‘Noburo Tomura, son of Count Iwazu Tomura of the Japanese delegation to the peace conference.’
Le Singe nodded, as if this answer only confirmed what he already knew.
‘The Tomuras are after you because they believe you know something that could damage them – maybe destroy them.’
Le Singe gave another nod. It seemed to be true, then. He did know something.
‘Will you tell us what it is? We can help you bring them down. We can help you avenge Soutine.’
Le Singe wrote on the slate again. NO REVENGE.
‘No?’
JUSTICE.
‘We’ll settle for that,’ Sam put in.
‘So we will,’ said Morahan.
More silence and more immobility. They were elements in which le Singe seemed to dwell quite naturally. Eventually, another word appeared on the slate: HOW?
‘Tell us what you know,’ said Morahan. ‘You can trust us.’
More deliberation, then: WHY?
‘Because Tomura is our enemy as well as yours.’
Something in le Singe’s expression told Sam that was not enough. He required more. Instinctively, Sam said, ‘Because we trust you.’
Le Singe nodded. That was what he wanted to hear. FOLLOW ME, he wrote. Then he pointed to Sam.
‘Me?’
Another nod. Le Singe laid the slate on the floor and stepped out onto the balcony.
‘Be careful,’ murmured Morahan.
‘You can count on that,’ Sam replied as he started after le Singe.
The boy was waiting for him on the narrow balcony, the still, grey evening air suspended around him in a world of roofs, windows, chimney-stacks, drainpipes and blank, steepling walls.
One drainpipe was several feet from the near end of the balcony. Le Singe kicked off his espadrilles and jumped up onto the balcony rail, then stretched out, grasped the pipe and climbed it with such speed and ease that Sam could not have said exactly how he had done it. But there he was, on the sloping roof above, looking down at him and beckoning. It might have been possible to reach the roof from the balcony using a ladder. But there was no ladder to be seen. And as soon as Sam tried to follow by the route le Singe had used, the full height he might fall into the courtyard below was revealed. The pipe was none too securely fixed to the wall and the rail was slippery. To manage the climb he would have to step into a void and hope to brace himself on the bracket holding the pipe before pulling himself up onto the roof. It was madness to attempt it.
‘Don’t do it,’ said Morahan, looking out at him from the doorway.
Le Singe went on beckoning. ‘He won’t believe we trust him if I don’t,’ said Sam tremulously. ‘And he won’t trust us.’
‘We can persuade him some other way.’
‘I don’t think so. I truly don’t.’
Le Singe looked down at Sam, his white tunic bellying in the gentle breeze. And Sam looked down as well, to the distant, cobbled surface of the courtyard below. Yes. It was madness. He could not do it. He should not do it. But then . . .
Hoping momentum would carry him where caution would not, Sam lunged forward, reaching for the bracket with his foot and the outward curve of the pipe, where it met the gutter, with his hand.
He reached both. But the crevice le Singe had found with his toes was inaccessible to Sam. His stolidly shod foot slid off the edge of the bracket into thin air, pulling his other foot off the rail behind him. He grasped the pipe, but his feet swung free. ‘Oh Christ,’ he cried out.
He was going to fall. He did not have the strength to pull himself up and round with his arms alone. He was going to fall. And it would be a fall to his death.
Morahan was on the balcony now, stretching out towards him. But the gap between them was too wide. It suddenly occurred to Sam that he had jumped into a trap – that le Singe was so suspicious of them he had lured him out there precisely so that he would fall. He looked up. And le Singe was smiling.
Then a rope-ladder, released by le Singe, unfurled itself from the roof, falling across Sam’s shoulder. He thrust one foot into a rung and clasped the sides, uttering a silent prayer of thanks. He was safe, even if far from secure.
He hauled himself up the ladder, ignoring the ominous creaking of the rope as it sagged and swayed. Le Singe grabbed him by his hand and wrist to help him scramble up over the gutter and onto the roof, where he fell on all fours, heart racing, lungs straining, nerves shredded. ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped. ‘Bloody sodding hell.’
He looked up then and saw le Singe climbing the slope of the roof to the wall behind it, above which stood a broad stack of chimneys. The rope-ladder was fastened to two hooks fixed to the base of the wall. Le Singe hauled the ladder back in and rolled it up. There were two other hooks sunk in the wall about six feet up, painted cream, like the plaster, so that they would not be noticeable from any distance.
Le Singe jumped and lightly grabbed one of the hooks, found the other with his foot and was suddenly up on the chimney-stack, fully fifteen feet above, grinning down at Sam. The fluidity and seeming weightlessness of the boy’s movement reminded Sam of monkeys he had seen at London Zoo. That was not quite it, though. There was a distinctiveness to le Singe’s agility that was beyond the simian. It was more like dancing than gymnastics – a celebration of something he could do that no one else could.
Le Singe nodded semi-formally to Sam, arms by his sides, then turned and vanished from view, stepping off and away on some roof-tree road to wherever he wanted to be. Like a bird taking flight, but without the faintest flutter of wings, he was gone.
‘Sam?’ Morahan called. ‘Where in hell are you?’
Sam raised himself uneasily, feeling more afflicted by vertigo now than when he had followed le Singe onto the drainpipe. Morahan’s head came into sight as he leant back against the balcony rail and craned his neck.
‘I’m here,’ said Sam, raising his hand feebly.
‘And le Singe?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Where we can’t follow.’ Sam pointed behind him. ‘Up there somewhere.’
‘But why? Why run away?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t think while I’m stuck up here.’
‘Well, crawl along till you’re above the balcony and drop down. Don’t worry. I’ll catch you.’
Climbing out and over the gutter, then letting go and trusting Morahan to break his fall without both of them toppling off the balcony, was terrifying, and Sam was shaking like a leaf by the end of it.
‘How can you have been in the Air Force if you’re afraid of heights?’ Morahan demanded, as they picked themselves up from the foot of the balcony rail, against which they had fallen.
‘I was ground crew,’ Sam mumbled apologetically.
‘And what exactly d’you think this escapade accomplished?’
‘I’m hoping it’ll make him trust us.’
‘He’s given us nothing. You realize that, don’t you?’
‘But maybe he will give us something now.’
‘Maybe. I—’
A movement within the apartment caught their attention. A movement and a sound: a click, as of a latch engaging. They rushed into the bed-sitting-room.
Le Singe was not there. But something had changed while they had been on the balcony. ‘Look,’ said Sam.
A small sheaf of papers had been placed on the table. There were about half a dozen sheets in all, hole-punched in one corner and held together by a tag. They were covered in script – some typed and some handwritten. It was spidery, oriental script arranged in columns. Sam was hardly qualified to judge, but he felt instantly certain it was Japanese.
PARIS WAS EERILY quiet in the aftermath of the earlier protests and disorders. This did not give Sam any particular sense of safety, however, as he and Morahan hurried across the Pont Neuf and headed east along the Quai des Orfèvres. Proximity to Police Headquarters should have supplied some reassurance and was, he guessed, the reason Morahan had chosen the r
oute. But somehow he was not reassured.
The document le Singe had given them might be all and more they needed to move against Count Tomura and his son, but it was impenetrable to them. They needed to have it translated as quickly as possible and the only way Sam could suggest of achieving that was to enlist the help of Kuroda’s assistant, Yamanaka, via his cousin, the blanchisseur of Rue Frédéric-Sauton.
‘How can we be sure Yamanaka will respond to our message, Sam?’ Morahan asked, almost reflectively, as he strode along.
‘Kuroda assured me he would,’ Sam replied, breaking into a half-jog to keep up with the tall American.
‘Well, I guess that’s good enough. We’ll just have to hope the document gives us something we can use.’
‘It will, Mr Morahan: that’s why le Singe gave it to us.’
‘You’re a sight surer of him than I am. That dance he led us . . .’ Morahan shook his head. ‘I’ll bet it’s not all he could have given us. He must have a secret stash somewhere on the roof of that building.’
‘It wouldn’t be easy to find it.’
‘No. But he has no need of that rope-ladder, does he? He must have rigged it up for Soutine to use in an emergency. And if Soutine could reach the stash, so can we.’
‘We shouldn’t try, Mr Morahan. He wouldn’t trust us if we did.’
‘All right, God damn it. We’ll trust him. If that document yields something useful.’
The Blanchisserie Orita was plainly not the kind of establishment where a general strike was likely to be observed. The staff were all Asians, though they spoke French. English was incomprehensible to them, so Morahan switched to French to ask after the eponymous Orita.
He appeared through a doorway concealed by a thickly hung row of bagged garments awaiting collection. Bald, spectrally thin and spaniel-eyed, clad in snowy white overalls, he heard their request expressionlessly.
‘Twentyman,’ he said slowly, stressing each syllable, when Morahan had finished. ‘D’accord.’ He looked Sam in the eye. ‘A message for my cousin?’
‘Yes,’ Sam replied.
‘What is it?’ Orita leant forward, so that Sam had only to whisper to make himself understood.
‘We want him to meet us at Gare St-Lazare at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘I will tell him.’
‘When?’ Morahan pressed.
Orita greeted the question with a frown, perhaps of irritation. ‘Before eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Will he be there?’
‘I will give him the message.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sam, pressing his foot against Morahan’s. Annoying Orita struck him as a bad idea. ‘That’s all we needed to know.’
Sam acknowledged he could not return to the Majestic that night in case Tomura did have the hotel under surveillance. But having heard about Morahan’s rift with Ireton, he was not convinced Morahan’s apartment was a wise choice of bolt-hole either.
‘Don’t worry,’ Morahan reassured him. ‘Tomura won’t have learnt where I live. I guard the information carefully. But we need cast-iron certainty on the point, I agree. Which is why we’re going there via the Ile St-Louis.’
Malory Hollander was drinking light beer and smoking a long, slender cigarette in a café halfway along the Rue St-Louis-en-l’Ile. It was clear to Sam she had been waiting for Morahan. She was reading a book, the title of which – Of Human Bondage – made him feel no happier about his situation.
Sam had never met Malory before, but she seemed to know everything there was to know about him. His first impression of her – stiff and starchy, quite possibly hoity-toity – changed rapidly. She was Ireton’s secretary, but Morahan’s confidante.
‘I’d have spat in Travis’s eye and resigned on the spot, Schools, if you hadn’t said it was vital I remain there in the short term. You will make that the very short term, won’t you? Travis has burnt his boats with me by siding with Tomura against you.’
‘It’s important he doesn’t know that, Malory,’ said Morahan. ‘If Tomura found out you were helping us, you’d be in as much danger as we are. I can’t allow that.’
‘Travis actually instructed me to give Tomura your address, you know.’
‘Which you did?’
‘Certainly. Your old address, anyhow. Just as well you never settle anywhere.’
‘It’s my footloose character.’
‘I’ll be sure to act surprised if Tomura comes complaining you don’t live there any more. Now, what happened at the apartment? Did le Singe show up?’
‘He did. And we have something that may be useful. But we won’t know for certain until tomorrow. It’s a document – in Japanese.’
‘Let me see.’
‘You read Japanese, do you, Miss Hollander?’ Sam asked.
‘No, Sam, I don’t. But I might be able to turn up something useful.’ She began scanning the pages Morahan had passed her, squinting through her horn-rimmed glasses. ‘And please call me Malory. Also please stop calling Schools Mr Morahan. However you’d choose to describe our little alliance, formal wouldn’t be it, I reckon.’
‘OK, Malory,’ Sam said with an effort. ‘How’d you get a name like Schools . . . Schools?’
‘I’ll tell you some other time,’ Morahan growled.
‘You’re going to get this translated?’ asked Malory as she read on.
‘Kuroda’s assistant will do the honours.’
‘It’ll be fascinating to find out what it— Ah! My goodness me.’
‘What?’
‘Here. And here again.’ Malory pointed to two blocks of characters on one of the pages. ‘This word. I’m pretty sure I recognize it. It’s the word Max showed us when he came to the office that last time. The word written on a scrap of wallpaper. It’s written vertically here, of course, rather than left to right in the Western style. But it is the same.’
Sam peered at the characters. They meant nothing to him as such, of course. They looked familiar, it was true, but he could not have sworn they were the same as those he had seen himself on the scrap of wallpaper Max had brought back from London. It was tempting to believe they were, though, since le Singe was the source of both.
‘Farngold,’ he said under his breath.
‘That’s what it means? The name Farngold?’
‘It’s what le Singe wrote on the wallpaper at the flat in London after he helped Max get the better of Tarn. Yamanaka translated it for him.’
‘So this document tells us all about Farngold,’ Morahan suggested.
‘Maybe,’ said Malory. ‘Yamanaka will be able to tell you.’
‘Does Max know who Farngold is, Sam?’ Morahan asked.
‘No, he doesn’t. But he’d badly like to. Farngold was the name his father held a safe-deposit box under at the Bank Ornal. The box Lemmer emptied.’
‘Lemmer and Henry and Farngold and Tomura,’ Morahan mused. ‘There’s the thread.’
‘And it leads to Japan, Schools,’ said Malory, in a tone that suggested a significance to the point beyond any Sam was equipped to comprehend. ‘Japan thirty years ago. And Japan today.’
‘What d’you mean, Malory?’ Sam asked.
‘Tell him, Schools,’ she responded. ‘You must tell him now it’s come to this.’
‘Yuh.’ Morahan nodded sorrowfully. ‘I guess I must.’
MAX FORMULATED A plan of sorts as he walked down through Westminster towards Pimlico. He helped himself to a fist-sized chunk of masonry from a building site he passed and bought a pair of thick woollen socks at the next draper’s he came to. He stuffed the chunk inside one of the socks, knotted it and reckoned the result was the most serviceable weapon he could hope to come by.
The draper helped him out with directions to Glamorgan Street as well. It ran between Lupus Street and Grosvenor Road, close to Belgrave Dock. The streets around the dock were, he saw as he approached, lined with terraced working-class houses. He decided to approach Glamorgan Street from the river end and walked
down past the dock to reach it. The night was closing in and the warehouses were shuttered and silent. The evening was damp and windless.
He turned in to Glamorgan Street and saw a pub sign ahead: the Balmoral Castle. Number 24 was some way beyond it on the same side. It was not quite as dark as he wanted it to be. Patience, he knew, was as important as determination. He went into the pub, where men who looked for the most part as if they worked at the dock were drinking and smoking and playing cribbage and bickering amiably. He ordered a Scotch and sipped it slowly, standing at the bar. He did not know exactly what he was going to do. But he was going to do it.
Morahan declined to say any more until he and Sam had reached the privacy of his apartment. There they settled over glasses of bourbon and talked the matter through.
‘Going back to the life of an ordinary working Joe after you’ve fought in a war is no easy thing, Sam,’ Morahan began. ‘I guess I don’t need to tell you that. Well, after Travis and I had served together in Cuba in ’ninety-eight, Travis fixed us up with an assignment in Colombia. There was a civil war brewing and the US government had a hand in it. Travis knew more than he told me and that was fine by me. I did more drinking than thinking back then. Anyhow, the plan was to foment a revolution in Panama, which was still Colombian territory, in order to set up a US-friendly government that would cede the US a strip of land to push the Panama Canal through.
‘That all worked out well if you were sitting in Washington with a map spread out on your desk, but it was dirty business down on the ground. We were paid well, though, I can’t deny it. We moved on to Peru afterwards. “American interests” – that was how Travis always described our anonymous paymasters – wanted to secure control of some copper deposits, by fair means or foul. They were mostly foul. I split with Travis because I didn’t like what he was turning me into and we went our separate ways, though it seems I hadn’t learnt my lesson, because I partnered up with him again later. Before leaving Peru, I did a few stupid things. Sabotage of US corporation assets, they called it. I never thought they’d come after me. But they did. I went to Brazil and found work – the semi-respectable kind in Rio de Janeiro. Then I was arrested. The Brazilian government was pro-American and the authorities would’ve been happy to send me back to Peru, where I’d have been tried on exaggerated charges and likely executed.’
The Corners of the Globe Page 23