Waiting for Venus - A Novel by Robert Cooper

Waiting for Venus - A Novel by Robert Cooper

Author:Robert Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International


18

Take a Letter, Adolf

AFTER SEEING Agnes off into the Botanic Garden’s postage-stamp jungle for her quality time alone, I walk home across the cricket field through a light rain, trying to make sense of Agnes’s avalanche of revelations.

Driving smoothly around the edge of the field is the old Citroën, wings waxed and gleaming, chevrons shining, gorgeous and menacing. Its roll through decades of history halts where I always cross Evans road before reaching the flat. A back door opens. Barns presses against my legs, growls rising. I wait for an SS officer with skull on hat to step out in full-length leather coat, take off his gloves and slap them on one palm. It doesn’t happen, but a familiar blond head pokes out into the misty drizzle. ‘Doctor Haddock. How are you?’ Von Führer Düsseldorf sings out in Wagnerian tones of comradeship and victory.

‘Well, all right. Nothing much has happened in the two hours since we met.’ I put a hand on Barns to calm her.

‘Good. So good. Do you like the car?’

‘Lovely. Was it left over from the war?’ I think I’m joking.

‘Yes. How clever of you to guess. Harry Chin managed to pull the strings for me and get it out of the auto museum and back on the road. The very same car I had here until 1945. “Traction Avant”; best thing the French ever made. Hop in. Ve vill take a spin.’ Quiet as a ghost, the Citroën creeps forward and the Führer beckons me into his time-machine. ‘I’d like to talk to you, Doctor Haddock – Tom. Perhaps we could eat together? I invite you to the Mandarin. Please to come in.’

‘Sorry, Adolf. I’m busy. Another time, okay?’

Adolf looks like another time is not okay. He remains polite as he waves an envelope. ‘I have something here of interest. I vish to discuss matters of mutual benefit.’

I see Ra’mad watching from his balcony, binoculars dangling from his neck. Poor old bugger, I think, the threat of a downpour will make the girls think twice before setting out on their run tonight. ‘I can’t make it tonight. Maybe some other time,’ I intend to reply, something reasonable like that. But Bernard – doing the behind-the-scenes thinking for me – comes through loud and clear with what is really in my mind. ‘No way. Eating with you makes people disappear.’ Hey, Bernard, take it easy. That might be construed as provocative.

The square head flushes under its tan. Thin lips purse. Cold-blue eyes narrow as Adolf does a fair impression of a cobra preparing to strike. ‘Reinkommen!’ He hisses in my direction. ‘Im Auto!’

The front door of the car smashes open against my thigh and I fall back into the puddle I’d just jumped over and Barnaby just skipped though. I look up into the hard eyes of the Japanese driver, who is out of the car and talking in perfect English. ‘Please get in the car. It would be a pity to have unpleasantness … An unfortunate fall.



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