Magic Terror. Peter Straub

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СКАЧАТЬ been known to do, you have to meet certain standards. Many Horses sounds a lot more Native American than Bunce. Now can you please explain what the hell got you all riled up?’

      ‘Is someone else down here keeping an eye on me? Besides Martine? Someone I’m not supposed to know about?’

      ‘Oh, please,’ the contact said. ‘Where’s that coming from? Ah, I get it – sounds like you spotted somebody, or thought you did anyhow. Is that what this is all about? I guess paranoia comes with the territory. If you did see someone, he’s not on our payroll. Describe him.’

      Today in Mauléon, I noticed a kid I saw hanging around the café last night. Five-ten, hundred and fifty pounds, late twenties. Long blond hair, grubby, rides a Kawasaki bike. He was following me, Charles, there is no doubt at all about that. Where I went, he went, and if I weren’t, you know, sort of reasonably adept at my job, I might never have noticed the guy. As it was, I had to run out of a restaurant by the back door to ditch him. Okay, call me paranoid, but this sort of thing tends to make me uncomfortable.’

      ‘He’s not ours,’ the contact said quickly. ‘Beyond that, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s your call, champ.’

      ‘Okay, Charles,’ said N, hearing a murky ambiguity in the man’s voice. ‘This is how it goes. If I see the kid again tonight, I have to deal with him.’

      ‘Sounds good to me,’ said the contact.

      ‘One more thing, Charles. Have we, to your knowledge, taken on any Japanese field people? You mentioned this possibility yesterday. Was that an idle remark, or … no. There are no idle remarks. We hired some Japanese.’

      ‘Now that you mention it, a couple, yeah. It’s impossible to find people like you anymore. At least in the States.’

      ‘Are these the Japanese gentlemen I’m seeing wherever I go, the past couple of days?’

      ‘Let me ask you a question. Do you know how strong the yen is against Western currencies? It’s a joke. If you fly first-class on Air France, they give you sushi instead of escargots. Busy little Japanese tourists are running around all over Europe, the Pyrenees included.’

      ‘Sushi instead of snails.’ The knowledge that he had heard an almost identical remark not long before set off a mental alarm which subsided at the recollection of the drunken Basques.

      ‘It’s about money, what a shock. Walk right in, right? You want it, we got it. Just ask Tonto. What’s our revenge against the palefaces? Casinos. That’ll work.’

      ‘Like an MBA,’ N said. ‘You’re too embarrassed to admit you went to Harvard, but you did.’

      ‘Now, just how …’ The contact gave a wheezy chuckle. ‘You’re something else, pardner. Heap proud, go-um Harvard, but people assume you’re an asshole. Anyhow, lay off the Japs. You see the same ones over and over because that’s where they are.’

      ‘Neat and tidy, peaceful and private. Just Hubert, Martine, and me.’

      ‘See how easy it gets when you dump your anxiety? Try not to mess up his car. Martine’ll drive it back to town. The mule who’s bringing her car down from Paris is going to drive the Mercedes to Moscow. We have a buyer lined up.’

      ‘Waste not, want not.’

      ‘Or, as my people say, never shoot your horse until it stops breathing. I’m glad we had this talk.’

      Neat and tidy, peaceful and private. Lying on his bed, N called a private line in New York and asked his broker to liquidate his portfolio. The flustered broker required a lengthy explanation of how the funds could be transferred to a number of coded Swiss accounts without breaking the law, and then he wanted to hear the whole thing all over again. Yes, N said, he understood an audit was inevitable, no problem, that was fine. Then he placed a call to a twenty-four-hours-a-day-every-day number made available to select clients by his bankers in Geneva, and through multiple conferencing and the negotiation of a four-and-a-half-point charge established the deposit of the incoming funds and distribution of his present arrangements into new accounts dramatically inaccessible to outsiders, even by Swiss standards. On Monday, the same accommodating bankers would ship by same-day express to an address in Marseilles the various documents within a lockbox entrusted to their care. His apartment was rented, so that was easy, but it was a shame about the books. He stripped down to his shirt and underwear and fell asleep watching a Hong Kong thriller dubbed into hilarious French in which the hero detective, a muscly dervish, said things like ‘Why does it ever fall to me to be the exterminator of vermin?’ He awakened to a discussion of French farm prices among a professor of linguistic theory, a famous chef, and the winner of last year’s Prix Goncourt. He turned off the television and read ten pages of Kim. Then he put the book in the satchel and meticulously cleaned the pistol before inserting another hollow-point bullet into the clip and reloading. He cocked the pistol, put on the safety, and nestled the gun in beside the novel. He showered and shaved and trimmed his nails. In a dark gray suit and a thin black turtleneck, he sat down beside the window.

      The lot was filling up. The German family came outside into the gray afternoon and climbed into the Saab. After they drove off, a muddy Renault putted down the road and turned in to disgorge the innkeeper’s friends. A few minutes later the red L’Espace van pulled into the lot. The three Japanese walked across the road in their colorful new berets to inspect the food and drink in the display case. The blond woman offered slivers of cheese from the wheels, and the Japanese nodded in solemn appreciation. The girl in the blue dress wandered past the kitchen doors. The men across the street bought two wedges of cheese and a bottle of wine. They bowed to the vendor, and she bowed back. An eager-looking black-and-white dog trotted into the lot and sniffed at stains. When the Japanese came back to the auberge, the dog followed them inside.

      N locked his door and came down into the lobby. Mouth open and eyes alert, the dog looked up from in front of the table and watched him put his key on the counter. N felt a portion of his anticipation and on the way outside patted the animal’s slender skull. At the display counter he bought a wedge of sheep’s-milk cheese. Soon he was driving along the narrow road toward Tardets, the sharp turn over the river at Alos, and the long straight highway to Mauléon.

      Backed into a place near the bottom of the arcade, he took careful bites of moist cheese, unfolding the wrapper in increments to keep from dropping crumbs on his suit. Beneath the yellow umbrellas across the square, an old man read a newspaper. A young couple dangled toys before a baby in a stroller. Privileged by what Charles (Many Horses) Bunce called its fuck-you plates, M. Hubert’s Mercedes stood at the curb in front of the antique shop. A pair of students trudged into the square and made for the café, where they slid out from beneath their mountainous backpacks and fell into the chairs next to the couple with the baby. The girl backpacker leaned forward and made a face at the baby, who goggled. That one would be a pretty ride, N thought. A lot of bouncing and yipping ending with a self-conscious show of abandonment. An elegant woman of perhaps N’s own age walked past his car, proceeded beneath the arcade, and entered the antique store. He finished the last of the cheese, neatly refolded the wrapping paper, and stuffed it into an exterior pocket of the case. In the slowly gathering darkness, lights went on here and there.

      There were no Japanese golfers in Basque berets. The backpackers devoured croque-monsieurs and trudged away, and the couple pushed the stroller toward home. An assortment of tourists and regulars filled half of the tables beneath the umbrellas. A man and a woman in sturdy English clothing went into Hubert’s shop and emerged twenty minutes later with the elegant woman in tow. The man consulted his watch and led his companions away beneath the arcades. A police car moved past them from the top of the square. The stolid man in СКАЧАТЬ