Operation Nassau

by Dorothy Dunnett

  If it didn’t move me, I thought, the walls were shortly going to fall out backwards. It had moved on to the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor, who could obviously afford a larger orchestra than the Breadcrumb Fairy. The iced-water glasses were chattering and the fan over my bed started to stagger. ‘Come!’ said the Magnificent Animal, and pulled me on to my feet.

  I am not, as I have reported, a dancer. Neither am I a Hungarian acrobat. As I went over Krishtof Bey’s shoulder and under his arm in a type of cloverleaf system I had time to thank God for the bearskin. Whatever happened to my wig or my intervertebral discs, I should fall soft.

  In the end, I pinned down the technique. Dancing consists of a number of simple binary decision-points: whether to stand up or fall down. As we emerged from a back-to-back spin, I would begin to fall down, and Krishtof would raise me with a hand under one thigh and throw me on to his shoulder. I would begin to fall down again, and he would catch me and switch me like full dairy cream by my own upraised arm, while I stood up. He would then plié round about me until I fell down again.

  I began to fear for my airways. Rimsky-Korsakov was molesting my eardrums. Basic intestinal disturbances began to threaten my vodka. My wig was going to come off.

  I yelled ‘Stop it!’ and kicked him viciously behind the left knee. He sat. The tape-recorder, which was underneath him, went off. In the abrupt silence a patient tapping at my door made itself heard. The Begum’s calm English voice said, ‘Beltanno? Don’t be lazy,.darling. The water polo has started, and it isn’t fair to leave Rodney one swimmer short.’

  The sweat showered into my bath-robe. I took a temporary grip of my respiration and said, ‘Krishtof Bey would swim better.’

  ‘I dare say,’ said the Begum. ‘But there’s no response from his room.’

  His necklace heaving, I was delighted to see, the Magnificent Animal rose to his feet, and the oblique gaze on me, was retreating slowly towards the door behind the pink curtain. ‘Try again,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I heard him a moment ago.’

  ‘Right,’ said the Begum. Krishtof and I stared at each other. ‘I’ll try him. But get up, darling, won’t you? I want you to enjoy meeting people.’

  He had got to the Chinese vase with the blossoms. Without looking down he broke one off, kissed it theatrically and cast it into the room mournfully, as from Armand to Marguerite. Then the door between our two rooms fastened softly behind him. In a moment I heard the Begum’s knock on the outer door to his room. I couldn’t hear what he answered.

  I remained perspiring, my sympathetic nervous system all shot to hell. He was not only a murderer: he was an irresponsible murderer. To what he had just done to me, I would not subject the fittest man in my acquaintance. Had he taken any precautions? Had he asked any single question about my cardio-respiratory history? Had he even asked if my teeth were my own?

  No.

  All I had received from Krishtof Bey was a four-minute kiss.

  I was not myself. I sat down on that bearskin and lamented.

  In the end, I did go down to the pool, largely because I wasn’t going to stay too long in that room alone. It took me some time to get ready. On my way out I found and delivered a cavalry charge on Johnson’s modest oak door, but he didn’t answer. When I got out into the garden in my sunsuit, sandals and wrap-around glasses, I discovered the reason.

  He had begun to paint Krishtof Bey. Since presumably one cannot swim in bifocals, he was fully dressed in an old crew-necked sweater and what looked like cook’s trousers. Krishtof, sitting behind the collapsible easel, was perched on the shady steps of the Begum’s thatched bar. He had changed into a thinner gold chain and a pair of pale tailored trousers. His stringy hands, clasping one knee, formed a pattern of light and shade against the spectacular torso, brown and lightly relaxed. His face was observant. Indeed, one could not disagree with anything about either his clothes or his posture. The taste was markedly Johnson’s.

  Beside them Trotter, Brady and an assortment of muscle-bound newcomers were splashing about playing water polo, watched by the Begum and my father on deep-buttoned reclining chairs in brilliant colours. Krishtof Bey said, ‘Is it permitted to wave to a girlfriend?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnson, continuing the motions of window-cleaning with a long, pale-handled brush. ‘Waggle your ears. Hullo, Beltanno. Not swimming?’

  ‘Not with two potential murderers; not in that pool. ‘I may have pulled a muscle,’ I said. ‘I thought your sitter was to play water polo?’

  ‘He may have strained his knee,’ Johnson said. The glasses bent over his palette. ‘You should take your muscle to Trotter. Trotter used to be the muscular therapy adviser to the London School of Oriental Studies. The whole of Zen Buddhism would have fallen down without Trotter.’

  I assumed he was joking. The water polo was ending. As I watched, Sergeant Trotter himself nipped up the diving-board and executed a swallow and somersault. It was impressive. ‘Flaming hoops next,’ I said. I was trying to exercise telepathy. Johnson’s hand continued to scrub at his canvas.

  ‘Flaming hoops next,’ said my father’s voice, and I looked round icily, but he hadn’t even heard me. Then I saw they had flaming hoops, or at least a pile of bamboo circles wrapped in swathes of wet cotton. The pool boy, whose given name was Louis B. Mayer MacRannoch, lit one and spun it up through the air. Sergeant Trotter, reappearing at the top of the diving-board, swallow-dived efficiently through it.

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘The Bamboo Conch Club,’ I said.

  ‘No, dear. The MacRannoch Gathering,’ said the Begum’s cool voice. ‘Come and sit down. Hank, George, Missa, Louis and Jake.

  That is Catherine. And that is Wallace Brady climbing up to dive through the hoop. Can he dive? We shall soon know. I beg you to watch him. He is risking his handicap solely for you.’

  Wallace Brady, a nicely built American figure in maroon striped bathing-shorts, took off from the platform and plummeted successfully down through a hoop. A respectful voice said, ‘Dr MacRannoch? I hear you’ve muscular trouble.’

  It was Sergeant Trotter, a well-hewn example of Canadian redwood. I said, ‘I thought you were practising for the MacRannoch Gathering.’

  ‘Oh, no. A little touch of afternoon entertainment,’ said Sergeant Trotter. ‘And it gives the boy practice, you know. Where is it, then? Back? Turn over. I’m a trained masseur, no need to worry.’ Fingers like heavy-grade forceps flipped me over and a red-hot poker struck me hard behind the left shoulder-blade. I gasped.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Sergeant Trotter with quiet triumph, withdrawing his fingers. ‘Golfers, they always get tightened up there. Take up running, I tell them. Swimming. Loosen up. You ought to know that, you being a doctor,’ he said to my suffering back.

  My spine was rising and falling like dough on a rolling-pin. As my face shifted up and down the deep-buttoned plastic I observed, ‘I am much obliged to you, although I feel it needs very little. I understand Mr Krishtof has quite a painful left knee.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Sergeant Trotter, pausing with interest.

  Afterwards,’ said Johnson. He took a pound tube of flake white and leaned on it, while a low glistening hill formed on his palette. Krishtof Bey said feelingly, ‘Afterwards may be too late.’

  ‘Middle-Eastern soft-bellied drop-out,’ said Johnson pleasantly.

  ‘Pavement artist,’ said Krishtof Bey.

  There was an amiable silence, broken by the rasping of Trotter’s thumbs on my neck. People splashed in the pool. I could hear James Ulric conversing in a creaking cackle with Missa or Catherine or Louis or Jake on his other side. My muscles began to warm up and spread out, like treacle. I allowed my eyelids to close against the dark glasses.

  Sergeant Trotter said, ‘I reckon Mr Johnson ought to burn them arsenic notes of yours, if he has them.’

  In a trice, my fibres had sprung into their natural bunches again like strong gutta-percha. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I managed.

  ‘Mr Krishtof mentioned Mr
Johnson had those tests,’ Sergeant Trotter explained. ‘Mr Brady was of the opinion that they ought to be destroyed, and I must say I agree.’

  ‘I think you’re probably right,’ said Johnson. He stepped back, stuck a brush in his fist and pushed his glasses up his insignificant nose. The picture, pale and stylish with no third dimension as yet, was undoubtedly that of Krishtof Bey, tinted and drawn by a draughtsman. He said, ‘I’ll put a match to them some time. I can’t remember which book I put them in. Or were they in that grip they mislaid for me at Coral Harbour?’

  I said, ‘You were lucky, you got yours back . . ‘and stopped what I was saying. Of course. That was why my case too had been taken. For the same reason as Johnson’s. ‘I lost mine too, between Nassau and Great Harbour Cay. Someone wondered what we might have committed to writing,’ I said. I added impatiently, ‘You must remember what you did with the papers.’

  I have no patience with crassness. Wilful crassness. Did he not realize he was endangering not only my life but his own? That between the covers of Portnoy’s Complaint lay the seeds of premature death?

  ‘Oh, it’ll turn up,’ said Johnson. ‘They call it information retrieval among console computers.’

  ‘It’s a pity we haven’t a console computer,’ I said. ‘An integrated data-processing system could find some work to do here and there.’

  The bifocals turned, elevated and lower Ds, and then reversed to gaze on the canvas. ‘I would have you know,’ said Johnson comfortably, ‘that I am multiprogrammed with impeccable software. What about you?’

  ‘I am a small, edge-punched component,’ I said bitterly, ‘whom nobody wants.’ And closing my eyes, allowed Trotter to resume kneading my back.

  No accidents befell me over the rest of that day, largely because I spent every waking minute taking precautions. I would have been suspicious of Arli, the Wonder Dog who Types with his Nose. Now Krishtof, Brady and Trotter all knew that I was a witness to the fact that there had been an attempted murder, and that I was a prosecution witness in potential. They also knew that there was evidence of this, and that it was in Johnson’s possession. That afternoon, I had regarded Krishtof Bey as a confessed murderer. By making Johnson’s share in this public, he had later strengthened my suspicions. If anything befell Johnson or my notes, neither Brady nor Trotter could claim total ignorance. They were bound to fall under suspicion as well.

  On the other hand, Krishtof might have been speaking the truth.

  If I believed he was speaking the truth. I had to believe that he had questioned me, snatched my gun and hidden under my bed in order to prepare me for a major onslaught of passion.

  In my experience, there was no precedent for this.

  On the other hand, my experience was limited. In vitro and in vivo.

  I spent a number of cogitant hours in the undemanding and, it must be said, amusing company of Missa, Catherine, Louis and Jake, as well as the Begum and my father; and at bedtime, followed Johnson upstairs like an empty chair on a ski-lift. At his closed door, he turned and confronted me. ‘Beltanno.’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, stepping backwards.

  He sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come in and tell me about it.’

  The door, I noticed, following him in, was not even locked.

  The lights were blazing as well.

  And every drawer, shelf and cupboard in the room had been swept as clean as a whistle, and all their contents dumped in the middle of the floor.

  Johnson, his arms dangling, stood beside me and surveyed it. ‘Dear, dear,’ he said. ‘It looks like the changing-room in a rehabilitation centre for knitted soft toys.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ I said bitterly.

  He thought about it a while. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you can over-do this natural-fibre thing. I wonder if your notes have gone. Actually, I did remember where I put them. In this drawer.’

  The drawer was empty.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Johnson.

  I was silent in my disillusionment.

  ‘Someone else had the random access device. Who, I wonder? It could have been anyone. But they might,’ said Johnson, ‘have folded the stuff and put it back in the drawers.’ A large moth rose groggily from a larval pile of old socks: Johnson smacked his hands on it and stooping, gathered an incohesive clot of his possessions to his bosom. The lights went out.

  ‘Oh,’ said Johnson.

  I didn’t say anything. I was no longer relying on the leading luminary of Britain’s intelligence services abroad. I got the gun out of my bag and pointed it into the darkness. Now the killer had made off with the evidence, he was half safe. All he had to do to be wholly safe was to get rid of us. I said, ‘Johnson?’

  ‘Beltanno,’ said Johnson. His voice came out of the darkness on the other side of the room: I could hear the sound of socks dropping. He said, ‘Can you clap your hands?’

  ‘I’ve got a gun,’ I said, speaking slowly and clearly. ‘Johnson, who has the room on the right?’

  ‘Your right or my right?’ said Johnson. There was the sound of more socks dropping. He said, ‘Listen. Clap your hands.’

  ‘My right,’ I said. ‘Remember this is a copy of the castle at home? There’s a concealed hatch to the right of the fireplace. It leads straight into the bedroom next door.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Johnson. ‘Who has the bedroom next door?’

  I said, ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’ To the right of me somewhere, something was creaking. I was sure of it. I took a fresh grip of the gun and turned slightly, facing the sound.

  ‘All right,’ said Johnson obligingly. There was a pause, during which clearly I heard the creaking again. Johnson said, ‘Two senior members of Frei Korper Kultur from Sylt?’

  I said, ‘What? I’m going to fire. Stand still, or I’m going to fire.’

  ‘I am standing still,’ said Johnson’s voice from the same place, touched with anxiety. ‘But the rib-knits are falling simply all over the place. Who was in the next bedroom then?’

  I was listening. I then said as lucidly as my engorged vascular system would allow, ‘Here. Who has the next bedroom here?’

  ‘I wish you would clap your hands,’ Johnson said with some wistfulness. ‘I don’t know. Wallace Brady, I think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said a third voice, a soft voice out of the darkness on my right. ‘Wallace Brady it is.’

  I fired.

  The lights came on.

  In front of the hatch by the fireplace stood Wallace Brady, his pale irises surrounded by an even paler rim of shocked scleral tissue, his shoulders straightening after a duck. Behind him on the plaster was a wide splintered hole. ‘You shot at me!’ he said.

  ‘Marvellous!’ Johnson said. He dropped all the woollies, and moving forward, laid a hand on Brady’s limp arm. ‘I must say,’ he said, ‘I didn’t expect it. I told her to clap.’

  ‘I wish she had,’ said Wallace Brady. ‘I didn’t expect it either.’

  The glasses turned to where I stood transfixed, the smoking gun in my nerveless right hand. ‘Go on, Beltanno,’ said Johnson. ‘Do it again.’

  ‘Hit him?’ I said, unexpectedly in the top third of my register. My knees were trembling. I could have sworn he was sober.

  ‘You can’t hit a civil engineer,’ Johnson said. ‘They never stay still long enough. Try the ceiling. Or clap.’

  I was alone with a drunk and a murderer. I went along with it, playing for time. ‘I can’t clap with a gun in my hand.’

  ‘Give me the gun,’ said Johnson impatiently. He took it and stood twirling it between us and waiting. ‘Now go on. Clap.’

  Foolishly, I applauded.

  The lights went off, came on, went off, came on and went off.

  There was a short silence. ‘Again,’ said Johnson’s voice impatiently. I clapped. The lights went on.

  ‘Lovely. Wasn’t it?’ said Johnson. ‘Acoustic switches are my absolute buzz. Come in and have a drink, Wallace. I’ve got some Glenfiddich somewhere, I t
hink, if the bastard has left it. Did you wonder where that hatch was going to lead you?’

  ‘I knew where it was going to lead me,’ said Wallace. ‘But thanks for the let-out. I was just too bloody nosy for the good of my skin.” He looked at me. ‘I suppose you thought I was a burglar?’

  ‘She thought you were whoever has just slithered off with her arsenic tests,’ Johnson said. He gazed at Brady and Brady looked down, embarrassed. ‘My God,’ said Johnson with interest. ‘Did you think we were conducting an Arthurian agape in four-ply? We just came in, and the room was like forget it. Hallelujah!’ He pounced. ‘The survival kit.’

  He put the whisky down, assembled the glasses, and disappeared into the bathroom for ice. I clapped my hands slowly, twice. The light went out, lingered, and came on again. Wallace Brady was sitting in an attitude of extreme discomfort, looking at me. He said, ‘I want to apologize.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It must all have sounded quite extraordinarily odd.’

  He said, ‘You can hear quite clearly behind that damned hatch.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  Brady said, ‘Do you think I took the papers? I could have.’

  ‘So could Krishtof Bey and Sergeant Trotter,’ I said.

  Johnson came in with the ice and Brady walked over to him and said, ‘There’s something I’m just not too clear on. You said downstairs this morning that all this wasn’t an accident. Then you told us all that Beltanno had proof that it wasn’t. I just wanted to ask you why you had to shoot off your mouth about Beltanno? Doesn’t that expose her to attack by the murderer?’

  ‘How funny,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask him that too.’

  Johnson handed round the drinks, sat down and looked at him, his bifocals twin circles of blankness. ‘I’m being paid by Mr Tiko,’ he said. ‘So that he can inherit three million dollars.’

  For a moment, I think Wallace Brady believed him. I was almost more irritated with him than I was angry with Johnson. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said snappishly. ‘Mr Tiko inherits the Chieftainship, and I’m quite sure my father will see that’s all there is to inherit.’