Brass Go-Between (24 page)

“Mr. St. Ives?” the guard on my side of the car said, his left arm still leaning casually on the Ford’s window ledge, his right hand resting not so casually on the butt of a holstered revolver.

“Yes.”

“May I see some identification, please?”

I got out my wallet and handed him the New York driver’s license. He read it without moving his lips and then handed it back. “The other gentleman?” From the way he said it I could tell that Mbwato was a mile or two from being a gentleman in his estimation.

“He wants some identification,” I said.

“To be sure,” Mbwato said, reached into the inside breast pocket of his splendid deep blue, raw-silk jacket, and handed over what looked to be a passport. The guard opened it, read all about Mbwato, looked at the picture, compared it with the real thing, and then said, “How do you pronounce it?”

“Conception Mbwato,” the good colonel said in his best Old Boy English.

“Just a minute,” the guard said, and went back into the hut and picked up a telephone. The other guard continued to lean on the door on the right-hand side and stare at Mbwato. “You’re a big ’un, for sure,” he said conversationally, and Mbwato smiled at him again. The guard in the hut replaced the phone and came out. “Follow the road straight ahead,” he said, as if by rote. “Do not turn off. Do not drive over twenty miles per hour. Do not stop. One mile from here you’ll be met by a blue jeep. Follow the jeep to the main house.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded and went back into a hut where I assumed that he pressed a button because the two iron gates parted. I drove through and followed another winding asphalt road through grassland and forest for a mile. I drove exactly twenty miles per hour. There were no buildings in sight.

“Mr. Spencer seems to put a high premium on security,” Mbwato said.

“His art collection is worth God knows how many million dollars,” I said. “I guess he doesn’t want it trucked away in the middle of the night.”

“How large is his farm?”

“Plantation,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“Four thousand acres, I think. That’s about eleven square miles.”

“My word.”

The blue jeep was waiting for us with a sign on its back that read
FOLLOW ME,
just like the ones that some airports have. Its driver was another of Spencer’s lean, rangy home guards and he kept the jeep at exactly twenty miles per hour as we wound through the meadows and the pines and the oaks and the birches. Three miles from where we picked up the jeep we topped a rise and caught our first glimpse of what one can do to make oneself comfortable if one is worth a billion dollars or so.

It was built on the side of a hill that ran down to an artificial lake that was large enough to land the pontoon-equipped six-passenger Beechcraft that was tied up alongside a concrete dock. The house or mansion or villa or chateau or whatever it was carefully tumbled down the side of the hill for a hundred yards or so. It was built primarily of gray fieldstone that had been cut into massive blocks at least ten feet long and two feet high. Thick chimneys stuck up from the black slate roof here and there and the windows were recessed a foot into the stone under wide eaves that thrust the roof line out in a pleasantly aggressive manner. It was a one-story structure built on at least a dozen levels that wandered down to the lake. A brilliant green lawn was saved from looking as if you could putt on it by what seemed to be casual plantings of shrubs and flowers which probably crowned the life’s work of some landscape genius.

Separated from the house by some fifty yards was a large, windowless one-story structure of what looked to be gray marble. It was built on a ledge that had been cut into the hill and I assumed that it contained Spencer’s art collection.

The jeep with the
FOLLOW ME
sign took us up a crushed-stone drive that circled in front of two massive green copper doors that were recessed into the gray stone. The jeep stopped and I pulled up behind it. The guard came back to the Ford and bent down to look at us. “No packages, briefcases, or luggage are allowed inside,” he recited. “If you will step out of the car, please.”

I stepped out and he said, “Hold your arms straight out from your body, please.” I did and he ran expert hands over me. “Thank you,” he said, then turned to Mbwato and gave him the same instructions and the same treatment. Mbwato left his large, black attaché case on the front seat.

The guard went up three steps to the door, pressed a button, and spoke into an intercommunication device. “Cleared at primary checkpoint,” he said. “Henderson now returning to mile-point-one.” The communications device squawked something and the green doors were opened by a wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped man, about thirty, with short-cropped brown hair and a face that would have been almost pretty but for a nose that someone had broken. “Mr. St. Ives,” he said, looking at me, “and Mr. Mbwato, I believe.” I nodded. “I’m Mr. Spencer’s secretary. Will you follow me, please.”

Mbwato and I followed him down a wide carpeted hall to a closed door. He knocked on the door and then opened it, stood to one side, and motioned us through. I went first; Mbwato followed. It was a good-sized room, well furnished and richly carpeted. Opposite the door was a glass wall that afforded a view of the lake. A massive carved desk was at the far right. Behind the desk was Spencer and behind Spencer, resting on the floor and leaning against the wall, as if nobody could think of a place to hang it, was the shield of Komporeen.

Mbwato gave a long sigh as we moved toward the desk. Spencer stood up, glanced at the shield, and then looked at me. “You haven’t seen it before, have you, St. Ives?”

“No.”

“But Mr. Mbwato—or rather, Colonel Mbwato, I should say—has.”

“Often,” Mbwato said.

“You said that you were bringing no one who was of the police, St. Ives,” Spencer said, and toyed with a letter opener on his desk. It was the only thing on it. “You lied to me.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you did. Colonel Conception Mbwato is very much of the police. The Komporeenean police.”

“I thought you were in the army,” I said to Mbwato.

The big man smiled gloriously and shrugged. “In a small country such as mine, Mr. St. Ives, it is sometimes difficult to separate the duties of the constabulary from those of the armed forces.”

“They have a name for Colonel Mbwato in his country,” Spencer said. “They call him ‘The Rope.’”

“Do they?” I said to Mbwato.

“Only the enemies of my country, I assure you, Mr. St. Ives.”

“And there have been at least two thousand of them in recent months,” Spencer said. “They have dangled from the end of ropes.”

“History demonstrates that each revolution produces a fair crop of both traitors and patriots,” Mbwato said. “It was at one time my duty to deal with the traitors.”

I moved over to the shield, squatted down, and looked at it. I was surprised that it was a dull, dark green. But most brass that is nine hundred or so years old probably is. In the center of the shield was a sunburst and from it emanated in widening concentric circles carefully cast figures who seemed busy running, harvesting, planting, making love, and killing each other with sharp-looking knives and spears. I thought they were extremely well done as were some animals who were also getting killed. It may have told a story, but there didn’t seem to be much plot.

I stood up and turned to Spencer. “Anything else?”

“You may have cost me a great deal of money, St. Ives.”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“You will,” he said, tightening his mouth into what I suppose he hoped was a grim line.

“Mr. Spencer has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t he?” Mbwato said.

I shrugged. “You want me to help carry the thing or would you rather do it yourself?”

“I can manage,” Mbwato said.

“You’ll never get another assignment, St. Ives,” Spencer said. “I’ll see to it.”

Mbwato moved over to the shield, ran a large hand over its edge, then leaned it from the wall and slipped his left arm through two brackets on its back. He picked it up easily, all sixty-eight pounds, and I thought that it was a perfect fit.

“Do you have any more threats?” I said to Spencer.

He was staring at the shield and once again there was that look that I had seen twice before, once on the face of a fat man in a cafeteria and once on the face of a cop on the take in a New York hotel. Greed. Spencer ran a thin, pointed tongue over his lips as if he could taste it.

“It’ll never get to Africa,” he said. “He’ll sell it in London or Rotterdam. He’s fooled you, St. Ives. He hasn’t fooled me. He’ll sell it.”

“Would you sell it in Rotterdam or London?” I asked Mbwato.

“How much, Mr. Spencer?” Mbwato said softly. “How much do you think it would bring—in Rotterdam, say?”

“How much do you want?” Spencer said in a whisper, his thin tongue working at his lips again. Mbwato stared back at him, holding the shield chest high, his face for once impassive. “How much?” Spencer said again, hurling the words into the silence. “How much do you want?” This time it was a scream, one that keened out on the last word.

Mbwato looked at him without expression. Then he smiled, that gleaming, brighten-the-corner-where-you-are smile of his, and turned toward the door. I followed him through it and down the hall.

Halfway to the green copper doors that were held open by the man with the broken nose, Spencer called after us. It was more of a scream than a call. “How much, Mbwato? How much do you want?”

We didn’t hesitate or stop. We went through the door and down the three steps and across the crushed rock to the car. Mbwato put the shield in the rear, leaning it against the back seat. I had the car started by the time he got in next to me. “By the way,” he said, “what time is it?”

I didn’t look at my watch. I put the car into drive and pressed down on the accelerator. The rear wheels churned up some of the crushed rock. “It’s getaway time,” I said.

I
KEPT THE FORD
at twenty miles per hour on the way to the gate. We went past the blue jeep and its guard only glanced at us.

“Do you think he’ll give up so easily?” Mbwato said.

“Spencer? I don’t know.”

“At the gate perhaps,” he said.

“What about the gate?”

“They could try to stop us there.”

“He could have stopped us in the house. He’s got enough help around.”

“No,” Mbwato said. “Not in his home. It would be too complicated. I think the gate and if so, one must be prepared.” He took a key from his pocket and fitted it to the lock of his large attaché case. He opened it and I glanced at its contents.

“What in the hell is that?”

“Part of the Virginia contingency plan,” he said. “A sub-machine gun. A Carl Gustaf M45 to be exact, manufactured in Sweden.” He busily snapped things together. “Fires a 9-millimeter parabellum round, six hundred a minute. Thirty-six in the magazine,” he said, clicking one into the breech or whatever it was. I’m sure Mbwato knew.

With its U-shaped metal stock folded over its right side, the Carl Gustaf M45 had a wicked look about it. “Only weighs a little over nine pounds,” Mbwato said, handling the weapon as though it were an extension of his right arm.

“You get caught with a sub-machine gun in this country and you get thirty years,” I said.

“Really? I have one for you.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” I said.

“Oh, it’s not a sub-machine gun. It’s an automatic. Here.”

I had to take my right hand off the wheel to accept his present. It was a surprisingly light automatic. I glanced at it and saw the name Colt engraved on its slide.

“Quite a good piece,” Mbwato said. “It’s the Colt .45 Commander model with the alloy frame. Weighs just 26 ounces. Wonderful stopping power.”

“I don’t quite know how to thank you,” I said, and put the automatic on the seat beside me.

“Just a precaution.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Of course.”

The two guards at the exit to the plantation must have seen us coming because the gate opened as we approached and the one who earlier had examined our identification was outside the stone hut waving us through. Mbwato smiled at him as we went past; the guard didn’t smile back. I pressed the accelerator down and the Ford jumped up to sixty miles an hour which was really too fast for that road.

“Okay,” I said, “where to?”

“When you get to Highway 29 and 211 turn left. What time is it now?”

I looked at my watch. “Eight-twenty.”

“It’s growing dark.”

“Does that fit in with your getaway plan?”

“Perfectly,” he said.

“That’s good, because we’re going to need it.”

“Why?”

“We’ve got two cars behind us.”

“They’re following?”

“That’s right.”

“My word. Can you lose them?”

“No,” I said. “I’d only lose myself.”

Mbwato turned around in the seat. “There seem to be two in each car and they’re wearing hats very much like the guards at Spencer’s. He must have changed his mind.”

“He must have.”

“Is this a fast car?”

“Fairly so.”

“Then I think we should go as fast as possible.”

“That’s what I’m doing. It might help if you told me where we’re going.”

“Bull Run,” Mbwato said, adding dreamily, “‘Look! There stands Jackson like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians.’ General Barnard Elliott Bee said that, you know; gave Jackson his nickname.”

“At Bull Run,” I said.

“Manassas really. The first battle of Manassas to be exact. Jackson was an extremely dour man, most reserved.”

“And that’s where we’re going? To Manassas?”

“Not to the town, to the battlefield.”

“It was a big battle,” I said. “What particular spot do you have in mind?”

“Henry Hill.”

“What’s on Henry Hill?”

“It’s where Jackson held. In point of fact, there’s a statue of him there now. Might have been the turn of the battle really. McDowell’s union troops were hopeless, raw recruits mostly. Had McDowell kept the plateau, he might have won. There’s been some debate about that. But it was a great victory for the South. Their first. In fact, it was the first battle of the war.”