I nodded thoughtfully, and looked back and forth at the two pieces, and tried to imagine how many motorbikes I’d need to own before I decided to start spending money on stuff like this.
Murdahhad done enough walking, apparently, and peeled off back towards the sofa. The way he moved seemed to say that the pleasantries box was almost empty.
‘Two opposite images of the same object, Mr Lang,’ he said, reaching for another cigarette. ‘You might say, if you like, that those two cabinets resemble our little problem.’
‘I might, yes.’ I waited, but he wasn’t ready to expand. ‘Of course, I’d need to know roughly what you’re talking about first.’
He turned to me. The sheen was still there, and so were the indoor good-looks. But the chumminess was dying away, sputtering in the grate and warming nobody.
‘I’m talking, Mr Lang, about Graduate Studies, obviously.’ He looked surprised.
‘Obviously,’ I said.
‘I have an involvement,’ said Murdah, ‘with a certain group of people.’
He was standing in front of me now, his hands held wide in that welcome-to-my-vision gesture that politicians like to use these days, while I lounged on the sofa. Otherwise little had changed, except that someone was cooking fishfingers near by. It was a smell that didn’t quite belong in this room.
‘These people,’ he continued, ‘are, in many cases, friends of mine. People with whom I have done business over many, many years. They are people who trust me, who rely on me. You understand?’
Of course, he wasn’t asking me if I understood the specific relationship. He just wanted to know if words like Trust and Reliability still had any meaning down where I lived. I nodded to show that yes, I could spell them in an emergency.
‘As an act of friendship towards these people, I have taken something of a risk. Which is rare for me.’ This, I think, was a joke, so I smiled, which seemed to satisfy him. ‘I have personally underwritten the sale of a quantity of merchandise.’ He paused and looked at me, wanting some
reaction. ‘I think perhaps you are familiar with the nature of the product?’
‘Helicopters,’ I said. There didn’t seem to be any point in playing stupid at this stage.
‘Helicopters, precisely,’ said Murdah. ‘I must tell you that I dislike the things myself, but I am told that they perform some functions extremely well.’ He was starting to go a little fey on me, I thought - affecting a distaste for the vulgar, oily machines that had paid for this house and, for all I knew, a dozen more like it - so I decided to try and blunt things up a bit, on behalf of the common man.
‘They certainly do,’ I said. ‘The ones you’re selling could destroy an average-size village in under a minute. Along with all its inhabitants, obviously.’
He closed his eyes for a second, as if the very thought of such a thing gave him pain, which, perhaps, it did. If so, it wasn’t for long.
‘As I said, Mr Lang, I don’t believe I have to justify myself to you. I am not concerned with the use to which this merchandise is eventually put. My concern, for the sake of my friends, and for myself, is that the merchandise should find customers.’ He clasped his hands together and waited. As if the whole thing was now my problem.
‘So advertise,’ I said, after a while. ‘Back pages ofWoman’s Own.’
‘ Hm,’he said. Like I was an idiot. ‘You are not a businessman, Mr Lang.’
I shrugged.
‘I am, you see,’ he continued. ‘So I think you must trust me to know my own market-place.’ A thought seemed to strike him. ‘After all, I wouldn’t presume to advise you on the best way…’And then he realised he was in a jam, because there was nothing on my CV to indicate that I knew the best way to do anything.
‘To ride a motorcycle?’ I offered, gallantly. He smiled.
‘As you say.’ He sat down on the sofa again. Further away, this time. ‘The product I am dealing with requires a more sophisticated approach, I think, than the pages ofWoman’s Own.If you are making a new mousetrap, then, as you say, you advertise it as a new mousetrap. If, on the other hand,’ he held out his other hand, to show me what another hand looked like, ‘you are trying to sell a snake trap, then your first task is to demonstrate why snakes are bad things. Why they need to be trapped. Do you follow me? Then, much, much later, you come along with your product. Does that make sense to you?’ He smiled patiently.
‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re going to sponsor a terrorist act, and let your little toy do its business on thenine o’clock news. I know all this. Rusty knows that I know all this.’ I glanced at my watch, trying to make it look as if I had another arms dealer to see in ten minutes. But Murdah was not a man to be hurried, or slowed down.
‘That, in essence, is precisely what I intend to do,’ he said. ‘And I come into this where, exactly? I mean, now that you’ve told me, what am I supposed to do with the information? Put it in my diary? Write a song about it? What?’
Murdahlooked at me for a moment, then took in a deep breath and pushed it out gently and carefully through his nose, as if he’d had lessons in how to breathe.
‘You, Mr Lang, are going to carry out this terrorist act for us.’
Pause. Long pause. A feeling of horizontal vertigo. The walls of this massive room shooting inwards, then out again, making me feeling smaller, and punier, than I’ve ever felt. ‘Aha,’ I said.
Another pause. The smell of fishfingers was stronger than ever.
‘Do I have a say in this, by any chance?’ I croaked. My throat was giving me trouble, for some reason. ‘I mean, if I were to say, for example, fuck you and all your relatives, roughly what could I expect to happen, at today’s prices?’
It was Murdah’s turn to do the glancing-at-the-watch bit. He seemed to have grown suddenly bored, and wasn’t smiling at all any more.
‘That, Mr Lang, is not an option that I think you should waste any time considering.’
I felt cooler air on my neck, and twisted round to see that Barnes and Lucas were standing by the door. Barnes looked relaxed. Lucas didn’t. Murdah nodded, and the two Americans stepped forward, coming each side of the sofa to join him. Facing me. Murdah held out a hand, palm up, in front of Lucas, without looking at him.
Lucas slid back the flap of his jacket and pulled out an automatic. A Steyr, I think. 9mm. Not that it matters. He placed the gun gently in Murdah’s hand, then turned towards me, his eyes widened by the pressure of some message that I couldn’t decipher.
‘Mr Lang,’ said Murdah, ‘you have the safety of two people to think about. Your own, of course, and Miss Woolf’s. I don’t know what value you place on your own safety, but I think it would be only gallant if you were to consider hers. And I want you to consider hers very deeply.’ He beamed suddenly, as if the worst was over. ‘But, of course, I don’t expect you to do it without good reason.’