by Jack Higgins
‘Excellent,’ Guyon said. ‘I’ll open it while you fetch some glasses.’
His gaiety was quite infectious and within a few moments he had them all laughing with a description of an outrageous and quite untruthful incident from his past. The conversation which followed moved along spontaneously.
Once or twice Mallory noticed the three men in the corner looking towards them, obviously irritated after some particularly loud burst of laughter from Fiona or Guyon. One of them hammered on the table and called loudly to Owen Morgan for more cognac.
Mallory leaned across to Anne. ‘The one on the left with the haircut. He was at the wheel of de Beaumont’s boat this afternoon. Who is he?’
‘They call him Jacaud,’ she said. ‘That’s all I can tell you. He seems to go everywhere with de Beaumont. I think the others are afraid of him.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ Guyon put in. There’s about fifteen stone of bone and muscle there, mostly muscle from the look of him.’
Jacaud got to his feet, crossed the bar and mounted the steps to the other room. He leaned on de Beaumont’s table and they held a short conversation. Mallory watched them over the rim of his glass. Once, de Beaumont turned and looked towards them. He gazed coolly at Mallory for a moment, then turned back to Jacaud.
The big Frenchman rejoined his friends and Owen Morgan turned on the radio, the sound of music filling the room. Guyon pulled Fiona to her feet and grinned.
‘Come on, let’s liven the place up a little.’
They made an attractive couple as they circled the room. The beautiful young girl on the threshold of womanhood, and Guyon, his lean, sun-blackened face animated and full of life.
Anne Grant watched them wistfully and coloured when she saw that Mallory was looking at her. ‘Fiona always makes me feel old,’ she said.
‘But not too old.’ Mallory turned to the General. ‘You’ll excuse us, sir?’
The General touched the champagne bottle lightly and raised his glass. ‘Enjoy yourselves while you can. I’ll make do with this.’
They moved into the centre of the floor. She slipped one arm about his neck and danced with her head on his shoulder, her body pressed so closely against him that he could feel the line from breast to thigh.
For a moment, he forgot about everything except the fact that he was dancing with a warm, exciting girl whose perfume filled his nostrils and caused a pleasant ache of longing in the pit of his stomach.
It had been a long time since he had slept with a woman, but that wasn’t the whole explanation. That Anne Grant attracted him was undeniable, but there was something more there, something deeper that for the moment was beyond his comprehension.
The music stopped, a pause between records, and they went back to their table. The others followed a few moments later, and as Fiona seated herself there was a burst of loud laughter from Jacaud and his two friends in the corner, followed by a remark in French, coarse and to the point and quite unprintable.
Guyon swung round, his face hardening. The three men returned his gaze boldly. He took one quick step towards them and Mallory caught him by the sleeve and pulled him down into his chair.
‘Let it go.’
Guyon was shaking with suppressed anger. ‘You heard what he said?’
Fiona leaned forward and put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t let it upset you, Raoul. They’ve had a little too much to drink, that’s all.’
A shadow fell across the table and Mallory looked up into the face of the man he had heard Owen Morgan refer to as Marcel a little earlier. He was of medium height and wore denim pants and a blue seaman’s jersey. He was very drunk and clutched at the edge of the table to steady himself.
‘I think you’d be better off sitting down,’ Mallory told him in French.
Marcel ignored him, leaned across the table, knocking over a glass, and grabbed Anne by one arm. ‘You dance with me now?’ he mouthed in broken English.
Mallory grabbed for the man’s right arm just above the elbow, his thumb hooking into the pressure point. As he swung round, mouth opening in a cry of agony, Guyon kicked him under the right knee-cap. Marcel staggered backwards, lost his balance and sprawled across the other table. Jacaud pushed him to one side, got to his feet and moved forward.
He stood there, swaying slightly as if drunk, and yet the slate-grey eyes were as cold as ice, eternally watchful.
‘Two to one, messieurs,’ he said in excellent English. ‘You made the odds.’
Owen Morgan came round the bar on the run, face very white, eyes blazing. The big Frenchman sent him staggering backwards with a single, contemptuous shove of his hand and laughed harshly.
‘He asked for it, Jacaud,’ de Beaumont called sharply. ‘Let it end there.’
Jacaud ignored him and de Beaumont made no move to come down into the bar, gave no indication of being able or willing to control the situation. He stayed by the fire, a watchful expression on his face.
In that moment Mallory realised that the whole thing had been arranged. That for some reason of his own de Beaumont had deliberately engineered the situation.
Guyon started to rise and Mallory pulled him down again. ‘My affair.’
Jacaud stood there swaying a little, still keeping up the pretence of being drunk, his great hands hooked slightly, every muscle tensed and ready. He lurched forward and stood over them.
‘Of course, my friend might be willing to settle for a drink.’ He nodded at the table. ‘A bottle of champagne would do.’
‘Anything to oblige,’ Mallory said calmly.
He reached for the bottle and, as he turned, reversed his grip and smashed it across the side of the Frenchman’s skull. As Anne cried out, Jacaud staggered and fell to one knee. Mallory picked up a chair, moved in fast and smashed it down across the great shoulders. Jacaud grunted, started to heel over and Mallory smashed the broken chair down again and again, until it splintered. He tossed it to one side and waited.
Slowly, painfully, Jacaud reached for the edge of the bar and pulled himself up. He hung there for a moment, then turned to Mallory, wiping blood from his face casually.
And then, incredibly, he charged, head down like a wounded bull, the great hands reaching out to destroy. Mallory judged his moment exactly, swerved to one side, allowing the Frenchman to plunge past, and slashed him across the kidneys with a karate blow delivered with the edge of his hand.
Jacaud screamed and fell to the floor. For a little while he stayed there on his hands and knees, and when he got to his feet he was slobbering like an animal. He lurched forward and Mallory kicked his feet from under him. Jacaud crashed to the floor, rolled over and lay still.
In the silence which followed, de Beaumont came down the steps slowly. He dropped to one knee beside Jacaud, examined him and looked up. ‘You are a hard man, Colonel Mallory.’
‘When I have to be,’ Mallory said. ‘You could have done something to stop this. Why didn’t you?’
He turned without waiting for a reply and went back to the table. ‘I think that might do for one night. Shall we go?’
Hamish Grant’s face was pale, the nostrils flaring slightly as he got to his feet. ‘You know, I really think it’s about time I bought you a drink, Neil. I’ve got some rather special whiskey back at the house. So Irish that you can taste the peat. I’d like to have your opinion on it.’
Anne’s face was very white and she was trembling. Mallory squeezed her hand reassuringly and they all walked towards the door. De Beaumont moved to block the way.
‘One moment, General. Perhaps I might be allowed to tender my apologies for this distressing affair. At the best of times Jacaud has a short temper. When he’s been drinking …’
‘No need for that, de Beaumont,’ Hamish Grant said coldly. ‘I think the matter has been handled quite adequately.’
De Beaumont stood there, his smile frozen into place, and then he turned away sharply and they moved outside.
Fiona got behind the wheel, Guyon beside her, a
nd the General and Anne climbed into the back. Mallory slammed the door and leaned in at the open window.
‘If you don’t mind, General, I’d like to take you up on that drink another time. I’ve had enough excitement for one night.’
As Anne’s head turned sharply towards him he turned quickly, giving them no time to argue, and went down the slope towards the jetty. A few moments later the engine coughed into life behind him and the station wagon moved away.
He turned right at the jetty, following a steeply shelving path which brought him down to a strip of sand, white in the moonlight, waves curling in across the shingle with a gentle sucking sound.
He sat on a boulder and lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled slightly. He inhaled deeply, drawing the smoke into his lungs and released it with a long sigh.
Behind him Anne Grant said, ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’
‘What’s the point?’ he said simply.
‘We seem to have held this conversation before.’
When she whispered his name they came together naturally and easily. Her hands pulled his head down as her mouth sought his and her sweetness drove every other thought from his mind. He picked her up in his arms and laid her down gently in the soft sand.
11
In a Lonely Place
The wind was freshening, lifting the waves into whitecaps, and as the dinghy rounded the point water slopped over the gunwale. Guyon carefully eased his weight into the centre and started to bale. He wore a heavy sweater and reefer jacket against the cold. A pair of night-glasses hung around his neck and one of the aquamobiles lay in the prow behind him.
Mallory sat in the stern wearing a black rubber diving suit, the heavy aqualung already strapped into place on his back. As a crosscurrent started to turn the dinghy in towards the cliffs he opened the throttle on the outboard motor to compensate and glanced at the luminous dial of his watch.
It was 11.45 and there was very little cloud, the sky brilliant with stars, and the moonlight danced across the waves, leaving a trail of silver behind it. The dinghy lifted high on a large swell and swung in towards the great finger of rock which marked the western tip of the island. Mallory opened the throttle again. For a moment the dinghy seemed to stand still and then it forged ahead.
They rounded the point, fighting the crosscurrents, Guyon cursing steadily as water slopped over the sides, and then they were sweeping into calmer water. Beyond, St Pierre and the Gothic towers of the castle were dark against the sky.
Mallory throttled down again and the dinghy coasted on, the sound of her motor a murmur on the wind. The great reef running between the two islands was deceptively innocent in the moonlight. Waves rolling in from the sea splashed lazily across the rocks, now and then a curtain of white spray lifting into the night like silver lace.
He took the dinghy into the calm waters of the Middle Passage until they reached the first point where the roof closed in and water boiled across great jagged black teeth. He cut the motor and the dinghy slowed and ground gently against a sloping, weed-covered shoulder of rock. Guyon hooked the painter into a crevasse and looked towards St Pierre through the night-glasses.
‘About a quarter of a mile. A long swim.’
‘Not with the aquamobile,’ Mallory said.
Guyon got it over the side, the dinghy heeling dangerously. ‘Rather you than me. The water’s like ice. How long will you be?’
Mallory shrugged. ‘No more than half an hour. I’ve no intention of hanging around at the other end.’
He fitted the rubber mouthpiece between his teeth and adjusted his air supply, touched the knife briefly at his belt and clambered awkwardly over the side on to the reef. He waded into the water, swam to the other side of the dinghy and reached for the aquamobile. Guyon smiled once and Mallory nodded and sank beneath the surface.
Moonlight filtered down through the water, probing into the depths. When he passed beneath the surface of the reef and came into the Middle Passage he entered a darker, more sinister, world.
He switched on the powerful spot mounted on top of the scooter and the shaft of light pierced through the darkness in front of him, splaying against the rocks that arched above his head.
He tilted the nose of the aquamobile and went down gently, levelling out at twenty feet. Although his top speed was no more than three knots, he seemed to rush at a terrifying speed into the wall of grey mist that was the edge of his visibility. The great, arched nave of the reef stretched into infinity before him, the water breaking against his mask.
And then he was through and moving into a strange, unreal landscape of jumbled rocks and pale forests of sea-weed waving languidly in the diffused moonlight. He surfaced and looked up at the cliffs of St Pierre, the pointed towers of the castle dark against the sky.
The moonlight splashed across the face of the cliffs, picking out the dark mouth of the cave. It was now high water and there was no more than a ten-or twelve-foot clearance. Mallory turned the nose of the aquamobile down and levelled out at forty feet. He switched off the spot and moved into a grey phosphorescent mist.
The great fault in the sea-bed dropped beneath him. At least ten fathoms, Anne had said, slicing into the heart of the island. The mist seemed to swing to one side like a curtain, revealing the entrance to the cave, a good sixty feet across as it widened on its way down.
He drifted in, grey-green walls moving past on either side. The water lightened, the grey merging into aquamarine as artificial light seeped down from the surface. He moved in close to the wall and went forward cautiously.
He stopped abruptly, switching off the aquamobile. From this point on the rough wall of the cave merged into the jetty, great square blocks of masonry like the foundations of some ancient fort descending into the depths. He started up cautiously and immediately the grey-black underbelly of the submarine appeared from the mist.
He had found what he was looking for and to stay any longer was to invite trouble. He turned and flutter-kicked towards the entrance. The light dimmed and he was aware of the current tugging at him.
He swam out into that strange, grey, phosphorescent world and paused to switch on the aquamobile. In that same moment it was torn from his grasp with a metallic clang and a shock-wave, spreading through the water, burst around him.
He turned and saw the frogman suspended in the water about twenty feet away, a weird sea-creature, full of menace, the moonlight glinting on his visor as he reloaded his spear-gun.
Mallory drove forward, pulling the heavy knife from its sheath. When he was perhaps ten feet away the gun exploded again in a shower of silver bubbles. He swung desperately to one side. The spear hurtled past and he moved in fast, his knife cleaving through rubber and flesh.
The man’s body bucked agonisingly, blood rising in a dark cloud as Mallory pulled out the knife and snatched at the air-pipe. As it came free in his hand, air burst out at pressure, bubbles swirling past him on the way to the surface.
He could see the man’s face quite clearly now, eyes bulging, teeth clamped together in agony. Quite suddenly he went over backwards in a graceful curve, like a leaf spiralling earthwards in autumn, the weight of his aqualung taking him down.
Mallory struck up towards the surface, chasing his aquamobile, which was rising slowly. He grabbed the handles and switched on, already aware of further shock-waves rippling through the water, bouncing from his body.
The aquamobile surged forward, helped by the turning tide. The sea-bed started to shelve again, and, below, he was aware of the pale forest of seaweed, the ribbons of black rock that were the beginnings of the reef.
Once again he was aware of a shock-wave curling around his body and he glanced to his right. Perhaps fifty yards away and coming up fast through moon-drenched water was a large underwater scooter, at least twice as long as his aquamobile, a frogman trailing behind.
Mallory kicked desperately, urging the aquamobile forward. And then the rocks swarmed up out of the gloom on either sid
e and he rushed into the darkness of the Middle Passage. He switched on his spot, planing down to avoid the over-hanging roof. He was aware of a muffled throbbing in his ear and glanced back. A wide band of diffused light spreading through the mist told him that his pursuer wasn’t far behind.
He passed through a section where moonlight streamed in through cracks and fissures in the roof and knew that he was about halfway along the passage, somewhere above the wreck of the freighter. As he came into the clear section he plunged down and at ten fathoms a tapering steel mast loomed out of the gloom. Mallory held on with one hand and waited.
The darkness moved in on him with a terrible, suffocating pressure and the mast seemed to move a little as if the old freighter had rolled. He remembered the dark companionway, dead men’s bones crushed under a steel girder, and shivered, suddenly aware of the cold.
He could sense the turbulence in the water, waves rippling down. When he looked up there was the weird, incandescent glow of the spot-lamp on the other scooter as it passed overhead. He waited for a moment or two, then went up slowly.
At twenty feet he levelled out, switched on the motor, but not the spot, and went after the other scooter. Only in patches was visibility really bad and at this depth the moonlight streamed in through fissures in the rock like regularly spaced lamps along a dark road.
When he emerged at last from the great central nave into clear water he switched off the aquamobile and surfaced.
Raoul Guyon sat in the stern of the dinghy. A yard or two away the frogman stood waist-deep in water on the shelving reef beside his scooter, a loaded spear-gun in his hands. It was almost as if they were holding a conversation.
Mallory released his grip on the aquamobile, went under the surface and swam forward. He erupted in a surge of power, slid his right arm about the man’s neck and fell backwards, towing him into deep water, tearing the air-hose from his mouth.
They sank down through the clear water, the spear-gun spiralling off to one side. Mallory wrenched again with his free hand, pulling away the mask, and the man’s face turned up, contorted with fear.
