by Jackson, Gil
He smiled at her phoney Irish and put his hand out to brush her face. She took the hand and put it to her cheek. ‘My Life! that’s as bad as my Yiddish,’ he replied, ‘vhat’s happened to me?’ he said shrugging his shoulders and opening his hands palms up.
‘You fell off a barstool, don’t you remember, you’re in hospital.’
‘Barstool? That’s not for the first time. Hospital? When — how long?’ He tried to lift himself up from the pillow, gathering his thoughts and the events that led to him being here. His eyes were clearing and could see the end of his bed, Sarah sitting holding his hand.
‘Shoosh, there now, Charlie. Lie back down,’ she said trying to reassure him that he would be all right and was in good hands. ‘Three days! Charlie. You’ve been here three days; your heart and breathing have been but a whisper, you were not supposed to make it; they’re calling it a miracle.’
Sarah gently restrained him as he tried to raise himself from his pillow once more.
‘Hold fast, Charlie, you must take things gently.’
He closed his eyes in resignation. He couldn’t get up if he wanted to, he was too weak. ‘Sweet Mother of Jesus,’ he whispered, ‘I feel awful, what did they say happened to me?’
‘They think it was a massive seizure to your heart; the doctor didn’t expect you to survive it.’
‘That’s me Angel,’ he said, closing his eyes to prevent light nausea.
‘Am I tiring you, Charlie, would you like a sip of water?’
‘I can’t die, she won’t let me!’
‘Who’s she, Charlie?’
His mind flashed back to what he had said and wondered why he had said it when he had never mentioned it before. It wouldn’t take any explaining he was delirious. And if he did nobody would believe him. Why should they? ‘I’ve a guardian angel, so I have.’
She smiled. ‘Thank heaven for angels.’
‘There. She’s standing by your shoulder. Look.’
She turned. Humoured him. ‘Yes, I see her ... we’d called a priest.’
He put his hand out to her. ‘A priest you say? Well, I suppose you had to, I’d left an unfinished beer on the counter, he won’t get that now I’m back to finish it.’
She smiled at his lightness of the situation.
The doctor returned. ‘How you feeling, Mr. O’Hare, any pains? You look and measure up great, for a man a quarter your age.’
‘He hasn’t lost his sense of humour that’s for sure.’
Charlie moved his hand and felt himself. Lifted his head. ‘No, I’m fine.’
The doctor gently pushed his head back onto the pillow. ‘I’m sure you’re right, with your permission though I’d like to run some tests, if you’re feeling up to it.’
‘Better do it now, doc, I shall be gone tomorrow, so I will.’
‘Gone! What’d you mean, gone?’
‘Leaving. The hospital.’ He looked at Sarah. ‘Going home, I’m leaving to go home ... what did you think I meant?’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Going home, yes. Well I’ll have a look.’ He pushed Charlie’s sleeve up and strapped a rubber band onto his arm below the muscle pumping the rubber ball attached to the end. Charlie could feel the blood pulse under the pressure. The doctor put his stethoscope to the enlarged artery and listened once again for the auscultation. He pursed his lips said: ‘Hmm.’ Moved the hearing plate to his chest and listened for what to Charlie seemed longer than necessary. ‘Would you mind if my colleague has a listen?’
‘If you feel he could do with the practice, by all means, carry on, I’m not one to be standing in the way of medical advancements.’
Sarah looked on anxiously. ‘Is there something wrong, doctor?’
‘Not at all, Mrs. O’Hare.’
She smiled. ‘Weinberg. I’m Mr. O’Hare’s oldest friend.’
‘Sorry. Mrs.... Weinberg. I assumed ... I’m sorry, no of course there’s nothing wrong, I’d just like a second opinion on Mr. O’Hare’s miraculous recovery ... seeing as he wants to go home.’ He smiled embarrassingly, and said: ‘Excuse me for a moment.’
‘Well, whatever’s that all about? You can’t go home tomorrow, Charlie, you’re talking nonsense — good God man, didn’t you hear us say; you were within a priest’s whisper an hour ago, whatever are you thinking of?’
He put his hand on hers and smiled. ‘I’ll be all right, Mrs. O’Hare.’
She pulled her hand from his. ‘And you can get ideas like that out of your head, so you can.’
The doctor returned with his colleague who put his stethoscope to Charlie’s chest and listened. ‘You’re fine, Mr. O’Hare, we’d like to keep you though, for a couple of days ... be on the safe side.’ He put his hand up to stay Charlie. ‘Before you say anything, I insist. 24 hours, you can go, okay?’
‘If I must.’
‘Good chap. I’ll see you in the morning.’ He nodded to Sarah, ‘See that he doesn’t escape.’
‘Can I have a glass of water please?’
Sarah couldn’t resist it. ‘Quick, doctor, he’s relapsing, he normally asks for whiskey....’
When they were alone again Charlie spoke quietly to her. ‘You realise that this change in my health status means that we won’t be sailing into the sunset just yet, I’ve still got some years’ left in me, and I’ve business that needs finishing.’
‘You’re going back to work, after what’s happened?’
He noticed that she was still holding his hand; the warmth gave him a feeling of well-being. They had never spoken of their feelings for each other in any more than a jocular way, yet, as far as he was concerned it felt both right and wrong for them to be more than — dare he think it — lovers, or man and wife. But, he’d thought that more than once before. How could he contemplate an emotional commitment that he’d never had any experience of? He would surely — so set in his ways — fall far short of her expectations, that he would not only lose a wife, but the friendship that he’d always enjoyed in her company; and from his selfish point of view, the risk would be all too much if it should fail.
The words surprised him. They’d come without any conscious effort, and surprisingly, they did not make him feel that he shouldn’t have said them. ‘I love you, Sarah Weinberg, that’s all, let’s get married?’
She held his hand all the tighter and looked into his eyes. ‘Study the Torah; get your self circumcised and I’m yours.’
He screwed up his face, drew a loud breath between his teeth said: ‘I’m not sure if I can be doin’ with all that reading at this time o’ me life, Sarah, so I’m not.’
PART TWO
CHAPTER 12 – 1950
Director Franklin Lomax had two telephones. One on his desk, which was black; the other, which was under it, grey. The black one worked, the grey one didn’t. At least that is what he had been told before he was director. A back-up telephone, in the event, of a national emergency; or some other occurrence, the stiff, bun-topped matron in charge of the typing pool had snapped at him, her head shaking as if to set the sentence and the telephone in stone, in case (perish the thought), he had any ideas in the moving of it. He’d picked it up once (when he thought she was out of the room) when he thought the line dead, but wasn’t absolutely sure (just checking) when she came back and caught him. He quickly made out he was cleaning it, replaced the receiver it, smiled at her carried on with what he was doing and at the same time, feeling her eyes boring into the back of his neck. Not wishing to repeat the experience, did not bother with it again.
Over the years, and after she had long retired and he had become director, the telephone had acquired its own life by way of layers of grime made up of the transference of perspiration, coffee spills, food, flakes of body skin, cigarette smoke and ash: all the result of being in someone’s way and being moved and removed to make space for a file or some other piece of office paraphernalia. Unlike his predecessor — who had asked for it to be removed permanently — and Lomax (out of respect and not a little fear for the ghost of the late m
atron) refused him permission — director Lomax had taken the initiative and sat it on a shoe box on the floor under his desk where it had taken to continue gathering dust. (He still hadn’t checked if it worked. Again out of ... respect!)
And now, it was level with this same shoe box that director Lomax found himself: trying to answer that same dead telephone. He cursed the embarrassing predicament he found himself in. Crammed into the desk’s leg well, his suit, to his annoyance — he hated baggy knees — tight from the kneeling was picking up dirt in its weft.
To his knowledge — and he was convinced that it hadn’t been connected — that telephone had never rang, and according to the previous occupant of the desk, not even during the Second World War. And as for any other national emergency of which there had been one a week he had not seen any use for it. There was the usual weekly office pass-round the: the standing order for the telephone still on it, and curiously to Franklin, reiterated recently. [Grey telephone #278. In the event etc.... Exampled for instance: in case the head of the FBI became no more]. His temporary replacement assumed to be the President. But neither suggested or confirmed to be by the receiver of the call: would be given his instructions. Director Lomax prided himself on being able to recognise voices of people he was likely to come across in the course of his working day and recognised neither the President’s or anyone else’s for that matter — and that included J. Edgar Hoover himself — on that dirty old grey telephone that he had answered in the presence of several other office staff wondering what their boss was doing on his hands and knees under his desk with his arse sticking out.
* * *
David had taken a flight from New York to Mexico City where he took delivery of a waiting rental Pontiac for the rest of the journey into the Yucatan Peninsula. It was there Franklin Lomax had arranged for him to meet an agent from Special Intelligence Service and the only contact the Bureau had in Mexico. And to Franklin Lomax’s chagrin: burrowed deep into the CIA.
Ty Colsson was David’s age and billeted in a government hacienda at Campeche with views across the Gulf of Mexico. He worked out of the American embassy in Mexico, or rather that was his cover base, for he was hardly ever there excepting to take and receive orders from his controller. His primary function was to collect foreign intelligence from Cuba and any other of the South American countries that could become potential sites for Russian missiles. There was no shortage of tin pot dictators ready to trade suitable real estate to the Russian’s for American dollars.
‘So,’ Ty Colsson said after he had made him welcome with local Tequila. ‘How can the Mexican Chapter of the FBI stroke CIA help you?’
David smiled at his use of the word Chapter, guessing by the motorcycle accoutrements dotted around the walls in the form of pictures; the leathers hanging from the door; the framed photograph of him sitting astride an Indian dirt bike with others (looking like those known as Hell’s Angels), where it came from.
Ty noticed him looking. ‘Just a bit of inside work. The powers that be had it in their minds that they might be capable of subversive activities.’
‘And did they?’
‘Not if you count pissing over each other by way of initiation.’
David smiled. ‘No, not really. Do you still ride?’
‘When I can. Doesn’t seem to be much time at the moment with Russian activity in South America.’
‘Can’t blame them. What they need is a slip jetty to the Mediterranean, they wouldn’t bother us.’
‘Then Europe really would have trouble. This is the so-called cold war, David — Stalin’s legacy for a new world order. Its come to Russian spies in the United States government, and I don’t think they’ll stop there. You know what they’re calling us and the Russian don’t you?’ David shook his head. ‘Scorpion and a tarantula in the same bottle. God alone knows what the future’s going to hold.’
David had a lesson in politics from the CIA; but was more concerned as to how the CIA could help him than Europe’s endlessly tiresome problems.
He explained that he didn’t work for either organisation, more a paid mercenary spy. David was puzzled but he didn’t elaborate, except to say that he had no-one to bother him, as long as he came up with the goods.
‘Understand you’re making inquiries of someone?’ Ty said.
‘That’s right. A missing Professor and the man he was apparently trying to assassinate, who’s been linked with Ocean International.’
‘Ocean International, eh, well if you turn your head forty degrees starboard you’re see a yacht resembling something from the US Navy anchored out in the bay.’
He pointed out the window across the water and handed David a pair of binoculars. ‘Here, it’s the one blocking out the setting sun.’
David took them and adjusted the focus. There were several out in the bay but only one descriptive of a small battle cruiser. ‘Is that it, the one with the Decca radar dish on its the mast-head?’
‘You got it. Money no object there — Frederic Spannocs, head of Ocean International. And if your professor had been involved with him, aggressive like, I wouldn’t have given him five minutes. You don’t go upsetting Frederik Spannocs. I’m used to crossing people but I wouldn’t that one; if that’s what you’re here for, I suggest you say you’ve found nothing and go home. That man’s got clout in the US senate. Your man wouldn’t have got passed his bodyguard’s. And one in particular — well, strange isn’t the word—’
‘How’d you mean, strange?’
‘Homosexual! And as far as I know so are the rest of his crew; Spannocs’s no stranger to a bit of perversity.’
‘That’s a bit unusual isn’t it?’ David said.
‘Certainly is, not something you’d want to advertise, still makes no difference down here, they can’t do you for it; and you wouldn’t want to make comments about them either. Some Marines on shore leave did and one lived to regret it.’
‘What happened?’
‘Typical Marines, got drunk, start upsetting the locals, except the bar they were in weren’t locals, they were off Spannocs’s yacht. One of them, Spannocs’s personal bodyguard, you know, they hold and dress in, what, something you might describe as an effeminate way, well anyway one of the Marines begins getting fresh with him. I must admit I have seen him and he does look a bit womanish, if you know what I mean. Anyway this Marine decides on a bit of fun and tries to pick him up. To be fair to the guy he first off ignores him and walks away from the bar and sits down with his friends. But the Marine, he can’t leave it alone — probably a bit bent himself, if the truth were known. They all join in, you know, start cat calling and whistling — by the way, I’m being rude, do you want another drink? I’ve some Jack Daniels or do you prefer the tequila?’
‘Since you ask I’ll have the JD, can’t get on with the other.’
Ty got two fresh glasses from the small bamboo decorated cocktail bar in the corner of his room and poured two JD’s. ‘Ice?’
‘Please, so what happened next?’
He passed him his drink and tapped his glass with the lip of his. ‘Cheers, here’s to the Russians. Well I wasn’t there you understand but apparently this guy gets up, goes up to them, by himself, and attacks them.’
‘What’d you mean all of them? There wasn’t a fight?’
‘Only token on their part, he downed the lot of them in seconds. Used that oriental hand fighting — you know the one the Tibetan monks use against bandits on account of their religion not permitting them the use of weapons?’
‘Kung Fu.’
‘That what it’s called? Yes, well, Kung Fu. Whatever it’s called it’s effective, they never stood a chance.’
‘I can imagine. I saw a demonstration recently — they’re thinking of training us in it.’
‘Useful I’d imagine, well anyway, he puts two of them in hospital after he’d chopped their throats; they had terrible breathing problems.’
‘And the other?’
‘The other?’
‘Yes you said there were three.’
‘Sorry, yeh, I didn’t say, died where he laid. And what was strange, there were no charges brought against him.’
‘So, who was this guy, did they say?’
‘Yeh, it was Spannocs’s bodyguard, Tony Di Sotto.’
‘Di Sotto?’
‘You know him!’
‘I don’t, but I know a man that does, and is looking for him.’ David passed the binoculars back. ‘And the Marine?’
‘The Marine, sorry did I say he was a Marine. No he was with them, someone they’d met on their run ashore.’
‘Did he have a name?’
‘Not that I know of – it wouldn’t have been important to us, otherwise I might have known, no.’
‘Thinking it was your man?’
‘Might be.’
‘Well, if he’d made an unsuccessful attack on Spannocs and got away, he’d have sent Di Sotto after him – ashore. What was he called, I’ll make some inquiries?’
‘Angus Paul. Bit of a mystery. Far as we know he’s involved with some quasi-religious order that go by the name of the Order of the Most Divine Third Circle, heard of them?’
Ty shook his head, no.
‘Apparently they wanted someone murdered, we think Spannocs. Paul had been sent to do that, except, he’s gone missing and no apparent murder’s taken place.’
‘So what are they all about, this Circle?’
‘Anti science, which is a bit ironic considering that’s what Paul was, or did—’
‘Something like Creationism by the sound of it. Makes sense, you know that Spannocs’s company are involved in atomic energy — and there’s an awful lot of people against that — could be a reason for wanting him dead, perhaps it is him?’
David smiled. ‘Who knows, but Di Sotto will do for a starter.’
‘So what would this Circle people have against Spannocs?’
‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’
‘Well naturally I’ll give you any help you need. I told your Lomax that. I’ll tell you one thing strange, they found an oxygen re-breather set washed up on the beach a little while ago. And it had teeth bites on it. Your Paul wasn’t a diver by any chance.’
