by James Munro
"Sit down," she says to Harry, and lacks a chair out for him, and Harry does so, and I am aware that Lonesome has withdrawn from behind me as the air is much clearer, and I am surprised because Lonesome doesn't usually chicken. Then I dig. The phone is near by, and the jukebox is going loud, and the bird is preoccupied, so Lonesome moves.
"What's in my pocket?" says the bird, and Harry looks down at the shape of her coat, and he can't believe what he sees.
"You're kidding," he says.
"Am I?" says the bird. "Touch the barrel then—but be careful."
Harry's hand goes out, and he touches her coat, like reverently, and he says, "It's a shooter all right," and the bird says, "I told you," sort of impatient, as if she's tired of explaining the obvious. 'You others sit down too," says the bird, then looks up quick, but Lonesome is behind me again and we are okay.
"Why does this Candlish want me?" she asks, and we say we don't know and explain how it's best just to do what Mr. Candlish says and she laughs in our faces and we take it, because this is a bird who does what she wants, and nobody else. Then I say she better go with us on account of the wog who's looking for her, and the wog worries her, but she can handle it, and she asks us do we know a man called Craig and we don't and she is unhappy. But she sees we're okay and lets go of the shooter and goes back to the calories, and even while I realize this is the way out night of my life I think how terrible it will be if she gets fat.
She tells us how she stays with the Chinaman, and about Sherif, and how the Chinaman comes into her when she is like worried and tells her how it's in the paper that Sherif is dead, and she must go because he never takes murderers, and gives her back their money less two quid use
of the room, and she agrees to go at once because the Chinaman has a gun and two assistants. Then she looks at us, one after the other, and she sighs.
"Very well," she says. "I really haven't any choice, have I? Let's go and meet your terrifying Mr. Candlish."
And we go out of the caff, and it is dark outside, and like deserted, and we go to where we park our bikes, and this girl is as wary as a leopard in the Hons' playpen. There is a light by the bikes and we stand under it, reaching for our keys, then suddenly a wog geezer steps out of the darkness, and what he is holding is a gun. And he says: "Stop there." The girl starts to turn. "You too, princess," he says, and two more blokes appear out of nowhere, and the bird is still. "You have a Browning automatic in your pocket," he says. "Take it out and put it on the ground." She does just that.
"Now you boys can go," says the wog, and maybe Harry is a bit slow in starting. I don't know, but one of the other wogs taps him on the cheekbone with a cosh and he yells, and turns, and like lurches away and we follow, feeling like children, and the wogs move in on the bird. And then it happens—like Harry's yell was a signal.
A big black Jag comes roaring up, and suddenly its headlights go on full and its horns blare and we are blinded, and so are the wogs, and it is still moving when this man gets out, and believe me, Rodney, he moves. And he hits these wogs like a bomb. For a moment they can't even see him, and he is into the first one and I see what happens. His fist comes curling up from his hipbone and he hits this wog in the ribs, and while he is doing so, not wishing to be idle, his other hand comes out flat and the edge of it connects with the wog's ear and he drops him and the second wog lunges at him with his gun, and the new man swings his arm and blocks the blow, and his other hand moves forwards as if it had a knife in it, only there isn't a knife—just his fingers, and they stab into the wog's gut, so then the third wog comes behind him and grabs him around the shoulders and gives the second wog time to straighten up and try again with the gun. And as he comes in the new guy sticks one arm out straight, crooks it and brings the elbow back into number three's belly, and there's a noise like wet cement and number three is falling and as he goes the new guy twists and throws him into number two's way, and number two hesitates, and this is fatal because the new guy doesn't punch this time, he leaps in the air like he's Nureyev's brother and as he goes his right leg straightens and connects with number two's neck, then he's down again ready for more of the same but the wogs aren't ready to go on, being unconscious, and the bird is in his arms, yabbering in wog, and all this time I still haven't moved, and my mouth is open, and I feel about six years old.
Then the new guy puts the girl to one side and turns to face us, and he has one fist clenched and the other straight, like the blade of an ax, and I see this is a very hard man indeed. His clothes are sharp but he doesn't overdo it on account of he is old, and his body moves inside them like a V8 engine. He has very dark-brown hair and eyes gray as the Thames that tell you nothing except he'll kill you if he has to, and I want more than anything to be like this man, and I am afraid. Then I hear gravel crunch behind us, and I look round and there is another man behind us all the time, in the shadow of the Jaguar, but now he comes toward us and he is a deb's delight, curly bowler and all but instead of an umbrella he carries an automatic pistol, and there is what can only be a silencer screwed on to the barrel. And this one's eyes are blue, and screwed up at the corners like he's tired, but the pistol isn't.
He comes over and looks at the wogs lying nice and peaceful, and "Ah good," he says. "You chaps did a splendid job."
Then he kneels beside the wogs and searches them, and takes away the coshes and the shooter, and in each of their free hands he finds a lead plug, and he looks displeased and shows them to the other man.
"Nasty," he says. "These boys were really quite heroic."
"We didn't do anything," says Harry.
The man with the empty hands says, "You laid out these three. You found them trying to steal your bikes and you laid them out. Now call the police."
"The coppers won't believe it," says Jigger.
The sleepy one says: "They will, I promise you," and I believe him. Then he takes out a wallet the size of a briefcase and distributes five-pound notes—two each, except Lonesome. The All-England halitosis champ gets four.
Then the two men and the bird get into the Jag and go, and I realize how dull the rest of my life is going to be.
* * *
They telephoned Loomis from a call box, and he told them to go back to the nursing home. He wanted Selina where she would be safe. It was Schiebel's one piece of luck. Another search party in a Mercedes spotted them, and followed them, then radioed to Schiebel, who used two more cars, an old Peugeot with an astonishing engine, driven by a very fair Albanian, and a Mini-Cooper S which he drove himself. They took it in turn to follow the Jaguar, and never stayed behind it for long. Once the Peugeot cut out and passed it, and shadowed it for a while from in front, until Schiebel called the driver on the radio to leave the hunt, and it was the Cooper's turn to hang on and to leave when the Jaguar left the main road, and Schiebel followed until they turned off again, then switched off his lights and felt his way through the darkness, his eyes straining for the ruby tail lights ahead, until at last the Jaguar stopped at a lodge gate. There was a pause, then the car went through, the lodge gate swung back, and Schiebel waited in the darkness, then slipped out, wary, silent, to look at the defenses of the house.
The lodge gate was a sheet of steel, the windows of the lodge itself were tiny, and the men inside it would be armed. The lodge was built of solid stone, and would withstand direct assault from anything less than a tank. The walls were of smooth stone, ten feet high, and, he discovered when he climbed on to his car roof, wired for alarm bells. Above the powerline was barbed wire, held in position by steel angle irons, and in each of the angle irons was a photoelectric cell. From inside the house he could hear the hum of a generator. It would do no good to try to cut off their power supply; they made their own, and guarded it. The place was impregnable.
Schiebel let the Cooper coast down the road past the house, then switched on the ignition and drove back to London, flogging the car as if it had been a horse, yelling obscenities in his mind in German, Russian, Arabic, repe
ating them solemnly, as if it were a ritual, dragging out each phrase in an ecstasy of fury, then ceasing at last, braking, easing his speed as the houses began, driving decorously, cautious of policemen, while his mind grappled with the problem that the princess of the Haram had sent him.
He had underestimated her. She had warned him when he had hunted her down that night in Zaarb, and he had believed in her courage, but not her competence. That had been a mistake. She would have been so useful too, for acquiring the cobalt. Her father would surely have— Schiebel closed his mind to that thought. He had made a mistake. If it proved to be too great, he would answer for it, not to Zaarb but to Peking. That must not happen; the mistake must be rectified. He thought again of the two women. Selina would have been useful, but Mrs. Naxos was vital, if he were to get the British out of Zaarb. Somehow he must get Phihppa Naxos. Somehow, and soon. She was in a fortress, but her husband had left it—gone back to his yacht ready for the treaty negotiations that opened next day. Mrs. Naxos's place, he decided, was with her husband.
He went back to the embassy, up to the radio room where Selina and Sherif had escaped, and had a long, snarling conversation with Zaarb's president and commanding general. Their displeasure didn't worry him, so long as they would move when the time came. The army had some tanks now, old Russian stuff, and Chinese crews for them. They had field guns too, and a squadron of MIG-15's. The Haram had nothing bigger than a machine gun, in a country made for modem war. If the British didn't interfere, the whole operation would take a couple of days at most —and if he could get at Naxos the British wouldn't interfere. He extracted his promises at last, and gave his in return, then switched off on the cursing president. He began to imitate Loomis's voice using the carefully remembered words and phrases he had heard when the big man had interviewed him as Andrews. At last the speeches came together, and sounded right.
"Look, cock," he began, "we can't afford to offend Naxos now d'you see."
It wasn't quite Loomis, but it was near enough, particularly as the telephone he would use would have a bad fine. Tomorrow he would make two calls, and perhaps have Phihppa Naxos as a result. Now it was time to deal with a traitor.
He dressed himself in black sweater and pants, stuck a Russian automatic in his pocket, and drove to a street near the mews behind Swyven's house. His shoes were rubber-soled, and made no noise. Schiebel moved like a shadow to the mews itself, and waited for the tiny sound he needed. He was lucky. The man on duty struck a match, and Schiebel heard his sigh as he inhaled smoke, then began to walk slowly up and down. Twenty paces. Turn. Back. Twenty paces. Schiebel grinned. This one had been too long in the army. Schiebel waited until he moved down again, then sped to the doorway the watcher had used. He made no sound at all. When he came back—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty—Schiebel waited till he turned, then struck with the barrel of his pistol along the side of the man's head, jumped from the shadows to catch him as he fell, and dragged him into the doorway. Then he broke into the house next door to Swyven's.
The whole operation took seven minutes. Break in, go up to the attic—past the master bedroom, the nursery, the empty guest room, the maid's room where the au pair girl dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees in unattainable Sicily, up to the deserted attics, a litter of toys, books, discarded furniture, the squeak of a rusty window hinge, and Schiebel was on the roof, moving velvet-pawed across the leaded guttering to the attic window in Swyven's house. He used a diamond with four neat strokes, waited for the glass to fall—a tiny brittle whisper of noise— then put his hand into the hole he had made, opened the window and lowered himself into the house. In the comfortable darkness he checked his pistol by touch, screwed on the silencer, then moved into the house, past the attics full of unacceptable souvenirs, the maid's room where Ara-paro dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees in unattainable Burgos. The stairs were carpeted and the noise he made was less than a sigh; he went down to the drawing room and the sound of voices. Swyven's voice, then an older female voice, and then another older voice, a man's. Schiebel heard words in his mind he thought he had forgotten. "Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me," said the voice in his mind, "but showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." The voice spoke in German.
Schiebel grinned in the darkness. The voice had got it wrong. He was going to visit the sins of the child on the father—and mother. Two parents had chosen to spend an evening with their son, and there was nothing wrong with that, except that it meant their death. He couldn't wait for another chance, and there must be no survivors to send for the police until his work was accomplished. Schiebel listened, concentrating on the clipped, half-swallowed noises that English bourgeois made. They were quarreling. If you had Mark Swyven for a son, Schiebel thought, what eke could you do but quarrel?
Mark Swyven was saying: "But you say yourself I haven't done anything illegal—and that chap Craig admits it. If I choose not to go back to Venice, they couldn't make me."
"Don't be a fool," said his father.
Lady Swyven said: "Mark's right, you know, dear. He hasn't committed a crime."
"He's a traitor," said Lord Swyven. "There aren't many worse crimes, surely? He's betrayed bis own country."
"I don't believe in countries," said Swyven. T believe in mankind."
"And you've done your best to put fifty millions of them in a damned difficult position."
"Fifty million "haves.' I wanted to do something for the "have-nots.' It's about time somebody did. And anyway it's not your business. It's mine."
"And theirs."
"The point is there's nothing Britain can do about it."
"Mark," said his father. "Use your brains. Just this once. You've got them. Use them. They want you out, and you must go out. If you insist on staying here—good God, man, can't you see? Look what they did just to fetch you back here—damn near sent your mother to prison. If they did that to her, do you suppose they won't do it to youF'
Schiebel went into the room then. It was interesting stuff, and Swyven's concern with the masses was correct enough, even touching, but he hadn't got all night. Lady Swyven and Mark were facing him. Their reactions were obvious at once. Lady Swyven, bewildered yet indignant, Mark abject with terror. The father, because he was deaf and had his back to the door, took a little longer to understand. When at last he did turn, and saw the gun, he was neither bewildered nor terrified. He saw danger, and at
once began to look for a means to resolve it. This was a man Schiebel could understand.
"Your father's right, Mark," he said. 'They won't let you stay."
Swyven stared, petrified by the pistol and its bulging, extended barrel. Swyven's father moved deliberately in front of a small drinks table and said: "You have no business here. Our discussion is quite private. If you have come here to rob, get on with it, but don't pry into family affairs."
Schiebel shot him between the eyes, and the force of the bullet slammed him backward, scattering gin, sherry, glasses, siphons, jugs. It was as he had expected. As he fell, Swyven's father gripped a bottle of whiskey in his fist. Facing danger, he at once looked for a weapon.
Young Swyven's reaction was very odd to SchiebeL who knew every detail of his life. He ran at Schiebel.
"You swine," he screamed. "That's my father."
Schiebel shot him in the chest, and the running stopped at once, then Swyven very slowly crumpled to the floor. Lady Swyven made no move at all. She sat bolt upright in her chair, and looked into the barrel of the pistol, and said nothing, did nothing, because her world was over. Mark, she thought. Oh, my darling Mark. And then, almost too late: Poor Jack. Then Schiebel killed her. He went over to each in turn, felt his pulse, then unscrewed the silencer, put it in his pocket. He went out by the back door. On the way he passed the watcher, breathing now in great snoring gasps. The watcher was well out of things. Schiebel walked to his car. As always, when he had do
ne something right and proper, he felt marvelous.
* Chapter 21 %
When Grierson and Craig got back, Loomis was away, and Flip was with Sir Matthew. They ate a meal, and Selina ate with them: the fight had made her hungry again. As they ate, she told them what had happened to her: the kidnapping, the trip to England, the escape, and then the fight.
"That was splendid," she said. "The hand, the fist, the elbow, and then you jump. My brothers will want to learn this—"
"Karate," said Craig. 'It's a Japanese technique."
"You learn from your enemies?"
Tf they have anything worth learning. The way you escaped, for instance—by using the house next door."
Sehna grinned.
Grierson said: "I don't understand why he brought you to England. Wouldn't you have been safer in Zaarb?"
The girl put down her fork, and looked at him.
"Schiebel hates me," she said. "He hated the other girl too—the one you persuaded to betray him. You know what he did to her?"
Grierson nodded. "He was going to do it to me. I was being kept for his pleasure—when it is all over." She turned to Craig. "One of us must kill him," she said. "He means what he says about the cobalt, Craig. Hurting, destruction: they're all he knows. He'll use them until he's killed."
Craig said nothing, and Grierson thought: Schiebel will die, all right. And Craig will kill him. Loomis had it set out that way from the beginning—victim and executioner; and I've known it all along, because Craig is useful in any sort of situation, to drive a car, guard a millionaire, steal a secret, seduce a girl. But his speciality is death, and that's what Loomis wanted him for. At death he's a genius.
Aloud he said: "Don't worry. Schiebel will be taken care of."
Craig grinned at him.
"You're talking like a politician," he said.
That night and the next day they waited for Loomis, taught Selina to play poker, and used her gold coins for chips. Sir Matthew called, and went at once to Fhp. The day dragged slowly on, and Sehna yawned and fought to stay awake. An angry fat man wanted to speak to her. She would not sleep until he came.
