December Ultimatum (12 page)

LONDON—DUBLIN

‘With the help of young Kieran’

Just as Cheaney had promised, Franklin got his Cairo Embassy shower and his Embassy change of clothes and his Embassy steak and onions. He also got his call to the
New York Times
and dictated fifteen hundred words of copy. His night editor was ecstatic and promised him a Pulitzer.

The story was syndicated to a hundred newspapers worldwide and used as the lead by all the News Agencies. Television networks coast-to-coast ran it at length. The ex-Mrs Franklin saw it, watching the
ABC
evening show from her bedroom in Tamworth, New Hampshire. Quietly she packed her bags and just as quietly left the house, leaving the large man asleep in her bed, snoring and smelling of sweat and Jack Daniels.

Franklin left Cairo in the Embassy Lear-jet for Rome a little after three in the morning and arrived at Leonardo da Vinci airport in time for breakfast and the Alitalia flight to London Heathrow. But there the Agency’s forward planning did a turnabout. Agents began running, Embassy phones began ringing, deputies began chattering.

Forward Planning dealt with the untoward and were proud of how well they manoeuvred with the unforeseen, but there’s nothing more untoward than fog at London airport and nothing more unforeseen than visibility below a hundred yards. So Franklin was requested to remain in transit at Heathrow.

Anna Schneider bit the plastic sachet and spat into the bath. The she squeezed the rest of the bath oil into the hot water and lowered her body until only her nose and eyes showed. She felt the current of water from the slow-running hot tap move inside her thighs like an eel and rest on her stomach. She closed her eyes, slid her hands along the enamel of the bath to her thighs. She gently fingered her pubic hairs and as steam descended like a warm cloud she began luxuriously to masturbate.

Her Dublin flight had been delayed and then cancelled because of fog at London’s Heathrow. So, like many hundreds more in the departure hall that afternoon, she had been shepherded into a convoy of buses and distributed to the nearby tack and tinsel hotels which depended on the cussedness of British weather, unable to make their money any other way.

This was not something her own people or those at the other end would have taken into account. European weather could not be. The Irish, used to such things, would simply wait for the next day’s flight, but she hoped he would take trouble to cool the Arabs. They were the anxious ones, the ones who would do the wrong thing in panic. The Irishman would have to stay with them. There was nothing she could do.

That was the rule when things went wrong. No contact outside the list. No unilateral initiative. She could not move until London’s fog lifted. People would simply have to wait until that happened.

Her years as a courier with the Reds had taught her patience at such times, had taught her not to side-step, not to detour. From her early revolutionary reading she remembered that George Grivas, the Cypriot
EOKA
leader, worked the opposite way. If anything went wrong with his schedule, however small, however apparently insignificant, he would cancel the entire plan. A late car, a plane delayed, an appointment made too early or kept overdue, and he would revise. It was, he had written, his way of reducing anxieties and keeping alive.

She preferred her own strategy, such as it was. At moments of alarm, at times when fate or man’s stupidity forced her to move sideways or not at all, her own chemistry took control of the situation. She became sexually highly charged. Enormously so. She understood from what she had heard and read that such a thing was not unusual. Men and women in the Reds had spoken of it during the drugs and drinks in the early days—but listening then she knew none felt it her way. It was after her first bank raid, and the elation that follows survival, that to her surprise she had taken the most energetic role in her first sex orgy. Three men, all since dead, and four women, three of them also dead, had been astonished at her inventiveness. But the men, despite their initial enthusiasm, had tired too easily and the other women had crept away after their orgasms. Only she was left alone, still waiting to be exhausted. She had tired of men so she had tried women and had tired of them. So eventually she took to herself, frequently, sometimes violently and often in the most absurd places, wherever the urge took her. As it did tonight.

The hot tap was still slowly running and the gurgle of the overflow mixed with her moaning as she suddenly surged. Her body arched out of the water, her hands lost in the foam covering her stomach and thighs. Her legs twisted and her hoarse shouted obscenities were suddenly lost as she turned over gurgling ‘Pappa, Pappa’ in the tiny voice of a child.

An hour and ten minutes later she woke, chilled. The hot tap was trickling cold and the bath oil covered the water like a slick. She got out, covered her shoulders with a towel, and stood shivering in front of the mirror. The cold had turned the scar on her neck a dull blue, a thin curved slightly raised purple line contouring from the clavicle three inches up towards her left ear but after a minute using her make-up stick the scar might easily have been a varicosed vein or something just as comfortably explained. She combed her straight blonde hair tightly back, squeezing the ends dry. Her crutch ached. She had not enjoyed it. She had had orgasm but the cold water had denied her satisfaction. She went into the small bedroom, as grey and as blank as the television screen that dominated it. Outside she could hear the droning of diesels as the coaches queued to drop off more despondent passengers from the emptying airport halls. She read the single-card room service menu, then dropped it into the waste-bin. She could feel irritation rising to anger. The tension had not been got rid of this time. She dropped the damp towel and wrapped herself in the quilted bedcover and sat on the warm air vent by the dressing-table. She picked out a cigarette from the Benson and Hedges packet, lit it and inhaled slowly with a hiss. The scent of sweet marijuana filled the room. She had broken the rules for the first time. Others smoked it regularly, some even during a job to keep themselves easy. But she had never done that. She had always insisted you were never properly in control.

Recrimination fired anger and she wanted to crush the cigarette. But the longer she delayed doing so the easier it was to smoke, and the easier it was to cope. She knew she could not sleep until she was tired and she would not be tired until long after midnight, four hours away. She drew in, a long pulling of air through the sides of her mouth. Malawi Gold they had always called it, to be distinguished from the rubbish. She felt its warmth inside, mingling with the growing warmth coming up from the vent and spreading inside. She was beginning to feel the fire again, distant and remote but still there. She shook her head and dry warm hair fell across her face and she sucked some into her mouth to tickle her tongue. Success was so near now. Two days and she would be done, safely away and lost.

There was an inch of cigarette beyond her fingers. She threw her head back and blew hard to the ceiling. Then slowly she inhaled its last pleasure, watching the dark paper turn to ash in the side mirror of the dressing-table. And she focused on herself as the inner warmth moved into the tips of her, the skin on her knees, her ankles, her toes, her nipples. For the first time in many many years she felt irrational, almost careless. She broke the burning ash between her forefinger and thumb and felt the tingle of pain. She would not wait alone tonight. For once she would not be on the outside. Tonight she would wait with the bourgeois for the fog to lift and enjoy bourgeois things, a gin, a steak and the warmth and light of their idiot noisy bars.

Franklin was into his fifth large whisky and soda and eating peanuts from a bowl when she sat down at the bar, leaving an empty stool between them. He had watched her in the mirror opposite. He turned, smiled, and nodded to the stool. ‘You mustn’t let a little thing like this come between us.’ Without a word, she stepped down and then stepped up again to sit next to him.

He looked astonished and grinned. ‘That was real Yankee corn and I didn’t expect it to work.’

She nodded back. He held out his hand.

‘I’m Matt Franklin. Can I get you a drink?’

She nodded again.

‘What’ll it be?’

‘Is that bourbon?’

‘No, it’s Scotch.’

‘I’ll have bourbon.’

‘American style?’

‘With rocks.’

Franklin laughed loudly, much encouraged.

‘On the rocks. Great.’ He caught a passing waiter’s arm and held him. ‘One large bourbon, one large Scotch, lots of ice, separate glasses.’ The small man smoothed his sleeve and went away whimpering.

Franklin swivelled his stool and faced her.

‘You’re Swiss?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if I’d said you were German?’

‘Yes, too.’

‘But you’re not Australian.’

‘Recently emigrated.’

‘I like your humour.’

‘Swiss-Germans have none.’

‘Is the fog going to damage you much?’

‘Damage?’

‘Upset your plans. You on business someplace? Holiday? Visiting?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry. It’s an American habit. We tell everything about us. You tell everything about you.’

‘You are Mr Franklin and you are American. What else?’ ‘Fire away.’

‘May I drink first?’

Franklin swung round and hit the bar hard with the fist of his hand. ‘God help me. Can somebody pour a drink, or do droughts follow fogs in this goddamned city?’ He banged his glassful of Scotch on the counter and ice cubes fell into her lap.

‘Christ, I’m sorry.’ He reached down to pick them up and she felt his hand move clumsily on her thigh. She brought her knees together quickly and trapped it.

Franklin looked up. ‘I was going after the ice, lady.’

‘It can do little damage there,’ she said, picking his hand up with both of hers and placing it back on the bar.

The Scotch and bourbon arrived immediately, the barman anxious to avoid noisy scenes with foreign strangers.

Franklin lifted her drink to her and chinked glasses. ‘Chow!’

‘Chow!’

‘If I ask you a direct question will you knock me off the stool?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you a hooker?’

‘Do you not usually talk to ladies in the bar?’

‘No. Are you?’

‘No. Disappointed?’

‘No. Encouraged.’

‘Because you might get it free?’

‘Christ! Are all Swiss-German-Australians like you?’

‘All of them. It’s just they travel so little it’s not known.’

‘Dinner and bed?’

‘Dinner and bed.’

‘I never thought it could be so easy.’

‘It may not be.’

‘You’re what we call a cock-teaser.’

‘It’s a nice idea.’

‘Christ again!’ He watched her forefinger and thumb move slowly up and down the neck of his bottle of soda. ‘Jesus! One helluva movie. Can we eat and bed before the lights go up again?’

She held out her hand to steady him as he got off the high stool and he was mildly astonished at her strength. He grinned. ‘There’s an American joke that ends: “Gee, that was great, what did you say your name was?”’

‘I know that joke too,’ she smiled back. ‘And you’re supposed to ask that afterwards.’

He held on to her elbow and pulled her closer. ‘Ma’am, no offence, but if I’m going to fuck you I ought to call you something.’

‘I’m sure you will, Mr Franklin. You will.’

Anna Schneider had her steak. And Franklin persuaded her to take one glass of champagne with it. The fillet was small and over-done and the Moët Chandon had lost its chill, but they were in no mood to trouble over such things. Franklin sat close to Schneider with many Scotches and most of the champagne inside him, her right hand in his left trouser pocket, and cared not at all.

Schneider found it pleasurable and felt safe in his company. She had broken a rule formerly cherished, one of many that had kept her safe. But at this time, in this place, she could persuade herself there was good reason for an exception to be made. Tonight she was marking time in fog. Tomorrow she would be on a flight to Dublin. She moved as time moved and stopped as it stopped. There was, she mused, sipping her champagne, a soothing inevitability about it.

She had made no other concession. She’d told him nothing, relying on any man’s assumption that a one-night stand values anonymity. He had called himself Franklin. She could have invented a name just as readily.

He knew nothing, suspected nothing. Afterwards he would remain behind long after she had left. At first she had thought that it might be better that he never left the hotel alive, but decided the risk did not match the convenience. So she would delay him, and he would only blame the drink.

When they finally came to wake him up he could remember very little. He didn’t recall her room number, only that she had insisted they went to hers. They had smoked pot, very strong and very good. She’d called it ‘Gold’. He remembered her sitting on the warm air vent smoking it, naked except for a thin twist of red silk around her neck. She’d joked about it but he couldn’t remember what or why he’d laughed, except that he had laughed for too long and she stopped him by sitting on his face and he’d thought that funny too but couldn’t laugh any more.

And then he’d been woken up fourteen hours later with why and what the hell! At first he’d blamed it on the fatigue of a middle-ageing man not used to it. And who the hell could ever get used to her and her enormous enthusiasm, whose contortions and appetite and sheer bloody strength had threatened to tear him apart!

They’d started by blaming the drink until they checked the glass she had given him and found the tiny deposits. And then they stopped blaming and started questioning. But what to tell? A one-night stand to end them all. Beautiful, blonde, green eyes, with a body you only see in make-believe. A Swiss-German—German-Swiss? Or an Australian emigrant. No. Certainly German or Austrian, about twenty- four years, 140 pounds, five feet ten. It was a pick-up, and you don’t ask for curriculum vitaes. Anyway, when she’d done she took him back to his room. How about that? And she knew as much about Franklin as Franklin knew about her. Drink or no drink.