Anthony Burgess: Tremor of Intent

'Oh, there's time. Time for the vimanam and the akaya-vimanam. Mor and the taddinam and the Yaman.'

'Yaman? That's the god of death.'

'It's just a name. My room is 47. Wait there.'

'Let's go to mine,' said Hillier.

'No. I have the instruments of the Yaman. Wait for me there. I must perform the triple washing of the vay.' Hillier noticed that she had a little waterproof bag on the chair by the bath. There would be other engines there than those of the Yaman. He went to her room. It was as seedy as his own, but her presence rode it strongly, sneering at the accidents of decay. He washed himself in cold water from her basin and briskly dried himself. Then he got into her bed (the sheets must be her own: crisp black linen) and waited. In five minutes she came to him, plunging into bed naked from the very door.

'It's no good,' said Hillier, after the simple movements of the vimanam. 'I want something too direct and easy and tender for you. I want a simple tune, not a full orchestra. It's just the way I am.'

She went cold and stiff beneath him. 'A little English girl,' she said. 'Blonde and trembling and talking about love.'

'She never talked about love,' said Hillier. 'She left that to me.'

With a swift muscular convulsion she rejected him. He uas not sorry to be rejected. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'You'd better go.' The voice was glacial. 'Mr Theodor escu said something about business first, dinner after. He'll see you in your room as you requested. He asked me to see that you have drinks sent up. Not raki. It can go on his bill, he told me to tell you. And now get out of here.'

Hillier sat in his room waiting. The marine sky insinuated itself, through phases of pink and madder, into a velvet transformation. Stars over the Golden Horn, its gold in darkness now like the gold of Byzantium. On the table by the balcony were whisky, gin, cognac, mineral water, ice, and a box of cigarettes whose paper was like silk and whose tobacco tasted like burnt cream. Hillier checked his gun once more and placed it in the right-hand pocket of his moygashel jacket. He waited.

Theodorescu entered without knocking. He was in a lounge suit and silk shirt; he smelled of an ideal Orient, not the gamy real Asia that started here east of the Bosporus. He was huge; his baldness was massive smoothed stone; he was urbane, genial, saying: 'I'm sorry you've had to wait, my dear Hillier. There were things in Athens that had to be seen to. Miss Devi entertained you, I take it? No? You seem very serious, glum almost. This is not the naked Hillier I knew and respected on shipboard.' There were chairs on either side of the drink-table. Theodorescu took a whole gill of whisky; ice clinked in with the tones of a tiny celeste.

'You respect me no longer?' said Hillier. 'Now that I'm going to give you something for nothing? Now that I'm going to give you everything for nothing?'

'My trade is a crude one. I'm used to buying and selling only. I doubt if anybody's ever genuinely given me something for nothing. Presents, bribes – those are different. There's a tag, isn't there, about dona ferentes? You say you have things to give me. What do you want in return?'

'Release,' said Hillier. 'I've a burden to jettison. A general confession that justifies my staying alive. Do you understand me?'

Theodorescu shone both eyes full on him. 'I think I do. You're turning me into a priest. I'm honoured, I suppose. And now I have to take the burden over. I see. I see. I see why you wanted no mechanical recorders. Well, go slowly – that's all I ask.'

'A confession,' said Hillier. 'But also a gift horse. I'll take my own time.'

'Begin, then. Bless me, father, for I have sinned-' Hillier did not answer his smile; Theodorescu ceased smiling.

'That's not for you. But this is, these are.' And he started. 'The identity of Avenel is H. Glendinning of Seyton House, Strand-on-the-Green, London. Abu Ibn Sina, known to the Baghdad police, runs the radio station known as Radio Avicenna. The three international saboteurs who call themselves the Adullamites are Horsman, Lowe, and Grosvenor; you will know the names, I think.'

'Indeed. Hypocrites.' He took another gill of whisky. 'Pray continue.'

'Operation Aegir is to be mounted near Gellivare six months from now. H. J. Prince, at Charlinch near Bridg-water, Somerset, England, is in charge of a training school for subversion called Agapemone. A pocket television transmitter called, for some reason, Nur-al-Nihar, is in process of development at a station near El Maghra, southwest of Alexandria. Twin missiles named Aholah and Aholibah are near completion on the Jordan border, east of Beersheba. The assassin of Sergei Timofeyevich Aksakov is in retirement at Fribourg; he goes under the name of Chichikov-a pretty touch. T. B. Aldrich, an importer, runs our station at Christinestad; he is in radio contact with GRT, as it's called, which is in the Valdai Hills, south of Staraya Russa. The scheme known as Almagest is already being mounted at Kinloch on Rhum Island. Escape route Gotha starts three miles north-west of Cöpenick. Barlow, Trumbull, Humphreys and Hopkins, a so-called pop-group named the Anarchists, have plans of the San Antonio installations in a villa outside Hartford.'

'Are you sure of that?'

'One can never be totally sure. They may have other things too. That's why there's been no pounce as yet.'

'I doubt if I shall remember more than a fraction of all this. You're a hard man, Mr Hillier.'

'C. Babbage is in charge of the Cambridge team which is developing the Zenith PRT calculator. A very corruptible man. John Balfour of Burley leads the Cameronian sect with its headquarters in Groningen – mad but potentially dangerous. The Nero Caesar cryptogram has been broken by Richard Swete in Tarante The sea-trials of the Bergomask have been indefinitely postponed. Watch very carefully the activities of the Bismarck Group in Fried-richsruh. The Black Book of the Admiralty has disappeared: don't try and sell that to the press. Rolf Boldrewood is forging roubles in Bolt Court off Fleet Street, London. The air-exercise known as Britomart will be photographing the base at Varazdin. An atomiser-gun provisionally named Cacodemon is being tested at Gonville Hall. The French nuclear scheme is phased according to the revolutionary months. Completion stage is designated Fructidor. At present the Thermidorian tumbrils are coming – that was the message received.'

'Good God.' Theodorescu had finished three-quarters of the whisky.

'Watch Portugal. Leodogrance has, we gather, seen plans of an ICBM called Lusus. But Leodogrance was raving from the cellars at Santarem. Watch Spain. There are rumours of what is known as a Pan-Iberian doctrine being drafted underground at Leganes. There are some very strange installations at Badajoz, Brozas, and in camps in Southern Pontevedra.'

'That I knew.'

'That you knew. But you didn't know that Colvin was in Leningrad as a fur-buyer. Nor that a certain Edmund Curll is fabricating indecent photographs to compromise Kosygin. His shop is on Canonbury Avenue, London, N.i. Our agents in Yugoslavia are at Prijepolje, Mitrovica, Krusevac, Novi Sad, Osijek, Ivanic and Mostar. They all give English lessons. The password till September 1 is Zoonomia.'

'Please spell that.'

'The UAR call their long-term anti-Israelite attrititive scheme by the Koranic name of Alexander the Great-Dhul'karnain. Hence arms-dumps are indicated by the sign of the two horns. Johann Döllinger has recently been expelled from the underground neo-Nazi Welter ob erungs- bund. He drinks all day in a rooming-house on Schaum-kammstrasse, Munich. The Druidical movement in Anglesey is not to be laughed off: it is financed by Böltger and Kandier, late of Dresden. Laurence Eusden was seen with a Moorish boy in Tangier.'