Phantoms

Chapter 18

London, England

When midnight came to California, it was eight o'clock Monday morning in London.

The day was dreary. Gray clouds melted across the city. A steady, dismal drizzle had been falling since before dawn. The drowned trees hung limply, and the streets glistened darkly, and everyone on the sidewalks seemed to have black umbrellas.

At the Churchill Hotel in Portman Square, rain beat against the windows and streamed down the glass, distorting the view from the dining room. Occasionally, brilliant flashes of lightning, passing through the water- beaded windowpanes, briefly cast shadowy images of raindrops onto the clean white tablecloths.

Burt Sandier, in London on business from New York, sat at one of the window tables, wondering how in God's name he was going to justify the size of this breakfast bill on his expense account. His guest had begun by ordering a bottle of good champagne: Mumm's Extra Dry, which didn't come cheap. With the champagne, his guest wanted caviar — champagne and caviar for breakfast! — and two kinds of fresh fruit. And the old fellow clearly was not finished ordering.

Across the table, Dr. Timothy Flyte, the object of Sandler's amazement, studied the menu with childlike delight. To the waiter, he said, “And I should like an order of your croissants.”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter said.

“Are they very flaky?”

“Yes, sir. Very.”

“Oh, good. And eggs,” Flyte said, “Two lovely eggs, of course, rather soft, with buttered toast.”

“Toast?” the waiter asked, “Is that in addition to the two croissants, sir?”

“Yes, yes,” Flyte said, fingering the slightly frayed collar of his white shirt. “And a rasher of bacon with the eggs.”

The waiter blinked. “Yes, sir.”

At last Flyte looked up at Burt Sandler. “What's breakfast without bacon? Am I right?”

“I'm an eggs-and-bacon man myself,” Burt Sandler agreed, forcing a smile.

“Wise of you,” Flyte said sagely. His wire-rimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose and were now perched on the round, red tip of it. With a long, thin finger, he pushed them back into place.

Sandler noticed that the bridge of the eyeglasses had been broken and soldered. The repair job was so distinctly amateurish that he suspected Flyte had soldered the frames himself, to save money.

“Do you have good pork sausages?” Flyte asked the waiter. “Be truthful with me. I'll send them back straightaway if they aren't of the highest quality.”

“We've quite good sausages,” the waiter assured him, “I'm partial to them myself.”

“Sausages, then.”

“Is that in place of the bacon, sir?”

“No, no, no. In addition,” Flyte said, as if the waiter's question was not only curious but a sign of thick- headedness.

Flyte was fifty-eight but looked at least a decade older. His bristly white hair curled thinly across the top of his head and thrust out around his large ears as if crackling with static electricity. His neck was scrawny and wrinkled; his shoulders were slight; his body favored bone and cartilage over flesh. There was some legitimate doubt whether he could actually eat all that he had ordered.

“Potatoes,” Flyte said.

“Very well, sir,” the waiter said, scribbling it down on his order pad, on which he had very nearly run out of room to write.

“Do you have suitable pastries?” Flyte inquired.

The waiter, a model of deportment under the circumstances, having made not the slightest allusion to Flyte's amazing gluttony, looked at Burt Sandier as if to say: Is your grandfather hopelessly senile, sir, or is he, at his age, a marathon runner who needs the calories?

Sandier merely smiled.

To Flyte, the waiter said, “Yes, sir, we have several pastries. There's a delicious”

“Bring an assortment,” Flyte said, “At the end of the meal, Of course.”

“Leave it to me, sir.”

“Good. Very good. Excellent!” Flyte said, beaming. Finally, with a trace of reluctance, he relinquished his menu.

Sandier almost sighed with relief. He asked for orange juice, eggs, bacon, and toast, while Professor Flyte adjusted the day old carnation pinned to the lapel of his somewhat shiny blue suit.

As Sandler finished ordering, Flyte leaned toward him conspiratorially, “Will you be having some of the champagne, Mr. Sandler?”

“I believe I might have a glass or two,” Sandler said, hoping the bubbly would liberate his mind and help him formulate a believable explanation for this extravagance, a likely tale that would convince even the parsimonious clerks in accounting who would be poring over this bill with an electron microscope.

Flyte looked at the waiter. “Then perhaps you'd better bring two bottles.”

Sandler, who was sipping ice-water, nearly choked.

The waiter left, and Flyte looked out from the rain-streaked window beside their table. “Nasty weather. Is it like this in New York in autumn?”

“We have our share of rainy days. But autumn can be beautiful in New York.”

“Here, too,” Flyte said, “Though I rather imagine we have more days like this than you. London's reputation for soggy weather isn't entirely undeserved.”

The professor insisted on small talk until the champagne and caviar were served, as if he feared that, once business had been discussed, Sandier would quickly cancel the rest of the breakfast order.

He's a character out of Dickens, Sandier thought.

As soon as they had proposed a toast, wishing each other good fortune, and had sipped the Mumm's, Flyte said, “So you've come all the way from New York to see me, have you?” His eyes were merry.

“To see a number of writers, actually,” Sandler said, “I make the trip once a year. I scout out books in progress. British authors are popular in the States, especially thriller writers.”

“MacLean, Follett, Forsythe, Bagley, that crowd?”

“Yes, very popular, some of them.”

The caviar was superb. At the professor's urging, Sandier tried some of it with chopped onions. Flyte piled gobs on small wedges of dry toast and ate it without benefit of condiments.

“But I'm not only scouting for thrillers,” Sandier said, “I'm after a variety of books. Unknown authors, too. And I suggest projects on occasion, when I have a subject for a particular author.”

“Apparently, you have something in mind for me.”

“First, let me say I read The Ancient Enemy when it was first published, and I found it fascinating.”

“A number of people found it fascinating,” Flyte said, “But most found it infuriating.”

“I hear the book created problems for you.”

“Virtually nothing but problems.”

“Such as?”

“I lost my university position fifteen years ago, at the age of forty-three, when most academics are achieving job security.”

“You lost your position because of The Ancient Enemy?”

“They didn't put it quite that bluntly,” Flyte said, popping a morsel of caviar into his mouth. “That would have made them seem too close minded. The administrators of my college, the head of my department, and most of my distinguished colleagues chose to attack indirectly. My dear Mr. Sandler, the competition among power-mad politicians and the Machiavellian backstabbing of junior executives in a major corporation are as nothing, in terms of ruthlessness and spitefulness, when compared to the behavior of academic types who suddenly see an opportunity to climb the university ladder at the expense of one of their own. They spread rumors without foundation, scandalous tripe about my sexual preferences, suggestions of intimate fraternization with my female students. And