Overtime. Part 4

De Nesle was facing him now, still seated. 'That's a good question,' he said. 'Hurt, definitely yes, so I'd be awfully grateful if you were careful where you point that thing. I don't want to appear rude, but your hand is shaking rather a lot, and...'

Guy tried looking stern. 'Never mind that,' he said. In retrospect, he felt, he could have done much better. Esprit d'escalier, and all that.

'As to whether bullets could actually kill me,' de Nesle went on, 'now there you have me, I'm afraid. Opinion, as they say, is divided. There's a school of thought that says that if I die, I come to life again immediately afterwards. There's another school of thought that agrees that I come to life again, but probably about five minutes before. They reckon five minutes because that gives me time to make sure that I stay well out of the way of whatever it was that killed me. The third school of thought, which includes my mother, feels that I probably stay dead. It's never actually been put to the test, thank goodness, and that's the way I like it. Was there something?'

'What?'

'The threat,' de Nesle explained. 'I generally find - don't you? - that when people wave weapons at you they want something. What can I do for you?'

'For a start,' said Guy, 'you can tell me how I get out of here.

'Ah.' De Nesle made a sort of a sad face. 'That's tricky, I'm afraid. I'd have to come with you, and I am waiting for this rather important call. Do you think -'

'No.'

De Nesle considered for a moment. 'No, I imagine on balance that you probably don't. Sorry, that was very rude of me. But I do find being threatened puts me rather on edge, don't you know?'

Guy was beginning to feel bewildered. 'Look,' he said, 'exactly what is going on?'

De Nesle grinned. 'I must say,' he said, 'you do ask the most awkward questions. Might I suggest that you really wouldn't want to know?'

'All right,' Guy said. 'Just get me out of here and that's fine. I don't want you to come with me. Just show me the door.

'I must advise -'

'The h.e.l.l with your advice.'

De Nesle shrugged. 'Very well, then. To leave, go through that door behind you.'

Guy frowned, suspecting a ruse to make him turn his head. He felt that eye contact should be maintained at all times in these situations. He reached behind him with his free hand and found a door k.n.o.b.

'This one?'

'That's the one. But really...'

Guy opened the door, backed through it, and vanished. The door, which was marked Private - Staff Only - No Admittance, closed behind him.

'Oh bother!' said de Nesle.

He looked at his watch, a Rolex Oyster which he wore under the sleeve of this steel hauberk, frowned, and picked up the microphone of his answering machine.

'h.e.l.lo,' he said into the microphone, in the slightly strained voice that people always use for that purpose, 'this is Jean de Nesle here. Sorry I'm not available to take your call. Speaking after the tone, please state the time at which you called and on my return I'll arrange to be here then. Thank you.'

He switched on the answering machine, took a sword from under his desk, and went through the door.

Guy was at a party.

More like a reception, actually. In the split second before his appearance, walking backwards brandis.h.i.+ng a revolver and causing the seventy-four people in the room all to stop speaking at once, Guy thought he heard several languages and the characteristic hyena-like yowl of diplomats' wives laughing at the jokes of trade attaches.

He froze.

The men, he observed, were all wearing dinner jackets, the women posh frocks. They were holding wine gla.s.ses. Women in waitress outfits were holding trays of bits of minced-up fish and tiny impaled sausages. There was no band.

A woman screamed, in isolation. Being English and of the social cla.s.s brought up to believe that being conspicuous is the one crime which even G.o.d cannot forgive, Guy began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He tried to smile, found that he was having problems with his facial motor functions, and looked down at the revolver, which was pointing at the third waistcoat b.u.t.ton of a tall, stout gentleman who Guy felt sure was a charge d'affaires.

'Er,' he said.

'M'sieur,' said the charge d'affaires. It was the way he said it that made Guy's bowels cringe; also the fact that he said it in French. Guy was no linguist, and the thought of trying to apologise, or say, 'Sorry, I thought this was the Wilkinson's fancy-dress ball' in a foreign tongue, was too much for him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth so effectively that he might as well have forgotten not only Jerusalem but Damascus and Joppa as well.

He was just about to shoot himself, as being the civilised way out of it all, when a familiar figure appeared behind him. A figure in red and yellow trousers and chain mail, holding a sword, handing a piece of tattered parchment to the toastmaster.

'Monsieur le President de la Republique,' announced the toastmaster.

There was a brief, thrilled murmur from the distinguished guests, and Guy realised that they'd forgotten all about him. They were forming an orderly queue.

De Nesle, smiling brightly, stepped forward to start shaking hands. As he pa.s.sed Guy, he hissed, 'Go back through the door you came in by, quickly,' out of the corner of his smile and pa.s.sed on.

Guy needed no second invitation. Despite the fact that the door was marked Defense d'entrer, he pushed through it and found himself back in de Nesle's peculiar study. He sat down heavily in the chair and began to shake.

'I warned you.'

De Nesle was standing over him, a comforting grin on his face. A small part of Guy's mind toyed with the idea of pointing the revolver at him, but was howled down by the majority. He put the gun on the table and made a small, whimpering noise in lieu of speech.

'Don't worry,' de Nesle went on, 'I said that you were a new and rather over-zealous security guard.'

Guy found some words. They wouldn't have been his first choice, but they were there.

'Are you the president of the republic?' he asked.

'Good Lord, no,' said de Nesle. 'I don't go in for politics much, I'm afraid. Not deliberately, anyway. I think you'd better have another drink, don't you?'

This time, Guy felt, it would be churlish to refuse; and besides, he needed a drink, dead wasps or no dead wasps. To his surprise, however, de Nesle produced a bottle of brandy from a drawer of the desk and poured out a stiff measure into two balloon-shaped gla.s.ses.

'You must excuse my offering you mead just now,' de Nesle was saying. 'I forgot that you don't drink mead any more, and it can be something of an acquired taste. Cheers.'

He drank and Guy followed suit. It was very good brandy.

'Now then.' De Nesle sat down on the edge of the desk and stroked his thin moustache with the rim of his gla.s.s. He was grinning. 'I'm terribly sorry if I've put you out at all.'

'Don't mention it,' Guy heard himself saying. Pure reflex.

'Nonsense,' said de Nesle. 'If you hadn't been kind enough to give me that lift - oh yes, let's see if my call came through.' He pressed a k.n.o.b on the box attached to his telephone, and then continued; 'No, not yet, what a nuisance. If you hadn't been kind enough to give me that lift, you wouldn't have been put to all this trouble. Actually,' de Nesle said, in a confidential whisper, 'I think you'd have crashed in the sea, because you were almost out of fuel. Can you swim?'

'No.'

'Oh well,' de Nesle said, 'I needn't feel quite so bad about it after all. Still, it was a bit of a liberty when all's said and done, particularly since your friend was, well, dead. A bit tasteless in the circ.u.mstances. Still, needs must, as they say.'

'Er,' said Guy.