I folded my hands together again. ‘The ikon. The Lesnovo ikon: what about that? Simon was flogging copies to Comer, and both his wife and Beverley seem to know; but so far neither has split on him.’
My father looked at Johnson, and Johnson fielded it for me. It was like bloody Pinky and Perky. He said, ‘If you remember, your launderette acquaintance Vladimir was an ikon painter, as well as being one of the three men you chased in the Wonderland. Poor Simon doesn’t really seem much of a conspirator. A clever man playing for very high stakes would never have got involved with Beverley, or with a doubtful trade in spurious ikons; but because of all these things, he might have made a reasonable tool. I wondered if Vladimir could be blackmailing him.’
‘So?’ I said. I knew my father was watching my face.
‘So I copied the Lesnovo ikon myself. Eighteen double night-trips to that basement for nothing, as it turned out. I put the genuine ikon into the parcel Simon took to the Eisenkopps and hung my own copy in its place in the basement. It was the first thing Simon went to look at, of course, when he got back to his house. Naturally, he thought he had been double-crossed by the painter who did his copies, and phoned him. I hoped it would be Vladimir, but it wasn’t.’
‘So you are no further on,’ I said. ‘Vladimir could still be blackmailing him.’
‘So I’m no further on,’ he agreed. ‘Except that I have a name or two for the New York city police when all this is over, and the Eisenkopps have the ikon they paid for. The Robin Hood of the paint box.’ He got up unexpectedly, leaving his pipe where it was, and strolling to the end of the desk, stood with his hands on either side of his seat, surveying my father. There were worn leather squares on his elbows and his cavalry twills, planked a little apart, were undeniably bagged at the knees.
‘All right. Don’t be impatient,’ my father said. ‘I’ve had your plan, and I approve of it. Now you’ve stopped smoking that bloody thing, in fact, we might as well settle down and get on with it. The drinks cupboard is behind you and if it’s rye, I don’t want it.’
I thought of the Eskimos and opened my mouth, it must be told, to comment on any plan made by Johnson Johnson. Then, although he wasn’t looking at me, I shut it again.
The Eskimo episode had placed me firmly where the Department wanted me to be: in the Booker-Readmans’ household. And it had flushed out for inspection all those who might be interested in Benedict and in me: such as, for example, Vladimir. Behind the continuous floor-show existed a gentleman who was no slouch and never had been, even when I was seventeen.
The discussion only took ten more minutes and Johnson and I had perhaps three more together after my father had gone and before he also slipped out by a back door, to make his way back to New York. I said, ‘I should have guessed. About you, I mean.’
‘I know. It’s annoying, isn’t it?’ said Johnson. ‘Like not getting the solution to yesterday’s crossword. You probably don’t realize it, but both your parents have put quite a lot of time and energy into keeping you out of the muddier bits of the field.’
Mother too, then. I said, ‘What brought you into it? Or were you always in from the beginning, and the portraits came after?’
He had stopped on his way to the door and looked as if he might continue to drift out at any second, though the pipe in his hand had been lit again. He said, ‘Oh, the painting came first. The rest, through Naval Intelligence: a popular way of recruiting legalized conmen. They expect you to tie all your victims in reef knots . . . Does this whole scheme appear fairly nerve-racking? I’m sorry there’s no other way. But they won’t kidnap you without the baby, or the baby without you. We have to let them have the matched set or nothing.’
‘Well, let’s put it this way,’ I said. ‘If it had been anyone else I’d have said no. Do I see you again before Yugoslavia?’
‘Not unless anything goes wrong. I’ll be on the flight, of course, and I’d like to have the pleasure of showing you Dolly. Lenny Milligan, who looks after it, is a very good sort of gent.’
He put his pipe in his mouth and had been walking to the door as he was speaking, but when he got there he turned, his hand still on the knob. ‘Joanna?’
‘What?’ I said.
He was looking at me through the top halves of the bifocals. ‘If it comes to a shoot-out, Benedict is my affair. Look after yourself and leave the baby to me. It isn’t what I told your father I’d do, but that way, he’ll live even if you don’t. Check?’
No slouch, and a bloody psychologist into the bargain. I did say ‘Check,’ after a moment, but he had gone by that time.
I spent the afternoon very, very privately, at the dentist’s.
Three days later, Bunty and I flew to Dubrovnik in a Warr Beckenstaff charter plane, ankle-deep in orchids and Bollinger. Since we had the three kids with us, both were necessary.
Along with us flew all Ingmar’s guests who were not already in Europe. They included both Booker-Readmans, the Eisenkopps, Hugo Panadek and Joshua Gibbings, the family doctor. And, of course, Johnson and Donovan, with his arm in a sling. I didn’t know who had rehired Donovan, but I strongly suspected Rosamund.
I was glad to see him. if unable to show it. However well organized you may be, it is a well-known truth that eight hours in the air with a child can drive all thoughts from your mind except possibly those of public suicide. Benedict’s cot swung ham-mockwise from the ceiling, and there wasn’t one of the crew or the passengers who failed to chuck him under the chin whenever passing. When he flaked out after three hours of crying it was probably because he was punch-drunk.
Sukey, also clipped to the ceiling with her Lolo Boochie Soft Camel, fared rather better, through her preference for wearing her hat on her face, which produced a knitted landscape not conducive to chucking. Every now and then Bunty cleared the pattern with cotton wool buds in the nose area. Sukey, who was teething, was in trouble at both ends and kept Bunty busy while I inherited the problem of Grover, who could sit on a potty, musical or otherwise, until kingdom come, and still have an emergency as soon as the lunch trays were with us.
Around me, concealing a murderer, was the Yugoslav party Johnson said must be treated as hostile. No doubt. I was busy. And avoiding, if it must be known, the bright, steam-cleaned glances of Donovan. Our forthcoming three days together on Dolly I was looking forward to with some ambivalence.
But for Bunty and her two kids, everyone else on the plane would be living on board Ingmar’s Glycera. Bunty, her hair newly frizzed, was off to a seaside hotel thirty miles south of Dubrovnik with Sukey and Grover and an envelopeful of addresses from Charlotte. I couldn’t see Bunty getting to Zagreb or Sarajevo, but there were a couple of boyfriends in the Dubrovnik/Herceg-Novi vicinity whom she’d marked with two stars and a question mark. One was called Jesus Krysztof and the other Lazar Dogíc. I’d been offered my pick, but had pointed out that I’d be bloody well immured on Dolly. With Donovan.
What Bunty did was obviously not weighing too much on her happy employers. Ever since their hospitality to the baby and me had wrung an invitation from the reluctant Warr Beckenstaffs, they had been lying about producing alphas like fortune cookies. Bunty said they’d had four hundred special cards printed, headed As from the M/S Glycera, and had found out how to spell Omar, Ira, Merle and Bianca. She thought they could manage Sammy, Peter, Grace, Cary, the Aga, the Bedfords and Jackie O already, or were prepared to risk it.
I hoped her list was accurate. Glycera habitués tend to have a short season, like cauliflowers. I also remembered with interest that according to Hugo, Beverley Eisenkopp had booked her bed at the Radoslav clinic four weeks before Ingmar invited her. So sure had she been, clearly, of wangling it.
I wished I could have asked her how. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen Beverley since I came back from Toronto, bearing the glad news that I had found a nurse-housekeeper for my ailing aunt Lily. Bunty had hardly left for her day off before her employer sent me a message. Would I bring Ben to spend the afternoon with Grover and Suk
ey, who had been missing me.
Considering that their mother had been willing to pay ten thousand dollars to arrange my permanent absence, I might be forgiven for receiving that sourly. But I took some routine precautions, and went. Donovan, as I remember, volunteered to stand outside the door.
The principal Eisenkopp sitting-room is forty feet long and apart from Grover and Sukey contained only Mrs Eisenkopp herself, looking teenage and vulnerable in Levis and a lumberjack shirt, with thick blonde hair falling down to her shoulderblades, and smelling of Sukey’s lamb dinner.
She said, ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ and did, eventually, with both of us locked in the bathroom, this being the only place within earshot in which we could discuss the topic of adultery with any assurance of privacy.
The opening gambit, delivered with her incredible lashes downturned in her exquisite profile, was that she supposedly found it a pretty strange scene, someone with a nice home and two fine kids and a wonderful husband like Mr Eisenkopp even thinking of dating another man. The development, which was slightly confused, had, I finally worked out, something to do with Mr and Mrs Richard Burton. The conclusion was predictable.
‘It happens once in a hundred years to a girl, and you can’t say no,’ said Beverley Eisenkopp, raising her voice a little above the noise of Grover kicking the door in. ‘I love my husband, Nurse Joanna, but Simon Booker-Readman is my prince. We were made for one another.’
They had certainly fitted very well into the Jacuzzi bath. I said, ‘You aren’t thinking of a divorce?’
She put the lid on the lavatory seat and sat on it. ‘Have I done any God-damned thing but think?’ she said peevishly. ‘Of course all I ask is a golden future with Simon - but what would be the cost? Two fine homes destroyed, my husband’s peace of mind gone, the mental health of three little children damaged for ever. I wouldn’t do that to my children, Joanna.’
I took it as a good sign that I had become Joanna, and said, ‘It’s none of my business anyway, Mrs Eisenkopp. You can be quite sure that no one among your family or friends will hear about it through me.’
She lifted her lashes and there were beautiful tears in them. ‘Do you mean that?’ she said. ‘Do you really mean it? But you hardly know me. Is it for the sake of those lovely children?’
To the sound of Grover’s feet and Grover’s voice, hoarse with rage, was added the rattle of the doorknob, violently turned from outside. I said ‘Well, they’ve got Bunty, of course. But certainly, it means a great deal to both of the children to have you there as much as possible. Grover is doing all this because he wants you to love him, you know.’
Her eyes were bright, pellucid hazel, with the whites clear as boiled eggs. She said, ‘Then if Comer were to ask you a question that threatened our marriage, could I count on you, Joanna, to be a real friend?’
I wondered how many files her romance with Simon Booker-Readman already occupied in British Intelligence and tried to look well-disposed but unbending. ‘We are trained, Mrs Eisenkopp, never to interfere in the personal affairs of the family. If awkward questions are asked, the rule is to answer that we know nothing about it.’
Beverley Eisenkopp got up and snatched at a tissue, dislodging a shower of Bunty’s personal James Bond plastic frogmen into the empty bath. ‘But that’s not enough,’ she said pettishly.
‘I’m sorry. I did try to leave. Don’t you think, if Mr Eisenkopp finds out from anyone, it will be from Mrs Booker-Readman?’
Her face relaxed. If the discussion had been less fraught, I think she might even have laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Oh, no. There’s no danger of that.’
The doorhandle fell inwards on to the carpet. She said, her voice melodious still, ‘Grover! What are you doing? You bad boy, leave Momma’s handle alone!’
He did, too. We could hear his shouts receding into the playroom and a series of crashes, such as bricks being thrown at a television set.
I undid a pin from my bib and set to work on the door while Mrs Eisenkopp wheedled through it. Bathos. I tell you, my private life and my career both sure as death were designed by a plumber.
We arrived at Ĉilipi, a little south of Dubrovnik, just before lunchtime.
You could see, looking out of the plane, how the Magistrala, the Adriatic Highway, ran down the west coast of Yugoslavia, on the green strip between mountains and sea. And on the sea, opposite Italy’s heel, stood this ancient walled town of Dubrovnik.
From the plane, it looked pretty well preserved, considering. The Balkans have changed hands so often that they’re a kedgeree of names and religions and languages. Yugoslavia has Austro-Hungarians in the north and there are Negroes in the south, descended from slaves of the Barbary corsairs. Occupied in the last world war by the Germans, the place liberated itself in a fearsome upheaval, complicated by the fact that there were two opposing Resistance movements. The Partisans, under Marshal Tito, ended by ruling the country, but the men of some regions, such as the Croats, have never really accepted the outcome.
So in his briefing Johnson had told me. The country was Communist, but its mixture of public and private enterprise was unlike that of Russia. It was still poor, and vulnerable to recession and trade barriers, but helped by the new tourist industry. For the tourist industry they needed Adriatic Highways, and Beverley Eisenkopp and places like Dubrovnik.
Its harbour town lay to the north. We saw, as we circled to land, the white banded flanks of the Glycera, lying there at the quay under the confetti-like swags of her bunting.
There were cars waiting for us all at the airport, with Warr Beckenstaff escorts in pink silk rosettes and makeup. The Eisenkopps went off first, on Comer’s insistence, to install their little prince and princess with Bunty at Herceg-Novi.
Our car came next, to take us with the baby to Johnson’s yacht Dolly. With us, not to be outdone in conscientious parenthood, came the Booker-Readmans and Johnson himself, to see the child safely aboard before going on to the Glycera.
It was all going according to plan. I believe I heard, as we drove away, the boom of some announcement behind, being made over the airport’s tannoy. But I paid no attention.
I remember that drive up the coast towards the harbour because Benedict was asleep, and I was able to relax, too, for perhaps the last time. For one thing, the car was a hired one and driven not by a member of the Warr Beckenstaff Corporation but by the little man called Lenny Milligan who looked after the Dolly, and had brought her round from Malta. And beyond his smart navy uniform and suntanned neck I had my first, and what might be my only close look at Yugoslavia.
It was more dramatic than I had expected: the high lilac mountains clothed with green almost to the top, and full, they said, of both Venetian fortresses and houses weekendica. The coast showed the same contradictions: the pink and white stucco buildings and the stone ones, with door rings and carved lintels and flanking pilasters.
The highway was international. There were green and yellow pumps of Jugopetrol, and snackbars, and autocamps and a notice Top Strip Tease by the roadside. We shared the route with Peugeots and Skodas and Opels, Fiats and Volkswagens, Zastavas and Trunus with thick hairy upholstery. There were also a herd of white goats, and donkeys with panniers of green stuff, and a man leading a horse with a wooden saddle. A Tam lorry full of Valencian oranges passed by a grove of citrus trees.
One third of these people were farmers. There were orange and lemon trees everywhere, and vines, just putting out their new leaves, and the pale trunks of fig trees, with the fruit small and firm as green light bulbs. There were flowers everywhere too, in beds and parks and balconies: phlox and tulips and begonias and low thick spidery succulents; geraniums and irises and bushes of small full pink roses. Wistaria and mimosa, and palms with great sprays of bright orange dates. We passed a window full of pot plants and I saw Donovan’s lips moving, silently.
Of course the summer was hot. Today it was merely mild, and the sky was overcast, although we passed men in the fields working strip
ped to the waist: tall brown-skinned men with an easy walk, as had the girls. Dressed, they wore in the country the Mediterranean uniform you see on older people everywhere: the long or short black cotton skirts, the headscarf, the black beret worn with faded blue denims. The old men with bad teeth and thick unwashed grey hair, each with his brimmed hat tipped over one narrowed eye, rakishly. They played cards in the side-streets we passed, on small tables littered with glasses and coffee cups. It reminded me of those other men playing cards in the Carl Schurz Park in America.
It reminded me of everything. How did twenty strangers expect to blend into a countryside such as this? How did you walk the hills in your good British clothes, avoid the dogs and the cats, produce the smart walkie-talkies from under your jacket; explain the use of your binoculars?
On the other hand, Mike Widdess had done it. So could other people, if driven hard enough. If driven, of course, by my father.
Then I saw Donovan watching me, and thought about nothing for the rest of the journey.
Johnson Johnson’s yacht, the Dolly, lay with six others at the Orsan, the yacht club on the opposite side of the basin from where the Glycera was berthed, and I heard Simon draw in his breath when he saw her. I thought I knew what to expect, but it wasn’t the elegant sheer of fifty-six feet of white topside; the tailored teak of the deck with its brass sparkling; the pale soaring poles of her masts. Graceful, orderly and implicitly workmanlike. I should have checked my suppositions against the experience I already had, of Johnson painting. Denny Donovan, his arms full of baby luggage, said, ‘Wow!!!’ Rosamund followed Johnson into the cockpit and looking around said, ‘Why the Dolly? She’s a beautiful boat.’
Her tone was critical, but he smiled at her.
‘Crummy name, I agree. It’s really the Doiley,’ he said. ‘Once belonged to a fancy paper goods manufacturer.’ A door leading aft had swung open under his fingers, disclosing a double stateroom, brightly and impeccably furnished. ‘Suppose you come in here while Lenny and Donovan take the luggage through for Joanna and the baby, and Donovan gets his stuff settled. I’ve given Joanna the forward stateroom with Lenny on one side of her in the fo’c’sle cot and Donovan on the other, next to the galley. I’ll show you in a minute. There’s a place for lashing Ben’s basket and no one can possibly get at them there.’
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