"Harry, help me, I need you!"

Wait. Don"t speak. Don"t tell her you"re not Harry. Hear what she says next. Lips pressed together. Receiver armlocked to right ear. Speak, you b.i.t.c.h! Declare yourself! The b.i.t.c.h is breathing. Rasping breaths. Come on, Sabina, honey, speak. Say, "Come and f.u.c.k me, Harry." Say, "I love you, Harry." Say, "Where"s my f.u.c.king money, why do you keep it in a drawer, it"s me, Sabina, rad stud, calling from the f.u.c.king rice farm and I"m lonely."

More bangs. Crackle pop, like motorbikes backfiring. Wallop. Slap. Put down vodka gla.s.s. Holler at the top of my voice in my father"s cla.s.sical Yanqui Spanish.

"Who is this? Answer me!"

Wait. Zero. Whimpering but no words. Louisa changes to English.

"Get out of my husband"s life, you hear me, Sabina, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h! f.u.c.k you, Sabina! Get out of my rice farm too!"

Still no words.

"I"m in his den, Sabina. I"m looking for your f.u.c.king letters to him, right now! Ernesto Delgado is not corrupt. Hear me? It"s a lie. I work for him. It"s other people who are corrupt, not Ernesto. Speak to me!"

More bangs and thumps in the earpiece. Jesus, what is this? The next invasion? b.i.t.c.h sobs pitifully, hangs up. Vision of self, smashing receiver on cradle, as in any good movie. Sit down. Stare at phone, waiting for it to ring again. It doesn"t. So I finally bashed my sister"s head in. Or somebody else did. Poor little Emily. f.u.c.k you. Louisa stands up. Steadily. Takes sobering swig of vodka. Head clear as a bell. Tough s.h.i.t, Sabina. My husband"s mad. Guess you"re having a bad time too. Serves you right. Rice farms can be lonely places.

Bookshelves. Mind-food. Just the thing for bewildered intellects. Look in books for b.i.t.c.h"s letters to Harry. New books in old places. Old books in new places. Explain. Harry, for the love of G.o.d, explain. Tell me, Harry. Talk to me. Who"s Sabina? Who"s Marco? Why are you making up stories about Rafi and Mickie? Why are you s.h.i.tting on Ernesto?

A pause for study and reflection while Louisa Pendel in her red three-b.u.t.toned housecoat and nothing underneath patrols her husband"s bookshelves, pushing out her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and b.u.t.tocks. She is feeling extremely naked. Better than naked. Hot-naked. She would like another baby. She would like to have all of Hannah"s Seven Sisters as long as none of them turns out to be an Emily. Her father"s books on the Ca.n.a.l march past her, starting with the days when the Scots tried to form a colony in the Darien and lost half their country"s wealth. She opens them one by one, shakes them so vigorously that the bindings creak, flings them carelessly aside. No love letters.

Books about Captain Morgan and his pirates who sacked Panama City and burned it to the ground except for the ruins where we take the kids picnicking. But no love letters from Sabina or anybody else. None from Alpha, Beta, Marcos or the Bear. Nor from some cute-a.r.s.ed little rad stud with funny money from the States. Books about the time when Panama belonged to Colombia. But no love letters, however hard she flings them at the wall.

Louisa Pendel, mother-to-be of Hannah"s Seven Sisters, squats naked inside the housecoat he never f.u.c.ked me in, calves to thighs and all the way back again, browsing through the construction of the Ca.n.a.l and wishing she hadn"t screamed at that poor woman whose love letters she can"t find and probably wasn"t Sabina anyway and wasn"t calling from the rice farm. Accounts of real men like George Goethals and William Crawford Gorgas, men who were solid and methodical as well as mad, men who were loyal to their wives instead of writing letters about seeing fit or blackening the reputation of her employer or hiding wads of banknotes in their locked desks, and wads of letters I can"t find. Books that her father made her read, in the hope that she would one day build her own f.u.c.king ca.n.a.l.

"Harry?" Screaming at the top of her voice to scare him. "Harry? Where did you put that sad b.i.t.c.h"s letters? Harry, I wish to know."

Books on the Ca.n.a.l Treaties. Books on drugs and "Whither Latin America?" Whither my f.u.c.king husband is more like it. And whither poor Ernesto, if Harry has anything to do with it. Louisa sits down and addresses Harry quietly and reasonably in a tone calculated not to dominate him. Shouting doesn"t do it any more. She is speaking to him as one mature human being to another from a teak-framed armchair her father used when he was trying to get her to sit on his knee.

"Harry, I do not understand what you are doing in your den night after night irrespective of what time you come home from whatever you have been doing before. If you are writing a novel about corruption or an autobiography or a history of tailoring, I think you should come out with it and tell me, since after all we are married."

Harry druckens himself, which is how he describes it when he"s joking about a tailor"s false humility.

"It"s the accounts, you see, Lou. You don"t get the fluence, not during the daytime, not with the doorbell going all the time."

"The farm accounts?"

She is being a b.i.t.c.h again. The rice farm has become a non-subject in the household and she is supposed to respect this: Ramon is restructuring the finances, Lou. Angel has got a bit of a question mark over him, Lou.

"The shop," Harry mumbles, like a penitent.

"Harry, I am not ungifted. I took excellent grades in math. I can help you any time you wish."

He is already shaking his head. "They"re not that sort of numbers, you see, Lou. It"s more the creative side. Numbers out of the air."

"Is this why you have notes scribbled all over the margins of McCullough"s Path Between the Seas, so that no one will ever be able to read it except you?"

Harry brightens - artificially. "Oh well, yes, you"re right there, Lou, clever of you to notice it. I"m seriously thinking of having some of the old prints blown up, you see, giving more of a Ca.n.a.l tone to the Clubroom, maybe get hold of a few artefacts for the atmosphere."

"Harry, you have always told me and I agree that Panamanians with certain n.o.ble exceptions like Ernesto Delgado do not care for the Ca.n.a.l. They didn"t build it. We did. They did not even provide the labour. The labour came from China and Africa and Madagascar, it came from the Caribbean and India. And Ernesto is a good man."

Jesus, she thought. Why do I speak like that? Why am I such a strident pious shrew? Easy. Because Emily is a wh.o.r.e.

She sat at his desk, head in hands, sorry she had split the drawers open, sorry she had bawled out that wretched weeping woman, sorry she had once more had wicked thoughts about her sister Emily. I"m never going to talk to anyone like that again in my life, she decided. I"m never going to punish myself again by punishing other people. I"m not my f.u.c.king mother or my f.u.c.king father and I am not a pious perfect G.o.d-fearing Zonian b.i.t.c.h. And I"m very sorry that in a stressful moment, under the influence of alcohol, I found it in me to abuse a fellow-sinner, even if she"s Harry"s mistress and if she is I"ll murder her. Rummaging in a drawer that she had till now neglected, she came upon another unfinished masterpiece: Andy, you will be very pleased to hear that our new arrangement is highly popular with all parties, especially the ladies. Everything being down to me, L is not compromised in her conscience as regards naughty Ernie plus it"s safer regarding the family as a whole it being one to one. Will continue this at shop.

And so will I, thought Louisa in the kitchen, giving herself one more for the road. Alcohol no longer affected her, she had discovered. What affected her was Andy alias Andrew Osnard who with her reading of this fragment had abruptly supplanted Sabina as the object of her curiosity.

But this was not new.

She had been curious about Mr Osnard ever since the trip to Anytime Island when she had concluded that Harry wished her to go to bed with him to ease his conscience, though from what Louisa knew of Harry"s conscience, one f.u.c.k was unlikely to solve the problem.

She must have telephoned for a cab because there was one standing outside the door and the bell was ringing.

Osnard turned his back on the eyehole and walked through the dining room to the balcony where Luxmore sat in the same near-foetal position, too scared to speak or act. His bloodshot eyes were opened wide, fear stretched his upper lip into a sneer, two yellowed front teeth had appeared between his beard and his moustache and they must have been the ones he sucked when he wished to signal a happy turn of phrase.

"I am receiving an unscheduled visit from BUCHAN TWO," Osnard told him quietly. "We have a situation on our hands. You"d better get out fast."

"Andrew. I"m a senior officer. My G.o.d, what"s that hammering? She"ll awaken the dead."

"I"m going to put you with the coats. When you hear me shut the dining room door after her, take the lift to the lobby, give the concierge a dollar and tell him to get you a taxi to the El Panama."

"My G.o.d, Andrew."

"What is it?"

"Are you going to be all right? Listen to her. Is that a gun she"s using? We should call the police. Andrew. One word."

"What is it?"

"Can I trust the taxi driver? Some of these fellows, you hear things. Bodies in the harbour. I don"t speak their Spanish, Andrew,"

Lifting Luxmore to his feet, Osnard led him to the hall, bundled him into the cloakroom and closed the door. He unchained the front door, slid the bolts, turned the key and opened it. The hammering stopped but the ringing continued.

"Louisa," he said as he prised her finger from the bell b.u.t.ton. "Marvellous. Where"s Harry? Why don"t you come on in?"

Transferring his grip to her wrist he heaved her into the hall and closed the door but did not bolt it or turn the key. They stood face to face and close while Osnard held her hand above their heads as if they were about to begin an old-fashioned waltz, and it was the hand that held the shoe. She let the shoe fall. No sound was coming out of her but he smelt her breath and it was like his mother"s breath whenever he had to accept a kiss from her. Her dress was very thin. He could feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the bulge of her pubic triangle through the red fabric.

"What the f.u.c.k are you playing at with my husband?" she said. "What"s this c.r.a.p he"s been telling you about Delgado taking bribes from the French and messing with the drugs cartels? Who"s Sabina? Who"s Alpha?"

But despite the force of her words she spoke uncertainly, in a voice neither loud enough nor convinced enough to penetrate the cloakroom door. And Osnard with his instinct for weakness sensed at once the fear in her: fear of himself, fear for Harry, fear of the forbidden, and the biggest fear of all, which was of hearing things so terrible she would never again be able not to hear them. But Osnard had heard them already. With her questions she had answered all his own, as they had gathered like unread signals in the secret rooms of his consciousness over recent weeks: She knows nothing. Harry never recruited her. It"s a con.

She was about to repeat her question or enlarge upon it or ask another, but Osnard could not risk this happening within Luxmore"s hearing. Clamping one hand over her mouth, therefore, he lowered her arm, folded it behind her, turned her back to him and frogmarched her on one shoe into the dining room, at the same time as he banged the dining room door shut behind him with his foot. Halfway across the room he came to a halt, clutching her against him. In the flurry two of her b.u.t.tons had come undone, leaving her b.r.e.a.s.t.s uncovered. He could feel her heart thumping under his wrist. Her breathing had slowed to longer, deeper gasps. He heard the front door close as Luxmore took his leave. He waited and heard the ping of the arriving lift and the asthmatic sigh of electric doors. He heard the lift descend. He took his hand from her mouth and felt saliva in his palm. He cupped her bare breast in his hand and felt the nipple harden and nestle into his palm. Still standing behind her, he released her arm and saw it fall languidly to her side. He heard her whisper something as she kicked off her other shoe.

"Where"s Harry?" he said, keeping his hold on her body.

"Gone to find Abraxas. He"s dead."

"Who"s dead?"

"Abraxas. Who the f.u.c.k else? If Harry was dead he couldn"t have gone to see him, could he?"

"Where did he die?"

"Guarare. Ana says he shot himself."

"Who"s Ana?"

"Mickie"s woman."

He put his right hand over her other breast and was treated to a mouthful of her coa.r.s.e brown hair as she shoved her head hard into his face and her rump into his groin. He turned her halfway to him and kissed her temple and cheek bone and licked the sweat that was pouring off her in rivulets, and he felt her trembling increase until her lips and teeth locked over his mouth in a grimace, her tongue searched his, and he had a glimpse of her squeezed-up eyes and the tears seeping from the corners and he heard her mutter "Emily."

"Who"s Emily?" he asked.

"My sister. I told you about her on the island."

"h.e.l.l does she know about all this?"

"She lives in Dayton, Ohio and she f.u.c.ked all my friends. Do you have any shame?"

"Afraid not. Had it out when I was a kid,"

Then one of her hands was hauling at his shirt tails, the other was delving clumsily in the waistband of his Pendel & Braithwaite trousers and she was whispering things to herself that he didn"t catch and anyway were of no interest to him. He groped for the third b.u.t.ton but she hit his hand impatiently aside and pulled the housecoat over her head in one movement. He stepped out of his shoes and peeled off his trousers, underpants and socks in a single damp roll. He pulled his shirt over his head. Naked and apart, they appraised each other, wrestlers about to engage. Then Osnard grabbed her in both arms and, lifting her clean off the ground, carted her across the threshold of his bedroom and dumped her on the bed where she at once began attacking him with great lunges of her thighs.

"Wait, Christ"s sake," he ordered, and pushed her off him.

Then he took her very slowly and deliberately, using all his skills and hers. To shut her up. To tie a loose cannon to the deck. To get her safely into my camp before whatever battle lay ahead. Because it"s a maxim of mine that no reasonable offer should ever be pa.s.sed up. Because I always fancied her. Because s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g one"s friends" wives is never less than interesting.

Louisa lay with her back to him, her head under the pillows and her knees drawn up to protect her while she clutched the bedsheet to her nose. She had closed her eyes, more to die than to sleep. She was ten years old in her bedroom in Gamboa with the curtains drawn, sent there to repent her sins after slicing up Emily"s new blouse with a pair of sewing scissors on the grounds that it was brazen. She wanted to get up and borrow his toothbrush and dress and comb her hair and leave, but to do any of those things was to admit the reality of time and place and Osnard"s naked body in the bed beside her and the fact that she had nothing to wear except a flimsy red housecoat with the b.u.t.tons torn off it - and where the h.e.l.l was it anyway? - and a pair of flat shoes that were supposed not to show off her height - and what the h.e.l.l had happened to them! - and her headache was so terrible that she had a good mind to demand to be taken to a hospital where she could begin last night again from the beginning, without vodka or smashing up Harry"s desk if that was what she had done, without Marta or the shop or Mickie dying or Delgado"s reputation being ripped to shreds by Harry, and without Osnard and all this. Twice she had gone to the bathroom, once to be sick, but each time she had crept back into bed and tried to make everything that had happened unhappen, and now Osnard was talking on the telephone and there was no way on earth she couldn"t hear his hateful English drawl eighteen inches from her ear however many pillows she might pull over her head, or the sleepy bewildered Scottish accent from the other end of the line like last messages from a faulty radio.

"We"ve got some disturbing news coming through, I"m afraid, sir."

"Disturbing? Who"s disturbing?" The Scots voice wak-ing up.

"About that Greek ship of ours."

"Greek ship! What Greek ship? What are you talking about, Andrew?"

"Our flagship, sir. The flagship of the Silent Line."

Long pause.

"Got you, Andrew! The Greek, my G.o.d! Point taken. Tricky how? Why tricky?"

"It seems to have foundered, sir."

"Foundered? What against? How?"

"Sunk." Pause for "sunk" to sink in. "Written off. Up west somewhere. Circ.u.mstances not yet established. I"ve sent a writer there to find out."

More puzzled silence from the other end, reflecting Louisa"s own.

"Writer?"

"A famous one."

"Got you! Understood. The bestselling author from bygone times. Quite so. Say no more. Sunk how, Andrew? Sunk totally, you mean?"

"First reports say he"ll never sail again."

"G.o.d. G.o.d! Who did it, Andrew? That woman, I"ll be bound. I"d put nothing beyond her. Not after last night."

"Further details pending, I"m afraid, sir."

"What about his crew? - his shipmates, dammit - his silent ones - have they gone down too?"

"We"re waiting to hear. Best you go on back to London as planned, sir. I"ll call you there."

He rang off and yanked the pillow from her head where she was clutching it. Even with her eyes crammed shut she couldn"t escape the sight of his replete young body stretched carelessly at her side or his idle, bloated p.e.n.i.s half awake.

"I never said this," he was telling her. "All right?"

She turned resolutely away from him. Not all right.

"Your husband"s a brave chap. He"s under orders never to talk to you about it. Never will. Nor will I."

"Brave how?"

"People tell him things. He tells "em to us. What he doesn"t hear he goes and finds out, often at some risk. Recently he stumbled on something big."

"Is that why he photographed my papers?"

"We needed Delgado"s engagements. There are missing hours in Delgado"s life."

"They"re not missing hours. They"re when he goes to Ma.s.s or looks after his wife and kids. He"s got a kid in hospital. Sebastian."

"That"s what Delgado tells you."

"It"s true. Don"t give me that bulls.h.i.t. Is Harry doing this for England?"

"England, the States, Europe. Civilised free world. You name it."

"Then he"s an a.s.shole. So"s England. So"s the civilised free world."

It took her time and effort but eventually she managed it. She climbed onto her elbow and turned to look down on him.

"I don"t believe a f.u.c.king word you"re telling me," she said, "You"re a slimy English crook with a sackful of clever lies and Harry is out of his mind."

"Then don"t believe me. Just keep your big mouth shut."