the Spanish Gambit (Aka Tapestry Of Spies)

360 Pages·1985·1.09 MB·English

by  Hunter Stephen

Tapestry Of Spies
Stephen Hunter
*
PROLOGUE:
THE TRIAL OF THE ASSASSIN BENNY LAL
IN THE OLD COURTHOUSE at Moulmein, lower Burma, in February of
1931, caused a bit of a stir in its own day, but its memory has not lingered.
It was a forgotten moment in the history of a vanished empire.
Yet a case could be made that it changed the political history of our century,
however secretly, however subtly. Still, in the mind of one man, the event was
important for exactly what it was, and not for what it eventually made possible.
He was, on the last day of the trial, the Crown's chief witness, a tall, not
unpleasant-looking young officer in the service khaki of the India Imperial
Police. It was his duty to put the noose around the neck of Benny Lal.
The blades of the overhead fan moved through the air in a stately whirl, yet
without palpable effect. Robert Florry stared at the motion, its easy, hypnotic
blur fascinating him.
"Assistant superintendent?"
The magistrate's voice. Florry swallowed awkwardly and, blinking,
embarrassed, redirected his vision toward the bench. He hoped his discomfort
did not show, knowing of course that it did. He swallowed again. It had taken
such a long time for this moment to arrive, but now it rushed at him with the
power of the undeniable future.
"Assistant superintendent?"
Florry attempted a wretched smile. The courtroom, jammed with other
Imperial Policemen and natives, was as still as a photograph. He could feel their
scrutiny: it had the weight of accusation.
"Yes sir," he said. His own voice always bothered him. It was a reedy, thin
instrument and tended to disappear in key moments such as this one.
"The man I saw-" he said a bit more smartly, raising his finger to point At the
defense table, under the slow whirl of the fan, amid a collection of more
fortunate members of his race, sat a Hindu.
He was small and had that furtive, shifty, almost liquid swiftness in which the
wogs seemed to specialize. He had a shock of thick dark hair and two darting
black eyes, his skin so mocha-chocolate that it made his white teeth blaze like
diamonds in the firelight. For Benny Lal was smiling; he always smiled. He was
an idiot.
"That's the man," said Florry, suddenly finding his policeman's voice.
"That's the man I saw running from the deceased on Tuesday last, half past
eleven in the evening, outside the Moulmein officers' club. Sir."
He added the bit of recapitulation as if in testimony to his own efficiency,
which was on trial here, too. Yet surely every officer and every native in the
courtroom would have known that Tuesday last at half-eleven, a drunken
Burmese merchant named U Bat had had his throat opened all over his white suit
not fifty paces from the veranda of the club where Florry, nursing his fifth gin of
the night, had sat trying to write Georgian poetry in the lamplight, amid moths
and fancies. Only slightly drunk, the young officer had rushed to the still form in
the dust as a smaller, quicker shape had dashed by him. Perhaps, it was being
said in certain quarters, a man with more wit about him (or less gin in him)
would have made the pinch right there. But Florry, stunned by the suddenness
with which the violence had occurred and a little dotty not only with drink but
also with dreams of literature and then still further staggered by his first
exposure to the gaudy wreckage of a human body soaking in its own blood in the
dust, had let the villain slip away in the shadows of an alley.
A manhunt organized rather like a tiger drive had come upon the naked
Benny Lal sleeping in blissful abandon by the side of the road a few miles away
early the next morning. It developed swiftly, under blunt methods of
investigation, that he had once been a houseboy in the domicile of U Bat and a
frequent target of the drunken merchant's weekly rages. Under questioning
Benny Lal, idiot child of the East, neither confessed nor defended himself.
He merely smiled pleasantly at everybody and tried not to offend the British.
Was he in fact the guilty party?
If Florry could not really say yes, neither could he really say no. Yet he could
not say nothing. These were tricky times, it had been explained to him by a
fellow in the Intelligence Department. Already ugly rumors were afoot. The
British themselves, it was said, had been behind the slaying.
U Bat, in certain quarters, was being inflated into some kind of nationalist
saint, not the black brute he'd been in reality.
It would do, the chap explained with sweet reason and abundant charm on his
side, it would do to be done with this matter quickly. It was a duty; sometimes
one had to see the bigger picture.
"You're certain, then?" said the magistrate.
"I am sure, sir, yessir, I am," said Florry in a clear, unwavering voice.
"Mr. Gupta? Have you any questions?"
Mr. Gupta, who had been fanning himself this long time, at last arose.
He was a tiny Hindu lawyer, up at no fee save mischief from Rangoon to
speak for Benny Lal. He offered Florry a broad, extremely pleasant smile.
"How much, Constable Florry, would you-2' Conscious of the contest and
eager not to fall behind from the start, Florry corrected the man.
"Assistant superintendent please," he said, and in the instant he said it,
realized he'd been snookered.
"Oh!" said the lawyer, in mock astonishment. "Oh, I am begging the officer's
pardon," his smile radiating heat, "oh, I am so sorry of the mistake. Then you
have received so recently a promotion? For duties of spectacular success?"
"I don't see what the devil dif-" Florry began with an extra measure of sahib's
bluster, but the sudden swell of bright laughter from the unsympathetic Hindus
in the back of the courtroom drowned him out.
"Mr. Gupta, the bench does not quite see what relevance the assistant
superintendent's recent promotion has to do with the facts at issue," said the
magistrate coolly.
"I meant no disrespect, your honored self. A simple mistake, in which no
harm was meant nor even intended or implied. I congratulate the new assistant.
If I have it right, over the year, the difference in moneys is about one hundred
pounds, is that not so""
"Perhaps counsel could explain what relevance to the case of the accused is
meant by this?" the magistrate requested.
"Apologies, apologies, many and profuse," said Gupta, his cynicism as broad
as his smile. "I only mean it to remark on the fortune of some and the misfortune
of others in this cruel world. I mean never to imply or infer any kind of payment
for services red-"
"Now see here!" began Florry.
"Mr. Gupta, your client's case will not be helped by impertinence.
Indeed, it will most likely be harmed."
"Then the subject of money shall be forever avoided from this moment
onward. Now, Mr. Assistant Superintendent, I understand that you are a poet, is
that not correct?"
Florry squirmed. He was a tall man, or boy, actually, twenty-three, with a
long thin face, sandy hair, and a husky, big-boned body. He looked strong and
English and a bit too decent for anybody's good. He was an Eton boy-though
he'd been wretched there-but of an odd English class.
The son of an India Company clerk, he'd gone to his fancy school on account
of having been at one time thought promising. He was in service because no
university would have him after a disastrous finish to his years at the college.
Worse, he felt here, as he felt at Eton-as he felt everywhere-somewhat
fraudulent.
"Scribble a verse now and then, yes," he said.
"Ah, said the Indian, as if having made a remarkable discovery. "And would
you not say that a poet is rewarded for his imagination, Mr.
"And his sense of rhyme, his moral vision, his beautiful command of the
language, his higher range of exalted thought, his--" Florry looked like a copper
but he thought he was a poet, and if he was wholly neither, he was still capable
of speaking eloquently on this one subject alone.
But the magistrate cut him off.
"See here, Gupta, where's all this headed?"
"Honored judge of men, I wish only to see if the assistant superintendent is
the sort of chappy who sometimes sees things that aren't there in his poems. Or I
wonder if he doesn't, in the honored tradition of such as Shakespeare and
Spenser, sometimes improve the way things are for the sake of the beauty and
soul of his no doubt significant poetics. I only mean to find the officer's sense or
definition of the truth."
Benny Lal smiled. A lick of drool, like a gossamer filament in a dream,
drifted from his mouth.
"My poems are my poems," said Florry sullenly, embarrassed to be depicted
as such a dreamy ninny before the other officers, "and duty is duty. Separate and
apart. The way it should be."
"Leaving aside which is the most important to you, let me ask you this, Mr.
Assistant Superintendent. You were off duty, relaxing, cooling down at the end
of a hot day's duty in service to your mighty engine of empire. A man in these
circumstances, sir, has been known to have a drink of spirits. May I inquire, sir,
if you had done so, and if you had, to what extent?"
"A gin," Florry tied. "Maybe two."
"You are sure?"
"Quite.
"Not so much for an Englishman?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't know."
"Your Honor, I have here-ah--oh, yes-here-Assistant Superintendent Florry's
bar chit for the previous month."
He held aloft the pink form that the young policeman, with sinking feeling,
recognized immediately.
"And perhaps in the excitement of the night's events, the assistant
superintendent forgot to sign that night. Yet in the weeks proceeding, it's quite
clear he was accustomed to drinking as much as five gins a night. My goodness,
here's one night when he drank nine! Yet on the night in question, he would have
us believe he had drunk only two. My goodness. Perhaps, Mr. Assistant
Superintendent, you could amplify."
"Ah-" Florry began, feeling a tide of liar's phlegm rising in his throat,
"perhaps I may have had more than two.
Perhaps I had three. It's difficult to remember. Four gins is not a lot.
Certainly not enough to affect my vision, which is what is important in this
matter. My vision was intact, sir, it was. Yes, sir, four, four it was."
Actually, it had been five. But the curious thing was, it hadn't really affected
him. He could drink grotesque amounts of liquor without much damage.
"Well then, that should clear that up, shouldn't it?" said the magistrate.
"You see," hastened Florry, "I had had an idea for a poem that day. And when
I write a poem, I never drink a lot. Dulls the senses."
"Then you had not written a poem for some time?"
"No," said Florry, wondering what the little devil was up to.
"And yet, here I have--oh, now where'?-yes, here, here it is!-" and the little
Hindu milked the theme of the missing document like some bad actor in a West
End melodrama for some time until at last---here it is, indeed. Your postal chit."
He displayed it triumphantly to the courtroom.
"Yes," Mr. Gupta continued merrily, "your postal chit.
And on Friday before you had dispatched a large envelope-the bill was a
pound six-to an address in London. In Bloomsbury. Here it is. Number 56
Bedford. At Russell Square. SWI. Correct?"
"Well---" nd two weeks before. And a week before that. Would you tell the
court what the address is?"
Florry paused bitterly before issuing the grim answer.
"It's the address of The Spectator. A literary quarterly. The best literary
quarterly." They never took his poems. Nobody ever did.
"And so you have been writing poetry and you have been drinking and you
were lost in the worlds of your own poetry. You heard the scream. You rushed
off the veranda the body you have just noticed. You have so testified, is this not
true?"
"Yes," said Florry.
"And a shape flies past you. There's precious little light.
And the distance must be thirty feet and the time must be, oh, one would
gauge it to be only seconds, eh?"
Florry said nothing.
"Yet you recognized-please point to him."
Flony raised his finger to point.
Damn the wog.
Two smiling Hindus sat at the defense table. To Florry they were identical.
Gupta and his tricks.
Florry's rising finger grew heavy. Pick one, he thought.
Then he remembered a line from a poem: In the end, it's all the samel In the
end, it's all a game. Brilliant Julian had written it. It was from the famous
"Achilles, Fool," which had made him such a thing in London these days.
Julian, why did you hurt me so? The pain of it, five years gone, was never
adequately buried and now came up like a rotting odor.
Pick one, he thought. It doesn't matter. It's just a game.
"How can I pick one," said Florry, with a sudden icy coolness, "when neither
is the right chap?"
There was a roar from the courtroom gallery. And then an English cheer.
Gupta stared at him. The message was hatred. Florry stared back.
Benny Lai now sat three places down the table, in a blue coat. He was trying,
under what must have been instruction from his lawyer, not to smile. Florry's
eyes linked with his in an odd second and beheld, behind the gaze, exactly