Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  So, to a ragged chorus of whistles, sirens and hooters, the great ship turned out towards the sea and her maiden trans-Atlantic run, and deep down in her Specie Room on Eight Deck lay three tons of gold bullion and a ton and a half of silver bullion, and the gentle drunk in the Look-Out Room leaned across his black banquette and said to Raikes, ‘They can keep their Jumbo Jets and their Concordes. When I travel I like to feel that it takes time. No snatchin’ at drinks between here and there and a tasteless roast chicken leg served up in a cellophane bloody pack. No sitting on your bloody passport and ticket because there’s just time to lose ’em and not time to look for ’em. For my money a ship’s a lady and a gentleman should always travel with a lady. And believe me, this one’s a real thoroughbred. Modern, up to all the tricks, but a lady. Here’s to her.’ He raised his brandy glass, found it empty, and called to the steward.

  In her cabin, Belle lay on the small bed and day-dreamed, forgetting for a while completely the purpose of her presence aboard. Somewhere in Devon they had a house, the two of them, and there was a nanny for the girl.… Yes, she saw it as a girl to begin with. She wanted it like that, but she’d give him a whole quiverful of boys afterwards. It had to come to that.

  She loved him so much that it had to pass to him, was passing to him … she’d do whatever he wanted. Try not to irritate him with the way she talked. Put a plum in her mouth. Go to the best hair stylists and dress salons, make herself over with the right stuff. Tweeds, simple but expensive little dresses … hunting, shooting, and fishing … and learn to sit on a shooting stick and mark a race card, and stand by him like a tigress—she opened her mouth and showed her teeth at the cabin ceiling—if anything went wrong. Yes, she was it for him and he had to be it for her. And if he wanted her five times a day or only five times a year she would be happy. Mrs Andrew Raikes.

  She reached out to the dressing table console and turned the radio on softly, then lay back and went on dreaming … bright lights, soft music, love triumphs.

  When he knocked on her door two hours later she was sleeping but still dreaming.

  He said, ‘I had some sandwiches in the Coffee Shop. You see you have some dinner tonight. Nobody can operate on an empty stomach.’

  He locked the door, took off his shoes and lay down beside her.

  ‘If the steward knocks, don’t forget—the shower.’

  He was asleep within ten minutes.

  The place which they had rented was five miles from Loudeac. It was a small château, beginning to be dilapidated, standing in its own grounds, tree-surrounded and with a large lawn behind the house where they had parked the helicopter. Although it carried no markings they made no attempt to camouflage it or hide it. By four o’clock the next morning the house would be empty and there would be nothing left which would help to trace them.

  At ten o’clock Berners, sitting in the small study that looked out over the lawn, had a call from their man in Brest to report the weather. The wind was WNW, Force 3.

  ‘That’s twelve knots,’ Berners said to Benson who was with him.

  At midday the report was the same. Cloud cover had thickened a little off the Channel Islands and dropped from three to two thousand five hundred feet. The report at four o’clock was the same.

  Benson said, ‘Where would you rather be? Here, or out there on the ship?’

  Berners smiled. ‘I am out there. Just as he is here, although he’s never seen the place. I’m there because he knows he can rely on me, knows how I think and how I will act. The same goes for me with him.’

  ‘You’ve never known much about him, have you?’

  ‘It’s never been necessary. I’ve known him. That’s enough. Where he lives or how many suits he has is of no importance.’

  ‘What will he be doing now?’

  ‘Sleeping in Miss Vickers’s cabin.’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘I can. What you and Mandel got was the plan, the main details. But he and I have never done anything without going through everything. Within limits of say ten or so minutes I can tell you everything he’s done on that boat so far. I could have put a call through to him at twelve-thirty and had him paged in the Look-Out Room.’

  Benson smiled. ‘You should have been twins.’

  ‘We are—when it comes to working.’

  ‘What will he do if things go wrong aboard the ship and he has to run for it?’

  ‘He’s got a passport and an American visa. He stands every chance of making New York. It’s only a few days. People are always stowing away and making it. The hardest thing to find on a ship that size with all its bars and eating places is a well-dressed stowaway. It’s the chap who hides in a lifeboat that gets caught. It’s like any London club. You can walk into any of them if you’re dressed right. They all have members who live in Ireland, Scotland or abroad who come in about once a year or less. The whole thing about being unquestioned is to look and act as though you have a complete right to be where you are.’

  ‘He still might be caught.’

  ‘Then it would be the end. You heard him say that. He means it.’

  ‘And you?’

  Berners laughed. ‘I’m very fond of being alive—but on my own terms. I’d die in prison. So, if the need arises, I shall take good care to die out of it.’

  ‘Does Miss Vickers feel the same way?’

  ‘I’ve never asked her, but I know she doesn’t. She’s the kind that puts up with life, just so long as it is life. They call it, and I’m sure she would, making the best of a bad job. Raikes and I would never settle for a bad job. Would you?’

  Benson twisted the gold ring on his finger and then smiled, his white teeth flashing against the tanned face. ‘ Frankly, no. Not now. You see I once did three years in a Turkish prison. It taught me a sharp lesson.’

  Berners said, ‘You wouldn’t be thinking of making something go wrong aboard?’

  Without surprise Benson said, ‘No. I wouldn’t be talking like this if I were. I’m just interested in Raikes. You’re enjoying doing all this. He’s not. We’re forcing him. Why couldn’t he enjoy it, too?’

  ‘Because he’s got all he wants.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘There’s no end—I’ve discovered recently—to the things I want. They’re solid, tangible and beautiful and so many of them. But Raikes wants himself. Not the man he is now, but the man he missed being. He thinks he can have a second life. I’ve never been candid enough to tell him that he’s chasing a dream. After all, why shouldn’t he do just that? So many people do.’

  At six o’clock the wind was still in the same quarter, still at Force 3 and the cloud cover had risen five hundred feet and thinned but there were scattered rain storms in the Channel approaches.

  At eight o’clock Berners put in a call to Miss Vickers on the QE2 at Le Havre. During the course of their very ordinary conversation she learnt that her aunt was much the same.

  As Belle put back the telephone receiver, Raikes said, ‘All right. Now you go and have some dinner. Take your time. I’m going off now. If you happen to run into me you don’t know me. The steward will be in to turn back your bed sometime in the next couple of hours. I’ll be back here at half-past eleven to pick up my hat and coat and stuff. You join me on the Deck Lido of One Deck at a quarter to twelve.’

  He put out a hand, touched her face and went. A few minutes later he was leaning over the rail aft watching the passengers boarding from Le Havre. After a while a brief, heavy rain shower drove him inside. He bought a magazine at one of the shops and then went and sat in a chair on the promenade, deck outside the Double Room. In all the restaurants and the Grill Room now people were eating and drinking, choices being made between a thick sirloin steak or Suprême de Turbot, waiters explaining just what was in a Paella à la Valenciana, recommending a wine to go with the Kebab à la Turque … hundreds of people enjoying themselves while Raikes sat, untroubled, reading an article about the revival of interest in Pharaoh hounds from Mal
ta and waited for the hours to pass.

  He sat there for an hour and then moved forward into the Look-Out Room. The blinds were already drawn. At nine o’clock he went aft and watched from the rail as the liner blew a salute to Le Havre and then began slowly to move out into the Channel. The French coast and the lights of Le Havre dropped away in the growing darkness. He stood there until the night air began to make him cold and then he went through to the Theatre Bar and had a large whisky. As he stood there Belle passed him but they took no notice of one another. He watched her thread her way past him through the other passengers. She wore a plain black dress, a little scarf over her shoulders and around her neck were the pearls. Momentarily he was touched with a sudden affection for her. There was little about her he liked, her body most, and yet disconcertingly he was aware that there was something between them. Not only the child she carried, but a bond that came from the events they had shared in the last months. But more than that he was grateful for her loyalty. To him, he knew, no matter its source, she was completely loyal. And it was the same kind of loyalty as he knew with Berners. Berners would have said that it was because they were all the same kind, people outside ordinary society, their interests and welfare cemented by the simple fact of being different from other people. The odd thing was that he had never felt different from other people. Other people, fundamentally, were the same as he was. It was just that they had never found their lines laid in the strange places he had. Given the right pressures, given the moments of crisis and threat, then most people would lie and steal and kill. In fact, most people had a need for such activities. That was why they were happy in war. That’s why they rioted and wrecked public places and trains after a football match. In him, in all of them, were the primitive instincts close to the surface, seeking some excuse for emergence. Yes, Berners was his kind, and so was Belle … and so—given the right circumstances—was every living soul on this ship.

  For the next two hours he moved around the ship matching his movements and his waiting periods to the plan he had carried in his mind for so many weeks. He hadn’t eaten since his morning sandwiches and there was only one whisky inside him. His body craved nothing, not food, nor excess of alcohol, because his body had ceased to exist. He was Raikes, part of a plan and a routine.

  At half-past eleven he went to Belle’s cabin. There was little talk between them. He took his hat and put on his coat and gloves. Into the pockets—wiping them all clean of prints first—he stuffed the Very pistol and its cartridges and the small automatic.

  At the door before leaving, he said, ‘I’ll be waiting on One Deck Lido. Carry your coat over your arm and put it on just as you go out. And when you come back in take it off and carry it the same way so that it partly hides your big handbag’.

  She moved up to him and he was unsurprised by the clear, sharp movement of fear in her. It had to be there, to well up and then be banished before she was free to move.

  ‘Andy … say something happened … ? Well, I mean, just suppose?’

  For once her sloppy speech didn’t irritate him. It made him smile.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen which we don’t already know about.’

  ‘But if something did … just suppose it did? You would come to me for help wouldn’t you?’

  ‘If I want you or your help for something which isn’t in the plan—then I’ll come to you? Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I want something and you have it then I’ll come. You know that already.’

  He leaned forward and kissed her and then left her. Fifteen minutes later she joined, him on the Lido Deck. They stood close together on the port side, looking out through the darkness towards the south, towards the direction from which the helicopter would come flying in. Like a lover he crooked his arm in hers and they stared silently across the sea. The wind which had been westerly when they had left Le Havre had gone round more to the north. There was a slow swell running and mixed with the wind noises came the steady hiss of water breaking away from the ship’s sides, streaming out behind in a pale, luminous wake. A handful of other people walked the deck, coated and scarfed against the wind and now and then a red cigarette end was flicked over the side.

  Belle, conscious of the warmth of his arm against, hers, thought, here we stand like a couple going off on their honeymoon trip. Like dozens of other couples that there must be aboard. If life had been right, properly planned, this in truth was how it should have been, even if not with him, but years ago with some other man, he and the hardness of his body, and the ungivingness of his spirit never to have been known by her. And that would have been all right, because what you never had you never missed. Him, as a man, that was. Not a honeymoon. That she missed, would always miss, she guessed. No confetti. No trousseau. No excitement. No going from here urgently to a cabin to make love for the first time as married people. Life had really dished it out to her, and a fine honeymoon couple they made. He with his hidden automatic. She with a handbag full of filthy canisters that could wipe out scores of people and somewhere deep down in the guts of this bloody great affair, tons of gold. And, let’s face it, that was what men were really interested in having and getting—money. Women, marriage, home and children were just sidelines to them. Decorations round the great maypole of their lust for money and power and position.

  He turned his face a little toward her and kissed the corner of her eyebrow and her heart jumped at the unexpectedness. It couldn’t be playacting for the benefit of anyone watching. It had to be real. This thing coming out in him for her, to meet the love she carried for him. Had to be.

  At her side Raikes looked at his watch and said, ‘Ten past twelve. They’re late.’ It was said more to himself than her.

  Let them be late, she thought. Just don’t let them come at all. Let him be stuck here aboard with her, a stowaway to give himself up and pay his passage. From New York they could go off together … anywhere … find themselves a new life. Find themselves … their real selves. The two decent people they should have always been. Please God, let it be that way.

  Suddenly, a quarter of a mile away on the port bow, a red Very flare streamed into life high up, hung burning for a while and then dropped and disappeared, leaving the blackness of the starless night blacker than it had been before.

  Almost immediately his arm left hers.

  He said, ‘Wait here until you’ve seen the next two sets of Very lights from the wheelhouse—then you can go to your cabin or watch from the Look-Out Room.’

  She nodded, and half raised a hand to touch his face but he was gone, moving away from her.

  Now he moved automatically, no hurry in him, no emotion except the nullity of feeling which was emotion enough. He went the full length of One Deck, forward to A Stairway, and from there, hat in hand, he climbed the blue-carpeted flights to the boatdeck. The staircase finished outside the 736 Room. He went to the glass doors and looked through. There were quite a few people in there and beyond in the Coffee Shop. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes past twelve. He moved to the starboard side down a short alleyway and without trouble jemmied open the door into the Officers’ Quarters. Memory served him faithfully, but not nostalgically. Long ago he had moved in here, watching, noting, ready to substantiate his presence. On his right a bedroom door was open, a cup and saucer and magazines on a low table and he heard a man whistling gently to himself. He passed down the runway and turned left up the stairs to the Senior Officers’ Quarters. At the top of the stairs he moved forward, past the quarters of the Staff Captain on his right, and the door to the Captain’s quarters faced him. He paused, put on his hat, pulled his scarf from his pocket and wrapped it around the lower part of his face. He took the automatic in his gloved hand, opened the door and went in and let the door close quietly behind him.

  The room was familiar to him. The desk before him still had its little collection of dictionaries in their book ends. The jar of pencils and pens seemed untouched from the last time he had seen
them. The standard lamp at the side of the desk was on and a few lights burned around the walls above the green leatherette chairs and banquettes. There was no one in the room. On a low round glass table to his left stood a potted dusty-pink azalea where once had been the flowering cactus. Farther away to the left and forward the door to the Captain’s sleeping quarters was open. As he looked towards, it the Captain came through. He was bare-headed and fully dressed, the gold buttons of his jacket undone so that it swung comfortably open.