"If we bump into someone you know and I don't, Jonathan, which as you are no doubt aware is Sod's Law in this game, don't explain me. If you're driven to it, I'm your old barrack-mate from Shorncliffe and switch to the weather," he said, thus incidentally demonstrating that he had done his homework on Jonathan's early life. "Doing any climbing these days?"
"A bit."
"Where?"
"Bernese Oberland mainly."
"Anything spectacular?"
"Quite a decent Wetterhorn during the cold spell if you like ice. Why? Do you climb?"
If Burr recognised the mischief in Jonathan's question, he chose to ignore it. "Me? I'm the fellow who takes the lift to the second floor. How about your sailing?" Burr glanced at the window, where the grey lake smouldered like a bog.
"It's all pretty much kiddie stuff round here," said Jonathan. "Thun's not bad. Cold, though."
"And painting? Watercolours, wasn't it? Still dabble, do you?"
"Not often."
"But now and then. What's your tennis like?"
"Middling."
"I'm serious."
"Well, good club standard, I suppose."
"I thought you won some competition in Cairo."
Jonathan gave a modest blush. "Oh, that was just some exiles' knockabout."
"Let's do the hard work first, shall we?" Burr suggested. He meant: let's choose our food so that we can talk in peace.
"You're a bit of a cook yourself, aren't you?" he enquired as they hid their faces in the overlarge menus. "A man of parts. I admire that. There's not a lot of Renaissance blokes about these days. Too many specialists."
Jonathan turned the page from meat to fish to dessert, thinking not of food but of Sophie. He was standing before Mark Ogilvey in his grand ministerial house in Cairo's green suburbs, surrounded by fake eighteenth-century furniture assembled by the Ministry of Works, and Roberts prints assembled by Ogilvey's wife. He was wearing his dinner jacket, and in his mind it was still coated with Sophie's blood. He was shouting, but when he heard his voice it sounded like a sonar echo.
He was cursing Ogilvey to hell and back, and sweat was running down the undersides of his wrists. Ogilvey was wearing his dressing gown, a mousy brown thing with a drum major's frayed gold frogging on the sleeves. Mrs. Ogilvey was making tea so that she could listen.
"Watch your language, do you mind, old boy?" said Ogilvey, pointing at the chandelier to remind him of the risk of microphones.
"Damn my language! You've killed her, do you hear me? You're supposed to protect your sources, not have them beaten to death!"
Ogilvey sought refuge in the only safe answer known to his profession. Grasping a crystal decanter from a silver-plate tray, he removed the stopper with a practised flick.
"Old boy. Have a drop of this. You're barking up the wrong tree, I'm afraid. Nothing to do with us. Or you. What makes you think you were her only confidant? She probably told her fifteen best friends. You know the old saying: Two people can keep a secret provided one of 'em's dead? This is Cairo. A secret's what everyone knows except you."
Mrs. Ogilvey chose the same moment to enter with her pot of tea. "He may just think he's better with this, darling," she said in a voice pregnant with discretion. "Brandy does odd things to one, when one's het up."
"Actions have consequences, old boy," Ogilvey said, handing him a glass. "First lesson in life."
A crippled man was limping between the tables of the restaurant on his way to the lavatory. He had two walking sticks and was assisted by a young woman. His rhythm discomforted the diners, and nobody was able to go on eating until he was safely out of sight.
* * *
"So that night our chum arrived was pretty much all you saw of him, then," Burr suggested, shifting the topic of conversation to Roper's stay at Meister's.
"Apart from good morning and good evening, yes. Quayle said don't press my luck, so I didn't."
"But you did have one more casual conversation with him before he left."
"Roper asked me if I skied. I said yes. He said where. I said Miirren. He asked me how the snow was this year. I said good. He said, 'Pity we haven't got time to pop up there for a few days; my lady's dying to have a shot at it.' End of conversation."
"She was there too, then ― his girl ― Jemima? Jed?"
Jonathan affects to search his memory while he secretly celebrates her unfurrowed gaze on him. Are you frightfully good at it, Mr. Pine?
"I think he called her Jeds. Plural."
"He's got names for everyone. It's his way of buying them."
It must be absolutely gorgeous, she says, with a smile that would melt the Eiger.
"She's quite a looker, they say," said Burr.
"If you like the type."
"I like all types. What type's she?"
Jonathan acted world-weary. "Oh, I don't know. Good spread of O-levels... floppy black hats... the millionaire urchin look.... Who is she, anyway?"
Burr seemed not to know, or not to care. "Some upper-class geisha, convent school, rides to hounds. Anyway, you got along with him. He won't forget you."
"He doesn't forget anyone. He had all the waiters' names off pat."
"It isn't everyone he asks for their opinion on Italian sculpture, though, is it? I found that rather encouraging." Encouraging to whom or why, Burr did not explain, and Jonathan was not disposed to ask. "He still bought it, though. The man or woman wasn't born yet who could head off the Roper from buying something he fancies." He consoled himself with a large mouthful of veal. "And thanks," he continued. "Thanks for all the hard work. There's some choice observation in those reports of yours to Quayle I've not seen bettered anywhere. Your left-handed gunman, time-piece on the right wrist, changes his knife and fork over when he tucks into his food ― I mean, that's classic, that is."
"Francis Inglis," Jonathan recited. "Physical-training instructor from Perth, Australia."
"His name's not Inglis, and he doesn't come from Perth. He's a British ex-mercenary, is Frisky, and there's a price on his nasty little head. It was him taught Idi Amin's lads how to extract voluntary confessions with the aid of an electric cattle prod. Our chum likes them English, and he likes them with a dirty past. He doesn't fancy people he doesn't own," he added as he carefully sliced his roll down the middle and spread butter on it. "Here, then," he went on, jabbing his knife in Jonathan's direction. "How come you got the names of his visitors, with you only working nights?"
"Anyone proposing to go up to the Tower Suite these days has to sign in."
"And hanging around the lobby of an evening?"
"Herr Meister expects it of me. I hang around, I ask whatever I want. I'm a presence; that's why I'm there."
"So tell us about these visitors of his," Burr suggested.
"There was this Austrian, as you call him. Three separate visits to the Tower Suite."
"Dr. Kippel, address Vienna, wore a green loden coat."
"He's not Austrian, he's not Kippel. He's a humble Pole, if a Pole's ever humble. They say he's one of the new czars of the Polish underworld."
"Why on earth should Roper be messing with the Polish underworld?"
Burr gave a regretful smile. His purpose was not to enlighten Jonathan but to tantalise him. "How about the thickset fellow with the glittery grey suit and eyebrows, then? Called himself Larsen. Swedish."
"I simply assumed he was a Swede called Larsen."
"He's Russian. Three years ago he was a big shot in the Soviet Ministry of Defence. Today he runs a flourishing employment agency, pimping East Bloc physicists and engineers. Twenty thousand dollars a month, some are pulling in. Your Mr. Larsen takes his cut both ends. As a sideline he traffics in military hardware. If you're looking to buy a couple of hundred T-72 tanks or a few Scud missiles at the Russian back door, Mr. Larsen is your man. Biological warheads come extra. What about your two military-looking Brits?"