'A mite tricky, this one, Nigel. A mite softly-softly-catchee-monkey frankly.'

'Well, watch yourself,' Stormont advised him, with appropriate gravity.

Gulliver had recently been sighted by one of Phoebe Maltby's bridge wives on the arm of a gorgeous Panamanian girl. She was twenty if a day, said the bridge wife, and darling, black as your hat. Phoebe proposed to warn her husband at an appropriate moment.

Paddy had gone to bed. Stormont could hear her coughing as he went upstairs.

Sounds as though I'll be going to the Schoenbergs alone, he thought. The Schoenbergs were Yankee and civilised. Elsie was a heavy-duty lawyer who kept flying back to Miami to fight dramatic court cases. Paul was CIA and one of the people who mustn't know that Andrew Osnard was a Friend.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

'Pendel. To see the President.'

'Who?'

'His tailor. Me.'

The Palace of Herons stands at the heart of the Old City on a spit of land across the bay from Punta Paitilla. To drive to it from the other side of the bay is to be whisked from a developers' inferno to the filth and elegance of seventeenth-century colonial Spain. It is surrounded by appalling slums, but a careful selection of the route eliminates their existence. This morning, in front of the ancient porch, a ceremonial bra.s.s band played Strauss to a row of empty diplomatic cars and parked police motorcycles. The bandsmen wore white helmets and white uniforms, white gloves. Their instruments glistened like white gold. Torrents of rain flowed down their necks from the inadequate awning stretched above them. The double doors were guarded by bad charcoal suits.

Other white-gloved hands took Pendel's suitcase and pa.s.sed it through an electronic scanner. He was beckoned to a scaffold. Standing on it he wondered whether spies in Panama were shot or hanged. The gloved hands returned the suitcase. The scaffold declared him harmless. The great secret agent had been admitted to the citadel.

'This way, please,' said a tall black G.o.d.

'I know,' said Pendel proudly.

A marble fountain played at the centre of a marble floor. Milk-white herons strutted in the spray, pecking at whatever caught their fancy. From floor-level cages in the wall more herons scowled at pa.s.sers-by. And well they might, thought Pendel, remembering the story that Hannah insisted on hearing several times a week. In 1977 when Jimmy Carter came to Panama to ratify the new Ca.n.a.l Treaties, secret service men sprayed the Palace with a disinfectant that preserved presidents but killed herons. In a top-secret emergency operation the corpses were removed and live lookalikes flown down from Chitre under cover of darkness.

'Your name, please?'

'Pendel.'

'Your business, please?'

He waited, remembering railway stations when he was a child: too many big people hurrying past him in too many directions, and his suitcase always in the way. A kind lady was addressing him. Turning to her, he thought it must be Marta because of her beautiful voice. Then light fell across her face and it wasn't smashed, and he saw by the label on her Brownie suit that she was a presidential virgin named Helen.

'It is heavy?' she asked.

'Light as a feather,' he a.s.sured her courteously, rejecting her virginal hand.

Following her up the great stairs, Pendel exchanged the radiance of marble for the deep red dark of mahogany. More bad suits with earphones eyed him from pillared doorways. The virgin was telling him he had chosen a busy day.

'Whenever the President comes back we are always busy,' she said, raising her eyes to Heaven where she lived.

Ask about his missing hours in Hong Kong, Osnard had said. h.e.l.l d'he get up to in Paris? Man s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g or conspiring?

'As far as here, we are under Colombian rule,' the virgin was informing him, pointing her blameless hand at rows of early Panamanian governors. 'From here on, we are under the United States. Soon we shall be under ourselves.'

'Great,' said Pendel enthusiastically. 'High time too.'

They entered a panelled hall like a library without books. A honey smell of floor polish rose at him. A beeper sounded on the virgin's belt. He was alone.

Whole gaps in his itinerary. Find out about his missing hours.

And remained alone, and upright, clutching his suitcase. The yellow-covered chairs round the walls were too flimsy for a mere convict to sit on. Imagine breaking one. Bang goes remission. Days turn to weeks but if there's one thing Harry Pendel knows, it's how to do time. He'll stand here for the rest of his life if he must, suitcase in hand, waiting for them to call his name.

A great pair of doors was flung open behind him. A shaft of sunlight burst into the room, accompanied by a tattoo of busy footsteps and male voices of authority. Careful to make no disrespectful movement, Pendel sidled beneath a fat-faced governor from our Colombian period and druckened himself until he became a wall enc.u.mbered by a suitcase.

The approaching posse was a dozen strong and poly-glot. Excited s.n.a.t.c.hes of Spanish, j.a.panese and English resounded above the clatter of impatient shoes on parquet. The posse moved at politician speed: much bustle and circ.u.mstance, chattering like school kids freed from detention. Uniform was dark suits, the tone self-congratulatory, the formation, Pendel noticed as it thundered closer, arrowhead. And at its point, elevated a foot or two above the ground, floated a larger-than-lifesize embodiment of the Sun King himself, the All Pervading, the Shining One, the Divine Misser of Hours, dressed in a P&B black jacket, striped trousers and a pair of Ducker's black calf town with the toecaps.

A roseate glow, part-sanct.i.ty and part-gastronomy, suffused the presidential cheeks. The full head of hair was silvered, the lips were small and pink and moist, as if newly s.n.a.t.c.hed from the maternal breast. The neat cornflower eyes were shining in the afterglow of conference achieved. Reaching Pendel, the posse pulled to a ragged halt and there was business and a bit of shoving in the ranks as some kind of order was pragmatically arrived at. His Sublimity strode forward, turned on his heel and faced his guests. An aide labelled Marco placed himself at his master's side. A virgin in Brownie costume joined them. Her name was not Helen but Juanita.

One by one the guests ventured forward to shake the Immortal One's hand and take their leave. His Radiance had a word of encouragement for each. If there had been gift-wrapped favours to take home to their mummies, Pendel would not have been surprised. Meanwhile the great spy is torturing himself with fears about the contents of his suitcase. What if the finishing hands have packed the wrong suit? He sees himself drawing back the lid to reveal Hannah's Bo-Peep costume that the Cuna women have run up for Carlita Rudd's fancy-dress birthday party: flowered bell skirt, frilly hat, blue pantaloons. He longs to take a rea.s.suring look, but dare not. The farewells continued. Two of the guests, being j.a.panese, were small. The President was not. Some handshakes took place on the slope.

'It's a deal, then. Golf on Sat.u.r.day,' His Supremacy promised, in the grey monotone so beloved of his children. A j.a.panese gentleman was promptly convulsed with laughter.

Other fortunates were singled out - 'Marcel, thank you for your support, we shall meet again in Paris then! Paris in the spring! - Don Pablo, be sure to give my greetings to your distinguished President and tell him I shall value the opinion of his National Bank -' until the last of the group had departed, the doors closed, the shaft of light vanished and there was no one in the room but His Immensity, one suave aide named Marco and the virgin named Juanita. And one wall with a suitcase.

Together, the trio turned and advanced down the room with the Sun King at its centre. Its destination was the presidential sanctum. The doors to it were not three feet from where Pendel stood. He hoisted a smile and, suitcase in hand, took a step forward. The silvered head lifted and turned in his direction, but the cornflower eyes saw only wall. The trio swept past him, the sanctum doors closed. Marco returned.

'Are you the tailor?'

'I am indeed, Senor Marco, and at His Excellency's service.'

'Wait.'

Pendel waited, as must all who only stand and serve. Years pa.s.sed. The doors opened again.

'Make haste,' Marco ordered.

Ask about his missing hours in Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

A carved gold screen has been erected in one corner of the room. Gilded ges...o...b..ws adorn each fretted corner. Gold roses tumble down the staves. Backlit by the window, His Transparency stands regally before it in his black jacket and striped trousers. The presidential palm is as soft as an old lady's but larger. Making contact with its silken cushions, Pendel has a memory of his Auntie Ruth chopping chicken for the Sunday soup while Benny sings 'Celeste Aida' at the upright piano.

'Welcome back, sir, after your arduous tour,' Pendel murmurs through a chicane of glottal obstructions.

But it is uncertain whether the World's Greatest Leader receives the full force of this strangled greeting because Marco has handed him a cordless red telephone and he is already speaking into it.

'Franco? Don't bother me with that stuff. Tell her she needs a lawyer. See you at the reception tonight. Catch my ear.'

Marco removes the red telephone. Pendel opens his suitcase. Not a Bo-Peep costume but a half-made tail suit with discreetly reinforced breast panels to bear the weight of twenty orders sleeps safely in its scented tissue coffin. The virgin makes a silent exit as the Master of the Earth takes up his post behind the gold screen with its mirrored interior. It is an ancient artefact of the Palace. The silver head so beloved of its people vanishes and reappears as the presidential trousers are removed.

'If His Excellency would be so kind,' Pendel murmurs.

A presidential hand appears round the side of the gold screen. Pendel lays the basted black trousers over the presidential forearm. Arm and trousers disappear. More phones ring. Ask about his missing hours.

'It's the Spanish Amba.s.sador, Excellency,' Marco calls from the desk. 'Wants a private audience.'

'Tell him tomorrow night after the Taiwanese.'

Pendel stands face to face with the Lord of the Universe: the Grand Master of Panama's political chessboard, the man who holds the keys to one of the world's two greatest gateways, determines the future of world trade and the balance of global power in the twenty-first century. Pendel inserts two fingers inside the presidential waistband while Marco announces another caller, one Manuel.

'Tell him Wednesday,' the President retorts over the top of the screen.

'Morning or afternoon?'

'Afternoon,' the President replies.

The presidential waistline is elusive. If the crotch is right, the trouser-length is wrong. Pendel raises the waist. The trousers rise above the presidential silk sockline, so that for a moment he looks like Charlie Chaplin.

'Manuel says afternoon is okay as long as it's only nine holes,' Marco warns his master severely.

Suddenly nothing stirs. What Pendel described to Osnard as a blessed truce amid the fray has descended over the sanctum. n.o.body speaks. Not Marco, not the President nor his many telephones. The great spy is kneeling, pinning the presidential left trouser leg, but his wits do not desert him.

'And may I enquire of His Excellency with respect whether we were able to relax during our highly triumphant Far Eastern tour at all, sir? Some sport perhaps? A walk? A little shopping, if I may make so bold?'

And still no phone rings, nothing disturbs the blessed truce while the Keeper of the Keys to Global Power considers his reply.

'Too tight,' he announces. 'You make me too tight, Mr Braithwaite. Why won't you let your President breathe, you tailors?'

'"Harry," he says to me, "those parks they've got in Paris, I'd do the same for Panama tomorrow if it wasn't for the property developers and the Communists."'

'Wait.' Osnard turned a page of his notebook, writing hard.

They were on the fourth floor of a three-hour hotel called the Paraiso in a bustling part of town. Across the road, an illuminated Coca-Cola sign turned off and on, now flooding the room with red flames, now leaving it in darkness. From the corridor came the stampede of arriving and departing couples. Through the adjoining walls, groans of chagrin or delight and the accelerating thump of eager bodies.

'He didn't say,' said Pendel cautiously. 'Not in as many words.'

'Don't paraphrase, mind? Just give it me the way he said it.' Osnard licked a thumb and turned a page.

Pendel was seeing Dr Johnson's summerhouse on Hampstead Heath, the day he went there with Auntie Ruth for the azaleas.

' "Harry," he says to me, "that park in Paris, I wish I could remember its name. There was a little hut there with a wood roof, just us and the bodyguards and the ducks." The President loves his Nature. "And it was there in that hut that history was made. And one day, if all goes according to plan, there'll be a plaque on the wooden wall telling the world that on this very spot the future prosperity, wellbeing and independence of the fledgling state of Panama was determined, plus the date." '

'Say who he was talking to? j.a.ps, Frogs, Chinese? Didn't just sit there and talk to the flowers, did he?'

'Not as such, Andy. There were clues.'

'Give 'em to me -' licking his thumb again, a small slurp.

' "Harry, you'll have to protect me on this one, but the brilliance of the oriental mind is a total revelation to me, plus the French aren't far behind."'

'Say what kind of oriental?'

'Not as such.'

'j.a.panese? Chinese? Malaysian?'

'Andy, I fear you are trying to put thoughts into my head which were not there before.'

No sound except for the shriek of traffic, the clank and heave of air-conditioners, the canned music to drown the clank and heave. Latin voices yelling above the music. Osnard's ballpoint speeding over the pages of his notebook.

'And Marco didn't like you?'

'He never did, Andy.'

'Why not?'

'Palace courtiers don't like Turco tailors enjoying one-to-one pow-wows with their bosses, Andy. They don't like, "Marco, Mr Pendel and I haven't spoken for an age and we've got a lot to catch up with, so be a good lad and go and stand the other side of that mahogany door till I give you a shout -" do they?'

'Is he a poof?'

'Not so far as my knowledge extends, Andy, but I haven't asked him and it's not my business.'

'Take him out to dinner. Show him a time, give him a cut rate on a suit. Sounds like the sort o' chap we ought to have on our side. Anything about traditional anti-Yankee feeling raising its head among the j.a.ps?'

'Zero, Andy.'

'j.a.ps as the world's next superpower?'

'No, Andy.'

'Natural leader o' the emerging industrial states? - still no? j.a.p-Yank animosity? - Panama's got to choose between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea? - Pres feels like the ham in the sandwich - that type o' thing? - no?'

'Nothing above the normal in that regard, Andy, not on j.a.pan, no. Well, there was just the one reference, Andy, now that it comes back to me.'

Osnard brightened.

' "Harry," he says to me, "all I pray is, that I never-never never again have to sit down in a room with j.a.ps one side of the table and Yanks the other because keeping the peace between them puts years onto my life, as you can see from my poor grey hairs," although I'm not sure that hair's all his own, to be frank. I think it's helped.'

'Chatty, was he?'

'Andy, it was pouring out of him. Once he's got that screen round him there's no holding him. And if he ever gets onto Panama as all the world's p.a.w.n, it's the morning gone.'

'How about his missing hours in Tokyo?'

Pendel was shaking his head. Gravely. 'I'm sorry, Andy. There we have to draw a veil,' he said, and turned his head towards the window in stoical refusal.

Osnard's pen had stopped in mid-caress. The Coca-Cola sign across the road switched him on and off.

'h.e.l.l's the matter with you?' he demanded.

'He's my third President, Andy,' Pendel replied to the window.