"Women ask too many questions, right, Megs?"
"Not me, Mr. Roper. Never."
"Remember that hooker I had, Megs? Me sixteen, her thirty, remember?"
"I surely do, Mr. Roper. She gave you your first lesson in life."
"Nervous, you see. Virgin." They were eating side by side, able to confide without the threat of eye contact. "Not her. Me." Another shout of laughter. "Didn't know the form, so I played the earnest-student type. Decided she had to have a problem: 'Poor you, where did it all go wrong?' Thought she was going to tell me her old dad had the big C and her mum had run off with the plumber when she was twelve. Looks at me. Not a friendly look at all. 'What's your name?' she says. Little Staffordshire terrier. Broad-arsed. Five foot nothing. I'm Dicky,' I said. 'Now, you listen to me, Dicky,' she says. 'You can fuck my body, and that'll cost you a fiver. But you can't fuck my mind, because that's private.' Never forgot it, did I, Megs? Marvellous woman! Should have married her. Not Megs. The tart." His shoulder nudged up against Jonathan's again. "Want to know how it works?"
"If it's not a state secret."
"Fig leaf operation. You're the fig leaf. Straw man, the Germans call it. Joke is, you're not even straw. You don't exist. All the better. Derek Thomas, merchant venturer, regular guy, quick on his feet, personable, wholesome. Decent record in commerce, no skeletons, good crits. It's Dicky and Derek. Maybe we've done deals before. Nobody's business but ours. I go to the clowns ― the brokers, the venture boys, flexible banks ― and I say: 'Got a very smart cookie here. Brilliant plan, quick profits, needs backing, mum's the word. It's tractors, turbines, machine parts, minerals, it's land, it's what the hell. Introduce you to him later if you're good. He's young, he's got the connections, don't ask where, very resourceful, politically hip, good with the right people, opportunity of a lifetime. Didn't want you missing out. Double your money in four months max. You'll be buying paper. If you don't want paper don't waste my time. We're talking bearer bonds, no names, no pack drill, no connection with any other firm including mine. It's another trust-Dicky deal. I'm in but I'm not there. Company's formed in an area where no accounts need to be prepared or filed, no British connection, not our colony, somebody else's mess. When the deal's done, company ceases trading, pull the plug on it, close the accounts, see you sometime. Very tight circle, few chaps as possible, no silly questions, take it or leave it, want you to be one of the few.' All right so far?"
"Do they believe you?"
Roper laughed. "Wrong question. Does the story play? Can they sell it to their punters? Do they like the cut of your jib? Are you a pretty face on the prospectus? Play our cards right, answer's yes every time."
"You mean there's a prospectus?"
Roper let out another rich laugh. "Worse than a bloody woman, this chap!" he told Meg contentedly as she poured more coffee. "Why, why, why? How, when, where?"
"I never do that, Mr. Roper," said Meg severely.
"You never do, Megs. You're a good scout."
"Mr. Roper, you are patting my behind again."
"Sorry, Megs. Must have thought I was at home." Back to Jonathan. "No, there's no prospectus. Figure of speech. By the time we've printed the prospectus, with any luck we won't have a company."
* * *
Roper resumed his briefing, and Jonathan heard him and replied to him from within the cocoon of his other meditations.
He was thinking of Jed, and his images of her were so vivid it was a wonder that Roper, sitting a few inches from him, did not receive some telepathic inkling of them. He felt her hands on his face while she studied him. and he wondered what she saw. He remembered Burr and Rooke in the training house in London, and as he listened to Roper describing the energetic young executive Thomas, he realised that once again he was conniving in the manipulation of his character. He heard Roper say Langbourne had gone ahead to smooth the way, and wondered whether this might be the moment to warn him that Caroline was betraying the cause behind his back and so earn further credit in Roper's estimation. Then he decided Roper knew this anyway: how else would Jed have been able to tax him with his sins? He pondered, as he pondered constantly, the intractable mystery of Roper's notions of right and wrong, and he remembered how, in Sophie's judgment, the worst man in the world was a moralist who gained stature in his own eyes by disregarding his perceptions. He destroys, he makes a great fortune, so he considers himself divine, she declared in angry mystification.
"Apo will recognise you, of course," Roper was saying. "The bloke he met at Crystal ― used to work at Meister's ― chum of Dicky's. No problem there that I can see. Anyway, Apo's the other side."
Jonathan turned quickly to him, as if Roper had reminded him of something.
"I wanted to ask you, actually, who is the other side? I mean, it's great to be selling, but who's the buyer?"
Roper let out a false shout of pain. "We've got one, Megs! Doubts me! Can't leave a good thing alone!"
"Now, I don't blame him one bit, Mr. Roper. You can be very mean when you want to be. I've seen it before, you know I have. Mean and devious, and very, very charming."
Roper dozed, so Jonathan obediently dozed too, listening to the chirrup of the MacDanbies' laptops over the roar of the engines. He woke, Meg brought the ritual champagne and smoked-salmon canapés, there was more talk, more laughter, more doze. He woke again, to find the plane circling above a Dutch toy town shrouded in a white heat haze. Through the haze he saw the slow bursts of artillery fire as the flare stacks of Willemstad's oil refinery burned off their surplus gas.
"I'll be hanging on to your passport for you, if you don't mind, Tommy," Frisky said quietly as they walked across the shimmering runway. "Just pro tem, right? How are you off for cash at all?"
"I haven't any," said Jonathan.
"Oh, right, then. We needn't bother. Only, those credit cards old Corky gave you, they're more for show, you see, Tommy. You wouldn't get a lot of joy, not using them, know what I mean?"
Roper had already been spirited through customs and was shaking hands with people who respected him. Rooke was sitting on an orange bench, reading the inside pages of the Financial Times through the horn-rimmed glasses he wore only for distance. A travelling team of girl missionaries was singing "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" in baby sound, conducted by a man with one leg. The sight of Rooke brought Jonathan halfway back to earth.
* * *
Their hotel was a horseshoe of red-roofed houses at the edge of town, with two beaches and an outdoor restaurant that looked onto a choppy, windswept sea. In the centre house ― the proudest of them ― in a run of large rooms on the top floor, the Roper party made its village, with Roper in one corner suite and Derek S. Thomas, executive, in the other. Jonathan's drawing room had a balcony with a table and chairs, and his bed room had a bed big enough for four, and pillows that did not smell of wood smoke. He had a bottle of Herr Meister's complimentary champagne, and a bunch of complimentary green grapes, which Frisky ate in handfuls while Jonathan settled in. And he had a telephone that was not buried two feet underground and rang while he was still unpacking. Frisky watched him pick up the receiver.
It was Rooke, asking to speak to Thomas.
"Thomas speaking," Jonathan said in his best executive voice.
"Message from Mandy. She's on her way up."
"I don't know Mandy. Who is this?"