Krystelle covered her face with the warm, steaming cloth but allowed Grant’s to cool a little and then gently laid it over his forehead and temples while she slowly rubbed his hands. She was more thoughtful than she had been in her life and the whole business made her feel like an amateur. ‘Tea, David,’ she whispered, and kissed his lips as he opened his eyes.
Minutes later, and while Krystelle combed her hair, he glanced at his watch. He felt better than he had expected: and little wonder! Five hours had passed since the kidnapping!
A voice called out from the shadows. ‘Come out now and walk slowly to the door of the house. You were searched while asleep and we know that you carry no arms, but please don’t make the mistake of trying to run away.’
‘That girl is the coolest thing outside a deep freeze I’ve ever seen,’ said Krystelle as she walked hand in hand with Grant across the dust to a flight of low wooden steps.
‘Now turn right, enter the room and sit down on the two larger chairs. I’ll be with you in a moment.’
A whiff of incense caught Grant’s nostrils as he walked inside, but the room itself was pure Thai and the furnishings worth a small fortune. The two ‘larger’ chairs were tall-backed stiff affairs heavy with braid and tapestry placed beneath ebony with mother-of-pearl lamp shades. Bulbs had been replaced by two odd looking little dark balls and Grant automatically recorded that they were well bugged, with tapes and pick-up probably in the next room. There were several suspect ventilation holes which could give a man with a gun full command of the room and windows were blocked by tight-fitting shutters concealed by heavy velvet curtains.
The girl seemed to glide through the door. She was wearing a saffron coloured dress falling to her ankles, gold shaded flip-flops and a deep blue sash around her waist. ‘My name,’ she said formally, ‘is Moogie, and we are no longer in Bangkok. You are my special guests and I want information. It will help if you can answer a few questions.’
Grant and Krystelle both knew the value of silence. But they also knew how and when to talk. ‘What things?’ asked Grant.
‘You know Admiral Cooper, an American in Europe?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a woman called Miss Sidders?’
‘Yes.’
‘What exactly do they do?’
Grant almost smiled. Everyone who was anyone knew that he worked for the Admiral and everyone who was anyone knew at least something about the job, since there had been nothing but security leaks and trouble after the break-up of their Paris office and transfer to Belgium. ‘Intelligence,’ he said. ‘Just intelligence.’
‘You mean, to put it bluntly, that you are all spies?’
‘You could say so.’ Grant saw Krystelle frown slightly. From the way the girl talked it seemed possible that her people didn’t yet know that the Admiral was dead.
‘And who is the enemy these days?’
‘Moogie,’ said Grant. ‘Just about everyone might be an enemy. In this world, right now, and as no doubt you know, it is a clever man who can say for sure that his neighbour isn’t an enemy. The whole goddam place from Peking to London and on to Washington is stuffed with men sitting on the fence wondering which way to jump. We only want to keep the cold wars cold. Simple.’
‘Would you say that Admiral Cooper is a good man?’
‘At his job?’
‘In his mind. Minds are more important than jobs.’
‘A good man.’
‘Then why does he never leave Europe?’
Grant was puzzled. ‘Why should he? He seldom needs to leave the office.’
‘But he is American. Why does he never go home?’
Grant suddenly felt himself slip into gear. ‘I never thought of that. Maybe you’ve got something there. But why do you ask?’
The girl looked at him coldly. ‘You will answer questions, not me. But I gather that you don’t know why he never returned to America.’
‘I don’t know why. Never thought about it until now.’
‘Was he afraid of something perhaps? Had he a “past”?’
‘Everything is possible,’ said Grant. ‘But I doubt it. His record must have been clean or he would never have been given the job. We are all carefully screened. You know the word?’
‘Sure. I was at school in Hong Kong and took my degree in Bangkok. My English is very good. But I still don’t understand why he never returned to the United States, even for a holiday. It isn’t natural for a man to leave everything like that. There must have been a very good reason, yet you say he was screened. Were the examiners thorough?’
‘He was screened in detail and in depth,’ said Grant. ‘But now one question from me. Your degree? You don’t look old enough to have left school.’
The girl tittered slightly. ‘I am twenty-three but very Thai. It is difficult for foreign men to guess the age of a woman like myself.’
‘And the degree?’
‘English language and English literature. Now back to work. Has the Admiral a wife?’
Grant changed his tactics. ‘Something you had better know. The Admiral plus Miss Sidders were killed yesterday late afternoon in Belgium.’
The girl seemed to freeze and her eyes went flat dead. ‘Tell me more,’ she said at last. ‘I am, well, interested.’
‘They were motoring in Brussels, Belgium. A lorry swerved towards them and they crashed into railings. The Admiral was killed immediately and the lady died a few hours later.’
‘It was an accident?’
‘They happen every day. Why not?’
‘So does murder. Who would wish to kill them? As spies they must have made many enemies.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Grant at last. ‘The man who killed them is called Mark Goodenough. He is English, a playboy, married to a French girl and seen around with good-looking boy-friends. A.C. and D.C. some people call it.’
‘And you know this man?’
‘I know where to find him.’
‘You mean to kill him?’
‘If possible, yes. Though right now it looks more likely that your friends will kill me.’
‘You mean to kill him for revenge?’
‘Yes. But that apart I figure he’s a trouble-maker. The world might be better without him.’
‘So you make yourself judge and executioner?’
‘Occasionally. Yes.’
‘Like now?’
‘Yes.’
‘You would like a cigarette?’ The girl pointed to a pack on the side-table beside Grant’s chair. ‘In a moment you shall have more tea. But first a little more work. Did Admiral Cooper have any children?’
‘I think not. But he was pretty close about private things.’
‘You think, maybe, that this Miss Sidders was his wife?’
‘Not a chance.’ The idea almost amused Grant. ‘They were very good friends. Nothing else. Not ever.’
‘So he has no heirs?’
‘How should I know? I dare say he’ll have nephews or nieces somewhere. Or a sister or something.’
The girl seemed to brace herself before speaking. ‘He did have, as you say, “something”. I am his daughter.’
Grand and Krystelle began to feel they had jumped neck high into some surrealist nightmare. It was impossible, or at least . . . anyhow it made no sense. ‘Tell us more,’ said Grant at last. ‘I don’t mind saying that you surprise me.’
The girl looked at him curiously. ‘You were his friend?’
‘I would say so. I certainly thought so.’
‘Then let me explain. He was posted to Indonesia after the Second War and worked all over south-east Asia until he fell in love with my mother who lived in a small estate between Bangkok and Ayudhya not so very far from the Summer Palace. Her parents had been killed in an air raid during the war and her husband was an army officer serving for months on end in the north near Chiengmai. She became his mistress and I was born a year later. By that time she had told her husband everything and he divorced her. I knew nothi
ng about my family until, one day, about sixteen years ago, a man visited our home. He was kind and I liked him. He stayed for some days and I never saw him again, yet I never forgot him. My mother wept after he had gone and told me that the American was my father. I hated him for making my mother so unhappy, but later, when I was a little older, I began to understand and I remembered the good things, his smile, his kind voice, his jokes, the good times we had together and the light he brought into my mother’s eyes when she spoke of him. Then,’ she said slowly, ‘I thought of other things. I became a young lady, a student, and forgot him until, as happens, Mother took ill and sent for me. I found her very sick. She was dying, she said, but she told me that I would be given papers after I had taken my degree, that they would give me the name and address of my father, and that I would see how good he had been to us.’
She shrugged her shoulders in a curious gesture of helplessness. ‘The papers were given only after I took my degree and then I wrote to my father and told him everything. I even sent a photograph and said how much I wanted to meet him. He wrote back and made good noises. One day, he said, he would come. But always something seemed to keep him at work. I thought of him as a man who never left the office. He told me about his few friends. He even said that a man called David Grant reminded him of his youth. I saw that he thought of this David Grant as a sort of son and I began to think of him as a kind of brother. You see,’ she said, ‘now I have no family. None at all, and so I made up a fairy story about David Grant. I thought of this Miss Sidders as a woman with no first name. She sounded like some God, or a ghost or something. A sort of power that wasn’t human exactly. Yet I might read that “Miss Sidders knitted socks for me last week” or “Miss Sidders gave me a pair of slippers at Christmas time.” Miss Sidders was always giving things, or making things. And she made me jealous because I wanted to give my father things and make him socks or buy him slippers. Was I very silly?’
‘No,’ said Grant. ‘You weren’t silly. But why did you kidnap us? Or didn’t you know that I was David Grant?’
Moogie hung her head and Grant would have sworn that she was blushing. ‘It was a joke. My father had made me think that David Grant was a kind of super-man and I wanted to see if I could take him by surprise.’
‘Just a minute,’ snapped Grant, ‘you must have had some idea about my working for intelligence, or being a spy as you called it, when you arranged that kidnap routine. Why couldn’t you just have contacted us in the hotel.’
‘I knew you were coming,’ said Moogie. ‘My father wrote in his very last letter that you would be visiting Bangkok and that he might give you my address. Well, I was happy about that and got very excited. I checked out airline offices to find what flight you would be coming on and . . . you won’t be angry?’
‘What could we do about it even if we were angry?’ snapped Grant. ‘You’ve got us neatly trapped in a room wired for sound, with loopholes for guns on each wall. What the Hell do you expect us to do but sit this out?’
Moogie giggled. ‘You aren’t trapped. There was no kidnap. It was just bluff. There are no holes for guns here, only for ventilation, and the place isn’t even wired for hi-fi. The cab was a standard cab with the usual driver and his friend in front. And there were no men with guns at the Siam Inter-Continental. I just played a little joke because kidnapping important people seems to be all the rage these days and I wondered if it could be done.’
Krystelle was almost speechless. ‘Okay! You’ve had a party. Now get to the point.’
Moogie giggled like a school-girl. ‘I’m sorry you are angry.’
‘And cut that routine too,’ said Krystelle. ‘We got that way back in the hotel. Just tell us what lies behind this set-up.’
‘I am sorry. But please let me explain. My father had written to say that his friend David Grant would be coming to Bangkok. Well, for me that meant that my “brother” was coming. Now my father seemed to think that he was clever, so I wanted to show that I was even more clever. I knew from my mother that my father had been some kind of intelligence officer out here in the old days, and from the way he had written that David Grant reminded him of his own youth I agree that I thought David Grant might be an agent as well. But I don’t know anything about spies, except what I have read in books, and the word “spy” meant very little. Though I did think that if I could trick him, or actually even kidnap him, it would be a big coup and my father would have proof that I was really grown up and quite able to look after myself.’
Grant felt that he was going crazy and simply couldn’t believe that it was all happening. ‘Admiral Cooper never mentioned his private life and I’ve never heard of you. He never hinted that anyone would contact us here and he would never, not ever, have given anyone not in the Department a clue as to where we were going to have our holiday. I don’t believe you.’
The girl opened a drawer in a little cabinet by the door. ‘Then read this. My father wasn’t a heartless machine. He was human. It was reasonable for him to give me news.’
‘Okay,’ said Krystelle. ‘Let me read it aloud.’
Moogie inclined her head. ‘Why not? You are David’s concubine. He trusts you, so for my part you can read it. There is no secret.’
Grant would have taken a bet that the word ‘concubine’ hadn’t gone down too well, but gave Krystelle full marks when she opened the letter and read it aloud as though she was sitting in their sun-parlour way back home.
Dearest Moogie,
You’re a great kid. That degree is really something and I’m transferring some dollars to your account so’s you can celebrate. Get yourself a new dress or a jade drop or something. Anyhow you’ve made an old man feel pretty damn good. So thanks again and have fun.
Remember my buddie David Grant? Well, seems he’s going out your way with his girl-friend for a vacation. They’ll be at the Inter-Continental, but don’t use my name if you do try to muscle in. I know you want to meet him, but take it easy and fix an introduction local. And watch it! That guy reacts fast to girls like you and that last picture you sent was terrific.
Now a surprise. I’m thinking of packing up the job. Age kind of happens to people without them realising it. But I’m not too young these days and the doctors are getting het up about my blood pressure. Nothing to worry about but seems they feel I should start shedding the load and relax more. So if I’m still around I’ll be out later in the year. And then you can show me that parchment. Maybe we could do a trip together.
Now remember, honey, play David cool. And play up to his girl-friend. She’s a doll, but kind of possessive. Though she might make a good friend.
Anyhow, honey, that’s it for now. Hardly seems more than yesterday since you were a kid and I made the last trip. Maybe the next will be even more fun.
See you soon,
Love,
Dad.
Grant picked on the phrase that mattered. ‘He told you not to use his name.’
Moogie hung her head. ‘You forget that I knew nothing about his work. I never thought that he was a spy. I only asked you what he did. His job. I didn’t think it would matter to disobey him just a little in that. And I wanted to meet you. I knew that Dad had been a spy when he was younger, and I suspected from the way he spoke that you must be some kind of intelligence person. But I never thought that my father was still an active agent, and I thought that it would be fun to see if I could kidnap a real live spy, even if I didn’t know whether you were important or not. It was just a joke. And I still think that my father would have laughed very much if he had known about it. I wouldn’t even have let you know I was his daughter if you hadn’t said that he was dead. That came as a shock and then nothing seemed to matter any more except to talk about him with his friend. You see,’ she added sadly, ‘I never knew him. Never really knew him. Only letters from time to time. And the address he gave was always a box number or poste restante. I only guessed he worked in an office from piecing together little things which he said in different l
etters. Everything was really built up from reading between the lines, and I was desperate to know more about him. Before Mother died it wasn’t so bad, but afterwards, when I was alone, I felt lonely and in terrible need of a family.’
Krystelle was still irritated, but had begun to understand. ‘I’d like to smack your bottom, young lady. Chiefly because you’ve outsmarted us. But now what’s the drill? We could do with sleep.’
The girl stood up and suddenly seemed very shy. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am . . .’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Krystelle, almost giggling. ‘That’s the first time anyone’s ever called me ma’am. Am I that old? The name’s Krystelle.’
Moogie looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Now you go to bed. And tomorrow we can return to the Inter-Continental.’
‘You don’t mind if I sleep with your “brother”?’
‘Why not? Concubinage is a very old custom and it is not polite for me to ask him to sleep with me. When he does I shall do so gladly. Because he is my brother only in fantasy. In reality he looks very competent and I think he could please me in bed. But the invitation must come from him. If he were alone it would be different. I would have an obligation to ask if he required a woman. If he did then I would ask if I would please him.’
It was seldom that Krystelle was left short of words, but Moogie was coming as a new experience. She looked as innocent and harmless as a seven-year-old, yet Krystelle sensed that already she had caught Grant’s imagination and that she was about as dangerous as a fer de lance.
‘Well, that’s mighty nice of you, Moogie. And maybe one day David will send out an invitation. But right now he’s going into the sack with his current concubine if that’s okay by you, and we’re going to surface about ten hours from now. There’s a thing called dysrhythia, and it knocks the Hell out of you. We need sleep. And after that we can think about the big cold world outside. So congratulations on the cleanest operation I’ve ever known and for being so explicit about David. We girls like to know where we stand. And guys like David like to know where they’re going to stand. So once again thanks a lot and now excuse. If there’s a loo around I’d appreciate a visit, not having been there for quite a time and I’d also like to brush my teeth.’
Paradise Spells Danger Page 3
