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Authors: Helen MacInnes
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gently, and kissed her.
“Then,” she told him, “I was a foot-loose student. Now, I’m an old married woman.”
“The difference,” he said in mock wonder, “that nineteen months can make to a twenty-one-year-old!”
“Darling”—her arms were around him, her body yielding— “we’ll leave day after tomorrow. I’ll pack and write notes to everyone and close the flat up tight.”
“No notes,” he said quickly, then softened that small command by adding, “A waste of time. We’ll just slip away and forget this flat. We’ll leave Gemma in charge of the key.” And Gemma could start looking for some other place for them. Gemma would love that: no imposition. “We may stay in America for several weeks.”
“Can you manage it?” She looked at him. “Or is this a business trip?”
“Now and again,” he admitted. “I’ll take you to see my—” cut out the word “people”—“my sister who married an ex-Marine and lives in La Jolla.” Not to see anyone with the name Renwick, not now at least. And what about the name O’Connell, if Nina’s family connection was being traced? “Is your father in Washington, or has he left for the Maryland shore?” Nina’s stepmother liked its cooler temperatures in the summer months for her incessant dinner parties.
“He isn’t very happy in either place nowadays.”
Out of a job, Renwick thought. No longer an economic adviser to the White House or attached to the State Department. A quick and total resignation—the modern way for an honourable man to put a bullet through his brain. Nina was watching him. “He likes you, Bob.”
“That’s news.” Why should a proud man like Francis O’Connell like anyone who knew about his stupidity? With his high-minded scorn for all security, he had almost walked into a White House meeting with an explosive device planted in his attaché case by someone he had taken on trust.
Nina was suddenly still. She said, “He told me all about it. You saved him. And the president. And all the others in that room.”
“He told you?” The words were jolted out of Renwick.
“I’m glad he did. Don’t try to shelter me so much, Bob.”
“And you never mentioned it—”
“I was waiting for you to tell me. The obedient wife,” she said, turning it into a joke.
“How obedient?” he asked, and took her into his arms again.
5
Djibouti was as hot as Claudel had predicted, and more crowded than he remembered from last year’s visit. It always had held half the inhabitants of this small and arid land, a sliver of scrub and desert stretching a rough hundred miles in length, even less in breadth, tightly bound both north and west by Ethiopia, in the south by Somalia, freely breathing to its east with an indented coastline that lay on the Gulf of Aden just where the Red Sea began its long stretch northward to the Suez Canal. Facing South Yemen across the Gulf, Djibouti had always been a trader’s delight, but with the reopening of Suez it was once again on a major shipping lane—from India and the Far East right up into the Mediterranean. It might be a minuscule republic, a speck on the map of Africa, but it had significance. Today, it seemed to Claudel as if the town would soon hold most of the country’s population and its assimilated foreigners.
He poured another cup of coffee, finished the last croissant. He was sitting on the Café-Restaurant’s deep-set verandah, shaded almost to the point of darkness against the morning sun. The Café-Restaurant de l’Univers, six modest bedrooms upstairs (one of which was occupied by Claudel), owned by good friend Aristophanes Vasilikis: once of Athens, later of the Sudan, and for the last ten years a resident in Djibouti, capital of the Republic of Djibouti. Too bad, thought Claudel, that independence had ditched the old name: Territory of the Afars and Issas. That had a sound that few countries could match.
The Afars and Issas were still around, he had been glad to see,
“Then,” she told him, “I was a foot-loose student. Now, I’m an old married woman.”
“The difference,” he said in mock wonder, “that nineteen months can make to a twenty-one-year-old!”
“Darling”—her arms were around him, her body yielding— “we’ll leave day after tomorrow. I’ll pack and write notes to everyone and close the flat up tight.”
“No notes,” he said quickly, then softened that small command by adding, “A waste of time. We’ll just slip away and forget this flat. We’ll leave Gemma in charge of the key.” And Gemma could start looking for some other place for them. Gemma would love that: no imposition. “We may stay in America for several weeks.”
“Can you manage it?” She looked at him. “Or is this a business trip?”
“Now and again,” he admitted. “I’ll take you to see my—” cut out the word “people”—“my sister who married an ex-Marine and lives in La Jolla.” Not to see anyone with the name Renwick, not now at least. And what about the name O’Connell, if Nina’s family connection was being traced? “Is your father in Washington, or has he left for the Maryland shore?” Nina’s stepmother liked its cooler temperatures in the summer months for her incessant dinner parties.
“He isn’t very happy in either place nowadays.”
Out of a job, Renwick thought. No longer an economic adviser to the White House or attached to the State Department. A quick and total resignation—the modern way for an honourable man to put a bullet through his brain. Nina was watching him. “He likes you, Bob.”
“That’s news.” Why should a proud man like Francis O’Connell like anyone who knew about his stupidity? With his high-minded scorn for all security, he had almost walked into a White House meeting with an explosive device planted in his attaché case by someone he had taken on trust.
Nina was suddenly still. She said, “He told me all about it. You saved him. And the president. And all the others in that room.”
“He told you?” The words were jolted out of Renwick.
“I’m glad he did. Don’t try to shelter me so much, Bob.”
“And you never mentioned it—”
“I was waiting for you to tell me. The obedient wife,” she said, turning it into a joke.
“How obedient?” he asked, and took her into his arms again.
5
Djibouti was as hot as Claudel had predicted, and more crowded than he remembered from last year’s visit. It always had held half the inhabitants of this small and arid land, a sliver of scrub and desert stretching a rough hundred miles in length, even less in breadth, tightly bound both north and west by Ethiopia, in the south by Somalia, freely breathing to its east with an indented coastline that lay on the Gulf of Aden just where the Red Sea began its long stretch northward to the Suez Canal. Facing South Yemen across the Gulf, Djibouti had always been a trader’s delight, but with the reopening of Suez it was once again on a major shipping lane—from India and the Far East right up into the Mediterranean. It might be a minuscule republic, a speck on the map of Africa, but it had significance. Today, it seemed to Claudel as if the town would soon hold most of the country’s population and its assimilated foreigners.
He poured another cup of coffee, finished the last croissant. He was sitting on the Café-Restaurant’s deep-set verandah, shaded almost to the point of darkness against the morning sun. The Café-Restaurant de l’Univers, six modest bedrooms upstairs (one of which was occupied by Claudel), owned by good friend Aristophanes Vasilikis: once of Athens, later of the Sudan, and for the last ten years a resident in Djibouti, capital of the Republic of Djibouti. Too bad, thought Claudel, that independence had ditched the old name: Territory of the Afars and Issas. That had a sound that few countries could match.
The Afars and Issas were still around, he had been glad to see,
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