Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766)

by Caplan, Thomas

  “It sounds interesting. I’ve never been to Gibraltar,” Ty said.

  “Really? Then you shouldn’t miss it,” Isabella told him. “It’s a fascinating place.”

  “Much like Zurich, with better weather,” Philip said.

  “And apes,” Isabella added with a laugh.

  “You’re kidding,” Ty replied.

  “They’re all over the mountain. They’ll steal your handbag or your camera. They’re playful, but you have to be careful,” Isabella said. “And that’s just on the surface of the mountain. Inside it there are all sorts of labyrinthine tunnels left over from its days as a fort.”

  “Are they over?” Philip inquired. “I’m not so sure. Admiral Cotton, for example, commands his staff and forces from a very sleek headquarters that was once one of the largest tunnels. How they hollowed it out one can only imagine, but it surveys the straits between Gibraltar and Jebel Musa fourteen miles away.”

  “Jebel Musa?” Ty inquired.

  “It and Gibraltar were once one mountain,” Ian interrupted, advancing toward them, “until the tectonic plates shifted, dividing not only them but Europe from Africa. If you studied Greek mythology, you know them as the Pillars of Hercules. Plato believed that the lost continent of Atlantis lay beneath them and that they marked the end of Hercules’ travels as he performed his Twelve Labors. The Romans believed he smashed through the mountain on his way to the western edge of the known world.”

  “How fascinating,” Ty said. “When did the plates actually shift?”

  “It’s a constant process, as I am sure you know,” Ian said, donning a professorial mask that was new to Ty, although he suspected the older man had a mask ready for every audience and situation, “one that plays out over hundreds of millions of years in what are called Wilson cycles, after the Canadian geologist who originally described them. Continents form, break up, disperse, then reassemble. Nothing is as permanent as it appears to a human within his life span. By about six million years ago, Spain and Africa had collided, enclosing the western edge of the Mediterranean. Four million or so years before that, other collisions had sealed off its eastern edge. Thus constricted, the inflows of its rivers proved insufficient to maintain its sea level, so the Mediterranean dried out. Those rivers, however, were relentless. They kept pushing forward, far beneath the level of the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually one managed to cut through sufficiently to allow the waters of the Atlantic to begin to flow back in. It is likely that this flow, not Hercules, cut the Strait of Gibraltar. Of course, whether those mountains mark the entrance to the Mediterranean or the exit from it to the larger world beyond depends upon one’s perspective.”

  “Well, I’ve learned something,” Ty said. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  “I can’t wait to show it to you,” Ian said, “if only by way of thanking you for having added such a note of glamour to our little party.”

  Ty shrugged. “I think the last thing any party of yours requires is more glamour—not that I bring any.”

  “Oh, but you do,” Ian insisted. “It’s not every day we have a film star, especially one of your magnitude and who’s come to us directly—well, almost—from Buck House.”

  “I’ve never been to Buckingham Palace, if that’s what you mean. The premiere was in a theater.”

  “Just slang,” Ian said. “It was Buckingham House before it was Buckingham Palace, you see.”

  Very deftly, Ian maneuvered Ty toward his guests, beginning with his elegant lawyer, Riccardo Haslett, and his wife, Olivia, who lived in nearby Sotogrande, as well as Olivia’s sister, Elvira, a twice-divorced, immaculately turned-out equestrienne then, as often during the polo season, visiting from Gloucestershire. Beyond them were Sir Timothy Foo and Lady Foo Fan Dang, an almost legendary couple from Singapore whose daughter, Catherine, had both begun and concluded her merchant banking career on the trading floor of Ian’s old firm.

  Tim Foo began their conversation, pointing to Ian. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve known this man?” he asked Ty. “Since he was a don and I a fellow of his Cambridge college. Where did the time go?”

  “They say every day passes more quickly than the one before because it represents a diminishing percentage of your life,” Ty said, “but I’m not so sure.”

  “Aren’t you? And why is that?”

  “Because I’ve spent days on certain sets that felt like they would never end.”

  “How true,” exclaimed Lady Foo.

  “My wife Celia was an actress,” Tim Foo explained as Ian departed.

  Lady Foo smiled. “‘That was long, long ago,’” she said, “‘and in a universe far, far away.’”

  “Am I missing something?” Tim Foo asked. “I didn’t realize Ian was in the film business.”

  “Is he?” Ty asked.

  “If not, I must tell you I’m surprised. Ian seldom has people to Pond House or aboard Surpass to whom he has merely a social connection, although I suppose, being who you are, you’re the exception that proves the rule.”

  Ty shrugged. “I take it, then, that you and Ian are more than old friends.”

  “Indeed we are old friends, and yes, I’ve also invested in some of his projects, as has he in my funds.”

  In rapid Mandarin, in order to disguise her words from Ty, a frowning Celia Foo said, “The way you say that, you would think he hadn’t gone on to bigger and better.”

  Ty immediately looked away, suggesting that her foreign words meant nothing to him.

  “Now, don’t be unkind,” Tim Foo told his wife, nodding to Ty with an expression that both begged his indulgence and implied that the matter suddenly under discussion was of some urgency. “Family crisis,” he whispered in English.

  “Three times we’ve asked him to our parties—in Singapore, Shanghai and London—and three times he has had better things to do,” Celia noted grudgingly, still in Mandarin.

  “Obviously he’s got a lot on his plate,” her husband told her.

  “There was a time when you would have known exactly what that was.”

  Tim hesitated. “Perhaps that’s true,” he said. “Anyway, we’re here.”

  Celia nodded reluctantly. “And I can’t help wondering why.”

  “Life is relationships,” Tim said calmly. “We nurture them or we don’t.”

  “Ah, but relationships with whom?” Celia inquired. “Who exactly are all the new people in our friend Ian’s life, so many of whom, from what I gather, seem to be from the Middle East? What roles do they play in the grand mise-en-scène he takes such joy in creating around himself everywhere he goes? We’ll never know is my guess, because the great man is so jealous of his little secrets.” Abruptly resuming in English, she turned to Ty and said, “Sorry, very rude of me to slip into another tongue.”

  At dinner Ty was seated between Isabella and Eloise Cotton, the admiral’s longtime, formidably constructed wife.

  “When you go to Gibraltar,” Eloise Cotton said, “you must be sure to see Ian’s office. It’s on the opposite side of the mountain from Giles’s, looking landward over the airport and harbor.”

  “So I’ve heard. I would love to.”

  “I’m afraid that Giles’s office is off-limits,” Eloise continued, “even to me.”

  “Except on certain occasions,” Giles Cotton interjected from across the polished round table. He was a big, genial man whom Ty had already overheard telling one rambling story after another without ever reaching a punch line.

  “Oh, that,” Eloise remarked disdainfully, turning to Ty. “They have a reception one day every year, for the local VIPs—VSIPs, I call them: very self-important people—and even then most parts of the place are cordoned off.”

  “Nothing so secret in my little shop,” Ian said. “Acres of files and bills of lading, HM’s customs forms, et cetera, everywh
ere one turns. Boring, boring, boring they are, too!”

  “You’re being modest,” Isabella said. “It’s like Aladdin’s cave. It cries out mystery.”

  “To you,” Ian said, “perhaps it does, because you are an artist at heart, my darling, and because you don’t work there. If you did, I’ve no doubt you’d find the boredom suffocating.”

  “Mr. Hunter doesn’t work there either, so he may well agree with me. Anyway, we’re not going to settle this now.”

  “How long will you be with us?” Eloise Cotton asked Ty.

  “That’s a hard one to answer,” he said. “Not long, in all likelihood. This whole trip pretty much came up out of the blue.”

  “The last time we met,” Isabella said, “you were so eager to get back to your new house and all the work being done and contemplated there.”

  “What an impressive memory,” Ty observed. “When I did get back to La Encantada, I quickly discovered that the house is undergoing the kind of renovation you can’t live around for too long.”

  Isabella suppressed a smile. “Tomorrow we go to the bullfight,” she said.

  “Indeed we do,” Ian said, then, after catching Isabella’s eye, added, “You should come, Mr. Hunter. And anyone else who would like to is more than welcome.”

  “Enough of this ‘Mr. Hunter,’ please,” Ty said. “I thought we’d straightened that out aboard your boat.”

  Ian nodded.

  “Do come, Ty,” Isabella said. “You’ll enjoy it. Have you ever been to a bullfight?”

  “Never.”

  “All the more reason, then! At the very least, you’ll add to your inventory of experience, which has to be a good thing for an actor.”

  “You can stay overnight in one of the guest rooms,” Ian offered. “The Marbella Club is too far to drive anyway, especially after drink and with the Guardia Civil in the mood they’re in lately. So it’s settled?”

  “I suppose it is,” Ty agreed, after what he judged an appropriate pause.

  “You and Philip are about the same size,” Isabella said.

  Philip, plastering a smile to his face, said, “I’m sure I can find something suitable for you to wear.”

  “Thank you very much,” Ty told him.

  “Pleasure,” Philip replied.

  After he turned out the light but before he went to sleep, Ty picked up the BlackBerry Oliver had given him. It was nearly midnight—considering the time difference, a credible time for him to call his house, his production company at the studio or his agent. He pressed the pad at its center, thought about holding down the E character until the light behind the numbers blinked, but decided that it would risk provoking suspicion to encrypt a conversation one end of which could easily be overheard by other means. Instead he pressed then held the capital N in order to make the conversation seem subject to interference and thus unintelligible to any intruder. From his list of contacts, he highlighted his agent, Netty Fleiderfleiss, then pressed the green call button. Seconds later he heard the single-spaced rings of an American telephone.

  The intercepted call was answered before the third ring had been completed. “Hello,” Oliver said.

  “Hi, Netty,” Ty replied. “Do you have a cold? It sure sounds like it.”

  “The usual summer drip,” Oliver responded, playing along. Trusting as little as necessary to chance, they spoke in an impromptu code even beneath the protective layer of technology.

  “You won’t believe where I’m going tomorrow.”

  “Knowing you, I’m sure you’re right, but try me.”

  “To a bullfight.”

  “A bullfight?”

  “In Seville.”

  “According to the papers,” Oliver said, “you were just in one at Puerto Banús.”

  “Oh, that,” Ty said.

  “You’re not going to the bullfight with that bitch?” Oliver asked.

  “Jesus, no,” Ty said. “With friends. In fact, I’m staying with them now.”

  “Glad to hear it. Don’t even think of becoming a matador. Your face is too valuable.”

  “So you’ve told me once or twice before.”

  “It’s the box office talking, not me. The box office talks to the front office. That’s why they talk to me. You know how it works. By the way, I had a chance to go by your palace, if that’s the reason for your call.”

  “It was one of the reasons,” Ty replied. “What’s the story there?”

  “‘Creative destruction,’ I think is what they call it. They’re working, but they’re a long ways from there yet. Incidentally, sorry about the bust-up of your pickup—forgive me, but I don’t know what else to call it.”

  “Plenty more fish,” Ty said.

  “When are you coming home?” Oliver asked. “Do you know yet?”

  “Netty, I have no idea. Maybe soon, maybe later. For the moment I’m here and have no reason to be there.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about the Thralls’ party?”

  “Is there anything to hear?”

  “Come to think of it, I don’t suppose there is.”

  “Bye, then,” Ty said.

  “Yeah,” replied Oliver, “bye-bye.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Tell me again what Andrej told you,” Ian said. “And, Philip, don’t leave anything out this time.”

  They were in Ian’s study, yet another, smaller, soundproofed glass structure in the Pond House complex. In the dark of the Spanish summer night, the room glowed, its sleek furnishings and Arabian carpets unpredictably harmonious.

  Philip replied, “He said questions had been asked, as high up as the Main Directorate Number Four, about Zhugov.”

  “I expected there would be.”

  “You hadn’t mentioned it. Anyway, Zhugov, as you know, is dead.”

  “A fact that pains me,” Ian said. “I had wanted him to prosper. He deserved to.”

  “I’m sure you’re right and that he was a very nice man, but he cut an outrageous profile, which might have become more dangerous if he’d cut it for longer. His tastes were growing ever more expensive and flamboyant. What can I say?”

  “That you had no hand in his death. You could say that.”

  “Of course I didn’t,” Philip said. “You know better than that. It’s a very different thing to note that a man’s death is convenient than to have had a hand in arranging it.”

  “That’s true,” Ian said. “I apologize if I sounded accusatory.”

  “Accepted,” Philip told him. “Anyway, it was known that he and you had dealt hands to one another from time to time.”

  “Neither of us made much of a secret of that fact, but the devil lies in the details. How much was known about those ‘hands,’ as you put it?”

  “Andrej couldn’t say.”

  “So naturally you’re wondering if you are tarnished by your association with me. That’s another well-known fact, after all.”

  Philip paused. “It is,” he replied, “but Andrej assures me that I’m not. So far I’m in the clear, and he expects it to remain that way.”

  Ian shook his head, not at the accuracy of Andrej’s prediction but at the ease with which people were fooled by credentials—the right family, the right school, the right posting, such as Philip’s to the Nunn-Lugar initiative. “Because of your good works, I take it?”

  “Apparently so,” Philip said.

  “Nevertheless, on your own initiative you had our cargo re-rerouted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you think I should have been made aware of this before rather than after the fact?”

  “We had a contingency plan in place for a reason. All I did was activate it.”

  “By doing so you also risked activating more interest in
our turbines. Did that occur to you?”

  “Naturally, but the risk seemed small in comparison with the risk of doing nothing.”

  “Think about whom you’re dealing with.”

  “Our friends in the Camorra are as interested in handing off those turbines and being paid their last installment as we are in taking receipt of them.”

  “In all probability, but they’re human. Don’t forget that. They possess curiosity. What if, once aroused, they pursue it?”

  “What if? Your question, in this context, is hypothetical. Anything is possible, sure, I’ll grant you that, but the real what-if question here is this: What if, Ian, you are under closer scrutiny than you think? Not for cargoes that no one knows exist, that according to the best-kept records don’t, but because some suspicious bureaucrat or eager politician playing cop has decided you might have had your hand in Zhugov’s pocket or he in yours? What if, while they’re building their petty case, a precious cargo lands right at your doorstep and they say, ‘What’s this—let’s open it and have a more thorough look’?”

  Ian swallowed hard. “Be that as it may,” he said, “my earlier point still stands. I should have been made aware of your action before you took it, not simply before you’d left Prague for Geneva.”

  Philip studied his mentor. There were times, grave and pivotal moments of which this was one, when Ian’s famously piercing eyes seemed only to refract the available light. “I agree,” Philip said, “and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “No,” Ian said. “Well, good night.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The bullfight, one of the last of the season, was held in the Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza in Seville, a two-hour drive north by northeast from Pond House. They arrived at the ring with time to spare and so, before entering their box, toured the nearby Museo de la Real Maestranza de Sevilla, where Ian carefully explained the history of the bullfighting artifacts on display, including a cape that Picasso had painted. Of the guests at the party the evening before, only Ty and the Foos had joined the excursion, so once they made their way past the main structure’s baroque façade to their assigned seats, Ty was surprised to find a number of vacant chairs, indicating that others were expected.