‘To stop anyone coming to the house?’
‘Quite. We can hold out here for more than twelve hours if necessary, particularly as most of that time it will be dark. At first light we shall be lifted out by helicopter.’ She spoke calmly, but underneath she had to be worried. The helicopter lift was all laid on and they clearly had no way of communication that would bring it earlier than first light. But her biggest worry was that if things did go wrong the really big boys of her service would be handing out painful demerit marks.
She moved to the door, paused and looked back at me. It was the sad, hurt look of an aunt whose nephew, loved and spoiled, had wounded her by stealing from her purse.
‘We entered,’ she said, ‘into an honourable contract with your government. They have broken the contract. It could have very serious consequences, particularly for young Mr Dawson.’
‘People,’ I said, ‘are always letting other people down. I gave up crying about it long ago. Anyway, a contract is only as honourable as the people who make it. In my book you and Sutcliffe are nonstarters.’
She smiled then. ‘Considering your position, you are remarkably provocative.’
‘You’ve only got to shoot me to make an end of it.’
But I knew she wouldn’t. Not yet. If a posse of tricorn-hatted Spanish police came roaring up in the night she wanted to have hostages, a couple of good cards in her hand to play with until the helicopter came. I knew it, and she knew that I knew it. Aunt Saraband was no fool.
‘Put him up with the others,’ she said, and she went out. Paulet and Duchêne moved towards me and formed a prisoner’s escort.
*
They were in a long upstairs room, directly over, I judged, the room in which I had been interviewed. It had two camp beds in it, discreetly screened from one another by a couple of sheets hung on a wire. There was a table and a few odd chairs, and some gay rugs on the bare wood plank floor. Against the far wall was an old-fashioned wash-hand stand. There was a small window, set low in the wall, but no light came through it because it had been boarded up outside, and there were bars—their ends set in the stone—on the inside. The light in the room came from two oil lamps. The atmosphere was warm and thick.
Bill Dawson sat on the end of one bed. He was in shirt sleeves and trousers. He had a square, freckled face and a mouth that smiled easily, and he wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses. He might have been a first-class geologist, but it soon became clear that he was a young man who took people on trust too easily. He had to be to be where he was. The first thing he said, after the introductions, was, ‘Have you got a British cigarette on you?’
I tossed him my packet. He was easily satisfied. Wilkins less so. She stood by the table, rusty hair a little untidy, a cold glint in her blue eyes, and marked the silence between us with an occasional sniff.
‘You’ve caught another cold,’ I said sympathetically.
‘It’s the same one,’ she said, and fished in the pocket of her cardigan for a handkerchief.
‘Hilda’s like me,’ said Dawson. ‘Once I get one it takes ages to go—’
I looked around. ‘Do you think they’ll bring another bed up for me?’
‘It’s the least of our problems,’ said Wilkins. She sat down on a chair, and went on, ‘I might have known that you would make a mess of things. We don’t want you here. You’re just another complication.’
‘Nice welcome for a rescuing knight.’
‘What Hilda means,’ said Dawson, ‘is that there’s a motor scooter in their garage. But it only takes two. One pillion.’
‘You’ve got it all fixed?’ I really was surprised.
‘Hilda,’ said Dawson, ‘has been wonderful.’
‘She always is.’ I turned to her and, believe me, I really was anxious to get back into her favour. ‘Your beer-bottle message worked. But they got wise to it.’
‘And naturally,’ said Wilkins stiffly, ‘you didn’t go straight to a set of responsible people—but you had to come here on your own.’
‘There were complications.’
‘There always are with you.’
‘You want to hear the form or just go on grumbling?’
‘The form is all fixed,’ said Dawson. ‘By the way, what happened to old Freeman? They really killed him, did they? Such a nice chap.’ I said, ‘Don’t let’s bother about Freeman. We have to think about us.’
‘He was my friend,’ said Dawson. ‘We had some good times together.’
I made no comment.
Wilkins said, ‘Where’s Olaf?’
‘At the airport. You’re on Ibiza.’
‘Does he know you’re out here? I mean, does he know about this place?’
‘By now, yes.’
She sighed. ‘That means he’ll come charging out and upset things more. You shouldn’t have let him know. He might get hurt.’
I said, ‘For two people in deep trouble, you’re not exactly wild about being rescued, it seems.’
‘We’ve got it all arranged,’ said Dawson. ‘We could have managed nicely on our own.’
‘You’ve only got until six tomorrow morning—and then you’ll be lifted out of here by helicopter. You will. Wilkins and I will stay.’ I gave her a straight look. She sniffed. But she knew what I meant. She was too intelligent not to be way ahead of me all the time.
Dawson, taking a deep draw at his first British cigarette for days, said, ‘We can get out of here the moment they go to bed.’
‘They won’t go to bed tonight. They’re not sure whether they’re going to have a police visit. They’ll be on guard all night.’
‘You see,’ said Wilkins, ‘how you’ve messed things up. We were going tonight.’
I sat down on a chair by the boarded window. I don’t often feel chastened but I was now. A man works his fingers to the bone trying to set something up and when he’s finished, or failed, he gets no thanks or sympathy.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you would tell me how you propose to get out? I know I’ve got no standing, of course, but it would be nice to know that you might let me follow you and run along behind this motor scooter.’
‘Just try and take this seriously,’ said Wilkins primly.
‘A wonderful girl,’ said Dawson. ‘She’s been a tower of strength. This I say sincerely.’
‘Reminds me of your old dad,’ I said. ‘But let’s have the facts.’
‘How is my father?’ asked Dawson. ‘How’s he taking all this?’
A little exasperated now because there seemed no way of pinning these two down to a straight line of talk, I said, ‘He’s reacted as any father would, and also with true British phlegm. For your safe return, he’s agreed—no publicity, mind you—to a highly one-sided exchange of political prisoners between London and Moscow.’
His eyes popped. ‘You mean we’re being held by the Russians? I thought it was just for money. Didn’t you, Hilda?’
She shifted uncomfortably. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t see that there was any point in bothering you with my conclusions. You’ve had a bad enough time.’
Firmly, I said, ‘Just tell me, for God’s sake, how you propose to get out of here?’
‘There is,’ said Wilkins, ‘no need to blaspheme.’
‘It was Hilda’s idea,’ said Dawson. ‘You see, when we first came here, they used to take us separately for exercise in the courtyard. Hilda saw this motor scooter in the garage, and she saw one of them use it once. The cars were no good because we guessed that they’d never leave the ignition keys in at night. So, one morning, Hilda hit the big French chap with a stone and ran.’
‘It wasn’t a very big stone,’ said Wilkins.
‘They chased after her,’ said Dawson, ‘but she got into the garage and shut herself in. It took them a little while to break down the door and get her out. That was clever of her, wasn’t it? You see, they smashed up the bolts so that the door can’t now be shut up at night. That means we can always get at the scooter.’
/> ‘Clever,’ I said. And it was. I should have taken over the secretarial work long ago and let Wilkins do my job. ‘But what good is access to the scooter out there if you can’t get out of here?’
‘Two birds with one stone,’ said Dawson, beaming at Wilkins. ‘You tell him, Hilda.’
‘While I was in the garage,’ said Wilkins, ‘I took a pair of pliers from the work bench and hid them on me. They didn’t search me when they brought me back here.’
I didn’t ask her where she had hidden them on her because I didn’t want more trouble from her. Instead, I said, ‘He’s right. You are wonderful. But don’t forget I’ve been saying it for years.’ Dawson stood up, and pulled back one of the floor rugs. ‘These boards, you see, are in short lengths and they’re nailed to the rafter of the ceiling below. We’ve been working with the pliers for three days taking out the nails. All we have to do now is to lift out three boards and we can drop through into the room below.’ He beamed at Wilkins and then at me. ‘She thought of it all,’ he said, replacing the rug.
At that moment the door opened and Paulet, gun in hand, came into the room, standing aside to let a woman with a tray pass him. I didn’t have to be told that it was Thérèse. She was a neat, trim, dark-haired number of about forty, in a linen frock. She put the tray on the table, gave us a smile all round, held it a bit longer for me as she studied me and then said, ‘Bon appétit.’
She went out. Paulet gave us a nod and followed. The door was locked and bolted from the outside. I looked at the tray. There was a plate of cold meats and some salad stuff. I suddenly remembered that I had not eaten since early that morning and, instinctively, I said, ‘Lord, am I hungry.’
Wilkins gave me a disapproving look.
*
The first part was easy. We waited until about half past four in the morning. In another hour it would begin to be light. During the night there had been a lot of movement and voices from the room below us. But now everything had been quiet for over an hour.
We pulled the rug back and Dawson and I between us carefully and quietly lifted out the first board. In our room we had put out the lamps so that no light would shine through into the room below. I put my head into the board space and looked down. The room below was in darkness.
We lifted out three more boards and then I went through, hanging by my hands and then dropping little more than a couple of feet to the floor below. Wilkins came next. I reached up and got her by the waist and eased her gently to the ground. Dawson followed.
We all three stood there in the darkness, listening.
There was no need for talk because we knew exactly what we were going to do. It was too risky to go out through the front of the house into the courtyard. We were going to climb out of the room window, circle around the house towards the headland and come down to the back of the garage. There was a longish slope down the entrance road from the garage until it started to rise towards the bluff where I had hidden. Dawson was to ride the scooter, Wilkins on the back, and free wheel away down the slope, not starting the engine until he was almost at the bottom. Once they were away I was going to take off into the scrub and pine woods and make my way back, staying clear of the road. But first of all I was going to climb one of the short telegraph poles and cut the line so that the party in the house could not get in touch with Peter Brown if he were still in the cottage on watch. Simple, straightforward, and it should have worked. Would have done with most people, even with someone like Aunt Saraband—if it had not been for the beer-bottle episode. They had slipped up on that one. Aunt Saraband and Duchêne never made the same kind of mistake twice. From that moment they had upped Wilkins’s I.Q. rating to a level which would have made her president of Mensa for life.
I went towards the window, Wilkins and Dawson following. I was still four feet from it when two torches came on, pinning us where we stood.
Aunt Saraband’s voice said quietly, ‘Please don’t move.’
For a moment I was tempted to ignore this and rush the window. But another voice, Paulet’s, said, ‘If you do, mon ami, Miss Wilkins will get the first shot.’
We stayed where we were. There was movement at the far end of the room, a match was struck, and suddenly the oil lamp flared. I saw that it was Duchêne lighting it. He turned away from the lamp after adjusting the wick and made a motion with his hand to us. ‘Just come back into the centre of the room.’
We moved back, controlled by his hand which had a gun in it, shepherded, too, by the automatics that Aunt Saraband and Paulet held.
Aunt Saraband shook her head sadly at Wilkins.
‘If we could have had you ten years ago, Miss Wilkins, and you’d been willing, we could have made you a great operator.’
I began to reach for my cigarettes.
‘No, Mr Carver,’ she went on, ‘just keep your hands where we can see them.’
Paulet winked an eye at me over his big de Gaulle nose. ‘You had a treasure there, Monsieur Carvay. Not until yesterday did it strike us. A woman, an ordinary woman, hits a man with a rock and runs . . . just runs.’
‘But Miss Wilkins ran into the garage,’ said Aunt Saraband. ‘Why?’
‘The answer comes,’ said Paulet, ‘when there is wood dust on the table there each morning, fallen from ceiling boards. Thérèse, you know, is good housewife and very observant. So.’
Duchêne, who had been standing by almost, I thought from his face, disapproving of this exchange, said sharply, ‘I think I hear it.’ They were all silent, listening. Far away I thought I could hear the sound of an engine.
‘If it is,’ said Aunt Saraband, ‘Peter will put on the car lights.’ The noise grew louder, and then unmistakable. The helicopter was coming, coming in at the first faint streak of morning light. Another day was beginning—badly. I looked at Wilkins. Her face was expressionless. I wondered what she was thinking about? Her father in Greenwich, the socks she would not darn any more? Olaf, wanting to marry her, and she reluctant to leave her father? I knew what I was thinking . . . not of a hundred lost opportunities, the small, but bright change of life . . . not of never again the amber circle of whisky in a glass and the comforting hiss of the first siphon squirt of the day . . . no, I was just wondering how the hell I could get something into my hands that I could sling at the oil lamp. How do you get something into your hands when you have to keep them still and in the open?
Outside the helicopter racket increased. It was overhead now, circling. Peter Brown would have the Mercedes’ lights on to monitor the pilot down to the courtyard. There would be a fast take-off with Dawson and Aunt Saraband’s party—and Wilkins and I would be left. Either here, in this room, or in the courtyard. No formalities, no bandage round the eyes, no last requests.
Of course, I’d made a mistake about Wilkins. She might have been thinking about her father and Olaf, but she was also thinking way above them, had to in the circumstances because the instinct for survival runs strong in all of us at such times, and in Wilkins probably stronger than most because it was backed by a natural obstinacy of character. She was to one side of me and a little ahead, a wing of rusty hair untidy over one ear, sensible old cardigan creased, sensible tweed skirt drooping a little unevenly to one side. To survive, risks had to be taken. Her hand came down sharply into the front pocket of her skirt. She whipped out the pliers she carried there and threw them awkwardly at the lamp.
She missed by a foot, but she hit the vase of sand lilies and the whole lot went crashing to the ground. Outside, the helicopter was down. The engine note had changed.
Aunt Saraband’s face showed her anger.
‘You really are a dangerous woman.’
Wilkins looked at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘You tried. It’s a good thought to go out on.’
Dawson said, ‘It’s funny about women not being able to throw straight.’ Then to Aunt Saraband he went on, ‘Look—I know now you’re not going to do anything to me. But do you really have
to . . . well, do anything to these two? It doesn’t serve any useful purpose and I’m sure they would keep the secret. Please . . . why do something so unnecessary?’
Duchêne said, ‘It has been decided not by us. We have orders.’
Aunt Saraband said, ‘Francois, you take him out. Duchêne and I will do what is necessary here.’ She looked at Wilkins. ‘I am sorry. Personally I consider it unnecessary. I would trust you both, but unfortunately my employers haven’t the first-hand field knowledge of you that I have. To them you are just two people who could talk loosely and ruin this thing by creating publicity . . . bad publicity, for both sides.’
It was then that the oil lamp was shattered. Olaf did it. Though it was some time before the thing was sorted out in my mind because I was too busy going into action on the heels of a miracle.
There was the sound of a shot, the window glass crashed, and the oil lamp exploded in a brief flare of flame and then there was a grey gloom in the room, and the sound of a window being kicked in, frame shattered, as Olaf, a dark mountainous bulk, burst through.
I didn’t wait to congratulate him. The edge of my right hand was already hitting out for the spot where I took Aunt Saraband’s wrist to be. I got her inner elbow and heard the gun go to the floor. I heard Dawson shout, heard Olaf bellow, ‘Hilda, this way!’
For a moment or two the room was a grey tangle of movements, noisy, with chairs going over and the sound of two shots. One of them fanned my neck and then I heard Duchêne roar, ‘Stop shooting!’ He was right. It was dangerous for both sides.
‘I’ve got him!’
It was Paulet and briefly I saw him hurl himself at Olaf. Paulet, big, competent and dangerous. Not the kind of man I would want hurled on me. But he had met his match. Olaf stretched out his giant arms, embraced him, crushed him, spun him round, picked him up and threw him. Paulet hit the wall and dropped to the floor with a crash that shook the house.
l saw Olaf spin round and grab Wilkins. I kicked out at Aunt Saraband who was coming at me like a Kilkenny cat who was going to knock the English stuffing out of a London tom. I got her legs and she went down.
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