The Constant Gardener (43 page)

“And your political friends—who are washing their hands of you—the ones we didn't warn?”

“Phone call from a flunky at Number Ten with a potato up his arse. Speaking on behalf of, et cetera. They're eternally grateful et cetera, but in the present climate of having to be holier than the Pope they're sending back my very generous contributions to party funds, and where should they send them, please, because the sooner my money is off their fucking books the happier they'll be and can we all pretend it never happened? Know where he is now? Where he was two nights ago, getting his end off?”

It took Donohue a blink and a shake to realize that Curtiss was talking not about the incumbent of 10 Downing Street anymore, but Justin Quayle.

“Canada. Fucking Saskatchewan,” Curtiss snorted, in reply to his own question. “Freezing his arse off, I hope.”

“Doing what?” Donohue asked, mystified not so much by the notion of Justin in Canada as by the ease with which Curtiss was able to follow him there.

“Some university. There's a woman there. A fucking scientist. She's taken it into her head to go round telling everybody the drug's a killer in violation of her contract. Quayle shacked up with her. A month after his wife's death.” His voice rose, threatening another storm-force gale. “He's got a phony passport, for fuck's sake! Who gave it to him? You did. He pays cash. Who sends it to him? You buggers do. He slips through their net like a fucking eel every time. Who taught him to do that? You lot!”

“No, Kenny. We didn't. None of it.” Their net, he thought. Not yours.

Curtiss was pumping himself up for another scream. Now it came. “Then what, if you'd be so kind as to inform me, is Mr. Porter fucking Coleridge doing, lodging inaccurate and defamatory information with the Cabinet Office regarding my company and my drug, what the fuck is he doing threatening to go to fucking Fleet Street if he isn't promised a full impartial inquiry by our lords and masters in the Brussels loony bin? And why the fuck do the wankers in your shop let him do it—or more like it, encourage the bastard?”

And how did you get to know about that? Donohue was marveling silently. How in heaven's name did even a man as resourceful and duplicitous as Curtiss manage to get his hairy paws on a piece of top-secret encrypted information just eight hours after it had been sent personally to Donohue over the Service link? And having asked himself this question Donohue, craftsman of his trade, set about obtaining the answer to it. He smiled his jolly smile, but a really pleased one this time, reflecting his honest pleasure that a few things in this world are still decently done among friends.

“Of course,” he said. “Old Bernard Pellegrin tipped you the wink. Brave of him. And timely. I just hope I'd have done the same. I've always had a soft spot for Bernard.”

His smiling eyes fixed on Curtiss's flushed features, Donohue watched as they first hesitated, then formed themselves into an expression of contempt.

“That limp-wristed faggot? I wouldn't trust him to pee his poodle in the park. I've been keeping a top job warm for his retirement, and the bugger hasn't lifted a finger to protect me. Want some?” Curtiss demanded, shoving a brandy decanter at him.

“Can't, old boy. Leech's orders.”

“I told you. Go to my doctor. Doug gave you his address. He's only down in Cape Town. We'll fly you there. Take the Gulfstream.”

“Bit late to change horses, thanks, Kenny.”

“It never is,” Curtiss retorted.

So it's Pellegrin, thought Donohue, confirming an old suspicion as he watched Curtiss pour himself another lethal dose from the decanter. Some things about you are predictable after all, and one of them is, you never learned to lie.

•      •      •

Five years ago, impelled by a desire to do something useful, the childless Donohues had driven up-country to stay with a poor African farmer who in his spare time was setting up a network of kids' football teams. The problem was money: money for a truck to drive the kids to matches, money for team uniforms and other precious symbols of dignity. Maud had recently come into a small inheritance, Donohue a life policy. By the time they returned to Nairobi they had pledged the whole lot in installments over the next five years and Donohue had never been so happy. His only regret, looking back, was that he had spent so little of his life on kids' football, and so much of it on spies. The same thought for some reason flitted through his head as he watched Curtiss lower his vast bulk into a teak armchair, nodding and winking like a kind granddad. Here comes the fabled charm that leaves me cold, Donohue told himself.

“I popped down to Harare a couple of days ago,” Curtiss confided artfully, clapping his hands on his knees and leaning forward for greater confidence. “That stupid peacock Mugabe's appointed himself a new Minister of National Projects. Quite a promising lad, I must say. Did you read about him at all, Tim?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Young bloke. You'd like him. He's helping us with a little scheme we've got going up there. Very fond of a nice backhander, he is. Mustard, in fact. I thought you might value that piece of information. It's worked for us in the past all right, hasn't it? A bloke who'll take a backhander from Kenny K is not averse to taking one from Her Maj. Right?”

“Right. Thanks. Good idea. I'll pass it up the line.”

More nods and winks accompanied by a grateful pull of cognac. “Know that new skyscraper I built off the Uhuru Highway?”

“And very fine it is, Kenny.”

“I sold it to a Russian last week. A mafia boss he is, Doug tells me. A big one, too, apparently, not a tiddler like some of the fellows we've got here. Word is, he's cutting himself a very big drug deal with the Koreans.” He sat back and surveyed Donohue with the deep concern of a close friend. “Here. Tim. What's the matter with you? You look faint.”

“I'm fine. It's the way I go Sometimes.”

“It's the chemotherapy, that is. I told you to go to my doctor and you wouldn't. How's Maud?”

“Maud's fine, thanks.”

“Take the yacht. Give yourselves a break, just the two of you. Talk to Doug.”

“Thanks again, Kenny, but it might be stretching cover a bit, mightn't it?”

Another mood swing threatened them as Kenny breathed a long sigh and let his great arms flop to his sides. No man could take it harder that his generosity had been rejected. “You're not joining the hands-off-Kenny brigade, are you, Tim? You're not cold-shouldering me like those banking boys?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, don't. You'll only get hurt. This Russian I was telling you about. Listen. Know what he's got tucked away for a rainy day? Which he showed Doug?”

“I'm all ears, Kenny.”

“I built a basement for that skyscraper. Not a lot do that here, but I decided I'd give it a basement for a car park. Cost me an arm and a leg, but that's how I am. Four hundred spaces for two hundred apartments. And this Russian, whose name I'm going to give you, he's got a big white lorry in every fucking car space, with U.n. painted on the lid. Never been driven, he tells Doug. Fell off a freighter on their way to Somalia. Wants to flog them.” He flung up his arms, amazed by his own anecdote. “What the fuck's that about then? The Russian mafia flogging U.n. lorries! To me. Know what he wanted Doug to do?”

“Tell me.”

“Import them. From Nairobi to Nairobi. He'll respray them for us, and all we've got to do is square the customs boys and put the lorries through our books a few at a time. If that's not organized crime, what is? A Russian crook ripping off the U.n., here in Nairobi in broad daylight, that's anarchy. And I disapprove of anarchy. So you can have that item of intelligence. Gratis and for fuck all. With Kenny K's compliments. Tell them it's a freebie. On me.”

“They'll be over the moon.”

“I want him stopped, Tim. In his tracks. Now.”

“Coleridge or Quayle?”

“Both of them. I want Coleridge stopped, I want the Quayle woman's stupid report lost—”

My God, he knows about that too, thought Donohue. “I thought Pellegrin had already lost it for you,” he complained, with the kind of frown that older men put on when their memory is failing them.

“You keep Bernard out of this! He's no friend of mine and never will be. And I want you to tell your Mr. Quayle that if he goes on coming at me, there's fuck all I can do to help him because he's taking on the world, not me! Got it? They'd have done him in Germany if I hadn't gone down on my hands and knees for him! Hear me?”

“I hear you, Kenny. I'll pass it up the line. That's all I can promise.”

With bearish agility Curtiss sprang from his chair and rolled away down the room.

“I'm a patriot,” he shouted. “Confirm that, Donohue! I'm a fucking patriot!”

“Of course you are, Kenny.”

“Say it again. I am a patriot!”

“You're a patriot. You're John Bull. Winston Churchill. What do you want me to say?”

“Give me one example of me being patriotic. One of dozens. The best example you can think of. Now.”

Where the hell is this leading? Donohue gave one all the same. “How about the Sierra Leone job we did last year?”

“Tell me about it. Go on. Tell me!”

“A client of ours wanted guns and ammunition on a no-name basis.”

“So?”

“So we bought the guns—”

“I bought the fucking guns!”

“You bought the guns with our money, we provided you with a phony end-user certificate saying they were destined for Singapore—”

“You've forgotten the fucking ship!”

“ThreeBees chartered a forty-thousand-ton freighter and loaded up the guns. The ship got itself lost in the fog—”

“Pretended to, you mean!”

“—and had to put in to a small harbor near Freetown, where our client and his team were standing by ready to unload the guns.”

“And I didn't have to do it for you, did I? I could have chickened. I could have said, ”Wrong address, try next door.“ But I did it. I did it for love of my fucking country. Because I'm a patriot!” The voice dropped, to become conspiratorial. “All right. Listen. Here's what you do—what the Service does.” He was pacing the long room as he gave his orders in low, staccato sentences. “Your Service—not the Foreign Office, they're a bunch of sissies—your Service, in person, you go to the banks. And you identify, in each bank —I'll mark your card for you—a real Englishman. Or woman. Are you listening, because you're going to be passing this on to them when you get home tonight.” He had put on his visionary's voice. High tones, a bit of quaver, the people's millionaire.

“I'm listening,” Donohue assured him.

“Good. And you call them together. These good Englishmen and true. Or women. To a nice paneled room in the City somewhere. You boys will know the places. And you say to them in your formal capacity as the British Secret Service, you say to them: ”Gentlemen. Ladies. Lay off Kenny K. We're not telling you why. All we're saying is, lay off in the name of the Queen. Kenny K has done great work for his country but we can't tell you what it is, and there's more to come. You're to give him three months' ride on his credits and you'll be striking a blow for your country, same as Kenny K is.“ And they'll do it. If one says yes, they'll all say yes, because they're sheep. And the other banks will follow suit, because they're sheep too.”

Donohue had never supposed he could feel sorry for Curtiss. But if he ever had, this might have been the moment.

“I'll ask them, Kenny. The trouble is, we haven't got that kind of power. If we had, they'd have to disband us.”

But the effect of these words was more drastic than anything he could have feared. Curtiss was roaring and his roars were echoing in the rafters. He had flung up his white-sleeved arms in priestlike oblation above his head. The room was drumming to the thunder of his tyrant's voice.

“You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's ”God save our multinational“ they're singing these days. And here's another thing you can tell your friends Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Quayle and whoever else you're lining up against me. Kenny K loves Africa—” a sweep of the whole upper body took in the picture window and the lake bathed in silken moonlight—“it's in his fucking blood! And Kenny K loves his drug! And Kenny K was put on earth to get his drug to every African man, woman and child who needs it! And that's what he's going to do, so fuck the lot of you! And if somebody sets himself up to stand in the way of science, he's only got himself to blame. Because I can't stop those boys, not anymore, and nor can you. Because that drug has been tried and tested all ways up by the best brains money can buy bar none. And not one of them—” the voice soaring to a crescendo of hysterical menace—“not one of them has found a fucking word to say against it or will. Ever! Now fuck off.”

As Donohue did as he was bidden, a furtive cacophony of haste broke out around him. Shadows sidled into the corridors, dogs barked and a chorus of telephones began their chant.

•      •      •

Stepping into the fresh air, Donohue paused to let the night smells and sounds of Africa wash him clean. He was, as ever, unarmed. A ragged veil of cloud had spread itself across the stars. In the glare of the security lights the acacia trees were paper yellow. He heard nightjars and the braying of a zebra. He peered slowly round, forcing his gaze to rest longest on the darkest places. The house stood on a high terrace and behind it lay the lake and before it a tarmac sweep, which by moonlight resembled a deep crater. His car stood at the center of it. From habit he had parked it clear of the surrounding undergrowth. Unsure whether he had glimpsed a moving shadow he remained motionless. He was thinking, oddly enough, of Justin. He was thinking that if Curtiss was right, and Justin had in quick succession been in Italy, Germany and Canada, traveling on a false passport, then this was a Justin he didn't know, but had in recent weeks come to suspect might exist: Justin the loner, taking nobody's orders but his own; Justin impassioned and on the warpath, determined to uncover what, in an earlier life, he might have helped to cover up. And if that was who Justin was these days, and that was the task he had set himself, then where better to start looking than here, at the lakeside residence of Sir Kenneth Curtiss, importer and distributor of “my drug”?

Donohue took a half pace toward his car and, hearing a sound close to him, stopped in midstride and laid his foot oh-so-softly on the tarmac. What are we playing, Justin? Grandmother's Footsteps? Or are you just another colobus monkey? A tread this time, a palpable footstep behind him. Man or beast? Donohue raised his right elbow in defense and, suppressing a desire to whisper Justin's name, swung round to see Doug Crick standing four feet from him in the moonlight, his hands hanging demonstratively free at his sides. He was a big fellow, as tall as Donohue but half his age, with a wide pale face and fair hair and an appealing if effeminate smile.

“Hullo, Doug,” Donohue said. “Keeping well?”

“Very, sir, thank you and I hope I can say the same for you.”

“Something I can do for you?”

They were both speaking very quietly.

“Yes, sir. You can drive to the main road, turn toward Nairobi, drive as far as the turnoff to Hell's Gate National Park, which closed an hour ago. It's a dirt road, no lights. I'll meet you there in ten minutes.”

Donohue drove down a ride of black grevillea trees to the gatehouse and let the guard shine a torch in his face, then in his car, in case he had stolen the leopard-skin rugs. The kung fu had given way to badly focused pornography. He turned slowly onto the main road, watching for animals and pedestrians. Hooded natives crouched and lay along the verges. Lone walkers with long sticks lifted a slow hand at him or leaped mockingly into his headlights. He kept driving until he saw a smart sign indicating the national park. He stopped, switched off his lights and waited. A car pulled up behind him. He unlocked his passenger door and opened it a foot, making the courtesy light go on. There was no cloud and no moon. Through the windscreen, the stars were double bright. Donohue made out Taurus and Gemini; and after Gemini, Cancer. Crick slipped onto the passenger seat and slammed the door after him, leaving them in pitch darkness.

“The chief's desperate, sir. I haven't seen him like this—well, ever,” said Crick.

“I don't suppose you have, Doug.”

“He's going a bit screwy, frankly.”

“Overwrought, I expect,” said Donohue sympathetically.

“I've been sitting in the communications room all day, putting the calls through to him. The London banks, Basel, then it's the banks again, then it's finance companies he's never heard of, offering him monthly credit at forty percent compound, then it's what he calls his rat pack, the political ones. You can't help listening, can you?”

A mother with a child on her arm was scraping timidly on the windscreen with her emaciated hand. Donohue lowered his window and handed her a twenty-shilling note.

“He's mortgaged his houses in Paris, Rome and London, and there's to be a charge on his house in Sutton Place, New York. He's trying to find a buyer for his stupid football team, though you'd have to be deaf and dumb to want them. He's asked his special friend in Credit Suisse for twenty-five million U.s. today, pay you back thirty million Monday. Plus KVH are after him for payment on his marketing deals. And if he hasn't got cash they'll stretch a point and take over his company.”

A dazed family trio was gathering at the window, refugees from somewhere, going nowhere.

“Want me to sort them out, sir?” Crick asked, reaching for the door handle.

“You'll do no such thing,” Donohue ordered sharply. He started the engine and edged slowly along the road while Crick kept talking.

“He screams at them is all he does. It's pathetic, frankly. KVH don't want his money. They want his business, which is what we all knew, but he didn't. I don't know where the shock waves will end, do I?”

“I'm sorry to hear that, Doug. I'd always thought of you and Kenny as hand in glove.”

“Me too, sir. It's taken a lot to bring me to this point, I'll confess. It's not like me to be two-faced, is it?”

A bunch of ostracized male gazelles had come to the roadside to watch them pass.

“What do you want, Doug?” Donohue asked.

“I was wondering whether there was informal work available, sir. Anyone you'd like visited or kept an eye on. Any special documents you needed.” Donohue waited, unimpressed. “Plus I've got this friend. From the Ireland days. Lives in Harare, which wouldn't be my cup of tea.”

“What about him?”

“He was approached, wasn't he? He's a freelance.”

“Approached to do what?”

“Certain European people who were friends of friends of his approached him. Offering him megabucks to pacify a white woman and her black boyfriend up Turkana way. Like by yesterday. Leave tonight, we've got a car waiting.”

Donohue pulled onto the verge and again stopped the car. “Date?” he asked.

“Two days before Tessa Quayle was killed.”

“Did he take the contract?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Why not?”

“He's not the sort. He won't touch women, for one thing. He's done Rwanda, he's done Congo. He'll never touch another woman.”

“So what did he do?”

“He advised them to speak to certain people he knew who weren't so particular.”

“Such as who?”

“He's not saying, Mr. Donohue. And if he was, I wouldn't let him tell me. There are some things that are too dangerous to know.”

“Not a lot on offer then, is there?”

“Well, he is prepared to talk the wider parameters, if you know what I mean.”

“I don't. I buy names, dates and places. Retail. Cash in a bag. No parameters.”

“I think what he's really talking about, sir, if you cut away the fancy language is: would you like to buy what happened to Dr. Bluhm, including map references? Only being by way of a writer, he's written an account of the events in Turkana as they affected the doctor, based on what his friends told him. For your eyes only, assuming the price is right.”

Another group of night migrants had assembled round the car, led by an old man in a lady's broad-brimmed hat with a bow on it.

“Sounds crap to me,” said Donohue.

“I don't think it's crap, sir. I think it's the real McCoy. I know it is.”

A chill passed over Donohue. Know? he wondered. Know how? Or is your friend from Ireland days a cipher for Doug Crick?

“Where is it? This account he's written.”

“It's to hand, sir. I'll put it that way.”

“I'll be at the pool bar of the Serena Hotel tomorrow at midday for twenty minutes.”

“He's looking at fifty K's, Mr. Donohue.”

“I'll tell you what he's looking at when I've seen it.”

Donohue drove for an hour, swerving between craters, slowing down for very little. A jackal scurried through his headlights, bound for the game park. A group of women from a local flower farm hailed a lift from him, but for once he didn't stop. Even passing his own house he refused to slow down, but headed directly for the High Commission. The lake salmon would have to keep until tomorrow.

“Sandy Woodrow,” Gloria announced with playful severity, standing arms akimbo before him in her new fluffy dressing gown, “it's jolly well time you showed the flag.”

She had risen early and brushed out her hair by the time he had shaved. She had packed the boys off to school with the driver, then cooked him bacon and eggs, which he wasn't allowed, but once in a while a girl's allowed to spoil her man. She was mimicking the school prefect in herself, using her head girl voice, though none of this was yet apparent to her husband, who was plowing his way as usual through a heap of Nairobi newspapers.

“Flag goes back up on Monday, dear,” Woodrow replied distractedly, masticating bacon. “Mildred's been on to Protocol Department. Tessa's been half-masted longer than a prince of the blood.”

“I'm not talking about that flag, silly,” said Gloria, removing the newspapers from his reach and setting them prettily on a side table beneath her watercolors. “Are you sitting comfortably? So listen. I'm talking about throwing an absolutely bumper party to cheer us all up, you included. It's time, Sandy. It really is. It's time we all said to each other, ”Right. Been there. Done that. Dreadfully sorry. But life has to go on.“ Tessa would feel exactly the same. Vital question, darling. What's the inside story? When are the Porters coming back?” The Porters like the Sandys and the Elenas, which is how we talk about people when we're being cozy.