by James Munro
Loomis had it made, he thought. Naxos would sign anything now, so long as Flip was being cured. And Sir Matthew seemed to think she was. But yesterday when he had seen her, she had seemed relaxed, at ease, and completely crazy, dreams and reality blending at will, Hollywood True Confessions and worry and affection flowing together like sewerage in a reservoir. Sir Matthew must know his stuff. But whatever happened to Flip, Loomis would win, because he always did. Loomis could get the defense plans of Heaven out of the Archangel Michael. He went into a room marked "Matron," stretched out on the couch, and went to sleep. Counterespionage was mostly waiting anyway.
Three hours later, the door clicked open and Loomis came in, moving with incredible softness for a man of his size. He stood over Craig, and reached out a hand.
"No," Craig said, eyes still closed. "I'm ticklish."
Loomis grunted, and sat down opposite Craig.
"I'm just about ready for the laughing academy," Loomis said. 'That lad in there's got me tied in knots."
Craig sat up, and faced him.
"It's bad then?" he asked.
"Oh no," said Loomis. "From our point of view it's perfect. Swyven and Dyton-Blease have been comrades for years, d'you see. Know their Marxist-Leninist dialectic, all that stuff. All for the suffering masses—unless they happen to be British, American, or West European. So they went out to Zaarb in the fifties and spread the gospel. While they were there they met Schiebel or Andrews, or whatever his bloody name is, and Schiebel welcomed them in. Of course. He was working loose from Russia at the time, and he needed a few chums. So Dyton-Blease and Swyven helped him in a fund-raising drive, flogging dope Schiebel brought in from China. That's how Dyton-Blease managed to borrow a couple of heavies from that Greek dope peddler. He was his main supplier. Then Schiebel sent Dyton-Blease into the Haram, that's Selina's father's place. His name's Sayed by the way. He was out looking for recruits to comradeism, but he couldn't see that happening in the Haram. They're all happy as pigs in muck there—it's like a Viking Valhalla—all fighting and feasting and screwing. So naturally, Dyton-Blease wants to change all that, but in the meantime he gets to be great chums with Sayed, and told him what swine the British were, and of course after Suez, Sayed believed every word, but unfortunately, he wasn't too keen on Dyton-Blease's other idea, which was that Zaarb was the new Jerusalem. Old Sayed had been knocking hell out of Zaarb for years, and he knew what they were like. So Dyton-Blease concentrated on just
being nice and friendly and anti-British, and waiting until Zaarb had a modern army to take over the Haram."
"Why bother?" said Craig. "There's not such a lot
of it."
"Three reasons," said Loomis. "It's strategically useful, it's about 50 percent oil, and they've got a mountain there with enough cobalt to posion the entire earth."
"Cobalt makes H-bombs look like cigarette lighters," he continued. "We won't touch the stuff, no more will the Yanks, and even the Russians have gone off it since Stalin— but the Chinese have exploded their second A-bomb, and they're looking ahead. Schiebel was anxious to provide them with the raw material. He's a nut for explosions, Swyven said. He's also just crazy enough not to care whether the little yellow brothers start popping the things off or not.
"Of course he needed transport to get the stuff to China in bulk, and that's where Naxos came in. If Naxos could be persuaded to vote the U.K. out of Zaarb Oil, then Zaarb would take over the Haram and start paying off Chinese aid with cobalt. Only that would be a bit dicey—I mean if we or the Yanks or even the Russians found out what they were doing—we'd have to stop them. Go to war. And Schiebel knew it. So he decided to use Naxos's ships for the job. After all, it's logical, it fits. They'd put the cobalt in Naxos's tankers and say it was oil to pay for Chinese equipment, and nobody would be surprised if Naxos got the job. He'd earned it by voting for Zaarb against us. And in a few years' time, the Chinese would be saying do as we say or there'll be a hell of a bang."
Loomis sat back, grunted, and produced a vicious-looking cheroot from another pocket, then glowered at Craig, fumbled again with a fat man's intensity, produced another and tossed it to Craig. Craig lit it, and inhaled cautiously. It tasted like concentrated beetroot.
"I don't see what makes you ripe for the nut house," Craig said.
"It's the motivation," said Loomis. "Dyton-Blease is easy. He just hates everybody—always has. The only fun he ever had was in destroying things and people—like old Serafin. Like you, if you hadn't cheated. Communism's built on two ideas: tear down, and rebuild. All Dyton-Blease believed in was the tearing down bit. Every time he hit somebody it was another blow for the masses. Schiebel's easy too. The Nazis built him, and the Russians improved the model, and he got away from them before they could change their minds and destroy him. He's a Communist for the same reason Dyton-Blease was—because it justifies destruction, and he was precision-made to destroy.
"But Swyven. You know why he's a Red? Because he loves his mommy and he hates his daddy. And you know why that is? Because he once saw them having a bit of nooky, and wet the pants of his sailor suit as a result, and got spanked on his bare behind by his nurse as a result of that. Put him right off women. Only mommy will do for Swyven. And the odd sailor. Very odd sailor. He hasn't liked people from that day, d'you see? Only causes. Abstractions. Dialectical Materialism. Greatest Good of the Greatest Number. Inevitability of History. He felt safe among words like that. Like an armadillo in a desert." He puffed hard on the cheroot, and the room stank of beetroot. "Now he wants to see his mommy. I said he could talk to her on the phone. I want another couple of days with him before he sees anybody else." He wheezed reminiscently. "You frightened the hell out of him in your dungarees. Damned if I know why. You just looked dirty to me."
»*9
When the S.S. Hegira reached London, Schiebel and Selina were in a packing case with diplomatic seals. A van with CD plates met them and took them to an embassy in Belgravia. They rested there overnight, and the next morning moved on to a building in Knightsbridge, just off Brompton Road. It was tall, narrow, Georgian. The notice on its door said AZ Enterprises, Ltd. Its contents included a shortwave radio station, an armory, and a prison cell. Every one of its windows had steel shutters. It was the London headquarters of an espionage organization that served Zaarb, Albania, and China. Here Schiebel began to study a pile of newspapers, coded telegrams, and reports. He worked through them steadily, and at last put through a shortwave scrambled call to Zaarb. The information he received made him angry, so that his hand shook as it held the pen. They had no right to let Swyven go. He would be safer dead. His value to Zaarb as a spy in Europe was limited, and the Security Minister should have known it. Now the British had got him, and he'd talk in five minutes. Swyven shouldn't
go near anywhere risky. He put the pen down, covered his face with his hands, and breathed deeply. In ten minutes he was calm again. He began to plan.
Now he had two jobs to do. First, Swyven must die. It was too late to prevent him talking, but he had to preserve justice. Swyven couldn't help himself, but neither could Schiebel. His course was perfectly clear. Second, there was the question of Naxos. His vote was still necessary to take oil away from an imperialist power. More important, if he could move quickly enough the Zaarbist army might be able to make a dash for the Haram and get the cobalt out before any other power could stop them; but to do that British troops would have to be withdrawn from Zaarb, and that couldn't happen until Naxos voted them out. He'd have to deal with Naxos, and for that he'd need a free hand. He had no doubt at all that Craig and the others would expect his arrival; his only chance was to send them looking for him in the wrong direction, and for that he would need Selina. He sent for the only two good men in the embassy, one of whom had been trained in China, the other in Russia. They were both in awe of him, and each hated and mistrusted the other. Schiebel found that very useful.
Between them they evolved a plan which delighted Schiebel. It was fast and viol
ent, yet it had an elegance about it that pleased him. It was at once witty and ideologically correct. It exposed the vices of capitalist society, which would be of value to the propaganda people, it destroyed traitors, and it improved the strength of the People's Republic of Zaarb, and therefore of the People's Republic of China. With any luck, it might get rid of Craig as well.
* Chapter 19 *
Selina also thought about Craig. She had wronged him, and he had behaved perfectly, the way her brothers tried to behave, with an effortless chivalry that was instinctive, and therefore the more to be respected. She must repay him for that, and the only way to do it was to return to her father, warn him of the danger of men like Dyton-Blease, and the horror of the cobalt which Schiebel had explained to her with such loving care. At first she had refused to believe that any substance would cause such bestial damage, but he had shown her books and photographs, and now she believed, and was afraid.
She must warn her father, get away from Schiebel, from England, but that would take very careful planning. Schiebel had imprisoned her in a suite of rooms that was almost a gigantic safe, with a steel door and a steel grille over its windows. The door had a Chubb lock, and the man who brought her food was always armed. She knew nothing of the rest of the house, not even where it was, but that didn't bother her. All her life she had been trained to action, and the idea that most problems diminished in size from the moment you did something about them. What worried her was Schiebel. She had to wait until he was out of the way. She was not, she told herself, afraid of him, but his skill and efficiency had been too much for her in Zaarb. It must not happen again. She spent long hours by the window grille, watching the courtyard at the back of the house. When her chance came it was just before dinner. Schiebel came out and crossed the yard, opened the door of a car, then turned to look up at her window. She shrank back, and Schiebel got in and drove away.
Selina began to move quickly. She changed into a black sweater, black jeans, and rubber-soled shoes. For what she had to do skirts would be in the way. She remembered that these were the clothes she had worn when she first met Craig, remembered the harshness of his voice speaking Arabic, and grinned to herself. He would see that she was a proper woman—one who could take care of herself. She opened her jewelry box, took out the great necklace of gold coins, and unscrewed the catch. Dollars, sovereigns, guineas, louis d'or spilled into her hands and she crammed them into her pockets, then examined the chain they had hung on. It was of very fine links of steel, and at one end of it three gold coins were riveted into place. Selina wrapped a handkerchief round her hand, then twisted an
end of chain over the handkerchief and swung the chain in the air. The weight of the gold coins made it sing viciously as it spun. Selina sat in an armchair facing the table where she would eat, and waited, staring at a picture of a carousel on the wall—splendid horses, fat and laughing children.
When she heard the key in the lock she sat back listlessly, the hand holding the chain hidden in the depths of a cushion. A stocky, Negroid Arab came in, a pistol in his fist.
"You eat now," he said, and put the pistol in his
pocket.
I'm not hungry," said Selina.
"You'll eat. It's time," the Arab said, and went to the door to pull a trolley in, then shut and lock the door before he took the trolley to the table, lifted a covered dish. Selina waited until he set the dish down. There must be no noise.
His back still turned toward her, the stocky Arab began to straighten up. The last sounds he heard were the whirr of the chain before it curled round his neck, and the slap of the gold coins into the palm of her free hand. Selina's foot slammed into his back, she hauled hard on the chain, and the stocky Arab's yell was muted to a gasp. The girl's leg straightened slowly, there was a sharp crack of sound, and the Arab was dead.
Selina unwound the chain, slipped it into her pocket, then put on a hip-length coat, took the stocky Arab's pistol from the trolley, then turned him over. She grimaced once when she saw his face, then she thought of her father, her brothers, and her face set like stone as she searched him, took away his keys, his money, the knife he carried in his trouser pocket. It was a knife of a kind she had never seen before, an enormous clasp knife with a single blade. She touched a button at its base, and the blade flicked out, leaf-pointed, one edge ground razor sharp. She looked at the weapon in her hand, tested its balance. The guard was poor, but the blade was excellent. She looked at the words etched into the blade, "Made in Germany." That made her think of Schiebel, but this time she smiled. The knife was a good omen.
She opened the door and looked out on to a deserted corridor that led to a wide, curving staircase. A tall, welldressed Arab was walking up it slowly. He was Schiebel's expert on nuclear physics, and he had helped Schiebel to explain to her what the cobalt could do. Even the thought of it seemed to horrify him, for he was a mild and gentle man, but now Selina had no pity for his gentleness; it might be useful to her. She crouched behind the banisters and waited as the Arab moved along the corridor to the door of the room she had just left, then rapped softly on the steel panel. Slowly, carefully, she moved toward him. As he raised his fist to knock again her hand went to her pocket.
"Here," she said.
The Arab spun round and she threw the keys at him. Automatically his hands reached out for them, and as they did so he found himself looking into the barrel of a .380 Browning Standard automatic, a weapon with a 3.5-inch barrel and a weight of twenty ounces, a weapon far too big and heavy for a woman, but this woman didn't seem to be aware of the fact. The tall Arab looked at her, and had no doubt that she knew how to use it. No doubt at all.
"Open the door," said Selina. "Go inside."
The tall Arab obeyed at once. Selina followed him, and the Arab noticed that she never came within reach of his hands. Then he saw the stocky Arab, and winced.
"You will do as I say," said Selina.
"Assuredly, princess," said the tall Arab. T am yours to command."
"You will get me out of here," said Selina.
The tall Arab said. "If I do, they will kill me."
Selina said nothing, but the gun barrel lifted from his heart to a point between his eyes. The tall Arab stared down it, then slowly, careful not to alarm her, he nodded. The telephone rang. "Answer it," said Selina. "Hold it so that I can hear what's said."
He picked up the phone as she had told him, and an agitated voice from the kitchen asked questions. The tall Arab said smoothly: "This is Sherif. David has an errand to do for me. He will come back to you when he has finished, in about half an hour. And hsten. I have business with the girl"—he looked at the gun barrel then away— "important business. I don't want to be disturbed again." He hung up then, and Selina smiled at him. Even then, as he loathed and feared her, Sherif thought how enchanting her smile was.
"Now I will have to help you," he said bitterly. "Do you think your father will protect me?"
Selina said: "The Tuareg always protect their own." Sherif winced again.
"It will have to be the roof," he said at last. "The doors are guarded all the time. The men on guard never let anyone in or out without a pass. The roof is the only way." He began to explain, and at last, reluctantly, Selina agreed. Sherif leading, they went out again to the corridor, to the stairs, up and up to a row of attic rooms. Sherif hesitated before one of them and the girl whispered: "My father cannot protect you if you are dead." Sherif shuddered, took a key from his pocket, and went in.
The attic was a wireless room, lit by a skylight. Sherif clambered on a table, and opened the skylight, then hauled himself through. As he got halfway, the girl said: "Stay there." Sherif sat in sulky silence as Selina put a chair on top of the table. "Now crawl away," she said. "Don't walk. Crawl. And count aloud as you go." Sherif thought of the gun barrel and obeyed. When he got to five he heard a low clatter behind him, and turned. The girl was coming through. He rose then, but she was as fast as a cat and was up before him, the gun rock steady
in her hand.
"What now?" she asked.
They were in a deep gutter that ran between the twin roofs of the house. Sherif walked cautiously down it, Selina close behind him. Sherif crouched down and took out a cigarette, lit it with a hand that shook. "In a little while it will be dark," he said. "Then you can escape."
"Then we can escape," said Selina.
Sherif groaned.
When darkness came he led the way to where, at the edge of the tower, he pointed to a fire escape. Selina moved closer to him, and he felt the gun barrel burn into his back. They stepped on the escape together, and the girl stifled a cry as it swung down, counterweighted between the building and the one next to it. When it reached the floor beneath, Sherif reached out an arm, and held on to the rails of a balcony projecting from the house opposite, then stepped across. Selina stayed on the fire escape.
"Now you must let me help you, princess," said
Sherif.
Selina shook her head, walked back up two steps of the escape, then jumped, clearing the railings, and was beside him once again. Sherif stopped hating her then.
He tried the balcony windows, and found them locked, and spoke to the girl. The gun barrel flashed once, then again, and a pattern of cracks showed on the glass as Sherif flicked his lighter. She jabbed then at a square of cracks near the window latch, and glass made a brittle splash of sound as it fell. Sherif reached in and opened the window. They entered the offices of Stanley East and Partners, Solicitors. For a long time afterward Mr. East was to wonder why nothing was stolen, and why so many policemen came to investigate.
Selina and Sherif went from the solicitors' office to the lift, and Sherif wasted two frantic minutes explaining what a lift was, then they went down to the ground floor, and Sherif opened the main door, reset the catch, and locked up again as they went through.
London boiled in front of her, a long, wide street that seemed an endless river of cars, with here and there a bus, a floating island, moving always past her, cutting off any chance of escape. She squeezed hard on the butt of the Browning, now in her pocket, but it gave her no comfort. Sherif touched her arm gently.
