“What sort of a gift?”

“Oh, just a cheap memento of Biarritz. It was wrapped up in tissue paper. But I had cut out a gun shape from metal foil paper and slipped it between the sheets of tissue.”

Sir Wilfred sputtered with laughter. “So, the X-ray scanner picked up a gun each time the package passed through, and the poor officials could find nothing! How delicious: I think I must drink to that.” He measured out the other half, then returned to the task of familiarizing himself with the leverage information, occasionally allowing himself such interjections as: “Is that so? Wouldn’t have thought it of him.” “Ah, we’ve known this for some time. Still, wouldn’t do to broadcast it around.” “Oh, my. That is a nasty bit. How on earth did he find that out?”

When he finished reading the material. Sir Wilfred carefully tapped the pages together to make the ends even, then replaced them in the folder. “No single thing here sufficient to force us very far.”

“I’m aware of that, Fred. But the mass? One piece released to the German press each day?”

“Hm-m. Quite. It would have a disastrous effect on confidence in the government just now, with elections on the horizon. I suppose the information is in ‘button-down’ mode?”

“Of course.”

“Feared as much.”

Holding the information in “button-down” mode involved arrangements to have it released to the press immediately, if a certain message was not received by noon of each day. Hel carried with him a list of thirteen addresses to which he was to send cables each morning. Twelve of these were dummies; one was an associate of Maurice de Lhandes who would, upon receipt of the message, telephone to another intermediary, who would telephone de Lhandes. The code between Hel and de Lhandes was a simple one based upon an obscure poem by Barro, but it would take much longer than twenty-four hours for the intelligence boys to locate the one letter in the one word of the message that was the active signal. The term “button-down” came from a kind of human bomb, rigged so that the device would not go off, so long as the man held a button down. But any attempt to struggle with him or to shoot him would result in his releasing the button.

Sir Wilfred considered his position for a moment. “It is true that this information of yours can be quite damaging. But we are under tight orders from the Mother Company to protect these Black September vermin, and we are no more eager to bring down upon our heads the ire of the Company than is any other industrial country. It appears that we shall have to choose between misfortunes.”

“So it appears.”

Sir Wilfred pushed out his lower lip and squinted at Hel in evaluation. “This is a very wide-open and dangerous thing you’re doing, Nicholai—walking right into our arms like this. It must have taken a great deal of money to draw you out of retirement.”

“Point of fact, I am not being paid for this.”

“Hm-m-m. That, of course, would have been my second guess.” He drew a long sigh. “Sentiment is a killer, Nicholai. But of course you know that. All right, tell you what. I shall carry your message to my masters. We’ll see what they have to say. Meanwhile, I suppose I shall have to hide you away somewhere. How would you like to spend a day or two in the country? I’ll make a telephone call or two to get the government lads thinking, then I’ll run you out in my banger.”

Middle Bumley

Sir Wilfred’s immaculate 1931 Rolls crunched over the gravel of a long private drive and came to a stop under the porte cochère of a rambling house, most of the charm of which derived from the aesthetic disorder of its having grown without plan through many architectural impulses.

Crossing the lawn to greet them were a sinewy woman of uncertain years and two girls in their mid-twenties.

“I think you’ll find it amusing here, Nicholai,” Sir Wilfred said. “Our host is an ass, but he won’t be about. The wife is a bit dotty, but the daughters are uniquely obliging. Indeed, they have gained something of a reputation for that quality. What do you think of the house?”

“Considering your British penchant for braggadocio through meiosis—the kind of thing that makes you call your Rolls a banger—I’m surprised you didn’t describe the house as thirty-seven up, sixteen down.”

“Ah, Lady Jessica!” Sir Wilfred said to the older woman as she approached wearing a frilly summer frock of a vague color she would have called “ashes of roses.” “Here’s the guest I telephoned about. Nicholai Hel.”

She pressed a damp hand into his. “So pleased to have you. To meet you, that is. This is my daughter, Broderick.”

Hel shook hands with an overly slim girl whose eyes were huge in her emaciated face.

“I know it’s an uncommon name for a girl,” Lady Jessica continued, “but my husband had quite settled on having a boy—I mean he wanted to have a boy in the sense of fathering a son—not in the other sense—my goodness, what must you think of him? But he had Broderick instead—or rather, we did.”

“In the sense that you were her parents?” Hel sought to release the skinny girl’s hand.

“Broderick is a model,” the mother explained.

Hel had guessed as much. There was a vacuousness of expression, a certain limpness of posture and curvature of spine that marked the fashionable model of that moment.

“Nothing much really,” Broderick said, trying to blush under her troweled-on makeup. “Just the odd job for the occasional international magazine.”

The mother tapped the daughter’s arm. “Don’t say you do ‘odd jobs’! What will Mr. Hel think?”

A clearing of the throat by the second daughter impelled Lady Jessica to say, “Oh, yes. And here is Melpomene. It is conceivable she might act one day.”

Melpomene was a substantial girl, thick of bosom, ankle, and forearm, rosy of cheek, and clear of eye. She seemed somehow incomplete without her hockey stick. Her handshake was firm and brisk. “Just call me Pom. Everyone does.”

“Ah… if we could just freshen up?” Sir Wilfred suggested.

“Oh, of course! I’ll have the girls show you everything—I mean, of course, where your rooms are and all. What must you think?”

As Hel was laying out his things from the duffel bag, Sir Wilfred tapped on the door and came in. “Well, what do you think of the place? We should be cozy here for a couple of days, while the masters ponder the inevitable, eh? I’ve been on the line to them, and they say they’ll come up with a decision by morning.”

“Tell me, Fred. Have your lads been keeping a watch on the Septembrists?”

“On your targets? Of course.”

“Assuming that your government goes along with my proposal, I’ll want all the background material you have.”

“I expected no less. By the bye, I assured the masters that you could pull this off—should their decision go that way—with no hint of collusion or responsibility on our part. It is that way, isn’t it?”

“Not quite. But I can work it so that, whatever their suspicions, the Mother Company will not be able to prove collusion.”

“The next best thing, I suppose.”

“Fortunately, you picked me up before I went through passport check, so my arrival won’t be in your computers and therefore not in theirs.”

“Wouldn’t rely on that overly much. Mother Company has a million eyes and ears.”

“True. You’re absolutely sure this is a safe house?”

“Oh, yes! The ladies are not what you would call subtle, but they have another quality quite as good—they’re totally ignorant. They haven’t the slightest idea of what we’re doing here. Don’t even know what I do for a living. And the man of the house, if you can call him that, is no trouble at all. We seldom let him into the country, you see.”

Sir Wilfred went on to explain that Lord Biffen lived in the Dordogne, the social leader of a gaggle of geriatric tax avoiders who infested that section of France, to the disgust and discomfort of the local peasants. The Biffens were typical of their sort: Irish peerage that every other generation stiffened its sagging finances by introducing a shot of American hog-butcher blood. The gentleman had overstepped himself in his lust to avoid taxes and had got into a shady thing or two in free ports in the Bahamas. That had given the government a hold on him and on his British funds, so he was most cooperative, remaining in France when he was ordered to, where he exercised his version of the shrewd businessman by cheating local women out of antique furniture or automobiles, always being careful to intercept his wife’s mail to avoid her discovering his petty villainies. “Silly old fart, really. You know the type. Outlandish ties; walking shorts with street shoes and ankle stockings? But the wife and daughters, together with the establishment here, are of some occasional use to us. What do you think of the old girl?”