Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  He sat there planning the detail because this was the division between himself and Frampton. Frampton stood out in front, bringing confidence and assurance, and the right word and manner to all their dealings with the public, the two of them dovetailing to a combination which had only once shown the smallest fleck of bad workmanship. Although it had been Frampton’s fault, he had no condemnation, anger or regret. It was, in a way, welcome. It gave him this problem to absorb him. Perhaps, after all, he had been getting a little bored with his brief days in Brighton.

  The following morning at ten Sarling arrived at the Mount Street flat. Only Raikes was there. For fifteen minutes he sat in the armchair by the window and talked with very little interruption from Raikes. He sat there, a small bunched up crow of a man, his voice precise, authoritative, the chairman reviewing a situation, decision already made, the programme of work now being delegated and the few interruptions swiftly dealt with. There was no momentary softening of his personality, no touch of friendliness or acknowledgment of the basic antagonism between them. Raikes was given an exposition and then his orders.

  When he rose to go, Raikes said, ‘And where is all this stuff coming from?’

  ‘That you will know later.’

  ‘And it’ll be my job to get it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t see why you can’t tell me the details now.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to know yet. First, we must arrange the market. You’ve got all the facts you need for that.’

  ‘And I’m to appear as the principal in this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But this man will know I’m not if he’s got any sense.’

  ‘Of course he will. He’s not a principal himself. In this kind of business the principals never appear. In fact they’re seldom known. All you have to do is to make your introduction to him and talk business.’

  ‘He might want to know where the stuff is coming from.’

  ‘If he asks you that question you get up and leave.’

  At the door Raikes said sharply, ‘You know, sometimes I feel like telling you to go to hell. Do your worst. I’m walking out.’

  ‘Naturally, but that’s only an emotional phase. You know you can’t do that.’

  Sarling gone, Raikes went to the telephone and dialled a number. A man’s voice at the other end said, ‘ Yes?’

  Raikes said, ‘ Tony’s back and wants an appointment.’

  ‘Which Tony?’ There was no lift, no curiosity in the voice.

  ‘The Applegate one.’

  Raikes heard the phone put down firmly on to the receiver rests and the line went dead. He put back his own receiver, walked to the window and lit a cigarette. It was all a cold, bare dream, and he was in it, a principal in it.

  Five minutes later his telephone rang.

  The same voice on the other end said, ‘Tony?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Four o’clock today. The Ritz. Room 97. Go straight up. Don’t knock. Just walk in.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The line at the other end went dead.

  At four o’clock Raikes walked into the Ritz Hotel. A wedding reception was just breaking up in the main hall; men in morning suits studded with carnations, high-heeled girls in silk suits and dresses and bizarre movement of wedding hats … this was how it would be when he married Mary … grey and black toppers, the pop of flash bulbs and champagne corks … half the county and the same high chatter and laughter … Raikes taking his bride back to Alverton … Raikes now, he thought, going up in the lift to fix up a deal … gold bullion that still had to be stolen by him. Tony’s back and wants an appointment. What world was he being pushed into?

  He opened the door of number 97 and walked through a small hall to the open door of the sitting room. It was furnished in green: green carpet, green settee and chairs and green and white curtains. A bowl of chrysanthemums on the table exploded great puffs of yellow, bronze and red in the air. A man was sitting at a small desk writing. He turned, gave Raikes a smile and a nod and waved a hand at a chair, a movement that flashed a frost-white cuff and a gleam of gold cuff-link. He was about thirty, tanned skin, dark hair and everything about him very clean, fresh-pressed and laundered. His teeth shone and the whites of his eyes were healthy, the eyes smiling and friendly. He was full of warmth of the Mediterranean sun; the smallest of his movements sleek and assured, knowing where he came from, certain of where he was going, content with his secret world; poised, with a smooth air of knowing the arcane rituals demanded of him as though he had been born fully equipped, adult from a boy to fill his destined niche in a luxurious twilight underworld where gold ruled.

  ‘Cigarettes in the box there, if you use them. Excuse me a minute.’ He turned back to the desk and went on writing.

  It was a psychological pause, full of friendly understanding, to give Raikes a moment or two to get settled.

  With surprise Raikes recognized that he was nervous and unready. He took a cigarette from his own case and lit it. The man turned at the snap of the lighter and then swung his chair right round to face Raikes.

  ‘Like to get right down to it? No polite preliminary chat?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice shadowed the resentment inside him. The man was being nice to him because he knew he was nervous.

  ‘Good. What’s the offer?’

  ‘I want a price, chiefly for “ good delivery bars”. Four hundred ounces. There might be also some kilo bars.’

  ‘How many of each?’

  ‘It’s not certain yet. But anything from fifty up to a hundred of the big bars. The kilo bars … I don’t know. But that doesn’t stop a price being fixed.’

  The man smiled. ‘Nothing stops a price being fixed when there’s good will on both sides. At thirty-five dollars an ounce—which is the U.S.A. Treasury price—the four-hundred-ounce jobs are worth somewhere around fourteen thousand dollars a piece. The kilos; say, a thousand one hundred and twenty. That’s not our price, of course. On the free market the price runs from well over forty dollars an ounce upwards. The big boys would have to be smelted. For our trade we like the kilos or the real babies like this.’

  He put his hand in his pocket and tossed something across to Raikes who caught it. It was a piece of gold in the shape of a large chocolate.

  ‘Ten-tola bar. There are millions of them being hoarded in places like India … all the countries of the East. They don’t have much faith in paper currencies. Gold is gold. It never changes. Your stuff would be from London?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Delivery date?’

  ‘Sometime next April.’

  ‘Where? It affects the price.’

  ‘I’d like a price for England, and another for the Continent.’

  ‘You’d drop a lot on an English delivery. We’ll give you one, but we’d prefer the Continent. That’ll put up your operating cost but not as much as the price difference. What about payment?’

  ‘Dollars?’

  ‘Anything you say.’ He smiled. ‘ Vietnamese piastres or Cambodian riels, if you like.’

  ‘Dollars. Deposited abroad.’

  ‘When a price is fixed, you give me the details. Any bank you like, Switzerland, Beirut … but watch where you choose because if our price is in dollars you’ll have to watch the exchange rates. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Well, I get the impression that this is the first time you’ve handled this type of merchandise. It can be a tricky business. But you don’t have to worry about trusting us. We fix a price, you deliver and we pay. In this business if you cheat someone once you don’t get any more business. The word goes round. Sometimes the small boys, the agents and carriers try it … well, then they just go right out of business for life. We find them and fix them wherever they go. So, for your peace of mind I’m telling you that within its own framework it’s strictly honest. We’re just business men operating a market which governments have created by
their regulations, gold price fixing, and some of them by refusing their citizens the right to buy or hold gold. Thirty-five dollars an ounce is the official price. You can get anything from forty to sixty dollars and upwards on the black market, but out of the difference we’ve got all our expenses and losses to meet. I’ve known a Dubai dhow captain on the Persian Gulf-India run dump his whole shipment overboard in an emergency and never recover it. We stood the loss—a hundred and thirty thousand dollars’ worth. But the captain did what he had to and he still works for us. Sorry if I’m chatting too much, but I didn’t want you to have any wrong ideas about us. You can trust us.’

  ‘And you can trust me?’

  The white teeth flashed. ‘ Somebody gave us your phone number, and you the word “Applegate” and a phone number. That’s where the trust is.’ He stood up. ‘Ring the number you’ve got in a couple of weeks, we’ll have something for you by then.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Raikes rose and held out the ten-tola bar to him.

  He shook his head. ‘Keep it. Give it to your girl friend. As a citizen of the United Kingdom you’re not allowed to hold gold, but I doubt whether that will worry you.’ He moved to the door with Raikes, held out his hand and added, ‘Don’t bother to check when you get down below. I’m registered in the name of Benson. Very English, no?’

  For the first time in his life Raikes felt himself inadequate, humbled almost. He felt like a new, raw employee, moving to a master’s orders and not fully comprehending them. For him this was novel and immediately resented. He was used to being his own boss and to navigating waters that he understood fully. Nothing about this was real. It was a game of make believe where he had to pretend that one day he would be fully engaged in some operation already conceived in Sarling’s brain. But he wasn’t going to be engaged in anything. Sarling was going to be killed, and he was going to go back to Devon. He couldn’t take any real interest in the gold smuggling world because he knew he was never going to be involved in it. Fifty ‘good delivery bars’, 400 ounces each at fourteen thousand dollars … seven hundred thousand dollars … one hundred such bars would be one million four hundred thousand dollars … that was getting on for nearly three-quarters of a million pounds. What craziness had Sarling in mind? The man had to be put down. He stopped halfway up Bond Street and, unbothered by the pavement crowds and traffic, dropped the ten-tola bar down a gutter drain. So much for Sarling and Benson.

  Berners when they met in the R.A.C. said, ‘He couldn’t be stupid enough to think a bank could be tackled? One of the bullion dealers perhaps? Or something in transit?’

  At ease now, smoothed by Berners’ presence, himself again, knowing exactly where he was going, Raikes said, ‘ I don’t know what he’s got in his mind. I’m just not having any part of it. You’ve been to Meon—how soon could you be ready?’

  ‘I’m ready now. All we want is a few hours’ warning that Sarling is going to Meon Park for the night. Enough time for us to get there before him.’

  ‘He goes abroad tomorrow. For three weeks, according to Miss Vickers.’

  ‘That’s good. It gives us time for a final meeting and I’ll let you have all the details. Then you can brief her.’

  Raikes shook his head. ‘All this gold business. This chap Benson just sat there as though we were agreeing the delivery of carpets … everything square and above board.’

  Berners smiled, pushing a hand over his pale hair. ‘You did the same only on a smaller scale and with different goods. Sarling obviously got you in there. That wasn’t difficult for him. Most of these millionaire international types hold gold in some vault or other abroad. No matter how respectable he is he’d have contacts, probably some oil tycoon or a Greek shipping magnate who would only have to give him a phone number and a few code phrases and then forget all about it. For all you know Sarling may have an interest in gold smuggling to the East. He’d be so far back from the real operations he could never be traced. I must say I’d like to know what his project is before we finish with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Berners rolled a few cake crumbs under his finger on the table. ‘We might begin thinking it over and decide to take it on—by ourselves.’

  ‘Not me! I just want him out of the way so that I can go back where I came from. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes … I suppose so.’

  ‘Then let’s get him out of the way.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘Her, too. But we won’t be able to rush that, and it’ll have to look like an accident. And I’m not asking you to have anything to do with that. I’ll do it.’

  Berners shook his head. ‘I’ll do it with you. Everything in this affair we do together.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must get my train.’

  Chapter Seven

  Raikes went down to Devon for Christmas and stayed over well into the New Year. While in London he had kept in touch with Mary through letters and a few phone calls from his club. He had plenty to do while he was at home. He would be taking over Alverton soon. There were builders’ estimates to be approved for the alterations he wanted made before he moved in and lists of furniture still to be bought for him by his Exeter dealer for the moment of his re-entry. In addition there were a lot of new furnishings which had to be provided for the house. He spent a good deal of time with Mary discussing this and arranging with her for the various purchases. Although they were not officially engaged, it was understood that they would be as soon as the house was his. He wanted the engagement to be made from the house.

  Mary stayed two days with him at his present house, rumpling the bed in the spare room for Mrs Hamilton to make in the morning, a courtesy which Mrs Hamilton appreciated but which did not deceive her, nor was intended to. They went shopping, paid visits together, and took long walks either along the river or up on the moors. Sarling, Mount Street and all the fantasy that London held receded from him. This was his country and his place and he had only to be back for a few hours and it claimed him absolutely as it had always done. But this time there was a difference which he could not help but notice. There was a change in his relationship with Mary and it was impossible for him to tell whether it came from her or from him. To satisfy himself, he explained it by the unseen presence of Belle. No matter how contrived and forced by circumstances, nor how genuine he had had to make it seem for Belle, the aura of their relationship persisted with him down here. He felt that something of this made itself known to Mary. There were moments when he would turn to find that she was looking at him reflectively. He pretended not to notice and she, as though in willing conspiracy, threw off her mood, effervescing into gaiety and talk to convince him, utterly if she could, that there had not been anything.

  But there were moments when this pretence betrayed itself. Lying by her side one night, waking and feeling her near him, he reached out in the dark and his hand found her face, smoothing the line of her cheek. To his surprise he felt the wetness of tears. In the dark he pulled her face gently to his and kissed her eyes.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  After a moment for time and darkness to raise a defence for her she said, ‘Why not? Because I’m happy. Because you’re here and there’s so much ahead of us. When a girl’s happy she gets the choice of smiles or tears. Sometimes I like to cry because I’m happy—only I’m not too keen about your seeing the tears. Men always think tears are for unhappiness.’

  He said, ‘You’d tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘If it was something you had to know, yes.’

  The moon, dying from its full, laid a great sword blade of cold light from the window across the far wall. Outside there was hard frost and the long grass would be white, crisp meringue to the feet in the morning.

  ‘Anything that was wrong between us I would have to know.’ His hand moved, sliding over the curve of a breast, fingertips softly acknowledging the nipple, hovering, barely touching until it rose in hardness to him.

  ‘I’ve got everything I want. No troubles,
So let me have my sloppy tears, too.’

  He pulled her to him, made love to her, a rare gentleness guiding and possessing him and her. Afterwards, while she slept, he lay watching the blade of moonlight on the wall thicken from rapier thinness to a blunt Roman sword, and he knew that he had, not everything he wanted, but nearly everything. The things he lacked would come.…

  Another day, coming back from a country house sale near Minehead where he had been buying some old silver with Mary, they stopped for an evening drink at the Anchor Inn at Dulverton. Sitting together in the bar, fox masks over the fireplace, a stuffed monster trout in a case behind them, Mary from out of the blue had suddenly said, ‘If you had to list the things that mean most to you in order of preference what would you put at the top?’

  ‘You, of course.’

  ‘Because you love me? Oh, I know we have our own ideas about what love means exactly. But me, because you really love me, no matter what?’

  ‘Yes, you. But what’s the “no matter what” bit about?’