Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  ‘If I hadn’t considered it I’d be a fool,’ said Raikes sharply. ‘ Yes, indeed, I might be left holding the baby, and there’s not much I can do about it. When I go aboard I shall have my own passport with me, and I shall have a United States entry visa. My only chance will be to run for it, hide from time to time in Miss Vickers’s cabin and hope to get ashore in New York. After all, my papers will be in order. If you think it’s a possibility and you’re worried about it … well, all you have to do is to be considerate enough to call the whole thing off. I’d be delighted. Is your concern for me enough to make you do that?’

  Mandel shrugged his shoulders. ‘No. Anyway I was only considering a very remote possibility.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘If things went wrong and I were caught, perhaps you were wondering if I would do a lot of talking to make things easier for myself. Give names … involve you and Benson here.’

  Unmoved, Mandel said, ‘ I think you would find it impossible to involve Benson or myself. To involve a man you’ve got to give him a correct name and an address. But you would be involving Berners and Miss Vickers. Anyway, the question is an idle one. I don’t think you would try and save your skin that way. If the thing goes wrong and you’re caught, you’ve got nothing left except an automatic in your pocket. I know what you would do with it. Yes?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Raikes drained his drink and put the glass down. In his own mind there was no question of ‘maybe’. In going over the plan in the last weeks he had often come to this point. Any plan had to envisage the chance of failure. If it should happen it had long been clear to him that nothing remained, nothing that he valued. Months ago when he had retired with Berners the position had been just the same. If a policeman had walked into his house he would have shot himself. If things went wrong on the ship and there was no hope for him, then he would do the same.

  Berners stood up and for the first time spoke.

  ‘There’s no question of failure. In certain circumstances people are predictable. The Captain will be forced to co-operate. That is the key point. Once that happens the whole thing will go smoothly, because every move will be backed by the Captain’s authority. So don’t let’s talk about it any more.’ He looked at Benson. ‘When do you want me in France to do these helicopter timings?’

  Benson said, ‘It’ll be a couple of weeks before we’re ready for that. You don’t just walk into a showroom and buy a Bell 205A like that. Not for this kind of job. And you don’t just rent a furnished country house in Brittany by motoring round the agents. We’ve got plenty of time. We’re not out of March yet …’

  As they talked Raikes turned and looked out of the window at the river and the embankment traffic. Some black-headed gulls were scavenging in the mud banks, and pigeons were courting in the crevices of Waterloo Bridge above the brown water. He had a sudden picture of the Taw, gin-clear, and the white mouth of a trout showing as it levelled off to take a rising nymph.…

  Mandel moved up to his side.

  He said quietly, ‘It’s a good plan. I’m sure it will work. The difficult part, of course, is yours. I’ve every confidence in you. Believe me, I’m sorry that we are working under these circumstances.’

  ‘You’re forcing me to do something I don’t want to do, Mandel. So don’t give me any comforting talk. Because I’ve got to work for you, don’t expect me to like you. I’m going to do it. Just be content with that.’

  Two days after the meeting with Benson and Mandel, Raikes went down to Devon. There was nothing further for him to do in London. His passport was in order and he’d got his entry visa from the United States Embassy. Belle didn’t want him to go but he said that he had to fetch up the canisters and there were things awaiting his attentions at Alverton Manor. Apart from the fact that he wanted to get away from Belle for a while, he would have gone anyway. The salmon fishing had opened on the first of the month and the sea trout and trout season on the fifteenth.

  He spent the first three days on the river and, for hours at a time, all memory of Mandel and the Queen Elizabeth 2 went from his mind. Out of courtesy he rang Mary’s home but was told that she was still away. The evenings he spent at home mostly by himself. He had plenty of invitations to go out but refused them. Most people by now knew of his break with Mary and he guessed that most dinner party engagements would have been planned with some suitable partner for him. He had no interest in women, and he knew that he would have none until this operation was over. At the moment he acknowledged frankly, even with a fading resentment, that he was in a trap, being trained to go through certain antics and until he had satisfied his trainer he would not be let out. And when he was let out it would be to an incomplete freedom … pleasant giving him everything he had ever wanted except the iron security which he had once thought he had arranged for himself. Well, he could live with it. But there were times when he could not stop himself—useless though he knew it to be—from brooding about Mandel and Benson, wondering if there were some way he could escape from them and from this project. It was then that he felt most trapped, then that he drank too much by himself, and sometimes, full of frustration, left the house in the dark and walked for miles. With him often went persistent fantasies of ways he could kill Benson and Mandel and escape, but always underneath ran a current of common sense forcing him to acknowledge that there was no escape. Sarling had been a fool, an overconfident fool and had invited death. But Benson and Mandel were well protected, and he had to accept the logic of their dictate. Years ago he had committed himself to a way of life that offered only one chance in a million of a future free of fear. He had thought that chance had come up for him. Now, he knew better.

  Over the days, his thinking about Mandel and Benson faded. He found himself, almost with pleasure, lying in bed at night thinking about the ship, thinking about the moment that would surely come when he would stand on the afterdeck, above the tiled swimming pool and see out in the darkness the Very signal from the helicopter, see himself walking forward along the glassed-in run of the boatdeck to the Officers’ quarters. He opened a door and the Captain’s lounge was in his memory, clear and detailed, and he wondered how he would find him … coming shirt-sleeved from his sleeping quarters, sitting at his desk, or sprawled back in an armchair with a nightcap in his hand … ? He saw and heard himself talking to the man … and although it was weeks ahead he could feel a nervous excitement rise in him, now, as he thought of it, which he knew would not be with him at the actual moment. From the moment of the first. Very signal all emotion would be clamped down.…

  But in those dark hours, watching the moonlight creep across the wall, hearing the steady tick of the bedside clock, the biggest irony always came to him. What he had done with Berners in the past he had enjoyed doing. He had been the master, had been delighted when a bait was greedily taken, and had known the full satisfaction of increasing his wealth and bringing Alverton Manor nearer. Now, he was the odd man out. He had known no true joy in the planning, was far from being his own master, would take no satisfaction from success and be indifferent to the additional money it would bring him. With him, too—arising perhaps from his ancestry—was a permanent disgust that they should be doing this to a beautiful ship on her maiden voyage … the whole conception was sacrilegious, an affront to tradition, a dirty insult to the Captain and his ship. But none of the others showed any sign of feeling this. Benson and Mandel thought only of the gold and their undercover trading profits; Berners—why had he never completely understood the man before?—was frankly greedy, had never wanted to retire, would always want more than he had to satisfy his lust for beautiful possessions … Yes, Berners had long forgotten that they were being forced to do it. Berners liked working under orders, being someone else’s man so long as it made big money for him. And even Belle welcomed it … welcomed it in her stupid way because it kept him longer with her. Christ, what a crew … And then, in the dark bedroom he laughed out loud at himself
. Who the hell was he to condemn them? What was he, what was his particular virtue, marking him out from them? Simply that he liked to be his own master. But after that there was nothing to be said for him.

  At the end of the month he had a telephone call from Belle saying that Berners was back from France and wanted to see him. He went up to London, taking seven of the gas canisters with him. He got in just before lunch and Belle was waiting for him. She came into his arms as though he had been away for a year. Easily, as though the break from her had freshened him, given him a recharge of facility to play his part, he held her, kissed her and made a fuss of her and felt the happiness overflow from her, but as he held her and caressed her, he felt his own body stir, and although it had not been his intention, he took her into the bedroom and made love to her. Anything less, he told himself afterwards, would have disappointed her, but he knew it was not the full truth. In the moment of holding her and kissing her he had suddenly found himself wanting her … not her as Belle, but as a woman.

  She made him a drink while he unpacked his suitcase, turning and watching him as he opened the safe and locked away six of the seven canisters. When he left one canister on the table, she said, ‘What’s that one for, Andy?’

  ‘You can drive me down to Brighton. On the way down we’ll find a wood somewhere and I’ll show you how to work it.’

  Belle put her drink down slowly. ‘You really mean that … that I may have to?’

  ‘It could happen.’

  ‘But that would be killing people.’

  ‘So what … we’ve done it before. You haven’t forgotten Sarling have you?’

  ‘No, but … well, that was different.’

  ‘There’s nothing different about death. It’s death.’

  He came over to her smiling and picked up his drink. ‘Look, get this straight in your head. If I say you won’t have to use it, I mean it. You won’t have to, because this plan will work. But it’s no good going into an operation like this not meaning what you say, not believing in your threats. It’s a matter of a frame of mind. When I talk to the Captain he’s going to know that I mean every word I say—because I am going to mean it, and it’ll be plain to him. In the same way, you’re going to be on that boat knowing that if things go wrong you’re going to do everything you’ve been briefed to do. That’s the only way we shall be successful. Unless you believe you’re going to do it, know you will do it … then we could be in trouble. If you want to survive you’ve got to be ready to kill.’

  ‘But you told me I would never have to do it.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he said patiently. ‘But this is something different. It’s a question of attitude. When I go in to the Captain I’ve got to know you will do it, because knowing that makes everything I say to him the truth, and in those few minutes in his quarters anything except the truth will stick out like a sore thumb. Can’t you get that?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘Then you’ve got to know how to work the thing, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes … yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Then we’ll take this one with us this afternoon and you can use it.’

  He turned away from her, drink in hand. A few minutes before he had been making love to her, taking her body willingly. Now, he was holding down his irritation with her … Well, yes … yes, I suppose so. This weak stumble as she came up against reality. She lived in a fairy-tale world, even a macabre, grim fantasy world, where she did outrageous things … shoplifted, forged cheques, helped to kill Sarling, was appalled at the moment of action and then, within hours or days, assimilated or forgot what she had done, but only to be appalled and shocked again when she came up against the truth of her own capabilities. If something went wrong she would set off the canisters. She would do it dumbly, obediently, because he had told her to do it. Because now she was in love with him and she would do anything that ‘Andy’ told her, believe anything that he told her. Yet, if she had to do it and people died, she would begin to forget about it the moment she stepped off the ship at New York.

  He turned back to her, smiling. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. Whatever happens nobody can touch you or trace any connection between us. You either throw the canisters over the side, or quietly place them in the places I’ve told you and then go back to your cabin and forget me. Nobody can touch you.’

  He didn’t entirely believe it, for if things should go wrong then an enquiry would start that might eventually lead back to her, but if it did he would be beyond caring anything about her … beyond any caring.

  She drove him down to Brighton that afternoon. They made a slight detour taking the Uckfield-Lewes road and, just before Uckfield, they stopped where the road ran across Ashdown Forest and walked a couple of hundred yards across a heath. He showed her how to work the canister and she pitched it into a clump of bracken where it exploded with a soft plop.

  In Brighton she dropped him near Berners’s house and drove off to park on the sea front and wait for his return.

  Berners was waiting for him with a full report on the loading trials and the details of the French end. The trials had shown that by using four loading nets, each loaded net being swung inboard and unhooked and a fresh net dropped free to the deck for the next hoist, that the gold, from a waiting position on the foredeck, could be taken aboard the helicopter comfortably within forty minutes. This also included the time for Raikes to be lifted aboard. To this figure had to be added thirty minutes from the time Raikes went into the Captain’s quarters until he and the Captain were in the wheelhouse and the order was given for the ship to slacken speed and come up into the wind. To this had to be added another thirty minutes at least for the bullion to be brought on deck. A total of an hour and forty minutes.

  Berners said, ‘There’s no question of our not being able to clear it from the deck in forty minutes. That gives you an hour’s operating time aboard. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s generous, but not too generous. Bringing the stuff up from the Specie Room on the lift will be a quick job. It’s carrying it across to the starboard side, through the crew’s quarters and out to the foredeck that’s uncertain. Call it at a maximum something like eighty single boxes between, say, four men at a minimum. That’s twenty boxes each weighing twenty-five pounds. They’re not bulky. Each man could carry two boxes—fifty pounds—that’s ten trips a man. With another man on the foredeck to start loading the net the moment the bullion begins to arrive, the carrying time from the lift can be running concurrently with your lifting time. Yes, I’ll accept an hour and forty minutes. It could work out less. I hope it does. What about the French end?’

  ‘The moment we land that’s Benson’s headache. You and I go off separately and have nothing more to do with it. They’ve found a place on the Brest peninsula, west of a town called Loudeac. It’s called Château Miriat.’

  ‘How far will that be from the ship’s position between midnight and one?’

  ‘From your timing from Le Havre she should be about ten or fifteen miles just north-west of Alderney in the Channel Islands. That gives us a distance of around two hundred and fifty miles out and back. That’s an hour’s flying time each way, and then the hovering time over the ship so we’ll have to carry a full fuel load. That still gives us a safe margin. I’m going back this weekend and we’re going to carry out a dummy night run to check everything. They’ve found a good set-up over there and Benson is very efficient.’ Berners made no effort to conceal the admiration he felt. ‘I must say, when you operate with the money behind you that these people have, the whole thing becomes too easy.’

  Raikes said, ‘You’ll be telling me next that you’ll be prepared to go in on other jobs with them.’

  Berners palmed his bald patch. ‘Well … if I ran short of funds I might. Let’s face it, they’re making no trouble for us and they’re being generous. They didn’t have to give us seventy-five per cent. We’d have settled for thirty in the circumstances.’

  �
��I’d have settled for cutting both their throats if it would have done any good.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t have that choice, so why not make the most of this and be happy about it?’

  ‘What about the pilot and the other man who is coming with you?’

  ‘I’ve only met the pilot so far. The other man’s coming in just before the actual day.’ Berners stood up and moved to the window. The afternoon was fast going and the sea was a gun-metal grey under the low clouds. With his back to Raikes, he said, ‘ I never offered and you never asked me, but you know I would have done the ship part willingly. You don’t think I couldn’t have done?’

  ‘I know you could. But I’ve always been the front man. Why do you bring that up?’

  Berners turned, ‘Well, between ourselves in this room, we can be franker than with anyone else. It’s the front place. It’s the dangerous place. And the best plan in the world can go wrong. Oh, I know we long ago agreed not to have this kind of talk. But for the moment let’s accept the possibility. What would you do?’

  ‘If it went wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I got stranded on the ship and couldn’t see a safe way out without involving you or Miss Vickers … couldn’t see any future for myself … Well, you know what I would do. What I’ve always said. Finish myself.’

  ‘We could get away with the gold, but you could be finished … and that’s what I want to ask you. I know nothing about your private life, but there would be your share … maybe there’s someone in particular you would like it to go to. If there is, I would see to it.’

  ‘Thanks—but there isn’t anyone.’