The Loo Sanction (7 page)

“We
do
have other commitments, sir.”

“Double the price of the suit. And twenty quid for you.”

The clerk sighed histrionically. “Very well, sir. I'll see what can be done.”

“Good man. Have them delivered to the Charing Cross Hotel, to Mr. (he had to think for a second of the mnemonic device he had used for names) Mr. Charles Crosley.”

The next call was to his shirtmaker in Jermyn Street. A little more pot-sweetening was necessary there because he despised ready-made shirts, and they would have to be cut from his patterns on file. But eventually he received their commitment to have six shirts delivered by five o'clock, together with stockings and linen.

Jonathan's last call was to MacTaint.

“Ah, is that you, lad? Just a minute.” (The hiss of a phone being cupped over with a hand.) “Lilla? I'm on the phone. Shut your bleeding cob!” (An angry babble from off phone.) “Put a sock in it! . . . Now, what can I do for you, Jonathan?”

“I'm going to mail off three hundred quid to you this afternoon.”

“That's nice. Why?”

“I'm in a little trouble. I want a source of money that's not on my person.”

“Police?”

“No.”

“Ah. I see.
Real
trouble. What do I do with the money?”

“Keep two-fifty handy to send to me if I contact you. I'll probably be at the Great Eastern. My name will be Greg Eastman.”

“And the remaining fifty's for my trouble?”

“Right.”

“Done. Keep well, lad.”

Jonathan rang off. He appreciated MacTaint's professionalism. It was right that he accept the fee without whimpering protestations of friendship, and it was right that he ask no questions.

The telephone box was near an Underground entrance, and Jonathan took the long escalator into the tube. Until this trouble was sorted out, he would travel primarily through the anonymous means of the Underground.

He reemerged into the sunlight near Soho, and he made his way to a double-feature skin flick:
Working Her Way Through the Turkish Army
and
Au Pair Girls in the Vatican
. For four hours he was invisible in the company of the lost, the lonely, the ill, and the warped, who pass their afternoons in torn seats that smell of mildew, candy-wrapper litter under their feet, staring with frozen pupils at Swedish “starlets” moaning in bored mock ecstasy as they make coy orificial use of members and gadgets.

London

J
onathan stayed in the cover of the crowds around Charing Cross Monument, keeping the facade of the Charing Cross Hotel under observation. It was nearly five, and the go-home traffic had thickened. Queues for buses coiled and re-coiled: in a few minutes vehicular and human traffic would nearly coagulate. He was relying on that, in case the people who were after him had had the experience or intelligence to think of checking with his tailor.

He looked up to the belfry clock of St. Martin's-In-The-Fields for the time, and he recalled the newspaper reports of the unfortunate fellow who had been found impaled there. A delivery van bearing the name of his shirtmaker had already arrived at the front entrance of the hotel, but he had seen nothing of the bullet-headed boxer in sunglasses or of the 1950 vintage American tourist. Still the suits hadn't arrived from his tailor; that was disconcerting because everything depended on his being able to pick up his clothes during the rush hours.

At five o'clock straight up, a taxi pulled into the bustle of the rank outside the hotel, and a young man alighted. He breasted his way through the press of people, a large white box carried high. That would be the suits. Jonathan strolled across the street and stood against the facade of the hotel. No sunglasses, no Aloha Shirt, no Bentley. He waited until a taxi stopped to discharge passengers, then approached the driver.

“Wait for me here, will you? Five minutes.”

“Can't do that, mate. Rush hour, you know.”

Jonathan took a ten-pound note from his pocket and ripped it in half. “Here. The other half when I get back in five minutes.”

The driver was undecided for a second. “Right.” He glanced through the rearview mirror at the growing queue of taxis behind. “Make it quick.”

Jonathan entered the lobby through the restaurant and glanced around before picking up a house phone.

“This is Charles Crosley in 536. There will be some parcels for me. Would you ask the porter to have them sent up?”

Through the glass of the telephone cabinet he watched the receptionist, hoping she would not check to see if his key had been picked up. In the rush of guests and inquiries at this hour, she did not. A bellboy responded to a summons and went to the parcels room, where he collected a small and a large box. As he carried them toward the lifts, Jonathan stepped out from the telephone booth and fell in behind him. Just as the lift doors closed, Jonathan caught the bustle of two men entering the main lobby hurriedly. Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head.

So they had thought to check with his tailor after all. But just a little too late, if everything worked out well.

“You must be bringing those to me.”

“Sir?”

“Crosley? Room 536?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Jonathan pushed the fourth-floor button. “Here, I'll take them.” He passed the bellboy a pound note.

“But you're on five, sir.”

“That's true. But my secretary is on four.” He winked, and the lad winked back.

Waiting for the elevator car to bring him back to the lobby, he watched the indicator for the next car count its way to five, then stop. He had a minute on them. Time enough, provided his taxi driver had been able to resist the anger and impatience of men behind him in the rank.

The Bentley was parked at the entrance, and the driver, a beefy lad with longish hair, recognized Jonathan as he passed. He clambered out of the car and took a step or two toward Jonathan, changed his mind and turned toward the hotel entrance to alert his comrades, then thought better of it and decided that he must not lose sight of Jonathan. He ran back to the Bentley and, not knowing what to do, leaned in the driver's window and pressed his horn. Startled taxi drivers in the rank sounded their horns in retribution. Confused by the blare of horns, a car stopped at the intersection, and a lorry behind him slammed on its brakes and barked irritation with its two-toned air horn. Passing cars swerved aside and blasted their horns angrily. Bus drivers slammed their fists onto their horn buttons. Traffic around the Circus joined in.

Jonathan shouted to his taxi driver over the din, “Charing Cross Underground!”

“But that's only a block away, mate!”

Jonathan passed forward the other half of the torn note. “Then you've made out, haven't you?”

The driver added his horn to the cacophony and pulled away from the curb. “Bleeding Americans,” he muttered. “Bloody well mental they are.”

Just as the taxi turned the corner, Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head burst through the revolving doors, flinging out before them a bewildered old woman who spun around twice before sitting on the steps, dizzy. The Bentley was only half a block behind as Jonathan jumped out at the Underground entrance. Holding his bulky packages over his head, he ran down the long double escalator, passing those who obediently kept to the right. The passageways were crowded with commuters, and the parcels were both a burden and a weapon. Instantly he came out on the waiting platform, he walked along to the “Way Out” end, so he had an avenue of escape should the train not come in time.

And he waited. No train. Girls babbled to one another, and old men stared ahead sightlessly, in the coma of routine. The train did not come. An advertising placard requested readers to attend a benefit concert for Bangladesh, and a scrawled message beside it enjoined them to “Fuck the Irish” and another said “Super Spurs.” No train.

There was a flutter in the crowd at the far end of the tunnel, and Bullet Head and Aloha Shirt rushed out to the platform. The former's head was glistening with sweat as he looked up and down, scanning the faces of the throng. Jonathan pressed against the wall, but no good. They spotted him, and the two of them were breasting through protesting commuters in his direction.

Jonathan slipped out the exit and up a tiled passageway toward the double escalators. A train had pulled in at another dock, and just behind him came a flood of people, rushing to make connections. At the head of this mob, he was able to trot up the long escalator two steps at a time. At the top he looked back. Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head were crowded into the center of the human ice jam, slowly oozing up the escalator. Jonathan U-turned and stepped onto the nearby empty down escalator. His pursuers watched with helpless rage as he passed them, not five yards away. They struggled to push ahead, but sharp words and threats of physical retribution from men in cloth caps forced them to accept the inevitable, if not philosophically. As they drew abreast, Jonathan nodded in sassy greeting and slipped his middle finger along the side of the box in his arms. They did not react to the taunting gesture, and Jonathan realized he had used the one-finger American version, rather than the two-finger British orthography for the universal symbol.

No sooner had he stepped back out onto the platform than he felt the rush of stale air that signaled the arrival of a train. It stopped with a clatter of opening doors, there was a gush and countergush of people, the doors slammed shut, and it pulled out with a squeal. Bullet Head, outstripping his panting companion, ran along just outside the window, shouting his rage and frustration. Jonathan leaned over and communicated with him in sign language, this time in British. As they plunged into the black tunnel, Jonathan glanced up to see a look of frozen indignation on the face of a prim old lady on the seat opposite. He had inadvertently made the gesture within inches of her nose.

“Well, tipped up this way, it
could
mean Victory, you know. Or Peace? I'll bet you don't want to talk about it, right?”

         

Jonathan took breakfast in the Victorian abundance of the grand dining room of the Great Eastern. The railroad hotel was a perfect cover. With his native panache, he would have been conspicuous in a bed-and-breakfast place, and they—whoever they were—would already have checked the ranking hotels.

The night before, he had taken a long, very hot bath in a bathroom so cool that it rapidly filled with thick swirling steam. He had lain soaking in the deep tub, the open hot tap keeping the temperature of the water high, until the stresses and fatigues of the day had seeped out of his body. His skin glowing from the bath, he had gotten into bed naked between stiffly starched sheets. He would need rest when the business began again tomorrow, so he emptied his mind and set his breathing pace low as he folded his hands together and brought on sleep through shallow meditation. Each stray thought that eddied into his mind he pushed aside, gently, so as not to disturb the unrippled surface of the pond in his imagination. The last conscious image—Maggie's imperfect but pleasing face—he allowed to linger before his eyes before easing it aside.

Whatever happened, he had to keep her to the lee of trouble.

         

Luncheon at the Embassy was, as always, both vigorously animated and abysmally dull. Jonathan considered his attendance at such functions the price he had to pay for their lavish support of his stay in England, but he made it a practice to be dull company, talking to as few people as possible. It was in this mood that he carried his glass of American champagne away toward the social paregoric of an untrafficked corner. But it was not sufficiently insulated.

“Ah! There you are, Jonathan!”

It was fforbes-Ffitch, whom Jonathan seemed fated to encounter at every function.

“Listen, Jonathan. I've just been in a corner with the Cultural Attaché, and he gives his support to this idea of mine to send you off for a few lectures in Sweden. The American image isn't particularly bright there just now, what with the Southeast Asia business and all. Could be an excellent thing, jointly sponsored by the USIS and the Royal College. Sound enticing?”

“No.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“I told you the other evening I wasn't interested.”

“Well, I thought you might just be playing hard to get.”

Jonathan looked at him with fatigue in his eyes. “Don't rush at it, f-F. You'll make it. With your hustle and ambition, I have no doubt you'll be Minister of Education before you're through. But don't climb on my back.”

fforbes-Ffitch smiled wanly. “Always straight from the shoulder, aren't you? Well, you can't blame a fellow for trying.”

Jonathan looked at him with heavy-lidded silence.

“Quite,” f-F said perkily. “But you will honor your commitment to lecture for us at the Royal College this afternoon, I hope.”

“Certainly. But your people have been remiss in their communications.”

“Oh? How so?”

“No one has told me the topic of my lecture. But don't rush. It's still an hour away.”

fforbes-Ffitch frowned heavily and importantly. “I am sorry, Jonathan. My staff has been undergoing a shake-up. Heads rolling left and right. But I've not put together a trim ship yet. In any department I run, this kind of incompetence is simply not on.” He touched Jonathan's shoulder with a finger. “I'll make a call and sort it out. Right now.”

Jonathan nodded and winked. “Good show.”

fforbes-Ffitch turned and left the reception room with an efficient bustle, and Jonathan was in the act of retreating into another low-traffic corner when he was intercepted by the host, the Senior Man Present. He was typical of American Embassy leadership—a central casting type with wavy gray hair, a hearty handshake, and an ability to say the obvious with a tone of trembling sincerity. Like most of his ilk, his qualifications for statesmanship were based upon an ability to get the vote out of some Spokane or other, or to contribute lavishly to campaign funds.

“Well, how's it been going, Dr. Hemlock?” the Senior Man Present asked, pulling Jonathan's hand. “We don't see enough of you at these affairs.”

“That's odd. I have quite the opposite impression.”

“Yes,” the Senior Man Present laughed, not quite understanding, “yes, I imagine that's true. It's always like that, though, really. Even when it doesn't appear to be. That's one of the things you learn in my line of work.”

Jonathan agreed that it probably was.

“Say,” the SMP asked with a show of offhandedness, “you're out in the wind of public opinion. What kind of ground swells do you get concerning the American elections?”

“None. People don't talk to me about it because they know I wouldn't be interested.”

“Yes.” The SMP nodded with profound understanding. “No—ah—no comments about the Watergate bugging business?”

“None.”

“Good. Good. Nothing to it, really. Just an attempt to implicate the President in some kind of messy affair. Between you and me, I think the whole thing was cooked up either by the other party or by the Communists. I imagine it will blow over. This sort of thing always does. That's one thing you learn in my line of work.”

“Good Lord, Jonathan, there's been a ballup.” fforbes-Ffitch was back. “Ah!” He smiled profuse greetings to the SMP. “Did I catch you two chatting about my plans for a lecture series in Sweden?”

“Yes, you did,” the SMP lied with practiced insouciance. “And I'm all for it. If there's anything my office can do to move things ahead . . .”

“That's awfully good of you, sir.”

After shaking hands with warm cordiality, both his hands cupped around Jonathan's, the SMP returned to his hostly duty of pressing a drink on a visiting Moslem.

“You say there's been a ballup?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes. I am sorry. Our fault entirely. I'll cancel, if you want.”

Jonathan had been looking forward to seeing Maggie in the audience during this lecture, perhaps even meeting her in the café afterward.

“What's the trouble?” he asked.

“They've advertised that you're going to lecture on
cinema
. I've got the title here: ‘Criticism in Cinema: Use and Abuse.'”

Jonathan laughed. “No problem. Not to worry. I'll vamp it.”