The Liar [calibre]

Trefusis watched him contentedly.

'A good wine is like a woman,' he said. 'Except of course it doesn't have breasts. Or arms and a head. And it can't speak or bear children. In fact, come to think of it, a good wine isn't remotely like a woman at all. A good wine is like a good wine.'

'I'm rather like a good wine too,' said Adrian.

'You improve with age?'

'No,' said Adrian, 'whenever I'm taken out I get drunk.'

'Except that in your case you get laid down after drinking, not before.'

Adrian blushed.

'Oh dear,' said Trefusis, 'that was not a sexual allusion. Merely frivolous paronomasy on the theme of alcoholically induced unconsciousness. I was particularly pleased with "in your case". Are you to be discomfited by the potential for erotic interpretation of every remark I might make?'

'I'm sorry,' said Adrian. 'I've a feeling I'm a bad vintage.'

'That's nonsense, but very graceful. We were talking of drink, I've always believed it right for young people to drink. Not be alcoholic of course, that is a passive state of being, not a positive action. But it is good to drink to excess. That sounds like a toast. To excess.'

'To excess,' said Adrian, bumpering. 'Nothing exceeds like it.'

'Your strenuous tongue is bursting Joy's grape against your palate fine, and that's just as it should be.'

'Keats,' burped Adrian. 'Ode to Melancholy.'

'Keats indeed,' said Trefusis, refilling their glasses. 'Ode on Melancholy in fact, but we are beyond pedantry here, I hope.'

'Bollocks,' said Adrian, who hated being corrected, even kindly.

'Now,' said Trefusis, 'we should talk.

'For the moment,' he said, 'I have nothing to say on the subject of last night. One day, when the world is pinker, I will a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine, and generally make you go all of a dither. But for the moment, shtum, you can keep all thoughts on the topic to yourself: zip your lip. However I do have a proposition to put to you which I would like you to consider very seriously. You have no fixed plans for next year, I think?'

'That's right.'

Adrian had made up his mind to wait until after his Finals before deciding what to do with himself. If he got a First he still planned to stay at Cambridge, otherwise he supposed he would look for a teaching job somewhere.

'How would it be, I wonder, if you were to spend the summer travelling with me?'

Adrian goggled. 'Well, I . . .'

'As you know, I shall be doing a little research for my book. But I have something else to do. There is a problem that needs sorting out, a noisesome problem but not unchallenging. I believe you will be able to offer me material assistance with it. In return I will naturally take care of all expenses, hotels, flights and so forth. It will, I think, be a tour not wholly devoid of interest and amusement. At journey's end we will both deposit ourselves back in England, you to become Prime Minister or whatever lowly ambition you have set your sights on, me to pick up the threads of a ruined and disappointed career. How does that strike you as a plan?'

It struck Adrian as Roscoe Tanner struck a tennis-ball, but how it struck him as a plan he couldn't say. His mind reeled with questions. Had Trefusis run mad? What would his parents say? Should he tell them? Did Donald expect him to share his bed? Is that what it was all about?

'Well?'

'It's . . . it's unbelievable.'

'You don't like it?'

'Like it? Of course I like it, but '

'Excellent!' Trefusis poured out two more glasses of wine. 'Then you're game?'

If I refused to sleep with him, thought Adrian, would he just kick me out and abandon me in the middle of Europe without a penny? Surely not.

'God yes!' he said. 'I'm game.'

'Wonderful!' said Trefusis. 'Then let us drink to our Grand Tour.'

'Right,' said Adrian draining his glass, 'our Grand Tour.'

Trefusis smiled.

'I'm so very pleased,' he said.

'Me too,' said Adrian, 'but. . .'

'Yes?'

'This problem you mentioned. That I may be able to help you with. What exactly . . .?'

'Ah,' said Donald. 'I'm afraid I am not yet fully at liberty, as they say, to disclose the details.'

'Oh.'

'But I don't suppose there's any harm in my asking you to cast your mind back to last summer. You remember the Salzburg Festival?'

'Vividly.'

'I am sure you haven't forgotten that terrible business in the Getreidegasse?'

'The man in the Mozart museum?'

'That same.'

'I'm hardly likely to forget it. All that blood.'

Bob appeared at the door.

'Sorry to disturb, gents. Thought you might appreciate some of this superior Armagnac brandy.'

'How solicitous!' said Trefusis.

'May I enquire, sir, whether everything went well?'

'Everything went splendidly, Bob. Splendidly.'

'Oh goody-good,' said Bob, taking three small brandy glasses from his jacket pocket. 'I'll join you then, if I may.'

'Please do, Bob, please do. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so pour us each one desperate measure.'

Bob complied.

'We were just talking about Salzburg.'

'Ooh, nasty business that, sir. Poor old Moltaj. Throat slit from ear to ear, they tell me. But then you both saw it in the flesh, didn't you, sirs?'

Adrian stared at him.

'I know you'll do right by old Moltaj, Mr Healey,' said Bob, clapping him on the shoulder. 'Course you will, sir.'

A St Matthew's Tie with Liberty silk handkerchief flamboyantly thrust into the breast pocket was bent double in Corridor Four of the third floor of Reddaway House next to the door marked '3.4.CabCom'. He seemed to be taking an unconscionable time in doing up the laces of his black Oxford shoes. It was almost impossible for him not to hear voices coming from behind the door.

'I was just thinking, sir, that what with the Bikini alert over Iran and everything . . .'

''Bugger the bloody Persians, Reeve - I have a Limit Zero Cabinet Appro on this.'

'Copeland is very keen that we should co-operate.'

'Listen to me. The Hairy Mullah is there to stay. You know it, I know it. Neither Copeland nor anyone at Langley nor over here has got a choirboy's chance in Winchester of doing anything about it. Checkmate, d'you see? I don't suppose you know what checkmate means?'

'Well. .:

'Of course you don't, you went to Oxford. Checkmate comes from the Arabic "shah mat"- the King is dead. Well the Shah is mat, all right, he's as mat as a bloody doornail, and I don't propose to waste time feeding the ambitions of his whining progeny - they can live it up in Monaco and Gstaad for the rest of their lives as far as I'm concerned. Clear the board, put the chessmen back in their box, we've got bigger capon to baste.'

'Right, sir.'

'Right. So. Report?'

'Well, sir. I'm sorry to have to make report that the ObSquad lost Castor for a day.'

What.?'

'Er . . . if you take a look at this, sir. It's a Cambridge police report.'

The St Matthew's Tie heard the wobble of a cardboard wallet being opened.

'Castor and Odysseus, eh?''

'We rather think so, sir.'

'So are you telling me that Odysseus has got the whole box of tricks now?'

'No, sir, . . if you remember our signal from Locksmith in Budapest, Castor may have given one part of Mendax to Odysseus but the other half will be with Pollux, sewn into the lining of his jacket.'

'And Pollux is still in Troy?'