Saturn Over the Water (7 page)

‘Keep tight hold of me, then.’

A youngish military type, very red in the face, was bawling at Sam. ‘Okay, okay, okay, mister! But I still say if it’s good enough for Mike Giddings, it’s good enough for me – and it ought to be good enough for you, mister.’

‘Well, it isn’t, Colonel, not for me it isn’t,’ Sam shouted. ‘And your General Giddings won’t make any more sense to me even if they plaster him all over
Time
magazine the rest of this year. What the hell’s he want, anyhow? Have we all to stop living because he thinks the Russians are under his bed? We’ve got ’em ringed round with bases right now. What more does he want?’

‘Listen, Sam, listen,’ another man said to him, an older man, who’d learnt the trick of sounding weary at the top of his voice. ‘Mike Giddings doesn’t trust the Reds – and he’s right, I guess – so he says so. He believes – and he’s right again, I’d say – that when they give us the soft talk we have to be hard – talk from strength – ’

‘Sure!’ This was the military type again. ‘I want to tell you I’ve had the privilege of serving under Mike Giddings – and that’s one man they can’t fool and who won’t leave this country undefended – ’

‘Undefended!’ Sam looked as if he was about to explode. ‘Look, man – we’ve spent billions and billions of dollars on fancy hardware – and we’ll all be going underground next – and we’re driving ourselves half nutty –
for what?
What do they want, these Giddingses – what are they aiming at – where do they stop? You talk about crackpots!
They
’
re
the crackpots – ’

‘If you can listen to them talking this stuff,’ said Angel, giving me a sharp nip, ‘you don’t love me. You don’t love anybody. Just argument, argument, argument. Why,
darling
– you never told me.’ This last remark, in a new tone of voice, wasn’t addressed to me of course, and I never saw the man who received it, the crush becoming greater just then; but without another word to me, Angel vanished, taking our beautiful friendship with her.

When we were back in Sam’s apartment, I asked him about this Giddings. I felt pretty sure he must be the
Gen
.
Giddings
who headed Joe Farne’s list. ‘Who is he?’ I said. ‘And why did he keep coming into the argument?’

Sam pushed out his big lower lip and wagged his head. ‘He’s one of these Washington screwballs who are a hundred per cent American patriots. They’re not going to share the same planet with the Reds, and they pretend the five hundred million Chinese aren’t there, only the Russkis. Every time we’re not too far from some sort of agreement with Moscow, somebody like Giddings starts hollering and screaming. They never say what they want or where it all ends. But we mustn’t talk to the Commies as if they were men, we must go on and on, spending more and more dollars, getting tougher and tougher. If you don’t agree, you ought to be investigated – you’re the one whose sister clapped when the speaker mentioned the Red Army in
1944
.’

‘If you saw Giddings’s name on a list, Sam, what would you think?’ I asked him.

‘I wouldn’t think I was looking at the entries for a Peace Prize.’ He gave me a sharp look. ‘I can keep my mouth shut, Tim, if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.’

‘It doesn’t make enough sense yet. I’d feel a fool trying to tell you.’

‘Okay, let’s forget it. Now tomorrow, Tim, if you can take it, we spend a day with the rich. Believe it or not, Mrs Tengleton has at least seventy-five million bucks, and though she’s a spender she’s richer every week. She has some goddam fine pictures out there – she bought a few from me – and we can mix with the quality, so long as you keep your hands off the silver, you low Limey painter. Okay?’

A friend of his called Hirsh, even fatter than Sam was, took us out there, in a car nearly as big as a landing craft. No more snow had fallen; the day sparkled; the air was marvellous. A lot of other people, in cars nearly as large as Hirsh’s, were all going somewhere, perhaps to Mrs Tengleton’s. This was somewhere in the Westchester region, and though I gathered that it wasn’t quite as big as Luxemburg, I felt when we drove up to the gates that there ought to have been passport and customs officials. Mrs Tengleton herself was about a mile farther on, inside a building that looked as if it was trying to be the Château de Chambord. She was alone except for about a hundred other people, guests and retainers. Her seventy-five million dollars seemed to be weighing her down – she was a grey and drooping woman, with a voice filled with deep melancholy – but she had among other things a socking great helping of French painting, perhaps keeping up with the Chambords – Claude Lorrain, Chardin, an Ingres, and two huge compositions by Delacroix, to name no more. She was also refusing to preside over – just waving vaguely towards – a Sunday buffet lunch, both hot and cold, of astounding variety and size.

It was open house on the widest scale, and, like most other people, we were there for hours and hours. I tried a walk, just to get some air, with a handsome girl called Marina Nateby, who did sculpture somewhere down in Greenwich Village, and we ended up at the back of the château where there was an enormous hothouse, about the size of the palm house at Kew. We went in and sat down, and very soon a weight of sleep dropped on me, and the last thing I remembered for half-an-hour or so was Marina Nateby telling me to go ahead and not mind her because she knew I was still feeling the effect of the flight from London the day before. When I woke up we seemed to be surrounded by Central Europeans, and a portable bar had arrived. Marina Nateby, who had a strong maternal streak that I’ve found in other girls who sculpted, brought me a Scotch on the rocks and then introduced me to the Central Europeans. The only one whose name I remembered afterwards, for a reason that will soon be obvious, was a man very different in his carriage and looks from most of the middle-aged American men around the place. His face might have been carved out of old brown wood; he had a cold military eye; and though he wasn’t wearing a monocle he gave the impression that he’d only just started doing without it. He was formally polite but said little himself and seemed to regard with contempt anybody who did say anything. After observing him for some time, I led Marina Nateby out of sight and hearing of the group, into a kind of Tahiti corner, rich with blossom and the scent of frangipani or something.

‘Don’t tell me it’s gorgeous, I know it,’ she said. ‘But don’t make a pass at me. It’s too early. Besides, you’re not really thinking about me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘That’s something we girls do know, dumb as we are about other things. Your mind’s elsewhere, Mr Bedford – your heart too.’

‘My heart isn’t anywhere,’ I said, ‘but you’re right about my mind. It’s that chap who looks as if he led an armoured division as far as the Crimea and then burnt two hundred Russian villages on the way back. Did I get his name right – von Emmerick? And if so, who is he?’

‘He’s a friend of my friend Inge, who lives near me in the Village. He doesn’t live in New York but he turns up every six months or so – stays at the Plaza – knows a lot of people and goes to parties – sleeps around a bit, Inge says, though I can’t imagine how he leads up to the first suggestion – and then disappears again. He’s one of those aristocratic Continental mystery men who always turn out in the end to be selling oil pumps or printing machines. Why do
you
care?’

‘I don’t. But the name interests me,’ I said, for of course I’d remembered there was a von Emmerick on Joe’s list. ‘Though there might be a dozen of them around, all looking as if they were still on the barrack square.’

‘He wasn’t a Nazi, if that’s what is eating you. I know because Inge told me – and you ought to hear her on the Nazis – boy!’

‘She didn’t happen to tell you where von Emmerick lives these days, did she?’

‘Not Western Germany, not Europe at all.’ She frowned at the nearest sprig of blossom. ‘I think – no, I don’t, I
know
– yes, that’s it.’ Now she looked at me. ‘South America. I don’t know where, but I’m sure it’s South America. Why, what does that prove? Don’t say it doesn’t prove anything because I saw your eyes light up – they really did.’

‘That’s drink, you, and this Tahiti atmosphere, ducky. Lighting-up time for Bedford. But nothing’s been proved, not a thing. Perhaps I ought to talk to Inge.’

‘Let’s go and find her. And listen to me! Waiting on you hand and foot! It must be this
ducky
line of yours – and no passes being made. Come on, then.’

But Inge wasn’t to be found. Neither was von Emmerick; and the next time I met him we were a hell of a long way from Mrs Tengleton’s château.

I had to talk to somebody about it, and I felt I could trust Sam Harnberg, so later that night, after I’d told him he wasn’t to see me off at Idlewild next morning, when he had his own business to attend to, I explained what had happened so far about Joe Farne’s list.

‘Here’s a man – a steady, hard-working scientist – who disappears from one country, Peru, where nobody knows where he’s gone to, and then suddenly writes to his wife apparently from another country, Chile. And after telling her they should never have separated and that he still loves her and so forth, he scribbles as fast as he can remember them, obviously in a devil of a hurry, some names of people and places. Roughly about a third of them couldn’t be made out at all, neither by me nor by a typist who copied the list. So I’ll never know what they were.’

He held out a big meaty hand. ‘Gimme, boy. I’ll take a look at ’em through a reading glass. I’ve had to cope with some terrible writing in my time. So hand it over.’

‘I can’t, Sam. I haven’t the one Joe originally wrote. It was stolen while I was out at a dinner party given by a man I didn’t know, who asked me at the last minute. And it’s my belief I was asked so they could be sure I wasn’t at home that night.’ And now I told him about Sir Reginald Merlan-Smith and how Nadia Slatina kept me on, probably because they weren’t sure then the job had been pulled off. ‘And then when Merlan-Smith did talk to me, he’d nothing much to say and obviously wanted to get rid of me. I couldn’t understand it at the time, naturally, but afterwards I felt certain he’d heard, probably over the phone, that they had Joe’s list, so there was no point in detaining me any longer. And a man called Mitchell comes into it somewhere.’ And then I explained about Mitchell.

‘It’s a hell of a note,’ said Sam, grinning. ‘You walked into something, Tim, but I wouldn’t know what.’

‘Yes, but this is what I wanted to say, Sam. Last night, you remember, General Giddings was mentioned – and I asked you about him afterwards. And his was the first name on the list. The next seems to be a Russian – V. Melnikov – I don’t know anything about him. But next to him, the third name, is von Emmerick. Now I met a von Emmerick – a German General Staff type if I ever saw one – this afternoon at Mrs Tengleton’s. And though he pays fairly regular visits to New York, he’s living in South America, where I’m going tomorrow. Now this may be all a coincidence – or a series of coincidences – ’

‘No, Tim boy, I don’t buy that. When old Sam Harnberg finds himself stuck with too many coincidences, he begins to smell something. There’s a setup here somewhere. What about the places – didn’t you say some places were on the list?’

‘One might be in South America – Chile, perhaps. The other three seem to be in Australia, a devil of a long way from anywhere else. And if there’s a setup of some sort, as you suggest, how could Australia come into the picture?’

‘I wouldn’t know. By the way, some good painting is coming out of there, Tim. I’ve been surprised lately. No, don’t tell me we’re not talking about painting. I’m only spitballing while I try to think. Not that there’s much to think about, when you get down to it, just the idea of a possible setup. To do what – how – and where, I couldn’t even start guessing, and if you’ll take my advice, fella, you’ll let it ride till you know more. There’s two things I’d like to say though, Tim.’ He looked old and wise as he wagged a finger at me. I often remembered him afterwards as he was at this moment, one hand up and the other trying to brush the cigar ash off his lapels, something he was for ever trying to do: his great raw-sienna beak of a nose, his purplish thick underlip, his saurian eyes dark with speculative thought.

‘London – New York – Peru – Australia,’ he began slowly. ‘Don’t let distance fool you, Tim. If the money’s there – and this setup smells like money – distance don’t mean a thing these days. By this time tomorrow, with any luck, you’ll already have been in Lima a few hours. By the middle of the week you could be in Greenland or West Africa. That’s the kind of world we live in now, boy. So if anything has to be spread around – and there might be good reasons for doing just that – all you have to do is to buy tickets. Dead easy. And the other thing is this. I’m not Walter Lippmann, just an old man trying to sell good pictures, but I’ll tell you this much, boy – this world where you can go anywhere in a day or so or can’t go at all, it’s the most goddam crazy world ever known, nothing like it in the history books. If you’ve walked into something, Tim – and it’s my guess you have, and to hell with coincidences – don’t go kidding yourself that something can’t be happening because it doesn’t seem to make sense. It hasn’t to make sense, not as we used to understand things making sense, not any more. There are fellas up top now, making big decisions, that would have been locked in padded cells when I was young. And nothing’s firm under the feet or solidly nailed down any more. It’s all melting, dissolving, slipping down the side, turning into liquid and bubbles. Talk about flying saucers! We’re in one. I swear to God only pictures keep me sane and in one piece. And even then half the new talent’s nutty. Maybe you are for leaving your work to go slewfooting in South America – ’