Unpopular Science

The consultant turned out to be a seventy-six-year-old butler who had served most of the British royal family during his long career. At their first session, the old man, who never went by any name other than Robert, dressed Gomez in his stiff butler uniform and stuck a slender, dried meter of wood down the back of his shirt.

“Stand straight, don’t break it.”

Within minutes Gomez broke the wooden stick. Robert emotionlessly replaced it with another.

Robert taught Gomez how to stand stiffly, how to walk at half his usual speed, how to maintain a droll and emotionless demeanor at all times. By the end of the week Gomez could walk around for hours without breaking the stick in his shirt. He knew he could do this job.

But acting a role and actually living it, day after day, was taking its toll. He was horrified to discover that Gomez was going away and Jenkins was becoming the dominant, personality.

He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it before he either gave up and became Jenkins, the living, breathing cliché role to last a lifetime, or flee Cote and his formal British household and his extravagant paychecks and go back to distributing heroin in shantytowns around Madrid.

There was a lot to be said for shantytowns.

Jenkins made the deliberate and lengthy walk across the ballroom with the silver platter and the antique telephone, as if it were a crown on a felt pillow he were presenting.

“Mr. Fastbinder on the line from America, suh,” he intoned to his employer.

“Ah, terrific.” Cote snatched up the receiver lying on the doily aside the phone. “Fastbinder, how are you, old man? Fastbinder? Oh, bloody hell, he rang off.”

“Allow me to get him on the line again, suh,” Jenkins said, turning back for the servants’ entrance. Inside he was screaming—the walk was six minutes round trip, not counting the time it would take to get the kraut on the line. He didn’t know if he could stand it.

“Bugger it!” Cote blurted, snatching a mobile phone from his pocket, pressing a button and getting Fastbinder in seconds. “There you are, old man! Where’d you run off to then?”

“Your grasp of British frippery is excruciating, and I find your whole act repulsive,” snapped Fastbinder. “Please don’t make me a part of your fairy tale.”

“Hang on, old chap.” Cote lowered the phone. Jenkins took his cue.

“Will there be anything else, suh?”

“Not right now, Jenkins, thank you.”

Jenkins turned and began pacing back to the servants’ service room.

“All right, Fastbinder, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. So where’s our little ducks, eh?”

“They landed thirty-six minutes ago and had a car waiting for them,” Fastbinder reported.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all I know,” Fastbinder said.

“That’s all you know? What happened to all your whiz-bang technology you’ve been going on about?” Cote demanded.

“Surveillance isn’t my specialty. Besides, Spain is your realm, not mine. What have your spotters reported?”

“My spotters couldn’t find their arseholes even if you stuck a lit signal flare up in ’em,” Cote exclaimed. “They somehow managed to miss seeing who it was that got off the aircraft and into the car.”

“We’ve been told these men are fast and elusive.”

“Poppycock! What I want to know is when the bastards are coming here.”

Fastbindertsked. “Really, Allessandro. Poppycock? Did anyone ever really use the word?”

“When, Fastbinder? When?”

“Soon enough,” Fastbinder said. “You’re drinking far too much coffee today.”

“I’m drinking tea.”

“I can see the tea service, Allessandro, and I watched your poor imitation butler brew coffee.”

Cote swore silently. He’d forgotten Fastbinder had the place set up for intense data gathering, including audio, video and a scattering of other sensors he couldn’t begin to understand. “It’s not the coffee, it’s the whole bloody setup. I don’t even know how much risk there is.”

“Very little.”

“So you say.”

“You get the Gee-DAM schematics as a reward— you’ll make millions, Cote. Besides, it’s too late to back out now. Everything is in place.”

Cote said, “Yeah.” He stood in the middle of his ballroom and slowly walked in a circle. He saw wooden panels painted in the late eighteenth century. He saw stained glass and a polished marble floor. There wasn’t a hint as to the location of Fastbinder’s equipment.

“How can I be sure your mechanical contraptions won’t mistake me for one of your special agents?”

“You’ve got your pocket watch?” Fastbinder asked. Cote withdrew the old gold-plated pocket watch provided him by Fastbinder and his son when they’d outfitted the great old Spanish house just days before. It supposedly served as a beacon that Fastbinder’s equipment could sense. As long as he had the watch, he wouldn’t be targeted—in theory.

“What I said was, how do I know?”

“Little late to be asking now,” Fastbinder replied. Leaving Cote not at all reassured.

Chapter 12

Jorge Portillo was finally getting some use out of his AK-47 after all these weeks. Actually, it was only the bayonet that came in handy. He was scraping mud out of the treads of his boots with it.