The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(91)

Johanna emerged from the trees, holding a curious kind of machine-pistol of a brand I had never seen before.

‘What’s new, *-cat?’ I quavered valiantly. She planted a wifely but perfunctory kiss on my cheek before trotting over to the ha-ha to seek out any further fiends in human shape. She found none. We took the chap with the sore eye back to the College with us.

Over a cup of tea in the Commandant’s office, or ‘den’ as she chose to call it, we chatted of this and that. Johanna’s cup of tea was what she calls a ‘General Montgomery’, which is a fearful kind of dry Martini and so called because the proportion of gin to vermouth is twelve to one. Mine was a richly-deserved Red Hackle De Luxe – a fluid expressly designed to twitch people back from the very edge of the grave – while the Commandant was demurely sipping neat Navy rum. The actual teapot seethed unloved upon its tray.

‘Look,’ I said. They looked, politely.

‘Look, why were those awful people trying to kill me, eh? Eh?’

‘They weren’t,’ said the Commandant crisply.

‘Well, you would certainly have had me fooled.’

‘Charlie dear, they were not trying to kill you in particular is what Sibyl means. Yes, dear, this is Sibyl but you must continue to call her Madam while you’re here. (Oh Charlie, dear, please don’t let your mouth hang open like that.) They were infiltrating the Command Post, you see.’ I didn’t see.

‘Where’s that?’ I asked.

‘Why, here, dear.’

‘No no no, quite wrong, this is Dingley Dell College, ask anyone.’

‘Well, yes, dear, but it’s a few other things as well. All sorts of things, in fact.’

I had a nasty feeling that someone would soon say that I should not trouble my pretty head with such things, so I shut up.

‘In fact,’ Johanna said with becoming modesty, ‘it was probably me they were hoping to kill. I was kind of expecting it, you know? That’s why I wasn’t at dinner last night, sitting on – OK, at – Sibyl’s right hand. I arrived here just after dawn, when Fiona would have locked her doggies up, and spent the day in the plantation or whatever you call it in Britain and there I was, just in time to save your life, wasn’t I, darling?’

‘Indeed you were,’ I said bitterly. ‘Indeed you were. Forgive me for not having thanked you at the time. Let’s see, how many times does that make?’

She gave me a long, level look which should have stuck out between my shoulder-blades but I was not abashed for I have received many such looks in my career. It takes a very long and level look indeed to abash a dealer in Old Master paintings.

‘Who, then,’ I asked curtly, ‘were these avenging angels? Mere fortune-hunters? Cast-off lovers? I feel I have a right to know, you know.’

This time she raised an eyebrow. Long, level looks I can cope with, but when Johanna raises an eyebrow strong men have been known to rend their garments. I quailed. My question had been in bad taste.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘They were from 14K.’

‘That’s 14, Quai d’Orsay?’ I asked brightly. ‘Assassination rules; Au Quai?’ They looked at me. I fancy I did a spot more quailing.

‘No, Charlie dear, it means Number 14, Po Wah Road, Canton, China. That used to be the headquarters of a sort of Tong – they call them Triads now in the newspapers – formed by the old Nationalist Government or, to be exact, by Madam Chiang, Sun Yat Sen’s grand-daughter, which amounts to the same thing – in 1945 as a “bulwark against Communism”. They’re still anti-Communist but they have kind of diversified their operations in the last twenty years or so. They’re into the Golden Triangle in a big way now.’

I both boggled and blushed, as any chap would who has shared many a loving jest with his bride about her being a natural blonde. She gave me another of the looks; there was little kindness in it.

‘Charlie, even you must have heard of the Golden Triangle; it is the opium-growing area bounded by the hill-country of Burma, Laos and Thailand. You must have realized what all those nasty little wars are about. Well, 14K desperately needs acetic anhydride and they can only get it from us. Now do you see?’

‘No,’ I said frankly.

‘Oh, golly. Acetic anhydride is for refining morphine. It’s essential. Refining opium into morphine reduces its bulk and increases its value; refining morphine into heroin does the same – in spades. You can buy a kilo of Number Three in Bangkok for a couple of hundred pounds; as heroin in Hong Kong it’s worth maybe ￡6000 wholesale, which means, say ￡30,000 on the streets. If you can get it to Amsterdam you can triple that, even after paying off the narcotics-gendarmes who have starving mistresses and a mortgage to support. In New York …’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘I know all that, although the prices seem to rise every week. And I know about the Police Sergeant in Hong Kong who has fifty-six bank accounts, too. But when I said “No” I meant “No, I don’t know who this ‘us’ is – I mean this ‘us’ who has a half-Nelson on the acetic what-d’ye-call-it.” Who, in fact, is this “us?” ’ I asked with a fine disregard for the niceties of the English tongue. She exchanged a quick glance with the Commandant.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, well, I guess you might as well know. “Us” are – oh, hell, you’ve got me doing it now – we are – or rather we’re friends with – the Woh Singh Wo, probably the most ancient Tong in China.’