“It’s sort of a summer intern program,” Arthur said.
Once the cigar was lit, Wu said, “Summer intern jobs never pay a lot of money.”
“These will,” Angus said.
“Where is it and what is it?” Wu said. “Be specific.”
“Kuwait,” Angus said. “Or it will be when the war’s over next week, next month—whenever. There’ll be a ton of money floating around during reconstruction and this consulting firm we heard from already has a lock on a lot of it. But the firm needs bodies, American bodies, and it’s willing to pay for them.”
“What’s the firm?” Wu asked.
“Overby, Stallings Associates.”
Artie Wu’s eyes narrowed and his face grew still. Nothing moved.
Then his lips moved just enough to say, “Overby as in Maurice Overby?”
Arthur grinned. “As in Uncle Otherguy, Pop.”
Agnes Wu sat before the dressing table in the Caledonian Hotel room, brushing her hair and listening to her husband’s word-for-word account of his telephone call from Quincy Durant.
Wu packed while he talked. He packed automatically, almost without thinking, folding whatever needed to be folded and wadding up whatever needed to be washed. It all went into an abused leather
satchel with brass fittings that she called the Gladstone and he called the bag.
The hair that Agnes Wu brushed was still the palest of pale gold, which she kept that way with only minimal assistance from her hairdresser. She now gave it what she hoped was its one-hundredth brush stroke, turned from the mirror, looked at Wu with her large clever gray eyes and said, “That was a hell of a coincidence—Quincy calling at that precise moment.”
After removing his partially smoked cigar from an ashtray, Wu said,
“Coincidences are seldom more than good or bad minor accidents that happen all the time. Quincy’s call was neither. He got the check from Glimm, knew we were broke and picked up the phone.”
Agnes Wu rose from the dressing table’s padded bench, went to a window, stared down at Princes Street with its handful of half-frozen pedestrians and asked, “Can we really afford it—Princeton?”
“That’s an August-September problem. This is February. But you can’t very well send two kids to Princeton at the same time unless you’re in the top two or three percent income bracket—which I trust we’ll have reentered by September.”
“Then you’re counting on Herr Glimm?”
“Somewhat.”
“Perhaps you’d best find out whether you should.”
Wu blew a fat smoke ring. “You can do it faster.”
Agnes Wu turned with an answering grin that transformed her face.
The cool, even remote look changed into something reckless, merry and even a trifle sly. “Cousin Duncan?” she said.
“Money knows money,” Wu said. “If Glimm has it, Duncan will know.”
“I really should see him now that I’m up here,” she said. “I could brag about the kids, slip Duncan some London gossip and find out whether he’s still cross with you and Quincy for not letting him invest in Wudu.”
“Since we kept him from investing in a damn near bankrupt outfit, he’s got nothing to be cross about.”
The first cousin with nothing to be cross about was Sir Duncan Goriach, the 62-year-old titular chief of the Goriach clan, who had been knighted in 1984 for services to the Crown— services that consisted largely of making enormous profits for himself and a few carefully selected others during the North Sea oil boom.
Agnes Wu said, “Duncan wouldn’t’ve cared about the money. He thinks you and Quincy lead spicy, eventful lives and merely wanted to buy himself a vicarious slice. So I’ll call him and invite myself up to Aberdeen for a long weekend.”
“There’s something we need to talk about first.”
Agnes left the window to sit on the edge of the bed next to the leather satchel. She clasped her hands in her lap and settled a carefully neutral look on her face. It was the look she assumed when anticipating terrible news. She had worn the same look during her marriage more times than she thought really necessary.
After Wu remained silent for a number of seconds, his wife said,
“Well?”
He blew another smoke ring, this time at the ceiling. “The boys’ve been offered summer jobs.”
“Where?”
“Kuwait.”
“By whom?”
“Otherguy Overby.”
Agnes Wu’s neutral look vanished. Her eyes lost their cool remoteness and seemed to turn a hot
