The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(106)

I looked at my watch and stifled a well-bred yawn.

‘Mr Ree,’ I said, ‘you have frightened me, as you intended. This was unnecessary for I was already frightened. Your dossier is right in one respect: I am sensible. Tell me some of the truth. We both know that you can and will kill me later if you decide to do so – and unless I contrive to kill you first, which has no part in my plans at present. Meanwhile, perhaps I might have just a touch more of that delicious malt whisky? And enough plausible facts to persuade me to part with the toothpowder, eh?’

How brave I was, to be sure. Mr Ree passed me a Kleenex. I mopped the sweat off my forehead. He began to utter.

‘Your wife is Johanna Mortdecai,’ he told me. Well, I knew that, of course, but I wasn’t about to walk into any straight-line situations; I didn’t even nod.

‘She is the chief financier – forgive me, financière? – of the Women’s Domination Society; arso, Deputy Head of it.’

‘You mean Women’s Liberation, don’t you?’ I said in the embarrassed tones one uses to foreigners who get words wrong.

‘No, Mr Mortdecai. Women’s Riberation is a piece of sirriness which was froated to, ah, test the temperature of the water and to mask the rear movement. It was instructive to see how many sirry women were prepared to, shall we say, cut off their bras to spite their breasts.’ He had made a joke. I smiled, not showing the teeth. ‘Quite agree,’ I said. ‘I mean, if God hadn’t meant us to wear trusses, he wouldn’t have given us ruptures, would he?’ He didn’t smile.

‘The Women’s Domination Society is very serious. It is probabry the richest private organization in the world; even richer than the Parestinian Popurar Front – with whom they happen to be friends.’ I was about to say something valiant about how little I cared for the riches and murderous capacity of the PFLP when I recalled that, some forty years ago, I had promised an aged aunt never to tell a lie. (This was in exchange for a tin of Mackintosh’s Quality Street Toffee Selection. Those toffees are long gone – nor would I find them toothsome in this my middle age – but a Mortdecai’s promise, even to an aunt, is not to be paltered with.) So I held my tongue.

‘They intend,’ continued Mr Lee, ‘to assume controh of the world.’ I gave him that look – often practised before the mirror – which I give to players at stud poker who back into the betting on the fourth card. He was unimpressed.

‘How can they not win?’ he asked. ‘First, the terrifying American middre-aged woman controhs quite three-fifths of the wealth of the richest country in the world. Second, the women “behind the curtain” – in the harems of the Musrim world – controh wealth which even Zurich could not count. Third, the female interrectuals of Israel and India have their poriticah worlds by the, ah, borrocks. Fourth, women have the insensate drive of the castration comprex; the same knowledge of inferiority which makes rittre men into tyrants. Arexander the Great was incapable with women; Attira the Hun died trying to achieve an erection; Naporeon had an absurdry small penis (36mm – it was sold at Sotheby’s a few years ago) and Adorf Hitrer, as all the world knows, had onry one testicre.’

I shifted uneasily in my chair; he was talking the kind of lunacy which often makes better sense than sense does. Also, I was frantically trying to convert mirrimetres into inches – feet? – in my head.

‘Fifth,’ he said, spreading his beautifully-tapered fingers on the desk, ‘who is to oppose them? Is there one state – other than China – which is not rotten from top to bottom? Can you name one poritician in office who is a strong man – a statesman?’

This was not a rhetorical question; he paused to give me time to answer. I took that time.

‘No,’ is what I finally said. He nodded a few mirrimetres.

‘Sixth and last, they have friends, as I have said. Most of all, they have us.’

‘Who are “us”?’

‘Issyvoo.’

I boggled as I had never boggled in my life before. ‘Issyvoo,’ surely, was what the Berliners used to call Christopher Isherwood, the man who will go down to fame as the chap who made the joke about ‘the last of the small Spenders’. I allowed myself to raise an eyebrow. He spelled it out for me.

‘ICWU. The International Chinese Waiters Union. No, prease do not raugh. Our union – we do not call it that but you would not be interested in its reah name – is the only trury internationah organization in the world. Arso, it is the only Union with no absurd poritical affiriations. Arso, it is the onry Union where the emproyers are equah members with the emproyees. They have to be. Most important of all, it is the only union which has no trouble with brackregs. Such people are given one hour in which to understand that the union is their mother and father. The crever ones understand this in much ress than one hour. The stupid ones; we send a present of money to their families – and a souvenir.’

‘Like, say, an ear?’ I ventured.

‘Something of that sort, yes. But annoyances of that kind do not often happen nowadays. We Chinese, as the world knows, are inveterate gambrers; when you go to your favourite Chinese restaurant and find that it has changed hands it arways means that the owner has lost it at the gaining table.’

‘I knew that,’ I said.

‘The new owner is onry a manager, you understand. He now owes the union a great deah of money, as do all the waiters, according to their station in rife. You understand that all this calls for heavy financing, far more than the union dues can suppry. Your charming rady wife suppries this through her organization. Partry by supporting our cash-flow, partry through making avairable her capable young radies as couriers so that we can, ah, adjust the supply of medicines internationarry. I think that is all you need to know, ah?’