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The three of them strode clattering across the bridge, and Andrew watched his mother's graying brown hair toss in the wind. Got us home from Cairo, he thought; when Herod was looking for you. And the man she called Herod is with an Arab king now, in a place called something like jitter.
Andrew's mother had instructed him in geography, as well as mathematics and Latin and Greek and history and literature and the tenets of the Catholic faith, but except for the Holy Land she had always dealt cursorily with the Middle East.
At the open doorway on the far side of the bridge two men stood back to let the trio pass, and Andrew saw what he guessed was the steel-and-polished-wood butt of a revolver under the coat of one of them. His mind was whirling with potent words: Cairo and revolver and the Raj and the body and blood of Christ, and he wondered anxiously if it was a sin to vomit after taking Communion. He did almost feel seasick.
The black-haired man now led Andrew and his mother through a succession of doors and narrow climbing and descending hallways, and if Andrew had known where north was when he had come in, he would not have known it any longer; the floor was sometimes carpeted, sometimes bare wood or tile. Then they turned left into a dim side-hall, and immediately right under a low arch, and scuffed their way up another electrically illuminated staircase, this one turning clockwise. Net zero, Andrew thought dizzily.
At the top was a door upholstered quilt-fashion in polished red leather, with a green light glowing above it. Their guide pressed a button beside the door frame, and by this time Andrew wouldn't have been very surprised if a trapdoor had opened under them, sending them to their destination down a slide; but the door simply swung open.
The black-haired man swept a hand into the little room beyond. "Our Chief," he said. Andrew was the first to step inside, his nose wrinkling involuntarily at the mingled smells of curry, oiled metal, and a cluster of purple fox-glove flowers that stood in a vase on the big Victorian desk.
A stocky man in the uniform of a British colonel was standing beside the room's one small window, and he appeared to be trying to disassemble a spiderweb with a brass letter opener. Without stepping away from the window he turned toward his visitors; he was bald, with bristly gray hair above his ears, and his weathered jaw and nose were prominent like granite outcroppings on a cliff face. After a moment his chilly gray eyes narrowed in a smile, and he held out his free right hand. "Andrew, I think," he said.
"Yes, sir," said the boy, crossing the old Oriental carpet to shake the man's callused hand.
"Splendid." The old man returned his attention to the spiderweb then, and Andrew watched him expectantly, soon noticing that the loose left thigh of the old man's uniform trousers, though clean and pressed, was riddled with little half-inch cuts; but after half a minute had passed Andrew let his eyes dart around the dim room. Six black Bakelite hook-and-candlestick telephones hung on extendable scissors-supports against the wall, and several glass flagons half-filled with colored liquids stood on a table beside them; one wall was all shelves, and models of submarines and airplanes served as haphazard bookends and dividers for the vast collection of leather-bound volumes and sheaves of paper that were crowded together and stacked every-which-way on the shelves. On the walls were hung rubber gas masks, tacked-up maps, diagrams of radio vacuum valves, and a photograph of a group of European villagers lined up against a wall facing a Prussian firing squad.
"There's a fly here," said the Chief, without looking up from his work.
Not sure who was being addressed, Andrew glanced back at his mother, who just widened her eyes in helpless puzzlement. Even the man who had led them here was simply blank-faced.
"Andrew, lad," the Chief went on impatiently, "look here. Do you see this fly, in the web? Waving his legs like a madman."
Andrew stepped up beside the burly old man and pushed back a lock of his long blond hair to peer at the windowsill. A bluebottle fly was struggling in the spiderweb. "Yes, sir."
"Can you kill it?"
Bewildered, assuming this was some token sort of test of ruthlessness, the boy swallowed against his nausea and then nodded and held out his hand for the letter opener.
"No," said the Chief impatiently, "with your will alone. Can you kill the fly just by looking at it?"
Andrew really didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or start crying. He heard his mother shift and mutter behind him. "No, sir," he said hoarsely.
The old Chief sighed, and turned to stare for several seconds straight into the boy's eyes. "No," he said at last, gently. Then he hugely startled Andrew by stabbing the letter opener into his own left thigh, which gave out a knock that let the boy know it was a wooden leg. Through ringing ears Andrew heard the Chief go on, "No, I see you could not-and good for you. Are you interested in radio, lad?" He rocked the letter opener out of his leg and tested the point with his thumb.
Chipping Campden had only got electricity the year before. "We don't own one," Andrew answered. He had fainted in church once, and the remembered rainbow glitter of unconsciousness was crowding in now from the edges of his vision-so he abruptly sat down cross-legged on the carpet and took several deep breaths. "Excuse me," he said. "I'll be all right-"
Andrew's mother was crouching beside him, her hand on his forehead. "The boy hasn't eaten since midnight," she said in an accusing or pleading voice.
"Good Lord," came the Chief's voice from over Andrew's head. "Where did they drive from, Scotland? I thought you said they live in Oxfordshire."
"That's right, sir," the black-haired man said, "in the Cotswolds. This is some Catholic fast, I believe."
"Of course. Polarized, you see? Like Merlin in the old stories, christened. Nevertheless-Andrew."
Andrew looked up into the old man's stern face, and he felt clearheaded enough now to get back up onto his feet. "Yes, sir," he said when he was standing again. His mother had stood up too, and he could feel that she was right behind him.
"Remember your dreams." The Chief scowled. "Dreams, right? Things you see when you're asleep, things you hear? Don't write them down, but remember them. One day Theodora will ask you about them."
"Yes, sir. I will, sir." Andrew was simply postponing the effort of trying to imagine some no doubt frightening-looking woman named Theodora interrogating him about his dreams at some future date.
"Good lad. When is your birthday?"
"January the sixth, sir."
"And why the hell shouldn't it be, eh? Sorry. Good. Your mother has done very well in these seven years. Do as she tells you." He waved his hand, suddenly looking very tired. "Go and get something to eat now, and then go home to your Cotswolds. And don't-worry, about anything, understand? You're on our rolls."
"Yes, sir. Uh-thank you, sir."
