Turn the light out before you leave.'


CHAPTER FIVE

Misgivings

'What's the matter, Nick? You look worried.'

Martin Adler's companion in the first class compartment of the Orient Express looked up and gave a smile. 'Why do you speak in English, Martin?'

'Good practice for you, pal. Frankly, yours sounded a bit rusty when you were speaking with those Britishers at the reception the other day. So I think we'll stick to English for the rest of this trip. Nothing makes an Englishman feel more superior than to hear another guy talking broken English.'

Nicholas Felman hesitated for a moment; then: 'OK, you are the boss,' he said carefully. 'How did that sound?'

'Not bad. Keep trying. But you didn't answer my question: why the anxious visage?'

Felman shrugged. 'Just nervousness. I have never had experience of anything so important as this. I cannot help wishing that you had not asked for me to accompany you, Martin. You need someone older - someone more practised at negotiations of this nature.'

'Don't be such a hick. I didn't want one of the old guard of stuffed shirt diplomats - all hot air and protocol. I wanted someone I could talk to, who understands me, and whom I understand. You know just as much about the situation as any of those old buffers.'

'Yes, I believe I do, and I do not want you to think I am not grateful for your confidence. It is merely that I cannot bear the thought that I might fail my country. The situation is so perilous—'

'You don't need to tell me that, old buddy. But I don't see in what way you could let the country down. If we should fail, I'd be to blame. But the British aren't our enemies. They want to help. These are just going to be cosy, informal talks to decide the precise details of how best they can help - and how we can best repay them.'

'You make it sound very easy. But I have this feeling that things are not going to proceed quite as smoothly as you anticipate.'

'You're a natural-born pessimist,' said Adler.

* * *

'Blasted foreigners.' George Henry Aylwin Saunders, twelfth Earl of Burford, muttered the words as he sat in a wicker chair on the terrace at Alderley, gazing out across the tree-dotted parkland, baking under the summer sun.

A few yards from him, a hammock had been slung from a hook on the wall of the house to the spreading branch of a nearby tree. At that moment the only indication that Lord Burford was not simply soliloquizing was a bulge in the underside of the hammock; but after a quarter of a minute his daughter's voice from inside it murmured: 'Which ones? Richard's? What's wrong with them?'

Ten seconds passed before Lord Burford said: 'Coming here. Disturbin' things. Having to be entertained. Shown round. Talked to. Not understandin' English all over the place. Deuced unsportin' of Rich to foist 'em on us.