"Hullo, Sally, this is Hardwear, calling from the
Click.
And after him again, Checheyev's voice, as I had heard him countless times in telephone and microphone intercepts. He is speaking English, but as I go on listening, his voice has the unnatural courtesy of a man under fire.
"Sally, good morning, this is CC. I need to get a message to Misha quickly, please. He must not go north. If he has started his journey, he should please discontinue it. This is an order from Our Chief Leader. Please, Sally."
Click.
Checheyev again, the calm if anything more pronounced, the pace slower:
"CC for Misha. Misha, take heed, please. The forest is watching us. Do you hear me, Misha? We are betrayed. The forest is on its way to the north, and in Moscow everything is known. Don't go north, Misha. Don't be foolhardy. The important thing is to get to safety and fight another day. Come to us and we shall take care of you. Sally, please tell this to Misha urgently. Tell him to use the preparations we have already agreed."
Click. End of message. End of all messages. The forest is northward bound and Birnam Wood has come to Dunsinane, and Larry has or hasn't got the message. And Emma? I wonder. What has she got?
I was counting money: bills, letters, cheque stubs. I was reading burned letters from banks.
"Dear Miss Stoner"—the top right corner of the page charred, writer's address incomplete, except for the letters SBANK and the words
Left side and lower half of letter destroyed, Miss Stoner's response unknown. But Miss Stoner is by now no stranger to me. Or to Emma.
"Dear Miss Roylott."
Quite right: Miss Roylott is Miss Stoner's natural companion. It's Christmas evening before the big fire in the drawing room at Honeybrook. Emma wears her intaglio necklace and a long skirt and sits in the Queen Anne wing chair while I read aloud Conan Doyle's "Speckled Band," in which Sherlock Holmes rescues the beautiful Miss Stoner from the murderous designs of Dr. Grimesby Roylott. Drunk with happiness, I affect to continue reading from the text, while I ingeniously depart from it:
"And if I may be permitted, madam," I intone, in my most Holmesian voice, "to confess a humble interest in your immaculate person, then permit me also to propose that in a few moments we repair upstairs and put to the test those desires and appetites which, with the impetuosity of my sex, I am scarcely able to contain—"
But by now Emma's fingertips close my lips, so that she may kiss them with her own....
"Dear Miss Watson."
The writer is in Edinburgh and signs himself "Overseas Portfolio Exe ." And Watson should have been braving the wild beasts of Dr. Grimesby Roylott's private zoo with an Eley's No. 2 revolver in his pocket, not masquerading as a woman named Sally with an address in Cambridge Street, Bristol.
"We take pleasure in ... osing ... short-term ... combi ... high yie ... wit ... condi ... withdraw ... fshore."
I'll bet you take pleasure, I thought. With thirty-seven million to play with, who wouldn't?
"Dear Miss Holmes."
And more of the same unction from the banker's greasy bottle.
* * *
I was collecting carpets.
Kilims, Hamadans, Balouchis, Kolyais, and Azerbaijans, Gebbehs, Bakhtiaris, Basmackis, and Dosemealtis. Notes about carpets, scribbled memos about carpets, phone messages, letters typed on spotty grey paper posted by our good friend So-and-so who is travelling to Stockholm: Have the Kilims arrived? Are they on their way? Last week you said next week. Our Chief Leader is distraught, so much anxious talk of carpets. Issa is also distraught, because Magomed has no carpets to sit on.
Carpets from AM. To Our Chief Leader or, as the Winchester
"Dear Prometheus." Badly burned letter on plain white paper, electronic type. "We are ... posi ... to arra . . . ear ... livery of 300 Qashqais as discussed, an ... shall be happy to take mat . . . to next agreed stage on receipt you ..." The signature a jagged hieroglyph resembling three pyramids side by side, sender's address The Hardwear Company, Box (number illegible) ... sfield.
