Pike's Pyramid. Michael Tatlow
At one o’clock in the morning, after two days spent conferring with their recruits, Blarney figured it would be11am, 10 hours ahead, in Tasmania. He phoned Richard De Groote’s surgery.
He was surprised that, despite the city’s dysfunctional phone system, the number rang. He heard Richard’s long-time secretary/receptionist purr, ‘Good morning. Professor De Groote’s surgery. Sarah Williams speaking’.
Pike smiled into the handset. Sarah was a generous and sharp spinster, who knew the strengths and foibles of Argo’s every ranking member on the island. Pike knew Sarah admired Richard De Groote with an unrequited passion, and kept at her home twelve fat cats.
‘Hi, you lovely old tart… Oops, you’re sure not old, Sarah my dear. We’re still in Prague but on the way home very soon.’
She immediately recognised the deep and engaging voice. ‘Blarney, darling. Wonderful! I hear you two have been terrific in Prague.’ Nasal Australian replaced the formal English of her opening line. ‘How’s your lovely bride?’
‘Alex is fine, thanks, Sarah.’ To shorten the call, he decided to lie. ‘She’s on another phone to her parents in Stanley. I’m on a public phone with only enough coins for a few minutes. Is Richard there?’
‘You two did it, Blarney!’ De Groote declared. His modulations were warm. Touches of guttural remained from the tongue of his birth, garnished by middle-class England—where he graduated at Oxford—and his stint in the US, then a decade in Australia. ‘I knew you guys would dazzle them.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen the deceitful reports on Argo’s website,’ said Pike. ‘Is that Jerry Bell’s opinion?’
‘He rang me last night. He says you and Alex have been great.’
Pike swallowed and levelled his voice. He realised he should have prepared a mental immunisation. ‘There hasn’t been much dazzle here, Richard. Jerry Bell must have told you that. It’s in a mess. An avoidable one. You’ve got a major—’
‘Easy, Blarney.’ The professor’s voice hardened. ‘National openings can be tough. It’ll be fine.’ He paused. ‘Why didn’t you ring me before this? A postcard last week was all I got. You and Alex should have sent scores of inspiring cards to all your downline here.’
Pike knew his leader’s smile had departed like a nun from a rough joke. The genial, cornflower-blue eyes would have narrowed. Aggression from another direction diverts attack, Richard had told him.
‘Four letters, I sent you,’ Pike declared. ‘They must still be on the way. And I don’t know how many phone calls I tried. I wanted to tell you about the mess over here. To get your advice, Richard. The phones here are often crazy. You were supposed to ring me at our apartment, Richard. Every day, you said.’
‘Couldn’t get through,’ De Groote replied flatly.
‘Mmm. Others did.’ Counter attack. ‘It’s easier to ring into the Czech Republic than bloody phoning out of it. We got a lot of calls from Tasmania.
‘It was an execution, Richard,’ Pike said earnestly, brushing his free hand across the G scar.
‘Execution?’ De Groote sounded incredulous. ‘Of what? Who?’
‘Jack Sussoms. Come on, Jerry must have told you about that horror.
Gerry was at the hotel when it happened. Jack was a friend of ours.’
‘Jack Sussoms was murdered, you say? Good Lord! I know…ah, knew old Jack. An Argo legend. He went a bit paranoid, I seem to remember hearing. He imagined a bunch of criminals were after his business.’
‘Really?’ Pike mused. ‘Jack seemed quite sane to this layman. I’ll tell you about it later.’
He was incredulous that De Groote had not known about the slaying. And now his mentor did not want details about it. When? How? Why?
Who?
‘I’ll check it out with Jerry,’ De Groote replied.
‘Did Jerry tell you they stole my organiser book?’
‘Yes. Awful luck, that.’
So Jerry had told him about the book stealing but not Jack’s murder? ‘As Jerry’s instructions are needed for you to come to Prague, I’ll ring him myself. Right now.’
‘Don’t you dare. Information for Jerry has to go through me.’
Pike enjoyed that. Bypassing upline De Groote to get to Bell would be a gross, a grossly gross, breach of Argo protocol. Fine. ‘Regardless, Alex and I are going to fly out, heading for home, in a day or two,’ he announced.
“Look, you cannot—’
‘We’re leaving this mess,’ Pike interrupted. ‘When we get to Melbourne, I’ll ring you and arrange a meeting in Hobart while Alex flies on to meet her parents at the airport at Wynyard. They’ll be in our car, and will take her to Stanley.’
‘Blarney, do not, do not tell anyone—’
‘The phone here’s run out of coins,’ Pike shouted. He hung up.
Alex erupted, angrier than he had ever seen her, at Pike’s candid report of what De Groote had said. She shared Pike’s astonishment that De Groote had not been told of Jack Sussoms’ death; that their mentor probably would not be in Prague for weeks.
‘If he doesn’t come to Prague right away,’ she declared, ‘I’ll chuck in the whole business. And I’m not going to keep quiet about Jack’s murder or lie to our people at home about the whole damned shambles in Prague.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Pike said. Did she really mean that? Throw away our achievements in Tassie? Kiss goodbye to a life of profitable leverage? Our secure future? Mark up another failure? Back to the freelance writing grind? ‘I’ll be arguing with Richard in Hobart while you fly on to Wynyard.’
‘You’re Richard’s best agent in Tassie,’ Alex added. ‘Raise hell with him.’
After making passionate love, they left their bed at nine in the morning. Pike walked through more snow to a nearby travel agency and booked seats on a British Air flight leaving for Melbourne at three that afternoon. He booked connecting flights to Wynyard for Alex and to Hobart for himself.
He phoned his close friend and colleague Dick Street. He was the Pikes’ immediate Argo upline, based in the city of Burnie, on the coast an hour’s drive east of Stanley. Street was appalled to learn of Sussoms’ murder, the dead man’s evidence of corruption in Argo, the probably related theft of the leather book and the shambles of the Argo launch in the republic.
‘You two are in fucken danger there, Blarns,’ he said, anxiety fuming from the phone. ‘Bloody murderers with guns could beat even you. Come on home, mate. Bloody soon.’
‘We’re flying out today, Dick. I’ll see you soon. Meantime I’d like you to arrange for that pitch presentation at Sean and Mary O’Halloran’s farm in Irishtown to go ahead soon. The ideal time would be… Hang on, I’ll check for a date.’
Pike consulted the year’s calendar that was on the wall. ‘See if they can host it on the evening of Friday, January 27, a couple of weeks after we get home.’
‘I’ll ring ’em now. If I don’t call back in the next hour, Blarns, it’ll go ahead then.’
Pike phoned Harbek’s secretary and told him they would fly out in three hours.