The man who sold death c-1

by James Munro

  They flew back to Paris, and from there took the next plane to Nice. A black Citroen waited for them at the airport, and they drove off at once to an office building near the Place Massena. The two relaxed in the sunlight; the northeast of England had been cold, and these were men who clung to a Mediterranean warmth… When they went inside, they had to identify themselves three times before they were admitted into the presence of the man they had come to see, the man in olive-green shirt and slacks worn like a uniform, who carried the insignia of a colonel in the French Army; and even then his bodyguard sat facing them, a Sten gun in his hands, and at his feet an Alsatian dog that panted softly in the warmth of the room and looked at them as his master did, cautiously, unwaveringly, ready to kill as soon as the word was given. St. Briac sat very still, with a terrible calm of will that struggled with the flickering madness of his pale eyes. He was very thin and yet looked strong, with the more than physical strength of the fanatic. His face looked bland because he chose to make it so: it was a mask that served his purpose. Yet even the serenity was achieved solely because he was incapable of compassion. For him the extremes of physical pain, even death itself, were a means of achieving an end, no more.

  One of the reporters said, "We think Craig's still alive."

  The colonel said, "What makes you think so?"

  His voice was as bland as his face, yet if Craig lived, his most important mission had failed.

  "The English reporters think that their police are lying when they say he is dead, and yet they don't know why."

  "Do you think their police are hiding him?" the colonel asked.

  "Not yet. They are still looking for him. The Special Branch from Scotland Yard are helping. They are the people who deal with espionage."

  "I didn't know that," said the colonel, and the reporter flushed and hurried on. "One of their men, Detective Inspector Linton, has been to Craig's house. He has also visited the local police."

  The colonel nodded and sat back, and the bodyguard spoke softly to the dog. Only then did the two reporters dare to get up to leave. When they had gone, the colonel pressed a button on his desk. Almost at once, the door opened and the guard dog stood up, the hair on the back of its neck rising, then sat down again as it saw another man in olive-green, a captain with a golden tan and yellow hair, a handsome young man with beautiful, stupid blue eyes.

  "Robert," said the colonel, "Craig's still alive."

  The captain began to protest, but the colonel spoke again, and he was silent.

  "He is alive," said the colonel. "Whoever the bomb killed, it wasn't Craig. Now he's disappeared-and the English police are looking for him. The Special Branch. They are very good at finding people. I think we should let them do it, and when they are successful and find him, Craig dies. And this time we shall be quite certain that he is dead."

  "Who shall I send?" the captain asked.

  "Cadella can try again," the colonel said. "It is his chance to redeem himself. And this time Pucelli can go with him. Craig knows about us now. He is too good for any one of us. Even you, Robert."

  The captain frowned.

  "I'll go myself," he said.

  "No," said the colonel. "I need you here."

  He nodded at the door, and the guard went out. "We need more funds, Robert. And you raise funds so prettily. You are so big and blond and boyish-what old lady could resist you? We need money, Robert. The Middle East is too quiet. Muscat, Oman, Aden-calm everywhere. The British should be struggling as we are struggling in Algeria. It's time to work on the old ladies."

  The captain stiffened to attention, his face so miserable that the colonel laughed.

  "Being nice to old ladies is important too," he said. "Without money we can do nothing. Even to execute Craig costs money. Get me the money, Robert, and I'll find you other work. There's plenty of it. Almost too much. But not quite. We shall keep Algeria. It is part of France. If it goes, we have only one excuse. What is it, Robert?"

  "We shall all be dead," said the captain. He said it without melodrama; a simple statement of fact.

  "That won't happen," said the colonel. "I promise you it won't. Not if you get me the money I need. And there is always your pretty Englishman when your work is finished." Again the captain tried to protest, and again was quiet at once when the colonel spoke.

  "The fact that you are a homosexual is unimportant to me," he said. "But be careful, Robert. It must not become public, you understand?"

  "Yes, sir," said the captain.

  "Then you may go," said the colonel.

  When Robert left, the colonel unlocked a drawer and took out a list. Craig's name was on it, neatly ruled out in red ink. So were Lange's, and Rutter's. Neatly, precisely, the colonel wrote it in again.

  Captain Robert La Valere removed his rank badges, then walked out to the Place Massena. A thin young man in a shirt of yellow silk, wine-red, tapered slacks, and yellow sandals sat outside a cafe, scowling in the sunlight at the office building, his drink untasted beside him. In his mind he was saying, over and over, the words on its door plaque. Society for the Solution of the Algerian Problem. President: Colonel de St. Briac, and adding each time obscenities that did not match a yellow silk shirt and wine-red, tapered slacks. Then he saw Robert, and the scowl vanished. For Robert there was always a smile. Perhaps one day he would have to betray Robert, but it would be for his own good. Always for his own good. He adored Robert. The captain held out his hand, and he held it in both of his. Held it and held it.

  In Tessa's flat, Craig settled easily into a routine, working at the exercises that Hakagawa had set him; loving Tessa, talking to her, listening to her. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, he allowed himself to become involved with another person, to regulate his life in terms of another's. It altered his appearance far more than the beard he was growing.

  When she came home with the newspaper, he didn't try to argue. It was better that she should know who he was. The knowledge gave her ultimate power over him, but if she chose to use it, it was better that he should die. She had wanted him so much; surely she would never try to destroy him. If he were going to be involved with other people, then they and he would have to take tremendous risks, and if he were not, then he must condemn himself to another time of loneliness and fear, before he tried, like Baumer, like Rutter, to create a new character whom they could not know.

  All Tessa said was, "I gather you're married." He nodded. "You didn't like her much, did you?"

  "No," he said. "Not for a long time. I should have tried harder. She didn't help me much, but I should have tried. Does it bother you, my being married?"

  "I haven't dreamed about orange blossoms for an awfully long time," Tessa said. "I hope she'll be all right."

  "So do I," said Craig. "It's my fault that she was hurt. It's my fault that she was left alone after it happened. I had my chance to help her, and all I did was run. If anything happened to you, that would be my fault too."

  The phone rang then, and she looked to Craig for permission before she picked it up.

  "Have you heard from your Sir Galahad yet?" Grierson asked.

  "Who?"

  "The bloke who laid out Lishman. Hasn't he been to see you yet?"

  "You mean Reynolds? I'd have to look in my diary," Tessa said.

  Grierson sighed.

  "Tell him to ring me," he said, and hung up.

  Tessa tried to speak before she had put the receiver down, but Craig put his finger to his hps, and replaced it for her.

  "They may be tapping the wire," he said. "I don't think so, but they might. What did Grierson mean about my calling him?" She looked away. "You'd better tell me," he said.

  Tessa looked at him stubbornly, preparing to resist. He might hurt her, but for his own sake he mustn't know.

  "Tessa," he said. "Don't make up my mind for me. I can reach Grierson myself if I want to. All I have to do is tell a policeman who I am. Just let me know what he's after first. I'm the expert in this game, love, not
you. Keeping quiet might be the biggest risk of the lot."

  It was the only way to learn what he wanted to know, and she told him at once.

  "Grierson said, 'We know about Rutter-and we can help you.'" She gave him the phone number. "Did he say who 'we' were?" Craig asked. She shook her head. "More police, I suppose." "Maybe, but I don't think Grierson's a copper." "What then?"

  Craig shrugged. "Cloak and dagger boy," he said. "Airy smile and a gay flick of the wrist. The one who beds the contessa while somebody else breaks open the safe and steals the plans. He'd better watch it this time. I can flick my wrist too."

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "You," said Craig. "For not telling me before."

  Later she asked him again, and he said, "I'l think about it. I'll think about it a lot. And when I've got the answer, HI tell you."

  CHAPTER 9

  Loomis sent again for Grierson, and once again Grierson sipped black and scalding coffee and listened to Loomis grumbling. It was very important that they should talk to Craig; it would save certain people, Loomis said menacingly, a great deal of work; it might even save the taxpayers' money. Why the hell couldn't Grierson produce him?

  "I'm trying to, sir," said Grierson. "Linton's got half the narks in London looking for him. We're watching ports and airlines, doing spot checks on the trains. Trouble is, the only photographs we could find are the ones left over from the war. We've had them touched up a bit, but they're not exactly portraits. Do you want Linton to give them to the press?"

  "Good God, no," said Loomis, genuinely horrified.

  "If I had any idea why you wanted him, it might help," Grierson said.

  "All right. You can't say I don't give you every chance.

  I want Craig to do a job for me." Grierson's cup clattered in its saucer. "Craig? A job?" he asked.

  "Don't shout," Loomis yelled. "I can't stand shouting. Certainly a job. Why not? He's the only one who can do it, except you. You might-if you were lucky, and if I can't find Craig, I may have to use you anyway. But I'd sooner use him. He won't need any luck."

  "What's the job?" Grierson asked.

  "The one you set up in Nice. He's made to order for it. Now where the hell do you think he is?"

  Grierson said, "I've no idea."

  "Well, I have," Loomis said. "It's sticking out a mile. He's still with that Tessa person. In Holland Park."

  "But we searched the place twice."

  "Maybe he was too clever for you. It hardly seems possible, does it?" Loomis snarled.

  "Do you want me to go and look for him now?"

  "No," said Loomis. "Go and listen in the flat next door. Dress up as the gas man or something. You know the stuff to use."

  Grierson was in luck. The man next door was a solicitor named Reddish, a bachelor, who was attending Canterbury Sessions. Grierson sought out the porter of the flats, discussed with ominous calm the possibility of a gas leak, and was admitted without argument. He set up his equipment, and painstakingly recorded the murmur of voices, the creak of bedsprings, the prolonged crash of a flushed toilet. Once he used Mr. Reddish's phone and called Tessa's number after he'd seen her go out; there was no answer, but shortly afterwards the toilet flushed again. Then there was silence until Tessa returned, and Grierson received the full blast of Radio Luxemburg at maximum volume, and decided that he had heard enough. Loomis, inevitably, was right, and when the time came he and others, probably including Linton, would be beaten stupid trying to persuade Craig to take coffee at Queen Anne's Gate. Meanwhile all he had to do was return the gear and take a girl out to dinner while he waited for the recording to be amplified. His only problem was which girl to take.

  In Tessa's flat, Craig nagged at the question of whether to phone Grierson. In his mind there was room for nothing but his survival and hers, and cautiously he tested out what he must do, andin doing that, he found it necessary to review what he had been, where he had come from. He remembered the beery cheerfulness of his father's house, and the joy of the seine-netter, an idyll of oven-bottom cake and bull's-eyes and a man's skills in handling a boat. Then his mother had betrayed him and ever since then women were suspect, an indulgence, a luxury that carried its own risks, like field mushrooms carelessly picked. With women he had always been so careful, until now. Then suddenly his mind refused to accept Tessa as a problem. He could trust her and he knew it without having to worry about proof.

  He thought of the orphanage and the misery he had endured there, until his body had filled out and his speed and strength had bought him peace. At first he had wept, and been tormented, but after he had learned to hurt, no one had dared approach him. He was left in a lonely pride. Foster mothers next; good, bad, mostly indifferent. Then the Navy. The sea again, and security, so long as the war lasted; the only time when the gifts that had been thrust upon him, the aggression, the ruthlessness, the will to survive, had been welcomed by authority; they had even paid him for using them. And after the war, the advice of Sergeant McLaren, and piracy-it was the best word for it-in Tangier. Then the Rose Line, the chance of a lifetime. Craig wondered what Sergeant McLaren was doing. He'd talked about schoolmastering, but it seemed impossible that a man could teach after he had known the despair that had made McLaren state with such utter conviction that there would be room for nothing, after the war, but a man's own survival. It would be satisfying to see McLaren again, to face him and say: Here I am. I did what you advised me. Do you still think your advice was good? McLaren had said that gentility or piracy was his only choice, and Craig, being English, had compromised and tried both, because Sergeant McLaren had said that civilization was finished and the only thing to do was grab enough power to make life bearable.

  He'd grabbed it, all right: grabbed it by the balls and twisted till the victims yelled. Then they hit back; the victims he'd chosen were as tough as he was; toughened in Indochina in year after year of hopeless war, until all they had left was their skill in destruction and their desperate need for a victory. Any victory. After Indochina they'd been moved to North Africa, the most elegant thugs in history. St-Cyr for polish, the paras for ruthless-ness. And in North Africa they'd run up against Craig, industriously selling mortars, bazookas, grenades, machine guns to trigger-happy Arabs who were doing well if they could get their weapons pointing the right way. The destruction they had caused had been immense, and totally haphazard. With the guns he had supplied, they had killed Frenchmen, and women, and children; and each other: hale or infirm, young or old, it had made no difference. As soon as they learned where the trigger was, they pulled it. To a European it was more than frightening, it was incomprehensible. But they paid well. On delivery. Every time.

  The French had hit back, with no more cruelty-that was not possible-but with far greater efficiency. They had hunted out the freedom-fighters or terrorists (as always synonymous: only the viewpoint differed), the leaders, the staff, the lines of supply, and so, in the end, they had hunted out Craig, who, they argued, deserved to die for selling the means of death to savages. Craig remembered the men and women he had met who had been beaten up, the bare fingers and toes crushed under army boots, electric shocks in the testicles. He had been shown the machine that was used for that one, a birthday toy for the Marquis de Sade. Then there were the bomb outrages in the Arab quarters, the young colons roaming the streets, the pan lids and car horns crashing out Al-ge-rie Fran-gaise. Bee-Bee-Bee-Bee-Bee. They were no better than the Arabs; maybe worse. They should have remembered what it was like themselves.

  Craig shrugged that one away. Right and wrong didn't come into it, not for him. This was a commercial undertaking to fill a need created by two conflicting ideologies. He smiled. That had been Baumer's phrase. Baumer had never felt happy until he'd smoothed down the raw issues with big, dignified words. All the same, he'd have sold to both sides if there had been a market, and if Craig had let him, but the French managed without Baumer and Craig. Craig could never have managed without them. Because of the colons and t
he colonels, he'd made a hundred thousand pounds. Tax free. He needn't fear the orphanage any more, or the foster mothers. Alice had been bis last. Alice had worked hard on him, come very near to changing him, but had not quite managed it. He'd made his money, and he'd run the risk of death. If he'd done what Alice wanted, that would never have happened, but he'd gone his own way, and now she might be dying. Always now he carried death with him. Lange. Rutter. Alice. Soon it might be Baumer's turn. Tessa was pretty, cheerful, not very bright, but she'd shared bis risks and taken his chances because she loved him. He couldn't let her die. Tomorrow he'd phone Grierson. Maybe he'd write to McLaren too, let him know he'd followed his advice. Craig yawned and listened to the radio. It was playing a Jewish folk song, "Almonds and Raisins." He tried not to think of Baumer.

  CHAPTER 10

  Next day he told Tessa that he was going out. It took a long, patient time to persuade her that he would be safe, and in the end she agreed because she believed that it was best for him, might even save his life. From the curtained window, he sought the man who was watching the flat, a middle-aged, serious sort of man. Bowler hat. Pipe. Financial Times. Standing by a bus stop, looking at his watch. Craig dressed in slacks, a woolen shirt, suede jacket. They went well with the beard. Then he told Tessa what she must do. He would see Grierson alone.

  The man at the bus stop saw her running out of the block of flats, clutching a suitcase, her clothes disheveled, and race for a taxi. Craig, from the darkness of the hallway, watched as he hesitated, then ran for the next cab. As the two cabs turned a corner, Craig prepared to leave, but froze where he was. A Fiat followed the second cab, and there were two men inside. One of them, he was certain, had been pointed out to him in Marseilles, and afterwards he had been given photographs of him to study until he could never forget him. Pucelli. French citizen, Corsican extraction, living in North Africa. An executioner.