"I would like you to copy some personal documents for me. Please."
"Well now, we do have an executive sendee’s bureau directly across the lobby, Madame Sophie," Jonathan said. "Mr. Ahmadi usually presides at night." He made to pick up the telephone, but her voice stopped him.
"They are confidential documents, Mr. Pine."
"I'm sure Mr. Ahmadi is perfectly dependable."
"Thank you, I would prefer that we use our own facilities," she retorted, with a glance at the copier standing on its trolley in the corner. And he knew she had marked it on her journeys through the lobby, just as she had marked him. From the handbag she drew a wad of white paper, bundled but not folded.
She slid it across the desk to him, her ringed fingers splayed and rigid.
"It's only a very small copier, I'm afraid, Madame Sophie," Jonathan warned, rising to his feet. "You'll have to hand-feed it. May I show you how, then leave you to yourself?"
"We shall hand-feed it together, please," she said, with an innuendo born of tension.
"But if the papers are confidential..."
"You must please attend me. I am a technical idiot. I am not myself." She picked up her cigarette from the ashtray and drew on it. Her eyes, stretched wide, seemed shocked by her own actions. "You do it, please," she ordered him.
So he did it.
He switched on the machine, inserted them ― all eighteen of them ― and skim-read them as they reappeared. He made no conscious effort to do this. Also he made no conscious effort to resist. The watcher's skills had never abandoned him.
From the Ironbrand Land, Ore & Precious Metals Company of Nassau to the Hamid InterArab Hotels and Trading Company of Cairo, incoming dated August the twelfth. Hamid InterArab to Ironbrand, outgoing, assurances of personal regard.
Ironbrand to Hamid InterArab again, talk of merchandise and items four to seven on our stock list, end user to be Hamid InterArab's responsibility and let's have dinner together on the yacht.
The letters from Ironbrand signed with a tight flourish, like a monogram on a shirt pocket. The InterArab copies not signed at all, but the name Said Abu Hamid in oversized capitals below the empty space.
Then Jonathan saw the stock list, and his blood did whatever blood does when it sets the surface of your back tingling and makes you worry how your voice will sound when you next speak: one plain sheet of paper, no signature, no provenance, headed "Stock available as of October 1st 1990." The items a devil's lexicon from Jonathan's unsleeping past.
"Are you sure one copy will be enough?" he enquired with that extra lightness that came to him in crisis, like a clarity of vision under fire.
She was standing with her forearm across her stomach and her elbow cupped in her hand while she smoked and watched him.
"You are adept," she said. She did not say what in.
"Well, it's not exactly complicated once you get the hang of it. As long as the paper doesn't jam."
He laid the original documents in one pile, the photocopies in another. He had suspended thought. If he had been laying out a dead body he would have blocked his mind in the same way. He turned to her and said, "Done," overcasually, a boldness he in no way felt.
"Of a good hotel one asks everything," she commented. "You have a suitable envelope? Of course you have."
Envelopes were in the third drawer of his desk, left side. He selected a yellow one, A4 size, and guided it across the desk, but she let it lie there.
"Please put the copies inside the envelope. Then seal the envelope very effectively and put it in your safe. Perhaps you should use some sticky tape. Yes, tape it. A receipt is unnecessary, thank you."
Jonathan had a specially warm smile for refusal. "Alas, we are forbidden to accept guests' packages for safekeeping, Madame Sophie. Even yours. I can give you a deposit box and your own key. That's the most I can do, I'm afraid."
She was already stuffing the original letters back into her bag as he said this. She snapped the bag shut and hoisted it over her shoulder.
"Do not be bureaucratic with me, Mr. Pine. You have seen the contents of the envelope. You have sealed it. Put your own name on it. The letters are now yours."
Never surprised by his own obedience, Jonathan selected a red felt-tipped pen from the silver desk stand and wrote Pine in capitals on the envelope.
On your own head be it, he was telling her silently. I never asked for this. I never encouraged it.
"How long do you expect them to remain here, Madame Sophie?" he enquired.
"Perhaps forever, perhaps a night. It is not known. It is like a love affair." Her coquettishness deserted her, and she became the supplicant. "In confidence. Yes? That is understood. Yes?"
He said yes. He said of course. He gave her a smile that suggested he was a tiny bit surprised that the question needed to be raised.
"Mr. Pine."
"Madame Sophie."
"Concerning your immortal soul."
"Concerning it."
"We are all immortal, naturally. But if it should turn out that I am not, you will please give those documents to your friend Mr. Ogilvey. May I trust you to do that?"
"If that is what you want, of course."
She was still smiling, still mysteriously out of rhythm with him. "Are you a permanent night manager, Mr. Pine? Always? Every night?"
"It's my profession."
"Chosen?"
"Of course."
"By you?"
"Who else?"
"But you look so well by daylight."
"Thank you."
"I shall telephone you from time to time."
"I shall be honoured."
"Like you, I grow a little tired of sleeping. Please do not escort me."
And the smell of vanilla again as he opened the door for her and longed to follow her to bed.
* * *
Standing to attention in the gloom of Herr Meister's permanently unfinished grillroom, Jonathan watched himself, a mere walk-on character in his overcrowded secret theatre, as he goes methodically to work on Madame Sophie's papers. For the trained soldier, trained however long ago, there is nothing startling about the call to duty. There is only the automaton's drill movement from one side of the head to the other: Pine standing in the doorway of his office at the Queen Nefertiti, staring across the empty marble hall at the liquid crystal digits above the lift as they stammer out its ascent to the penthouses.
The lift returning empty to the ground floor.
Pine's palms tingling and dry, Pine's shoulders light.
Pine reopening the safe. The combination has been set ― by the hotel's sycophantic general manager ― at Freddie Hamid's date of birth.
Pine extracting the photocopies, folding the yellow envelope small and slipping it into an inside pocket of his dinner jacket for later destruction.
The copier still warm.
Pine copying the copies, first adjusting the density button a shade darker for improved definition. Names of missiles.
Names of guidance systems. Techno-babble that Pine cannot understand. Names of chemicals Pine cannot pronounce yet knows the use of. Other names that are as deadly but more pronounceable. Names like Sarin, Soman and Tabun.
Pine sliding the new copies inside tonight's dinner menu, then folding the menu longways and slipping it into his other inside pocket. The copies still warm inside the menu.
Pine placing the old copies in a fresh envelope indistinguishable from its predecessor. Pine writing pine on the new envelope and placing it in the same spot on the same shelf, the same way up.
Pine reclosing the safe and locking it. The overt world restored.
Pine eight hours later, a different kind of servant, seated buttock-to-buttock with Mark Ogilvey in the cramped cabin of the minister's yacht while Mrs. Ogilvey in the galley, wearing designer jeans, runs up smoked salmon sandwiches.
"Freddie Hamid buying dirty toys from Dicky Onslow Roper?" Ogilvey repeats incredulously, leafing through the documents a second time. "What the hell's that about? Little swine would be safer sticking to baccarat. The ambassador's going to be absolutely furious. Darling, wait till you hear this one."