Bolt Page 13

  ‘Do you?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Oh sure. I say I race for the money.’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘I’d do it for nothing, but being paid is better.’

  He nodded, having no difficulty in understanding. ‘So what do you expect next from Nanterre?’ he asked.

  ‘Another half-baked attack on one of us. He won’t have planned properly for contingencies, but we might find ourselves in nasty spots nevertheless.’

  ‘Charming,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t go down dark alleys to meet strangers.’

  ‘I never do.’

  I asked him rather tentatively what he did do, back in Paris, where he lived.

  ‘Frightfully little, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I have an interest in an art gallery. I spend a good deal of my life looking at paintings. The Louvre expert Danielle and I went to listen to is a very old acquaintance. I was sure she would enjoy …’ He paused. ‘She did enjoy it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I could feel him shift in the passenger seat until he could see me better.

  ‘There was a group of us,’ he said. ‘We weren’t alone.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  He didn’t pursue it. He said unexpectedly instead, ‘I have been married, but we are separated. Technically I am still married. If either of us wished to remarry, there would be a divorce. But she has lovers, and I also …’ he shrugged. ‘It’s common enough, in France.’

  I said ‘Thank you,’ after a pause, and he nodded; and we didn’t speak of it again.

  ‘I would like to have been an artist,’ he said after a while. ‘I studied for years … I can see the genius in great paintings, but for myself … I can put paint on canvas, but I haven’t the great gift. And you, my friend Kit, are damn bloody lucky to have been endowed with the skill to match your desire.’

  I was silent; silenced. I’d had the skill from birth, and one couldn’t say where it came from; and I hadn’t much thought what it would be like to be without it. I looked at life suddenly from Litsi’s point of view, and knew that I was in truth damn bloody lucky, that it was the root of my basic happiness, and that I should be humbly grateful.

  When we got to Eaton Square, I suggested dropping him at the front door while I went to park the car, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Dark alleys, he reminded me, and being careful.

  ‘There’s some light in the mews,’ I said.

  ‘All the same, we’ll park the car together and walk back together, and take our own advice.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and reflected that at one-thirty, when I went to fetch Danielle, I would be going alone into the self-same dark alley, and it would be then that I’d better be careful.

  Litsi and I let ourselves in, Dawson meeting us in the hall saying the princess and Beatrice had vanished to their rooms to change and rest.

  ‘Where is Sammy?’ I said.

  Sammy, Dawson said with faint disapproval, was walking about, and was never in any place longer than a minute. I went upstairs to fetch the new telephone and found Sammy coming down the stairs from the top floor.

  ‘Did you know there’s another kitchen up there?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I looked.’

  ‘And there’s a skylight or two. I rigged a nice little pair of booby traps under those. If you hear a lot of old brass firearms crashing around up there, you get the force here pronto.’

  I assured him I would, and took him downstairs with me to show him, as well as Dawson and Litsi, how the recording telephone worked.

  The normal telephone arrangements in that house were both simple and complicated: there was only one line, but about a dozen scattered instruments.

  Incoming calls rang in only three of those: the one in the sitting room, one in the office where Mrs Jenkins worked by day, and one in the basement. Whoever was near one of those instruments when a call came in would answer, and if it were for someone else, reach that person via the intercom, as Dawson had reached me when Wykeham rang the previous Sunday. This arrangement was to save six or more people answering whenever the telephone rang.

  From each guest bedroom outgoing calls could be directly made, as from the princess’s rooms, and her husband’s. The house was rarely as full as at present, Dawson said, and the telephone was seldom busy. The system normally worked smoothly.

  I explained that to work the new telephone, one had simply to unplug the ordinary instrument and plug in the new one.

  ‘If you press that button,’ I said, pointing, ‘the whole conversation will be recorded. If you press that one, everyone in the room can hear what’s being said.’

  I plugged the simple box of tricks into the sitting room socket. ‘It had better be in here while we are all around. During the day, if everyone’s out, like today, it can go to Mrs Jenkins’ office, and at night, if Dawson wouldn’t mind, in the basement. It doesn’t matter how many calls are unnecessarily recorded, we can scrub them out, but every time … if one could develop the habit?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘Such an uncouth man,’ Dawson commented. ‘I would know that loud voice anywhere.’

  ‘It’s a pity,’ Litsi said, when Dawson and Sammy had gone, ‘that we can’t somehow tap Beatrice’s phone and record what she says.’

  ‘Anytime she’s upstairs, like now, we can just lift the receiver and listen.’

  We lifted the receiver, but no one in the house was talking. We could wait and listen for hours, but meanwhile no outside calls could come in. Regretfully Litsi put the receiver back again, saying we might be lucky, he would try every few minutes; but by the time Beatrice reappeared for dinner the intermittent vigil had produced no results.

  I had meanwhile talked to Wykeham and collected the messages off my answering machine, neither a lengthy event, and if anyone had inadvertently broken in on the calls, I’d heard no clicks on the line.

  Beatrice came down demanding her ‘bloody’ in a flattering white dress covered in sunflowers, Litsi fussing over her with amiable solicitude, and refusing to be disconcerted by ungraciousness.

  ‘I know you don’t want me here,’ she said bluntly, ‘but until Roland signs on the dotted line, I’m staying.’

  The princess came down to dinner, but not Roland, and on our return to the sitting room afterwards Litsi, without seeming to, manoeuvred everyone around so that it was I who ended up sitting by the telephone. He smiled over his coffee cup, and everyone waited.

  When the bell finally rang, Beatrice jumped.

  I picked up the receiver, pressing both the recorder and conference buttons; and a voice spoke French loudly into our expectations.

  ELEVEN

  Litsi rose immediately to his feet, came over to me and made gestures for me to give him the phone.

  ‘It isn’t Nanterre,’ he said.

  He took the receiver, disengaged the conference button and spoke privately in French. ‘Oui… non … certainement … ce soir … oui… merci.’

  He put down the receiver and almost immediately the bell rang again. Litsi picked up the receiver again, briefly listened, grimaced, pressed the record and conference buttons again, and passed the buck to me.

  ‘It’s him,’ he said succinctly, and indeed everyone could hear the familiar domineering voice saying words that meant nothing to me at all.

  ‘Speak English, please,’ I said.

  ‘I said,’ Nanterre said in English, ‘I wish to speak to Prince Litsi and he is to be brought to the telephone immediately.’

  ‘He isn’t available,’ I said. ‘I can give him a message.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘I know who you are. You are the jockey.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I left instructions for you to leave the house.’

  ‘I don’t obey your instructions.’

  ‘You’ll regret it.’

  ‘In what way?’ I asked, but he wouldn’t be drawn into a specific threat; quite likely, I supposed, because he hadn’t yet thought up a particular mayhem
.

  ‘My notary will arrive at the house tomorrow morning at ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘He will be shown to the library, as before. He will wait there. Roland de Brescou and Princess Casilia will go down there when he arrives. Also Prince Litsi and Danielle de Brescou will go down. All will sign the form which is in the notary’s briefcase. The notary will witness each signature, and carry the document away in his briefcase. Is this understood?’

  ‘It is understood,’ I said calmly, ‘but it’s not going to happen.’

  ‘It must happen.’

  ‘There’s no document in the briefcase.’

  It stopped him barely a second. ‘My notary will bring a paper bearing the same form of words. Everyone will sign the notary’s document.’

  ‘No, they aren’t ready to,’ I said.

  ‘I have warned what will happen if the document is not signed.’

  ‘What will happen?’ I asked. ‘You can’t make people behave against their consciences.’

  ‘Every conscience has its price,’ he said furiously, and instantly disconnected. The telephone clicked a few times and came forth with the dialling tone, and I put the receiver back in its cradle to shut it off.

  Litsi shook his head regretfully. ‘He’s being cautious. Nothing he said can be presented to the police as a threat requiring action on their part.’

  ‘You should all sign his document,’ Beatrice said aggrievedly, ‘and be done with all this obstruction to expanding his business.’

  No one bothered to argue with her: the ground had already been covered too often. Litsi then asked the princess if she would mind if he and I went out for a little while. Sammy was still in the house to look after things until John Grundy came, and I would be back in good time to fetch Danielle.

  The princess acquiesced with this arrangement while looking anything but ecstatic over further time alone with Beatrice, and it was with twinges of guilt that I happily followed Litsi out of the room.

  ‘We’ll go in a taxi,’ he said, ‘to the Marylebone Plaza hotel.’

  ‘That’s not your sort of place,’ I observed mildly.

  ‘We’re going to meet someone. It’s his sort of place.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone to tell you about the arms trade.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, interested. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t precisely know. We are to go to room eleven twelve and talk to a Mr Mohammed. That isn’t his real name, which he would prefer we didn’t know. He will be helpful, I’m told.’

  ‘How did you find him?’ I asked.

  Litsi smiled. ‘I didn’t exactly. But I asked someone in France who would know … who could tell me what’s going on in the handguns world. Mr Mohammed is the result. Be satisfied with that.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Your name is Mr Smith,’ he said. ‘Mine is Mr Jones.’

  ‘Such stunning originality.’

  The Marylebone Plaza hotel was about three miles distant from Eaton Square geographically and in a different world economically. The Marylebone Plaza was frankly a barebones overnight stopping place for impecunious travellers, huge, impersonal, a shelter for the anonymous. I’d passed it fairly often but never been through its doors before, and nor, it was clear, had Litsi. We made our way however across an expanse of hard grey mottled flooring, and took a lift to the eleventh floor.

  Upstairs the passages were narrow, though carpeted; the lighting economical. We peered at door numbers, found eleven twelve, and knocked.

  The door was opened to us by a swarthy-skinned man in a good suit with a white shirt, gold cufflinks, and an impassive expression.

  ‘Mr Jones and Mr Smith,’ Litsi said.

  The man opened the door further and gestured to us to go in, and inside we found another man similarly dressed, except that he wore also a heavy gold ring inset with four diamonds arranged in a square.

  ‘Mohammed,’ he said, extending the hand with the ring to be shaken. He nodded over our shoulders to his friend, who silently went out of the door, closing it behind him.

  Mohammed, somewhere between Litsi’s age and mine, I judged, had dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and a heavy dark moustache. The opulence of the ring was echoed in the leather suitcase lying on the bed and in his wristwatch, which looked like gold nuggets strung together round his wrist.

  He was in good humour, and apologised for meeting us ‘where no one would know any of us’.

  ‘I am legitimately in the arms trade,’ he assured us. ‘I will tell you anything you want to know, as long as you do not say who told you.’

  He apologised again for the fact that the room was furnished with a single chair, and offered it to Litsi. I perched against a table, Mohammed sat on the bed. There were reddish curtains across the window, a brown patterned carpet on the floor, a striped cotton bedspread; all clean looking and in good repair.

  ‘I will leave in an hour,’ Mohammed said, consulting the nuggets. ‘You wish to ask about plastic guns. Please go ahead.’

  ‘Er …’ Litsi said.

  ‘Who makes them?’ I asked.

  Mohammed switched his dark gaze my way. ‘The bestknown,’ he said straightforwardly, ‘are made by Glock of Austria. The Glock 17.’ He reached unhurriedly towards the suitcase and unclipped the locks, ‘I brought one to show you.’

  Beneath his educated English there was an accent I couldn’t place. Arab, in some way, I thought. Definitely Mediterranean, not Italian, perhaps French.

  ‘The Glock 17,’ he was saying, ‘is mostly plastic but has metal parts. Future guns of this sort can be made entirely from plastic. It’s a matter of a suitable formula for the material.’

  From the suitcase he produced a neat square black box.

  ‘This handgun is legitimately in my possession,’ he said. ‘Despite the manner of our meeting, I am a reputable dealer.’

  We assured him that we hadn’t thought otherwise.

  He nodded in satisfaction and took the lid off the box. Inside, packed in a moulded tray, like a toy, lay a black pistol, an ammunition clip, and eighteen golden bullets, flat caps uppermost, points invisible, arranged neatly in three horizontal rows of six.

  Mohammed lifted the weapon out of the box.

  ‘This pistol,’ he said, ‘has many advantages. It is light, it is cheaper and easier to make than all-metal guns, and also it is more accurate.’

  He let the information sink into our brains in true salesman fashion.

  ‘It pulls apart.’ He showed us, snapping off the entire top of the pistol, revealing a metal rod lying within. ‘This is the metal barrel.’ He picked it out, ‘There is also a metal spring. The bullets also are metal. The butt and the ammunition clip are plastic. The pieces pop back together again very easily.’ He reassembled the pistol fast, closing its top into place with a snap. ‘Extremely easy, as you see. The clip holds nine bullets at a time. People who use this weapon, including some police forces, consider it a great advance, the forerunner of a whole new concept of handguns.’

  ‘Aren’t they trying to ban it in America?’ Litsi said.

  ‘Yes.’ Mohammed shrugged. ‘Amendment 4194 to Title 18, forbidding the import, manufacture and sales of any such gun made after January 1, 1986. It is because the plastic is undetectable by X-ray scanners. They fear the guns will be carried through airports and into government buildings by terrorists.’

  ‘And won’t they?’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘Approximately two million private citizens in America own handguns,’ he said. ‘They believe in the right to carry arms. This Glock pistol is the beginning of the future. It may result in the widespread development of plastic-detectors … and perhaps in the banning of all handluggage on aeroplanes except ladies’ handbags and flat briefcases that can be searched by hand.’ He looked from me to Litsi. ‘Is terrorism your concern?’

  ‘No,’ Litsi said. ‘Not directly.’

  Mohammed seemed relieved. ‘This gun wasn’t invented as a terrorist weapon,’
he said. ‘It is seriously a good pistol, better all round.’

  ‘We understand that,’ I said. ‘How profitable is it?’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To the manufacturer.’

  ‘Ah.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It depends.’ He considered. ‘It costs less to make and is consequently cheaper in price than metal guns. The profit margin may not be so very different overall, but the gross profit of course depends on the number of items sold.’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘It’s calculated that most of the two million people already owning guns in America, for instance, will want to up-grade to the new product. The new is better and more prestigious, and so on. Also their police forces would like to have them. Apart from there, the world is thirsty for guns for use – private Americans, you understand, own them mostly for historical reasons, for sport, for fantasy, for the feeling of personal power, not because they intend to kill people – but in many many places, killing is the purpose. Killing, security and defence. The market is wide open for really cheap good reliable new pistols. For a while at least, until the demand is filled, manufacturers could make big honest money fast.’

  Litsi and I listened to him with respect.

  ‘What about dishonest money?’ I asked.

  He paused only momentarily. ‘It depends who we’re talking about.’

  ‘We’re still talking about the manufacturer,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. A corporation?’

  ‘A private company with one man in charge.’

  He produced a smile packed with worldly disillusion.

  ‘Such a man can print his own millions.’

  ‘How, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘The easiest way,’ he said, ‘is to ship the product in two parts.’ He pulled the plastic gun again into components. ‘Say you packed all the pieces into a box, like this, omitting only the barrel. A barrel, say, made of special plastic that won’t melt or buckle from the heat caused by the friction of the bullet passing through.’