Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [85]
Mr. Powys was running late, for Sunday was normally his day of rest, and he had got up early only after he had realized that he was due in Blackheath that morning. He left his Hyde Park Gate maisonette with a shaving cut on his face and yesterday’s shirt on his back. He got his blue Aston Martin from the garage round the corner and put the top down so that the wet breeze would wake him up as he drove.
He switched on the radio for the same purpose, though he was too late to hear Little Miss Dazzle’s “Just What It Is.” Instead he came in on the middle of Tall Tom’s Tailmen singing “Suckers Deserve It.” If Mr. Powys had a destiny, then Tall Tom’s Tailmen were singing its tune—not that it occurred to Mr. Powys, but then he was like that. The only thing the song did for him at that moment was to make him feel hungry, though he didn’t know why. His thoughts turned to Miss Brunner and Dimitri, both of whom he knew intimately. In fact, it was extremely unlikely that he would have agreed to this venture if he hadn’t known them so well.
Miss Brunner and Dimitri had a persuasive manner. Except in moments of extreme sobriety, they were usually mingled together in his mind, Miss Brunner and Dimitri.
Mr. Powys was a baffled, unhappy man.
He drove through the park under the impression that the air was clearer there, turned left, and entered Knightsbridge, London’s fabulous thieves’ quarter, where every shop doorway (or, to be more accurate, every shop) held a thief of some description. Sloane Street was also his choice, but he went over Battersea Bridge and realized only after he’d reached Clapham Common that he’d made a mistake and was going to be later than ever.
By the time all the cars had crossed the river, Mr. Smiles was having breakfast in his Blackheath house and wondering how he’d got into this in the first place. His knowledge of the information (probably on microfilm) to be found in old Cornelius’s house had come from a friend of Frank Cornelius, a successful drug importer who supplied Frank with the rarer chemicals for his experiments. In a high moment Frank had let something slip, and Mr. Harvey, the importer, had later let the same thing slip to Mr. Smiles, also in a high moment.
Only Mr. Smiles had fully realized the significance of the information, if it was correct, for he knew the City better than it knew him. He had told Miss Brunner, and Miss Brunner had organized it from there.
Mr. Smiles had then got in touch with Jerry Cornelius, whom he hadn’t seen for some time—not, in fact, since the day he and Jerry had robbed the City United Bank of some two million pounds and, with a million each, split up. The investigation by the police had been very half-hearted, as if they were concentrating on the important crimes of the day, realizing that the inflating pound was no longer worth attempting to protect.
Mr. Smiles could read the signs, for he was something of a visionary. He could see that the entire Western European economy, including Sweden and Switzerland, was soon to collapse. The information Mr. Harvey had kindly passed on to him would probably hasten the collapse, but it would, if used properly, put Mr. Smiles and his colleagues on top. They would hold pretty well nearly all the power there was to hold when anarchy at last set in.
Mr. Smiles toyed with a fried egg, wondering why the yolks always broke these days.
In his permanently booked room in The Yachtsman, Jerry Cornelius had woken up at seven o’clock that morning and dressed himself in a lemon shirt with small ebony cuff-links, a wide black cravat, dark green waistcoat and matching hipster pants, black socks and black handmade boots. He had washed his fine hair, and now he brushed it carefully until it shone.
Then he brushed one of his double-breasted black car coats and put it on.
He pulled on black calf gloves and was ready to face the world as soon as he slipped on his dark