After the door closed behind the investigator, Burnside relinquished
control to the nicotine impulse. He lit a cigarette and snorted, "A cigar
no less." Then he briefly permitted the progress of a sneer across his
features, before asserting control. "No discipline, no threat," he
concluded and bridled at the insult of it.
How could anyone have set such a pathetic, hinting creature upon him
when the case was all but closed? Sir Geoffrey? Only on instinct, since
there could be no basis for suspicion. True, he was still D Ops after
Malta, after Willie, only because he'd personally surrendered to Lady
Wellingham and re-married Belinda. Surely, he'd played the reconciled
husband to Sir Geoffrey's full satisfaction.
Burnside flipped through the sequence yet again and once more the
intricate equation reduced perfectly to a botched Bulgarian hit on D Ops.
Belinda herself had creased the garage door with a fender and so the
Rolls had been parked outside in the driveway for days while the repairs
dawdled. Operation Pandora had been such a nicely gauged and
appropriately public success, humiliating without quite destroying the
Bulgarian Number 2, giving that faction every reason to get back.
Pandora had surely been real enough and Sir Geoffrey was indeed most avid
to claim credit on any grounds for its inspiration. Precisely no one
still alive knew Burnside had kept the second Bulgarian courier's metal
dispatch case and not turned it in to Archive. His instrument of freedom
had been so clean. Just as he'd learned in Africa long ago, a bomb can
be made to do its work without quite obliterating itself, leaving bits of
signature, shards of genuine Bulgarian metal workmanship, such as the
small trophy reposing serenely in the desk drawer.
So why this Wellingham suspicion as embodied in the American? Why
not fatherly grief instead? Why not grief for the son-in-law as well?
Burnside considered that he had allowed the planning to seek its own
opportunity. When the festering Malaysian situation had inexplicably
flared that night, not long before such a pompous and stately,
must-be-attended Whitehall reception, Peel had personally phoned Burnside
that he was sending a car around to fetch him. When Burnside asked that
Sir Geoffrey be informed Belinda would have to make her own way to the
reception, Peel had positively salivated in eagerness. Then came that
supreme moment when he icily dismissed Belinda's pique at going out alone
as beneath consideration and let a cigarette ash fall on the hem of her
gown. A sweet moment, almost as fulfilling as arming the device on the
way out. Yes, the equation resolved in full exactitude. Sir Geoffrey
must simply be getting career twitch.
He reached into the drawer, picked up the delightful shard and held
it up to the light for admiration. Then the door suddenly opened again.
Lieutenant Columbo poked his head in, held up a finger and said, "One
more thing, Sir."
Richard
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Richard Anderson (510) 465-9573 fax: (510) 465-9970