The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  José came back, armed with a map of the island. San José 21 was the number of the Villa Las Vedras, listed under the name of Barja—that could have been a long-standing cover for Duchêne or the name of an owner that they had rented the place from. José knew the villa. It was in the south-west corner of the island, about half a mile from the sea. It was about eight miles from San José along a dirt road that ran through pine woods. Beyond the villa was a headland and just off shore from it a group of conical-shaped islands known as the Vedras, from which the villa took its name. I made him draw me a sketch map of the road out and also of the layout of the villa and the ground around it as far as he could remember these. By the time this was done I knew what I was going to do. I got some notepaper from the cafe and wrote a letter to Olaf which José was to take to the airport. José was to tell Olaf all he had told me. In the letter I gave Olaf Sutcliffe’s unlisted London number and told him to put a call through to him, if Manston hadn’t arrived, and give him the facts. He was also to get in touch with the British Consul in Ibiza and pass him the code word Python and any information he asked for which he could give. He was also—though I didn’t say anything about this to José—to keep José with him. It was just possible that José, peseta-lust in his heart, might take it into his head to phone the Villa Las Vedras and make a little extra for himself. For myself, I said I was going out to have a look at the villa and to keep an eye on things. At least if they did move while I was around, I might have a chance to follow them or even whip Wilkins, if not Dawson, away. All I knew was that I had to get out there. I had a feeling that time was running out fast. Wilkins’s letter had helped me, but it had also, for certain, decided Duchêne upon a fast move.

  It didn’t take me long to get to San José. The road went inland, rising all the time until it reached the village that lay in a saddle between two hills. It was the usual affair, a church, a bar, a few shops, a tourist place for buying pottery and iron work, and a lot of old men sitting around watching time and the traffic pass.

  I had José’s sketch map on the seat alongside me. Just beyond the village I found the turning off to the right. A main sign read Cabo Llentrisca—that was the headland José had mentioned—and nailed under it were the name boards of the various houses and farms along the route. One of them read—Villa Las Vedras.

  It was a dirt road, built on a switchback pattern and, although I had to go slowly, I raised a great trail of dust behind me. I wasn’t pleased about that. Once I was in sight of the house it might attract attention. Duchêne wasn’t the kind not to have someone watching the road up to the villa. At first the road was bordered with little patches of maize, tomatoes, red fields of olive and almond trees, with here and there a peasant’s single-floored house. After about a couple of miles it began to rise slowly, through pine woods and hillside covered in tall, dark-green scrub. Now and again there would be a turning to left or right with a house sign on it. After a while the turnings grew less frequent until finally the only sign left on the direct road was that of the Villa Las Vedras. I stopped and consulted José’s map. A mile before the villa was reached he had said there was a small cottage. Half a mile after the cottage I would find a gate across the road, which marked the beginning of the Las Vedras property. From just beyond the cottage I meant to make the rest of the journey on foot. Anyone who wanted to come out of the villa had three routes. Either along this road, or out along the headland and down to the sea—or by an airlift. To a man like Duchêne any of these could be arranged. He had behind him any facility he liked to call on.

  I found the cottage. It stood up off the road, door shut, windows boarded up. Behind it ran the telephone wire for the villa, strung out on short poles through the pine trees. I went about four hundred yards past it and then, as the ground began to rise sharply, I pulled off the road and ran the van into the cover of some scrub.

  As I got out the air was full of the crazy fiddling of cicadas and the whine of a jet making a half-circle overhead to go in to land at Ibiza airport twenty miles away. I set out through the trees, keeping away from the road, but following the line of telegraph poles. After fifteen minutes I was running with sweat and half-deafened by cicadas. Twenty minutes after that I came panting up a hillside and out on to the edge of a small bluff that gave me a view which would have sent a tourist reaching for his Instamatic.

  Ahead of me the ground sloped down gently through scrub, umbrella pine and low oaks to a long hollow into which snaked the dirt road to end at the Villa Las Vedras. It was a long, low white building with flat roofs that looked as though it might have been converted from an old farm or group of cottages. Beyond the villa the ground rose to the beginning of the Cabo Llentrisca, a great block of headland thrusting out to the sea. Beyond that was a wide sun-dazzle of sea with away to the right the sharp, green sugar-loaf shapes of the Vedras lying about a mile off shore. To the left, just a hazy outline on the horizon, was the island of Formentera. Further left, almost lost in the haze, I could see the houses clustered on the Citadel hill in Ibiza itself. I gave the view little attention. The villa held all my interest.

  I worked around the side of the bluff for a while, keeping in the cover of the trees, then sat down, lit a cigarette to parch up my throat more, and studied it. There was a courtyard in front of the house and what looked like a wellhead to one side. Near this stood a large black saloon car. At a guess I thought it might be a Mercedes. I wished I had provided myself with field glasses. I wished so even more a few moments later because two men—I couldn’t identify them—came out of the house and got into the car. It swung round and came back along the dirt road. For a moment I panicked, wondering if Wilkins and Dawson (or just Dawson) were already in the car and this was the take-off. The road was away to my right. I got up and raced through the trees and came out just above the road in time to see the dust cloud trailing behind the car as it came slowly up the climb towards me. I threw myself down behind a myrtle bush.

  The car came by me and I had a clear view of the two men in it. There was no one else. One was Paulet and the other was Duchêne. They went by me and I lay there and let their dust settle on me. At that moment I didn’t realize how true that comment was to be. You should never let anybody’s dust settle on you.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Door is Closed

  Life is full of unpleasant surprises. Half of them, with a little concentrated thought and circumspection, need never arise. But some there is just no way of avoiding unless you are the absolute master of circumstance—which, unfortunately, no man is. Some people, of course, just ask for it because right from the start they are under-equipped. Like Freeman and Pelegrina. It was all very well for Browning to preach that ‘a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ Most of us are short-armed and have weak fingers, and the minds to match. Some of us, to stir up the metaphors a bit, just see only the wood and not the trees. That was me.

  But long before I came to give myself this homily, I had had another crisis of thought. Seeing Duchêne and Paulet motoring away down the road, chatting away and smoking, Duchêne still favouring his Swedish cigar jobs, gave the feeling that clearly they were not evacuating the villa . . . certainly not for some hours. Dawson, certainly, and, I prayed, Wilkins too, would be there. Well guarded. But I had a dirty feeling that Duchêne and Paulet might be on their way to San Antonio—maybe because they hadn’t had any message from Mimo confirming he had wiped out Freeman and Pelegrina, or maybe alarmed because he had not returned. I had a lot of thoughts along these lines and none of them were very comforting. It all boiled down to what I should do. I could either go ahead to the villa and do a one-man rescuing job against whatever odds there were there, or I could go back and get Olaf and we could tackle it together, or I could go back and rely on Manston arriving before nightfall. He mightn’t be able to get here himself but he would certainly have all the weight in the world to get Madrid on the phone and have the Spanish police in Ibiza and San Antonio under instructions
in a very short time. In fact that was what he would have to do. Unless something went wrong between Sutcliffe and the Prime Minister and a change of policy was vetoed. My interest was Wilkins, then Dawson. What was the best thing to do? In the end I decided to go back, get Olaf and go to the Spanish police. If they hadn’t received instructions I hoped that, with José as interpreter, and with a backing from the British Consul, I could get some action within the next six hours. I still think it was the right decision. In fact it was. But it didn’t turn out like that. That’s what I mean about life being full of unpleasant surprises. Seeing Paulet and Duchêne go by together, I should—Browning again—have been ‘stung by the splendour of a sudden thought’. I was just stung.

  I went back to the van, hidden in the scrub off the road, determined in my mind what to do. I got in, mopped my sweating face with my handkerchief, and then half-twisted to get my hand in my trouser pocket for Mimo’s keys. The movement made me cock my head to one side so that I could see, sitting in the shadowed back of the van, Francois Paulet. He had a Colt.45 levelled at me, and he was smiling.

  I said, ‘Hell!’

  He reached over with his free hand and took my Browning from the pocket of my jacket which I had slung over the back of the spare seat. At that moment I saw Duchêne coming down through the pines. He, too, was carrying a gun.

  Sadness in his voice, but a twinkle in his eye, Paulet said, ‘It is a pity that one cannot think of everything, no?’

  ‘It’s the climate,’ I said. ‘The brain goes soft with the heat.’

  ‘The little cottage back along the road, mon ami, is not empty. Peter Brown is there, and he reports anything that passes by telephone to the villa. Ça vous explique tous?’

  ‘We all make our mistakes. But just tell me, is Wilkins up there with Dawson?’

  He nodded and grinned. ‘She is. She has been a lot of trouble. Quelle femme! In our organization we could have made a great operator of her—once her brain had been washed clear of moral scruples.’

  At the window Duchêne said, ‘Get out, and behave yourself.’

  I did as I was told. They marched me back through the trees to the cottage. The black saloon was there. It was a Mercedes. Peter Brown, in blue canvas trousers, a white shirt and silk scarf at his neck, opened the back door for me.

  ‘Mr Carver. Nice to see you again.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  Duchêne said nothing. He got in alongside of me and Paulet drove. Within five minutes or so we were at the villa.

  The front was covered with plumbago and bougainvillaea and there were large red earthenware urns full of geraniums and petunias, flourishing in a way that would have delighted my sister. I was greeted by Saraband Two. She stood on the low patio by the front door, wearing gardening gloves and holding a watering can. She had a wide-brimmed straw hat, a bit like the jobs they used to put on horses, a floppy blue dress and rope-soled alpagatas. Her pleasant aunty face warmed at the sight of me and she didn’t look as though she had a worry in the world except greenfly and drought.

  ‘Mr Carver,’ she said, ‘how nice. We thought you were dead.’

  ‘That was the official bulletin.’

  ‘It just proves,’ she said, standing aside for me to pass, ‘that you can’t believe everything you read in newspapers. But I mean the second time.’

  ‘Your girl Gloriana made a mess of it.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  I couldn’t tell whether she was surprised or not.

  They took me through a cool, stone-flagged passage into a wide, long room with a wooden floor and a wooden ceiling. Clearly it had been an old farmhouse. The furniture was mostly cane stuff for coolness and there were gay green, gold and red tiles let into the walls. Through the window, between a clump of cactus, I could see the beginning of the rise to the headland. I flopped into a chair. Duchêne shut the door. Paulet went to a sideboard and said, ‘Beer?’

  I nodded.

  Aunt Saraband took off her gloves and her hat, patted her neat greyish hair tidy and then brought a cigarette box and offered it to me. I lit up and said nothing.

  Paulet brought me a glass of beer. It was all very friendly and controlled and I wondered how the real business would be.

  Aunt Saraband, who clearly outranked Duchêne, opened the proceedings.

  ‘Would you like to tell the story freely or do we have to be unpleasant, Mr Carver?’

  She said it with her back to me, as she fussed at a vase of some short-stemmed lily flowers on a table.

  ‘I hate unpleasantness.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Monsieur Carvay is always reasonable,’ said Paulet. Trust him to put in a good word for me.

  Aunt Saraband turned and smiled. I was being a good nephew.

  ‘I suppose it started with the beer bottles?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’d decided to stick to truth as far as I could. They could be told a lot of things which were no longer important.

  She sat down, crossed her legs and pulled her dress down. There was no need, it was already only a foot from the ground. ‘Your Miss Wilkins is a very fine and determined character. Too much so.’

  ‘She’s an excellent secretary too—and is very much missed at the office.’

  ‘We shall miss her too. She has kept everyone on their toes here. She has twice tried to escape. That was after we found out about the beer bottles.’

  ‘When I gave her exercise one day,’ said Paulet, without rancour, ‘she hit me with a large stone and ran. You know she is a fast runner. Mon Dieu, we had trouble with her. Since then she has no exercise.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Aunt Saraband, ‘we should let Mr Carver get on with his story, step by step.’

  Looking at the table with the flower vase, I said, ‘Those are new to me, those flowers.’

  ‘Sand lilies,’ said Aunt Saraband. ‘And don’t change the subject. I presume you received the letter from José Bonifaz?’

  ‘There’s a lad who should go far. Show him a peseta—’

  Paulet moved, with that swiftness some big men have, and the flat of his hand slammed across my face. I blinked and my eyes watered.

  ‘Of course, there’s nothing personal in that,’ I said.

  ‘No, mon ami/ he said, as he stood over me, and he slammed me again.

  ‘Enough, Francois,’ said Aunt Saraband. He went back to his chair. She looked speculatively at me for a moment or two and then said, ‘Mr Carver, we haven’t much time to bother about you or Miss Wilkins. I am sure you realize that we are not staying here. In fact we leave at six o’clock tomorrow morning. You, of course, and Miss Wilkins, will be left behind.’

  ‘In no state to talk,’ said Duchêne with his prim, irritable voice.

  ‘I don’t feel like talking now,’ I said. ‘But perhaps if you gave me a whisky—’ I looked at my watch, it was half past six—‘I might open up a bit.’

  To my surprise Aunt Saraband nodded at Paulet and he got up to do the necessary. I saw the bottle. It was a cheap Spanish whisky fake. Surprisingly it didn’t taste too bad, if you didn’t think of it as whisky.

  ‘What happened to Mimo?’ asked Duchêne.

  ‘José gave me his flat address. I walked in on a pretty tableau. Mimo standing over two dead bodies. He tried to make mine the third. I had to shoot him.’

  Not on any of the three faces watching me was there a flicker of doubt, surprise or even disapproval. They just looked at me and showed nothing.

  ‘I locked the door,’ I said, ‘and left them for the charlady to find sometime. I found this place, of course, from the telephone number that Mimo gave José. It cost me five thousand pesetas. I hope it’s going to be worth it. And thinking it over, why the hell should I tell you anything? You’re not going to do anything for me and Wilkins in return except put us out of circulation. I call that a no-deal.’ I took a gulp of the whisky. It tasted worse the second time.

  ‘We would make a deal gladly with you, Mr
Carver,’ said Duchêne, ‘if you had anything to offer.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  ‘What?’ It was Aunt Saraband.

  ‘You want to know how close on your heels Sutcliffe and his merry men are. For all you know he may be coming up the dirt track now—or he may know nothing.’ I smiled, though it took a little effort with my sore cheek. ‘You really are in a spot. You’re going to have to worry through life until six o’clock tomorrow morning, nearly twelve hours. And don’t try to tell me you could go now, because if you could you wouldn’t be wasting time on me at this moment. You’d be packing. What are you doing—going over the cliffside at dawn to make a rendezvous at sea with some Baltic or Black Sea timber boat? Or perhaps a quick helicopter lift out to sea to meet the Sveti on her way back—detouring, of course—from Algiers? So, you’ve got twelve hours to pass, worrying. Either I’ve passed the word to Manston or I haven’t. What am I offered to tell you the truth?’

  I looked around at them. They looked back at me. They didn’t have a thing to offer and they knew it. They weren’t going to let Wilkins go and they weren’t going to let me go.

  Aunt Saraband stood up. ‘You’re quite right, Mr Carver. There is no offer. There is no need of one.’

  ‘I could get the truth out of him,’ said Paulet.

  ‘It would take some time,’ I said, ‘and you would still have no guarantee that it was the truth.’

  ‘We don’t need any guarantee, Mr Carver,’ said Aunt Saraband. ‘In a situation like this the obvious line to take is that you have passed all or some of your information back. And—there’s no point in denying it—since we cannot leave here until tomorrow, we must take the obvious precautions.’