‘I’m no scientist,’ the Chief said, ‘but look at this great tank. It must stand nearly as high as the forest-trees. A huge gaping mouth at the top, and this pipe-line – the man’s only indicated it. For all we know, it may extend for miles – from the mountain to the sea perhaps. You know the Russians are said to be working on some idea – something to do with the power of the sun, sea-evaporation. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I do know this thing is Big. Tell our man we must have photographs.’
‘I don’t quite see how he can get near enough …’
‘Let him charter a plane and lose his way over the area. Not himself personally, of course, but stroke three or stroke two. Who is stroke two?’
‘Professor Sanchez, sir. But he’d be shot down. They have air-force planes patrolling all that section.’
‘They have, have they?’
‘To spot for rebels.’
‘So they say. Do you know, I’ve got a hunch, Hawthorne.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘That the rebels don’t exist. They’re purely notional. It gives the Government all the excuse it needs to shut down a censorship over the area.’
‘I hope you are right, sir.’
‘It would be better for all of us,’ the Chief said with exhilaration, ‘if I were wrong. I fear these things, I fear them, Hawthorne.’ He put back his monocle and the light left the wall. ‘Hawthorne, when you were here last did you speak to Miss Jenkinson about a secretary for 59200 stroke 5?’
‘Yes, sir. She had no obvious candidate, but she thought a girl called Beatrice would do.’
‘Beatrice? How I hate all these Christian names. Fully trained?’
‘Yes.’
‘The time has come to give our man in Havana some help. This is altogether too big for an untrained agent with no assistance. Better send a radio-operator with her.’
‘Wouldn’t it be a good thing if I went over first and saw him? I could take a look at things and have a talk with him.’
‘Bad security, Hawthorne. We can’t risk blowing him now. With a radio he can communicate direct with London. I don’t like this tie-up with the Consulate, nor do they.’
‘What about his reports, sir?’
‘He’ll have to organize some kind of courier-service to Kingston. One of his travelling salesmen. Send out instructions with the secretary. Have you seen her?’
‘No, sir.’
‘See her at once. Make sure she’s the right type. Capable of taking charge on the technical side. You’ll have to put her au fait with his establishment. His old secretary will have to go. Speak to the A.O. about a reasonable pension until her natural date for retirement.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Could I take one more look at those drawings?’
‘That one seems to interest you. What’s your idea of it?’
‘It looks,’ Hawthorne said miserably, ‘like a snap-action coupling.’
When he was at the door the Chief spoke again. ‘You know, Hawthorne, we owe a great deal of this to you. I was told once that you were no judge of men, but I backed my private judgement. Well done, Hawthorne.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He had his hand on the door-knob.
‘Hawthorne.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Did you find that penny note-book?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Perhaps Beatrice will.’
Part Three
CHAPTER 1
IT WAS NOT a night Wormold was ever likely to forget. He had chosen on Milly’s seventeenth birthday to take her to the Tropicana. It was a more innocent establishment than the Nacional in spite of the roulette-rooms, through which visitors passed before they reached the cabaret. Stage and dance-floor were open to the sky. Chorus-girls paraded twenty feet up among the great palm-trees, while pink and mauve searchlights swept the floor. A man in bright blue evening clothes sang in Anglo-American about Paree. Then the piano was wheeled away into the undergrowth, and the dancers stepped down like awkward birds from among the branches.
‘It’s like the Forest of Arden,’ Milly said ecstatically. The duenna wasn’t there: she had left after the first glass of champagne.
‘I don’t think there were palms in the Forest of Arden. Or dancing girls.’
‘You are so literal, Father.’
‘You like Shakespeare?’ Dr Hasselbacher asked.
‘Oh, not Shakespeare – there’s far too much poetry. You know the kind of thing – Enter a messenger. “My Lord the Duke advances on the right.” “Thus make we with glad heart towards the fight.” ’
‘Is that Shakespeare?’
‘It’s like Shakespeare.’
‘What nonsense you talk, Milly.’
‘All the same the Forest of Arden is Shakespeare too, I think,’ Dr Hasselbacher said.
‘Yes, but I only read him in Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. He cuts out all the messengers and the sub-Dukes and the poetry.’
‘They give you that at school?’
‘Oh no, I found a copy in Father’s room.’
‘You read Shakespeare in that form, Mr Wormold?’ Dr Hasselbacher asked with some surprise.
‘Oh no, no. Of course not. I really bought it for Milly.’
‘Then why were you so cross the other day when I borrowed it?’
‘I wasn’t cross. It was just that I don’t like you poking about … among things that don’t concern you.’
‘You talk as though I were a spy,’ Milly said.
‘Dear Milly, please don’t quarrel on your birthday. You are neglecting Dr Hasselbacher.’
‘Why are you so silent, Dr Hasselbacher?’ Milly asked, pouring out her second glass of champagne.
‘One day you must lend me Lamb’s Tales, Milly. I too find Shakespeare difficult.’
A very small man in a very tight uniform waved his hand towards their table.
‘You aren’t worried are you, Dr Hasselbacher?’
‘What should I be worried about, dear Milly, on your birthday? Except about the years of course.’
‘Is seventeen so old?’
‘For me they have gone too quickly.’
The man in the tight uniform stood by their table and bowed. His face had been pocked and eroded like the pillars on the sea-front. He carried a chair which was almost as big as himself.
‘This is Captain Segura, Father.’
‘May I sit down?’ He inserted himself between Milly and Dr Hasselbacher without waiting for Wormold’s reply. He said, ‘I am so glad to meet Milly’s father.’ He had an easy rapid insolence you had no time to resent before he had given fresh cause for annoyance. ‘Introduce me to your friend, Milly.’
‘This is Dr Hasselbacher.’
Captain Segura ignored Dr Hasselbacher and filled Milly’s glass. He called a waiter. ‘Bring me another bottle.’
‘We are just going, Captain Segura,’ Wormold said.
‘Nonsense. You are my guest. It is only just after midnight.’
Wormold’s sleeve caught a glass. It fell and smashed, like the birthday party. ‘Waiter, another glass.’ Segura began to sing softly, ‘The rose I plucked in the garden,’ leaning towards Milly, turning his back on Dr Hasselbacher.
Milly said, ‘You are behaving very badly.’
‘Badly? To you?’
‘To all of us. This is my seventeenth birthday party, and it’s my father’s party – not yours.’
‘Your seventeenth birthday? Then you must certainly be my guests. I’ll invite some of the dancers to our table.’
‘We don’t want any dancers,’ Milly said.
‘I am in disgrace?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah,’ he said with pleasure, ‘it was because today I was not outside the school to pick you up. But, Milly, sometimes I have to put police-work first. Waiter, tell the conductor to play “Happy Birthday to You”.’
‘Do no such thing,’ Milly said. ‘How can you be so – so vulgar?’
‘Me? Vulgar?’ Captain Segur
a laughed happily. ‘She is such a little jester,’ he said to Wormold. ‘I like to joke too. That is why we get on so well together.’
‘She tells me you have a cigarette-case made out of human skin.’
‘How she teases me about that. I tell her that her skin would make a lovely…’
Dr Hasselbacher got up abruptly. He said, ‘I am going to watch the roulette.’
‘He doesn’t like me?’ Captain Segura asked. ‘Perhaps he is an old admirer, Milly? A very old admirer, ha ha!’
‘He’s an old friend,’ Wormold said.
‘But you and I, Mr Wormold, know that there is no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman.’
‘Milly is not yet a woman.’
‘You speak like a father, Mr Wormold. No father knows his daughter.’
Wormold looked at the champagne bottle and at Captain Segura’s head. He was sorely tempted to bring them together. At a table immediately behind the Captain, a young woman whom he had never seen before gave Wormold a grave encouraging nod. He touched the champagne bottle and she nodded again. She must, he thought, be as clever as she was pretty to have read his thoughts so accurately. He was envious of her companions, two pilots from K.L.M. and an air-hostess.
‘Come and dance, Milly,’ Captain Segura said, ‘and show that I am forgiven.’
‘I don’t want to dance.’
‘Tomorrow I swear I will be waiting at the convent-gates.’
Wormold made a little gesture as much as to say, ‘I haven’t the nerve. Help me.’ The girl watched him seriously; it seemed to him that she was considering the whole of the situation and any decision she reached would be final and call for immediate action. She siphoned some soda into her whisky.
‘Come, Milly. You must not spoil my party.’
‘It’s not your party. It’s Father’s.’
‘You stay angry so long. You must understand that sometimes I have to put work even before my dear little Milly.’
The girl behind Captain Segura altered the angle of the siphon.
‘No,’ Wormold said instinctively, ‘no.’ The spout of the siphon was aimed upwards at Captain Segura’s neck. The girl’s finger was ready for action. He was hurt that anyone so pretty should look at him with such contempt. He said, ‘Yes. Please. Yes,’ and she triggered the siphon. The stream of soda hissed off Captain Segura’s neck and ran down the back of his collar. Dr Hasselbacher’s voice called ‘Bravo’ from among the tables. Captain Segura exclaimed ‘Coño’.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the young woman said. ‘I meant it for my whisky.’
‘Your whisky!’
‘Dimpled Haig,’ the girl said. Milly giggled.
Captain Segura bowed stiffly. You could not estimate his danger from his size any more than you could a hard drink.
Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘You have finished your siphon, madam, let me find you another.’ The Dutchmen at the table whispered together uncomfortably.
‘I don’t think I’m to be trusted with another,’ the girl said.
Captain Segura squeezed out a smile. It seemed to come from the wrong place like toothpaste when the tube splits. He said, ‘For the first time I have been shot in the back. I am glad that it was by a woman.’ He had made an admirable recovery; the water still dripped from his hair and his collar was limp with it. He said, ‘Another time I would have offered you a return match, but I am late at the barracks. I hope I may see you again?’
‘I am staying here,’ she said.
‘On holiday?’
‘No. Work.’
‘If you have any trouble with your permit,’ he said ambiguously, ‘you must come to me. Good night, Milly. Good night, Mr Wormold. I will tell the waiter that you are my guests. Order what you wish.’
‘He made a creditable exit,’ the girl said.
‘It was a creditable shot.’
‘To have hit him with a champagne bottle might have been a bit exaggerated. Who is he?’
‘A lot of people call him the Red Vulture.’
‘He tortures prisoners,’ Milly said.
‘I seem to have made quite a friend of him.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Dr Hasselbacher said.
They joined their tables together. The two pilots bowed and gave unpronounceable names. Dr Hasselbacher said with horror to the Dutchmen, ‘You are drinking Coca-Cola.’
‘It is the regulation. We take off at 3.30 for Montreal.’
Wormold said, ‘If Captain Segura is going to pay, let’s have more champagne. And Coca-Cola.’
‘I don’t think I can drink any more Coca-Cola, can you, Hans?’
‘I could drink a Bols,’ the younger pilot said.
‘You can have no Bols,’ the air-hostess told him firmly, ‘before Amsterdam.’
The young pilot whispered to Wormold, ‘I wish to marry her.’
‘Who?’
‘Miss Pfunk,’ or so it sounded.
‘Won’t she?’
‘No.’
The elder Dutchman said, ‘I have a wife and three children.’ He unbuttoned his breast-pocket. ‘I have their photographs here.’
He handed Wormold a coloured card showing a girl in a tight yellow sweater and bathing-drawers adjusting her skates. The sweater was marked Mamba Club, and below the picture Wormold read, ‘We guarantee you a lot of fun. Fifty beautiful girls. You won’t be alone.’
‘I don’t think this is the right picture,’ Wormold said.
The young woman, who had chestnut hair and, as far as he could tell in the confusing Tropicana lights, hazel eyes, said, ‘Let’s dance.’
‘I’m not very good at dancing.’
‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’
He shuffled her around. She said, ‘I see what you mean. This is meant to be a rumba. Is that your daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s very pretty.’
‘Have you just arrived?’
‘Yes. The crew were making a night of it, so I joined up with them. I don’t know anybody here.’ Her head reached his chin and he could smell her hair; it touched his mouth as they moved. He was vaguely disappointed that she wore a wedding-ring. She said, ‘My name’s Severn. Beatrice Severn.’
‘Mine’s Wormold.’
‘Then I’m your secretary,’ she said.
‘What do you mean? I have no secretary.’
‘Oh yes you have. Didn’t they tell you I was coming?’
‘No.’ He didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were.
‘But I sent the telegram myself.’
‘There was one last week – but I couldn’t make head or tail of it.’
‘What’s your edition of Lamb’s Tales?’
‘Everyman.’
‘Damn. They gave me the wrong edition. I suppose the telegram was rather a mess. Anyway, I’m glad I found you.’
‘I’m glad too. A bit taken aback, of course. Where are you staying?’
‘The Inglaterra tonight, and then I thought I’d move in.’
‘Move in where?’
‘To your office, of course. I don’t mind where I sleep. I’ll just doss down in one of your staff-rooms.’
‘There aren’t any. It’s a very small office.’
‘Well, there’s a secretary’s room anyway.’
‘But I’ve never had a secretary, Mrs Severn.’
‘Call me Beatrice. It’s supposed to be good for security.’
‘Security?’
‘It is rather a problem if there isn’t even a secretary’s room. Let’s sit down.’
A man, wearing a conventional black dinner jacket among the jungle trees like an English district officer was singing:
‘Sane men surround
You, old family friends.
They say the earth is round –
My madness offends.
An orange has pips, they say,
And an apple has rind.
I say that night is day
And I’ve no axe to grind.
r /> ‘Please don’t believe …’
They sat at an empty table at the back of the roulette-room. They could hear the hiccup of the little balls. She wore her grave look again – a little self-consciously like a girl in her first long gown. She said, ‘If I had known I was your secretary I would never have siphoned that policeman – without your telling me.’
‘You don’t have to worry.’
‘I was really sent here to make things easier for you. Not more difficult.’
‘Captain Segura doesn’t matter.’
‘You see, I’ve had a very full training. I’ve passed in codes and microphotography. I can take over contact with your agents.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’ve done so well they’re anxious you should take no risk of being blown. It doesn’t matter so much if I’m blown.’
‘I’d hate to see you blown. Half-blown would be all right.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I was thinking of roses.’
She said, ‘Of course, as that telegram was mutilated, you don’t even know about the radio-operator.’
‘I don’t.’
‘He’s at the Inglaterra too. Air-sick. We have to find room for him as well.’
‘If he’s air-sick perhaps …’
‘You can make him assistant accountant. He’s been trained for that.’
‘But I don’t need one. I haven’t even got a chief accountant.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll get things straight in the morning. That’s what I’m here for.’
‘There’s something about you,’ Wormold said, ‘that reminds me of my daughter. Do you say novenas?’
‘What are they?’
‘You don’t know? Thank God for that.’
The man in the dinner jacket was finishing his song.
‘I say that winter’s May
And I’ve no axe to grind.’
The lights changed from blue to rose and the dancers went back to perch among the palm-trees. The dice rattled at the crap-tables, and Milly and Dr Hasselbacher made their way happily towards the dance-floor. It was as though her birthday had been constructed again out of its broken pieces.
CHAPTER 2
1
NEXT MORNING WORMOLD was up early. He had a slight hangover from the champagne, and the unreality of the Tropicana night extended into the office-day. Beatrice had told him he was doing well – she was the mouthpiece of Hawthorne and ‘those people’. He had a sense of disappointment at the thought that she like Hawthorne belonged to the notional world of his agents. His agents …