The Brass Go-Between

Chapter twenty-three

We only got lost once on the way out of Washington. It’s an easy town to get lost in and we took a wrong turn somewhere around the Lincoln Memorial and wound up heading for Baltimore. Mbwato was navigating with the aid of an Esso map and finally he said, “I think we’re headed the wrong way, old man.”

Haying just seen the BALTIMORE — STRAIGHT AHEAD sign I agreed with him, made what I was sure was an illegal U-turn, and headed back toward the Lincoln Memorial. This time I crossed the Memorial Bridge into Virginia, found the double-laned Washington Memorial Parkway, sped past the entrance to the CIA, and finally picked up 495, the circumferential highway that belts Washington. It was still muggy, the air conditioning in the rented Ford didn’t work, and I was in a foul mood. Getting lost does that to me.

Mbwato, on the other hand, held his large black leather attaché case on his lap, hummed to himself, and admired the countryside. “According to the map,” he said, “we take 495 until we come to Interstate 66, which leads to State 29 and 211. Five miles this side of Warrenton we turn right.”

“In the glove compartment,” I said, “there’s a pint of whisky.”

He opened the glove compartment, looked, and closed it. “So there is,” he said.

“Would you mind kind of taking the cap off and passing it to me? I mean if it’s no bother?”

“Oh, none at all,” he said, got the whisky out, took off the cap, and handed me the bottle. I took a long drink and handed it back to him. “Not that I approve of drinking while driving, you understand,” he said.

“I understand,” I said. “Neither do I.”

“But under certain circumstances, especially when there may be some unpleasantness in the offing, it should be permissible.”

“Even for navigators,” I said.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, and tilted the bottle up.

It gurgled at least three times before he put it back into the glove compartment.

He stared out at the scenery again. There wasn’t much to see. Some fields, some trees, and occasionally the tacky back yards of some plastic houses that people bought because it was all they could afford and the forty-five-minute drive to Washington was a small price to pay for having lily-white neighbors.

“They didn’t get quite this far, as I remember,” Mbwato said.

“Who, the Negroes?”

“What Negroes?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Who didn’t get this far?”

“The Confederacy.”

“About as close as they got was Dranesville,” I said. “They turned north there toward Pennsylvania. Dranesville’s about fifteen miles or so from Washington.”

“I wish I had more time,” he said. “I would so liked to have spent several days studying the battlefields. I’m quite a Civil War buff, you know.”

“I’ve been to Gettysburg,” I said. “I found it all very confusing.”

“Were you ever a soldier, Mr. St. Ives?” he said.

“A long time ago,” I said. “The war was called a police action then and I wasn’t a very good soldier even in that.”

“When I studied your Civil War at Sandhurst, I must confess that I developed a rather sneaking sympathy for the Confederacy. Pity that they didn’t have a more suitable cause.”

“It was the only cause around.”

“Still, I find many parallels between the Confederacy and my own country. Both the South and Komporeen, if my history serves me right, could be described as underdeveloped, largely agricultural, but possessed of a fierce regional pride. And jealous of tradition, too, I suppose.”

“And gracious living,” I said. “A good, unreconstructed Southerner can go on for hours about gracious living. You know, crinoline and fatback. Myths die hard in the South and from what you’ve told me, they die even harder in Komporeen.”

“Yes, I suppose you could call the aura that surrounds the shield a myth. But when you have very little else, myths become important, even vital.”

“When were you at Sandhurst?” I said.

“From ’fifty-five to ’fifty-nine. I think I may have neglected to mention it, but I’m a lieutenant colonel in our army.”

“You neglected to mention it,” I said. “How many generals do you have?”

“None. There is only Colonel Aloko who is now head of state and three other lieutenant colonels.”

“What are you, head of G-2?”

Mbwato looked surprised. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. However could you tell?”

I sighed and swung the Ford over into the far right lane and headed up the curving exit that leads to Interstate 66. “I just guessed,” I said.

“Mr. Ulado is my second in command. It’s Captain Ulado really.”

“The getaway expert,” I said. “I hope he’s better at that than he is at torture.”

“Oh, he is,” Mbwato said quickly, as if I’d just lodged a complaint that could turn into a hanging offense or, at least, a general court-martial. “He’s really quite efficient.”

We didn’t say much after that as we rolled through northern Virginia, through the heart of the hunt country. Highway 29 and 211 was just another road, sometimes two lanes, sometimes four lanes, and lined by the usual Stuckey candy stands, billboards, gas stations, motels, and quiet, closed-mouthed houses stuck off by themselves as if their owners didn’t mind living by the side of the road, but to hell with that friend-to-man nonsense.

At a sign that read WARRENTON, 5 MILES, I turned right and Mbwato said, “This person whom we’re to see. Does he have a name?”

“Yes.”

“Can you reveal it?”

“Yes. Winfield Spencer.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Do you?”

“Well, not really. But Mr. Spencer, I believe, is chairman of the Coulter Museum’s executive committee and I seem to recall that one of his firms was interested in securing drilling rights in Komporeen. Am I right?”

“You are.”

“Fascinating. Mr. Spencer has the shield?”

“Yes.”

“And he is simply going to hand it over to you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Really fascinating,” Mbwato said. “Someday you will have to tell me the full story.”

“Someday,” I said. “I will.”

The road that we turned left on was a narrow, winding strip of asphalt that dipped and twisted between parallel rows of split-rail fences. There were a few unpretentious farmhouses and then the split-rail fences ended and were replaced on the left-hand side of the road by an eight-foot chain-wire fence that was topped by three wicked-looking strands of barbed wire. Behind the fence were pasture land and woods. No crops grew and I assumed that the Federal government paid Spencer not to grow anything. The chain-wire fence went on for two miles — which is a lot of fence to anyone but the military. At the two-mile point there was a stone hut with a thick, shake-shingled roof whose age was belied by the gray butt of an air conditioner which stuck out of one window. The road ended in a turnaround circle for the benefit of the strayed motorist out for a Sunday drive or for those who came calling on Spencer without an invitation. I stopped the car before the gate and the two men in gray uniforms came out of the hut and walked slowly over to the Ford. One of them, about thirty-five with gray, suspicious eyes that squinted underneath the brim of hat that seemed to have been copied from the highway patrol, rested his right arm on the window sill of the car and looked at me for several seconds. His partner circled around to Mbwato’s side, opened the rear door, looked inside, and then stared at Mbwato, who gave him a nice sample of the glory smile.

“Mr. St. Ives?” the guard on my side of the car said, his left arm still leaning casually on the Ford’s window ledge, his right hand resting not so casually on the butt of a holstered revolver.

“Yes.”

“May I see some identification, please?”

I got out my wallet and handed him the New York driver’s license. He read it without moving his lips and then handed it back. “The other gentleman?” From the way he said it I could tell that Mbwato was a mile or two from being a gentleman in his estimation.

“He wants some identification,” I said.

“To be sure,” Mbwato said, reached into the inside breast pocket of his splendid deep blue, raw-silk jacket, and handed over what looked to be a passport. The guard opened it, read all about Mbwato, looked at the picture, compared it with the real thing, and then said, “How do you pronounce it?”

“Conception Mbwato,” the good colonel said in his best Old Boy English.

“Just a minute,” the guard said, and went back into the hut and picked up a telephone. The other guard continued to lean on the door on the right-hand side and stare at Mbwato. “You’re a big ’un, for sure,” he said conversationally, and Mbwato smiled at him again. The guard in the hut replaced the phone and came out. “Follow the road straight ahead,” he said, as if by rote. “Do not turn off. Do not drive over twenty miles per hour. Do not stop. One mile from here you’ll be met by a blue jeep. Follow the jeep to the main house.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded and went back into a hut where I assumed that he pressed a button because the two iron gates parted. I drove through and followed another winding asphalt road through grassland and forest for a mile. I drove exactly twenty miles per hour. There were no buildings in sight.

“Mr. Spencer seems to put a high premium on security,” Mbwato said.

“His art collection is worth God knows how many million dollars,” I said. “I guess he doesn’t want it trucked away in the middle of the night.”

“How large is his farm?”

“Plantation,” I said.

“Sorry.”

“Four thousand acres, I think. That’s about eleven square miles.”

“My word.”

The blue jeep was waiting for us with a sign on its back that read FOLLOW ME, just like the ones that some airports have. Its driver was another of Spencer’s lean, rangy home guards and he kept the jeep at exactly twenty miles per hour as we wound through the meadows and the pines and the oaks and the birches. Three miles from where we picked up the jeep we topped a rise and caught our first glimpse of what one can do to make oneself comfortable if one is worth a billion dollars or so.

It was built on the side of a hill that ran down to an artificial lake that was large enough to land the pontoon-equipped six-passenger Beechcraft that was tied up alongside a concrete dock. The house or mansion or villa or chateau or whatever it was carefully tumbled down the side of the hill for a hundred yards or so. It was built primarily of gray fieldstone that had been cut into massive blocks at least ten feet long and two feet high. Thick chimneys stuck up from the black slate roof here and there and the windows were recessed a foot into the stone under wide eaves that thrust the roof line out in a pleasantly aggressive manner. It was a one-story structure built on at least a dozen levels that wandered down to the lake. A brilliant green lawn was saved from looking as if you could putt on it by what seemed to be casual plantings of shrubs and flowers which probably crowned the life’s work of some landscape genius.

Separated from the house by some fifty yards was a large, windowless one-story structure of what looked to be gray marble. It was built on a ledge that had been cut into the hill and I assumed that it contained Spencer’s art collection.

The jeep with the FOLLOW ME sign took us up a crushed-stone drive that circled in front of two massive green copper doors that were recessed into the gray stone. The jeep stopped and I pulled up behind it. The guard came back to the Ford and bent down to look at us. “No packages, briefcases, or luggage are allowed inside,” he recited. “If you will step out of the car, please.”

I stepped out and he said, “Hold your arms straight out from your body, please.” I did and he ran expert hands over me. “Thank you,” he said, then turned to Mbwato and gave him the same instructions and the same treatment. Mbwato left his large, black attaché case on the front seat.

The guard went up three steps to the door, pressed a button, and spoke into an intercommunication device. “Cleared at primary checkpoint,” he said. “Henderson now returning to mile-point-one.” The communications device squawked something and the green doors were opened by a wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped man, about thirty, with short-cropped brown hair and a face that would have been almost pretty but for a nose that someone had broken. “Mr. St. Ives,” he said, looking at me, “and Mr. Mbwato, I believe.” I nodded. “I’m Mr. Spencer’s secretary. Will you follow me, please.”

Mbwato and I followed him down a wide carpeted hall to a closed door. He knocked on the door and then opened it, stood to one side, and motioned us through. I went first; Mbwato followed. It was a good-sized room, well furnished and richly carpeted. Opposite the door was a glass wall that afforded a view of the lake. A massive carved desk was at the far right. Behind the desk was Spencer and behind Spencer, resting on the floor and leaning against the wall, as if nobody could think of a place to hang it, was the shield of Komporeen.

Mbwato gave a long sigh as we moved toward the desk. Spencer stood up, glanced at the shield, and then looked at me. “You haven’t seen it before, have you, St. Ives?”

“No.”

“But Mr. Mbwato — or rather, Colonel Mbwato, I should say — has.”

“Often,” Mbwato said.

“You said that you were bringing no one who was of the police, St. Ives,” Spencer said, and toyed with a letter opener on his desk. It was the only thing on it. “You lied to me.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you did. Colonel Conception Mbwato is very much of the police. The Komporeenean police.”

“I thought you were in the army,” I said to Mbwato.

The big man smiled gloriously and shrugged. “In a small country such as mine, Mr. St. Ives, it is sometimes difficult to separate the duties of the constabulary from those of the armed forces.”

“They have a name for Colonel Mbwato in his country,” Spencer said. “They call him ‘The Rope.’”

“Do they?” I said to Mbwato.

“Only the enemies of my country, I assure you, Mr. St. Ives.”

“And there have been at least two thousand of them in recent months,” Spencer said. “They have dangled from the end of ropes.”

“History demonstrates that each revolution produces a fair crop of both traitors and patriots,” Mbwato said. “It was at one time my duty to deal with the traitors.”

I moved over to the shield, squatted down, and looked at it. I was surprised that it was a dull, dark green. But most brass that is nine hundred or so years old probably is. In the center of the shield was a sunburst and from it emanated in widening concentric circles carefully cast figures who seemed busy running, harvesting, planting, making love, and killing each other with sharp-looking knives and spears. I thought they were extremely well done as were some animals who were also getting killed. It may have told a story, but there didn’t seem to be much plot.

I stood up and turned to Spencer. “Anything else?”

“You may have cost me a great deal of money, St. Ives.”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“You will,” he said, tightening his mouth into what I suppose he hoped was a grim line.

“Mr. Spencer has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t he?” Mbwato said.

I shrugged. “You want me to help carry the thing or would you rather do it yourself?”

“I can manage,” Mbwato said.

“You’ll never get another assignment, St. Ives,” Spencer said. “I’ll see to it.”

Mbwato moved over to the shield, ran a large hand over its edge, then leaned it from the wall and slipped his left arm through two brackets on its back. He picked it up easily, all sixty-eight pounds, and I thought that it was a perfect fit.

“Do you have any more threats?” I said to Spencer.

He was staring at the shield and once again there was that look that I had seen twice before, once on the face of a fat man in a cafeteria and once on the face of a cop on the take in a New York hotel. Greed. Spencer ran a thin, pointed tongue over his lips as if he could taste it.

“It’ll never get to Africa,” he said. “He’ll sell it in London or Rotterdam. He’s fooled you, St. Ives. He hasn’t fooled me. He’ll sell it.”

“Would you sell it in Rotterdam or London?” I asked Mbwato.

“How much, Mr. Spencer?” Mbwato said softly. “How much do you think it would bring — in Rotterdam, say?”

“How much do you want?” Spencer said in a whisper, his thin tongue working at his lips again. Mbwato stared back at him, holding the shield chest high, his face for once impassive. “How much?” Spencer said again, hurling the words into the silence. “How much do you want?” This time it was a scream, one that keened out on the last word.

Mbwato looked at him without expression. Then he smiled, that gleaming, brighten-the-corner-where-you-are smile of his, and turned toward the door. I followed him through it and down the hall.

Halfway to the green copper doors that were held open by the man with the broken nose, Spencer called after us. It was more of a scream than a call. “How much, Mbwato? How much do you want?”

We didn’t hesitate or stop. We went through the door and down the three steps and across the crushed rock to the car. Mbwato put the shield in the rear, leaning it against the back seat. I had the car started by the time he got in next to me. “By the way,” he said, “what time is it?”

I didn’t look at my watch. I put the car into drive and pressed down on the accelerator. The rear wheels churned up some of the crushed rock. “It’s getaway time,” I said.