The Night Manager (4 page)

His breath smelled of the day's good things: the martinis before lunch, the wines with it and the brandies afterwards, washed down by his foul French cigarettes.

"Oh, I think as permanent as one can be, in this profession, Major," Jonathan replied, altering his manner a little for an underling.

"Goes for us all, heart, believe me," said the Major fervently.

"Permanently temporary. Jesus."

Another film cut, and they were traversing the great hall to the tune of "When I Take My Sugar to Tea," played by Maxie the pianist to two old ladies in grey silk. Roper and the woman were still entwined. You're new to each other, Jonathan told them sourly, out of the corner of his eye. Or else you're making up after a quarrel. Jeds, he repeated to himself. He needed the safety of his single bed.

Yet another cut, and they were standing three deep before the ornate doors of Herr Meister's new Tower Suite lift, the affluent society twittering in the background.

"Hell happened to the old lift, Pine?" Roper was demanding. "Thought Meister was a sucker for old things. Bloody Swiss would modernise Stonehenge if they got a chance. Wouldn't they, Jeds?"

"Roper, you can't make a scene about a lift" she said in awe.

"Try me."

From far away, Jonathan hears a voice not unlike his own, enumerating the advantages of the new lift: a security measure, Mr. Roper, but also an attractive extra feature, installed last autumn for the sole convenience of our Tower Suite guests...

And as Jonathan talks, he dangles between his fingers the golden master key created to Herr Meister's personal design. decked with a golden tassel and capped with this rather amusing golden crown.

"I mean, doesn't it remind you of the pharaohs? It's quite outrageous, really, but I can assure you that our less sophisticated guests adore it," he confides, with a camp little smile that he has never vouchsafed to anyone before.

"Well, I adore it," says the Major, off-screen. "And I'm bloody sophisticated."

Roper balances the key in his palm as if to cost its melt weight. He studies both sides, then the crown, then the tassel.

"Taiwan," he pronounces and, to Jonathan's alarm, slings it at the blond blazer with cauliflower ears, who catches it low down and fast on his left side, shouting "Mine!" as he dives.

Beretta .09 automatic with safety catch at the "on," Jonathan records. Ebony finish, holster-carried under the right armpit. A left-handed OBG, with a spare magazine in his belt bag.

"Oh, well played, Frisky, heart. Good catch," Corkoran drawls, and there is relieved laughter from the affluent outfield, led by the woman, who squeezes Roper's arm and says honestly, darling, though in Jonathan's clouded ear it at first sounds like policy, darling.

Now everything is in slow motion, everything is happening under water. The lift takes five at a time; the rest must wait.

Roper strides in, drawing the woman after him. Roedean and model school, Jonathan is thinking. Plus a special course that Sophie had also taken in how to do that with your hips when you walk. Then Frisky, then Major Corkoran without his cigarette, finally Jonathan. Her hair is soft as well as chestnut.

She is also nude. That is to say, she has slipped off her quilted coat and slung it over her arm like an army greatcoat. She wears a man's white shirt with Sophie's puffy sleeves rolled to the elbows. Jonathan starts the lift. Corkoran stares disapprovingly upward like a man peeing. The girl's hip rides carelessly against Jonathan's flank in cheerful friendship. Get off, he wants to tell her irritably. If you're flirting, don't. If you're not flirting, keep your hip to yourself. She smells not of vanilla but of white carnations on Commemoration Day at cadet school.

Roper stands behind her, wide hands resting possessively on her shoulders. Frisky gazes blankly downward at the faded bite mark on her neck, at her unsupported breasts inside the expensive shirt. Like Frisky, no doubt, Jonathan has a disgraceful urge to scoop one out.

"Now why don't I go ahead and show you all the new goodies Herr Meister's put in for you since your last visit?" he suggests.

Perhaps it's time you gave up manners as a way of life, Sophie had said to him as she walked beside him in the dawn.

He went ahead, indicating the suite's priceless advantages; the amazing low-flush bar... the thousand-year-old fruit... the very latest in superhygienic Jetstream loos, does everything for you except clean your teeth.... All his whimsical little jokes, whisked out and polished for the delectation of Mr. Richard Onslow Roper and this long-waisted, funny-faced, un-pardonably attractive woman. How dare she be so beautiful at a time like this?

Meister's legendary Tower hovers like an inflated dovecote over the magic peaks and valleys of the hotel's Edwardian roof. The three-bedroom palace inside it is built on two floors, a pastel experience in what Jonathan confidingly calls Swiss Franc Quatorze. The luggage has arrived, the chasseurs have received their largesse, Jeds has retired to the master bedroom, from which issue the far sounds of female singing and running water. The singing is indistinct but provocative, if not downright bawdy. Frisky the blazer has stationed himself at a telephone in the landing and is murmuring orders to someone he disdains. Major Corkoran, armed with a fresh cigarette but minus his camel hair, is in the dining room, talking slow French on another line for the benefit of somebody whose French is worse than his. His cheeks are fluid as a baby's, the dabs of colour very high. And his French is French French, no question.

He has slipped into it as naturally as if it were his mother tongue, which perhaps it is, for nothing about Corkoran suggests an uncomplicated provenance.

Elsewhere in the suite, other lives and conversations are unfolding.

The tall man with the ponytail is called Sandy, we learn, and Sandy is talking English on another telephone to somebody in Prague called Gregory, while Mrs. Sandy sits in a chair with her overcoat on, glowering at the wall. But Jonathan has banished these secondary players from his immediate consciousness. They exist, they are elegant, they revolve in their far periphery around the central light of Mr. Richard Onslow Roper of Nassau, the Bahamas. But they are chorus.

Jonathan's guided tour of the splendours of the palace is complete.

It is time he took his leave. A graceful wave of the hand, an endearing exhortation--"Please to be sure to enjoy every bit of it"--and in the normal way he would have descended smoothly to ground level, leaving his wards to enjoy their pleasures by themselves as best they could at fifteen thousand francs a night including tax, service and continental breakfast.

But tonight is not the normal way, tonight is Roper's night, it is Sophie's night, and Sophie in some bizarre way is played for us tonight by Roper's woman, whose name to everyone but Roper turns out to be not Jeds but Jed--Mr. Onslow Roper likes to multiply his assets. The snow is still falling, and the worst man in the world is drawn toward it like a man who is contemplating his childhood in the dancing flakes. He stands cavalry-backed at the centre of the room, facing the French windows and the snow-clad balcony. He holds a green Sotheby's catalogue open before him like a hymnal from which he is about to sing, and his other arm is raised to bring in some silent instrument from the edge of the orchestra. He sports a learned judge's half-lens reading spectacles.

"Soldier Boris and his chum say okay Monday lunchtime," Corkoran calls from the dining room. "Okay Monday lunchtime?"

"Fix," says Roper, turning a page of the catalogue and watching the snow over his spectacles at the same time. "Look at that. Glimpse of the infinite."

"I adore it every time it happens," says Jonathan earnestly.

"Your friend Appetites from Miami says why not make it the Kronenhalle--food's better." Corkoran again.

"Too public. Lunch here or bring his sandwiches. Sandy, what does a decent Stubbs horse make these days?"

The pretty male head with the ponytail pokes round the door. "Size?"

"Thirty by fifty inches."

The pretty face barely puckers. "There was a good'un went at Sotheby's last June. Protector in a Landscape. Signed and dated 1779. A lulu."

"Quanta costa?"

"You sitting comfortably?"

"Come off it, Sands!"

"A million two. Plus commish."

"Pounds or bucks?"

"Bucks."

From the opposite doorway, Major Corkoran is complaining. "The Brussels boys want half in cash, Chief. Bloody liberty, if you ask me."

"Tell 'em you won't sign," Roper retorts, with an extra gruffness that he apparently uses for keeping Corkoran at arm's length. "That a hotel up there, Pine?"

Roper's gaze is fixed on the black windowpanes where the childhood snowflakes pursue their dance.

"A beacon, actually, Mr. Roper. Some sort of navigational aid, I gather."

Herr Meister's treasured ormolu clock is chiming the hour, but Jonathan for all his customary nimbleness is unable to move his feet in the direction of escape. His patent evening shoes remain embedded in the deep pile of the drawing room carpet as solidly as if they were set in cement. His mild gaze, so at odds with the pugilistic brow, remains fixed on Roper's back. But Jonathan sees him in only a part of his mind. Otherwise he is not in the Tower Suite at all but in Sophie's penthouse apartment at the top of the Queen Nefertiti Hotel in Cairo.

Sophie too has her back to him, and it is as beautiful as he always knew it was, white against the whiteness of her evening gown. She is gazing, not at the snow, but at the huge wet stars of the Cairene night, at the quarter-moon that hangs from its points above the soundless city. The doors to her roof garden are open; she grows nothing but white flowers--oleander, bougainvillaea, agapanthus. The scent of Arabian jasmine drifts past her into the room. A bottle of vodka stands beside her on a table, and it is definitely half empty, not half full.

"You rang," Jonathan reminded her with a smile in his voice, playing the humble servant. Perhaps this is our night, he was thinking.

"Yes, I rang. And you answered. You are kind. I am sure you are always kind."

He knew at once that it was not their night.

"I need to ask you a question," she said. "Will you answer it truthfully?"

"If I can. Of course."

"You mean there could be circumstances in which you would not?"

"I mean I might not know the answer."

"Oh, you will know the answer. Where are the papers that I entrusted to your care?"

"In the safe. In their envelope. With my name on it."

"Has anybody seen them except myself?"

"The safe is used by several members of the staff, mostly for storing cash until it goes to the bank. So far as I know, the envelope is still sealed."

She allowed her shoulders to slump in a gesture of impatience but did not turn her head. "Did you show them to anyone? Yes or no, please. I am not judgmental. I came to you on an impulse. It would not be your fault if I made a mistake. I had some sentimental vision of you as a clean Englishman."

So did I, thought Jonathan. Yet it did not occur to him that he had a choice. In the world that mysteriously owned his allegiance, there was only one answer to her question.

"No," he said. And he said again, "No; no one."

"If you tell me it is the truth, I shall believe you. I wish very much to believe there is one last gentleman on earth."

"It's the truth. I gave you my word. No."

Again she seemed to disregard his denial or find it premature.

"Freddie insists I have betrayed him. He entrusted the papers to my care. He did not want them kept in his office or at home. Dicky Roper is encouraging Freddie in his suspicions of me."

"Why should he do that?"

"Roper is the other party to the correspondence. Until today, Roper and Freddie Hamid were proposing to become business partners. I was present at some of their discussions on Roper's yacht. Roper was not comfortable to have me as a witness, but since Freddie insisted on showing me off to him, he had no choice."

She seemed to expect him to speak, but he kept his silence.

"Freddie visited me this evening. It was later than his usual hour. When he is in town, it is his custom to visit me before dinner. He uses the car park lift, out of respect for his wife, he stays two hours, then he returns to dine in the bosom of his family. It is my somewhat pathetic boast that I have helped to keep his marriage intact. Tonight he was late. He had been talking on the telephone. It appears that Roper has received a warning."

"A warning from whom?"

"From good friends in London." A spurt of bitterness.

"Good for Roper. That is understood."

"Saying what?"

"Saying that his business arrangements with Freddie are known to the authorities. Roper was careful on the telephone, saying only that he had counted on Freddie's discretion. Freddie's brothers were not so delicate. Freddie had not informed them of the deal. He was wishing to prove himself to them. He had gone so far as to set aside a fleet of Hamid trucks under a pretext in order to transport the merchandise through Jordan. His brothers were not pleased about that either. Now, because Freddie is frightened, he has told them everything. He is also furious to be losing the esteem of his precious Mr. Roper. So no?" she rehearsed, still staring into the night.

"Definitely no. Mr. Pine has no suggestions about how this information could have reached London or come to the ears of Mr. Roper's friends. The safe, the papers--he has no suggestions."

"No. He hasn't. I'm sorry."

Until then she had not looked at him. Now at last she turned and let him see her face. One eye was closed entirely. Both sides were bloated out of recognition.

"I would like you to take me for a drive, please, Mr. Pine. Freddie is not rational when his pride is threatened."

No time has passed. Roper is still absorbed in the Sotheby's catalogue. Nobody has smashed his face into a pulp. The ormolu clock is still chiming the hour. Absurdly, Jonathan checks its accuracy against his wristwatch and, finding himself able to move his feet at last, opens the glass and advances the large hand until the two agree. Run for cover, he tells himself. Flatten.