‘The Ng’ombwanan President?’
‘He. The thing is, Br’er Fox, I know him. And the AC knows I know him. We were at school together in the same house: Davidson’s. Same study, for a year. Nice creature, he was. Not everybody’s cup of tea but I liked him. We got on like houses on fire.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Fox. ‘The AC wants you to recall old times?’
‘I do tell you precisely that. He’s dreamed up the idea of a meeting – casual-cum-official. He wants me to put it to the President that unless he conforms to whatever procedure the Special Branch sees fit to lay on, he may very well get himself bumped off and in any case will cause acute anxiety, embarrassment and trouble at all levels from the Monarch down. And I’m to put this, if you please, tactfully. They don’t want umbrage to be taken, followed by a highly publicized flounce-out. He’s as touchy as a sea-anemone.’
‘Is he jibbing, then? About routine precautions?’
‘He was always a pig-headed ass. We used to say that if you wanted the old Boomer to do anything you only had to tell him not to. And he’s one of those sickening people without fear. And hellish haughty with it. Yes, he’s jibbing. He doesn’t want protection. He wants to do a Haroun el Raschid and bum round London on his own looking as inconspicuous as a coal box in paradise.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Fox judiciously, ‘that’s a very silly way to go on. He’s a number one assassination risk, that gentleman.’
‘He’s a bloody nuisance. You’re right, of course. Ever since he pushed his new industrial legislation through he’s been a sitting target for the lunatic fringe. Damn it all, Br’er Fox, only the other day, when he elected to make a highly publicized call at Martinique, somebody took a pot shot at him. Missed and shot himself. No arrest. And off goes the Boomer on his merry way, six foot five of him, standing on the seat of his car, all eyes and teeth, with his escort having kittens every inch of the route.’
‘He sounds a right daisy.’
‘I believe you.’
‘I get muddled,’ Mr Fox confessed, ‘over these emergent nations.’
‘You’re not alone, there.’
‘I mean to say – this Ng’ombwana. What is it? A republic, obviously, but is it a member of the Commonwealth and if it is, why does it have an Ambassador instead of a High Commissioner?’
‘You may well ask. Largely through the manoeuvrings of my old chum, The Boomer. They’re still a Commonwealth country. More or less. They’re having it both ways. All the trappings and complete independence. All the ha’pence and none of the kicks. That’s why they insist on calling their man in London an Ambassador and setting him up in premises that wouldn’t disgrace one of the great powers. Basically it’s The Boomer’s doing.’
‘What about his own people? Here? At this Embassy? His Ambassador and all?’
‘They’re as worried as hell but say that what the President lays down is it: the general idea being that they might as well speak to the wind. He’s got this notion in his head – it derives from his schooldays and his practising as a barrister in London – that because Great Britain, relatively, has had a non-history of political assassination there won’t be any in the present or future. In its maddening way it’s rather touching.’
‘He can’t stop the SB doing its stuff, though. Not outside the Embassy.’
‘He can make it hellish awkward for them.’
‘What’s the procedure, then? Do you wait till he comes, Mr Alleyn, and plead with him at the airport?’
‘I do not. I fly to his blasted republic at the crack of dawn tomorrow and you carry on with the Dagenham job on your own.’
‘Thanks very much. What a treat,’ said Fox. ‘So I’d better go and pack.’
‘Don’t forget the old school tie.’
‘I do not deign,’ said Alleyn, ‘to reply to that silly crack.’
He got as far as the door and stopped.
‘I meant to ask you,’ he said. ‘Did you ever come across a man called Samuel Whipplestone? At the FO?’
‘I don’t move in those circles. Why?’
‘He was a bit of a specialist on Ng’ombwana. I see he’s lately retired. Nice chap. When I get back I might ask him to dinner.’
‘Are you wondering if he’d have any influence?’
‘We can hardly expect him to crash down on his knees and plead with the old Boomer to use his loaf if he wants to keep it. But I did vaguely wonder. ‘Bye, Br’er Fox.’
Forty-eight hours later Alleyn, in a tropical suit, got out of a Presidential Rolls that had met him at the main Ng’ombwana airport. He passed in a sweltering heat up a grandiose flight of steps through a Ruritanian guard turned black, and into the air-conditioned reception hall of the Presidential Palace.
Communication at the top level had taken place and he got the full, instant VIP treatment.
‘Mr Alleyn?’ said a young Ng’ombwanan wearing an ADC’s gold knot and tassel. ‘The President is so happy at your visit. He will see you at once. You had a pleasant flight?’
Alleyn followed the sky-blue tunic down a splendid corridor that gave on an exotic garden.
‘Tell me,’ he asked on the way, ‘what form of address is the correct one for the President?’
‘His Excellency, the President,’ the ADC rolled out, ‘prefers that form of address.’
‘Thank you,’ said Alleyn, and followed his guide into an anteroom of impressive proportions. An extremely personable and widely smiling secretary said something in Ng’ombwanan. The ADC translated: ‘We are to go straight in, if you please.’ Two dashingly uniformed guards opened double-doors and Alleyn was ushered into an enormous room at the far end of which, behind a vast desk, sat his old school chum: Bartholomew Opala.
‘Superintendent Alleyn, your Excellency, Mr President, sir,’ said the ADC redundantly and withdrew.
The enormous presence was already on its feet and coming, light-footed as a prizefighter, at Alleyn. The huge voice was bellowing: ‘Rory Alleyn, but all that’s glorious!’ Alleyn’s hand was engulfed and his shoulder-blade rhythmically beaten. It was impossible to stand to attention and bow from the neck in what he had supposed to be the required form.
‘Mr President –’ he began.
‘What? Oh, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense! Balls, my dear man (as we used to say in Davidson’s).’ Davidson’s had been their house at the illustrious school they both attended. The Boomer was being too establishment for words. Alleyn noticed that he wore the old school tie and that behind him on the wall hung a framed photograph of Davidson’s with The Boomer and himself standing together in the back row. He found this oddly, even painfully, touching.
‘Come and sit down,’ The Boomer fussed. ‘Where, now? Over here! Sit! Sit! I couldn’t be more delighted.’
The steel-wool mat of hair was grey now and stood up high on his head like a toque. The huge frame was richly endowed with flesh and the eyes were very slightly bloodshot but, as if in double-exposure, Alleyn saw beyond this figure that of an ebony youth eating anchovy toast by a coal fire and saying: ‘You are my friend: I have had none, here, until now.’
‘How well you look,’ the President was saying. ‘And how little you have changed! You smoke? No? A cigar? A pipe? Yes? Presently, then. You are lunching with us of course. They have told you?’
‘This is overwhelming,’ Alleyn said when