The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘It’s the truth, isn’t it?’ said Perkins. ‘And, now that you’ve got it off your chest, why don’t we go on to the main point? Where is Dawson? Don’t tell us you don’t know that.’

  Standing there by the bunk, I raised my eyes to heaven and clamped my hands to my brow in a gesture of despair. The trouble was, I was so fatigued that the movement made me collapse on the bunk. Leaning back against the wall, I said, ‘This government spends eight million pounds a year, openly acknowledged, under State Expenditure, Class XI, Miscellaneous, for its Secret Service—and you two morons draw part of it in salary. Stick with it. Don’t go out into the big, hard world of industry and commerce. You’d never survive. You’ve got to have intelligence and common sense to hold down a pay-packet out there. Go away, you bother me.’ I rolled over and lay down. I was tired, too tired even to be angry. Too tired even to be afraid. Heat and cold and brass-band music can do that to you.

  Manston said, ‘All right, Perkins. He’s yours for five minutes. Don’t mark his face, that’s all.’

  He didn’t. I tried to kick him in the groin as he came for me, but he grabbed my ankle and damned near broke my leg as he jerked me off the bunk. Then he worked me over, strictly for five minutes, which is a long time when you are being bounced from wall to floor. It might even have been from wall to floor to ceiling towards the end. I wouldn’t have known, because I passed out without a mark on my face.

  *

  When I came round my watch said twelve o’clock, but whether it was midday or midnight I had no idea. Hackett appeared with a tray and no consolation. On the tray was a glass of milk and three very dry cheese biscuits.

  I stood up from the bunk as he put the tray on the table. My body was so stiff and bruised that I functioned like a badly manipulated puppet. Hackett waved me back with one hand.

  ‘Don’t try nothing like jumping me, Mr Carver. There’s someone outside the door.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t jump over a matchstick.’

  ‘That’s what you get for being difficult. You really ought to understand, Mr Carver, that you’re in deep. The boss is still off his food. Not like him a bit.’

  He came over and handed me the glass of milk.

  ‘Why don’t you be a good boy and tell’em what they want to know?’

  ‘They’ve had the truth. Why can’t they be content with that?’

  ‘There’s truth and truth. Mind you, I got to say that whichever one you stick with it won’t do you any good. The boss, he’s always had it in for you because you would never come and work for him. And because the times you have come in on a part-time basis you’ve always played it your own way. Bad, that. He likes things done proper even by temporary staff’

  I said, ‘Is it day or night outside?’

  ‘Midday. Lovely day, warm and bright. All the girls with skirts right up above their knees, birds singing and even the cab-drivers with grins on their faces. Pity you’ll never see any of it again.’

  He meant it. A cold spasm wriggled through my guts.

  ‘Cut it out,’ I said angrily.

  ‘It’s the truth. Yours won’t be the first body I’ve carried out of ’ere. Proper routine we got. No trouble. Just a quick injection and you’re out like a light. No trouble about disposal, neither. Ambulance waiting at the back, nice little drive down to just below Greenwich and you get dumped in the tide. Nice pub in Greenwich, The Ship, ’spects you know it. We always stop there on the way back for a couple of quick ones. Let’s see, be three weeks since I was there last.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Frightening you, am I?’

  ‘Of course you are, you bastard.’

  He chuckled and went, and I sat and munched the dry biscuits. Before I had finished they started up the tropical-arctic treatment again and after an hour a colliery brass band came on, blaring away at Colonel Bogey for a start and carrying on with a two-hour repertoire. And after that it all started again, the full story and omit no details. First with Sutcliffe, whose fat lips had started to be a little twitchy, then Perkins, who picked out a few spots on my body not already bruised and made a tidy job of filling in. I slugged him once when he got a bit careless, but my fist bounced off his jaw as though it had been made of india-rubber. Then Manston came, wearing a neatly pressed, Savile-Row, grey-flannel suit and smelling of Tabac after-shave lotion.

  He was sad and gentle, but adamant; the full story and omit no details.

  Lying on the bunk, chewed up, battered up, heated up, cooled down, eardrums aching from brass-band music, I said, ‘For God’s sake, you’re a reasonable guy, you know me. I’m not part of the Saraband Two set-up. If I had been I’d have admitted it ages ago. I’m no hero. I want to get out of here.’

  He said, ‘We’ve had people in here who’ve said just that. Little shrimpy types, hardly any blood in their veins, skinny types, fat types, tough types and angel-faced, wide-eyed innocent types. All sorts, and you could have got lovely odds that they were innocent—but they weren’t. Any more than you are.’

  ‘Just assume I am.’

  ‘Makes no difference. The innocent have got to suffer with the guilty in this. Get it into your head—this is a State affair of the highest secrecy. It’s the Prime Minister who is involved personally. Already his bottom is itchy with anxiety because one slip-up, one line of publicity, could blow this thing open. Can’t you see that? He wants his son back. That means a deal with the other side. Let that story break and God knows where the consequences would end. So . . .’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So, it’s obvious—whether you tell us the truth or not, you’re not going out of this room alive. Do you think Sutcliffe would let you wander around with a scoop like this in your hands? In a year’s time you’d be turning it into cash some way.’

  ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘Yes. And if I didn’t, I couldn’t help you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  With all the cold calmness in the world, he said, ‘Because we’ve already made preliminary contact with your Saraband Two crowd. They insist—for the common good—that a rider be added to the exchange agreement. We have to eliminate you—and they will eventually do the same for your Wilkins.’

  ‘The bastards! You’re not taking that, surely?’

  ‘Why not? We don’t want publicity, now or later. Anyway, it’s now part of the deal for Dawson’s return.’

  ‘And you’re accepting it?’

  ‘Of course, and the P.M. wants his son back. Naturally, he won’t be bothered with all the details.’

  I was silent for a long time, largely because my throat was too dry to let me say anything and my heart was pumping away so loudly that I doubt whether he could have heard anything I said.

  Finally I said in a very small voice, ‘Can’t you do something about Wilkins? She knows how to keep her mouth shut.’

  He shrugged. ‘No. It would be the same for Olaf, Gloriana Stankowski and Jane Judd, if you’d told them the real facts. I tell you the lid’s going to be put on this pot for good. You think, for instance, that Saraband Two and that lot will ever let Freeman or Pelegrina go free?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course not. They’re giving them that impression right now, even letting them pay back money, send postcards and so on—but they won’t ever get away. Now do you get some idea of the kind of fix you’re in? Once this exchange goes through, both sides have every reason in the world to eliminate all the fringe types who know anything about it. Certain professionals are going to know—but then they’re professionals, trained not to open their mouths. Pity you didn’t join us years ago—we might have treated you differently.’

  I stood up. I hated his guts. I hated Sutcliffe, Perkins and the whole cold-blooded lot of them—and I was scared stiff for myself.

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not, not for myself. But do one thing for me—try and work it for Wilkins. She’s a professional, all right. You tell her
to keep her mouth shut, and shut it will be for the rest of her life. Do that for me, you high-class, ice-cold security bastard. Just one favour.’

  He stood up and moved to the door. ‘I’ll put it to Sutcliffe—he’s listening now, anyway—but it will be entirely his decision.’

  He went. The brass band came on. The heat and the cold started up, and eventually they came again, by themselves, in twos, in threes, pumping away, the whole story, omit nothing, not even the smallest detail this time—if it had not been for Manston’s talk about Wilkins and what would happen to her, I might have disgorged the few tiny details that I had been keeping back. Not that they would have helped much. But now they were unimportant. I was going and so was Wilkins, so what was the good of saying anything? Let them rot.

  Then I was left alone. My watch said seven o’clock. The girl secretaries home from work would be taking their geyser-fed baths in Notting Hill Gate, the chaps from Lloyds, the Stock Exchange and the City offices would be suburb-bound through all points of the compass to their mock-Tudor villas and Kent farms, or be in their London clubs, hot hands already round their third whisky, Miggs would be in his office, feet up, listening to Alfred’s scurrilities, Mrs Meld would be leaning over the gate waiting for Meld to come back with the evening Guinness, Olaf, tired from badgering Mrs Burtenshaw for news of me, would be sunk in a rum depression, the Prime Minister would be struggling with his dress studs before going to a City Livery dinner, and clouds of starlings and pigeons would have settled around Trafalgar Square to unload another night’s guano harvest, and the world would go on turning, slowing down a little each minute but not really worried about deceleration. That was my worry, unique and unavoidable, I was decelerating fast. I would never sleep with another woman, never have a drop too much to drink again, never take that first morning draw on a cigarette and lie coughing happily in bed listening to Mrs Meld giving out with ‘Old Man River’—I suppose I should have been preparing my soul for the final fence. I even considered it, and then said, What the hell? My soul had been a non-runner for too long to think it could start steeple-chasing at this late hour, I turned over and went to sleep , . . sleep . . . chief nourisher in life’s feast. Well, tomorrow I would be absent from the board.

  They woke me at nine o’clock. Four of them, Manston, Perkins, Hackett and a bloke I’d never seen before who had a long, drawn, hanging face and bad teeth. Sutcliffe no doubt was watching over the closed-circuit television.

  Hackett and the strange man had me flat on my bunk the moment I made a move. Perkins stood by with a hypodermic syringe while Manston slowly rolled up my right shirt sleeve.

  ‘Usual disposal, Mr Manston?’ said Hackett.

  ‘No.’ Manston shook his head. ‘We’ve used Greenwich enough lately. Take him up river. Above Richmond.’

  Hackett beamed. ‘Right you are, Mr Manston. Make a nice change. Jim and I can have a drink at Kew Green on the way back.’

  I started to fight but they held me down. I started to shout and they let me. Alfred would have been proud of me. Perkins leaned over and jabbed the syringe in my arm. The fighting and the shouting died—and so did I—amazed how quick and painless it all was, and with no time to speculate on my destination.

  *

  It was the wink that did it. A little muscular flick of the eyelid that briefly spelled hope, a tiny signal picked up and registered within a tenth of a second.

  Rooks were cawing, there was the noise of a tractor, distant, ploughing the Elysian fields or more likely carting away clinker from the great fires of Hades. Water was splashing somewhere, but was probably unreachable, a diabolical tantalization. Warmth and comfort. Maybe a gentle initiation that would rise to red-hot discomfort. Naked, of course. Naked ye come and naked ye go. Music, too. Organ music, deep, welling up, fading, a long slow monotony of sound. No brass bands, thank God or, more probably, the Devil. Voices, too. Probably the central bureau of registration, manned by trusties, privileged types who were allowed a long drink once every decade. Church bells, distant, subtle torture since to have heeded their call in the old days would have changed one’s ultimate destination. A dog barked, a long, fierce, gritty sound prefacing the biting of some toiling buttock, some pain-wracked body.

  I lay there, eyes shut and in no hurry to open them. I considered the wink, that last-moment act, obscured from all the others, as Manston leaned over, watching me. It had to mean something, surely? Or had it just been a nervous tic? I didn’t want to open my eyes in case it had been. The beds in the place were comfortable anyway, even if they did tuck you in without pyjamas. I felt well, but bruised, rested but not eager for action. A telephone rang, distantly. That didn’t surprise me. From the tractor I knew that the place was modernized.

  I stretched, took a deep breath and got a whiff of tobacco in the air. Snout. That meant I would have to get on the right side of the barons.

  A voice said, ‘Why he so long?’

  Nobody answered. The voice was familiar. I ignored it. I was comfortable.

  There was the chink of a glass and then the long, slow hissing of a siphon. A delicious sound. Not to be ignored. I opened my eyes and sat up, naked.

  It was a nice bedroom, diamond-paned windows, a candlewick bedcover, white carpet, a bow-fronted Sheraton chest of drawers, some tapestry-covered chairs and a little Regency desk by the window. From a transistor set on the desk came the sound of organ music. Through the window I could see a row of elms, rooks flying around their crests, and a stretch of hop garden with the bines well up the wires.

  Olaf was standing by the window. He reached out and switched off the set. He looked absolutely miserable. Manston was sitting in a chair by the desk. He had a glass in his hand. Close to him was a low table, sunlight streaked across it, sparkling on crystal of decanters and glasses. A silver-meshed siphon stood on a silver coaster.

  I said, ‘Is it Sunday?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Manston. ‘The bells are from Sissinghurst church. Wind’s in the west. Morning service.’

  ‘It’s a bit early for a drink, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you lead a conventional life, yes.’

  He reached out for a decanter of whisky.

  ‘Three-quarters of the way up the glass. The rest soda. Lazarus special.’

  He fixed the drink for me and brought it over.

  ‘How was it down there?’ he asked.

  ‘They all sent messages. Freeman’s father runs a tobacco ring. He’s disappointed in his son, but looks forward to seeing him soon and expressing his displeasure in person.’

  I drank. It was a real corpse-reviver. I shivered with the shock, looked down at my naked, bruised torso, and said, ‘Why naked?’

  ‘Because,’ said Manston, ‘all your clothes were put on another cadaver, now going up and down with the tide somewhere between Richmond and Westminster Bridge.’

  I said, ‘You did wink, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did. It was the one moment when I could risk spoiling authenticity. I felt you merited it.’

  ‘Big of you.’

  I took another drink. It was good, but I had it tamed this time. ‘You did well,’ said Manston. ‘I was afraid you might ask the one question which would have spoiled it all.’

  ‘How did Duchêne and Paulet, in the first place, ever get on to the fact that Freeman was mixed up in the kidnapping? How, in fact, did they ever know there was a kidnapping?’

  ‘Yes. They knew long before you did.’

  ‘How did they know?’

  ‘From someone in our department—we think. Not sure, though. Freeman sent a letter to the P.M. It was opened by his personal secretary. The letter, of course, was not signed by Freeman. It just stated the facts and gave instructions for a code advertisement to be inserted in The Times. The letter was handed to Sutcliffe by the P.M. Five people only knew the facts right up to the time that one of our agents was murdered in Freeman’s cottage. Five. The P.M., his secretary, Sutcliffe, myself and Perkins.’

  ‘But there was a
leak.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘Perkins?’

  ‘Who can tell?’

  ‘It could have come through Captain Asab or one of his men in Tripoli.’

  ‘No. Duchêne was operating before Captain Asab knew.’

  ‘How did you know it was Freeman?’

  ‘Through a letter that Bill Dawson sent his father—unknown to Freeman, obviously. He said that Freeman was coming out to spend some time with him. He’d got leave from his oil company and they were going to do a tour of the Roman antiquities in Libya . . . Leptis Magna, Sabratha and so on. Freeman has a record. We checked him and it seemed likely that he was the man. Perkins, in fact, did the checking.’

  ‘You were a bit late getting on to his country cottage, weren’t you?’

  ‘That’s the way Perkins—if he’s the one—would have worked it, giving it to us late, and having Paulet there to put the clamp on our man.’

  I looked at Olaf, big, moon-faced, standing unhappily by the window. ‘Why don’t you say something?’

  ‘My heart is choked. I think only of Hilda.’

  I looked at Manston. ‘I’ve an idea that we’re going to do something about that, aren’t we?’

  Manston stood up and smiled. ‘You’ll find a complete change of clothes in the bathroom. We’ll talk it over before lunch.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’re due at Lympne at three to catch a plane to Paris. You can’t stay in this country—since you’re supposed to be dead.’

  *

  Showered, shaved, dressed, resuscitated, I sat on the loggia of Manston’s country’ house and watched the year’s first swallows dipping over the swimming pool while Manston laid it on the line for me. His analysis of the situation was clear, but bleak, and very direct.

  First, Perkins. He was only a few months back from a Far East tour. He might or might not be a double agent. Lacking proof yet, it was assumed that he was. Even so, it had been decided to let him run for a while. If he were a traitor, then through him they could be sure that the Saraband Two crowd would have written me off for dead. He, himself, had administered the injection of poison to me—only it had been, unknown to him, a nicely judged dose of pentothal, and Hackett and his friend had whisked me away before Perkins could become suspicious. The rest had been easy; another body in the river with my clothes on, and it might be some time before the body was found.