'You like it, do you, Andy?'

'Ever thought o' turning it into a clubroom for your customers? Somewhere they can let their hair down? Better than a clapped out sofa and an armchair on the ground floor on a Thursday night, isn't it?'

'I have thought along those lines many times, Andy, I'll admit, and I'm quite impressed you've hit on the same idea after just one look. But I always b.u.mp up against the same immoveable objection, which is where would I put my Sportsman's Corner?'

'Show a good return, that stuff?'

'Quite. Oh yes,'

'Didn't make me h.o.r.n.y.'

'Sports articles are more what I call my loss leader, Andy. If I don't sell them, someone else will, and they'll grab my customers at the same time.'

No wasted body movements, Pendel noticed uneasily. I had a police sergeant like you once. Never fidgeted his hands or scratched his head or shifted his a.r.s.e about. Just sits and looks at you with these eyes he's got.

'Are you measuring me for a suit, Andy?' he asked facetiously.

But Osnard was not required to answer, for Pendel's gaze had once more darted away towards a far corner of the room where a dozen or so noisy new arrivals, men and women, were taking their places at a long table.

'And there's the other half of the equation, as you might say!' he declared exchanging over-energetic hand signals with the figure at the head of the table. 'Rafi Domingo himself, no less. Mickie's other friend, beat that!'

'What equation?' Osnard asked.

Pendel cupped a hand to his mouth for discretion. 'It's the lady beside him, Andy.'

'What about her?'

'She's Mickie's wife.'

Osnard's furtive gaze made a quick raid to the far table while he busied himself with his food.

'One with the t.i.ts?'

'Correct, Andy. You do wonder how people get married sometimes, don't you?'

'Give me Domingo,' Osnard ordered - like, give me a middle C.

Pendel drew a breath. His head was spinning and his mind was tired but n.o.body had called intermission so he played on.

'Flies his own aeroplane,' he began arbitrarily.

Sc.r.a.ps he had picked up in the shop.

'What for?'

'Runs a string of very fine hotels no one stays in.'

t.i.ttle-tattle from more than one country.

'Why?'

The rest fluence.

'The hotels belong to a certain consortium which has its headquarters in Madrid, Andy.'

'So?'

'So. Rumour has it that this consortium belongs to some Colombian gentlemen not totally unconnected with the cocaine trade, doesn't it? The consortium is doing nicely, you'll be pleased to hear. A posh new place in Chitre, another going up in David, two in Bocas del Toro and Rafi Domingo hops between them in his plane like a cricket in a frying-pan.'

'h.e.l.l for?'

A silence of spies while the waiter replenished their water gla.s.ses. A c.h.i.n.k of ice cubes like tiny church bells. And a rush like genius in Pendel's ears.

'We may only guess, Andy. Rafi doesn't know the hotel business from his elbow, which is not a problem because like I told you the hotels don't take guests. They don't advertise and if you try and book a room you'll be politely told they're full up.'

'Don't get it.'

Rafi wouldn't mind, Pendel told himself. Rafi's a Benny. He'd say, Harry boy, you tell that Mr Osnard whatever keeps him happy, just as long as you haven't got a witness.

'Each hotel banks five thousand dollars a day cash, right? A financial year or two from now, as soon as the hotels have notched up a healthy set of accounts, they'll be sold off to the highest bidder who by coincidence will be Rafi Domingo wearing a different company hat. The hotels will be in excellent order throughout, which is not surprising seeing they haven't been slept in, and there's not one hamburger been cooked in the kitchen. And they'll be legitimate businesses because in Panama three-year-old money is more than just respectable, it's antique.'

'And he screws Mickie's wife.'

'So we are told, Andy,' said Pendel, wary now, since this part was true.

'Told by Mickie?'

'Not as such, Andy. Not in as many words. It's what the eye doesn't see in Mickie's case.' The fluence again. Why was he doing it? What was driving him? Andy was. A performer is a performer. If your audience isn't with you it's against you. Or perhaps, with his own fictions in tatters, he needed to enrich the fictions of others. Perhaps he found renewal in the remaking of his world.

'Rafi's one of them, you see, Andy. Rafi's one of the absolute biggest, frankly.'

'Biggest what?'

'The Silent Opposers. Mickie's boys. Waiters-in-the-wings, I call them. Those that have seen the writing on the wall. Rafi's a bitser.'

'h.e.l.l's that?'

'A bitser, Andy. The same as Marta. The same as me. Part-Indian, in his case. There's no racial discrimination in Panama, you'll be pleased to learn, but they don't care for Turcos a lot, specially not new ones, and races do get whiter as you go up the social ladder. What I call alt.i.tude sickness.'

It was a brand new joke and one that he intended to include in his material, but Osnard didn't see it. Or if he did, he didn't find it funny. In fact, to Pendel's eye, he looked as though he would prefer to be watching a public execution.

'Payment by results,' Osnard said. 'Only way. Agreed?' He had lowered his head into his shoulders, and his voice with it.

'Andy, that has been a principle of mine ever since we opened shop,' Pendel replied fervently, trying to think when he had last paid anyone by results.

And feeling light-headed from the drink and a general sense of unreality, his own and everybody else's, he almost added that it had been a principle of dear old Arthur Braithwaite's too, but restrained himself on the grounds that he had done enough with his fluence for one evening, and an artist must ration himself even when he feels he could go on all night.

'n.o.body's ashamed o' mercenary motive any more. Only thing that makes anybody tick.'

'Oh, I do agree, Andy,' said Pendel, a.s.suming that Osnard was now lamenting the parlous state of England.

Osnard cast round the room in case he was being over-heard. And perhaps the sight of so many head-to-head conspirators at nearby tables emboldened him, for his face stiffened in some way Pendel was not at all at ease with, and his voice, though muted, acquired a serrated edge.

'Ramon's got you over a barrel. If you don't pay him off, you're screwed. If you do pay him off, you're stuck with a river with no water and a rice farm that can't grow rice. Not to mention the hairy eyeball from Louisa.'

'It's a worry to me, Andy. I'll not deny it. It's been putting me off my food for weeks.'

'Know who your neighbour is up there?'

'He's an absentee landlord, Andy. A highly malicious phantom.'

'Know his name?'

Pendel shook his head. 'He's not a person, you see. More a corporation registered in Miami.'

'Know where he banks?'

'Not as such, Andy.'

'With your chum Ramon. It's Rudd's company. Rudd owns two-thirds, Mr X owns t'other third. Know who X is?'

'I'm reeling, Andy.'

'How about your farm manager chap? What's-his-face?'

'Angel? He loves me like a brother.'

'You've been conned. Case o' the biter bit. Think about it.'

'I am doing, Andy. I haven't thought like this for a long time,' said Pendel as another part of his world keeled over and sank beneath his gaze.

'Anybody been offering to buy the farm off you for peanuts?' Osnard was asking, from behind the wall of mist that had somehow gathered between them.

'My neighbour. Then he'll put back the water, won't he, and have a nice viable rice farm worth five times what he gave for it.'

'And Angel running it for him,'

'I'm looking at a circle, Andy. With me in the middle,'

'How big's your neighbour's farm?'

'Two hundred acres,'

'What's he do with it?'

'Cattle. Low upkeep. He doesn't need the water. He's just keeping it away from me,'

The prisoner is giving one-line answers while the officer writes them down: except that Osnard doesn't write anything down. He remembers with his quick brown fox's eyes.

'Did Rudd put you onto buying your farm in the first place?'

'He said it was cheap. An executors' sale. Just the place for Louisa's money. I was green is what I was.'

Osnard drew his balloon gla.s.s to his lips, perhaps to mask them. Then he took a suck of air and his voice flattened itself for speed.

'You're G.o.d's gift, Harry. Cla.s.sic, ultimate listening post. Wife with access. Contacts to kill for. Chum in the resistance. Girl in the shop who runs with the mob. Behaviour pattern established over ten years. Natural cover, local language, gift o' the gab, quick on your feet. Never heard anyone pitch the tale better. Be who you are but more of it and we'll have the whole o' Panama st.i.tched up. Plus you're deniable. You on or not?'

Pendel smirked, partly from the flattery, partly in awe of his predicament. But mostly because he was aware of witnessing a great moment in his life which, though terrible and cleansing, appeared to be taking place without his partic.i.p.ation.

'I've been deniable ever since I can remember, if I'm honest, Andy,' he confided, while his mind cruised erratically round the outer edges of his life so far. But he hadn't said yes.

'Down side is, you'll be in up to your neck from day one. That going to bother you?'

'I'm up to my neck already, aren't I? It's a question of where I'd sooner not be.'

The eyes again, too old, too steady, listening, remembering, smelling, doing all the jobs at once. And Pendel recklessly a.s.serting himself despite them or because of them.

'Though what you're going to do with a bankrupt listening post is slightly beyond my powers of comprehension,' he declared with the boastful pride of the condemned. 'There's no way out that I know of to save me, short of a mad millionaire.' A needless glance around the room. 'See a mad millionaire at all, Andy, among the crowd? I'm not saying they're all sane, mind. Just not mad in my direction.'

Nothing changed in Osnard. Not his stare, not his voice, not his heavy hands that sat uncurled and fingers down on the rich white tablecloth.

'Maybe my outfit's mad enough,' he said.

Casting round for relief, Pendel's gaze selected the gruesome figure of the Bear, Panama's most hated columnist, treading his inconsolable path towards a solitary table in the darkest part of the room. But he still hadn't said yes, and with one ear he was listening desperately to Uncle Benny: Son, when you meet a con, dangle him. Because there's nothing a con likes less than being told to come back next week.

'You on or not?'

'I'm thinking, Andy. I'm pondering is what I'm doing.'

'h.e.l.l about?'

About being a sober adult making up my mind, he replied truculently in his head. About having a centre and a will instead of a bunch of stupid impulses and bad memories and an excessive dose of fluence.

'I'm weighing my options, Andy. Looking at all sides,' he said loftily.

Osnard is denying accusations n.o.body has levelled against him. He is doing this in a low wet murmur that perfectly suits his bungy body, but Pendel finds no continuity in his words. It's a different evening. I was thinking of Benny again. I need to go home to bed.

'We don't put the hard word on chaps, Harry. Not chaps we like.'

'I never said you did, Andy.'

'Not our style. h.e.l.l's the point o' leaking your criminal record to the Pans when we want you the way you are and more so?'

'There's no point at all, Andy, and I'm pleased to hear you say it.'

'Why blow the whistle on old Braithwaite, make a fool o' you to your wife and kids, break up the happy home? We want you, Harry. You've got a h.e.l.l of a lot to sell. All we want to do is buy it.'

'Sort out the rice farm for me and you can have my head on a charger, Andy,' says Pendel to be com-panionable.