in satisfaction.
John Rupert, the one who might more likely have disapproved of this frank disclosure and have tried to stop Ghost’s abandonment of ‘need to know’ — even John Rupert was nodding in approval.
‘You’ll see now that we know more about uranium and so on than we admit to,’ he confessed. ‘We hide behind ignorance to be safe. We wanted to enlighten you on Friday in the hospital. Our superior officer won’t be pleased that we have.’
‘Don’t tell him,’ I said.
I shook their hands, one by one, with commitment and warmth.
John Rupert said, ‘What we’re always looking for are red hot letters like those in the folder you first came to tell us about. All those foreign scripts!’
‘As far as we know they’ve never resurfaced,’ Ghost said. ‘They are so sensitive they must be in someone’s safe keeping. Funny if they’re back where they started.’
John Rupert thought the idea frivolous. Ignoring it, he said, ‘There are anti-terrorist governments in Russia and in Germany and of course in many other countries. They welcome what we can send them. We never know exactly when we prevent sabotage or blackmail, but we receive intense expressions of thanks.’
‘But,’ Ghost warned, ‘do you remember we told you about the man in the Everglades...’