A Fine Night for Dying

by Jack Higgins

  Chavasse looked at his watch and saw that it was almost noon. “They’ll be almost there by now, if the weather holds.”

  “Saint Denise?” Mallory nodded. “Yes. I’m inclined to agree with you, and our friend from the People’s Republic will have returned with them if I’m any judge. For one thing, he’s going to need some kind of medical attention, and for another, he won’t want to hang around now that things have turned sour. Very practical people, the Chinese.”

  “What about Rossiter?”

  Mallory picked up a flimsy and examined it. “Now he really is an amazing character. I can’t get over him. Stoneyhurst, a double first at Cambridge, five years at the English College in Rome and then Korea. The Chinese had him for four years—four years behind the wire. That must have been hell.”

  Remembering his own experiences in a similar position for only a week, Chavasse nodded. “You can say that again. But why did he throw up Holy Orders? What was the given reason?”

  “Difficult to discover. The Church doesn’t exactly fall over itself to discuss this sort of thing. However, I’ve pulled a few strings and they’ve reluctantly given me the address of a priest who was in captivity with Rossiter. His parish is right here in London, which is convenient.”

  Chavasse examined the card Mallory passed across. Father Henry da Souza. Portuguese, which would probably turn out to mean that his family had been living in England for at least five hundred years. “Was there ever the slightest suggestion that Rossiter had turned Red?”

  Mallory shrugged. “Anything is possible in this worst of all possible worlds, dear boy. They certainly did a good job on him. Of course, a priest has something to hang on to; something to fight them with. Having said that, there’s no question that ministers held by the Chinese for a period and later released have sometimes needed psychiatric help on their return, that’s how complete the brainwashing process has been. They’ve done research into it at Harvard, I understand. Anyway, you go and see Father da Souza and see what you can get out of him.”

  “What about Darcy Preston?”

  “No problem there, as long as he behaves himself and keeps his mouth shut. We’ll put him on a plane for Jamaica tomorrow.”

  “Is it all right if he stays at my place in the meantime?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Mallory shook his head. “Saint Paul’s by day and Soho by night. What a strange, mixed-up life that boy must have had.”

  Chavasse got to his feet. “He seems to have survived it well. I’ll be in touch later this afternoon.”

  He was halfway to the door when the phone buzzed again. Mallory called him back with a gesture and picked up the receiver. He put it down again with a sigh. “The body of a middle-aged woman wearing a life jacket was pulled out of the sea off Weymouth by a fishing boat an hour ago. Paul, I’m sorry—damned sorry. Especially in view of what you told me.”

  “So am I,” Chavasse said, and went out quietly, murder in his heart.

  THE Church of the Immaculate Conception was not far from the East India Docks, an area that was anything but salubrious. Chavasse parked his car on the opposite side of the road and switched off the engine. He took a cigarette from his case and offered one to Darcy Preston.

  “Graham Mallory would hang, draw and quarter me if he knew I’d brought you along. On the other hand, he did tell me to keep an eye on you, and I can’t very well be in two places at once.”

  “You could try, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” Preston said, and he got out of the car.

  The church backed onto the river, a small, rather grimy pseudo-Gothic building of a kind that had been built extensively during a certain period of the nineteenth century. They went in through a porched entrance to a place of candles and shadows, incense and quiet peace. It was empty except for the man who knelt by the altar rail in a priest’s cassock, white hair flaming like a halo in the candlelight.

  Chavasse crossed himself and dipped a knee instinctively, although he had not practiced his religion for years, and they moved down the aisle. The priest got to his feet and was about to go toward the vestry, when he saw them and paused, smiling faintly.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  His eyes were those of a man who loved the whole world, a rare enough breed. A bad scar ran from the right eye into the hair, but otherwise he had a face as calm and untroubled as that of a two-year-old child.

  “Father da Souza? My name is Chavasse. I believe you were expecting me? This is Mr. Preston, an associate.”

  “Ah, yes.” Father da Souza nodded. “Something to do with Leonard Rossiter, wasn’t it?” He smiled. “Why don’t we go outside? It’s rather pleasant at the moment.”

  At the rear of the church, a cemetery ran down to the Thames, spiked railings fringing a low wall. There was plenty of activity on the river and the priest had been right—it was pleasant in the pale sunshine.

  He sat on a tombstone and accepted a cigarette from Chavasse. “This is nice—very nice. I often come out here to think, you know. Somehow it has the right atmosphere.” He bent his head to the match Preston held out to him and leaned back with a sigh of content. “Now then, what was it you wanted to know about Leonard?”

  “Before we go any further, Father, I think I should make it clear that this is a serious business and highly confidential. In fact, a matter of national security.”

  Da Souza didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest. “Go on.”

  “Would you say it was possible that Leonard Rossiter had turned Communist?”

  Father da Souza examined the end of his cigarette with a slight, abstracted frown and sighed. “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t think there was much doubt about it.”

  “I see. Have you ever spoken of this to anyone before?”

  “No one ever asked me.”

  Chavasse nodded. “All right, Father, tell me all you can.”

  “I was sent to work in Korea just after the Second World War. I was taken prisoner by North Korean forces a few days after the Korean War started.”

  “And Rossiter?”

  “Oh, I didn’t meet Leonard for quite some time—nine months later, when I was moved to a special camp in Manchuria. An indoctrination center run by the Chinese.”

  “And you think Rossiter was brainwashed there?”

  Father da Souza laughed gently. “Good heavens, it isn’t as easy as that, you know. They have an extraordinarily simple technique, and yet it works so very often. The original concept is Pavlovian. A question of inducing guilt or rather of magnifying the guilt that is in all of us. Shall I tell you the first thing my instructor asked me, gentlemen? Whether I had a servant at the mission to clean my room and make my bed. When I admitted that I had, he expressed surprise, produced a Bible and read me that passage in which Our Lord speaks of serving others. Yet here was I, allowing one of those I had come to help to serve me. Extraordinary how guilty that one small point made me feel.”

  “But your faith, Father?” Preston said. “Wasn’t it of any help at all?”

  The old priest smiled beautifully. “My son, my faith was triumphant; it overcame all odds in spite of everything that was attempted with me. I have never felt more certain of God than I did during those dark days.”

  “And Rossiter?” Chavasse said. “What about Rossiter’s faith?”

  The old priest looked genuinely troubled. “I am in a difficult position here, gentlemen. I was Leonard’s confessor at Nom Bek, and he mine. The secrets of the confessional are sacred. Let me say that he had problems long before he fell into Communist hands. From their point of view, he was fruit that was ripe for the picking.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “If I may use Marxian terminology, each man has his thesis and his antithesis. For a priest, his thesis is everything he believes in, everything he and his vocation stand for. His antithesis, on the other hand, is his darker side—the side that is present in all of us. Fears and hates, violence, aggression, the desires of the flesh. Leonard Ros
siter was racked by guilt long before the instructors at Nom Bek got to work on him.”

  “But why did he give up Holy Orders?”

  “The official explanation was that he had experienced a crisis of faith—that he could no longer continue. This happened three or four years after his return.”

  “But you think he’d fallen for the party line?”

  Father da Souza nodded. “I think it seemed to offer him what he was searching for—a strong faith—a faith that would support him.”

  “You say seemed to offer him, Father?” Darcy Preston said.

  Father da Souza smiled gently. “One thing I can tell you with certainty. Leonard Rossiter is a soul in torment. He is like the man in Thompson’s poem, pursued endlessly by the Hound of God, fleeing from the one certain hope of salvation, hell-bent on destruction because of his own self-loathing.”

  Chavasse nodded slowly. “That’s all, Father. I think you’ve made your point.”

  “I hope I’ve been of help. A pleasure, gentlemen.”

  He shook hands and they left him there on the cracked tomb, finishing his cigarette.

  “Quite a man,” Darcy Preston said, as they got into the car.

  “And then some.”

  MALLORY listened to what he had to say, a strange abstracted look on his face. “I’ve spoken to NATO intelligence since you were last here.”

  “About Montefiore.”

  Mallory nodded. “It’s curiously disturbing, Paul. They haven’t got a thing on him. Now that worries me—that really does worry me. I wouldn’t mind knowing that he was the most dangerous double agent in the game as long as one had a hint, but this whole situation smells to high heaven. How do you see it?”

  Chavasse stood up and paced backward and forward across the room. “Let’s take the two most important strands: Colonel Ho Tsen—a very dangerous Chinese agent—and Leonard Rossiter, who seems to have fallen for the party line during his captivity. That still leaves us with the most puzzling bit of all. Why should a multimillionaire financier like Enrico Montefiore help to further the cause of militant Chinese-style Communism? And there’s another point—the immigration racket. So amateurish.”

  “All right, so Rossiter’s organization is amateurish as you say, but the Chinese don’t have a great deal of choice when it comes to friends and allies. They’ve only got one toehold in Europe, remember—Albania. It’s always possible that they just haven’t realized how second-rate Rossiter’s organization is.”

  “You could be right,” Chavasse admitted. “They certainly can’t afford to be too choosy. Any kind of a contact in the European market is better than nothing. I suspect that might be the way they looked at it, and they can be naive. People are always telling us that we don’t understand Asians. That may be true, but they certainly don’t understand us any better.”

  Mallory sat there staring into space for perhaps thirty seconds, then he nodded. “Right, Paul, it’s all yours. Find them—all three of them: Ho Tsen, Rossiter and Montefiore. I’d like to know what it’s all about, but the most important thing is to bring them to a stop.”

  “A dead stop?”

  “Naturally. Seek and destroy. I can’t see any point in taking half measures. It’s completely your baby from now on. Use the usual communication system whenever possible to keep me informed. See Jean on your way out about money. Anything else?”

  Chavasse nodded. “The man you’ve got keeping an eye on this bloke Gorman at Fixby—pull him off.”

  “You’re going down there yourself?”

  “It would seem as good a place as any to start.”

  Mallory reached for the phone. “I’ll see to it now. Good luck.”

  Jean Frazer glanced up as Chavasse emerged. “You look pleased with yourself.”

  “I am.”

  Chavasse helped himself to a cigarette from the box on her desk. The eyes were like black glass in the dark Celtic face. He looked like the devil himself, and for some reason, she shivered.

  “What is it, Paul?”

  “I’m not too sure,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I felt like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Personally involved in something. Me, Paul Chavasse, not just the Bureau. I’m thinking of an old man on his back on a south coast beach this morning who only wanted to see his son, and a fussy little woman who died alone, utterly terrified. A silly, stupid little woman who never hurt anyone in her life.”

  He sighed heavily and stubbed out his cigarette. “I want revenge, Jean. For the first time, I want to take care of someone permanently for personal reasons. It’s a new sensation. What worries me is how happy I feel about the prospect.”

  HE parted from Darcy Preston with regret, for he had come to like the brilliant, sardonic Jamaican, and not only because of what they had been through together. As he packed one or two things, Darcy sat on the window seat and watched. He was wearing a pair of Chavasse’s slacks, a polo neck sweater and a sports jacket in Donegal tweed.

  “Sure you’re okay for cash?” Chavasse asked, as he locked his suitcase.

  Darcy nodded. “I still have a bank account here.”

  Chavasse buttoned an old naval bridge coat that gave him a rather nautical air. “I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you again. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be on your way to sunny Jamaica.”

  “Land of carefree calypso and shantytowns. Give me Birmingham any day.” Darcy grinned. “And what about you? Where do you start? At this place, Fixby?”

  “Good a place as any.”

  The Jamaican held out his hand. “This is it, then. Good luck, Paul, and next time you see Rossiter, give him one for me. Preferably with your boot.”

  Chavasse had the door half-open when Darcy spoke again. “Just one thing. It’s been eating away at me, so I’ve got to ask. Why did they kill Harvey that way?”

  “I can only guess. They were probably in danger of being boarded. In a manner of speaking, they were destroying the evidence.”

  Darcy Preston actually laughed. “You know something, that’s really ironic. That’s exactly what the blackbirders did with their slaves in the old days when the Royal Navy was on their tail—put them over the side in chains.”

  He laughed again, but this time there were tears in his eyes, and Chavasse closed the door and left him there, alone with his grief in the quiet room.

  CHAPTER 10

  Fixby was a village in decline, the sort of place that had enjoyed a mild prosperity when fishing was still an economic proposition, but not now. The young ones had left for the big city and most of the cottages had been taken over by town dwellers seeking a weekend refuge.

  Chavasse had himself driven to Weymouth in a Bureau car and completed his journey on the local bus. It was four o’clock in the afternoon when it deposited him in Fixby, where he was the only passenger to alight.

  The single street was deserted and the pub, in strict adherence with the English licensing laws, had its door firmly shut. He moved past it and continued toward the creek, one hand pushed in the pocket of his old bridge coat, a slim leather locked briefcase swinging from the other.

  The boatyard wasn’t hard to find, a ghost of a place, a graveyard of hopes and ships, beached like dead whales, somber in the rain. There was an office of sorts, a decaying clapboard house behind. There didn’t seem to be anyone about and he moved toward the jetty.

  A seagoing launch was moored there, a trim craft if ever he’d seen one. She was rigged for big-game fishing, with a couple of swivel chairs fitted to the stern deck and a steel hoist.

  She was a beautiful ship, there was no doubt about that—a jewel in a jungle of weeds. He stood there looking at her for quite a while, then turned away.

  A man was standing watching him from the shadow of an old barge. He was very tall and thin and dressed in an old reefer jacket, peaked cap and greasy overalls. His face was his most remarkable feature. It was the face of a Judas, one eye turned into the corner, the mouth like a knife slash, a
face as repulsively fascinating as a medieval gargoyle.

  “Admiring her, are you?” His voice was hardly more than a whisper, and as he approached, Chavasse noticed a jagged scar that stretched from his right ear to his windpipe.

  “She’s quite a boat.”

  “And then some. Steel hull, penta engine, radar, echo sounder. All that and thirty-five knots. You know boats?”

  “A little. Are you Gorman?”

  “That’s right. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to take a little trip if your boat is available.”

  “Fishing?” Gorman shook his head. “Too late in the day.”

  “I was thinking of more than that,” Chavasse said. “The fact is I want to get across the Channel in a hurry, and a friend of mine told me you might be able to oblige at a price.”

  Gorman looked down the creek, whistling softly. “Who is this friend?” he asked, after a short pause.

  Chavasse managed to look suitably embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, he wasn’t really a friend. Just a bloke I met in a bar in Soho. He said that any time I wanted to get out of the country in a hurry, you were a good man to see.”

  Gorman turned abruptly and spoke over his shoulder as he walked away. “Come up to the office. It’s going to rain.”

  Chavasse went after him and mounted the rickety wooden stairs to the verandah. At the top, he paused and turned his head sharply, aware of some kind of movement down among the derelict boats. A dog, perhaps, or a rabbit. But it left him with a vague unease as he went into the office.

  The place was cluttered with odds and ends of every description. Gorman cleared the table with a sweep of an arm and produced a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

  “So you want to get across the water pretty badly?” he said.

  Chavasse placed his case on the table and unlocked it. He lifted a shirt and uncovered a thousand pounds made up of several neat bundles of English fivers and French francs. It looked considerably more than it was, and Gorman’s bad eye rolled wildly.