I drank it gratefully and then turned to offer one to my companion.
Oh, how inevitable! I was alone in the forest. Kingdom Kum had charmed me, duped me, and had now made his escape.
Gunfire crackled from the distant clinic, and the blare of a klaxon made me wince. I heard shouting coming from behind me.
I decided my best course of action would be to get out of the vicinity as rapidly as my aged legs would carry me. Somewhat revitalised by the rehydration sachet, I fell into a slow jog. However, I had gone only a few hundred yards when a hulking silhouette barred the path before me. I pulled up and ducked behind the nearest tree, hoping that I’d been in time to avoid detection.
‘Alright, petal,’ said the shape. ‘Eeh, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?’
It was Whitley Bey.
And, clamped in the crook of his immense forearm, gasping for air, struggled the elusive Kingdom Kum.
I gave a huge sigh of relief–then suddenly the forest lit up like day. There was a terrific explosion and the three of us were hurled to the ground.
.12.
THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM
Rain was tipping down outside the long window but, in the dimness of the University, a three-barred electric fire glowed cheerfully.
Just as promised, Whitley Bey had given me my hour’s grace and then he and his men had hit the enemy headquarters with everything they had. Unfortunately, it seemed the place was booby-trapped and so, seconds after the Jung Turks had shot their way inside, the building had gone up in flames. In the chaos, the few white-coated figures who had survived the attack had managed to escape, leaving behind little evidence of their activities. At least, though, we had Kingdom Kum.
He was huddled in a thick blanket before the fire, staring into space.
Whitley Bey sat bass-ackwards in a chair, paring his nails with a brutal-looking knife and shooting resentful glares at the newcomer. I stretched out my aching legs and lit a cigarette, letting the strains of the last few hours fall away. My ears still rang from the explosion.
I proffered my fag case to Kingdom Kum. He grabbed one and popped it between his lips. I leaned across with my lighter and he inhaled hungrily, then glanced quickly back and forth between Whitley and myself. There was something of the trapped beast about him–feral, suspicious, dangerous.
I cleared my throat and said: ‘Now, isn’t this nice? I believe I invited you to do some talking back there, Mr Kum. Why don’t you start?’
The boy pulled a shred of tobacco from between his teeth and glanced down at his long, bare feet. ‘Damn. I had some nice shoes back there in the clinic. Cost a mint.’ He shivered. ‘I was particularly fond of those shoes. Burned up now, I guess?’
I nodded. ‘I said, talk.’
‘Wasn’t I just talking?’
‘Don’t get smart. Who exactly are you working for?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t have time for this, toots. You gotta let me go.’
Whitley Bey made a low, growling sound. ‘Shall I smack him about a bit? Sweat the truth out of him?’
‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ I raised my eyebrows at the youth. The threat was implicit.
He sighed, then took a long drag on the cigarette. ‘Hey, you think I could sue those guys? Get some replacements? They were damned fine shoes—’
Whitley Bey rose from his chair like a Titan from the waves, hand balling into a fist. ‘Stop buggering us about, you little ponce!’
I stilled him with a gesture. He sank back into his chair, rumbling.
Kingdom Kum smiled. ‘I’m what they call a rare bird, baby. Momma from Osaka, Daddy from Jamaica. There weren’t many like us at home. Daddy’s boss coined a name for me and my sister. Japanegroes.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘I didn’t care for it. Or him.’
I searched my memory. ‘This was Mr…Hyogo?’
The boy laughed his fluting laugh. ‘You remembered, baby! Très sweet.’
‘Aha,’ I said. ‘So much for your father’s boss. Who’s yours?’
Kingdom Kum just smiled, letting smoke pour from his nostrils like a patient dragon. Whitley sighed heavily and turned to me, metal eye glinting. ‘We’ll get nowt out of this one, Mr Box. You should’ve left him in there.’
The boy sucked on the cigarette again and his eyes closed in a long, exhausted blink. ‘I’m most grateful you didn’t.’ He hugged the blanket closer to his skinny frame and let ash tumble down it. ‘Listen, baby. You gotta trust me.’
Whitley laughed explosively. ‘Now I’ve heard everything.’ He leaned towards the boy and I could smell the sweat from his bear-like frame. ‘Answer Mr Box’s question. Who the hell are you working for? Who?’
‘Don’t you mean “for whom are you working”?’
Before I could stop him, Whitley had shot from his chair and smacked the youth across the face. ‘You cheeky get!’ he spat. ‘I’ll bloody crown you!’
Kingdom Kum’s long fingers flashed to his cheek and his dark eyes narrowed with malice. ‘We shouldn’t be sitting here playing games.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I murmured. ‘Back on the train, you warned me off—’
‘Maybe I just like your face.’
‘—and then you killed our contact in the Hagia Sophia…’
Kingdom Kum began giggling in his sing-song way and pressed a long slender hand to his throat. ‘Man, you are in the dark. You have no idea!’
‘All right, then,’ I bristled. ‘Enlighten us.’
‘Can I get some clothes, baby?’
‘I don’t think so, baby.’
He shrugged the blanket closer. ‘I know this sounds crazy but you gotta let me go. Certain…persons ain’t gonna be too happy if you don’t.’
I smoothed down my waistcoat. ‘Is that another threat?’
‘Uh-huh.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You’re a cool one and no mistake. But you seem to forget who’s in charge here.’
He looked down so that all I could see was a flash of his white teeth through the black tumble of his hair. ‘You’ve put your finger right on it,’ he whispered.
Whitley Bey’s chair squeaked as he rose again, fist raised.
I nodded towards the door. ‘All right, Whitley. I’ll take it from here.’
‘You sure? Go on, let us do him over a bit. Never fails, man. ’Specially with a smart little shite-hawk like this.’
‘No,’ I rapped. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Reluctantly, the big man stomped from the office, taking time to throw one last snarl towards the boy.
Kingdom Kum stretched out his long legs and regarded his bare feet as though still mourning the loss of his shoes. Then he looked up, head on one side, like a nervous bird. ‘Hey, handsome. Did I say thanks?’
‘Thanks?’
‘For rescuing me.’
‘As a matter of fact, you didn’t. In fact, you behaved rather rudely. Trying to run off like that.’
He shook his head, leaned over and slipped a single digit through my fingers and into my palm, moving it around in a neat circle. ‘You wanna let me make it up to you?’
I pulled my hand away, heart pounding and all too conscious of the heat and the scent of the boy. I was still smarting from Miss Beveridge and the humiliation of the cemetery.
Suddenly, I heard raised voices in the outer office. Whitley Bey sounded angry. I frowned.
Kingdom Kum scraped back the hair from his face. ‘You wanted some answers, yes?’
I nodded.
‘Then you’re in luck, baby,’ he said, stubbing out his fag.
The door opened to reveal a rain-soaked figure. He shook out his umbrella and waved a silly little wave. ‘Fear not! Only me,’ said Allan Playfair.
My face fell. ‘What are you doing here?’
Playfair crossed to the fire and warmed his hands. ‘I’m coming to the end, old love, of a very long game.’
.13.
/> REALPOLITIK
Another hotel room. A long way from Istanbul. Beyond the balcony, the lights of Kingston, Jamaica, sparkled like cut-glass.
Allan Playfair tossed his straw hat onto the bed and plonked himself next to me. His cane-backed chair creaked. A warm breeze blew across us, a gentle caress after the heat of the day. ‘Well, old love. This is the life, eh?’
I said nothing. I’d spent the long journey to Kingston quietly frustrated. There’d been no explanations, scarcely a chance to say farewell to a baffled-looking Whitley Bey and, after a whispered conference between Playfair and Kingdom Kum, I’d been bundled into a taxi to the airport. Playfair had promised to tell me everything on our arrival. Well, I was all ears.
He tapped his pipe on the iron balustrade and grinned to himself. ‘If this is the sort of lark our agents get up to, I might have to trade in that desk job, what? Get myself a Beretta, a pretty girl and an expense account.’
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. ‘Would it be too much to ask, old love, what the bloody hell’s going on?’
He stuffed tobacco into his pipe, spent a moment lighting it and the air was soon suffused with its sweet cherry-smell. ‘You really mustn’t be cross,’ he said, glancing over. ‘It wasn’t meant to be like this at all. But your trouble is, you’re so damned good.’
‘Good?’ I snorted. ‘I’ve been blundering around like a blasted mole, when all along my own people, so it seems, have known about the whole thing.’
Playfair shook his head. ‘Au contraire. You got a lead via the strange behaviour of Sir Vyvyan Hooplah. That led you to Istanbul and finally to the clinic where you were good enough to save the life of Mr Kum. Very nicely done.’ He looked at me over his pipe and pulled a face. ‘Trouble is, you very nearly blew many months of careful planning and—’
I sat up, stiff with anger. ‘I was promised answers.’
‘Fire away, old love.’
I tried to marshal my thoughts. ‘Hooplah’s death. It wasn’t the first of its kind.’
Playfair pointed the stem of his pipe at me. ‘Spot on.’
‘Sir Douglas Gobetween, Baroness Watchbell and that French priest,’ I said. ‘All of them died in bizarre, reckless accidents.’
Playfair chuckled. ‘No flies on you, old love. But did you discover the connection?’
I shrugged. ‘“Black Butterfly”?’
‘Top marks.’
I hunched forward. ‘So, this new drug—’
‘Well, that’s just the thing, old love,’ Playfair corrected me. ‘It’s not new at all.’
‘I don’t follow.’
Playfair got up and poured us both a cool gin. ‘Turns out it was something we were working on years ago. The forces of light, that is. Back at the turn of the century, in fact.’ He grinned. ‘Your heyday.’
I took the glass with ill grace.
‘It’s distilled from the wings of the papilio obscurus,’ he continued. ‘Found only in the Balkans. Butterflies have a sort of dust on their scales. I remember it from when I was a boy. If you brush it off, the poor things die. Dear me, what blood-thirsty devils we were then. I used to get a magnifying glass and—’
‘Yes, yes!’ I snapped. ‘This dust…?’
Playfair pulled his pipe from his mouth. ‘It acts like a psychotropic drug. Induces temporary euphoria and an incredible increase in the metabolic rate. Back in the day, the thinking was it might be very useful on the battlefield. Indestructible soldiers and so forth, you see?’
I turned weary eyes towards him. ‘There’s a but coming, isn’t there? I can always sense a but.’
‘The stuff was lethal,’ said Playfair. ‘Drove its subjects off their heads. Induced strokes. Heart failure. All round, a disaster. So the project was abandoned.’
I rubbed my bristly chin. ‘And the project’s team members…?’
‘Right again. Gobetween as Defence Secretary sanctioned the experiments. Baroness Watchbell—’
‘Pharmacist.’
‘Yes. She and Père Meddler headed the scientific team. And Vyvyan Hooplah as Head of the Board of Health was obviously keen to keep a weather eye on their progress.’
I looked out over the balcony towards the crashing sea. ‘So this is–what?–some kind of revenge scheme? Someone’s using a new form of the drug to kill off the people originally responsible for it?’
Playfair swirled the ice around his glass and took a small sip. ‘That’s what we reckon. Outstanding questions being who and why.’
‘What about Christopher Miracle?’
‘Who?’
I sighed. ‘Old friend of mine. I told you about him. Drove his car into the sea off Cape Town.’
‘Oh, yes. I remember.’
‘It’s the same pattern.’
‘Is it?’ Playfair shrugged. ‘Just a suicide, surely?’
I chewed a fingernail. ‘He was nothing to do with the original drug trial?’
‘Never heard of him, old love. Must just be coincidence. Top-up?’
I shook my head impatiently. ‘I have another outstanding question for you. Who the hell is Kingdom Kum?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ Playfair asked softly. ‘Really, one can’t make a move without the Yanks these days.’
‘CIA?’ I offered.
Playfair jabbed his pipe again and nodded. ‘He’s quite a live wire, isn’t he? Damned good field agent. He pieced together the whole thing. That’s why he was in London. He knew the “Black Butterfly” people were after Hooplah. Traced him to the Blood Orange but someone had already slipped the old fellow the pill. He got there too late…Well, you know the rest.’
‘But the girl in the Hagia Sophia,’ I protested. ‘He killed her!’
‘Before she could murder that interesting Turkish gorilla you’d befriended, old love. There was no contact out to betray “Black Butterfly”. They knew that the Jung Turks were sniffing round, so they fed them just enough titbits to intrigue the silly fools and then arranged to meet Whitley Bey and put him out of the way.’
I gazed at him coolly.
‘After that,’ said Playfair, ‘Mr Kum tried to infiltrate their headquarters but was captured. Happily, you turned up to save the day, so all was not lost—’
‘Listen,’ I cut in. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, your bloody merger doesn’t take effect for another month! I’m still “Joshua Reynolds”. You should have told me about this narcotics business. We could’ve shared information.’
Playfair frowned and his expression hardened just a mite. ‘Look, old love. You know how it is. I don’t wish to be unkind but you’re yesterday’s man. You should be thinking about fishing flies, not tearing around the Balkans like a stripling. Damn it, Box, it’s undignified. I have to deal with the here and now. Realpolitik, old love. Realpolitik.’
‘So why are we here–in Jamaica?’
‘The last link in the chain,’ said Playfair, setting down his gin. ‘The remaining target in this curious revenge. Lord Battenburg.’
‘Battenburg? Why the hell?’
‘He discovered the papilio obscurus butterfly itself on some Boy’s Own adventure of his out in the wilds. Then happened upon its extraordinary properties once back in his laboratory. Anyway, he’s coming out here the day after tomorrow to open the World Government Summit.’ Playfair drained his glass. ‘Lord Battenburg is the last target. Kingdom Kum found out that much before he was captured. That, and the fact that they’re planning to get him here, in Jamaica.’
I let this rather startling intelligence sink in. ‘So why are we sitting here?’ ‘Why aren’t you doing something, Playfair?’
‘I am doing something,’ he said tartly. ‘Everything’s in hand. I’ve taken personal charge of Lord Battenburg’s security. We’ve got people tasting everything he eats and drinks.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘He must cancel the summit meeting! It’s far too dangerous.’
‘No, no, no,’ soothed Playfair. ‘We need to learn the lesson of History, o
ld love. You, of all people, should appreciate that. We need to let the conspiracy mature. Like they did with the Gunpowder plotters. You remember?’
‘Incredible as it may seem, I wasn’t actually around in the seventeenth century.’
Playfair chuckled. ‘Oh, we will miss you, old love. You’re a card and no mistake. But don’t you see? We still have no idea who’s behind the whole ruddy scheme. We have to let their plans take their course so we can nip in and grab the whole gang.’
I shook my head and knocked back the rest of my gin. Playfair’s eyebrows rose.
‘It’s madness,’ I said. ‘And it doesn’t add up. There’s…there’s something wrong.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘It just feels…’ I shrugged helplessly.
‘Security is watertight,’ said Playfair.
‘Really?’
‘Abso-bloomin’-lutely,’ he smiled, steepling his fingers. ‘Battenburg has handpicked them himself. Boys in whom he has the utmost confidence.’
‘And where do I fit in?’
‘Well,’ drawled Playfair, ‘I thought you’d like to be in on the kill, as it were. Nice big coup for the Service. Handing over the baton and all that.’
I rose to my feet, a little drunk. ‘No, thanks.’
‘No?’
‘You’ll forgive me, I’m sure. But I think I’ve seen quite enough.’
I grabbed my jacket and stalked from the room.
In Jamaica they call the wind that blows in from the centre of the island, the Undertaker’s Wind. It stirred my snowy hair and made me shiver despite the balminess of the violet evening. I stood in the hotel lobby, the door ajar.
I was absolutely bloody furious. I’d been patronised, misled and ignored.
And what of Kingdom Kum? Was it genuine respect that had made him try to warn me off, back on the train? I’d saved his life in the clinic, but had his thanks been sincere? Or was he touched the way a dog-owner is when his old pooch unexpectedly manages a trick its arthritic limbs have long ago prevented? But then I remembered his finger stroking my palm and the wonderful heat of him in that tiny, dark room…