Tango

by Alan Judd

  She tugged at his arm. ‘There is nothing you can do.’

  ‘It was partly my fault. It was because I spoke to him. I gave him money so they probably thought he was spying for me, or something. It was Manuel Herrera who did it.’

  ‘You can do nothing now.’

  ‘We must get rid of them, Herrera and the others.’

  ‘That’s what we are doing.’

  ‘But now it’s serious.’

  ‘It wasn’t before?’

  ‘It didn’t feel serious. Did it for you?’

  She shrugged. They walked back towards the golf course. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Are you a fatalist?’

  She smiled. ‘God is a fatalist.’

  ‘If we go to the covered market, will God permit breakfast?’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘Arthur Box says you can be paid for the work you are doing – the spying work.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘He will pay me for it?’

  ‘Yes, if you want it for your family or whatever – if you like.’

  ‘I would like it very much. It’s better than the other work.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s good.’

  Chapter 10

  ‘Can you come now?’

  Nightingale’s tone was peremptory. William held the telephone away from his ear. ‘As I said, it’s a bit awkward. I’ve only just got into the office. I’m late myself and there’s no one else here. I ought to stay until there is.’

  ‘It is urgent. We’ve got to get something off.’

  ‘I’m pretty tired and there’s a lot here I should be getting on with. I’ve been up all night.’

  ‘I know you have. It’s about that.’

  ‘All right. It may take me some time to reach the embassy, though. I’ve lost my car.’

  ‘We’ll send you one.’

  Nightingale met him beneath the chandelier. He seemed hurried and distracted. His spotted bow-tie was loose and lopsided.

  ‘Awfully nice of you to come. The car will take you back again. It’s about this business of your friend – your secret friend, you know, the little funny – and what he wants us to send to London for him. He left a message and then disappeared and now we can’t find him. We’re not very happy about his message and Peter suggested we seek confirmation from you. Feather thinks we should just tear it up and forget it.’ Nightingale relaxed enough to smile as they went upstairs. ‘But that was first thing this morning and Feather’s early-morning reactions are sometimes a little – well, briskly decisive. I’m a hopeless prevaricator and Peter’s a natural compromiser, so we thought we’d call you to make up our minds for us.’

  Nightingale’s coffee was a help. The ambassador was as good-naturedly miserable as on the other occasions when William had met him. It seemed that the wrinkles would be smoothed and the furrows lifted from the man’s face if only someone would tell him he need no longer be ambassador.

  ‘Sorry to drag you in,’ he said. ‘Can’t find your friend anywhere. We had various names to ring at the hotel but no one answered any of them. Then we discovered they’d all checked out first thing. Who were they, anyway – agents of his?’

  ‘They were all him, I think.’

  ‘Well, he or they have gone to earth good and proper now, leaving us with a tidy problem.’ The ambassador handed William several sheets of dense black handwriting. ‘I say it’s a bit of a problem, Nightingale says it’s a crisis, Feather says it’s a disaster.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘You seem to have had an eventful night of it, anyhow.’

  ‘More coffee?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Please.’ William sat down to read Box’s notes.

  ‘Where’s Feather?’ the ambassador asked Nightingale.

  ‘In his bath, the brute. He’s got his brandy so he won’t be long. Then we’ll see a new man.’

  Box’s crabbed, precise handwriting summarised the night’s events as he knew them. The major part dealt with the scheme to entrap the president’s advisors. Paragraphs were headed: ‘The Situation’, ‘The Proposal’ and ‘The Way Ahead’. The final one was entitled ‘Back Up’. It comprised a request for immediate diplomatic recognition of the new government whenever it was declared, a statement of support for the president from the City, an announcement of substantial low-interest development aid to be provided by merchant banks, and a request for a pair of frigates as a ‘demonstration of intent’. The message ended on a personal note: ‘Why no answer to my last? Please send soon. Wooding doing well but needs encouragement. Self ditto. Allowances just adequate. EEC transmissions fine. Weather cool.’

  ‘All a bit far-fetched, I thought,’ ventured the ambassador. William said nothing. The ambassador hurried on, ‘Perhaps it’s not, though, perhaps you’re right and it’s all rather . . . you know, serious . . .’ He trailed off, looking at Nightingale.

  ‘Out of the question,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can’t set about undermining our host government. After all, we’re here to get on with them, not to get rid of them.’

  ‘And things aren’t that bad.’ The ambassador stressed the two last words. ‘Are they? Perhaps they are, I don’t know.’ He scratched his head.

  William remembered his conversation with Max, Sally’s boss. ‘The American embassy seems to think they are. They’re expecting to be expelled.’

  ‘Oh, the Americans,’ said Nightingale.

  The ambassador smiled. ‘Very alarmist, I always thought.’

  William persisted. ‘People have started disappearing.’

  ‘Really? Who?’ Nightingale asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know them all, of course, except one. A chap who used to live in a hut on the beach.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And they announced on the radio this morning that they’ve suppressed the newspapers – they’ve all got to reapply for licences except the government one.’

  The door opened as William was speaking. ‘Which makes this the same as half the other countries in the world,’ said Feather. ‘No change except a little for the worse.’ He went straight to the coffee. He was a big man and gave the impression of moving slowly while covering a lot of ground. His haggard, handsome face looked unhealthy when scrubbed. ‘Everything and everyone ends in disaster,’ he continued. ‘No reason why this place should be different. Your attempt to alter history’s decline into barbarism can only hasten the undesired end. This is no place for improvers.’ He gulped his coffee, poured another and in two long strides reached and reclined full-length on the ambassador’s sofa.

  The ambassador smiled at William. ‘That doesn’t mean you haven’t done jolly well.’

  Feather insisted from his recumbent position that it was no good, it wouldn’t do, they couldn’t send nonsense like that to London. London would think they were barmy. Nightingale regretted that the office no longer had any influence over the funnies now that the funnies were privatised, though the office still had to act as a channel of communication for them. Was it permissible to refuse to transmit material they didn’t agree with? No one knew. Feather thought the main thing was to prevent that lunatic Box from doing or saying anything more.

  ‘Box is not a lunatic. At least he’s trying to do something. You may not agree with it but at least he – he –’ William sought to avoid the caring cliche – ‘he is concerned about things.’ He felt like someone who had mistimed his leap over a puddle.

  Feather lit a cigar.

  ‘Perhaps the answer,’ the ambassador said tentatively, ‘is to send the thing as it is and for us to send a – a – you know . . .’

  ‘A dissenting telegram,’ said Nightingale, as if he had been waiting a long time. ‘What a brilliant idea, Peter.’

  The ambassador beamed at William. ‘Yes, perhaps that’s the answer.’

  ‘What did you need me for?’ William asked.

  ‘Oh, well, we needed you to – to . . .’

  ‘To put you in the picture,’ said Nightingale.

&n
bsp; ‘Exactly, exactly so.’ The ambassador stood. ‘Thank you so much for coming, Mr Wooding. A most useful mind-clearing exercise.’ He looked at the others.

  Feather raised himself and turned towards William. ‘The real point,’ he said slowly, ‘is the futility of ever doing anything. Things happen, but we don’t do them. Whenever we try, they go wrong. The temptation to action must always be resisted.’ He lay back and put his cigar in his mouth. ‘It is the one temptation I have always been able to resist.’

  Nightingale giggled and the ambassador smiled unhappily as William closed the door.

  The two girls were at the shop by the time the embassy car dropped William. As he suspected, they had been delayed by the bus strike but that was now over, they said. The government had ordered the strikers back to work and had issued a proclamation: strikes were not illegal but because the government governed for the people any strike against it – which this one had been – was an act against the people, and acts against the people were treason. There had been some arrests.

  The girls competed almost breathlessly with each other as if to show how well they had learned the message. They seemed pleased and excited. William wondered why they weren’t worried. He gazed at the orange-seller, hunched beside his stall. There was less breeze now and the sun was warmer but the man still dressed as if against a chill wind. So far as William knew, Box remained the only customer. Presumably the oranges were changed sometimes.

  ‘Possibly our strike will be finished,’ he said to the girls.

  They were round-eyed and serious. ‘Our strike? We do not make a strike, señor.’

  ‘At the factory, I mean. Our strike at the factory.’

  ‘The factory, yes, yes.’ The girls nodded.

  The factory was nothing to do with them; he wasn’t sure that they had ever understood its connection with the shop. ‘But maybe that is not a strike against the government,’ he added with a smile. ‘Not treason.’

  ‘No, señor, not treason.’

  As he went upstairs, he heard them whispering and laughing.

  There was a telex from London that morning, the first since he had sent his lengthy report on the strike. It asked what progress he had made in resolving it. His description of the political situation and his points about his own impotence to intervene under the new laws and about the government attitude towards foreign-owned companies had all been ignored. He could imagine the remarks being made in London about failure to get a grip, about things going downhill and about the need for radical surgery. This meant a senior visitor from head office with a kill-or-cure brief. There would also be staff restaurant gossip about his going native like his predecessors. There would be rumours of a bar girl, quite without foundation and only coincidentally true.

  Sally had not been at home when he had got back that morning. She must have gone to work early. His dinner was still in the oven, which had been turned off, and she had left no note. Angelica, the maid, was already there, back from her holiday. She had started on the washing. Diminutive and smiling, she behaved as if there were nothing unusual in his tired and unshaven appearance. No, Señora had left no message, only instructions about the washing, that was all. Señora had gone to work at her usual time.

  William showered and tried to ring her but she was teaching. He did not feel guilty at having been away all night, only a little at having had breakfast in the covered market when he could have got back. But it had been a very good breakfast. He and Theresa had laughed about Box and the coffin, she had talked of her brothers and sisters and had asked him about the Queen and Mrs Thatcher who, along with Churchill, were the Britons most admired or known about. They had eaten a vast breakfast, drunk many cups of coffee and had finished with two or three glasses of whisky. She laughed helplessly when he described Box’s tactics for street meetings, coughing over her coffee as she clutched his arm for fear she would fall off her stool. He felt a twinge of disloyalty in holding Box up for ridicule, but twinges were bearable. After all, they were getting on with their task, no matter what the embassy people thought. When they parted she kissed him on the lips.

  He tried ringing Sally from the office, but again she was teaching. Presumably she wasn’t too worried or she would have rung him.

  There was sudden laughter from downstairs and a few seconds later Ricardo bounced up. He entered grinning and reached for William’s hand, taking it in both his.

  ‘William, I congratulate you. Now at last you are a man.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You have a mistress.’

  ‘A mistress?’

  Ricardo threw himself into his chair and put his feet on the desk. ‘No man is really a man until he has a mistress. Of course, any man can have a wife, that is easy, but to have a mistress – and such a mistress – is very good. You were seen at breakfast in the covered market. By lunch you will be famous. And to have the president’s mistress, that is really something.’

  ‘Things aren’t always what they appear.’

  ‘That is English modesty. It suits you but it is not true. She looked tired and happy. You must have been making love all night.’

  ‘No, we weren’t.’

  Ricardo held up his hand. ‘It was breakfast. You both ate a lot and you were happy. She was laughing. When you parted, she kissed you. A woman who does that has always been making love.’

  ‘Who saw us?’

  ‘Manuel Herrera’s men. He told me this morning. I had to see him to make my report. I was very nervous because it was him, but he was all right. I had nothing to report’ – he grinned – ‘of course, but he did not mind. He said you are a sensible man. He will come to see you this morning but he said I must not be here so I will go for coffee.’

  ‘He’s coming here?’

  Ricardo stood. ‘Please – don’t tell him I told you. He must believe I am spying on you. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You could go to the factory and find out what’s happening. I haven’t been able to get through to them this morning.’

  Ricardo grimaced. ‘Not that kind of work. Spying. What spy work do you want me to do?’

  William thought. ‘You can find me another car. My old one was stolen.’

  Ricardo’s face lit up. ‘Another car? Any sort, any price?’

  William remembered Box’s promise as to who would pay. ‘Any sort, any price.’

  ‘I will find you a beautiful car. Chau, William.’ He paused at the door. ‘We work together well, eh?’

  William smiled. ‘We do.’

  ‘Chau, William.’

  ‘Chau.’

  Manuel made no secret of his visit. His black Mercedes drew up by the orange-seller’s stall. He got out with two other men and spoke to the orange-seller. His step was light on the stairs, his olive-greens were clean and pressed and he wore tight black leather gloves, which he removed delicately.

  He could not stay long, he explained. It was a social call, one of what he liked to call his ‘pleasure visits’. Things were going well and he was pleased that William had heeded their little talk on the beach the day before. He had done the right thing.

  William smiled. ‘You are well informed.’

  Manuel held up his hand, as Ricardo had done. ‘There is very little that escapes attention in this city, especially where women are concerned. Your companion for the night was an excellent choice in every sense. Better that you spend your time with her than with the president. He will not want her as his mistress when he knows she is sleeping with you . . . as he shall, in good time.’ His eyes rested steadily, almost warmly on William’s. ‘Also, I was never sure about that girl. Her attitude is suspect. Girls in general are not to be trusted. They are confused and unpredictable. But it is better that she is with you than with the president.’

  ‘You know them well, these girls?’

  ‘Well enough to know that there are better choices a man can make.’ He continued to gaze warmly and assessingly at William. ‘Also, I have good news for you. The strike at
your factory will be finished. The workers will return this afternoon. It was a simple matter to resolve. We are keen to have more foreign investment, therefore strikes against foreign companies whose attitude is favourable to us could be construed as sabotage. What is more, your Ministry of Information tender will be accepted. That should mean much business for you.’

  William inclined his head. ‘This is all very unexpected.’

  ‘Of course, you may see the president whenever you or he wish. We would like you to see a little of him. It is important that he should feel he has friends who can reassure him, perhaps even guide him. And it is equally important that you should feel free to discuss with me any worries that the president may confide in you.’

  Manuel’s manner was soft but precise. His eyes never left William’s. William always felt uneasy in his presence, sometimes frightened. He had to remind himself that the man was not invincible, that he didn’t like getting wet. But it was best to appear to go along with him.

  ‘I understand you.’

  ‘Good. There is one small question I have to ask: why should the British Embassy wish to see you this morning and send a car to pick you up and bring you back?’

  The orange-seller, thought William. Box was right. ‘They asked me if I’d seen the president. They wanted to know what was happening.’

  ‘It is not usual for them to be so curious. The Americans, yes, they wish to know everything. But the British are not usually so interested. They have been trying to contact all sorts of strange people.’

  ‘They are confused.’

  ‘Like the girls, yes. We men understand each other better, don’t you think?’ Manuel smiled. ‘We shall meet soon. It is important that we keep in touch, especially now we are getting on so well.’

  His apparent success made William more confident. ‘I have a question in return. The man on the beach I used to speak to, the tramp – what has happened to him?’