Mosaic

by Jo Bannister

  Slowly Shola returned the smile. “Maybe after you and I are dead—?”

  “Perhaps.” For a tiny space of time the nearest thing to empathy of which the two men were capable dwelt on the air between them like a shimmering bubble. They were still enemies, always enemies; but they also had more in common with one another than either had with anyone else. Vanderbilt pricked the bubble. “But I rather doubt it.”

  Someone began laughing. It was a thin sound, not entirely without hysteria but laced with a real if arcane humour. Shola and Vanderbilt exchanged a puzzled look before they realized it was Grant. His face was turned away and the blood from the wounds on his cheek had washed over his jaw and down the side of his throat, and his narrow shoulders shook with improbable laughter.

  Vanderbilt jerked on the chain. It had become a means of communication for him, a way of focusing attention. If he remembered that every time he did it he came closer to dislocating a man’s shoulder, it did not trouble him. “What’s amusing you then?”

  Pain had become an inane chorus for Grant, a kind of meaningless intermezzo. At regular intervals throughout the performance the orchestra would strike up and he would be hurt again; but it did not mean anything. He could think through it now. His thin reedy chuckle broke for a moment on a caught breath, then resumed a note lower. Then he said distinctly, “Joel Grant—game for a laugh.” But neither Shola nor Vanderbilt spent much time watching English television, so the allusion eluded them, leaving them more mystified than before.

  A minute passed. Shola said, “You realize Hamlin will be back with the police any moment.”

  Vanderbilt nodded, apparently unconcerned. “And you know it won’t change anything. Except that there’ll be a messy trial instead of a tidy funeral. I’ll still kill Grant before anyone can reach me, however many there are. The only difference is they won’t let you kill me afterwards.”

  Shola said, with hard conviction, “You really think they can stop me?”

  Vanderbilt shrugged. He looked at the door behind Shola, he looked briefly at the blank wall behind himself and the roof above him, and he sighed. He said, “I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you there’s a friend of mine behind you with a gun.”

  The slow, arrogant smile spread Shola’s lips. “None,” he said, and the man behind him swung his gun, clubbing Shola into black oblivion.

  Vanderbilt remarked, “I don’t know who you are, but I think I was safe describing you as a friend.”

  Patrick James said quietly, “I shouldn’t count on it.” He knelt quickly beside Shola, twisting the weapon out of his limp grasp and transferring it to the pocket of his poplin raincoat. He thumbed open Shola’s eyes and touched his rather delicate fingers to the pulse along his throat. He straightened up, unconsciously brushing dust from his sleeve. “Well, he won’t be bothering us for a while.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “I hit him too.”

  Vanderbilt regarded the young man curiously. He was around Grant’s age, slight like Grant—although it sat better on him: he looked naturally gracile rather than half-starved—and also not tall. Vanderbilt, who had in his own mind only recently graduated from the ranks of the Young Guard, suddenly felt middle-aged, and that his world was being overrun by children with guns. He sniffed. “Well, if you’re not my friend, and you’re clearly not his friend, whose friend are you?”

  James looked at the big man, still almost hidden behind his prisoner. They had not met before, but he recognized those features he could see from photographs: the corn-coloured hair, the very blue eyes, the breadth of the shoulders, the big butcher’s hand swallowing the knife. There was, he decided, enough of Pretoria’s gorilla showing to present a marksman with three or four adequate targets. Two of them he was sure he could hit from here, snap shooting with a gun as tolerant of imprecision as a rocket launch. He also knew what would happen if he did. He vented a world-weary sigh. “I’m nobody’s friend. I’m just here to try and prevent wars.”

  Vanderbilt nodded sagely. “I can see that wouldn’t make you popular.”

  James managed a tired smile. Neither George Corner, who had been too angry and disbelieving to study him in detail, nor Danny Vanderbilt, who was too far away and unwilling to move closer, had seen the shadow in his eyes of the weight that hung on his soul. He was a young man, but already he had carried it too long. There were too many occasions in the course of his job when he had to do things he did not like, and he strongly suspected that this was going to be another. Also, it was getting to be a long time since he slept. A battery shaver in the glove compartment of his car had kept his young man’s smooth face fresh, but he knew of no similar placebo for the gnarled and cynic spirit it hid. Afterwards he would drink too much wine and fix himself up with a girl who would not notice if he kept forgetting her name, but before that he had to resolve this situation. There were several possibilities, but his instructions tied at least one hand behind his back. He supposed Vanderbilt had the same problem.

  He said, “How are we going to get you out of here before you stop being a nuisance and start being a diplomatic disaster area?”

  Vanderbilt sounded genuinely apologetic. “I am a reasonable man. It embarrasses me that I am not at liberty to agree to a reasonable compromise. I would like to be able to leave Grant here, get on my aeroplane and go home. I think you would find that acceptable?” He paused for confirmation and James nodded. “But I can’t. My briefing was specific: to bring Grant back to Pretoria if at all possible, or to kill him here. If I cannot take him aboard our plane I must kill him, and then you must—well, do as your briefing tells you. A bullet in the head or a trial at the Old Bailey: either way I’m afraid I’m going to go on being a nuisance. No reasonable compromise is possible. I am sorry.”

  “Mm, quite.” James considered for a moment. “Have you ever thought about getting out of the game? Now would be a good time. I can provide you with asylum, with cover if you want it, probably with an income. Think about it: people like us tend to find it difficult to retire in our own countries, and you won’t want to be still doing this when you’re sixty.”

  “Defect? To a country with a climate like this?”

  “I could throw in a sun bed.”

  The muscles of Vanderbilt’s shoulders were beginning to protest. He had been holding Grant in this awkward position, intermittently taking most of his weight, for several minutes now—precious minutes, that should have seen him on his way to the airport with his cargo carefully crated in the back of Crane’s van. While the pilot was trapped here too there was little risk of the plane leaving without him, but a long delay could start the questions coming. Getting himself and Grant on board unnoticed depended on no one paying more than the routine minimum of attention to the loading and clearance procedures. So while there was any possibility that he might get out of the garage with his prisoner, there was an element of urgency.

  He said, “Which lot are you with?”

  “One of the lots which don’t exist.”

  “Ah—you too. Where do you work to—Whitehall?”

  “Whitehall would wet itself if it even knew about my lot. I don’t imagine you have the same problem with Pretoria.”

  “No indeed, Pretoria is very proud of us. Until we get caught in flagrante delicto in other people’s countries, of course. Because then they have to rattle a lot of sabres and stir up a lot of ill-will to camouflage the fact that we had no business being there in the first place. They’ll be downright annoyed with me if it comes to that. But they’ll also be cancelling all leave for the armed forces.”

  “There’s no need for it.” The urgency was also beginning to show in James’s voice. “Leave Grant and go home. No one need be any the wiser. Tell them he’s dead: I’ll put out the same story, we’ll relocate him, give him a new identity. Not for your sake, or mine, or even his, but because of the effect a diplomatic engagement now will have in South Africa. You can’t afford any more destabilization. You’re l
iving in one giant gas leak: you don’t need somebody to strike a match. It was a bad briefing. De Witte would never have given it—would he? In all the circumstances you’re doing your country a disservice by trying to carry it out.”

  He broke off, frowning. Vanderbilt was beaming broadly at him, as though someone had just dealt him the last ace.

  “I know who you are,” said Vanderbilt. “You’re one of Carver’s army.”

  “Does it matter who I am?” James rasped testily.

  “It does to me, sonny.” Vanderbilt was grinning as if he could not stop. “We know about Carver. He gets the best, and he makes damn sure they stay that way. You don’t carry that gun for hitting people with. You practise most days and you’re accurate to—well, over this sort of range, single atoms. If you’d been prepared to shoot me you’d have done it when you walked in here. Shola would have done it, if he’d been good enough. But he thought he’d hit Grant. You, on the other hand, have been told that getting Grant back is of only secondary importance beside getting me off British soil. They don’t want me here, dead or alive. So the gun is a bluff. You might as well put it away. I’m leaving here with my prisoner and my pilot, and if you stick around you’ll probably hear my plane.”

  He moved out from behind the car, straightening, pushing Grant before him. Six inches bigger all round, he presented all the target anyone could want. It made no difference. James sighed and returned his gun to its holster. Vanderbilt had done better than guessing at his orders: he had known what they had to be. There was nothing more he could do. He saw the pilot still cowering uncertainly and sent him after Vanderbilt with a weary nod of his head.

  He heard the van outside start but it did not move off. Instead Vanderbilt came back into the garage alone. James thought rapidly about his gun, saw no point in drawing it and left it where it was. Vanderbilt smiled an avuncular approval, as if he knew everything that passed through the younger man’s head. Perhaps he did. They were very alike.

  He said, “Can’t go without this,” and went to lift the packing-case. He was a strong man but it was an awkward shape. He looked slyly at James. “On the basis of ‘If it were done when’tis done, then’twere well it were done quickly,’ you wouldn’t care to give me a hand with this thing?”

  James replied quietly. “I don’t know how or when, but sometime there’ll be an account to pay for what I’ve had to do today.”

  Vanderbilt met his cool grey gaze without surprise or disdain. “I know.” He bent his back to the heavy crate and staggered outside with it, unaided.

  Will Hamlin lay rather than sat against the brick wall of the alley, nursing his broken forearm and trying to get his head together. He was aware of the purring that was the van’s engine without at first appreciating its significance.

  He had left the garage like a rugby forward with possession. In his right hand was the small gun that he had taken from the glove compartment of Vanderbilt’s car, that he had not so much hung onto as never got round to parting with. He was barely conscious of it; certainly in his hand it did not constitute a weapon. He sped from the garage, down the alley and sharp right where it turned towards the road.

  Patrick James had been half a stride behind Shola all the way. He too had thought to check on the pilot, had followed him to Glasgow and found the Hastings, only to have one of the ground crew say he had missed the captain by moments and point out the blue van in which he was driving away with two other men, one of them black. Without the time to hire transport he acquired a car by flashing an impressive but quite illegitimate card and shouting “Police!” at its owner, and set off in a pursuit that was both hot and covert.

  He trailed the van to the alleyway. There was a sign advising it was a dead end, so he parked the borrowed car and continued carefully on foot. From the vantage of the corner, unsuspected by men wrapped up in their own drama, he heard most of what was said and saw Joel Grant almost become a free man before being snatched back into captivity. He knew then what would happen, and what his own part must be. When Hamlin came sprinting round the corner, gravel spitting from under his shoes, James was ready for him.

  He knocked the forgotten gun from his hand with the axe-blow of his own barrel that broke his arm. Hamlin went down, the shock getting him behind the knees and keeping his legs from coping with his own momentum, and rolled wildly, helpless to protect his damaged arm. When he fetched up against the wall James kicked him soundly in the jaw. Then he calmly pocketed the little gun and walked towards the garage.

  Now Hamlin was coming back. He had been unconscious for some minutes and he was not really ready to wake up yet, but the new sound of the engine was striking chords of compulsion in his aching brain even though he was not yet up to remembering why. Exploring slowly, he discovered that his right arm was painful, weak and creaking nastily, and that all the teeth in his left jaw were raging. He pushed himself up against the wall and almost passed out again.

  But through his own hurts the throb of the engine beat insistently. He knew it was important, and when he made himself think he knew why. It meant somebody was getting ready to leave. If Shola had won it was him and Grant getting out before the arrival of the police they believed were on their way. But if Vanderbilt had won Shola was down or dead, and Grant was on the penultimate leg of his last journey. If it was Shola all was well: they would stop for him or the police would pick him up, he was not too bothered which. But the man who hit him, whom Hamlin remembered only as sudden unexpected movement and an explosion of pain, would have altered the balance of power in the garage. Hamlin began the long, arduous climb to his feet.

  Vanderbilt was behind the wheel. The pilot was in the passenger seat. Grant was in the crate, in the back, bound, gagged and finally drugged. While Vanderbilt was nailing the lid on he had contrived to beat repeatedly on the slats with some mobile part of his anatomy, but the noise had quickly grown faint and now there was silence. Grant was sliding down a midnight velvet tunnel into deep unconsciousness.

  Just as the Boer had at last yielded to the need for it, so in the end Grant had fought the needle. Vanderbilt threw him like a roped calf in the back of the van, face down, stapled his instep over Grant’s elbow and shoved the hypodermic in to half its length. Then he lifted Grant bodily and tossed him into the crate and hammered the lid down.

  He had by no means discounted the possibility that when they prised the top off they would find only a corpse, stiff and shrunken, diminished to a doll without the nervous energy which had animated it. He hardly cared. He had done his job; if someone else, Botha or his medical adviser, had proved unequal to his, Vanderbilt would find it hard to regret that their mistake had saved Joel Grant from another encounter with his monsters. All Vanderbilt wanted now was to be home.

  When the van rounded the corner Will Hamlin was in the middle of the alley, on his feet but only approximately vertical, swaying slightly as if there was a breeze. He looked less like a running forward than an old boxer who has taken too many punches. Neither to left nor right of him was there room for the van to pass. Vanderbilt sighed and trod gently on the brake.

  “No!” It was the man beside him, who had led these people to him, who had cowered in a corner of the garage all the time he might have been trying to atone for that, who now considered the moment opportune to reassert himself. “Run him down. Run him down! We can’t afford any more time.” His voice was harsh and excited, and if he had been driving he would have done it. Vanderbilt hoped he would keep a cooler head about any emergencies which arose at thirty thousand feet.

  The van coasted to a halt with its bumper a hand’s span from Hamlin’s knees. He hardly seemed to see it. He would not have jumped aside if it had come at him; perhaps he could not have done. Only a feat of will was keeping him on his feet.

  Vanderbilt pushed back the door and swung down. Hamlin let him walk right up to him before he even raised his head, and then it was an effort. His face was haggard, his eyes dull with pain. Vanderbilt said gently, “You’l
l have to move, you know.”

  Hamlin cranked his head a little higher to look him in the eye. “You have no right—”

  “No,” agreed Vanderbilt. “None at all. But I’m taking him just the same. Will you move?”

  Hamlin shook his head, mute and stubborn. Vanderbilt laid a hand quite lightly on his broken forearm, cradled in front of him, and Hamlin’s knees gave under him. The Boer caught him as he dropped and put him back against the wall. But before he could straighten up Hamlin fisted his good hand in Vanderbilt’s sleeve, letting the other trail on the ground like a bird’s broken wing. Vanderbilt hung onto his patience: hitting an injured man was about as good for his ego as beating girls. “Let go.”

  Hamlin’s voice was a hoarse whisper, thick with hurting and desperation. “You don’t know why they want him.”

  “I told you, I don’t have to know. All I have to do is take him back.”

  “They don’t care about anything he knows or anything he’s done. They want his heart. They want to transplant his heart into De Witte. Joel Grant is De Witte’s son.”

  As if he had not heard Vanderbilt broke the frail grasp of Hamlin’s clutching fingers, returned to the van and drove away.

  Chapter Three

  Liz Fallon, wearing her prettiest dress, walked quickly through the reception area towards the lifts, exchanging smiling nods with the people on the desk as she did so. They knew she was visiting their VIP. There had been some discussion about her, over the teacups. Some of them believed she was De Witte’s mistress, brought in to cheer him up now that he was dying (had not a queen of England once made such a gesture out of love for her dying king?) but the more worldly among the women pointed to her clothes and expressed the opinion that London was the devil of a long way to bring a mistress and he was bound to have one closer.