At the Signature base at Heathrow, Oliver preceded his friend off the Boeing business jet that had brought them, over the North Pole, from Los Angeles. By the time Ty reached passport control, Oliver had already found his car and set off toward the M4 and London. Ty had only just identified his baggage when he was greeted by the driver from Claridge’s Hotel and a pencil-thin young woman from the local public-relations office of the studio that was distributing Something to Look Forward To. He followed his minders to the waiting Mercedes S-Class.
“Mr. Thrall said to tell you he has forgiven you,” the publicity girl told him, “but only because it’s the Queen. He also said he was confused by the letters behind your name and that I should ask you about them.”
“Did he?” Ty said. “I wrote his wife, Mitzi, a note, explaining what had happened. After my name, on impulse—really, I mean just as a joke—I put the letters CBE.”
“But you aren’t, are you?” inquired the young woman with an audible gasp. “Can an American be a Commander of the British Empire?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. It’s an abbreviation I came across in a script once, and I thought it would throw Mitzi and Sid. They’re such Anglophiles, as maybe you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh, yeah. English chintz, English furniture, other people’s ancestors on their walls. It’s their thing. Anyway, that’s not what I meant the letters to stand for. I meant them to stand for Can’t Be Everywhere.”
The publicity girl laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell him,” she said, then handed Ty a copy of his itinerary.
An hour later Ty had finished unpacking his suitcase and was standing beneath an enormous round showerhead as torrents of hot water washed the residue of his long journey from his skin.
When the telephone rang, it startled him, but he took the call on the wall unit just outside the shower door.
“On the way up,” Oliver said.
“Give me five.”
“Four fifty-nine . . .”
Ty was in one of the hotel’s bathrobes when he answered the door of his suite. “You’re like a bad penny the way you turn up,” he told Oliver.
“Bad news,” Oliver said.
“It’s a long way to have come for that. Shoot!”
“She can’t make it.”
“The Queen?”
“Hardly. Isabella Cavill. She just called in her refusal. Apparently the invitation didn’t reach her until this morning. That’s her excuse, in any event. We know it was delivered yesterday.”
“Signed for?”
“Don’t you think that would have been a bit over the top? Let’s look on the bright side. She knows you’re back in Europe and have the best reason in the world to be here. She knows you were interested enough to invite her. We also know that her collection debuted last evening in Rome, so it’s not entirely unlikely she’s tied up there.”
“Perhaps we should have invited her boyfriend as well,” Ty suggested.
“It would have been out of character.”
“For me?”
“For Ty Hunter.”
“Where does this leave us?”
“With Plan B. Actually, still Plan A. It was always a long shot she’d appear. You go to the premiere. You have fun. We’ll play tomorrow when it comes. Let me pose a question. If you had received the invitation without any involvement from me or anyone else, would you have asked her?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And would you be tempted to pick up the phone and ring her now?”
Ty looked at his old friend with disbelief. “Not after she’d turned me down.”
“I was sure you’d say that,” Oliver said, “but I’m glad you did. As far as you are concerned, I’ve been seconded by the palace to see you through the hoops.”
“Fine.”
“We’d never met until today.”
“Should we be talking so openly?”
“The suite was swept for bugs five minutes before you entered it. It will be swept again every time you leave and just before you return.”
“Any other security precautions I should know about?” Ty asked.
“The couple in the suite next door—they’re ours. They don’t know anything about anything except that you are a guest of Her Majesty and famous in your own right. So it’s only natural you might need a bit of interference run.”
“Where will you be?”
“From here I go to the palace to review plans with the household staff, make sure there are no last-minute changes. From there I’ll go to my flat, then be back here to collect you at half five sharp.”
“Then it’s showtime.”
“‘The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd,’” Oliver told him, “or have I got it backwards? If you want to go out for anything, do. One of the studio’s blokes can go along with you—or not, whichever you choose. The essential thing is to behave as you would if you had nothing else in the back of your mind.”
“Beyond sleeping with Isabella Cavill, you mean?”
“A fine and completely understandable desire,” Oliver replied. “In the meantime, if you’re feeling frustrated, there’s a very spiffy gym on the top floor.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do. For a moment I forgot. You’ve stayed here before.”
“A couple of pictures ago, while we were shooting at Pinewood, Claridge’s was my home away from home, except that I didn’t actually have a real home then.”
“Maybe people like us shouldn’t.”
In the car, on the drive to the Odeon Leicester Square, Oliver said, “It’s all very simple. You bow, not deeply. A graceful nod will do. On first meeting the Queen, it is ‘Your Majesty,’ after that ‘ma’am.’ The rest of them are ‘Your Royal Highness.’ The younger they are, the more relaxed about this sort of thing. Remember, they’ll be as dazzled to meet you as you are to meet them.”
“I’m full of respect but never dazzled,” Ty said. “And when the film is over?”
“There’s an after party in aid of the Great Ormond Street Hospital that we’ve rather tagged onto at the last minute.”
“In that case I should probably stay on for a reasonable amount of time.”
“It would be a pity not to. It’s at Winfield House in Regent’s Park, the home of the American ambassador,” Oliver explained. “Very swell.”
“What about after the after party?”
“I’d forgot what a night owl you are.”
“I’ll be on my second wind by then. We are starting early, remember.”
A minute or two away from the red carpet, they were now in the Haymarket. “The Queen will probably not go to Winfield House,” Oliver said. “Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge very likely will. Harry’s a dead cert. Later they may go on to Boujis or Mahiki, or, who knows, now that they’re all adults, to Annabel’s.”
“Are we adults?” Ty asked with a wink.
“In the minds of others,” Oliver replied.
“As I recall, you’re not supposed to go to certain places if you’re a man over thirty or a woman over twenty-five.”
Oliver nodded. “Film stars excepted.”
“Would you have it any other way?”
“When was it ever?”
“And it’s not only film stars,” Ty continued. “Billionaires also get a free ride.”
“Another perk of the undeserving, but then you can’t fight nature. Women are affected by the physical attributes of men, Ty. There’s no getting around that fact. From fourteen to eighteen, it’s the face that counts with them. From eighteen to twenty-five, maybe thirty, it’s the body. After then, except for a precious few, it’s the wallet.”
Ty was surprised by how relaxed royal formality was. He was the first thr
ough the receiving line, followed by Greg Logan and his awestruck eleven-year-old daughter, Lily. He managed gracefully deferential yet far from obsequious bows and blushed with pleasure when the Queen told him she had seen and enjoyed both The Boy Who Understood Women and his second film, Fortune’s Wind. Oliver had been right about the princes and the elegant new duchess, whose welcoming smiles and enthusiastic questions about how certain scenes had been filmed Ty found flattering even though they seemed to cast the few years’ difference in their ages as larger than it was.
When the Queen told him she found it “astonishing, almost magical, really, how quickly and completely certain actors, such as you, Mr. Hunter, are able to assume not only the role but the entire identity of a character, to make people believe you are someone you aren’t,” she stared directly into his eyes, holding them for an extra second. This caused Ty to wonder whether—and, if so, in how much detail—she had been briefed about the operation that was under way.
“It’s very kind of you to say so, ma’am,” he replied.
“Or aren’t someone you are,” Her Majesty added. “It’s a gift, of course.”
Later, as they arrived at Winfield House, Ty pressed Oliver on the question.
“That’s difficult to say,” Oliver answered. “One can never be sure, although one suspects there’s far less she doesn’t know than that she does.”
“That’s the feeling I had. But I could hardly ask.”
“Indeed,” Oliver agreed. “Anyway, you know what they say. There are no such things as secrets, only people who find things out a little later.”
The reception hall of the American ambassador’s residence, a large bright, square room, immediately reminded Ty of La Encantada. In the center of it stood an imposing and eccentric table, a gilt-bronze-mounted burr elm with a porphyry top that Ty was almost sure had come from the same hand as one in his own house. This impression intensified when he and a few other VIPs, including the royals, were ushered into the Green Room for a pre-reception reception with the ambassador and his wife. There the avocado-and-coral palette, the Chinese wallpaper, the woven carpet with its subtle dragon design, the waxed-pine pelmet boards that contained the curtains within the windows, even the Jiaqing vases that had been adapted as lamps evinced unmistakably the Hollywood glamour of Billy Haines. Ty smiled to himself at the thought that this should be the face America had chosen to present to the mother country and, as he did so, felt a little homesick.
The ambassador, when Ty inquired, confirmed that the media tycoon Walter Annenberg and his wife, when he’d been ambassador to the Court of St. James under President Nixon, had indeed hired William Haines. “You’re very knowledgeable, Mr. Hunter,” the ambassador said with a smile.
“Only accidentally in this case,” Ty told him.
As the room filled, Ty studied the faces and expressions, the stance and dress of those who surrounded him, careful to betray no more than an actor’s natural curiosity in new surroundings. He wondered who if anyone knew of his assignment or even of his connection to Oliver; who might possess even one fact that, in the wrong hands, could thwart his mission. It was unlikely that the ambassador, a sixty-eight-year-old businessman bundler of campaign funds from the Upper East Side of New York, with no previous experience in foreign affairs, would have any knowledge of Oliver Molyneux’s background in the Special Boat Service or MI6. The CIA station chief was another matter, of course, but which one was he? Ty searched among the guests, eliminating those connected to the film or the film business as well as those whose features, Savile Row suits, or chancy frocks gave them away as English. Then, in a far corner of the room, he noticed a man with receding, silvering hair whose tortoiseshell reading glasses dangled from a black cord around his neck. The man was of average height, with just the beginning of a paunch. Innocuous but intellectual, he seemed stranded in middle age, somewhere between forty-five and sixty. Ty recognized the man as having been cut from the same cloth as many of his father’s friends, an almost perfect specimen of a type he had been familiar with since childhood. He did not wish to encounter the man more directly because he did not want to provide the probable spy an opportunity, in turn, to appraise him. The fewer people who knew or even suspected his role, the safer he and Oliver would travel, the more likely they’d be to succeed in uncovering and, if need be, foiling a transfer of missing nuclear warheads.
Outside the sprawling Georgian house, on the wide garden lawn, two geodesic domes had been inflated and were now illuminated by soft lights.
Ty left the private reception with the ambassador, his wife and Greg Logan and made his way toward the bar in the smaller tent. It was always the same, he thought, as a few fans approached and others receded, some eager to express their approval, others equally determined to respect his privacy. When someone said “Fantastic” or “Loved it” or “You were never better,” he smiled and thanked the person, offered his hand, and immediately deflected the compliment to his director. He was signing an autograph when a waiter passed, offering flutes of champagne from a silver tray. He took one and the instant he did so became aware of an immovable figure just over his right shoulder. He shifted slightly, curious why it did not shift with him, if only to avoid collision, then saw that it belonged to a woman, not too tall but lithe, in a pale blue dress whose jagged hemline might have been cut for Peter Pan. Her face was a few inches from his, almost too close for him to register its subtle beauty, but she was laughing as she gazed down. When Ty’s eyes followed, he saw that the toe of his slipper was pressing down on one of the points of her dress.
Embarrassed as he withdrew it, Ty said, “Sorry, I seem to have you kidnapped.”
The young woman nodded. “What do they call it when you begin to fall in love with your kidnapper? Stockholm syndrome?” Her English was almost too exquisite, her accent well traveled, if not foreign.
“Would you like a glass of champagne?” Ty asked.
“Why ever not?”
“I’m Ty Hunter.”
“I know.”
“And—”
“Who am I? Maria-Antonia,” she said. “Maria-Antonia Salazar.”
“Well, Maria-Antonia Salazar, here’s a health unto you,” Ty said, raising his glass.
“That sounds like a line.”
“You’re correct. It’s from my last film.”
“Did you get the girl in that one?”
“Naturally. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“So I take it you’re a man who plays the odds.”
“What else can a fellow do when he doesn’t have a script to go by?”
“Wing it, I suppose.”
“Very dangerous,” Ty said.
“Let’s dance,” Maria-Antonia said.
“Only if I lead,” Ty told her.
“Why do you say that? It suggests you might be a disappointing lover.”
“My reviews suggest the opposite.”
“But you’re too much of a gent to cite them?”
“You’d think less of me if I did.”
“Who’s to say?” Maria-Antonia replied. “It’s the kind of thing I decide for myself.”
“You’re very confident.”
“I was born that way.”
“Which is fortunate,” Ty said.
“Usually,” Maria-Antonia agreed.
“I still want to lead.”
“Because it’s been such a long time since you’ve done anything else?”
“Partly that,” Ty said, “but there are also other reasons.”
“If you insist,” she said. “I mean, I’m not your shrink.”
“I don’t have a shrink.”
“Everyone should.”
“I disagree.”
“You disagree a lot.”
“Only when you force the question,” Ty said. �
��Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to kiss you.”
“Then please do. I’d like you to.”
“You’re not afraid you’ll become tabloid fodder?”
“I’m not afraid of much.”
Before their dance they finished their champagne in silence, then made their way to the larger dome. Beneath the summer sky, they moved arm in arm across the soft, sweet-smelling lawn, their fixation with each other captured by the digital cameras of other partygoers as well as the benefit’s official photographer. As they approached the dome, they were drawn to the interplay of light and shadows upon the higher reaches of its convex surface. Inside, the music was throbbing and fast, and they headed toward the dance floor, which was tiled in Brazilian ebony. Between its squares, lights twinkled in random sequence, and they could feel its vibrations through the soles of their shoes. It was above them, however, that the mood of a moment was set, then altered and altered again. For the inside of the dome was a concave movie screen of 360 degrees. No sooner did they step onto the floor than they were riding twenty-foot waves, ascending, then balancing themselves at the crest of each, then high in the saddles of camels, galloping toward sunset, then skiing pristine glaciers by moonlight and descending vertiginous waterfalls with reckless glee. When the tempo finally let up, Ty drew Maria-Antonia closer to him and kissed her again, more passionately than before.
“Do you sail?” Maria-Antonia asked softly, slowly opening her eyes once he’d stepped back.
“I can handle myself on a boat,” Ty replied.
“We leave tomorrow.”
“We do?”
“From Stansted Airport,” Maria-Antonia said. “My boat is already on its way from Sardinia. It will be in Marbella by the time we get there. You can sail for as long as you like.”
“It’s an enticing invitation.”
“Then accept it.”
“I’ll have to check a few things.”
“Naturally. Where are you staying?”
“Claridge’s.”
“Alone?”
“That remains to be seen.”
Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) Page 18
