The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  As the lift flung us upwards, I steadied myself for what was likely to be a tricky kind of an interview. I kept telling myself that I was only doing what they tell you to do when you're swept out to sea by a strong current. Swim with it, they say, not against it. You'll hit land eventually. We dismounted at the fifth floor and I followed Carl along a well-waxed corridor to 5910 - Deputy Director European Research, Barnes, Russell R

  Carl waited while I knocked, and when the door opened I came within an ace of slipping a couple of pound coins into his gloved hand and asking him to book me a table at L'Epicure. Luckily, he stopped me by saluting violently, then turned on his heel and set off back down the corridor at a hundred and ten paces to the minute.

  Russell R Barnes had knocked around the world a bit. I may not be the greatest reader of men, but I know that you don't get to look like Russell P. Barnes by sitting behind a desk for half your life, and swilling cocktails at embassy receptions for the other half. He was nearly fifty, tall and lean, and with a scrum of scars and wrinkles fighting each other to see who could get control of his sunburned face. All I could think was that he was everything that O'Neal was trying so hard to be.

  He looked over some half-moon glasses at me as I came in, but carried on reading, running an expensive fountain pen down the margin as he went. Every fibre of his body said dead Viet Cong, well-armed Contras, and General Schwarzkopf call me Rusty.

  He flipped over a page and barked at me: 'Yeah.'

  'Mr Barnes,' I said, setting my briefcase down by the chair opposite him and holding out my hand.

  'What it says on the door.' He kept on reading. I kept my hand out.

  'How do you do, sir?'

  A pause. I knew the 'sir' would get him. He sniffed the air, picked up the scent of brother officer, and slowly raised his head to me. Then he looked down at my hand for a long moment before extending his own. Dry as dust.

  He flicked his eyes down at the chair and I sat, and as I did so I caught sight of the photograph on the wall. Sure enough, it was Stormin' Norman, dressed in camouflage pyjamas, with a long handwritten inscription under the face. The writing was too small for me to read, but I'd have bet everything I owned on it containing the words 'kick' and 'ass' somewhere in its text. Next to it, there was a larger photograph of Barnes in some kind of jump-suit, with a flying-helmet tucked under his arm.

  'British?' He unpeeled his glasses and flopped them on the desk.

  'To the core, Mr Barnes,' I said. 'To the core.' I knew that what he meant was British army. We exchanged wry military grins that told each other how much we hated those flyblown pieces of shit who tied the hands of decent men and called it politics. When we'd had enough of that, I said: 'David Solomon.'

  'What can I do for you, Mr Solomon?'

  'As I think your secretary mentioned, sir, I come from Mr O'Neal's Ministry. Mr O'Neal has one or two questions that he hopes you might be able to answer.'

  'Shoot.' The word fell easily from his lips, and I wondered how many times and in how many different contexts he'd said it.

  'It concerns Graduate Studies, Mr Barnes.'

  'Yup.'

  That was it. Yup. No 'you mean the scheme whereby an unspecified group of people conspire to sponsor a terrorist action with the aim of boosting sales of anti-terrorist military equipment?' Which, I must admit, I'd sort of been banking on. If not that, then a guilty start would have sufficed. But 'yup', on its own, was no help at all.

  'Mr O'Neal was hoping that you might care to enlighten us with your latest thinking on the subject.'

  'Was he now?'

  'Indeed he was,' I said firmly. 'He was hoping you might favour us with your interpretation of recent events.'

  'What recent events might those be?'

  'I'd rather not go into any details at this juncture, Mr Barnes. I'm sure you understand.'

  He smiled, and there was a flash of gold from somewhere at the back of his mouth.

  'You have anything to do with Procurement, Mr Solomon?'

  'Absolutely not, Mr Barnes.' I tried a dollop of ruefulness. 'My wife won't even trust me to do the supermarket shopping.'

  His smile faded. In the circles Russell P. Barnes moved in, marriage was a thing decent fighting men did in private. If they did it at all.

  A phone on his desk buzzed softly, and he yanked the receiver to his ear.

  'Barnes.' He picked up the fountain pen and clicked the top on and off a few times while he listened. He nodded and yeahed a few times, then hung up. He kept looking at the pen, and it seemed to be my turn to speak.

  'I think I can say, however, that we are concerned as to the safety,' I paused to acknowledge the euphemism, 'of two American citizens presently residing on British soil. Woolf is the name. Mr O'Neal wondered whether you had come by any information that might assist our Ministry in ensuring their continued protection.'

  He folded his arms across his chest and sat back in his chair.

  'I'll be goddamned.'

  'Sir?'

  'They say that if you sit still for long enough, the whole world will come by.'

  I tried to look confused.

  'I'm terribly sorry, Mr Barnes, but I think you may have lost me.'

  'Been a long time since I've taken this amount of bullshit in one glass.'

  Somewhere a clock ticked. Quite fast. Too fast, it seemed to me, to be counting seconds. But then this was an American building, and maybe Americans had decided that seconds were just too goddamned slow, and how's about a clock that can do a minute in twenty seconds? That way, we get more goddamned hours in a goddamned day than these faggot limeys.

  'Do you have any information, Mr Barnes?' I asked, doggedly.

  But he wasn't going to be rushed anywhere.

  'How would I come by that information, Mr Solomon? You're the one with the foot-soldiers. I just hear what O'Neal tells me.'

  'Well now,' I said, 'I wonder if that's strictly true.'

  'Do you?'

  Something was wrong. I hadn't the faintest idea what it was, but there was something very badly wrong here.

  'Leaving that aside, Mr Barnes,' I said, 'let us suppose that my Ministry is slightly under-staffed with foot-soldiers just at the moment. Lot of 'flu about. Summer holidays. Let's suppose that our foot-soldiers, owing to their depleted numbers, had momentarily lost track of these two individuals.'

  Barnes cracked some knuckles and leaned forward over the desk.

  'Well, I don't see how that could happen, Mr Solomon.'

  'I'm not saying it's happened,' I said. 'I'm offering it as a hypothesis.'

  'All the same, I don't agree with your premise. Seems to me that, if anything, you're over-staffed just now.'

  'I'm sorry, I'm not with you.'

  'Seems to me you've got staff all over the place, chasin' your own tails.'

  The clock ticked.

  'What do you mean, exactly?'

  'What I mean exactly is that if your department can afford to employ two David Solomons to do the same job, then you got a budget I wouldn't mind having.'

  Whoops.

  He got to his feet and started moving round the desk. Not threatening anything, just stretching his legs.

  'Maybe you got more? Maybe you got a whole division of David Solomons. Is that it?' He paused. 'I put a call into O'Neal. David Solomon is on a flight to Prague right now, and O'Neal seems to think that's the only David Solomon he's got. So maybe all you David Solomons just share the one salary.' He reached the door and opened it. 'Mike, get an E team up here. Now.'

  He turned and leaned against the jamb, arms folded, watching me.

  'You got about forty seconds.'

  'AH right,' I said. 'My name isn't Solomon.'

  The E team consisted of two Carls, one either side of my chair. Mike had taken the place at the door and Barnes was back at his desk. I was playing the dejected loser.

  'My name is Glass. Terence Glass.' I tried to make it sound as dull as possible. So boring that no one would ever think t
o make it up. 'I run an art gallery in Cork Street.' I dug into my top pocket and found the card the well-brung-up blonde had given me. I handed it to Barnes. 'Here. Last one. Anyway, Sarah works for me. Used to work for me.' I sighed and slumped a little lower. A man who'd gambled everything and lost. 'The last few weeks, she's been behaving ... I don't know. She seemed worried. Frightened, even. She'd started talking about some strange things. Then one day, she just didn't show up. Disappeared. I rang round. Nothing. I tried ringing her father a couple of times, but he seems to have disappeared too. I went through some things in her desk, odds and ends, and I found a file.'

  Barnes stiffened very slightly at this, so I thought I'd try stiffening him some more.

  'Graduate Studies. On the cover. I thought to begin with it was History of Art stuff, but it wasn't. I didn't really understand it, to be honest. Business. Manufacturing or whatever. She'd made some notes. Man called Solomon. And your name. American Embassy. I. . . Can I be honest with you?'

  Barnes looked back at me. There was nothing on his face but scars and wrinkles.

  'Don't tell her this,' I said. 'I mean, she doesn't know it, but ... I'm in love with her. Have been for months. That's why I gave her the job, really. Didn't need anyone else working at the gallery, but I wanted to be close to her. It's all I could think of. I know it sounds feeble, but... do you know her? I mean have you seen her?'

  Barnes didn't answer. He just fingered the card I'd given him, and looked up at Mike with a raised eyebrow. I didn't turn round, but Mike must have been busy.

  'Glass,' said a voice. 'It checks.'

  Barnes sucked his teeth for a moment and then looked out of the window. Apart from the clock, the room was astonishingly quiet. No phones, no typewriters, no traffic noise. The windows must have been quadruple-glazed.

  'O'Neal?'

  I looked as defeated as I could.

  'What about him?'

  'Where'd you get the stuff about O'Neal?'

  'The file,' I shrugged. 'I told you, I read her file. I wanted to know what had happened to her.'

  'Any reason why you didn't tell me this from the beginning? Why all this bullshit?'

  I laughed and glanced up at the Carls.

  'You're not an easy man to see, Mr Barnes. I've been trying to get you on the phone for days. They kept putting me through to the Visa Section. I think they thought I was trying to wangle a Green Card. Marrying an American.'

  There was a long pause.

  It really was one of the silliest stories I've ever told; but I was gambling - heavily, I have to admit - on Barnes' machismo. I read him as an arrogant man, trapped in a foreign country, and I hoped that most of him would want to believe that everyone he dealt with was as silly as my story. If not sillier.

  'You try all this with O'Neal?'

  'According to the Ministry of Defence, there is no one of that name working there, and I'd be better off making a missing persons report at my local police station.'

  'Which you did?'

  'Which I tried to do.'

  'Which station?'

  'Bayswater.' I knew they wouldn't check that. He just wanted to see how quickly I could answer. 'The police told me to wait a few weeks. They seemed to think she might have found another lover.'

  I was pleased with that. I knew he'd go for it.

  '"Another" lover?'

  'Well...' I tried to blush. 'All right. A lover.'

  Barnes chewed his lip. I was looking so pathetic he didn't have much choice but to believe me. I would have believed me, and I'm very hard to please.

  He came to a decision.

  'Where's the file now?'

  I looked up, surprised that the file was of any interest to anybody.

  'Still at the gallery. Why?'

  'Description?'

  'Well, it's just a sort of... gallery, really. Fine art.'

  Barnes took a deep breath. He was really hating having to deal with me.

  'What does the file look like?'

  'Like a file. Cardboard ...'

  'Jesus and Mary,' said Barnes. 'What colour?'

  I thought for a moment.

  'Yellow, I think. Yes. Yellow.'

  'Mike. Saddle up.'

  'Wait a minute ...' I started to get up but one of the Carls leaned on my shoulder and I decided to sit down again. 'What are you doing?'

  Barnes was already heading back to his paperwork. He didn't look at me.

  'You will accompany Mr Lucas to your place of business, and you will hand the file over to him. Is that understood?'

  'And why the hell should I do that?' I don't know how art gallery owners ought to sound, but I plumped for petulant. 'I came here to find out what's happened to one of my employees, not to have you meddling around with her private property.'

  It was as if he'd suddenly glanced down and seen that the last item on the agenda was 'showing everybody what a tough piece of work I am' - even though Mike was out of the door and the Carls were already starting to back away.

  'Listen to me, you fucking fairy,' he said. Which I thought was overdoing it, frankly. The Carls dutifully stopped to admire the testosterone. 'Two points. One. We don't know until we see it whether it's her private property or ours. Two. The more you do what the fuck I tell you to do, the better the chance you'll have of seeing this freak bitch again. Do I make myself understood?'

  Mike was a nice enough lad. Late twenties, Ivy League, and smart as a whip. I could see that he wasn't comfortable with this heavy stuff, and I liked him all the more for that.

  We were heading south down Park Lane in a light-blue Lincoln Diplomat, chosen from thirty identical ones in the embassy car park. It seemed to me a trifle obvious for diplomats to use a car called a Diplomat, but maybe Americans like those sort of signposts. For all I know, the average American insurance salesman drives around in something called a Chevrolet Insurance Salesman. I suppose it's one less decision in a man's life.

  I sat in the back, playing with the ashtrays, while a plainclothes Carl sat beside Mike in the front. The Carl had an earpiece with a wire disappearing inside his shirt. God knows where it went.

  'Nice man, Mr Barnes,' I said eventually.

  Mike looked at me in the rear-view mirror. The Carl turned his head an inch, and judging by the size of his neck, that was about all he could manage. I wanted to apologise for having cut into his weight-training time. 'Good at his job too, I would think. Mr Barnes. Efficient.'

  Mike shot a glance across at the Carl, wondering whether to answer me.

  'Mr Barnes is indeed a remarkable man,' he said.

  I think that Mike probably hated Barnes. I'm pretty sure I would have done, if I'd worked for him. But Mike was a nice, honourable, professional man who was trying hard to be loyal, and I didn't think it fair to try and get any more out of him in front of the Carl. So I went back to fiddling with the electric windows.

  Basically, the car wasn't equipped for the job it had to do -which is to say it had ordinary locks on the back doors, so that I could have stepped out at any traffic-light I chose. But I didn't do that, and didn't even want to do it. I don't know why, but I was suddenly feeling very cheerful.

  'Remarkable, yes,' I said. 'That's the word I'd use. Well, no, it's the word you'd use, but do you mind if I use it as well?'

  I really was enjoying myself. It doesn't happen often.

  We turned into Piccadilly, and then up towards Cork Street. Mike pulled down the sun-visor, where he'd tucked Glass's card, and read out the number. I was mightily relieved he didn't ask me for it.

  We pulled up outside number forty-eight, and the Carl had his door open and was out of the car before we'd come to a stop. He wrenched open the back door and looked up and down the street as I got out. I felt like a President.

  'Forty-eight, right?' said Mike.

  'Right,' I said.

  I rang the bell and the three of us waited. After a few moments a shortish, dapper-looking chap appeared and busied himself with the bolts and locks on the door.r />
  'Good morning, gentlemen,' he said. Very far back voice.

  'Morning, Vince. How's the leg?' I said, and stepped into the gallery.

  The dapper fellow was much too English to say who's Vince? what leg? and by the way, what are you talking about?

  Instead he stood back, with a polite smile, and let Mike and Carl in behind me.

  The four of us moved to the middle of the shop and surveyed the daubs. They really were awful. If he sold one a year, I'd be amazed.

  'If you see anything you fancy, I might be able to do you ten per cent,' I said to the Carl, who blinked slowly.

  The good-looking blonde, in a red shift this time, came through from the back and beamed. Then she saw me, and her well-bred chin dropped to her even-better-bred chest.

  'Who are you?' Mike was addressing the dapper man. The Carl was staring at the paintings.

  'I am Terence Glass,' said the dapper man.

  It was a great moment. One I'll always remember. There were five of us standing there, and only Glass and I were able to keep our mouths from hanging open. Mike was the first to speak.

  'Wait a minute,' he said. 'You're Glass.' He turned to me with a desperate look on his face. A forty-year career with pension and numerous postings to the Seychelles was starting to flash before his eyes.

  'Sorry,' I said. 'Not strictly true.' I looked down at the floor to see if I could spot my blood stain, but there was nothing there. Glass had been very swift either with the Vim, or a fake expenses claim.

  'Is there something amiss, gentlemen?' Glass had sensed unpleasantness in the air. Bad enough that we weren't Saudi Princes. Now it looked like we weren't buyers at all.

  'You're the . . . killer. Man who . . . ' The blonde was struggling for her words.

  'Nice to see you too,' I said.

  'Jesus Christ,' said Mike, and he turned to the Carl, who turned to me.

  He was a big chap.

  'Well, sorry about that little misunderstanding,' I said. 'But now that you're here, why don't you go away?' The Carl started to move towards me. Mike caught his arm, and then looked at me, wincing.

  'Wait a minute. If you're not... I mean, do you realise what you've done?' I think he really was at a loss for words. 'Jesus.'