He asked the cab to wait for him, and he got out on a wet, gritty sidewalk in front of the pub. The front door of the pub was open, but there was no rollicking on the inside, none of the gay, unruly laughter that he had seen in Mayfair. Here it was silent and grim and smelled of stale lager and piss.
Strand stepped through the door but did not have time to adjust his vision to the darkness before he heard a scratchy voice wheeze his name.
“Harry. Over here.”
He turned toward the booths along the wall and made out a solitary, sallow face looking at him through the smutty gloom. Strand moved to the booth and sat down.
“Jeeeezz-us.” The word came from a raw, wounded throat. “Here you are, the real fuckin’ thing.”
Strand reached across the sticky table and shook hands with the man whose head hunkered down between his bony shoulders. Even in the twilight of the pub Strand could see a wasted man.
“You have a real knack for ‘out of the way,’ Hodge,” Strand said.
The laugh was raspy and without strength.
“Hell, this isn’t out of the way, Harry. This is where I live. My part of town.”
Strand was embarrassed.
“Well, I appreciate your help, Mack. I didn’t even know you were still here.”
“Till I die,” Mack Hodge said.
It was a deliberate reference to his situation. Strand had already realized that the man was in serious trouble. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, Hodge’s face emerged as unrecognizable. Strand was appalled. The flush, boisterous face of memory was gone. The old familiar voice, spookily altered, issued from a papier-mêché visage.
“You’re sick, Mack?” Strand asked. He had to. The man wanted him to.
“Dying.”
Strand hesitated. “How long has this been going on?”
“Too fuckin’ long.”
Strand was shocked to see him lift a cigarette and puff on it, the end glowing mean and red between them.
“But not much longer,” Hodge added.
“I’m sorry,” Strand said.
“Shit.” Hodge shook his knobby and emaciated head dismissively, the few remaining wisps of hair on top of it floating aimlessly. “It comes to all of us.”
A mug of some kind of beer was clunked down in front of Strand. He sipped it. It was the last thing he wanted to do. And then he sipped again. Smoke floated up from the drawn and sunken mouth across from him and hung in the fetid air between them.
“Even in this dark, godforsaken place I can see you’re still handsome, Harry.”
It was the strangest remark that Strand could imagine. It was not a Mack Hodge remark. Strand didn’t say anything. Nothing, nothing at all seemed appropriate.
Hodge’s laugh squeezed from his throat in intermittent gasps.
“Some kind of thing to say, huh, Harry?” Hodge’s bony head smoked. “You know what, Harry? It is absolutely true that imminent death gives the lie to life’s stupidities. I always thought you were a handsome man. But would I have ever told you that? Hell, I hardly even wanted to think it.”
Raspy grunts.
Strand had to summon all of his willpower not to break and run from this sepulchral pub. He could get what he needed elsewhere, surely.
“Quit squirming, Harry. I was just trying to convey to you a little of what it’s like…” His voice gave out in a prolonged whiffle.
“You caught me off guard, Mack.”
“Well, that’s something. You always being so goddamn controlled. Macky scores a point, huh?”
Strand could only nod. He drank the warm beer and fought the gagging reflex. He wouldn’t be able to take another sip.
“Speaking of death,” Hodge whispered, and his scrawny hand floated out of the murk, holding a wadded paper sack. He placed it on the table between them. “I believe you have need of this.”
Strand didn’t move to pick it up.
“It’s exactly what you asked for. Only better. You were never much on keeping up with the latest technology. Every ninety days there are improvements in the application of scientific knowledge to practical purposes. It’s a natural law of some sort.”
Hodge’s mug rose up to his hollow face, and he drank some beer. The cigarette followed. Glowed. Smoke leaked up through the wisps of hair.
“Do I have to know anything particular?”
“You?” Hodge paused. “This is for you
personally
?”
Strand didn’t respond.
Hodge didn’t speak for a moment, but Strand could hear him breathing.
“Shit, Harry…” His tone was sympathetic, even compassionate. “Shit.” There was another awkward hesitation, and then he went on with the business. “Nothing special to know, buddy. It’s a disposable weapon. Will not be detected by X ray or metal detectors—there’s no metal in it. I wouldn’t rely on its accuracy past thirty feet. It’s basically a contact delivery device. The ammunition is special, though. When you’re through with it, throw the crap into the sea. For the hit, just break the skin with the bullet. The saxitoxin will do the rest.”
He tried to cough but didn’t seem to have the energy for it. His hard-drawn breath clattered in his throat, forcing its way past the phlegm. Hodge seemed not to have anything to do with it, as if he just had to wait passively while his body did what it had to do.
“About the pellets—they’re a neurotoxin, will drop him on the spot, so you have to give some thought to that. Might make it a brush-by. Could have used ricin, but the target would’ve had time to run around awhile, call for help, go to the hospital, whatever. Doesn’t matter, no antidote for either one of these. It’s a can’t miss weapon. Only downside is you’ve got to get in close to deliver it.”
“The ammunition?”
“The bullets—pellets—are hard-cast plastic, like the gun. They come in a clip of six, the casings linked, inseparable. They’re not delicate, but I’d treat them with the utmost respect.”
“The sound?”
“About like slapping the side of your face.”
“Will it penetrate clothing?”
“A business suit, probably not much more.”
“It’s automatic?”
“You bet. That’s a recent improvement. Didn’t used to be. Made the thing a little bulkier, but it’s a welcome improvement.”
Hodge smoked and drank.
Strand withdrew an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit and laid it in front of Hodge.
“Thanks,” Strand said.
“Lot of money for a dying man,” Hodge said. “But I’ve got expenses.” He paused. “And, like everybody else, I know people who can use it.”
Strand reached across and shook Mack Hodge’s hand. The first time he had not noticed how the hand felt, but now he was aware of the brittle, parchment texture of the skin and of the sharp ridges of the individual bones.
“It was good to see you, Harry,” Hodge said. “I hope this ends well for you.”
“I appreciate it, Mack.” Strand tried to think of something promising to say, a positive good-bye, but it didn’t come to him. Hodge sensed his struggle.
“It’s supposed to rain tonight,” he said, and Strand was stricken to hear his frail voice crack with unexpected emotion.
“I’ve got to go,” Strand said.
The skull nodded, and the hand came up and the mean glare of the cigarette flared dully one last time on the wasted face.
The rain hammered down on the car in the darkness of Harley Mews. Claude Corsier sat behind the steering wheel of his rental car and looked at Skerlic. The way the Serb’s hair was plastered to his forehead reminded Corsier of a dead dog he had once seen in the rain. Skerlic’s face was wet, and his raincoat crackled as it worked against the leather seats. He smelled rancid, of cigarettes and sweat.
Corsier looked over into the rear seat. The cumbersome picture frames were wrapped in plastic bubble-wrap. He cringed to see the rain droplets on the plastic, the dry forgeries barely visible through the thick layers of clear wrapping.
“You mounted them as I instructed?” Corsier asked, worried.
“Exactly as you said.”
“They weren’t damaged? Even a scratch?”
“I’ll keep the radio equipment with me,” Skerlic said, again ignoring Corsier’s fretting. “Give them to the dealer, work out a time for Schrade to come look at them. Contact me. Then we can work out the rest of it.”
“Okay.” Corsier couldn’t take his eyes off the pictures.
“The moment you put them in the agent’s possession, I want to be in the hotel,” Skerlic said.
Corsier had worried about that. He could not imagine how this odoriferous and coarse creature could stay in the Connaught even for two days without attracting more attention than anyone would want, even if they weren’t planning an assassination.
“Is there a problem with the rooms?” Skerlic asked, his glistening forehead wrinkling in suspicion at Corsier’s silence. Water beaded on his upper lip.
“No… no, I’ve already reserved the suite. It’s ready… You know, collectors, especially someone who is presented with a discovery such as this, will examine the frames closely. Curiosity. Everything about these drawings, even the frame in which they are set, will receive careful scrutiny.”
“Yes, we thought so.” Skerlic nodded quickly. “The job is very well hidden. As a matter of fact, after some concern, we decided to laminate the back of the frame, the part under the paper. We stained it with tea. The paper, too. Damp stain. He would actually have to lift off a rather good layer of laminate—which looks like solid wood—to discover the explosives and the microphones. He would have to take tools to it. It would not be easy.”
Corsier felt a little better.
“But,” Skerlic added, “you must not leave them with him the whole time. He will prowl. He will prod at it. I agree about the curiosity.”
“I won’t leave it,” Corsier said, “but I will have to let him see the drawings, and give him time to peruse them, before he will agree to call Schrade. And, of course, he will have to have them the day before Schrade arrives. Twenty-four hours.”
“That is not a problem. The frames will stand up to that.”
“How… uh, how stable… ?” Corsier glanced over into the rear seat again.
“You have to have the electronics.”
“And how easy is it to detonate?”
“Turn a switch. Push a button.”
Corsier nodded. It occurred to him that the pictures were facing out, now, in the rear seat. He made a note to turn them the other way as soon as he got around the corner out of Skerlic’s sight.
“Okay,” Corsier said, turning back to the Serb. “Then that’s it. I will call you about the hotel, about the date.”
“You, of course, will be with me,” Skerlic reminded him. “You have to identify the voice. Once you do that, then it will be up to me to pick the right moment.”
“Then that is that,” Corsier said.
“Yes,” Skerlic said. He was studying Corsier. “Okay.”
He turned quickly, his raincoat creaking loudly against the seats, and opened the car door and got out. The sound of rain swelled, and then the car door slammed. The Serb ran around in front of the car and ducked into the vine-covered doorway.
Corsier started the car and eased around the corner of the mews. He stopped and reached into the back and turned the two pictures facing away from him. God. He released the brake and drove out of the mews.
He drove through the rain with single-minded preoccupation until he arrived at a large house on a small street in South Kensington. He stopped at the curb, cut the motor, and looked at the white Georgian facade elevated several steps above the street and flanked by two great beech trees, whose broad leaves were shedding a thousand steady streamlets onto the stone-paved front garden. The windows of the lower floor glowed cheerily in the gloomy darkness, and Corsier could see someone moving about on the other side of the rain-spattered windows. No London residence ever looked cozier.
He got out of the car, locked it, and went to the door and rang the shiny black bell. It was opened immediately, and Corsier was let into a small foyer and then into the front room he had seen from the street. A tall, thin man was waiting for him.
“Ah, Claude, you’ve grown whiskers,” the man said, reaching out to shake Corsier’s hand.
Cory Fain was six and a half feet tall, with narrow shoulders, a long face with deep-set eyes, bushy eyebrows, a hawk nose, and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache. He was a handsome man in a severe kind of way, with a distinguished bearing and a manner of moving and speaking that conveyed a genuine kindness of character. He was, and had been for the twenty-six years Corsier had known him, an actor, though he had never appeared an hour on a stage or a minute in front of a camera. He was completely unknown in the world of actors and directors, but he enjoyed a fame of another kind in a much smaller arena, where obscurity was held in far greater esteem than celebrity.
They sat in comfortably worn armchairs in slight need of cleaning and exchanged a few minutes of polite conversation, each carefully taking the other’s measure to make sure there had been no dramatic changes in profession or position or loyalties.
Corsier paused and asked, “Cory, do you still have an office?”
Fain nodded. “Several, actually. Whatever suits.”
“I find myself in need of a barrister.”
Fain listened carefully with sober concern, as if Corsier were consulting, well, a barrister.
“This barrister represents a client who is selling several pieces of art anonymously, ‘the Property of a Gentleman.’ Normally, this is not a problem in the art world, as you may remember. This time, however, I suspect that the buyer will want to verify the identity of the seller. Just to make sure that someone other, namely myself, is not behind the sale.”
Fain understood.
“Though you would be representing the gentleman in question, when pushed for an identity—I suspect the buyer will not buy unless he ‘knows’ that I am not behind the sale—you will be forced to reveal that the seller is, in fact, a woman, not a man. You know her personally, have been representing her family for twenty years or more, and you most certainly will not reveal her identity. Damn the sale. These are discreet people. The tradition of anonymity in art dealings is a long tradition and a tradition you and the lady in question take seriously and honor.”