fellow professionals are in no doubt about it.’
‘If our information about Crau is correct, he’d better be. I see he claims to be an expert in karate and judo.’
‘He has never claimed anything of the kind. I claim it for him – rather, Smithers does, and as you know Smithers is very much an expert in those matters. He watched Bruno having a work-out down-town this morning in the Samurai club. The instructor there is a black belt – they don’t come any higher in judo. By the time Bruno had finished with him – well, I understand the instructor disappeared with the general air of a man about to write out his resignation on the spot. Smithers said he hadn’t seen Bruno chopping people around in karate: he has the feeling he wouldn’t like to, either.’
‘And this dossier claims that he is a mentalist.’ Pilgrim steepled his fingers in the best Holmes fashion. ‘Well, good for Bruno. What the devil is a mentalist?’
‘Chap that does mental things.’
Pilgrim exercised a massive restraint. ‘You have to be an intellectual to be an aerialist?’
‘I don’t even know whether you have to be an intellectual – or even intelligent – in order to be an aerialist. It’s beside the point. Practically every circus performer doubles up and does one, sometimes even two jobs in addition to his speciality in the actual arena. Some act as labourers – they have mountains of equipment to move around. Some are entertainers. Bruno doubles as an entertainer. Just outside the circus proper they have a showground, fairground, call it what you will, which is used to separate the arriving customers from their spare cash. Bruno performs in a small theatre, just a collapsible plywood job. He reads minds, tells you the first name of your great-grandfather, the numbers of the dollar bills in your pockets, what’s written or drawn inside any sealed envelope. Things like that.’
‘It’s been done. Audience plants and the hocus-pocus of any skilled stage magician.’
‘Possibly, although the word is that he can do things for which there is no rational accounting and which professional conjurers have failed to reproduce. But what interests us most is that he has a totally photographic memory. Give him an opened double-spread of, say, Time magazine. He’ll look at it for a couple of seconds, hand it back, then offer to identify the word in any location you select. You say to him that you’d like to know what the third word in the third line in the third column on the right-hand page is and if he says it’s, say, “Congress” then you can lay your life it is “Congress”. And he can do this in any language – he doesn’t have to understand it.’
‘This I have to see. A propos, if he’s such a genius, why doesn’t he concentrate exclusively on stage work? Surely he could make a fortune out of that, much more than by risking his life turning somersaults up there in the low cloud?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. According to Smithers, he’s not exactly paid in pennies. He’s the outstanding star in the outstanding circus on earth. But that wouldn’t be his real reason. He’s the lead member of a trio of aerialists called “The Blind Eagles”, and without him they’d be lost. I gather they are not mentalists.’
‘I wonder. We can’t afford excessive sentiment and loyalty in our business.’
‘Sentiment, no. Loyalty – to us – yes. To others, yes also. If they are your two younger brothers.’
‘A family trio?’
‘I thought you knew.’
Pilgrim shook his head. ‘You called them The Blind Eagles?’
‘No undue hyperbole, Smithers tells me. Not when you’ve seen their act. They may not quite be up in the wild blue yonder or hanging about, as you suggest, in the low cloud, but they’re not exactly earthbound either. On the upswing of the trapeze they’re eighty feet above terra firma. Whether you fall from eighty feet or eight hundred, the chances of breaking your neck – not to mention most of the two hundred-odd bones in your body – are roughly the same. Especially if you’re blindfolded and can’t tell up from down, while your body can’t tell you exactly where up is and most certainly can’t locate down.’
‘You’re trying to tell me – ’
‘They wear those black silk cotton gloves when they take off from one trapeze to another. People think there may be some advanced electronic quirk in those gloves, like negative poles attracting positive poles, but there isn’t. Just for better adhesion, that’s all. They have no guidance system at all. Their hoods are entirely opaque but they never miss – well, obviously they never miss or they would be one Blind Eagle short by this time. Some form of extra-sensory perception, I suppose – whatever that may mean. Only Bruno has it, which is why he is the catcher.’
‘This I have to see. And the great mentalist at work.’
‘No problem. On the way in.’ Fawcett consulted his watch. ‘We could leave now. Mr Wrinfield is expecting us?’ Pilgrim nodded in silence. A corner of Fawcett’s mouth twitched: he could have been smiling. He said: ‘Come now, John, all circusgoers are happy children at heart. You don’t look very happy to me.’
‘I’m not. There are twenty-five different nationalities working for this circus, at least eight of them mid-or eastern European. How am I to know that someone out there might not love me, might be carrying a picture of me in his back pocket? Or half a dozen of them carrying pictures of me?’
‘The price of fame. You want to try disguising yourself.’ Fawcett surveyed his own colonel’s uniform complacently. ‘As a lieutenant-colonel, perhaps?’
They travelled to down-town Washington in an official but unidentifiable car, Pilgrim and Fawcett in the back, the driver and a fourth man in the front. The fourth man was a grey, balding anonymity of a person, raincoated, with a totally forgettable face. Pilgrim spoke to him.
‘Now, don’t forget, Masters, you better be sure that you’re the first man on that stage.’
‘I’ll be the first man, sir.’
‘Picked your word?’
‘Yes, sir. “Canada.”’
Dusk had already fallen and ahead, through a slight drizzle of rain, loomed an oval, high-domed building festooned with hundreds of coloured lights that had been programmed to flicker on and off in a pre-set pattern. Fawcett spoke to the driver, the car stopped and, wordlessly and carrying a magazine rolled up in one hand, Masters got out and seemed to melt into the gathering crowd. He had been born to melt into crowds. The car moved on and stopped again only when it had reached as close to the building entrance as possible. Pilgrim and Fawcett got out and passed inside.
The broad passageway led directly to the main audience entrance of the big top itself – a misnomer, as the days of the great canvas structures, at least as far as the big circuses were concerned, had gone. Instead they relied exclusively on exhibition halls and auditoriums, few of which seated less than ten thousand people, and many considerably more: a circus such as this had to have at least seven thousand spectators just to break even.
To the right of the passageway glimpses could be caught of the true back-stage of the circus itself, the snarling big cats in their cages, the restlessly hobbled elephants, the horses and ponies and chimpanzees, a scattering of jugglers engaged in honing up their performances – a top-flight juggler requires as much and as constant practice as a concert pianist – and, above
