Jigsaw (32 page)

‘There's a complication. Which is why I'm here.' He turned to look at Martin Burr.

‘Good. Love complications. Speak.'

‘I need information on the American Embassy.'

‘Ah. And I assume it isn't entirely the kind of information you can just pop in and get from any old consular official, Frank, is it?'

‘Right.'

‘You want inside the machine, so to speak.'

‘Right again.'

‘And this is connected to the explosion?'

‘It appears so.'

Martin Burr juggled his cane from one hand to the other in a deft little movement. ‘Speak to me, Frank. Tell me what you have and what you want.'

Pagan quickly related the story of Bryce Harcourt, the death of Quarterman, Streik's message. In his pocket he had the cassette he'd purloined from Harcourt's answering-machine, but decided against playing it for the moment, as if it might slow down his hurried narrative.

Burr looked suddenly cheerful, animated, as if Pagan's request were a passage of high excitement in a retirement more dreary than Burr was prepared to admit. He hobbled round the narrow room, humming to himself, avoiding boxes and chairs and an empty old-fashioned birdcage on an iron stand. ‘The American Embassy,' he remarked. ‘That font of mystery.'

‘I was hoping you might know something,' Pagan said.

Burr leaned on his cane. ‘The names you mentioned. Streik doesn't mean anything to me. Nor Harcourt. Sorry. Quarterman, though. He was one of William Caan's boys.'

‘One of his boys in what way?'

‘What do you know about Caan?'

‘I'm not famous for mixing in ambassadorial circles,' Pagan said drily.

‘He's been ambassador for – what – two years now? Made his fortune in electronics, weapons systems, computer support for long-range missiles, that sort of thing. He gave liberally to the President's election campaign and was consequently rewarded with a nice diplomatic posting. A peach.' Burr wandered to his desk, leaned against it. ‘Politics being what, the President – haunted by the horror of the budget deficit – decides to slash away at the Pentagon's profligate spending, no easy matter for any president. Consider the vested interests pitted against him. Consider the fellows in the Pentagon who're accustomed to a continuing supply of new toys. Suddenly, Santa's a skinflint. The stockings aren't filled quite so liberally. A whole industry suffers. And all the sub-industries, all the sub-contractors, all the research-and-development boys start to hurt as well. The old domino effect. Scrap a new missile, you also scrap everything that goes with it.' Burr shrugged. ‘I'm not saying Caan is hurting personally. But the future for that whole industry isn't quite so rose-coloured these days … Anyway, that's a little background for you on William J. Caan. I've met him a few times socially. He's big on law and order, but he's no cowboy. Quite the contrary, he's as smooth as they come. A little flashy, perhaps, from my staid English point of view. But civilized with it. Spent a year at Cambridge. Some time at the Sorbonne.'

Pagan wondered where this portrait of Caan was leading. But he knew better than to interrupt Martin Burr, who said, ‘An ambassador always sets the tone for his embassy. Or so they say. In Caan's case, it seems to be true enough.' Burr raised an index finger, in the manner of a man testing the direction of the wind. ‘It's been common knowledge for ages that the Embassy has, shall we say, a darker aspect?'

‘Spooks,' Pagan said.

Burr looked at the tip of his finger, engrossed in a callus. ‘If you like. Now. Under the supervision of Caan, more electronic equipment has come in, more sophisticated stuff than Grosvenor Square had before. Her Majesty's Government can only look the other way. If the Americans want to haul state-of-the-art spook equipment into their own Embassy, that's nobody's business but their own. But these weren't the only changes. Out went most of the old staff and in came a new brigade. Maybe that's par for the course. The Ambassador's new broom, so to speak …'

Burr hesitated, turned his good eye toward Pagan, who experienced a moment of slight tension, even if he wasn't sure why. His mouth was dry and he was tapping the surface of Martin's desk with his fingertips. ‘You're trying to tell me something,' he said.

Burr smiled in a slightly secretive manner. ‘We're not supposed to know the inner business of the US Embassy, Frank. That's the protocol. The Embassy might lie in the heart of London and all, but it's American territory as surely as Kentucky – with this significant difference: you can wander around Kentucky. Just the same … You hear things. You pick things up. It's unavoidable. There's a rumour-mill. Only human nature.'

‘And what are these rumour-mills grinding out?' Pagan asked.

‘Some of the new people … how do I phrase this? Caan's gone outside the usual pool of young career diplomats to fish in strange waters. And he's landed some oddities altogether.'

‘Such as?'

‘Quarterman for one. He was a career officer in the US Army. Did a couple of tours of duty in Vietnam. A hard man, as I understand it. Not what you'd call ideal background for a diplomatic posting. But Caan – or quite possibly somebody acting on his behalf, I don't discount the idea he may not have made the appointment
directly
– plucks him out of limbo and gives him the wonderfully nebulous title of Special Projects Officer.'

‘Special Projects. That can mean anything,' Pagan said.

‘The Americans have raised job titles to an art form. Now. As I understand it, Caan also brought on board a couple of retired colonels, also old Vietnam hands, career officers whose careers since that unfortunate war have been less than exemplary. Political chicanery, as I hear it. Dirty tricks, that kind of thing. These are men with blood on their hands. Figuratively, for sure. Perhaps even literally. They weren't in Vietnam playing croquet, we may be sure of that.'

‘Special Projects officers, like Quarterman?'

‘I dare say. In addition, Caan's added a few characters with past experience in a variety of financial transactions. Money markets. Wall Street, et cetera. Don't ask me
their
job titles, because I don't know.'

Pagan pondered this information a moment. ‘The Vietnam veterans – they could just be part of the spook pool.'

‘That's a possibility.'

‘And the financial people …' Pagan shrugged. ‘Maybe they're here to drum up business investors. Who knows?'

‘Who indeed.' Burr moved across the room, edging forward with his cane. ‘All I can say is that some odd bods are gathered under the roof of Grosvenor Square. What you might call a rough crew. Makes you wonder.' The old man smiled and turned to Pagan. ‘I don't have the names of these people, Frank. Quarterman I knew, because I met him at some function in the company of Caan. The rest is rumour, and it's fuzzy round the edges, because that's the nature of the beast.'

Pagan was silent, turning over in his mind this assembly of characters Martin had called a rough crew. He had the feeling of being caught up in a maelstrom of gossip and fable. He slipped his hand in his pocket and took out Harcourt's cassette. ‘I'd like you to listen to this,' he said.

Burr indicated an answering-machine stuffed behind the word-processor on his cluttered desk, where there was a knot of wires. ‘Try that.'

Pagan inserted the cassette, pressed the play button. He turned up the volume and Streik's demented voice filled the narrow room.
Bryce. This is Jake Streik. Listen. Listen. If you're there, pick up. OK. I need to talk with you. How are things holding up at your end? I got problems. Listen. I'll get back to you later tonight if I can. You want my advice, get the fuck outta London. Get away from The Undertakers, unnerstand? Walk away from all that shit. If you don't you're a dead man … Bryce? You there? Bryce?

The message ended. Burr stood looking directly down at the machine. He pressed rewind, and replayed the tape. When it ended, he turned to look at Pagan. ‘Get away from The Undertakers,' he said rather quietly. ‘That's interesting. That's very interesting indeed.'

‘Tell me why,' Pagan said.

‘Some years back, two, three, there was some talk about a group inside the Embassy that called itself The Undertakers. Upper-case U, Frank. They apparently specialized in such jolly pastimes as character assassination. Blackmail. They laundered money when it needed to be done. They were not above dipping their fingers in the waters of British politics either, when it served their purpose. I heard of one government minister – and perhaps this is apocryphal – whose taste for small boys led to him being coerced by The Undertakers into seeking certain
highly
favourable tax concessions for American corporations doing business on these shores. There were said to be rather delicate photographs.' Burr paused, coughed into his hand. ‘There's more, of course. Rumours have a way of spawning themselves and multiplying. The Undertakers, when necessary, would
arrange
accidents. They would make people
disappear
. They were reported to be very good at this kind of thing. Distance no obstacle. Anti-American radicals in Europe, fugitives from US justice and so forth.'

Pagan was jolted into the realization he'd been thinking wrongly, he'd gone along with Foxie's quite reasonable assumption that ‘the undertakers' was Streik's euphemism for people intent on killing Harcourt. But Burr's information had turned this supposition upside-down. ‘Do you believe such a group existed?' Pagan asked. ‘That it still exists?'

‘Frank, it was never more than one of those whispers that just breeze across your desk and pass on into oblivion. Nobody really knew how the story got started, but it went the rounds, then faded away, and I hadn't even thought about it until I heard this tape. Never take scuttlebutt as gospel, Frank. You know better.'

‘But if they exist, it's possible that the oddball Embassy personnel you mentioned are part of them.'

‘Possible, of course. In the sense that
anything
's possible. But even if they exist, what in the world can
you
do about it? What can anyone do? The Embassy isn't going to come out and admit it. Caan certainly isn't going to sit you down and say,
Well, Frank, what do you want to know about The Undertakers?
' Burr shook his head emphatically from side to side. ‘Besides, Caan's position would certainly be one of official ignorance. There might be dirty work going on inside the Embassy – but it's down in the basement, so to speak. Caan breathes a more rarefied air, I'm sure. It's even possible that he doesn't
know
what's happening in his own cellar. Or he turns a blind eye to it. He's the Ambassador, after all. How can he
possibly
be associated with illicit activity? You see the problem, Frank. Where do you point the finger? Where do you place culpability? You don't, because you can't.'

Pagan let an echo of Streik's message play inside his head. The only conclusion he could draw from it was that Harcourt and Streik had somehow crossed The Undertakers. Really useful. True progress.

‘Here's what I don't understand,' he said. ‘If The Undertakers wanted Harcourt out of the way, how does Carlotta fit into the scheme of things? Did they hire her on a freelance basis to blow up the train?'

Burr emitted a long sigh. ‘Frank. I couldn't even begin to answer that one. I couldn't begin to fathom the connections involved. For starters, you'd have to prove The Undertakers exist …'

Burr was correct, of course. The Undertakers were eminently deniable, a fiction, a myth created by those people – and there were more than a few in the world – whose principal occupation was to disparage all things American. Where did this leave him? Fistfuls of sand, grainy particles of information that seeped through his fingers. Frustration, sheer and bloody.

‘Herself wants us to hie off to bloody Tangiers for a holiday,' Burr said. The subject had been changed. The old man clapped his hand on Pagan's shoulder. ‘Wants sunlight. Do the bazaars. Eat kebabs or whatever. I'm disinclined.'

‘Why?'

Burr smiled. ‘Because I'm a funny old codger, Frank. I actually like England in the winter. It touches something in my heart. An expectation of spring. Renewal.' He laughed, then tapped his cane on the floor with a gesture of finality. ‘Well. Come and see me again when it isn't business.'

‘I will,' Pagan said.

‘And tread carefully, Frank. Do you hear me?'

‘I hear you.'

Outside it was already dark. Pagan walked almost as far as Harrods before he found a taxi to return him to Golden Square. He was lost in contemplation, and the more he thought the more his reckonings diminished. When he stepped inside the taxi, his brain felt like an airless chamber.

TWENTY-ONE

LONDON

T
HE
B
RITISH
H
OME
S
ECRETARY,
A
RTHUR
W
ESKER,
DID NOT LIKE THE
American Ambassador. This hostility was rooted in the relationship between Britain and the United States; while the former had shrunk in worldly significance, Wesker thought the latter imagined itself a strutting global policeman, the planet's bully-boy. The Home Secretary, a man with a Lancashire accent and horn-rimmed glasses, tried to suppress an assortment of resentments. His working-class background, the way he pronounced his vowels, the fact he felt drab in contrast to the well-dressed William Caan – these matters grieved him.

George Nimmo, who sat facing the two men at a table in the Home Secretary's club – an oak-panelled room festooned with artless oil paintings of former members who'd achieved some kind of fame, notoriety, or total obscurity – seemed totally at ease with the Ambassador, a fact Wesker ascribed rather grudgingly to Nimmo's expensive education. George would be comfortable around men of power, of course. It was a class thing.