There was a tiny pause.
‘No family. Ancestors, yes. Family, no.’
‘Oh.’ The captain was genuinely surprised.
The wonderful smile died. ‘Families need commitment,’ said Philip Hardesty levelly. ‘I can’t do that.’
The captain shuffled uncomfortably. Sometimes, on these small, dangerous expeditions, men confided stuff that later they wished they hadn’t. He didn’t want to be the keeper of Philip Hardesty’s conscience.
But the man was not talking about his conscience, it seemed.
He said unemotionally, ‘You see, the job of a negotiator—a good negotiator—is to see everyone’s point of view. To say, no one is ever wholly in the wrong. Peace is just a matter of finding enough room for everyone to have some of what they want.’
The captain was puzzled. ‘So?’
‘So lack of commitment is my greatest professional asset. The moment I lose that, I’m in the soup. With everybody else trying to reach some goal of his own, I have to stay absolutely without any goals at all.’
The captain thought it over.
‘But surely personal stuff is different—’
‘Not for me,’ said Philip Hardesty, cool and level and just a little weary. ‘I can’t live two lives. What I am, I am all the way through.’
The captain thought, And maybe that’s why this bastard we’re going to see tomorrow trusts him.
‘And that’s why you don’t have a family? I see. Seems a lot to give up.’
Philip shrugged. ‘Family tradition,’ he said again.
The captain hesitated. But the others were either on watch or asleep and confidences seemed to be the order of the day.
‘Isn’t that lonely?’ he asked curiously.
The jungle night was full of noises. Above their heads, a bat screeched. There was a whirr of wings as some predator took off after it.
Philip held his hands out to the fire, though the night was not cold and the fire was dying.
‘Lonely?’ he echoed. ‘All the time.’
Five days later, Captain Soames was responding to reporters in the makeshift conference room at Pelanang airstrip.
Yes, they’d all got out alive. Yes, it had been dangerous. Yes, that part of the jungle was uncharted. Yes, they had brought back some totally new specimens.
‘And now we’re going to publish the map. Which was the aim of the expedition in the first place.’
‘You took UN negotiator Sir Philip Hardesty along with you on a field trip?’ said the local stringer for a group of European newspapers, scenting a story. ‘Do you want to comment on that?’
‘Sure,’ said Captain Soames with a grin. ‘It was a privilege.’
But later, over a beer under the palm trees, he said, ‘The Englishman? Off the record? The guy’s a phenomenon. If anyone can get these lunatics to make peace, he can.’
‘What’s he like?’ said the stringer, intrigued. ‘I mean, as a person.’
Captain Soames lowered the beer can. His face was sober.
‘As a person? He’s the loneliest man in the world.’
CHAPTER ONE
‘ANOTHER satisfied customer,’ said Mrs Ludwig, pushing the envelope across the desk. ‘They wanted you to stay on, of course. Don’t they always?’
‘That’s nice of them,’ said Kit Romaine, pocketing her salary envelope without opening it.
Really, the way that girl ignored money was downright heathen, thought Mrs Ludwig.
She said curiously, ‘Aren’t you ever tempted?’
‘To stay on in one job?’ Kit shook her head. ‘I like my freedom.’
She more than liked it. She needed it. It had taken her a long time to work that out. Now she had, she was hanging on to it like a drowning man to a lifeboat.
Mrs Ludwig shook her head. ‘From our point of view that’s fine, of course. You’re probably the best temp we’ve got. But shouldn’t you be thinking of your future?’
‘I’m strictly a live-for-today kind of girl,’ said Kit firmly. She had learned that the hard way too.
Mrs Ludwig gave up. She looked swiftly down her list.
‘Well, next week there’s a complete spring clean of a house in Pimlico. Owners moving back in after tenants. You’d like that. You’d have the place to yourself. Or Henderson’s Books need cover while their under-manager goes to a book fair. They particularly asked for you, by the way. Oh, no, that’s next month. Oh, hang on—there’s the Bryants again.’ She caught herself. ‘No, that won’t do, you’d have to look after the little girl after school for a couple of hours.’
In spite of what she said, she looked up questioningly. The Bryants were good clients. She’d like to give them the best. In terms of competence and reliability, Kit Romaine was the best.
But Kit Romaine was shaking her blonde head vigorously. Kit Romaine did not look after children. It was the only thing she refused to do.
This Century’s Solutions was a London agency priding itself on being able to find someone to solve any problem, no matter how extraordinary. Kit met the job description brilliantly. She was fit, clear-headed and completely unflappable. She was as at home with an embroidery frame as she was with a computer. Assignments that other people regarded as hopeless were just a challenge to Kit.
‘If there’s a problem, there’s a solution,’ she would say serenely. And take herself off to the library to research the problem of the moment.
There were only two things that Kit Romaine did not do. She wouldn’t take care of children. And she didn’t date.
Which was odd when you came to think of it. A gorgeous girl like that: good figure, perfect skin and the sort of grace that made people turn and look at her in the street. A client had even wanted to use her in a television commercial once. It was a shame to waste all that long, silky blonde hair, or so he had said. Kit had laughed at him. And been adamant in her refusal.
Make that three things that Kit Romaine did not do, thought Mrs Ludwig, sighing.
‘Not the Bryants,’ Kit was saying now. ‘Give me the house-cleaning. A whole week should get me to the end of module ten.’
Mrs Ludwig laughed. ‘What is it this time?’
‘War poetry.’
Mrs Ludwig pulled a face.
‘Sounds grim. Rather you than me.’
‘It’s not all grim, actually. It’s stuff every educated person ought to know.’
Kit was a dedicated self-educator. When she worked alone, she would slap a tape of her most recent subject into her Walkman. Then she could clean or drive or groom or do whatever it was she was being paid to do. And all the time, as she explained to Helen Ludwig, she was increasing her knowledge.
Helen Ludwig, who had two degrees and generally forgot both of them, wrote it off as an eccentricity. It did not get in the way of Kit’s efficiency or the agency reputation, and that was all she cared about.
‘Whatever you say,’ she said, bored. ‘The Pimlico house it is. Pick up the keys here on Monday.’
Kit nodded and stood up. ‘See you.’
‘Have a good weekend,’