Queen Victoria's Revenge (18 page)

“Wargh?” he said, or something like that, which Tony took to mean that he was ready to be commanded; the heady sound of many men's voices made conversation difficult.

“We'd like to order some drinks. What do you want, Esther?”

“Ginenit,” she said loudly and the bartender nodded.

“Whisky. A large whisky. I mean two large whiskies in one glass.”

“Dutch courage?” Esther shouted conversationally. He showed her his teeth in a spastic grin. “No, just the desire to have a big drink because it has been a long time since I had one and it will probably be an even longer time until the next.”

“I am sorry, I really did intend it as a joke. Perhaps my sense of humor has gone off after that horrible house.”

“Mine too. I shouldn't have snapped. For a secret agent you are very easy to love.”

“What? I didn't hear you, the noise.”

“I said shalom. Isn't that what you say? I never found out what it meant.”

“It means peace. As in peace pipe.”

“I'll drink to that.”

They did and the drinks were gone all too quickly, then they were outside in the cool air, cooled even more by an insinuating drizzle that was blowing over the distant chimneys and sweeping across the grass toward them. On the next street corner was a glass-fronted establishment with indecipherable objects concealed behind the nightblind and dusty windows.

“That's the place,” Esther said. “Doesn't look open.” Tony answered, cooled by the rain and depressed by the onslaughts of fatigue. “Of course it's closed, but he obviously lives over the shop. Hammer on the door until he answers. I'm sure he does most of his clandestine business after dark.” She slipped away. Tony took a deep breath and strode forward, went to the dark entrance and tapped lightly. The door opened instantly and someone hissed at him until he went in. A shaded light was turned on.

“You're not Stanley. Who're you?”

“Can we be overheard?” Tony whispered, Cuban accent thick, looking around suspiciously. They were in a darkened showroom filled with the castoff and unredeemed debris of countless households. Andirons and bent pokers clanged at his feet, and an upholstered couch bled its stuffing over garish reproductions of bad paintings set in chipped frames. A set of battered golf clubs, half of them undoubtedly missing, lay on top of an unstrung piano next to a brace of warped guitars. More and more dismal objects vanished into the gloom above and on all sides, mercifully concealed by the darkness. Whatever business was done here was certainly not done with these rejected castoffs. The proprietor had the same castoff look as his goods, a gray and wrinkled man of indifferent age, his skin hanging loosely on his slight frame as though it were someone else's, taken in pawn like the rest of his goods. His trousers were shapeless, his vest hung limply over a badly wrinkled shirt, his steel-rimmed glasses rode low on his pointed nose; he looked so disheveled and miserable that he must be very rich.

“Look, who are you? Speak up or nip out.”

“I am looking for Uncle Tom.”

“Well you've found him. Business hours nine to five, later by appointment, now 'op it.”

“But I am here by appointment about
dinero,
something green and crackling, on the orders of a certain colonel who shall remain nameless unless you wish the name.”

Uncle Tom seemed slightly taken aback by the news. He was silent, only his eyes flicking up and down Tony's form, a single index finger moving as well, scratching at his side, perhaps unseating some unwanted form of life. Before he could reach any decision there was a faint tapping at the door.

“In that corner, keep your gob shut.” Uncle Tom hurried to the entrance while Tony settled uncomfortably onto a horsehair chair, the seat of which contained a broken spring that probed sharply upward with hopes of making an intramuscular injection. The door opened and closed quickly and a small man appeared under the shaded light with a dark bundle. Uncle Tom peered at it suspiciously and they conversed demotically in voices rich with glottal stops and unusual diphthongs.

“You 'ave it?”

“Arr. First class, five quid at least.”

“Plated, dented, I'll give you three.”

“Bloody hell, I'll bung 'em in river first. Four.”

“Three pound fifty, out of the goodness of me heart.”

“My arse, you got no ‘art, Uncle. It's a deal.”

The package was passed over and bank notes rustled. Uncle Tom put the package in a dark corner, no shortage of them, and hissed Tony out of his. Before he could speak a phone began ringing in the distance. Muttering to himself the master of the establishment found his way unerringly through the looming piles and answered it. The conversation, mostly monosyllabic mutters and grunts from his end, was blissfully short, Tony was getting edgy with the waiting and interruptions, and they picked up where they had left off.

“All right, what's his name?” Uncle Tom asked.

“Who?”

“Who? The bleeding colonel, that's who.”

“Colonel Juarez-Sedoño.”

“Arumm. But he said the whole thing was off for a bit, had to wait.”

“The waiting is over.”

“Got the lolly, hey? Why didn't he say so?”

“I
am saying so for him since he is away on a business trip to Scotland. Do you want to see it or not?”

“I don't know, a pretty big deal, I was never happy.” His eyes blinked rapidly and his ears twitched as Tony took out the bundle of hundred dollar bills and rustled them through his fingers. “Over under the light.”

Tony flipped the bundle again, then pulled out one of the bills and passed it over. Uncle Tom produced from his vest a jeweler's loupe, which he screwed into his eye, through which he examined the bill closely on both sides, up and down and back and forth. Then he crinkled it, smelled it, tasted it with the tip of his tongue and handed it back.

“Real all right, but marked eight different ways.” So much for scientific undetectability. “Not easy to get rid of anything like this.” The phone rang again and he shuffled off. Tony put the money away and made an invisible cat's cradle with his fingers through another ahrring and humming phone call until the fence returned.

“I don't like it,” Uncle Tom said, blinking a suspicious and fishy eye at Tony. “It's too big a job for me to lay off alone. It has to be got out of the country and there is only one lad for that job. You see him and see what he says and if he says that what he says goes then I says it might be possible.” Tony labored through the syntax and extracted the nugget of information at its core.

“Who is this I have to see?”

“Man named Massoud. He runs a restaurant on the Portobello Road, name of The Taj Mahal. Next to the Mucky Duck, you can't miss it. See him and see what he says.”

There was no more information forthcoming because, as he spoke, Uncle Tom had a hand in the small of Tony's back and was hustling him to the door and out. Tony protested but could think of nothing more to say, so he permitted himself to be pushed through and heard the lock being turned behind him. Esther was waiting around the corner and nodded at his information.

“I think I know the place. The Mucky Duck is a common aphorism for any public house named the Black Swan. We must go, but we must have a plan. This address is on the other side of London and it will take at least a half an hour to get there. I'll go in the first car, the fast one, and you follow in that rented thing. I will be there having dinner with Isaj and we will not recognize each other. If there is trouble we will be ready. The others can go back to the Marmion.”

“But it's after ten at night, the restaurant won't be open.” Hopefully spoken, instantly dashed.

“This is a fine hour for an Indian restaurant. We will be waiting when you arrive.”

There was no escaping the workings of fate. He sat next to Jinon, it had to be him since Isaj was with Esther, who drove on the way back, and was regaled with fascinating stories of midnight raids on infiltrators' positions, hearty climbs up the heights of Masada in hundred-degree heat, friendly nights around the bonfire at the kibbutz, horseback riding at dawn in the barren hills as well as other healthy and exhausting Israeli pursuits. It was so enthusiastic that, had he been Jewish, Tony would have emigrated instantly; only his Apache blood saved him from a happy life as a kibbutznik. London streamed past and, all too soon, he had to once more become the double—or was it triple?—agent.

“Good luck,” Jinon called after him as he started down the road toward the beckoning restaurant sign. “And shalom.”

Shalom indeed, Tony muttered to himself; if there were more shalom in the world he would not be in the position he was in now. He passed the alcoholic temptations of the Black Swan and stopped to examine the menu posted in the window of the Taj Mahal. An endless variety of strange dishes was listed with prices for each, ending in a brief addition of steak, chicken and eggs served with chips, sop to the unexperimental British eater. A round exhaust fan was mounted above the entrance door, where it hurled rich waves of spiced Eastern cookery into the gasoline-fumed night air. It was all totally unfamiliar, but strangely attractive despite that, so that Tony's salivary glands, ever alert for opportunity, pumped a quick spurt into his mouth to show their interest. He took a deep breath and entered.

Beyond the door was a single large room with numerous small, white-tableclothed tables. The walls, and the ceiling, were imaginatively covered with red plush–flocked wallpaper, the plush worn thin over the tables where industriously working elbows of diners had scrubbed it away. Yellow bulbs glowed dimly on the half-dozen customers who were attacking steaming dishes and glowing mounds of rice. The two Israelis were among them and he let his eyes slide over them as easily as the other customers. A dark-skinned waiter appeared and waved him toward a table.

“Would you like to dine, sah?”

Well why not? It had been twenty-four hours since he had had a real meal and if the food here tasted anything like it smelled he was going to enjoy it. Certainly the Israelis were. Then stern duty laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and he sighed inwardly at an opportunity missed.

“No, I'm here to see someone by the name of Massoud.”

“I'm sorry but he is busily occupied at moment, however I will tell him you are here. If you will wait here it will be some minutes. Perhaps some tea or something to drink while you wait?”

Reprieve! “Drink, yes, but I want something to eat as well.” He sat at the nearest table and rested his elbows on the yellow stains of the tablecloth and seized the menu. It was indecipherable. “What, do you recommend tonight?” The standard gambit of the unknowing.

“Madras beef is very good, but very hot, so you must like hot food.”

“I like hot food that is
caliente
hot and
picante
hot both. Do you mean spicy hot, not stove hot?”

“Quite right, from the red chilies.”

“I'll have it.”

“Madras beef dinner with brinjal pickle paratha onion baji tarka dahl rice pilaf bombay duck to start.”

“I don't like duck. Do you have beer?”

“Bombay duck is fish. And one lager.”

This was more like it. The lager proved to be a glass of warm beer, which he sipped with the food that instantly began to appear, course after course. It was all good, and he washed it down with more lager, his mission completely forgotten in this furious stoking of his appetite. He was sweating heavily and mopping up a last bit of sauce with a shred of paratha when a tall man appeared at his elbow.

“I am Massoud. You wish to see me?” Gold teeth flashed warmly against the mocha of his skin; his eyes were as cold and unrevealing as a snake's. Tony hurriedly washed down the last mouthful of food with the remains of his beer.

“Yes, if I could.”

“There is privacy in the upstairs dining room, this way if you please.”

A dark staircase lay beyond the dumbwaiter, from which waiters were still extracting food from the kitchen in the cellar below, shouting incomprehensible commands down the shaft. On the floor above they passed doors labeled
LADIES
and
GENTLEMENS
, linguistic traps lurk everywhere in English, and on to the door at the far end.

“Here, please, I will turn on the light.”

The light came on, Massoud stood in the doorway behind him, and Tony faced into the small room already well filled with people, all familiar, the two most familiar of all sitting at the table and facing him. Smiling?

Willy MacGregor and Colonel Juarez-Sedoño.

THIRTEEN

It was one of those nightmare situations, the sort of thing one dreams about and then happily awakes to reality. Except that Tony was awake and this was no dream. He recoiled automatically from that loathsome twosome and fell back against Massoud's arm.
Out
his reflexes screamed at him, and out seemed a very good idea to his conscious mind as well. Massoud clutched at him but he evaded the grasping fingers by ducking under them, rushing back down the hall, diving at the staircase, leaping down three, four, five steps at a time, risking everything in the need for flight. His stomach, stuffed with curry and rice, felt heavy as a bowling ball behind his belt, slowing him, but not that much. Out was very much the order and he was getting out.

He stumbled at the foot of the stairs, almost fell, had a quick glimpse of wide-eyed waiters and interested customers, Esther looking at him with startled eyes.

“Get out!” he shouted. “The colonel's upstairs.”

Setting a good example, he pounded toward the front door but two customers sitting next to it were there first. Big men in rough tweeds who stood before the exit and turned to face him. Were those bicycle chains swinging from their lumpy fists? Tony slowed to a trot, to a halt, then collapsed into a chair. There was a pitcher of water on the table before him so he filled a glass and drained it. Things were not turning out just as expected. Willy came down the stairs and crooked a finger in his direction.