Touchfeather

by Jimmy Sangster

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Then she took the arm of the man who had been about to insult the Union Jack. ‘Let’s go get a drink, honey,’ she said, and they moved off.

  Marvin took my arm and steered me across the room towards another group of people. I could see Don out on the terrace, glass in each hand, moving around like a retriever who had lost the kill.

  ’I wish you’d stop introducing me around like a prize heifer,’ I said to Marvin before we reached the new group. ‘Like water, I can find my own level.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Katy,’ he said. ‘I thought it was what you wanted.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I thought you were going to introduce me to Roger Gerastan,’ I said.

  ‘I was?’

  ‘That’s what you said.’

  ‘But he’s not here. He never goes to parties.’

  ‘I didn’t think he was. But you said you were going to take me up to that place where he lives. Or was it the booze talking?’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t. Do you really want to meet him?’

  I nodded emphatically.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s a legend. I always like to meet legends. It’ll give me something to tell my grandchildren.’ He looked doubtful for a moment; then he smiled his beautiful smile.

  ‘How long are you in town?’

  ‘Three or four days.’ It could have been three or four weeks if necessary.

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Now do you want to find your own level, or do you want to meet some fascinating bores.’

  I reached up and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. ‘You’re a darling. I’ll find my own level.’

  He touched his cheek where I had kissed him. ‘Mind how you go, Katy. People might start to get the wrong idea about me.’

  ‘Like blondie?’

  ‘Oh, she knows. She just isn’t letting on. Twelve million dollars can keep an awful lot of urges under control. If I gave her the nod, she’d sew herself up.’

  ’It would take more than twelve million dollars to keep that one out of circulation,’ I said, in true Hollywood fashion.

  He smiled at me again. ‘Don’t try to be bitchy, Katy. You wouldn’t even be a starter in this town.’

  I looked at him speculatively. ‘You could be quite a challenge for a girl,’ I said.

  ‘If anyone could do it, you probably could,’ he said. ‘Even if you don’t look much like a fella.’

  I left Marvin and went to relocate Don. He’d drunk my drink as well as his own, and was now well under the weather.

  ‘Want me to drive you home, Don?’ I asked him.

  ‘No need, Katy. Staying here. Houseguest.’

  ‘Marvin’s idea or yours?’

  ‘Marvin’s. Nice fellow.’

  I hoped that they would be very happy together and I left the party without a ripple to disturb the surface. The butler called a cab for me, and half an hour later I was back in what I was rapidly coming to think of as home.

  I thought long and hard that evening, trying to marshal some sort of order out of the chaos of what had occurred over the past couple of weeks. Mr. Blaser had unbent sufficiently before I left to allow me to look at some of the files, and I had spent a boring hour in an outer office while a security man disguised as a canteen worker had peered at me through the glass partition in the door to make sure I didn’t make off with anything I wasn’t supposed to. There was a great wodge of material covering the work that Bill had been doing, and I spent most of my time trying to reduce the semi-technical data to a state where my extremely lay mind could understand it. It wasn’t easy.

  Missiles come in all shapes and sizes. There are air-to-ground and vice versa, ground-to-ground and air-to-air; there are missiles that home on heat, noise, vibration; and there are missiles that can be guided visually onto targets no larger than a hole in a man’s head. There are anti-tank, anti-aircraft, anti-warship, antipersonnel and anti-missile missiles; there are attack missiles and defence missiles. But the granddaddy of them all, the number-one, top-grade, copper-bottomed, highest-rated, most closely guarded missile of all is the ICBM; the intercontinental ballistic horror designed solely to lift a hydrogen bomb around the globe from East to West, or vice versa, and drop it neatly on New York, Moscow, Pittsburgh or Leningrad. They are very sophisticated items of technology indeed, and the amount of machinery they carry, apart from the nuclear device, is staggering. But nobody is going to sit still and just let one of these things land on them. They’re going to try to intercept it and get rid of it while it is still up in the stratosphere; there it will harm no one except the few millions who will be poisoned by radiation in the next couple of generations, when the fallout has leaked back into the atmosphere.

  So, built into the ICBM are all sorts of devices to counteract the machinery which might be hurled up against it. There are anti-heat-seeking devices, anti-vibration seekers, radar scramblers and infrared baffles. And as fast as one side comes up with something new, then the other side goes to work on something newer. And so the race goes on, each side leapfrogging over the other with the development of something that nullifies what has just gone before. And billions of dollars and roubles are poured into this fantastic race. The only time there is any relaxation is when one power gets far enough ahead of the other to sit back and say, ‘There you are. What are you going to do about that?’

  But this doesn’t happen very often, and when it does, it is purely temporary. As witness the case in hand. America had been two years ahead of Russia up to a few weeks ago, but before they could even stick their two fingers up in the air, the Russians chopped them off. Bill had developed a small electronic gizmo which, when fitted to an anti-ICBM missile, effectively scrambled every known device the ICBM carried. Fitted with Bill’s invention, America could effectively seek out and destroy everything that the Russians could send up against them. So up yours, Tovarich! One week with the details of Bill’s device and the Russians were able to tighten a nut here, change a washer there, and the device became nothing more than excess baggage. Now it seemed that America was falling over herself to find a new piece of machinery that would do what Bill’s had, before the Russians learned its secret. And that was all it boiled down to. America had been ahead, and now Russia had leapfrogged over her. It was now up to America to regain the lead. And until she did the Comrades in the UN were throwing their weight about trying to rush all sorts of things through before the status quo was reversed. As the Gerastan Corporation were the leaders in this particular field, thanks largely to Bill, the US Government had opened up the purse strings. They only scribbled one qualification across their carte blanche—money no object, but get a bloody move on.

  These, then, were the broader issues, all very straightforward. It was only when one came down to personalities that the whole affair started to cloud into confusion. Bill, the Eunuch, Jack Kelly and Hank Almedo, Mary Youngman, Marvin Torbay, Beamish, Scamper, Carter. Some of them fitted into the pattern quite neatly, but most of them didn’t.

  And the biggest question mark of all, the person who could hold the key to the whole mess, or could equally not have a clue, was the man I hadn’t even met yet. Roger Gerastan.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘The man’s a nut,’ I said to Marvin. We were in Marvin’s small private plane flying over the most inhospitable bit of country I’d ever seen. I’d probably flown over it many times before, but at thirty thousand feet, who the hell knows what is below? At three thousand feet one is still basically earthbound, and what I could see from the window just wasn’t worth looking at. Marvin was flying the plane one-handed. The other one he was using to do a crossword puzzle in the Los Angeles Times which he had folded open on his knee.

  ‘Who’s a nut?’ he asked, without looking up. ‘Six letters—a songbird?’

  ‘Bobolink...Roger Gerastan.’

  ‘That’s not six letters... Why?’

  ‘Nobody could like living out here
.’

  He glanced out of the window. ‘’Tis a bit bleak, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Still, he doesn’t live in a tent.’

  The radio suddenly crackled into life. ‘Aircraft approaching Santhoma, identify yourself please.’

  Marvin flipped the transmit switch. ‘Santhoma. This is Marvin Torbay and guest. Over.’

  ‘Hiyuh, Mr. Torbay. You’re clear to come straight in. Watch out for a couple of tractors at the east end of the runway.’

  ‘Roger, Santhoma. Out.’

  I looked at Marvin. ‘Santhoma? That’s Saint Thomas isn’t it?’

  He grinned. ‘He could hardly have called it Sanroger, could he?’ he said. ‘Kneads into lump—five letters?’

  ‘Balls,’ I said.

  The first thing I saw was the airfield. I had thought that the land below us was flat, but as we started to descend, I realised that it was a series of lowish hills running parallel to each other like rippling water. Then there was a cut through one of the hills and the runway stretched out beyond it. Just before we put down, I thought I caught a glimpse of gleaming white rooftops away over to the left, but then they were masked by the hills on either side of the runway. It was a single runway, long enough to take a Concorde—and, if all I had heard about Gerastan was true, he’d probably be first in line for one when they started to come off the production line, ahead of BOAC and Air France.

  There was a DC-8 standing to one side of the runway, with a couple of smaller aircraft sheltering beneath her wings. There was a maintenance hangar, surrounded on three sides by some small huts, and it was towards this that Marvin taxied. Before we had stopped, a car had appeared along the only road that led from the airfield. It pulled up, waiting for us. A couple of mechanics, beefy-looking men, chocked our wheels, while a third moved round to help me down from the plane. I was wearing a shortish skirt, and as he lifted me down he pulled me close, making it appear even shorter. But one never knows when one is going to need a friend, so instead of breaking his arm, I gave him a smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, lady,’ he replied. I may not have made a friend of him, but he was going to think twice before deciding I was an enemy. He glanced across me towards Marvin, who was just climbing down.

  ’Nice to see you, Mr. Torbay. How are you making out?’

  ‘Not as well as you, Bud,’ said Marvin, seeing the way I was being held. But Bud obviously knew which side Marvin’s bread was buttered and he only grinned.

  ‘This is Miss Touchfeather. Katy, this is Bud. He knows more of what goes on inside an aero engine than the Wright brothers.’

  ‘How fascinating,’ I said, wishing he’d get his dirty mechanic’s hands off my backside. Then he stepped smartly away from me as the driver got out of the car and came towards us. I hadn’t seen him before, but I might just as well have. He was of the same mould as Jack Kelly and Hank Almedo, pure hood. He was dressed in semi-Western gear which was part Roy Rogers and part Al Capone. His hair was jet-black and lacquered solid. He wore a six-gun at his hip like a stage cowboy; only this gun was for real. He flashed his sparkling teeth at us.

  ‘Hi, Marvin! How’s it been?’

  ‘Hello, Angel. Katy, meet Angel. Angel, Miss Touchfeather.’

  ‘Miss who?’

  ‘Touchfeather,’ I said. I was used to it.

  ‘I’ll call you Miss T. if I may, Misty.’ He held out his hand and I shook it. It was dry, yet giving the impression it was clammy. It was an extraordinary sensation, like shaking hands with a snake.

  ‘Mr. Gerastan sent me down to pick you both up, personally,’ he said, leading the way to the car. ‘Hop in!’

  The three of us got into the car, and as Angel swung it round, heading back towards the road, Bud called after us.

  ‘When d’you want the plane again, Mr. Torbay?’

  ‘About five,’ shouted Marvin.

  ‘You’re staying over,’ said Angel. ‘Mr. Gerastan arranged it.’

  I glanced sideways at Marvin, who shrugged. ‘But I haven’t brought any clothes,’ I hissed.

  Angel answered for him. ‘Not to worry, Misty. You’ll find everything you need up at the house.’

  He called it a house, but I suppose it was just familiarity breeding contempt. Although it was all under the same extended roof, it was more of a village than a house. The road curved away from the airfield through a cut in the hills and, half a mile away, headed through a pair of gates, which opened automatically as we approached them. A fifteen-foot wall extended from either side of the gates in an unbroken line. I couldn’t see any barbed wire along the top, but that was probably because they found electrification of the top three feet of wall more effective. Just inside the gates, two men dressed the same way as Angel were lounging against the wall. As soon as we were inside the gates it was like being in another world. Outside it was barren scrubland; in here it was like Kew Gardens: great sweeps of lawn, high magnificent trees and shrubs blazing with colour.

  ‘I thought water was supposed to be scarce out here,’ I said to no one in particular, noticing that the whole place was a forest of sprinklers.

  ‘It is,’ said Marvin. ‘Roger sunk a well.’

  ‘He sunk six wells,’ said Angel. ‘And the way he throws the stuff around he’ll have to sink another six before long.’

  ‘When they dry up he’ll pack his bag and leave this place to the natives,’ said Marvin.

  Angel laughed shortly. ‘You may just be right there, Marvin.’

  We turned a bend in the drive, and the house was in front of us. Like I said, it was all under the same roof, but it spread over about two acres, a series of long, single-storey buildings, linked by covered passages. The basic style, if it could be said to have one, was House & Garden hacienda. The whole place was painted a glaring white, which was blinding in the sunlight.

  The car headed straight through an archway and stopped in a courtyard framed by half a dozen of the sections, all facing inwards. Three more make-believe cowboys were lounging around, apparently minding nobody’s business but their own. One of them was throwing chunks of raw meat to a couple of dogs, half Alsatian, half Doberman and all mean. The dogs looked up at us incuriously as we drove in; the men didn’t even bother to do that.

  Two Mexican house servants ran down from the front door and opened the car doors for us as we stopped. We all three got out and Angel ushered us through the main entrance into what I assumed must have been one of the main rooms in the house. It was about sixty feet long, pine panelled and cool. Comfortable armchairs and settees were scattered about as though the owner had no further use for them. Passages led off from each end of the room and we headed down the one to the right. The walls here were hung with early Americana, bows and arrows, tomahawks, buffalo-hide shields and a few untidy scraps that looked uncommonly like scalps.

  At the end of this passage we emerged into another room, and I revised my opinion about the first being one of the main ones; it was just a lobby compared to this. Eighty feet long, thirty-five feet wide, with one wall all glass, it opened up onto a terrace and a gentle slope of lawn running down to the pool. At the far side of the pool there was another slope of lawn leading up to another section of the house. The pool area was enclosed on all four sides by the house, and in each direction I looked I seemed to see another room similar to the one we were standing in. At first glance it seemed there wasn’t a room in the place too small to hold a hunt ball.

  ‘Misty’s in the blue room, Marvin,’ said Angel. ‘Show her where, while I tell Mr. Gerastan you’re here.’

  He headed off towards the terrace, leaving me with Marvin.

  ‘Cosy,’ I said, trying not to be awed.

  ‘Come on, Katy; I’ll show you to your room,’ said Marvin. He looked a little subdued, not at all the Marvin I knew. We headed down another passage, hung with Navaho rugs and other relics of the first Americans. Then, turning right, Marvin opened a door and stood aside for me to go in.

  ‘Jesus!’ I
said, irreverently, as I crossed the threshold. The blue room was just that. Every damn thing in it was blue, from the carpet to the bed linen, from the wallpaper and the drapes; even the mirrors along one wall were tinted blue, as was the glass in the windows looking out across the formal gardens.

  ‘I’ll go blind,’ I said as Marvin followed me in.

  ‘Bathroom’s over there,’ he said. ‘Dressing room there. There’s a small sitting room just beyond the dressing room.’

  ‘Where’s the poolroom?’ I said. Marvin sat down on the bed, a huge monstrosity that looked large enough for a family of twelve, while I opened a few doors and peered into a couple of drawers.

  ‘Sorry about this, Katy,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just a little blue.’

  But he was serious. ‘This staying-over bit. I didn’t know.’

  ‘We don’t have to, if you don’t want to,’ I said, hoping that he did. But I needn’t have worried.

  ‘If Roger says stay, we stay.’

  ‘Even if you don’t want to?’

  He got to his feet and shrugged. ‘That’s the way it is, doll. You’ll find clothes in the dressing room. Put some pool gear on. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.’ He went out looking miserable.

  I peered into the bathroom. That was blue, too, with a sunken bath like something out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. I wondered which of the gold-plated taps one turned on for asses’ milk. The dressing room was lined with closets, and it took me five minutes to work out how to open the damn things. Then I found a small switch and the doors slid silently open, revealing enough clothes to restock Bergdorf Goodman. I have an inbuilt reluctance to wearing secondhand clothes, but I needn’t have worried; everything was brand-new. There were drawers full of undies, still in their original wrappings, ranging from the practical to the wildly exotic. The dresses, slacks, shirts, blouses and every other damn thing came in three of each of eight different sizes. The sizes were fine for any young girl of reasonable proportions; obviously Mr. Gerastan didn’t entertain any middle-aged or fat women. Not in the blue room at any rate—unless they brought their own luggage. The swimsuits were in the far cupboard. I chose a one-piece because a bikini allowed my Rome scar to show. Wondering which of the mirrors was a two-way job and who was watching, I stripped off and put on the swimsuit. I took a towelling robe and then set out to find my way back to the pool. It was no trouble, because Angel was waiting for me outside my bedroom door.