Siege at the Villa Lipp (28 page)

‘Reaction times must be slowing down.’

He chuckled. ‘Happens to us all, they say. But you’re here now, so never mind. I’ll get to the messages. He says you’ll want various questions answered, and that the first will be, ‘Who?’ After that comes, ‘Why?’. Finally, there’s, ‘What shall we do to be saved?’ That one must be religious, I think, from the way he said it. You still with me?’

‘Listening carefully.’

‘Then I’ll get straight to the why of it. I don’t have to tell you, Paul, that we’ve both been worried. Not about how you’d handle yourself, naturally, because we both of us know and respect you, but worried
for
and
with
you. So, we began wondering what we back home could do. We wanted you to feel that, when you were fighting that lonely battle of yours out there, you weren’t alone. We wanted you to know that you had friends right behind you ready to give a helping hand when you needed it. You understand me, Paul?’

‘Frank, it’s those friends right behind me, and what they might do before I can turn around and stop them, that I called about.’

‘Bear with me, Paul, and let me share our thinking with you. Our first thought was that you were, we all were, in bigger trouble than you wanted to admit, and that you were going to need more than a paper towel to clean off all that shit you stepped in. I mean clean if off so there’d be no lingering odour. What you needed, we figured, was one of those deodorants that does more than just freshen up the air. You needed one that would destroy the opposition’s sense of smell. Right?’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Look at it another way. What happens when one of these penny-ante Third-World governments has big trouble on the home front? You know what happens. It looks around for some foreign enemy who’ll take the people’s minds off all the troubles at home by standing up outside the gates and drawing fire. Xenophobia, right? Baddies from outside?’

‘I see.’

‘Of course you do. And you’ll also see that, with the kind of non-belligerents you have there with you right inside the city walls, we couldn’t take chances. You’re not going to fool social scientists of that calibre with Hallowe’en masks and hi-fi scream tracks. They’re serious investigators. You have to give them a taste of the real thing or they don’t believe, do they?’

‘Don’t believe what?’

“That this investigation they’re making is dangerous, physically dangerous. Dangerous for you, dangerous for your employees, and, thus, dangerous for
them.
In fact, so god-damned dangerous for everybody there, that the quicker they get their asses out the less likely they are to share the terrible fate planned for you. Death through proximity, that’s what they have to fear, Paul.’

‘They’re not going to buy it.’

‘You don’t know yet what you’ll be selling, friend. I’m trying to tell you. That is where we come to the “who” bit. Are you still with me? This is important.’

‘Still with you.’

‘Now, I’m not personally acquainted with the outfit that’s been hired, but I’ve heard of it and I understand that it’s talented enough to rate top money. Can’t say more because I’ve been told to stay with hard fact. The word to you from our friend, though, is that the tab for the operation’s been picked up by three guys acting in concert, three guys whose names he says you’ll know. I have them written down. Let’s see. Yes, here we are. The names are Kleister, Torten and Vic. Vic who, it doesn’t say. Maybe you know.’

‘Yes I know.’ The foot-pump connected to my head was being worked again.

‘Good. Then you’ll also know, Paul, that these three gentlemen are all, as far as you’re concerned, somewhat prejudiced. That means that, although our friend made it very clear to them that harassment was authorized only insofar as it was needed to carry conviction, the possibility of these nuts over-stepping the mark if provoked ought to be borne in mind. He asked me to mention that specially.’

‘I appreciate his concern.’

‘I hope you mean, that, Paul, because it’s something you should appreciate. He’s still fond of you, in spite of everything, and he still wants to protect you if you’ll let him. He says that before you went over the hill you played polo real good, and that if you found yourself in an emergency predicament you might still give these characters more trouble and make them real mad.’

‘I might, yes.’

‘The word is, don’t. You’ll only get hurt a lot instead of a little. That’s only advice, mind. He still has too much respect for you as his old bossman, Paul, to presume to
tell
you. He’s only asking you to accept a piece of friendly advice.’

‘Is there anything else that I should accept?’

‘He said to tell you that he’ll be thinking of you all the time. He meant it too.
All
the time.’

‘I’ll be thinking of
him.’

‘Have a good day, Paul.’

He hung up.

I switched off and immediately pressed the rewind button. After I had played the whole tape through twice, I listened to the beginning of it a third time before writing a note to Yves and Melanie.

Yves, please meet me at CP now after passing this to Melanie, please distribute File No. 2 and then join us.

I
found the cook’s husband and gave him the note to deliver. Then, I took the recorder from my bedroom and went to our ‘Command Post’ in the garage loft.

When Yves joined me everything was set up and ready.

I pointed to the recorder. ‘I’ve just taped a call from London on this. First, I want you to listen to the beginning and tell me if anything occurs to you, anything at all.’

He asked no questions, just nodded and sat down.

I started the play-back. After the first couple of sentences I stopped it and looked at him.

‘Again, please,’ he said, ‘and this time as loudly as possible. The speech quality doesn’t matter.’

I couldn’t get it much louder because induction suckers aren’t all that efficient and the recorder’s amplifier hadn’t much left to give, but I did my best. Oddly enough, Frank’s voice quacking away through the tape-hiss was, though still intelligible, less offensive than it had been with the volume lower. I let it run on for a moment or two longer before switching off.

Yves pursed his lips.
‘Anything
that occurs to me?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘You said that the call was from London. I don’t think it was.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Calls from London to here are dialled. With long-distance direct-dialling, an electronic time-and-distance charge counter is activated as soon as the answering phone is picked up. It’s connected to a computer that bills the customer. I don’t know exactly how long it takes to start running - only a small fraction of a second I would think - but if you already have the phone to your ear when the circuit is completed you always hear it. It’s like a sound of a stick being dragged for an instant along iron railings. Your recording here begins while the phone is still ringing. If the call had come from London, or Bonn or Amsterdam, we’d have heard the charge counter coming into action when you picked up the phone. The sound’s not there. That call was made locally from no farther away than Nice or Menton. And it wasn’t made from a pay-phone either. You’d have heard a charge counter start with that too. The sound would have been different from the long-distance counter, but you’d have heard it.’ He paused, then added: ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’

‘Not what I wanted, but what I expected. I didn’t notice until the second time I played the tape.’

‘Most people don’t hear it at all. The counter normally starts during the time it takes to pick up the phone and put it to your ear. You asked for anything that occurred to me. I also recognize the caller’s voice. It’s the man I know as Mr Yamatoku.’

He was watching me narrowly for a reaction. I nodded. ‘I’m going to ask you to listen to the rest of the conversation, but let’s wait a moment until Melanie gets here.’

We had to wait several minutes.

‘Questions,’ she explained peevishly. ‘Paul, you should not have so spoken about me in the ambience of such persons. They are incapable of maintaining the moderations of polite usage.’

The sudden deterioration of her English suggested that the questions had been inconveniently searching.

‘Didn’t the second file divert them at all?’

‘Do you divert lions with carrion when there is fresh meat to be had? These people are most ill-mannered.’

‘You’re being too fussy,’ I said. ‘I’ll be surprised if those other people with us, the ones we
weren’t
expecting, have any manners at all.’

Yves shoved a bentwood chair against the back of her legs and she sat down abruptly.

‘What do you know,’ I asked, ‘about a man named Mathew

Tuakana? He sometimes calls himself Mat Williamson. Mean anything to you?’

I was looking at Yves as I spoke simply to notify Melanie that I had called the meeting to order and wanted no more of her nonsense. I hadn’t really expected him to answer. In his line of work, he was unlikely to have become involved in any of the futile attempts already made to penetrate the dense covers concealing Mat’s operations; but I had been mistaken. After a moment’s thought, he nodded.

‘Yes, I’ve heard of him. A Polynesian
métis.
Homosexual. A banker of some sort. Ultra rich. Is that the man?’

‘Where did you hear that gossip?’

‘I know someone who did some work for him. It’s all wrong, I suppose.’

‘It’s right about his being half-caste, but wrong about the non-white component. His mother was Melanesian, not Polynesian. Also, he’s had women as lovers as well as men. Who was your informant?’

An impertinent question that ought not to have been asked. Yves didn’t apologize for ignoring it.

‘I was also told,’ he said, ‘that Williamson was one to stay away from if you were free to choose. Some of these ultra rich have a habit of ditching things when they’ve finished with them, even if the things have only been used once. I’m told Williamson does that with people. Was I wrong there too?’

I hesitated, so naturally he had to pounce.

‘Is
he
the one you’re covering for here?’

I didn’t have a chance of deciding how fully or frankly I would reply. Before I could draw breath, Melanie was talking across to me to answer Yves.

‘Of
course,’
she told him, ‘it must be Williamson. I should have thought of him before. He’s the Placid Island man, the one negotiating on behalf of the natives over the compensation to be paid out by the phosphate interests. He’s an economist with unorthodox ideas. You know? The kind of ideas that sound fascinating while they are being used to sell something, but that no one ever hears of again after the deal is set. He also acts for a Canadian bank. If that man had needed protection from Krom, I should have thought the bank would have provided it. Why trouble poor little Symposia?’

By bitching me with that snide reference to Symposia she was trying to recover the dignity lost minutes earlier when her buttocks had hit the seat of the chair.

‘He doesn’t control the Canadian bank,’ I said, ‘though his association with it is common knowledge. He
does
control Symposia, however, and he controls it through me. That is very far from being common knowledge and the thing that was to have been hidden at all costs from those with prying eyes and publishing voices, especially from Krom. News that there existed a backstairs financial arrangement between Symposia, the trendy fast-buck artists’ favourite tax-haven advisory service, and His Excellency Mat Tuakana, man of the people, King’s Scout and patron saint of Placid Island, would kill for ever his chance of getting that international licence to print money he’s always yearned for. And he’d never get another chance.’

I turned to Yves again. ‘I’m the one whose cover was blown by Krom, so I’m the one who has to make good the loss, hold the fort, stick the finger in the dyke, fall on the exploding grenade or do whatever else is necessary to keep His Excellency’s reputation safe, sound and spotless. Yes, he
does
like scrapping people when he’s used them. Let’s hope he hasn’t succeeded with us.’

‘Us,
Paul?’ Melanie again.

The look I gave her was as sour as her own. ‘I think it’s time I revealed, in case you didn’t know, that
both
of you were hand-picked for this operation by Mat Williamson himself. And if you think that being chosen by the great man personally for this assignment isn’t much of a distinction, you’re mistaken. In your case certainly, Melanie, the choice was made with immense care. To prove it I’m going to play back a phone conversation I’ve just had with Frank Yamatoku. He’s Williamson’s left-hand man, Melanie. That’s why I was a little upset when you told me that you’d given him our communications code.’

Yves whispered,
‘Merde’
as if it were a prayer.

She stared coldly at my chin. ‘A capable operations director would have reviewed the standard security procedures before committing the team.’

I wasn’t going to argue about that with her. ‘When I called Williamson’s London cut-out from here, I asked him to return my call personally. It was returned instead by Yamatoku, and it sounds as if he’s calling from a local phone not far from here. Listen.’

They listened. They listened to the whole thing three times. Between play-backs I answered questions as truthfully as seemed prudent in the circumstances.

Who, for instance, were Kleister, Torten and Vic?

‘No, they’re
not,
much as they may sound like it, a slack-wire baggy-pants act out of a third-rate circus. There’s nothing even marginally comical about these three. They’re old business rivals still nursing their grudges against me for the defeats they once suffered in a couple of big deals. They said I tricked them. You know how it is with losers,
some
losers anyway. They think that winners only win through skulduggery, and that makes it all right for losers to use skulduggery if it’ll give them their revenge. We should try to feel sorry for the poor slobs.’