Miss Turquoise

by George B Mair

  But even micro dots had been covered by Professor Juin’s boffins and an apparatus for blowing them up was part of his standard photographic equipment, this time disguised as a Japanese camera with telephoto lens. He slipped the letter into his pocket and returned to the bed. The man must be kept under for at least another hour. He gave him a shot of pethidine and covered the rest of the room while it took effect.

  A fragment of blotting paper in a waste-basket showed a smudged outline which might have been the coast of Africa. Two letters might have been the ‘S’ and ‘M’ of Smara, the capital of Rio de Oro, and there was a blurred cross as near as dammit from what might have been the site of Farrachi’s oases.

  He whistled softly. If they could be so careless in one thing they might be careless in everything. But the blotting paper might also be imagination. The blurred outline could be anything. Perhaps.

  The micro dot looked more promising.

  He tidied the room and finished coffee.

  A porter was on duty outside. ‘My patient is asleep,’ he said. ‘But stay where you are and I’ll be back in a few moments.’

  Juin’s lenses were fantastically powerful and blew the micro dot into something big enough to read.

  Chairman of Board contacting owner of mineral resources.

  Negotiations proceeding normally.

  Also sounding most favourable market and expect attempt deliver first load within a few weeks.

  Storage depot already arranged.

  Yacht must be in Tangier by 31st.

  Your man must be eliminated at Las Palmas within twenty-four hours your arrival.

  Expect confirmation immediate.

  So that was that. Only one thing lacking. Confirmation to whom? And how?

  He studied his cabin trunk and list of stores.

  Somehow or other Ion Zeys must be made to talk.

  Chapter Nine – ‘It is enough that he does not die in public’

  He reported to the manager. Their patient was ill but nothing more could be done at present. He would see him again after dinner.

  Two hours later he returned to the room. The porter was no longer on duty and the management had agreed that it would help their peace of mind if he slept for the night near the sick man. A single bed had been put up in a corner. Coffee was again on the side-table and he snibbed the door.

  A final phone call to reassure a panicky staff, and then he returned to the bed. Ordinary methods would never work with a man of Zeys’ calibre. And Force X seemed to have a way of disciplining men who talked too much.

  But there were more ways than torture to make a man sing and Grant’s stock of drugs had been built up with precisely this in mind.

  The pethidine was beginning to work off and Grant suspected that the effects of the gas had also faded. The man’s colour was good and his breathing steady.

  He peeled an orange, cut the skin to shape Zeys’ mouth and slipped it between lips and teeth. The man had no dentures and it fitted snugly. A second sliver was strapped against skin by Grant’s favourite gag, a broad strip of adhesive plaster.

  He then forced Zeys’ legs through one side of his pyjama trousers and tied the cord around his waist, at the same time fixing his left arm behind his back, the wrist in a slip-knot of nylon rope which went round the thick neck.

  Two pipes later the man began to moan and Grant watched him slither back into consciousness, marking every clinical sign and ready to pounce on him while he was still confused and off-guard. A syringe was now loaded with sodium pentothal, the one-time, and so-called, ‘truth drug’. But to be effective dosage had to be judged with a fine respect for many other factors.

  Almost without thinking he wrapped a bandage round Zeys’ eyes. Darkness would confuse him even more, but he could still write the sort of thing Grant wanted, even with one hand, and even blind.

  The man was moaning softly, his legs twisting inside the tightly stretched trouser leg, when Grant put a needle against his chest. To help disguise his voice and confuse matters even further he spoke in French. ‘Monsieur Zeys. You will lift your right hand once if you can understand what I am saying.’

  He paused. ‘Can you hear me?’

  The man’s hand rose feebly and Grant tried again. ‘You will lift it three times. Repeat, three times, if you want to say “No”.’

  He pricked the man’s skin very gently. ‘I have a needle loaded with poison here ready to stick into your chest if you try to bluff or tell lies. Do you feel it?’

  The hand lifted once and slowly flopped against the clothes.

  ‘Will you tell lies?’

  The man lay motionless and Grant smacked him swiftly on the shin with the side of a hairbrush. ‘Do something. Your last chance. Will you tell lies?’

  The hand lifted three times and Grant could sense the gathering tension in Zeys’ muscles as he tried to pull himself together.

  ‘Is your name Ion Zeys?’

  The hand moved slightly.

  ‘You arrived here with two friends?’

  Again the hand lifted once.

  ‘Do you know that they are dead?’

  There was a long pause and then the hand lifted, slowly, three times. The man’s face was suffused pink and his neck pulses racing furiously.

  Grant’s voice was very soft. Almost a whisper. ‘Do you wish to know how they died?’

  The hand moved feebly . . . once.

  ‘They were killed.’ He paused again. ‘Do you want to know who killed them?’

  The hand again moved once.

  ‘I killed them.’ He waited for a long minute, and then: ‘But I made them talk before they died. And they each gave me an address to which they would send reports about David Grant’s death. That David Grant who is now called Dr. Gunten. Do you understand?’

  The neck pulses were settling again and the hand moved once. But this time more swiftly.

  ‘And I worked on each of them separately. So that the one did not know what the other had said. Do you understand?’

  This time the hand moved almost impatiently.

  ‘But they both gave the same address. And they both told me how the message was to be signed, by what route it was to be sent and other important information about Zero.’ His voice became laden with menace. ‘Now you will give me the same information. And if it tallies with what your two agents said you may be allowed to go free.’ He thrust the needle a full quarter-inch into the skin. ‘But if it differs much you will be immobilized with this poison. I will then cover you with gasoline and burn you alive.’ He rattled a box of matches and added softly: ‘Do you understand?’

  There was a long pause and the hand lifted: once.

  ‘The position is,’ he continued, ‘that I have removed you to a small house on the outskirts of Las Palmas. If you confirm what the others have said I will keep you here for three weeks. You will then be released and it will be up to you to explain to Zero or your co-directors what you did during that time. But at least you will be given a chance of life.’ He paused again, waiting until the pulses began to throb in the man’s neck. ‘Do you understand?’

  The hand moved abruptly. Almost Grant could see it say ‘Get on with it’.

  ‘Now then,’ he whispered, ‘I am going to guide your right hand to a pencil and put it on to a piece of paper. You will write the message which you would have sent to H.Q. And this will be your only chance.’ Zeys reacted badly to silence and Grant watched again until the pulses raced in his neck. ‘One other thing,’ he added. ‘Your subordinates may not have known too much about detail. They may have missed on something, so I want to know the message you would have sent. And to make sure that you try no bluffs I have still got some of America’s truth drug beside me. As soon as you have written your message I shall give you the drug and take off your mask so that you can speak. Then we’ll have a double check, which may mean the difference between life and death for you.’

  He lifted over paper and pencil. ‘To repeat. You will die if there is any
important difference between what you write down and what you say under the influence of the truth drug. Understand?’

  The man gripped the pencil hesitantly and Grant guided it to the scribbling block. ‘Now then,’ he whispered softly. ‘Pray to God that you miss nothing because the penalty will be death in flames.’

  The man’s fingers were trembling and Grant saw that his pulse had risen to 120. He was breathing heavily and sweat had broken on his forehead. But the writing was clear enough: Telegram to Tangier. Poste Restante. Constantine Andreas. SNAP. Zeys.

  ‘And that is the truth?’ The hand moved again and Grant folded up the scrap of paper.

  Zeys’ arm was lying limply across the sheets when Grant sat down on his hand and grasped the elbow. There was a bulging vein in the correct place and he got his needle in first shot. The dose of Pentothal was a guess-work estimate, but as the man went limp Grant whipped off the gag and studied his reflexes.

  Five minutes passed before he replied to any questions and then he opened his eyes slightly.

  ‘What was the message you were to send to your superiors?’ Grant spoke English, and cursed with silent fury when he remembered that unless a man was wholly bilingual he would use his native language when under any form of dope. Fortunately the message was short and he could hardly miss even if Zeys did speak Greek.

  He asked the question five separate times in three languages and framed in five different ways. In each case the answer was the same. He could pick out the words. ‘Telegram’ and ‘Poste Restante’. ‘Constantine Andreas’, of course, was pure Greek. ‘Tangier’ was international. ‘Zeys’ was easy and ‘SNAP’ sounded convincing. But there had been other muttered sounds which made no sense.

  He opened a bottle of ether and carefully wiped away every trace of plaster from the man’s face and skin. The gag had left no permanent mark. And then he brushed the teeth clear of orange, untied the slip knot and pulled off the pyjamas, folding them inside the kid-leather case which lay in the dressing-room.

  Clearly the man had to die. As one of Zero’s executives there was no choice. But it would have to be an artistic death. And the message to Tangier was almost overdue. Needle-pricks had so far drawn no blood, but he decided to leave a syringe in the man’s toilet bag, together with a few grains of morphia as a red herring.

  The man was still asleep and Grant wanted to finish it before he surfaced. The poison in his signet ring caused spasm of the coronary arteries and could not be detected by any ordinary post mortem. He drew the buckle of his wrist watch over the upright of the initial on his signet ring and smiled again as the barb pivoted smoothly into position.

  Death was almost instantaneous, measured in less than a minute as Grant drove his needle home against the side of Zeys’ thigh. He mopped away a tiny fleck of blood and studied the scene. Only a highly suspicious individual would find anything to investigate. But if so there was enough evidence in the man’s luggage to suggest that not only was he a drug addict but that he was also a heart case. Grant believed in leaving a few nitro-glycerine tablets in his victim’s pocket when he used the signet ring. As standard treatment for coronary disease they made an ideal screen.

  He flipped the letter and micro-dot into Zeys’ wallet and returned to his own room with the drug-box. ‘Going to have some fresh air before bedtime,’ he explained to Miguel. ‘Zeys is sleeping naturally.’ He hesitated. ‘But you know, I’ve an idea he’ll not do too well. Over-weight. The right age for a heart catastrophe. Lots of worry. Responsibility and all that.’

  Miguel shrugged his shoulders indifferently. ‘Who can say? It is enough that he does not die in public.’

  Grant looked at him curiously. It was an ambiguous remark, but the man was professionally dead-pan. ‘Have you seen Miss Farrachi?’

  He shook his head. ‘I do not expect her back until very late. Have you a message for her?’

  Grant smiled. ‘Say I’ll meet her as arranged tomorrow at four. And it will be a Porsche.’

  Miguel scribbled a message. ‘You wish a call in the morning?’

  ‘Not really. I’ll be up off and on during the night. Incidentally,’ he added, ‘you might ask someone to see that Mr. Zeys is O.K. whilst I’m away. I’m not happy about him.’

  He slowly lit his pipe. The evening was clear, with a soothing mild breeze, and he walked swiftly back towards the city. Post Office and Cablegrams were still open. He printed the message with his left hand and then killed time for over an hour in a café surrounded by tourists from a cruising ship.

  The manager was waiting for him when he returned to the hotel. Mr. Zeys had taken worse. They had no way of knowing where the Señor had gone and had sent for another doctor.

  Together they rushed to Zeys’ room. The Spanish doctor was efficient and affable. Their patient was dead. He seemed to have a history of heart disease, but there was evidence of other drugs and a syringe had been found in his toilet set.

  It was God’s will. There would, of course, be an autopsy, but the body would be removed during the night and hotel clients must not be disturbed.

  He was really more interested in Grant’s operation on the mountains. It seemed that this was now the talk of the hospital. The boy had recovered and seemed to be shaping well. Everyone said it was a miracle. And how generous to have paid for treatment in advance! That was the sort of action which would never be forgotten. They would drink together and Grant would tell him all about it.

  The party broke up at 3 a.m. and even the manager was on form. Zeys’ body had been smuggled out through a back entrance. Police had been given statements by the doctors and staff. The wine was good. And everyone was happy.

  And Grant hoped that Zero, too, was happy, as he carefully navigated back to his bedroom. These dry Spanish wines had a kick worse than vodka at times. Especially on a half-empty stomach. But he felt like a million dollars. At last it looked as though he might now be in the clear, even if only for a few weeks.

  Chapter Ten – ‘I am very frightened’

  Grant wakened for the second morning in succession to find a note from Miss Turquoise delivered with his morning tea.

  Your name is in every morning paper and you seem to have become famous so I am looking forward to hearing about it and hope to be collected at four o’clock.

  The room steward was smiling as he handed over a newspaper. ‘May I have your autograph, señor?’

  Morning was the worst part of the day and Grant hated having to make conversation before he had shaved and dressed. Wordlessly he signed the grubby book and glanced at the news. His name had been thrown clean across the front page.

  DIETRICH GUNTEN

  FAMOUS AMERICAN SURGEON SAVES CHILD.

  DRAMATIC OPERATION ON MOUNTAINS.

  AMPUTATION WITH CARVING KNIFE AND HAIR-GRIP.

  ‘Las Palmas is proud to have as its most famous visitor of the moment . . .’

  *

  The story of the operation was clearly a natural for any paper which was short of news, and the fact that the child was doing well made it a cinch that he would be in the headlines. But he cursed when he remembered all the theoretical dangers which might follow.

  Improbable or not, the fact remained that some passing visitor who knew the real Gunten and thought him dead might see the photograph and smell a rat. Worse, if some unknown agent was still tracking him—and it was possible that more than one group might be doing that very thing—the photograph might be all that was needed to give a clear lead. The sooner he was out of the Canaries, the better.

  He looked at the shipping list. Viera y Clavijo was due to sail back to Africa at midnight, having turned round her cargo during the previous sixty hours and after disembarking Miss Turquoise with five other passengers.

  A ‘safe conduct’ to the Sahara could, in theory, be issued by an office not far from the hotel. But he knew that it was never given except for government business.

  Or! It was worth trying. If a man was en route to Port Etienne in Mauret
ania?

  But Mauretania was also enjoying the luxury of newfound independence and could be almost as awkward about documents or visas as Spain. He would have to disappear somewhere between La Guerra and Etienne. Which meant on the desert, and with nothing between him and his destination but either nomadic tribes or trigger-happy Spanish soldiers.

  Thinking it over later he reckoned that he had been lucky.

  The morning news became an open sesame at the Passport Office, and within an hour the celebrity of the moment had been given that most precious document a man can own on the Canaries: a ‘safe conduct’ to Spanish Sahara with the right, temporarily, to disembark at the port of Villa Cisneros en route to La Guerra and Mauretania.

  After luncheon he confirmed that the same Porsche, but this time chauffeur-driven, would arrive at the hotel precisely on the stroke of four.

  Miss Turquoise was waiting for him in the foyer, with Miguel the reception clerk again smirking in the background. ‘You must be very clever, señor.’ She greeted him with unexpected courtesy and offered her hand. ‘I telephoned the hospital and they say that your patient is a miracle. So you must show me where it happened and after that we can dine near Atalaya.’

  A photographer was waiting at the door and she fell into a natural pose beside him, standing a discreet yard apart but offering her profile to the camera as she smiled up at Grant with a mocking affection which made him itch to smack her. ‘You see, Dr. Gunten,’ she smiled as she paused beside the car. ‘Whether it is true or not everyone believes that we are lovers.’

  The driver was ordered to go inland to the mountains. ‘I must see where it happened,’ she explained. ‘because I want to talk to the women who helped at your operation and I want to see what they think about you.’

  She probed every angle. Why had he treated the child and left the mother to die? Had it been a difficult decision to make? How had he managed to work without penicillin? Nor did she easily understand that penicillin or any other antibiotic played no part in the operation, that it was a treatment given afterwards to prevent infection. And although she still refused to be drawn about her own life she missed nothing in his own, forcing Grant to use every detail of Gunten’s background until the more he described it, the less happy he became. The man had been an uninteresting stick with no distinction to lighten a career which had been wholly drab. Education in Germany; emigration to the States; naturalization as an American citizen and then humdrum professional years in a backwood small town where he had been so absorbed in a tiny hospital that he had neglected his wife enough to let her divorce him for cruelty.