by Denis Pitts
The Predator
Denis Pitts
Copyright © Denis Pitts 1976
The right of Denis Pitts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1977 by Robert Hale.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
For Leonie Pitts
“FOOL: IT IS YOU WHO ARE THE PURSUED,
THE MARKED DOWN QUARRY, THE DESTINED PREY.”
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
1
2
ELBA, 0900
3
ELBA, 1215
4
ELBA, 1440
5
ELBA, 1500
6
PISA, 1630
7
OVER GENOA, 1700
8
OVER CHERBOURG, 1800
OVER THE ISLAND OF SARK, 1810
9
BORDEAUX, 1900
10
OVER MUNICH, 1900
11
OVER MILAN, 1930
OVER STRASBOURG, 2000
12
OVER ELBA, 2050
13
OVER ELBA, 2130
14
OVER ELBA, 2145
15
OVER ELBA, 0000
HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON, 1000
Extract from Rogue Hercules by Denis Pitts
Author’s Note
This book is based on the assumption that the European Common Market will fail. It is a personal belief shared by several million others who voted to keep Britain out of it.
Because I happen to love Europe I pray that it will never become as vulnerable as I have portrayed it in these pages.
Alas, I fear it will.
Denis Pitts
Wiltshire, England, 1976
1
For a few minutes before sunrise on that island there is a time of half-light, of gray light, when the sea is a drab mottle, when each tree and shrub and flower appears to be molded from ashen, dull-sheened metal; and in the few moments that it takes for the sun to explode over the black hills on the mainland, there is a time of wondrous beauty when all things glow orange and red and then settle, with the rising, fast-whitening sun, to their natural colors, a hundred richnesses of green and soft brown. Pastel-perfect villages pose on mountain slopes, red tiles steaming in that first hint of the heat to come.
There is a silence before this moment. But at once, with the coming of the sun, there is sound: of a million mountain bees seeking dew-damp herbs and flowers before they become parched by the withering sun; of distant sheep bells, for at that time the grass is sweet and tender. There is no birdsong, because this is the time of the shoot.
Soon there will be the sound of people; the soft sibilance of the shepherd’s flute and the raucous voices of the women of the island, already gossiping and husband-chiding, shrill voices that carry over the valleys and down to the vineyards and chestnut groves where the hunters sit, green-capped and heavy with cartridge and camouflage, carbine and chianti.
It is a peaceful island. The people are known throughout Italy for their gentleness and generosity and for their excellent manners. And, like all islanders, they are singularly incurious.
*
The house on the mountain is a long, truly spectacular building that curves and ebbs and flows with gentle easy grace around the contours of the sheer cliff face onto which it is welded. There is no other house quite like this one. It is built of aluminum, partly faced with the mountain stone, and of glass and steel. It is defiantly modern.
Such a building could have been the ultimate in architectural vulgarity, a supreme affront to the quiet beauty of that island. But this is not the case. Some parts of it nestle securely on wide ledges; other sections overhang sheer drops — supported on apparently frail buttresses, which, in fact, could carry ten times the weight.
The house is a monumental example of engineering audacity. It took four and a half years — and six million dollars — to build. Four men had been killed in the hazardous blasting operations; another had plunged five hundred feet to his death while welding the natural stone facing onto the metal body of the building.
When the house was completed, it was opened to inspection by engineers and architects from all parts of the world. They came in admiring droves from every continent to examine the results, to photograph, to sketch, to question and to catch their breath at the result.
After six months of this, the owner of the house announced that there would be no further visits; the house would now become, and remain, a private residence.
It became very private indeed.
To reach it, the visitor turns off the main road onto a well-macadamed single-track lane that passes through a thickly wooded grove. Fifty yards along this lane he comes to a green metal gate guarded constantly by two men in light-blue uniforms. One man stays permanently in the guard’s office; the other approaches the visitor with brisk alertness.
The guards are supremely courteous, but unless the stranger can prove that he is there by invitation, he will unfailingly be directed to a reversing space and waved politely away.
There are four guests in the house this weekend. They are sleeping now. They are very important, and they are here for a very important reason.
In the Botticelli Suite, the President of the French Republic sleeps soundly, his closed eyelids relaxed.
The Chancellor of West Germany sleeps in the Rossetti Suite, but he sleeps badly, turning frequently. His pillow is soaked with sweat. The ashtray beside his bed is filled with cigarette butts.
In the dimly lit Titian Suite, the President of Italy sleeps an old man’s sleep. His mouth is slightly open and he is toothless. There is a half-finished glass of milk by his bedside.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland snores in his sleep. He is in the Renoir Suite and lies in ugly striped pajamas, his mouth well open, filling the elegant room with thunderous, rasping row.
These European leaders have come together in this house this weekend for a series of talks which, if successful, will save the economic community that binds their countries together. The brave postwar concept of uniting the warring nations is fast approaching total failure.
It is not necessary to go into the details of why this should be the case. Greed, national distrust and internal political struggle have combined to create the situation that has brought these men here.
Later today they will meet and talk freely and with the kind of directness that has been missing for too long in their discussions.
Now they sleep.
It is four a.m. on Saturday. It is going to be a perfect October day on the island.
*
In that gray light of dawn, a man dressed in a robe of white terry-cloth emerges onto the roof of the house and looks out over the silent island and the sea and the mainland beyond. A shabby coaster is making its way past the island, and so clean is the light that he can distinguish easily the frayed and tattered Italian flag on its stern. Nothing else moves; there is no wind; the air, normally scented with mountain marjoram and the sweet smell of chestnut trees, is still and fresh.
The swimming pool on the roof is an elongated kidney shape. The water is cold now, changed completely overnight by a mountain spring. In a while it will be heated to a temperature suitable for the guests. But this man, who has taken off his robe and stands naked at the poolside, prefers the water chilled to shock the sleep from his system.
He stands very still and the grey light bathes him. He is a man of forty-five, although his strong
and athletic body suggests fewer years. His face is handsome, but not glaringly so: it is the face of a man who has known power and wealth, love and hurt, luxury and danger. His eyes are friendly, but they have a piercing quality that, without immediately disturbing, commands notice. His skin is dark, the olive color of the Mediterranean people, and yet his hair, which has grayed slightly at the temples, is blond and soft.
He is an attractive man, one whom women cherish; yet he is a man whom other men are not driven to envy, because there is also a vaguely feminine quality about him, most evident in the immense sensitivity of his face.
There is an orange glow over the distant hills now and the sun is about to burst.
The man on the high board is no longer immobile. His body flexes as he curls his toes over the edge of the board, raises his arms to a horizontal position and draws in a deep breath. In the second that the sun swirls and explodes into life, he bends his knees very slightly and dives out, a crimson fiery figure, his body turning in flight and then straightening with absolute precision until it enters the completely still water of the pool. He surfaces and then swims several lengths in a graceful crawl.
This man is Jean-Paul Becker. He is the owner of the house.
2
The brothel was a pleasant, single-story building made of soft sandstone in an ornate, Moorish style, richly endowed with cryptic Islamic proverbs carved into its walls. It had been in its time the mosque of an obscure Mohammedan sect, and later in its life a warehouse. Then it was a club for noncommissioned British soldiers, and then a meeting place for the Ba-Ath socialist activists before they were squashed by the King of Egypt and his secret service.
The building lay in a dusty, decaying courtyard a hundred or so steps from the sleepy, flyblown railway station, and was approached only through a dark, dank alleyway that bore the ironic nameplate “Place de L’Empress Josephine” inscribed in French and Arabic.
In the early part of the morning, before the sun burned white over the town of Port Said, the women of the brothel would sit on cane-backed chairs in the courtyard and fashion intricate designs with lace and embroidery while they chattered, some in the Arab patois of the town, the others in French or Greek or Turkish.
Later, as the khamsin wind hissed in from the desert and filled the courtyard with fine, choking dust, they would pick up their chairs and move inside the building into a long, cool room with a marble floor that was heavily patterned with mosaic.
There they would remove their heavy black veils and arrange their chairs at one end of the room. At eleven o’clock precisely, they were inspected by the madam of the house, a bulbous and waddling woman born sixty years previously in Paris, who looked with care at their waxen faces daubed with cheap rouge and garish lipstick. The room was heavy with their scent, very much to the taste of most of their visitors and customers.
When satisfied, the madam would place a discreet sign in a window announcing “Maison Dina — Open” in five languages.
Slowly, for all things happened slowly in that fierce heat, the customers would emerge from the alley into the courtyard and make their way across the dusty paving stones to the brothel. The first to arrive, the regular customers, clerks, butchers, baggagemen from the station, used the brothel as a club.
They would sit on upright seats, ignoring the whores at the end of the room, making a circle around a giant hubble-bubble, smoking the powerful khif and drinking sweet Turkish coffee brought to them on hand-beaten metal trays by young boys in striped and frayed galabias, their heads shaven, their feet bare.
The madam would sit, sweating freely, in the corner, where she spent much of her time winding the handle of an aged Victrola and playing a ceaseless selection of records by Josephine Baker, Rudee Vallee and the early Bing Crosby.
Most of those morning customers made no use of the whores. They were more interested in the newspapers of the day, which hung from a rack nearby. They talked politics in soft, guttural Arabic, finished their coffee and left. Occasionally, the khif would put one of them into a drowsy relaxed mood and he would take a key from the madam and make a selection from the ranks of the painted dolls at the end of the room.
It was in the evenings that the house came to life with a fairly constant stream of men turning into the alleyway, some furtive, some drunk, some in groups, some led by infant pimps.
There were occasional fights between drunken seamen or soldiers who rolled in late from the bars; but these were broken up with practiced ease by the madam, who wielded an ancient police truncheon filled with lead. Mostly it was regarded as a well-run house of ill repute in a town in which whoring was a major industry and dubious sexual activities were an essential adjunct to the tourist trade.
A police sergeant called for his coffee and bribe each Saturday; the municipal venerealogist called each Monday.
It was in a small backroom of this brothel, in the winter of 1947, that one of the girls gave noisy birth to a boy baby. She screamed for most of the twenty-four hours of her labor; the more she screamed, the louder the madam played Josephine Baker.
The mother of the child was a raven-haired Greek girl from Piraeus who had once been a promising ballet student at the Hellenic Academy of Dance until she had been lured, like most of these girls, to the lucrative cabarets of the Middle East. Her name was Athenée Andropolis; but this had been forgotten in a five-year haze of heroin addiction and enforced prostitution.
There was no reason why this baby should have been born alive. The madam, who was a skilled destroyer of the unborn, had tried every ruse to rid the mother of it. But it was a particularly hardy baby; it clung to its mother’s womb with a tenacity that defied all the drugs and probes she had used.
It was a strong, healthy, and lusty child, much heavier than the average infant born in that town and physically far better developed. In those months in the womb it had drawn everything from its mother and had turned her into a wasting, cadaverous wreck with no further will to live after its birth.
Athenée died three days after her child was born and was buried in a cheap cotton shroud in the common cemetery overlooking the sea at the west end of Port Said. Her mourners were three whores who had been warned not to bruise their bodies in the anguished ceremony at the graveside in which they ripped their clothes and screamed. By eleven o’clock that morning, they were back in the long cool room awaiting customers.
A singular change overtook the madam at this time. She continued to be a hardened and cynical practitioner of her calling. The girls continued to be treated as cattle, and the customers suffered her mild contempt and venality. For most of her recent life, this gross lady had been attended by a fat and repulsive poodle, which, fortuitously, had been squashed to death by an army truck a few days before the baby was born.
She now lavished on the child all the love she had once given the poodle. It was, to be sure, a curious sublimation; but it did ensure the life of the baby.
The mother’s old room at the end of a corridor was converted into a nursery. The girls of the brothel were set to embroidering a layette of expensive silks. Trusted customers were bribed to steal the best-quality baby foods from the nearby British army base. And the child thrived.
The madam never registered the birth. When it came to choosing a name there was a mild rebellion among the girls, who had all adopted the child and given it love. Until the baby boy was six months old, he had been known as Poo-poo; he had been nursed and sung to in five different languages.
The father of the child had been a German sergeant in the Waffen SS, an escapee from the war-crimes trials who had hidden in the brothel for several months until he had managed to stowaway for South America.
He had not been popular; but he had paid well for the secrecy, and that was all that had mattered at the time.
One morning, the madam called the girls together to announce that the child was to be christened. The name she had chosen was Jean-Paul, after her own father.
The two remaining Greek girls dem
urred noisily. It was a Greek child, they insisted. The big, sloe-eyed Egyptian girl demanded that it have a true Arabic name. The Hungarians, the Palestinians and the Turkish girls were all equally vocal.
That evening, the brothel was closed to all but the most regular customers. Several bottles of champagne were brought in and placed on ice. The madam, who habitually wore black, emerged in a gay white dress with roses embroidered around the massive breasts. The girls discarded their makeup and also wore white, creating a peculiar aura of purity.
A British army chaplain performed the christening over a portable font, which he placed on a bookcase filled with pornography.
He was shy and ill at ease in the brothel, and somewhat hurt by the giggles of the girls as he read the christening service.
“Who givest this child into the hands of God?” he asked in a shrill voice.
“Moi,” said the madam.
“I baptize this child ...” He glanced at a sheet of paper “... Jean-Paul, Aristotle, Abdul ...?”
He looked around. “The surname?” he asked.
The madam looked perplexed.
“What was the name of that krauthead?” she asked. “Ah, yes, Becker,” she said.
“Jean-Paul Aristotle Abdul Becker.”
The witnesses to the christening were the venerealogist and a prostitute from Salonika.
Details of the ceremony were entered in a small, buff-colored army exercise book and later copied in a register at Canterbury, to which diocese the chaplain belonged.
For several long years it was the only indication anywhere in the world that the child had ever existed.
ELBA, 0900
The President of France was sitting in tight-lipped anger as the Prime Minister of Britain talked directly at him in a voice that barely concealed a deep-felt loathing.
“Monsieur le President, it is the contention of His Majesty’s Government — and it is my duty to put to you as frankly as I possibly can, within the bounds of politeness, the view of His Majesty’s Government — that the government of your country has consistently abused its position as an equal partner in the European Economic Community, and that my government, for one, is tired of extreme political and economic machination, vacillation and ...”
