The Mortdecai Trilogy (34 page)

My host’s name proved to be either Ree or Lee: my uncertainty about this is perfectly genuine. At Oxford we had a Korean professor who trilled his name unmistakably as ‘Ree’ but insisted on writing ‘Lee’. He saw no anomaly in this.

As we dabbled in the finger-bowls, my courteous host murmured courteously that he bereaved I had a package for him. I dabbled thoughtfully.

‘That may well be,’ I said guardedly, ‘or, perhaps, not. What?’

He gazed at me civilly. I replied with equal civility.

‘You see, I have no instructions about lashing out samples of toothpowder or dentifrice to one and all, however delectable the dinner they give.’

‘Mr Mortdecai,’ he said heavily, or as heavily as chaps like that can, ‘you are surely experienced enough to know that in this particurar rine of business it is not considered porite, or even safe, to pray, ah, sirry buggers. We have, you understand, certain resources, ah?’

‘Oh, goodness, yes,’ I hastened to say, ‘goodness yes. Indeed, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of meeting your Mr Ho. Ah? That’s really why I’ve sort of taken out insurance. I mean, I’ve a simple-minded sort of mind, you understand, no trace of a death-wish or any of that rubbish: self-preservation is so much more fun than self-destructiveness, don’t you agree? Eh? Or rather, “Ah”, eh?’

‘What sort of precautions have you taken, Mr Mortdecai?’

‘Oh, well, I’ve sort of entrusted the toothpowder to the US Mails: an incorruptible lot, I’m told. Neither frost nor sleet nor trade unions prevents these messengers from etc. And it’s gone to a safe address. Old-fashioned, I know, but the best I could think of at the time. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Mr Mortdecai,’ he murmured suavely, pouring me another cup of delicious tea, ‘if you have met my subordinate, Mr Ho, you must surely rearize that this safe address can be ericited from you in ress time than it takes to say what I am saying.’

‘Oh, my word, yes; I quite understand that, but the address is no secret at all, you may have it for the asking. It’s the Commercial Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington – he doubles in security co-ordination or whatever they call it now, as I’m sure you know. Old school-friend of mine; knows my face, you see. I sort of worked for him in the 1940s if you know what I mean. He’s quite potty about security, wouldn’t dream of handing the package to anyone but me. And I mean, me
unaccompanied
, of course. And if I didn’t say the right sort of words he’d give me a cosy bedroom in the Embassy for as long as I needed it. You see?’

He thought a while but without ostentation.

‘I see,’ he said. (An English chap would have said ‘Yes, I see, I
see
,’ but your actual Oriental is economical with words.)

‘How much do you want?’ he asked.

‘Money?’ I asked disdainfully. ‘Nothing at all. Still less, God forbid, any part of that costly tooth-powder, for I fancy I know what happens to people who own such things when other people wish to own them. No, all I wish is a little information. I have
become tired and vexed, you see, at being used as a cat’s-paw in matters about which I know nothing. This prodding from random directions insults my intelligence. I am prepared to fight under almost any flag if the money is good, but I do need to have a squint at the flag first. I am too overweight to play, ah, silly buggers.’

I could tell by the way he mused over this that he was a clever man. How much cleverer than me he was, of course, remained an open question.

‘That is quite understandable, Mr Mortdecai,’ he said at last, ‘and it seems to me that your case-officer has been running you without a proper regard for your interrigence and, ah, other quarities. I agree that you should be given a view of the frag under which you are fighting – but you rearise that I must first get a little crearance. Ah?’

‘Ah,’ I agreed. He invited me to his office. We entered. That sounds easy, but entering the office of a clandestine Chinese gentleman seems to involve being goggled at through peepholes, scanned by metal-detectors and listening to the office-owner murmur into voice-sensitive locks – all that stuff which so destroys the quality of life nowadays. Death, too, now I come to think of it. He gave me a glass of the actual John Smith’s Glenlivet to sip while he dialled a number so prodigal in digits that it had to be somewhere far, far away. His polite stare at me while he waited for his connection bore no trace of hostility but it had the effect of making me feel far, far away from home and loved ones; one would have thought that he was costing me out in terms of coffin-wood – or perhaps concrete and baling-wire. I let my tummy sag out fully, hoping to make myself look less cost-effective. The telephone crackled at last.

‘Harro!’ he said. ‘ … may make more noise,’ I murmured, for I can never resist finishing a quotation. His stare at me sharpened and he switched into a language which sounded like a malicious send-up of a Welsh newsreader but was, I suppose, one of the many brands of Chinese. He clacked and grunted and fluted awhile then listened intently while similar noises from his interlocutor made the instrument positively vibrate in his hand. This went on for a time then, in beautifully-modulated but outdated French, he said, ‘
D’accord. Au’voir, re copain
.’ Showing off, I suppose. Having replaced the receiver he said to me, ‘Would you rike to wash your
hands, Mr Mortdecai?’ I inspected said members: they were indeed sweating profusely. How had he
known
?

Returning from his richly but curiously appointed lavatory, I moved into the attack.

‘Well, Mr Ree?’ were the stormtrooper words which spearheaded my attack.

‘Thankyou, yes,’ he replied. My attack was wiped out. I felt just like an infantry subaltern who has thrown away a platoon against a machine-gun emplacement he forgot to mark on his map. (Listening to the Colonel’s remarks afterwards is not nearly so unpleasant as sitting down to write twenty letters to next-of-kin while the people in the Orderly Room pretend you’re not there. The worst bit is when your batman brings you your dinner to the foxhole or bivvy-tent, saying ‘Thought you might be too tired to dine in Mess tonight. Sir.’ But I reminisce.)

Having delivered the devastating ‘thankyou, yes,’ Mr Lee or Ree fell silent, studying me again. I did not break this silence; I felt that it was his move.

‘Mr Mortdecai,’ he said after a demoralizing interval, ‘are you a discreet man? No, prease do not repry, that was not a question but a warning. A rittre more Grenrivet? Good. I keep it for speciah occasions.’ Those words ‘speciah occasions’ hung delicately in the air between us.

‘Now,’ he went on, ‘my friend has agreed that I should tell you enough to exprain a rittle of our work – just enough to encourage you not to pray any more games with goods worth a great sum of money. The conditions are that you do not mention this conversation to your derightful rady wife; that you do not speak of it to any American Coroners you may happen to know (yes, we know about that but we bereave your rady wife does not) and, of course, you make no expranations to your Embassy friend in Washington, who is, forgive me, prease, a fool. In any case, his office is bugged.’

‘Tut!’ I said, frowningly. He raised a hand.

‘We did not bug it’ he said reprovingly. ‘The Americans did. They are even sirrier than the Engrish. We bug their bugs after they have instorred them. Much cheaper.

‘Now, prease pay attention more crosery. If you were to tell any of these people what I shall now tell you, three very powerful organizations would be offended with you.
Offended
.’

I sighed. How life repeats itself, to be sure.
^*

‘Do go on,’ I murmured nonchalantly. My hands were sticky with sweat again.

‘First, your rady wife is very fond of you but in such circumstances she would have to rate you “insecure” and pass you over to her people for disposah. Fiona, the dog-girl at the Correge, would bury you. Probabry your wife has enough infruence to ensure that you would be dead before buriah; I do not know.’

I did not shudder, I never let foreigners see me shudder, but he must have seen that the beads of sweat were popping out of my forehead like ping-pong balls.

‘Next, once you had given this information to a certain American Coroner, you would now be expendabah and he could prease many of his superiors – who have never approved of his keeping you arive – by “terminating you with extreme prejudice” as he would say. Naturarry, you would be interrogated first and this would hurt.’

‘Quite,’ I quavered. I don’t mind telling you that I detest being hurt.

‘Last, you would now be an enemy, in the third crass, of my own organization.’

‘Only
third
class?’ I asked in the indignant tones which Queen Victoria surely used when she received the Abyssinian Order of Chastity, Second Class; ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means we would not kill you.’

‘Oh, good.’

A muscle in his face twitched, almost as though he were a British cavalry officer who is trying to puzzle out whether someone has made a joke and, if so, whether or not it would be good form to smile.

‘No,’ he went on, having clearly dismissed any intention of smiling, ‘We would not kill you. We do not kill enemies of the third crass. But after a rittle time you would be asking us most poritery for death. We would not feel able to obrige. After another two or three days – this would depend on your stamina and vitarity – let us say two days – we would rerease you conveniently crose to a rairway-bridge. With a white walking-stick – you would of course by then have lost your sight – which would be taped to
what would remain of your hand, and a tendorrar note between your teeth. Sorry, yes, gums – you would no ronger have any teeth, naturarry.’

‘Naturarry,’ I said bravely.

‘The ten dorrars would be for you to give to some indigent passerby who would help you to a convenient part of the rairway-bridge: you would be anxious for such help by then, you understand.’

I pulled myself together, remembering that I was, after all, partly British. We British do not cringe in the presence of the heathen, nor are we daunted by foreign threats. (Well, all right, Suez was a special case, wasn’t it?)

‘Mr Ree,’ I said, as crisply as the words allowed, ‘pray tell me something. Is it true that Chinese, ah, persons, consider themselves to be constipated if they do not achieve at least two motions of the bowels each weekday? I have read this somewhere and I long to know whether it be true.’ He considered this for quite half a minute, looking as nonplussed as his inscrutability would permit.

‘Yes,’ he said after the stated half-minute, ‘yes, this is true. But I cannot see why you should ask such a thing. Are there not matters of almost equal importance … ?’

‘I ask,’ I said, maintaining the British crispness, ‘because I fear for your health. It seems to me that a good deal of surplus, ah, effluent has been escaping from your mouth during the past few minutes. Your digestive tract seems to have lost all sense of direction. In short, if you will forgive me, I begin to find your talk tedious.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘On the other hand,’ I continued, ‘your points are well taken; indeed I have been in accord with you for some ten minutes. If you will now tell me, in your own words, as much of the truth as your masters have empowered you to tell, then you may depend upon it that I shall impart it to no one. First, I am a man of my word. Second, I am not brave.’

‘Ah,’ he said again. ‘But, Mr Mortdecai, our dossier on you must be at fault, for it states that you can lie like a prostitute and are capable of quite absurd bravery on occasion. But it also says that you are sensible, a virtue often mistaken for cowardice.’

I looked at my watch and stifled a well-bred yawn.

‘Mr Ree,’ I said, ‘you have frightened me, as you intended. This was unnecessary for I was already frightened. Your dossier is right in one respect: I am sensible. Tell me some of the truth. We both know that you can and will kill me later if you decide to do so – and unless I contrive to kill you first, which has no part in my plans at present. Meanwhile, perhaps I might have just a touch more of that delicious malt whisky? And enough plausible facts to persuade me to part with the toothpowder, eh?’

How brave I was, to be sure. Mr Ree passed me a Kleenex. I mopped the sweat off my forehead. He began to utter.

‘Your wife is Johanna Mortdecai,’ he told me. Well, I knew that, of course, but I wasn’t about to walk into any straight-line situations; I didn’t even nod.

‘She is the chief financier – forgive me, financière? – of the Women’s Domination Society; arso, Deputy Head of it.’

‘You mean Women’s
Liberation
, don’t you?’ I said in the embarrassed tones one uses to foreigners who get words wrong.

‘No, Mr Mortdecai. Women’s Riberation is a piece of sirriness which was froated to, ah, test the temperature of the water and to mask the rear movement. It was instructive to see how many sirry women were prepared to, shall we say, cut off their bras to spite their breasts.’ He had made a joke. I smiled, not showing the teeth. ‘Quite agree,’ I said. ‘I mean, if God hadn’t meant us to wear trusses, he wouldn’t have given us ruptures, would he?’ He didn’t smile.

‘The Women’s Domination Society is very serious. It is probabry the richest private organization in the world; even richer than the Parestinian Popurar Front – with whom they happen to be friends.’ I was about to say something valiant about how little I cared for the riches and murderous capacity of the PFLP when I recalled that, some forty years ago, I had promised an aged aunt never to tell a lie. (This was in exchange for a tin of Mackintosh’s Quality Street Toffee Selection. Those toffees are long gone – nor would I find them toothsome in this my middle age – but a Mortdecai’s promise, even to an aunt, is not to be paltered with.) So I held my tongue.

‘They intend,’ continued Mr Lee, ‘to assume controh of the world.’ I gave him that look – often practised before the mirror – which I give to players at stud poker who back into the betting on the fourth card. He was unimpressed.

‘How can they
not
win?’ he asked. ‘First, the terrifying American middre-aged woman controhs quite three-fifths of the wealth of the richest country in the world. Second, the women “behind the curtain” – in the harems of the Musrim world – controh wealth which even Zurich could not count. Third, the female interrectuals of Israel and India have their poriticah worlds by the, ah, borrocks. Fourth, women have the insensate drive of the castration comprex; the same knowledge of inferiority which makes rittre men into tyrants. Arexander the Great was incapable with women; Attira the Hun died trying to achieve an erection; Naporeon had an absurdry small penis (36mm – it was sold at Sotheby’s a few years ago) and Adorf Hitrer, as all the world knows, had onry one testicre.’