She smiled and put her arms around my neck. In the lamplight her brown hair wreathed her face like a lion’s mane. I pushed some of it aside as if it had been a curtain, kissed her tenderly, and pushed my hand between her legs. Gentlemen prefer blondes, alleged a recent movie I’d seen; it was just as well I was no gentleman. She gasped a little and pressed down on my hand. Outside the wild pigs had come back. I could hear them snorting in the trees as they snouted around blindly in the dirt. At least I thought they were the wild pigs; in retrospect they must have been my brain cells.

TWENTY-ONE

Under a salmon-pink sky the following evening, Somerset Maugham, Robin, Alan Searle, and I waited for the old man’s chauffeur to fetch the British from their hotel on the Cap. A cold buffet dinner had been prepared and was being laid out on the terrace by the cook, Annette, while the four of us were in the drawing room with cocktails and cigarettes. The Grundig tape recorder remained on the refectory table, ready for action. The atmosphere was tense and expectant and, as usual, more malevolent and cattish than the chorus line in an old Weimar cabaret.

“Look at that sky,” said Robin. “It’s Leander pink, isn’t it?”

“More Garrick Club pink, I’d say,” remarked his uncle. “Not that you’d know the difference, dear.”

“I’ve never been to the Garrick Club,” said Alan. “Willie’s never taken me. Although he is a member.”

“You’re much too young for the Garrick, love,” said Maugham. “You’re not allowed through the door until there is a significant amount of hair growing out of your ears and nostrils. In fact, it’s a condition of membership.”

“Then you ought to be the club secretary,” said Alan.

Maugham turned in his chair to address Annette. “Make sure we use the Victorian champagne glasses,” he instructed her. “One of these men who are coming tonight is a knight of the realm.”

“Oh? Who?” asked Alan. “Who are these people, Willie?”

“Sir John Sinclair and a chap called Patrick Reilly,” said Maugham. “Sinclair’s the current director of MI6 and Reilly’s a Foreign Office mandarin. I believe he used to be chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The people who oversee MI5 and MI6. They’re going to make sure I’m not about to buy a pig in a poke and, hopefully, underwrite my purchase.”

“So why if they’re so damned important are they staying at the Belle Aurore?” asked Robin.

“Because it’s a lot cheaper than the Grand or La Voile d’Or,” said Maugham.

“Why aren’t they staying here at the villa? It’s not like there isn’t plenty of room.”