Shibumi (50 page)

Father Xavier’s head was bent, his fingers pressed against his temple, his hand partially masking the dim features of the old woman on the other side of the confessional’s wicker screen. It was an attitude of compassionate understanding that permitted him to think his own thoughts while the penitent droned on, recalling and admitting every little lapse, hoping to convince God, by the tiresome pettiness of her sins, that she was innocent of any significant wrongdoing. She had reached the point of confessing the sins of others—of asking forgiveness for not having been strong enough to prevent her husband from drinking, for having listened to the damning gossip of Madame Ibar, her neighbor, for permitting her son to miss Mass and join the hunt for boar instead.

Automatically humming an ascending interrogative note at each pause. Father Xavier’s mind was dealing with the problem of superstition. At Mass that morning, the itinerate priest had made use of an ancient superstition to gain their attention and to underline his message of faith and revolution. He himself was too well educated to believe in the primitive fears that characterize the faith of the mountain Basque; but as a soldier of Christ, he felt it his duty to grasp each weapon that came to hand and to strike a blow for the Church Militant. He knew the superstition that a clock striking during the
Sagara
(the elevation of the Host) was an infallible sign of imminent death. Setting a clock low beside the altar where he could see it, he had timed the
Sagara
to coincide with its striking of the hour. There had been an audible gasp in the congregation, followed by a profound silence. And taking his theme from the omen of impending death, he had told them it meant the death of repression against the Basque people, and the death of ungodly influences within the revolutionary movement. He had been satisfied with the effect, manifest in part by several invitations to take supper and to pass the night in the homes of local peasants, and in part by an uncommonly large turnout for evening confession—even several men, although only old men, to be sure.

Would this last woman never end her catalogue of trivial omissions? Evening was setting in, deepening the gloom of the ancient church, and he was feeling the pangs of hunger. Just before this self-pitying chatterbox had squeezed her bulk into the confessional, he had peeked out and discovered that she was the last of the penitents. He breathed a sigh and cut into her stream of petty flaws, calling her his daughter and telling her that Christ understood and forgave, and giving her a penance of many prayers, so she would feel important.

When she left the box, he sat back to give her time to leave the church. Undue haste in getting to a free dinner with wine would be unseemly. He was preparing to rise, when the curtain hissed and another penitent slipped into the shadows of the confessional.

Father Xavier sighed with impatience.

A very soft voice said, “You have only seconds to pray, Father.”

The priest strained to see through the screen into the shadows of the confessional, then he gasped. It was a figure with a bandage around its head, like the cloth tied under the chins of the dead to keep their mouths from gaping! A ghost?

Father Xavier, too well educated for superstition, pressed back away from the screen and held his crucifix before him. “Begone!
I! Abi!”

The soft voice said, “Remember Beñat Le Cagot.”

“Who are you? What—”

The wicker screen split, and the point of Le Cagot’s
makila
plunged between the priest’s ribs, piercing his heart and pinning him to the wall of the confessional.

Never again would it be possible to shake the villager’s faith in the superstition of the
Sagara,
for it had proved itself. And in the months that followed, a new and colorful thread was woven into the folk myth of Le Cagot—he who had mysteriously vanished into the mountains, but who was rumored to appear suddenly whenever Basque freedom fighters needed him most. With a vengeful will of its own, Le Cagot’s
makila
had flown to the village of Alos and punished the perfidious priest who had informed on him.

As he stood in the plush private elevator, mercifully without Musak, Hel moved his jaw gingerly from side to side. In the eight days he had been setting up this meeting, his body had mended well. The jaw was still stiff, but did not require the undignified gauze sling; his hands were tender, but the bandages were gone, as were the last yellowish traces of bruise on his forehead.

The elevator stopped and the door opened directly into an outer office, where a secretary rose and greeted him with an empty smile. “Mr. Hel? The Chairman will be with you soon. The other gentleman is waiting inside. Would you care to join him?” The secretary was a handsome young man with a silk shirt open to the middle of his chest and tight trousers of a soft fabric that revealed the bulge of his penis. He conducted Hel to an inner reception room decorated like the parlor of a comfortable rural home: overstuffed chairs in floral prints, lace curtains, a low tea table, two Lincoln rockers, bric-a-brac in a glass-front étagère, framed photographs of three generations of family on an upright piano.

The gentleman who rose from the plump sofa had Semitic features, but an Oxford accent. “Mr. Hel? I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I am Mr. Able, and I represent OPEC interests in such matters as these.” There was an extra pressure to his handshake that hinted at his sexual orientation. “Do sit down, Mr. Hel. The Chairman will be with us soon. Something came up at the last moment, and she was called away briefly.”

Hel selected the least distasteful chair. “She?”

Mr. Able laughed musically. “Ah, you did not know that the Chairman was a woman?”

“No, I didn’t. Why isn’t she called the Chairwoman, or one of those ugly locutions with which Americans salve their social consciences at the sacrifice of euphony: chairperson, mailperson, freshperson—that sort of thing?”

“Ah, you will find the Chairman unbound by conventions. Having become one of the most powerful people in the world, she does not have to seek recognition; and achieving equality would, for her, be a great step down.” Mr. Able smiled and tilted his head coquettishly. “You know, Mr. Hel, I learned a great deal about you before Ma summoned me to this meeting.”

“Ma?”

“Everyone close to the Chairman calls her Ma. Sort of a family joke. Head of the Mother Company, don’t you see?”

“I do see, yes.”

The door to the outer office opened, and a muscular young man with a magnificent suntan and curly golden hair entered carrying a tray.

“Just set it down here,” Mr. Able told him. Then to Hel he said, “Ma will doubtless ask me to pour.”

The handsome beachboy left after setting out the tea things, thick, cheap china in a blue-willow pattern.

Mr. Able noticed Hel’s glance at the china. “I know what you’re thinking. Ma prefers things to be what she calls ‘homey.’ I learned about your colorful background, Mr. Hel, at a briefing session a while ago. Of course I never expected to meet you—not after Mr. Diamond’s report of your death. Please believe that I regret what the Mother Company special police did to your home. I consider it unpardonable barbarism.”

“Do you?” Hel was impatient with the delay, and he had no desire to pass the time chatting with this Arab. He rose and crossed to the piano with its row of family photographs.

At this moment, the door to the inner office opened, and the Chairman entered.

Mr. Able rose quickly to his feet. “Mrs. Perkins, may I introduce Nicholai Hel?”

She took Hel’s hand and pressed it warmly between her plump, stubby fingers. “Land sakes, Mr. Hel, you just couldn’t know how I have looked forward to meeting you.” Mrs. Perkins was a chubby woman in her mid-fifties. Clear maternal eyes, neck concealed beneath layers of chin, gray hair done up in a bun, with wisps that had escaped the net chignon, pigeon-breasted, plump forearms with deeply dimpled elbows, wearing a silk dress of purple paisley. “I see that you’re looking at my family. My pride and joy, I always call them. That’s my grandson there. Rascally little fella. And this is Mr. Perkins. Wonderful man. Cordon-bleu cook and just a magician with flowers.” She smiled at her photographs and shook her head with proprietary affection. “Well, maybe we should turn to our business. Do you like tea, Mr. Hel?” She lowered herself into a Lincoln rocker with a puff of sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without my tea.”

“Have you looked at the information I forwarded to you, Mrs. Perkins?” He lifted his hand to Mr. Able, indicating that he would forego a cup of tea made from tea bags.

The Chairman leaned forward and placed her hand on Hel’s arm. “Why don’t you just call me Ma? Everyone does.”

“Have you looked at the information, Mrs. Perkins?”

The warm smile disappeared from her face and her voice became almost metallic. “I have.”

“You will recall that I made a precondition to our talk your promise that Mr. Diamond be kept ignorant of the fact that I am alive.”

“I accepted that precondition.” She glanced quickly at Mr. Able. “The contents of Mr. Hel’s communication are eyes-only for me. You’ll have to follow my lead in this.”

“Certainly, Ma.”

“And?” Hel asked.

“I won’t pretend that you do not have us in a tight spot, Mr. Hel. For a variety of reasons, we would not care to have things upset just now, when our Congress is dismantling that Cracker’s energy bill. If I understand the situation correctly, we would be ill-advised to take counteraction against you, as that would precipitate the information into the European press. It is currently in the hands of an individual whom Fat Boy identifies as the Gnome. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s all a matter of price, Mr. Hel. What
is
your price?”

“Several things. First, you have taken some land in Wyoming from me. I want it back.”

The Chairman waved a pudgy hand at so trivial a matter.

“And I shall require that your subsidiaries stop all strip-mining in a radius of three hundred miles from my land.”

Mrs. Perkins’s jaw worked with controlled anger, her cold eyes fixed on Hel. Then she blinked twice and said, “All right.”

“Second, there is money of mine taken from my Swiss account.”

“Of course. Of course. Is that all?”

“No. I recognize that you could undo any of these actions at will. So I shall have to leave this leverage information on line for an indefinite period. If you offend me in any way, the button will be released.”

“I see. Fat Boy informs me that this Gnome person is in poor health.”

“I have heard that rumor.”

“You realize that if he should die, your protection is gone?”

“Not exactly, Mrs. Perkins. Not only would he have to die, but your people would have to be sure he was dead. And I happen to know that you have never located him and don’t have even an idea of his physical appearance. I suspect that you will intensify your search for the Gnome, but I’m gambling that he is hidden away where you will never find him.”

“We shall see. You have no further demands upon us?”

“I have further demands. Your people destroyed my home. It may not be possible to repair it, as there no longer are craftsmen of the quality that built it. But I intend to try.”

“How much?”

“Four million.”

“No house is worth four million dollars!”

“It’s now five million.”

“My dear boy, I started my professional career with less than a quarter of that, and if you think—”

“Six million.”

Mrs. Perkins’s mouth snapped shut. There was absolute silence, as Mr. Able nervously directed his glance away from the pair looking at one another across the tea table, one with a cold fixed stare, the other with lids half-lowered over smiling green eyes.

Mrs. Perkins drew a slow, calming breath. “Very well. But that, I suggest, had better be the last of your demands.”

“In point of fact, it is not.”

“Your price has reached its market maximum. There is a limit to the degree to which what is good for the Mother Company is good for America.”

“I believe, Mrs. Perkins, that you’ll be pleased by my last demand. If your Mr. Diamond had done his work competently, if he had not allowed personal enmity for me to interfere with his judgment, you would not now be facing this predicament. My last demand is this: I want Diamond. And I want the CIA gunny named Starr, and that PLO goatherd you call Mr. Haman. Don’t think of it as additional payment. I am rendering you a service—meting out punishment for incompetence.”

“And that is your last demand?”

“That is my last demand.”

The Chairman turned to Mr. Able. “How have your people taken the death of the Septembrists in that plane accident?”

“Thus far, they believe it was just that, an accident. We have not informed them that it was an assassination. We were awaiting your instructions, Ma.”

“I see. This Mr. Haman… he is related to the leader of the PLO movement, I believe.”

“That is true, Ma.”

“How will his death go down?”

Mr. Able considered this for a moment. “We may have to make concessions again. But I believe it can be handled.”

Mrs. Perkins turned again to Hel. She stared at him for several seconds. “Done.”

He nodded. “Here is how it will be set up. You will show Diamond the information now in your hands concerning the Kennedy assassination. You will tell him you have a line on the Gnome, and you can trust no one but him to kill the Gnome and secure the originals. He will realize how dangerous it would be to have other eyes than his see this material. You will instruct Diamond to go to the Spanish Basque village of Oñate. He will be contacted by a guide who will take them into the mountains, where they will find the Gnome. I shall take it from there. One other thing… and this is most important. I want all three of them to be well armed when they go into the mountains.”

“Did you get that?” she asked Mr. Able, her eyes never leaving Hel’s face.

“Yes, Ma.”

She nodded. Then her stern expression dissolved and she smiled, wagging a finger at Hel. “You’re quite a fellow, young man. A real horse trader. You would have gone a long way in the commercial world. You’ve got the makings of a real fine businessman.”

“I’ll overlook that insult.”

Mrs. Perkins laughed, her wattles jiggling. “I’d love to have a good long gabfest with you, son, but there are folks waiting for me in another office. We’ve got a problem with some kids demonstrating against one of our atomic-power plants. Young people just aren’t what they used to be, but I love them all the same, the little devils.” She pushed herself out of the rocker. “Lord, isn’t it true what they say: woman’s work is never done.”