The Abominable: A Novel

28.

London in mid-August on rare occasions can be sweltering, but there was a chill in the air that reminded me of our visit to the Royal Geographical Society ten months earlier. Of course, the leaves on the trees weren’t changing in August, but there was some tinge in the air…smoke from coal and wood fires in the houses and buildings, I decided. I was wearing my second-best suit—three-piece, heavy wool, since my one bespoke suit had gone missing in my absence—and I hoped that the brief cold front would make the choice of apparel stand out a little less.

The building was brown with age and soot, its lobby quite imposing. Footsteps echoed on tile and marble. I told the first guard I encountered about my appointment with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he led me to a receptionist, who led me to a clerk, who led me to the important man’s aide, who parked me on a tattered leather couch in a wallpapered waiting room for only a two- or three-minute wait before I was shown into the Chancellor’s inner office.

Chancellor of the Exchequer. How very cute Reggie and the Deacon had been with their mildly coded talk about “our mutual friend who now likes to write cheques” and “our friend who really prefers gold.” The latter phrase, I’d learned just by reading and asking questions during my long solo boat trip from India to England, referred to this Chancellor of the Exchequer’s decision, under the Baldwin government, to return the British economy to the gold standard.

This had happened the previous May, while my friends and I were climbing Mount Everest, so I don’t know if Reggie and the Deacon had heard of the actual return to the gold standard, but they’d obviously known this man’s preference for an economy based on gold. I’d also read all about this return to the gold standard—and the continuing hubbub and disapproval of it and disapproval of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself by many economists—during my boat trip to England.

The male secretary left us, and I was looking across a broad room with a rather worn carpet, a large desk and chair—currently empty of its occupant—and a very rotund man with his back to me. He stood silently looking out a sooty window as he smoked a cigar, his legs wide apart in almost a pugilist’s stance and his pudgy hands clasped behind his back.

He turned a minute or so after his secretary or adjutant or whatever the hell he was announced me and looked me up and down, frowning a bit—perhaps at my wool suit—and said, “Perry, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good of you to come, Mr. Perry.” He waved me to an uncomfortable-looking chair while he took the large padded chair behind his desk.

I’d heard the name Winston Churchill during the months I’d stayed in London prior to the beginning of our expedition, but I didn’t recall seeing photographs of him. I dimly remembered that there’d been a buzz about him in the press in 1924 when he rejoined the Conservative Party after having left the Conservatives to join the Liberal Party some years before. I remember the Deacon laughing at an edition of the Times as we were sorting gear in our London hotel room and quoting Churchill to Jean-Claude and me (on whom the humor was totally lost)—“Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.”

Evidently the re-ratting had worked: Churchill now had an elected seat in Epping as a Tory and this high position in Baldwin’s Conservative government. The only other thing I’d learned about the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer was that it earned Churchill the honorific of “the right Honorable” and a rent-free home at No. 11 Downing Street, evidently right next to the Prime Minister’s digs.

“You’re an American, Mr. Perry?”

Had that been a question? “Yes, sir,” I said.

I confess that if this man was the intelligence chief for whom Lord Percival Bromley died—and most likely former captain Richard Davis Deacon and Lady Katherine Christina Regina Bromley-Montfort as well—he certainly didn’t fit the role of spymaster. He reminded me more of a big baby in a pinstripe suit and waistcoat, with a cigar in his mouth.

“You American fellows are putting me—and His Majesty’s Government—in the most frightful position,” he boomed from across the wide desk. He opened a box of cigars and shoved them across the expanse. “Cigar, Mr. Perry? Or a cigarette, perhaps?”

“No, thank you, sir.” I had no idea what he was talking about with the “frightful position” line. Certainly it couldn’t be in the pending handover of the envelope holding seven damning photographs and negatives that I had tucked in my oversized jacket pocket. I just wanted to get on with that exchange and to get the hell out of this office, and London.

“It’s the war debt, man,” said this Churchill person. “Great Britain owes you Yanks the rather preposterous sum of four billion, nine hundred thirty-three million, seven hundred one thousand, and six hundred forty-two pounds. The annual interest payment on that alone is more than thirty-five million pounds a year. And your President and Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary keep clamoring for payment on time. I ask you, Mr. Perry, how will that be possible until France pays His Majesty’s Government more of what they owe us on their war debt? Heaven knows France is getting its reparation payments and share of German steel sales coming out of the Ruhr Valley, but the French are as slow to pay as a renter who puts all his monthly income on the lottery rather than give it to his landlord.”

I nodded vaguely. My throat had improved sufficiently during my weeks in India and at sea that I could speak now with only a slight rasp rather than my former frog’s croak, but I could think of nothing to say. All I knew was that the envelope with the photos seemed to be burning a hole into the upper-right part of my chest, and if this fat little man didn’t shut up and quit blowing cigar smoke in my direction, I was going to leap across that too-broad desk and strangle the son of a bitch, American-British relations be damned.

“Well, not your fault, not your fault,” said Chancellor of the Exchequer Churchill. “Do you have the items with you?”

I said, probably breaking fifty rules of spy craft, “Do you mean the photographs and negatives from Lord Percival, sir?”

“Yes, yes.” He stubbed out the cigar and crossed his pudgy fingers over his chest.

I removed the envelope and set it as far across his desk as I could reach without standing up. To my shock, Churchill didn’t even glance at the envelope before one of those pudgy hands swept it up and slipped it into a red briefcase propped next to his feet.

“Good, then,” he said.

I took that as my dismissal and stood to leave.

“This is Friday,” said Churchill, still sitting, not rising even to shake my hand before I left. And I knew what goddamned day it was. I’d made the appointment with his lackeys for this day.

“I believe we should chat about the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of these items,” said Churchill. “Do you have anything on for tomorrow?”

On for tomorrow? What the hell was that supposed to mean? I’d never felt as alone and stranded as I had the last few days waiting here in London without the Deacon and Jean-Claude. These British people spoke a strange and cloudy language.

Churchill must have seen my vacant look, for he said, “For dinner, I mean.”

“No, sir,” I replied with a sinking feeling in my gut. I didn’t want to socialize with this…mere man…who I was sure had gotten three of my dearest friends killed, as well as my friend’s cousin.

“We shall plan on you dropping down to Chartwell sometime in the afternoon, then,” he said as if it were already an agreed-upon thing. “Clemmie’s not there this weekend, but we have a few very amusing dinner guests, and of course the children will be there. Come get a good meal, Mr. Perry, spend the night, and we shall talk more at length when we have some privacy.

“We do dress for dinner,” continued the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I’d read somewhere that he was 50 years old, but between the roly-poly appearance, flushed fat-baby cheeks, and bouncy energy, he seemed much younger. “Did you happen to bring white tie, tails, that sort of thing with you to London?”

“No, sir,” I said. I was already sick unto death of calling this Churchill nobody “sir.” “Just this suit I’m wearing.”

Churchill nodded judiciously, then pushed a lever on a contraption on his desk. The male secretary who’d seen me in appeared as if by magic. “Colonel Taylor,” said Churchill, “could you run this chap around the corner to my tailor at Savile Row and have him expedite a proper suit of evening clothes as well as a summer and autumn suit or two and perhaps a pair of pyjamas and some shirts and proper ties…by tomorrow noon, please. And tell them the bill is to be paid by His Majesty’s Treasury.”

I didn’t even know what to think of this, much less what to say—since all I wanted to say was I don’t need white tie and tails and I don’t need your damned charity, either—so I nodded at Churchill, who’d lighted a fresh cigar and was already perusing some papers even before I was out of the room.

“Wait,” I said, stopping and turning. “One thing.”

The round face with its cherubic little smile looked across the width of the room at me and waited.

“What and where is Chartwell?” I heard myself ask.