Split Code: Dolly and the Nanny Bird

by Dorothy Dunnett

  A girl in a long coarse white dress and short veil got out, followed by three men in good suits with carnations in their buttonholes and another girl in a long purple dress. They disappeared inside the building and the driver backed his car into line with the others.

  ‘I told you,’ Johnson said when we joined him at his table. ‘It’s the only thing they allow cars inside the city for. They’ll be out in twenty minutes. Did you meet someone you knew?’ Dr Dogíc had lingered behind to speak to one of the drivers.

  ‘A boyfriend of Charlotte’s,’ I said. ‘He’s coming to join us. He gave Mrs Eisenkopp her vaccination and it’s his birthday, so we rather owe him something, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to go and bring him,’ Johnson said; and vanished, like the Cheshire Cat, while his voice was still displacing sound waves. I picked up the wine list. It was in the Roman alphabet, not the Cyrillic for a wonder, and I was reading under the Zestoka Picā or Strong Drinks and hovering between Gin Gilbey’s and J. Walker at 15 Dinari when Johnson and Lazar came back and orders for sljivovica went flying about like the pigeons.

  Plum brandy at five in the afternoon needs to be treated with caution. I treated it with caution, which gave me a ringside view of Beverley lightly sloshed, going into her adored-little-girl act for Johnson and Lazar, both of whom had lost no time in chatting her up. Peals of silvery laughter greeted Johnson’s every graven-faced observation which were still effortlessly prolific no matter how high he was becoming. On the other hand there was Lazar’s charm, laid on with all the pure Balkan style which had placed him, obviously, on Charlotte’s mailing list.

  In between observing the Municipal Palace disgorge married couples like parking tickets I watched the handsome brown doctor down four separate tumblers of sljivovica with no visible change in his smile or his macho, and wondered how long it would take Mr Eisenkopp’s Beverley to recall that all the animation she was wasting on the habitués of the City Café would be better employed exclusively on Johnson and the other beautiful or powerful people on board the Glycera. Or Dr Dogíc, who appeared to know the whole of female Dubrovnik, to cease smiling and waving and remember the birthday party he had spent some energy fruitlessly inviting us severally to.

  I wondered what sort of head Johnson had for plum brandy. Sober, I watched the setting sun flame on the ribbed pantile roofs high over our heads and light the wings of the swifts as they swept up from the dark of the ancient Platea Comunis and squeaked and wheeled against the rose-coloured pines of Mount Srdj. Now the shutters were up and lights glimmered in all the arched windows and, a moment later, sprang along the main street as the people of Dubrovnik strolled out to take the evening air. A little wind started up and Beverley shivered and turned to pull on her green cashmere jacket, with help from each side. Then, smiling, she rose.

  She had remembered. Beverley Eisenkopp had taken a great many pains to acquire that coveted invitation on board the Glycera, and she wasn’t going to be diverted now.

  We all left the café together. Three more people among the strollers, two of them ravishingly pretty girls, waved to Dr Dogíc and he waved back, smiling. He was a popular boy. His polo-necked sweater, I noted, had been bought in Italy, and the thick gold ring on his little finger had a passable diamond in it. He said caressingly to Beverley, ‘You need help to find the way to your car? I come with you.’

  I watched him take her arm. I was still watching when he winked at me.

  I didn’t wink back, but I grinned. Conquering the impulse to look at Johnson almost killed me, both then and when we began to climb the steep street to the north wall and Lazar’s hand, leaving Beverley, brushed the stout inverted pleat in my faithful green Maggie Bee trenchcoat.

  I was entertained. Charlotte’s boyfriends always had bags of initiative, and no mid-European cavalier was going to offend the wealthier and more important of two possible dates by making up to both at once. None of that, however, was going to stop Dr Dogíc from trying to have his cake and eat it. Also, one bitchily had to remember, the Radoslav Clinic knew to a day just how old Beverley was. I went on climbing steadily, and hoped, also bitchily, that Johnson had noticed.

  It was getting dark. Overhead, the strip of sky between the tall leaning houses was inky blue, and the infrequent lanterns threw odd jagged shadows on the peeling walls and doorways and balconies. A gleaming brass plate announced advokat and another in English directed to Disco-Bar with Disc jokey. There was a smell of cats, and Dijamant filter cigarettes, and cooking. Behind us in the square the last of the wedding cars, honking and afforested with waving arms, swept along the Placa, displacing the sauntering citizens.

  It was all implacably foreign, and made one think of things I had heard about Yugoslavia during the war. How in one small town, every professional man, every doctor and teacher had been taken and executed in reprisal for German officers killed by the Resistance. How after the war, nine old women had been discovered living alone in one mountain village, where every other soul had either lost his life fighting or had been taken and shot. As we climbed higher I could see the neon sign of the Labirint, the night club built on the site, they said, of a wartime Gestapo torture chamber.

  I said to Lazar, ‘Don’t you see ghosts, when you go over there to dance?’

  The street was wide enough - just - for three people. He tucked the hand that wasn’t holding Beverley under my arm. ‘Why should we? Do you see ghosts in Dublin Castle? We are a collection of different races in Yugoslavia, with different languages, different religions, different customs.’

  ‘Then I suppose you were lucky,’ said Johnson from behind, ‘that a man like President Tito was able to hold you all together for so long. When he goes, what will happen?’

  Still holding my arm, Lazar turned his head smiling, over his shoulder. ‘Ask the politicians. They control us. I am only a doctor. Here is the gateway, and there is the car park. You see, Izlaz means exit.’

  The sign, distressingly, said ИЭЛАЭ. Lazar said ‘You have no Serbo-Croat?’ And when we all shook our heads, ‘Ah, but you will manage very well. Most speak English. And now I must leave you. Good-bye, my dear Mrs Eisenkopp. Good-bye, Mr Johnson. Is it possible, Joanna, before you leave, that I might give you a message for Charlotte?’

  The message, delivered in a smiling undertone as the others got into the car was, as one might have guessed, a pressing invitation to Lazar Dogíc’s birthday party. ‘The others will be on the Glycera, is it not? Then you are free.’

  ‘You don’t know how tempting it is,’ I said. ‘But I’m looking after a baby on Mr Johnson’s yacht and we shan’t even be tied up in the harbour. They’re afraid of kidnapping, and we have to spend the night at anchor somewhere. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘So Mr Johnson has said. But this is no problem. There are boats. There are two men on board, Mr Johnson says, who attend to the baby this afternoon. Why can you not leave the baby with them for this evening?’

  He patted me on the shoulder. ‘It is settled. I shall come for you.’

  ‘It isn’t settled,’ I said. Behind us, Beverley had leant over and pressed Johnson’s car horn. ‘Look, I have to go. Have a wonderful party. I’ll tell Charlotte I met you.’

  He continued to grin. ‘I shall come,’ he said. He was still waving as we drove off.

  Lenny Milligan brought the Dolly under motor to the quayside to pick us all up and take us across to where the Glycera, dressed overall with strings of coloured lights, lay floodlit on the ocean like Selfridge’s.

  Ben, neatly stowed in his carrycot, was pinkly asleep and had been so, Donovan said, for four hours. After all, it was what I’d been counting on, but none the less I was pleased. I left him a few minutes longer while I got out orange juice and beef soup and the next bottle ready to warm, and found out how Johnson’s galley cooker functioned. I spread polythene sheets and unpacked baby gear, while footsteps above, and voices, and the thud of dropped ropes gave way to the surge of the engine and the kind of motion that t
old we were now on our way to the Glycera.

  Beverley’s face needed fixing. She made straight for the heads, and didn’t come near me again. Donovan put his head round the door and said, ‘My God, you should smell the plum brandy. Where’ve you lot all been?’ and then withdrew when I grinned but didn’t stop working. I had gone to lift Benedict when the engine stopped and we coasted, by the sounds, up to the Glycera.

  They let Beverley on board this time: I heard her voice on the cruise boat’s companionway, followed by the bumps of her baggage ascending. The door opened and Johnson said, ‘All right, Joanna?’

  Because my whole attention was on Ben, I said ‘Yes, he’s fine. You’re off now, are you?’ without thinking. It did strike me that he looked pretty sober for the amount of Zestoka Picā he had consumed. Benedict’s eyes were still shut but his lips began to push in and out. I slipped my hands a little further under him, ready to lever.

  Johnson said, ‘I don’t know what the bloody hell your father was thinking of.’

  That found its way through the jet lag. My hands still under the baby, I gave Johnson my abrupt attention. ‘I’m sorry. I’m stupid. Don’t worry. I do remember why we’re here. Is there anything more I can do?’

  From outside, we could hear calling voices. Johnson said, ‘No. We’ve been over it all. Don’t trust the doctor.’

  ‘Lazar Dogíc? He was trying to lure me on shore,’ I said. ‘I thought you said that so long as Ben and I were separated . . . ?’

  ‘I know. But don’t trust him all the same. Good luck,’ Johnson said.

  Even after he said it, he didn’t move for a moment, although Lenny’s voice had now joined the others calling his name. I said again, ‘Don’t worry. It’s my own father I’m doing it for.’

  It sounded discourteous but he understood probably because he gave one of his less glassy smiles before he walked off and boarded the Glycera. It was Ben himself, squirming against my two hands, who dragged my mind back to the baby.

  My nose was pricking again, But that was jet lag as well as other emotions. Including, if you must know, plain terror.

  FOURTEEN

  Over supper Donovan and I revised our relationship. My second profession appeared to fascinate him.

  ‘Like crossword puzzles?’ he said helpfully. ‘I bet you sure beat the crap out of a crossword puzzle.’

  All he appeared to know about coding was that you needed a book by Charles Dickens and the ability to count up to twenty-six. I didn’t ask him how he got into Intelligence work. I did ask him if he had ever played ice hockey in his life and he said yes, twice; but it was a great way to impress chicks. He was a great admirer of Johnson.

  The Glycera, with Johnson on board, had sailed before we did. All the time I was feeding and settling Benedict, Donovan had given me a running commentary on the Glycera’s progress as she left her anchorage in the Daksa Channel and dropping her pilot turned south, reflected in the broken evening water, to begin her leisurely cruise into the calmer seas of the Boka Kotorska.

  A cruise she would never have had to take, comfortably berthed at the quayside at Gruz, or at Venice. Listening to the rain pattering on the deck as Ben played with his bottle, and picked at my sleeve, and allowed the teat to pop yet again from the gummy pink arch of his smile, I allowed myself to hope, acidly, that all the Beautiful People were good sailors.

  Beverley wasn’t. Beverley, who had got her way and shed Comer and was now on board the same ship as her golden Ulysses, Sultry Simon. And who had shown the same sort of contempt for Rosamund as had Simon, Rosamund’s husband. Nor was it hard to guess why. Beverley, too, must know that Simon was not the father of Rosamund’s baby, lying here on my knee.

  And the real father, Hugo? He also was on board; more at his ease than anyone there, for this was his country. Did his attitude of the sophisticated bystander extend to the baby, and was Ingmar right in believing he had no interest in claiming paternity; in staking an interest in the assets of the Warr Beckenstaff Corporation? Or was Ingmar herself not still a pretty good suspect? It was through her organization that this celebration was taking place tonight off Yugoslavia, instead of Venice.

  And was Dr Gibbings no more than a medical man paid by the Warr Beckenstaff to look after its employees, and specifically the Booker-Readmans? But for him, Sukey and Grover would never have been able to drive smoothly to their hotel in Herceg-Novi, taking their nurse Bunty with them. And the presence of a nanny might be quite essential to the plans for kidnapping a very young baby, particularly if Ben and I were to be separated. You couldn’t discount even Bunty or Charlotte except that, of course, Charlotte was back in New York.

  ‘This time,’ Johnson had said, ‘you won’t see Rudi or Vladimir or any of the faces we know already. This time the other team aren’t going to tip their hands. And by the same token, they mustn’t pot, when they do appear, that you were expecting them. So no carrycot packed full of feeds and nappies. Joanna. None of Ben’s equipment is going to be bugged: they’ll be on the lookout for that. Your own things are something again. You’ll be told about that.’

  I had been told about that. I had read all the notes he had given me about Yugoslavia. Even before Ben was fed this evening I had been shown by Lenny Milligan over every inch of the Dolly. including the sail locker, the engine and all the apparatus in the cockpit for running her. She was a beautiful ketch. The charts for the coast of Yugoslavia were already laid out in the saloon with an open volume of the Med. Pilot, and he took me quickly through both. I believe, heaven help me, I even asked him what the Bora was, that was mentioned on every other page. ‘To secure for a Bora, cables should be taken to the shore.’

  Into the business-like Cockney voice of Johnson’s skipper there had appeared a vein of real feeling. ‘That’s the joker in the pack. If you’re a summer sailor you won’t have struck it, because there ain’t this difference between the low pressure in the Adriatic here and the high pressure zones away up there to the north-east behind the mountains. Everywhere in Yugoslavia, I don’t have to tell you. The Bora’s a wind, Miss. It blows in the winter and the spring, and it’s caused by the cold air from the high ground spilling down into the sea through the mountain passes. There’s no warning and when it comes, it comes like a bloody dam bursting, driving anything in its way to the south and the west. That’s why there are wind socks on the cliff roads.

  ‘If you’re at sea, and you ever think a Bora’s on the way, get into harbour and tie up. If there isn’t a harbour, get under the land on a north shore and throw out cables . . . I’m going to get you and Mr Donovan some supper now. Is there anything more you want to ask me?’

  There was nothing more that mattered. We got under way soon after that, following in the Glycera’s track just as far as the roadstead to the east of Dubrovnik where we were to drop anchor. I remember being mildly irritated, sitting down to table, to find Donovan deep in a Mickey Mouse comic, with a stack of others beside him. It wasn’t till I saw some thumbed copies of the Politika beside them that the penny dropped. I said ‘Hey: you speak Serbo-Croat?’

  I will say one thing for Denny Donovan: nothing except perhaps a bad case of leaf thrip ever disturbed him. He looked up from his comic. ‘Sure I do. So do you.’

  He shoved the pile over and I picked up Donald Duck and, it appeared, Tarzan. He was quite right. I could speak Serbo-Croat. So also could Grover. ‘Ahhhh!’ I read slowly aloud. ‘Buum-Buum! Jeek! Bu-hul’ and ‘Super ldeja!’

  ‘There’s a hard one. Krokidilillll’ I said to Donovan. ‘O.K. Explain away the newspapers.’

  ‘I don’t have to. Lenny’s just going to chuck them overboard,’ said Donovan annoyingly. ‘Two weeks’ brain-flying tuition in Serbo-Croat, I would have you know, lies behind that innocent bunch of papers. Mr Johnson’s orders. All the time you’ve been ashore, Lenny and I have been working our asses off.’

  ‘Super Ideja,’ I said, but I was impressed. ‘What about Johnson? Is he learning it too?’

  ‘Didn�
��t ask him,’ said Donovan. ‘It’s a great language for swearing in. Hungarian’s supposed to be even better but I’m sure as hell not going to any sweat to prove it. Sit down and have some Niksicko Pivo. The beer’s not bad, at that.’

  His arm, I noticed, was giving him remarkably little trouble. I didn’t follow it up. I did get to the length of saying. ‘Denny. D’you remember what I had in my pockets in Winnipeg?’ and see him look surprised, as Johnson had done. Then Johnson’s skipper came in with coffee and said, ‘Not to interrupt, but I’m just going to throw the switch for the microphones. Just to remind you. Miss. Everything you say from now on will be listened to by our own friends on shore. And there’s always the risk that someone’ll pick it up that’s not meant to.’

  All according to plan. But now it was real, it wasn’t so easy. I remember sitting voiceless for a moment, until Donovan weighed in with some nonsense.

  We finished a meal I hadn’t done justice to. Three quarters of an hour out at Luka Gruz, Dolly arrived at her new anchorage and Donovan went up to help Lenny while I cleared the dishes into the galley and washed them. Then I climbed up on to the side deck and looked about me.

  It was dark and raining, in gusty showers fetched by a light and irregular wind; but all the lamps of Dubrovnik lay on our port side, while ahead the coast ran east and south in a string of clustering lights outlining the new resorts with their hotels and night clubs and restaurants.

  Above rose the dark hills, with the beam of car headlights appearing and vanishing from the Adriatic highway slashed across them, and a starry nexus here and there to show where the villages lay. Looking at Dubrovnik below, afloat on her soft floodlit walls, graceful as the M/S Glycera in the natural element of her waterway, you could see again the rich city-state full of palaces through which once flowed all the wealth of the East: the harbour in which thirty-five ships of the Spanish Armada had been built and fitted out to sail against England. A beautiful, and alien city.