"Of course," he said. "Old Bernard Pellegrin tipped you the wink. Brave of him. And timely. I just hope I'd have done the same. I've always had a soft spot for Bernard."
His smiling eyes fixed on Curtiss's flushed features, Donohue watched as they first hesitated, then formed themselves into an expression of contempt.
"That limp-wristed faggot? I wouldn't trust him to pee his poodle in the park. I've been keeping a top job warm for his retirement, and the bugger hasn't lifted a finger to protect me. Want some?" Curtiss demanded, shoving a brandy decanter at him.
"Can't, old boy. Leech's orders."
"I told you. Go to my doctor. Doug gave you his address. He's only down in Cape Town. We'll fly you there. Take the Gulfstream."
"Bit late to change horses, thanks, Kenny."
"It never is," Curtiss retorted.
So it's Pellegrin, thought Donohue, confirming an old suspicion as he watched Curtiss pour himself another lethal dose from the decanter. Some things about you are predictable after all, and one of them is, you never learned to lie.
* * *
Five years ago, impelled by a desire to do something useful, the childless Donohues had driven up-country to stay with a poor African farmer who in his spare time was setting up a network of kids' football teams. The problem was money: money for a truck to drive the kids to matches, money for team uniforms and other precious symbols of dignity. Maud had recently come into a small inheritance, Donohue a life policy. By the time they returned to Nairobi they had pledged the whole lot in installments over the next five years and Donohue had never been so happy. His only regret, looking back, was that he had spent so little of his life on kids' football, and so much of it on spies. The same thought for some reason flitted through his head as he watched Curtiss lower his vast bulk into a teak armchair, nodding and winking like a kind granddad. Here comes the fabled charm that leaves me cold, Donohue told himself.
"I popped down to Harare a couple of days ago," Curtiss confided artfully, clapping his hands on his knees and leaning forward for greater confidence. "That stupid peacock Mugabe's appointed himself a new Minister of National Projects. Quite a promising lad, I must say. Did you read about him at all, Tim?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Young bloke. You'd like him. He's helping us with a little scheme we've got going up there. Very fond of a nice backhander, he is. Mustard, in fact. I thought you might value that piece of information. It's worked for us in the past all right, hasn't it? A bloke who'll take a backhander from Kenny K is not averse to taking one from Her Maj. Right?"
"Right. Thanks. Good idea. I'll pass it up the line."
More nods and winks accompanied by a grateful pull of cognac. "Know that new skyscraper I built off the Uhuru Highway?"
"And very fine it is, Kenny."
"I sold it to a Russian last week. A mafia boss he is, Doug tells me. A big one, too, apparently, not a tiddler like some of the fellows we've got here. Word is, he's cutting himself a very big drug deal with the Koreans." He sat back and surveyed Donohue with the deep concern of a close friend. "Here. Tim. What's the matter with you? You look faint."
"I'm fine. It's the way I go sometimes."
"It's the chemotherapy, that is. I told you to go to my doctor and you wouldn't. How's Maud?"
"Maud's fine, thanks."
"Take the yacht. Give yourselves a break, just the two of you. Talk to Doug."
"Thanks again, Kenny, but it might be stretching cover a bit, mightn't it?"
Another mood swing threatened them as Kenny breathed a long sigh and let his great arms flop to his sides. No man could take it harder that his generosity had been rejected. "You're not joining the hands-off-Kenny brigade, are you, Tim? You're not cold-shouldering me like those banking boys?"
"Of course not."
"Well, don't. You'll only get hurt. This Russian I was telling you about. Listen. Know what he's got tucked away for a rainy day? Which he showed Doug?"
"I'm all ears, Kenny."
"I built a basement for that skyscraper. Not a lot do that here, but I decided I'd give it a basement for a car park. Cost me an arm and a leg, but that's how I am. Four hundred spaces for two hundred apartments. And this Russian, whose name I'm going to give you, he's got a big white lorry in every fucking car space, with U.N. painted on the lid. Never been driven, he tells Doug. Fell off a freighter on their way to Somalia. Wants to flog them." He flung up his arms, amazed by his own anecdote. "What the fuck's that about then? The Russian mafia flogging U.N. lorries! To me. Know what he wanted Doug to do?"
"Tell me."
"Import them. From Nairobi to Nairobi. He'll respray them for us, and all we've got to do is square the customs boys and put the lorries through our books a few at a time. If that's not organized crime, what is? A Russian crook ripping off the U.N., here in Nairobi in broad daylight, that's anarchy. And I disapprove of anarchy. So you can have that item of intelligence. Gratis and for fuck all. With Kenny K's compliments. Tell them it's a freebie. On me."
"They'll be over the moon."
"I want him stopped, Tim. In his tracks. Now."
"Coleridge or Quayle?"
"Both of them. I want Coleridge stopped, I want the Quayle woman's stupid report lost — "
My God, he knows about that too, thought Donohue. "I thought Pellegrin had already lost it for you," he complained, with the kind of frown that older men put on when their memory is failing them.
"You keep Bernard out of this! He's no friend of mine and never will be. And I want you to tell your Mr. Quayle that if he goes on coming at me, there's fuck all I can do to help him because he's taking on the world, not me! Got it? They'd have done him in Germany if I hadn't gone down on my hands and knees for him! Hear me?"
"I hear you, Kenny. I'll pass it up the line. That's all I can promise."
With bearish agility Curtiss sprang from his chair and rolled away down the room.
"I'm a patriot," he shouted. "Confirm that, Donohue! I'm a fucking patriot!"
"Of course you are, Kenny."
"Say it again. I am a patriot!"
"You're a patriot. You're John Bull. Winston Churchill. What do you want me to say?"
"Give me one example of me being patriotic. One of dozens. The best example you can think of. Now."
Where the hell is this leading? Donohue gave one all the same. "How about the Sierra Leone job we did last year?"
"Tell me about it. Go on. Tell me!"
"A client of ours wanted guns and ammunition on a no-name basis."
"So?"
"So we bought the guns — "
"I bought the fucking guns!"
"You bought the guns with our money, we provided you with a phony end-user certificate saying they were destined for Singapore — "
"You've forgotten the fucking ship!"
"ThreeBees chartered a forty-thousand-ton freighter and loaded up the guns. The ship got itself lost in the fog — "
"Pretended to, you mean!"
" — and had to put in to a small harbor near Freetown, where our client and his team were standing by ready to unload the guns."
"And I didn't have to do it for you, did I? I could have chickened. I could have said, "Wrong address, try next door." But I did it. I did it for love of my fucking country. Because I'm a patriot!" The voice dropped, to become conspiratorial. "All right. Listen. Here's what you do — what the Service does." He was pacing the long room as he gave his orders in low, staccato sentences. "Your Service — not the Foreign Office, they're a bunch of sissies — your Service, in person, you go to the banks. And you identify, in each bank — I'll mark your card for you — a real Englishman. Or woman. Are you listening, because you're going to be passing this on to them when you get home tonight." He had put on his visionary's voice. High tones, a bit of quaver, the people's millionaire.