Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

Michaelmas re-set his watch.

It was a beautiful drive into the city with the road winding its way down to the river, looping lower and lower like a fly fisherman’s line until unexpectedly the cab crossed the stonework bridge and they were in the narrow streets of the Old City.

Michaelmas loved Switzerland. He loved the whole idea of Switzerland. He sat back among the cushions with the cab’s sunroof open at his request. He beamed through the rented windows at the people going about their business and out of the fairy-tale buildings that were still preserved, with hidden steel beams and other subtle interval reconstructions, among the newer modern buildings that were so much more efficient and economical to erect from scratch.

“The escape capsule wreckage has not been reported as yet,” Domino said. “There have only been a few daylight hours for the helicopters to be out. In any case, we can expect it to be under a considerable accumulation of snow, and not indicative of anything of value to us. If Limberg can produce a genuine Norwood, he can produce genuine wreckage.”

“Quite so,” Michaelmas said. “I don’t expect it to tell us anything. But it would be nice if I were the first newsman to report it.”

“I am on all local communications channels,” Domino said tartly, “and am also making the requisite computations. I have been doing that since before arranging your hotel reservations.”

“Didn’t mean to question your professional competence,” Michaelmas said. He chuckled aloud, and the cab driver said:

“ Ja, mein Herr, it is a day to feel young again.” He winked into the rear-view mirror. It was a moment before Michaelmas realized they had been driving by an academy for young ladies in blue jumpers and white wool blouses, and in their later teens. Michaelmas obligingly turned in his seat and peered back through the rear window at sun-browned legs in football-striped calf socks scampering two by two up the old white steps to class. But to be young again would have been an unbearable price.

The suite in the Excelsior spoke of matured grace and cultivated taste. Michaelmas looked around approvingly as the captain supervised the bustling of the boys with his luggage and the plod of the grey old chambermaid with his towels. When they were all done and he was sated with wandering from room to room through open doorways, he found the most comfortable drawing-room chair and sank into it. Putting his feet on an ottoman, he called downstairs for coffee and pastry. He had about fifteen minutes before his crew director was due. He said to Domino: “All right, I suppose there are certain things we have to take care of before we get back to the main schedule.”

“Yes,” Domino said unflinchingly.

“All right, let’s get to it.”

“President Fefre.”

Michaelmas grinned. “What’s he done now?” Fefre was chief of state in one of the small African nations. He was a Harvard graduate in economics, had a knife scar running from his right temple to the left side of his jaw, and had turned Moslem for the purpose of maintaining a number of wives in the capital palace. He sold radium, refined in a Chinese-built plant, to anyone who would pay for it, running it out to the airport in little British trucks over roads built with American money. He had cut taxes back to zero, closed all but one newspaper, and last month had imprisoned the seventy-two-year-old head of his air force as a revolutionary.

Domino said : “The Victorious Soviet People’s Engineering Team has won the contract to design and build the hydro-electric dam at the foot of Lake Egendi, despite being markedly underbid by General Dynamics. A hundred thousand roubles in gold has been deposited to Fefre’s pseudonymous account in the Uruguayan Peasant Union Bank. It would be no problem to arrange a clerical error that would bring all this to light.”

Michaelmas chuckled. “No, no, let him go. The bank needs the working capital and, besides, I like his style. Anything else?”

“The source of funds for the Turkish Greatness Party is the United Arab Republic.”

“Imagine that. You sure?”

“Quite. The Turkish National Bank has recently gone into fully computerized operation, with connections of course to London, Paris, Rome, Cairo, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, and so forth. The Continental Bank and Trust Company of Chicago is in correspondence with all those, as part of the international major monetary exchange body, and is also the major and almost sole stockholder in the State Bank and trust Company of Wilmette, Illinois, where I have one of my earliest links. When Turkey joined that network I immediately began a normal series of new data integrations. I now have all the resulting correlations, and that’s one of them.”

“Do you mean to say the Arabs are paying the Turks by cheque?”

“I mean to say there’s a limit to the number of gold pieces one can stuff into a mattress. Sooner or later someone has to put it somewhere safe, and when he does, of course, I find it.”

“Yes, yes,” Michaelmas said. He had a very clear picture in his mind of suave, dark, blue-eyed gentlemen in white silk suits and French sunglasses passing canvas bags that rustled to somewhat rougher-looking people in drophead Bentleys by the light of the desert moon. Gentlemen who in turn paid for their petrol on a Shell card and booked air passage from El Fasher to Adana against personal checks which would be covered by deposit of lira notes which had trickled through the weave of the moneybags. On balance, if you had a mind like Domino’s and knew all credit card numbers, the flight times of all airliners, and the vital statistics of all gentlemen known to engage in the buying and selling of other gentlemen and submachine-guns, in all portions of the world, there was no great trick to it. “I know you can take a joke,” he said to Domino. “But sometimes I do wish you could understand a jest.”

“Life,” said Domino, “is too short.”

“Yours?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” Michaelmas pondered for a moment. “Well, I don’t think we need any expansionist revolutions in Turkey. The idea of armoured cavalry charging the gates of Vienna again is liable to be too charming to too many people. Break that up, next opportunity.” Michaelmas looked at his watch.“All right. Any more?”

“US Always has learned that Senator Stever is getting twenty-five thousand dollars a year from that north-western lumber combine. USA’s Washington office made a phone call reporting it to Hanrassy’s national headquarters at Cape Girardeau.”

“In that simple-minded code of theirs? If they’re planning to save the whole country from the rest of the world, you’d think they’d learn to respect cryptanalysis. Any information on what they’re planning to do with this leverage?”

“Nothing definite. But that brings to six the total of senior Senators definitely in their pockets, plus their ideological adherents. This is not a good time for USA to be gaining in power. Furthermore, although it’s very early in the morning in Missouri, Hanrassy’s known to work through the night quite often. I won’t be surprised if a Senatorial inquiry starts today on why Colonel Norwood wasn’t immediately reinstated as head of the Trans-Martian flight. Even allowing for her intake of amphetamines, Hanrassy’s annoyingly energetic.”

“Better she than someone with staying power. But I think we’d better take this committee chairman pawn away from her. Sam Lemoyne’s still on the night side for the Times-Mirror. It’d be good if he got the idea to go buy a drink for that beachboy Stever beat up in his apartment last year.” “I’ll drop him a note,” Domino said.

It was nearly eight o’clock. “All right, unless there’s a real emergency, go ahead and follow standard practice with anything else that’s pending.” With the passage of time, Domino was beginning to learn more and more about how Michaelmas’s mind worked. He didn’t like it, but he could follow it when instructed. That fact was the only thing that let Michaelmas contemplate the passage of time with less than panic.