The Corners of the Globe (29 page)

‘I was ground crew,’ Sam mumbled apologetically.

‘And what exactly d’you think this escapade accomplished?’

‘I’m hoping it’ll make him trust us.’

‘He’s given us nothing. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘But maybe he will give us something now.’

‘Maybe. I—’

A movement within the apartment caught their attention. A movement and a sound: a click, as of a latch engaging. They rushed into the bed-sitting-room.

Le Singe was not there. But something had changed while they had been on the balcony. ‘Look,’ said Sam.

A small sheaf of papers had been placed on the table. There were about half a dozen sheets in all, hole-punched in one corner and held together by a tag. They were covered in script – some typed and some handwritten. It was spidery, oriental script arranged in columns. Sam was hardly qualified to judge, but he felt instantly certain it was Japanese.

PARIS WAS EERILY
quiet in the aftermath of the earlier protests and disorders. This did not give Sam any particular sense of safety, however, as he and Morahan hurried across the Pont Neuf and headed east along the Quai des Orfèvres. Proximity to Police Headquarters should have supplied some reassurance and was, he guessed, the reason Morahan had chosen the route. But somehow he was not reassured.

The document le Singe had given them might be all and more they needed to move against Count Tomura and his son, but it was impenetrable to them. They needed to have it translated as quickly as possible and the only way Sam could suggest of achieving that was to enlist the help of Kuroda’s assistant, Yamanaka, via his cousin, the
blanchisseur
of Rue Frédéric-Sauton.

‘How can we be sure Yamanaka will respond to our message, Sam?’ Morahan asked, almost reflectively, as he strode along.

‘Kuroda assured me he would,’ Sam replied, breaking into a half-jog to keep up with the tall American.

‘Well, I guess that’s good enough. We’ll just have to hope the document gives us something we can use.’

‘It will, Mr Morahan: that’s why le Singe gave it to us.’

‘You’re a sight surer of him than I am. That dance he led us . . .’ Morahan shook his head. ‘I’ll bet it’s not all he could have given us. He must have a secret stash somewhere on the roof of that building.’

‘It wouldn’t be easy to find it.’

‘No. But he has no need of that rope-ladder, does he? He must have rigged it up for Soutine to use in an emergency. And if Soutine could reach the stash, so can we.’

‘We shouldn’t try, Mr Morahan. He wouldn’t trust us if we did.’

‘All right, God damn it. We’ll trust him.
If
that document yields something useful.’

The Blanchisserie Orita was plainly not the kind of establishment where a general strike was likely to be observed. The staff were all Asians, though they spoke French. English was incomprehensible to them, so Morahan switched to French to ask after the eponymous Orita.

He appeared through a doorway concealed by a thickly hung row of bagged garments awaiting collection. Bald, spectrally thin and spaniel-eyed, clad in snowy white overalls, he heard their request expressionlessly.

‘Twentyman,’ he said slowly, stressing each syllable, when Morahan had finished. ‘
D’accord
.’ He looked Sam in the eye. ‘A message for my cousin?’

‘Yes,’ Sam replied.

‘What is it?’ Orita leant forward, so that Sam had only to whisper to make himself understood.

‘We want him to meet us at Gare St-Lazare at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘I will tell him.’

‘When?’ Morahan pressed.

Orita greeted the question with a frown, perhaps of irritation. ‘Before eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘Will he be there?’

‘I will give him the message.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sam, pressing his foot against Morahan’s. Annoying Orita struck him as a bad idea. ‘That’s all we needed to know.’

Sam acknowledged he could not return to the Majestic that night in case Tomura did have the hotel under surveillance. But having heard about Morahan’s rift with Ireton, he was not convinced Morahan’s apartment was a wise choice of bolt-hole either.

‘Don’t worry,’ Morahan reassured him. ‘Tomura won’t have learnt where I live. I guard the information carefully. But we need cast-iron certainty on the point, I agree. Which is why we’re going there via the Ile St-Louis.’

Malory Hollander was drinking light beer and smoking a long, slender cigarette in a café halfway along the Rue St-Louis-en-l’Ile. It was clear to Sam she had been waiting for Morahan. She was reading a book, the title of which –
Of Human Bondage
– made him feel no happier about his situation.

Sam had never met Malory before, but she seemed to know everything there was to know about him. His first impression of her – stiff and starchy, quite possibly hoity-toity – changed rapidly. She was Ireton’s secretary, but Morahan’s confidante.

‘I’d have spat in Travis’s eye and resigned on the spot, Schools, if you hadn’t said it was vital I remain there in the short term. You will make that the very short term, won’t you? Travis has burnt his boats with me by siding with Tomura against you.’

‘It’s important he doesn’t know that, Malory,’ said Morahan. ‘If Tomura found out you were helping us, you’d be in as much danger as we are. I can’t allow that.’

‘Travis actually instructed me to give Tomura your address, you know.’

‘Which you did?’

‘Certainly. Your
old
address, anyhow. Just as well you never settle anywhere.’

‘It’s my footloose character.’

‘I’ll be sure to act surprised if Tomura comes complaining you don’t live there any more. Now, what happened at the apartment? Did le Singe show up?’

‘He did. And we have something that may be useful. But we won’t know for certain until tomorrow. It’s a document – in Japanese.’

‘Let me see.’

‘You read Japanese, do you, Miss Hollander?’ Sam asked.

‘No, Sam, I don’t. But I might be able to turn up something useful.’ She began scanning the pages Morahan had passed her, squinting through her horn-rimmed glasses. ‘And please call me Malory. Also please stop calling Schools Mr Morahan. However you’d choose to describe our little alliance, formal wouldn’t be it, I reckon.’

‘OK, Malory,’ Sam said with an effort. ‘How’d you get a name like Schools . . . Schools?’

‘I’ll tell you some other time,’ Morahan growled.

‘You’re going to get this translated?’ asked Malory as she read on.

‘Kuroda’s assistant will do the honours.’

‘It’ll be fascinating to find out what it— Ah! My goodness me.’

‘What?’

‘Here. And here again.’ Malory pointed to two blocks of characters on one of the pages. ‘This word. I’m pretty sure I recognize it. It’s the word Max showed us when he came to the office that last time. The word written on a scrap of wallpaper. It’s written vertically here, of course, rather than left to right in the Western style. But it
is
the same.’

Sam peered at the characters. They meant nothing to him as such, of course. They looked familiar, it was true, but he could not have sworn they were the same as those he had seen himself on the scrap of wallpaper Max had brought back from London. It was tempting to believe they were, though, since le Singe was the source of both.

‘Farngold,’ he said under his breath.

‘That’s what it means? The name Farngold?’

‘It’s what le Singe wrote on the wallpaper at the flat in London after he helped Max get the better of Tarn. Yamanaka translated it for him.’

‘So this document tells us all about Farngold,’ Morahan suggested.

‘Maybe,’ said Malory. ‘Yamanaka will be able to tell you.’

‘Does Max know who Farngold is, Sam?’ Morahan asked.

‘No, he doesn’t. But he’d badly like to. Farngold was the name his father held a safe-deposit box under at the Bank Ornal. The box Lemmer emptied.’

‘Lemmer and Henry and Farngold and Tomura,’ Morahan mused. ‘There’s the thread.’

‘And it leads to Japan, Schools,’ said Malory, in a tone that suggested a significance to the point beyond any Sam was equipped to comprehend. ‘Japan thirty years ago. And Japan today.’

‘What d’you mean, Malory?’ Sam asked.

‘Tell him, Schools,’ she responded. ‘You must tell him now it’s come to this.’

‘Yuh.’ Morahan nodded sorrowfully. ‘I guess I must.’

MAX FORMULATED A
plan of sorts as he walked down through Westminster towards Pimlico. He helped himself to a fist-sized chunk of masonry from a building site he passed and bought a pair of thick woollen socks at the next draper’s he came to. He stuffed the chunk inside one of the socks, knotted it and reckoned the result was the most serviceable weapon he could hope to come by.

The draper helped him out with directions to Glamorgan Street as well. It ran between Lupus Street and Grosvenor Road, close to Belgrave Dock. The streets around the dock were, he saw as he approached, lined with terraced working-class houses. He decided to approach Glamorgan Street from the river end and walked down past the dock to reach it. The night was closing in and the warehouses were shuttered and silent. The evening was damp and windless.

He turned in to Glamorgan Street and saw a pub sign ahead: the Balmoral Castle. Number 24 was some way beyond it on the same side. It was not quite as dark as he wanted it to be. Patience, he knew, was as important as determination. He went into the pub, where men who looked for the most part as if they worked at the dock were drinking and smoking and playing cribbage and bickering amiably. He ordered a Scotch and sipped it slowly, standing at the bar. He did not know exactly what he was going to do. But he
was
going to do it.

Morahan declined to say any more until he and Sam had reached the privacy of his apartment. There they settled over glasses of bourbon and talked the matter through.

‘Going back to the life of an ordinary working Joe after you’ve fought in a war is no easy thing, Sam,’ Morahan began. ‘I guess I don’t need to tell you that. Well, after Travis and I had served together in Cuba in ’ninety-eight, Travis fixed us up with an assignment in Colombia. There was a civil war brewing and the US government had a hand in it. Travis knew more than he told me and that was fine by me. I did more drinking than thinking back then. Anyhow, the plan was to foment a revolution in Panama, which was still Colombian territory, in order to set up a US-friendly government that would cede the US a strip of land to push the Panama Canal through.

‘That all worked out well if you were sitting in Washington with a map spread out on your desk, but it was dirty business down on the ground. We were paid well, though, I can’t deny it. We moved on to Peru afterwards. “American interests” – that was how Travis always described our anonymous paymasters – wanted to secure control of some copper deposits, by fair means or foul. They were mostly foul. I split with Travis because I didn’t like what he was turning me into and we went our separate ways, though it seems I hadn’t learnt my lesson, because I partnered up with him again later. Before leaving Peru, I did a few stupid things. Sabotage of US corporation assets, they called it. I never thought they’d come after me. But they did. I went to Brazil and found work – the semi-respectable kind in Rio de Janeiro. Then I was arrested. The Brazilian government was pro-American and the authorities would’ve been happy to send me back to Peru, where I’d have been tried on exaggerated charges and likely executed.’

‘Cripes,’ said Sam.

‘Yuh. Annoying the wrong people can be costly in Latin America. I claimed I was British because it was the only way I could think of to stop them dispatching me in chains to Lima. It was true up to a point. I was born in Belfast. The British Embassy sent someone to interview me. It was Sir Henry Maxted. I told him my whole sad story. I didn’t think he was going to help me. All I had to offer was the place of birth written in my US passport. But he wasn’t the stuffed-shirt type I was expecting. He was . . . sympathetic. For some reason I never properly understood, he seemed to like me. He said he’d see what he could do.’

‘And he got you out?’

‘He did. On the technicality that I was British-born and had never renounced British citizenship. “But I wouldn’t linger in Brazil if I were you, my boy,” he said. “London might countermand me if anyone cares to take it that far.” So, I vamoosed. I haven’t been south of the Rio Grande since, though there have been enough military coups and changes of government in Peru over the years to bury the charges against me.

‘I hooked up with Travis again a few years ago in New York. I’m not proud of all the things we’ve done together, but there’s been nothing like what we fell out over in Peru – until now. We came to Paris to make money the way Travis likes to make money – by brokering information. “Clean hands, full pockets” is how he describes it. With so many politicians and diplomats in the city, it occurred to me Henry might be among them. I checked with the British delegation and they confirmed he was part of their team, so naturally I looked him up. It was good to see him again.

‘It was around the end of February that he asked to meet me to discuss something important. I didn’t know what to expect, but it surely wasn’t what it turned out to be. He needed my help – and my advice. He wanted to launch a rescue mission, as he called it. Someone was being held in conditions of close captivity in Japan. He never said who they were or who was holding them or where exactly they were being held. But getting them out would be, well, challenging was how he put it. Impossible, in fact, without a team comprising hardened professionals in that kind of game. Did I know any such people? Could I put such a team together? And would I be willing to lead it?’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said yes, Sam. Ordinarily, to anyone else, I’d have said no. But I owed Henry my life. It’s not the kind of debt you walk away from. So, I agreed to help him. But I warned him it wouldn’t be quick or easy and it certainly wouldn’t be cheap. From the little he said I judged I’d have to recruit at least half a dozen good men. None of them were in Paris. I’d have to go back to New York to arrange it. Henry admitted we’d be up against some powerful people in Japan. I asked him if he really wanted to go through with it. He said he had to. “Now I know, I have no choice.” Again, what he knew and how he’d come to know it he wouldn’t reveal. He said he’d supply the details when our plans were further advanced. He didn’t have the money I told him would be needed, for one thing. But he meant to set about raising it right away. As we know he did.’