The Night Manager

"Mr. Roper is actually a very important guest," Strippli replied in his slow singsong as he buckled his leather overcoat in preparation for the snow. "From our private sector he is number five for spending and chief of all English. Last time his group was here, he was average twenty-one thousand seven hundred Swiss francs a day, plus service."

Jonathan heard the soggy chatter of Herr Strippli's motor bike as, snow notwithstanding, he puttered down the hill to his mother. Easy, he told himself. Roper has taken his time, you can do the same. He sat at his desk for a while, his head hidden in his hands, like someone waiting for an air attack. Finally he sat upright and, with the composed expression of someone taking his time, gave his attention to the letters on his desk. A soft-goods manufacturer in Stuttgart was objecting to the bill for his Christmas party. Jonathan drafted a stinging response for signature by Herr Meister. A public relations company in Nigeria was inquiring about conference facilities.

Jonathan replied regretting there were no vacancies.

A beautiful and stately French girl named Sybille who had stayed at the hotel with her mother complained yet again of his treatment of her. "You take me sailing. We walk in the mountains. We have beautiful days. Are you so very English that we cannot also be more than friends? You look at me, I see a shadow fall across your face. I am disgusting to you."

Feeling a need to move, he launched himself on a tour of the construction work in the north wing, where Herr Meister was building a grillroom out of old arolla pine rescued from the roof of a condemned treasure in the city. No one knew why Herr Meister wanted a grillroom, no one could recall when he had started it. The numbered panels were stacked in rows against the unrendered wall. Jonathan caught their musky smell and remembered Sophie's hair on the night she walked into his office at the Queen Nefertiti Hotel in Cairo, smelling of vanilla.

Herr Meister's building works could not be held to blame for this. Ever since seeing Roper's name at half past five that afternoon, Jonathan had been on his way to Cairo.

* * *

He had glimpsed her often but never spoken to her: a languid dark-haired beauty of forty, long-waisted, elegant and remote.

He had spotted her on her expeditions through the Nefertiti's boutiques or being ushered into a maroon Rolls-Royce by a muscular chauffeur. When she toured the lobby the chauffeur doubled as her bodyguard, hovering behind her with his hands crossed over his balls. When she took a menthe frappe in Le Pavilion restaurant, dark glasses shoved into her hair like driving goggles and her French newspaper at arm's length, the chauffeur would sip a soda at the next table. The staff called her Madame Sophie, and Madame Sophie belonged to Freddie Hamid, and Freddie was the baby of the three unlovely Hamid brothers who between them owned a lot of Cairo, including the Queen Nefertiti Hotel. Freddie's most celebrated accomplishment at twenty-five was to have lost half a million dollars at baccarat in ten minutes.

"You are Mr. Pine," she said in a French-flavoured voice, perching herself on the armchair on the other side of his desk.

And tilting her head back and viewing him on the slant: "The flower of England."

It was three in the morning. She was wearing a silk trouser suit and a topaz amulet at her throat. Could be legless, he decided: proceed with caution.

"Well, thank you," he said handsomely. "No one's told me that for a long time. What can I do for you?"

But when he discreetly sniffed the air around her, all he could smell was her hair. And the mystery was that though it was glistening black it smelled blond: a vanilla smell and warm.

"And I am Madame Sophie from penthouse number three," she continued, as if to remind herself. "I have seen you often, Mr. Pine. Very often. You have steadfast eyes."

The rings on her fingers antique. Clusters of clouded diamonds set in pale gold.

"And I have seen you" he rejoined, with his ever-ready smile.

"You also sail" she said, as if accusing him of an amusing deviation. The also was a mystery she did not explain. "My protector took me to the Cairo Yacht Club last Sunday. Your ship came in while we were drinking champagne cocktails. Freddie recognised you and waved, but you were too busy being nautical to bother with us."

"I expect we were afraid of ramming the jetty," said Jonathan, recalling a rowdy bunch of rich Egyptians swilling champagne on the club veranda.

"It was a pretty blue boat with an English flag. Is it yours? It looked so royal."

"Oh my goodness no! It's the minister's."

"You mean you sail with a priest?"

"I mean I sail with the second man at the British Embassy."

"He looked so young. You both did. I was impressed. Somehow I had imagined that people who work at night are unhealthy. When do you sleep?"