Out of the Sun by Robert Goddard

Author:Robert Goddard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780805058369
Publisher: Corgi
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"How about better than your best?"

"OK. I'll try for that as well."

"Great." The stiffness dropped out of her smile and she took an unladylike gulp of bourbon. "That I like the sound of."

THIRTY-TWO

Norman Page, chairman and managing director of Page-Muirson Ltd, financial adviser to the quality, flew into Dulles Airport early the following Monday afternoon. His suit was dove-grey, his shirt powder-pink, his tie richly striped, his hair elegantly styled. A pre-hired limousine sped him and his brand-new luggage through twenty-six miles of damp green Virginia and across the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge into the spacious heart of Washington. He glanced up at the pale slopes of Arlington Cemetery as he passed, down at the grey waters of the Potomac and all around him at the tree-screened federal buildings, the low-rise office blocks, the trimmed and trained regularities of the capital. At length he was delivered to the door of the Hay-Adams Hotel, just the sort of lavishly appointed establishment to which such a gentleman would naturally be used, and was ushered into its walnut-panelled lobby.

After signing his name in a vellum-paged register, he was escorted to a suite overlooking Lafayette Square. The view of the White House, though not the intervening vista of the homeless camping out in the park, was drawn to his attention. The push button availability of multiple electronic media was deferentially explained to him, as were the hot-and-cold mysteries of the marbled bathroom. He administered a five-dollar tip and was left alone pending the arrival of his suitcase. This brief interval allowed him to peer at the framed reproduction above the fireplace of L'Enfant's 1792 Plan for the Federal City, test the broad acres of the firm yet yielding bed and squint in awe at the printed tariff on the back of the door.

The suitcase delivered and another five-dollar tip dispensed, he telephoned reception and asked if his colleague, Bill Cornford, had yet booked in. He was told he had not. Mildly surprised, he proceeded to unpack and take a leisurely bath. He emerged from the bathroom an hour or so later to find an envelope had been slipped beneath his door, addressed to him by name and room number. It turned out to contain a fax. From Byron Lazenby, President of Globescope Inc." predictive consultant to the corporate elite.

Dear Norman Page

I would be delighted to meet with you during your stay in Washington and to outline the kind of forecasting package my organization could offer a company such as yours. Perhaps you would call my secretary, Ann Mather, to fix a date.

Sincerely

Byron E. Lazenby

It was not yet five o'clock and Harry was tempted to telephone Ann Mather straightaway. "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly' surfaced in his mind as a sound principle more than forty years after its accidental absorption during a desultory reading of Macbeth in the dying days of his school career. In the end, though, the only call he made was to reception, to learn that Bill Cornford had still not arrived.

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