I lit a couple of fags from a packet of bootleg Players Navy Cut that came with the room, and handed her one. We lay on our backs smoking, an aluminium ashtray balanced on my belly.
‘Grace?’
‘Yes?’
‘I knock along quite nicely in life, you know.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. I read the newspapers, talk to my boss, run a small airline. I think that I know the way the world works . . .’
‘But?’
‘Then I meet you again . . . and each time I do, after you’ve gone, I find that the world isn’t like I thought it was after all. It’s as if you change history every time I see you.’
She rolled over, and kissed me on the cheek. I felt warm tobacco smoke against my face before she spoke.
‘Don’t worry, Charlie. You’re much better at it than most. You know nearly all the answers most of the time. I just fill in a few of the little gaps for you.’ I felt a brief tickle on my belly, and knew that she’d flicked off her fag ash, and missed the ashtray. I hoped she’d look before she stubbed it out.
‘Knowing what’s in those gaps changes the way I see things.’
‘Good. It’s nice to know that someone’s listening.’ Hadn’t Hudd said something like that to me? The flat pressure on my belly told me she had looked before extinguishing her smoke. She rolled away, and turned her back on me. ‘I’m going to have a little nap now, darling, and when I wake up we can talk about the money.’
I looked at the ceiling. The room was completely black. It was like being suspended in space. Hudd had wanted to know if the Israelis had the money, before we split. It was clear now that they hadn’t. All I had to do was get back to him in one piece, and tell him the news. And for the first time in my life, I needed to get away from Grace. That was interesting.
When I awoke, Grace was humming a tune. It was ‘The Sheik of Araby’. Back in my prefab in Bosham I had a Tommy Dorsey recording of that. It was popular in the jazz clubs, where we roared out a vulgar version whose words we had learned in the war.
‘How long have you been awake?’ I yawned.
‘Five minutes. I was bored so I started to sing. I wanted to find out how loud I would have to get before you sat up.’
‘How loud were you?’
‘Not very.’
‘Shall we do what we usually do when you’re bored?’
‘No, Charlie. Let’s talk about money.’
‘You know your trouble, don’t you?’
‘No, what?’
‘You’re a square.’ The words fitted nicely in my mouth. I’d thought since the war that the next adventures for the English language were being written in America. It was time the world started to pay attention to the American teenager. I bent over and kissed a big nipple on a small breast, but Grace pushed me away.
‘Money.’
‘You never used to be interested in money,’ I told her cheerfully. ‘It must be the people you’re mixing with.’
‘Shit!’ Grace sat up. ‘You don’t think I’m serious, do you? We could all get killed over this!’
‘You never used to be worried about that either, when we smuggled you on to Tuesday’s Child and flew you over the Ruhr in 1944. You didn’t worry about living and dying at all.’
‘Maybe I’m older now,’ she spat at me.
When I said, ‘I’ve been trying to get you to admit that all night,’ she flung herself at me in a fury, punching and scratching and sobbing. Very un-Grace.
It ended with making love again, of course. With Grace everything always ended with love making. But she quietly cried herself to sleep afterwards. That was new.
Before dawn, I woke her and asked, ‘Would they really kill me for a couple of boxes of coins?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Charlie . . . not now you’re beginning to do so well. You can do whatever you please with the bloody coins. I want the real money.’
‘What for? It’s fake isn’t it? That’s what I was told.’
‘It’s exceptionally good counterfeit dollars, Charlie. Billions of them. So good that you could pass it off anywhere in the world other than Washington. America has fully committed itself to rebuilding old Europe, and Japan, and its own peacetime industries. Its armed forces occupy parts of Korea, Germany and Japan. In order to counter the Reds it has a bigger Air Force establishment in Britain, Italy, Germany and Iceland than it had during the war. This is costing a colossal amount of money to keep going. America is fully stretched, she has no money to spare – absolutely none at all – and anyone dumping that amount of dud money on the market will simply bankrupt her.’
‘But that won’t do you any good.’
‘The threat of it will do us good. If Israel has the cuckoo’s egg and America knows it, she will have to support us through thick or thin. Israel will be able to sort out its neighbours, and any attempt to restrain us will be vetoed by the US within the UN. It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card that will last for years.’
‘And we want the money back to stop you blackmailing the Yanks with it?’
‘Don’t be so bloody naive, darling.’ Grace yawned. ‘You want it for the same reason as us. If you have it safely tucked away in the Bank of England you’ll subtly indicate to
