Chapter 1
Greeting the other

Like music in the background she filtered into the hotel lobby unobtrusively but with the mystic allure of a theme recalled from long ago. It was an exclusive resort uncontaminated by numbers. She wore a diaphanous pallid gown. As she approached the front desk and was about to drop her ivory white hand upon the ringer, an attendant, struggling into his sport jacket, fully materialized and asked superfluously, “May I help you, ma’am?” Lavinia – for that was her name – turned and looked perishingly at the floor near the counter. She hadn’t spoken a word. The desk clerk knew enough to follow her gaze. Silently he stretched himself and peered over the counter onto the slate floor. Her silken white flats were covered in mud, red mud.

The attendant hadn’t the need to inquire.  He knew the symptoms: another guest of the hotel had mistakenly presumed that the verdant tropical walkway was unadulterated by refreshing moisture and supporting agriculture. “Oh”, he said, “yes, I see!” He immediately called for the support of a subaltern from the back office.

It was late in the afternoon when Mrs. Lavinia Gastonquay de Witt King restored herself (with her younger male companion) to their suite (with adjoining bedrooms) overlooking the Arabian Sea from a bamboo constructed building projecting along a boardwalk into the turquoise water. They had arrived a day ago after a prolonged journey – transported seemingly endlessly from one island stop to another in sea planes, boats and pontoons – and now she was confronting the perils of subtropical accommodation in Veymandoo, the Maldives. She had every intention of blaming her father for her soiled – ruined – slippers. It was his idea to secrete her on this remote and isolated island, no more than half a mile wide and half a mile long. And though she tolerated the gentlemanliness of her younger male companion – a junior solicitor with her father’s law firm back home in London, England – she knew the “cover” (for that was what he was) was strictly business and law, just another limitation of life’s apparent superfluity. She would however honour the family tradition of playing the game, submitting her intelligence to the ruthless domaine of international business law.

Lavinia also knew better than to inquire about the content of the telephone call in which her younger male companion James Armsby had been so entangled while she suffered the indignity of sodden shoes. The inescapable truth was that it was she – not James – who was the camouflage in this exploit. But long ago she had learned to cooperate. Objection would dissolve into mere redundancy. She would perform her role in the unfolding drama and deceit just as she had done all her life. Her father Brian Gastonquay was a clever man who had bred and educated a viper in a luxurious and sheltered afternoon parlour. Inquiry about the machinations of mere business had long ago escaped her interest and attention. The objects of the enterprise were purely money and power. Those were the sole anticipations of her father and his colleagues; though naturally being the spiteful and treacherous person she was at heart she at least had the temerity to dwell gloatingly upon the satisfaction of rampant materialism. Nor was she, as a result, unaccustomed to fawning favour, the inevitable necessity of conflict.

Meanwhile undisturbed by these mercurial inner reflections of Lavinia – whose fortune depended upon exhibition – the people who were to subscribe the ensuing event could be heard stumbling along the boardwalk from the beach.  Then came a respectful knock upon the door.  Both Lavinia and James looked up, first at one another, then towards the door.  Lavinia motioned James to open the door. There stood a handsome young man wearing a shiny red turban. Behind him were several others each carrying a cargo of briefcases. The meeting had begun.

Featured photo: Google Maps