'So?'

'So I won't do it. I can't.'

'Can't do what, f.u.c.k's sake?'

'Reconcile it with my conscience. Gra.s.s.'

'Are you out o' your mind? This is gold-dust, man. We're talking major, major bonus. Tell me what Pres said to you about his missing j.a.panese hours while he was trying on his b.l.o.o.d.y knickers!'

It took Pendel much heart-searching to overcome his reticence. But he managed it. His shoulders fell, he loosened, his gaze returned to the room.

' "Harry," he says to me, "if your customers ever ask you why I had such a light schedule in Tokyo, you're please to tell them that while my wife was inspecting a silk factory with the Empress I was having myself my first ever piece of j.a.panese tail" - which is not an expression I would use, Andy, as you know, neither in the shop, nor in the home -"because in that way, Harry, my friend," he says to me, "you will raise my stock in certain circles here in Panama, while putting other elements off the scent regarding the real nature of my activities and the highly secret talks I was conducting on the side, for the ultimate good of Panama despite what many may think."'

'h.e.l.l did he mean by that?'

'He was referring to certain threats that have been made against his person and suppressed in order not to alarm the public.'

'His words, Harry ol' boy, mind? Sound like the b.l.o.o.d.y Guardian on a wet Monday.'

Pendel was serene.

'There were no words, Andy. Not as such. Words were not needed.'

'Explain,' said Osnard while he wrote.

'The President wishes a special pocket inside the left breast of all his suits, to be added in total confidence. I'm to get the length of barrel from Marco. "Harry," he says, "don't think I'm being dramatic and never tell it to a living person. What I'm doing for the new emerging infant state of Panama which I love will cost me blood. I'm saying no more."'

From the street below, the jacka.s.s laughter of drunks rose at them like mockery.

'One king-sized bonus a.s.sured,' Osnard said, closing his notebook. 'What's the latest on Brother Abraxas!'

The same stage, a different setting. Osnard had found a flimsy bedroom chair and was sitting astride it with his podgy thighs spread and the backrest rising from his crotch.

'They're hard to define, Andy,' Pendel warned, pacing, hands behind his back.

'Who are, ol' boy?'

'The Silent Opposition.'

'I'll say they are.'

'They're holding their cards close to their chests.'

'h.e.l.l for? Democracy, isn't it? Why keep mum? Why not get up on their soapboxes, call out the students? h.e.l.l are they being silent about?'

'Let's just say Noriega taught them a sanitary lesson and they're not going to take the next one lying down. n.o.body's ever going to put Mickie in prison again.'

'Mickie's their leader. Right?'

'Morally and practically, Mickie is their leader, Andy, though he'll never admit it and neither will his silent supporters, neither will his students that he's in touch with or his people on the other side of the bridge.'

'And Rafi stakes them.'

'All the way.' Pendel turned back into the room.

Osnard pulled his notebook from his lap, propped it on the back of the chair, resumed his writing. 'List o' members anywhere? Got a platform? Set o' principles? What bonds 'em?'

'They're for cleaning up the country, one.' Pendel paused to let Osnard write. He was hearing Marta, loving her. He was seeing Mickie, sober and reconstructed in a new suit. His breast was filling with loyal pride. 'They're for furthering Panama's ident.i.ty as a single fledgling democracy when our Yanqui friends have finally upped sticks and left the scene if they ever do which is always doubtful, two. They're for educating the poor and needy, hospitals, improved university grants and a better deal for the poor farmers, rice and shrimp particularly, plus not selling off the country's a.s.sets to the highest bidder irregardless, including the Ca.n.a.l, three.'

'Lefties, are they?' Osnard suggested between bouts of composition while he sucked the plastic helmet of his ballpoint with his little rosebud mouth.

'Not more than is decent and healthy, thank you, Andy. Mickie is left-leaning, true. But moderation is his watchword plus he's got no time for Castro's Cuba or the Corns, no more has Marta.'

Osnard grimacing in concentration while he wrote. Pendel watching him with growing apprehension, wondering how to slow him down.

'I've heard quite a good joke about Mickie, if you want to know. He's in vino veritas but upside down. The more he drinks, the more he keeps silent in his opposition.'

'Tells you a whole lot when he's sober, though, doesn't he, our Mickie? You could hang him, some o' the stuff he's told you.'

'He's a friend, Andy. I don't hang my friends.'

'A good friend. And you've been a good friend to him. Maybe it's time you did something about it.'

'Like what?'

'Signing him up. Making an honest joe out o'him. Putting him on the payroll.'

'Mickie?'

'Not such a big deal. Tell him you've met this well-heeled Western philanthropist who admires his cause and would like to lend him a helping hand on the q.t. Don't have to say he's a Brit. Say he's a Yank.'

'Mickie, Andy?' Pendel whispered incredulously. ' "Mickie, would you like to be a spy?" Me go to Mickie and say that to him?'

'For money, why not? Fat man, fat salary,' Osnard said, as if stating an irrefutable law of espionage.

'Mickie wouldn't care for a Yank one bit,' said Pendel, wrestling with the enormity of Osnard's proposal. 'The invasion got right under his skin. State terrorism is how he calls it, and he's not referring to Panama.'

Osnard was using the chair as a rocking horse, coaxing it back and forth with his ample b.u.t.tocks.

'London's taken a shine to you, Harry. Doesn't always happen. Want you to spread your wings. Put a fullscale network together, cover the board. Ministries, students, trade unions, National a.s.sembly, Presidential Palace, Ca.n.a.l and more Ca.n.a.l. They'll pay you responsibility allowance, incentives, generous bonuses plus increased salary to set against your loan. Get Abraxas and his group aboard, we're home free.'

'We, Andy?'

Osnard's head remained gyroscopically still while the rump of him went on rocking, his voice sounded louder on account of being lowered.

'Me at your side. Guide, philosopher, chum. Can't handle it all alone. No one can. Too big a job.'

'I appreciate that, Andy. I respect it.'

'They'll pay subsources too. Goes without saying. Many as you've got. We could make a killing. You could. Long as it's cost effective. h.e.l.l's your problem?'

'I haven't got one, Andy.'

'So?'

So Mickie's my friend, he was thinking. Mickie's opposed enough already and he doesn't need to oppose any more. Silently or otherwise.

'I'll have to think about it, Andy.'

'n.o.body pays us to think, Harry.'

'All the same, Andy, it's who I am.'

There was one more subject on Osnard's agenda for that evening but Pendel didn't grasp this at first because he was remembering a warder called Friendly who was a master of the six-inch elbow jab to the b.a.l.l.s. That's who you remind me of, he was thinking. Friendly.

'Thursday's the day Louisa brings work home, right?'

'Thursdays is correct, Andy.'

Dismounting thigh by thigh from his rocking horse, Osnard fished in a pocket and extracted an ornate gold-plated cigarette lighter.

'Present from a rich Arab customer,' he said, handing it to Pendel where he stood at the centre of the room. 'London's pride. Try it.'

Pendel pressed the lever and it lit. He released the lever and the flame went out. He repeated the operation twice. Osnard took back the lighter, fondled its underparts, returned it.

'Now take a squiz through the lens,' he ordered with a magician's pride.

Marta's tiny flat had become Pendel's decompression chamber between Osnard and Bethania. She lay beside him, her face turned away from him. Sometimes she did that.

'So what are your students up to these days?' he asked her, addressing her long back.

'My students?'

'The boys and girls you and Mickie used to run with in the bad times. All those bomb-throwers you were in love with.'

'I wasn't in love with them. I loved you.'

'What happened to them? Where are they now?'

'They got rich. Stopped being students. Went into the Chase Manhattan. Joined the Club Union.'

'Do you see any of them?'

'They wave at me from their expensive cars sometimes.'

'Do they care about Panama?'

'Not if they bank abroad.'

'So who makes the bombs these days?'

'No one.'

'I get a feeling sometimes there's a sort of Silent Opposition brewing. Starting at the top and trickling down. One of those middle-cla.s.s revolutions that will flare up one day and take over the country when n.o.body's expecting it. An officers' putsch without officers, if you get me.'

'No,' she said.

'No what?'

'No, there is no Silent Opposition. There is profit. There is corruption. There is power. There are rich people and desperate people. There are apathetic people.' Her learned voice again. The meticulous bookish tone. The pedantry of the self-educated. 'There are people so poor they can't get poorer without dying. And there's politics. And politics is the biggest swindle of them all. Is this for Mr Osnard?'

'It would be if it was what he wanted to hear.'

Her hand found his and guided it to her lips and for a while she kissed it, finger by finger, saying nothing.

'Does he pay you a lot?' she asked.

'I can't supply him with what he wants. I don't know enough.'

'n.o.body knows enough. Thirty people decide what will happen in Panama. The other two and a half million guess.'

'So what would your old student friends be doing if they hadn't joined the Chase Manhattan and weren't driving shiny cars?' Pendel insisted. 'What would they be doing if they'd stayed militant? What's logical? Given it's today, and they still wanted what they used to want for Panama?'

She pondered, coming slowly to what he was saying. 'You mean, to put pressure on the government? Bring it to its knees?'

'Yes.'

'First we produce chaos. You want chaos?'

'I might. If it's necessary.'

'It is. Chaos is a precondition of democratic awareness. Once the workers discover they are unled, they will elect leaders from their own ranks and the government will be scared of revolution and resign. You wish the workers to elect their own leaders?'

'I'd like them to elect Mickie,' said Pendel but she shook her head.

'Not Mickie.'

'All right, without Mickie.'

'We would go first to the fishermen. It was what we always planned but never did.'

'Why would you go to the fishermen?'

'We were students opposed to nuclear weapons. We were indignant that nuclear materials were pa.s.sing through the Panama Ca.n.a.l. We believed such cargoes were dangerous to Panama and an insult to our national sovereignty.'

'What could the fishermen do about it?'

'We would go to their unions and their gang bosses. If they refused us, we would go to the criminal elements on the waterfront who are willing to do anything for money. Some of our students were rich in those days. Rich students with a conscience.'