by Trevanian
MacTaint entered the bathroom, carrying towels, shuffling along in his shaggy greatcoat, despite the steamy atmosphere of the room. “You didn’t half give Lilla a start, coming in like that with blood all over you and your shiny arse hanging out. I thought I was going to have to mop up the floor after her. Got her settled down with a bottle of gin now, though.”
“Give her my apologies, as one theatre personage to another.”
“I’ll do that. Gor, look at you! They gave you a fair bit of stick, didn’t they?”
“They got a little stick themselves.”
“I’ll bet they did.” He ogled the bathwater with mistrust. “That ain’t good for you, Jon. Bathing saps the strength. Dilutes the inner fluids.”
“Could I have another pint of milk?”
“Jesus, lad! Is there no end to the harm you’re willing to do yourself?” But he went out to fetch the milk, and when he returned he swapped the bottle for the empty glass in Jonathan’s hand.
Jonathan pulled off the metal lid and drank half the pint down without taking the bottle from his lips. “Good. I’m feeling a lot better.”
“Maybe. But not good enough, my boy. There’s no way in the world you could go along with me tonight. Not with your shoulder like that. Say! They got your beak too, did they?”
“No, I did that myself. Falling from a mantel.”
“A mantel?”
“Yes. I climbed up there to keep awake.”
“Oh, yes.”
“But I fell off again.”
“I see. I’ll tell you one thing, Jon. I’m glad I’m not in academics. Too demanding by half.”
“Look, Mac. You’re sure you can get into the Gallery tonight?”
MacTaint looked at him narrowly. “You ain’t in no condition to come along, I tell you. And I ain’t having you put sand in my tank.”
“I know. I recognize that.” Jonathan reached over and poured milk into his tumbler, then he put in a good tot of whiskey. “Tell me how you’re going to get the Chardin.”
MacTaint looked around for a glass for himself and, not finding one, he dumped the toothbrushes out of a cup on the sink and used that. Then he made himself comfortable on the lid of the toilet seat. “I go right up the outside of the building. They got scaffolding up for steam cleaning the facade. All part of ‘Keep London Tidy.’ And no chance of being seen, what with the canvas flaps they got hung on the scaffolding to keep the dirt and water from getting on blokes below. The window latch is in position, but it doesn’t do nothin’. I’ve had a lad working on it with a file, bit by bit, for the past two months. I just nip up the scaffolding, in through the window, and do the dirty to the national art treasures.”
“Guards?”
“Lazy old arseholes waiting for their pensions to come through. It’ll only take a couple of seconds to swap my Chardin for theirs.”
Jonathan turned on the hot water with his toes and felt the warmth eddy up under his legs, stinging afresh his scuffs and cuts. “Tell me, Mac. How much do you expect to make from the Chardin?”
“Five, maybe seven thousand quid. Why?”
“There’s something I want in there. Just one chamber away. I’ll give you five thousand for it.”
“You’ve got that much?”
“A man gave me ten thousand to do something for him. I’ll split it with you.”
“A painting?”
“No. Several reels of film. They’re inside a hollow bronze horse by Marini that’s on display in the next chamber.”
MacTaint scratched at the top of his head, then studiously regarded a fleck of scruff on his fingernail. “And you were going to get it while you were along with me?”
“Right.”
“Even though that might have fucked up my business?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a proper villain, Jonathan.”
“True.”
“A bronze horse, you say? How do I get away with it? I mean, I might attract a little attention running through the streets, dragging a bronze horse behind me.”
“You’ll have to break the horse with a hammer. One big blow will crack it.”
“I can’t help feeling the guards might hear that.”
“I’m sure they will. You’ll have to move like hell. That’s why I’m offering you so much money.”
MacTaint clawed at the flaky whiskers under his chin meditatively. “Five thousand, eh?”
“Five thousand.”
“What’s on the film?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“Well, I suppose that was a mug’s question.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the cuff of his overcoat. “It’s hot in here.”
“Yes, and close too.” Jonathan had been trying to breathe only in shallow oral breaths since MacTaint had entered. “Well?”
MacTaint scratched his ear meditatively, then he squished his bulbous, carmine-veined nose about with the palm of his hand. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll get your damned film for you.”
“That’s great, Mac.”
“Yes, yes,” he growled.
“When will you get back here with it?”
“About an hour and a half. Or, if they catch me, in about eleven years.”
“Can you drop the film off at my place in Mayfair?”
“Why not?”
“I’ll give you the address. You’re a wonderful man, MacTaint.”
“A bloody vast fool is what I am.” He shuffled off to find some clothes as Jonathan rose to get out of the bath. He was temporarily arrested by a bolt of pain in his shoulder, but it passed off and he was able to dry himself one-handedly, with some stiff acrobatics.
“Here you go,” MacTaint said, returning with a pile of rags. “They’re me own. Of course, they ain’t my best, and they may not fit so well, but beggars and choosers, you know. And take those frigging cannons with you. I don’t want them laying about the place.”
Getting into the clothes was an olfactory martyrdom, and Jonathan promised himself another shower directly he got to his apartment.
He got to his apartment later than he would have guessed, having to walk all the way, despite the five pounds MacTaint had given him. A few late-prowling taxis had come within sight, but they had not stopped at his signal; indeed, they had accelerated. The clothes.
As he got his key from the ledge over the door, he heard his phone ring within. He fumbled at the lock in his haste because all the way home he had been thinking of calling Maggie to tell her it was all over and he was safe.
“Yes?”
Yank’s phony American accent was a great disappointment. “I’ve been calling everywhere for you. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Yes, I know.” There was a flabby sound to Yank’s voice; he had not fully recovered from his booze-up on Vanessa’s whiskey during his self-indulgent crisis of disgust. “I’m calling from The Cloisters.”
“What are you doing there?”
“We just raided the place, figuring you might be in hot water. You left quite a mess behind you. The place is deserted—that is, there are no living people here.”
“I assume Loo is going to cover all that up for me?”
“Oh, sure. Look, I’m on my way out to the Vicarage. Want me to drop by and pick you and the films up?”
“I don’t have the films yet.”
There was a pause. “You don’t have them?”
“Don’t panic. I’ll have them in an hour, then I’ll pick up Miss Coyne and meet you at the Vicarage.”
“Miss Coyne’s already on her way. I called her to find out if she knew where you were. She didn’t, of course, so I told her we’d meet her there.”
“I see. Well, don’t bother to pick me up. If we drove out together, you’d talk to me. And I don’t need that.”
“You sure know how to hurt a guy. Okeydoke, I’ll meet you at the Vicarage. Don’t take any wooden—”
Jonathan hung up.
; He had bathed and changed and was resting in the dark of his room when MacTaint banged on the door.
“You wouldn’t have a drop of whiskey about the place?” were his first words. “Oh, by the way . . . here.” He handed Jonathan a cylindrical package bound up in black plastic fabric. “You know what you can do with your friggin’ films?”
“Trouble?” He passed the bottle.
“I’d say that. Yes. Never mind the glass.” He took a long pull. “Tell me, lad. Do you have any idea how much noise is made by busting open a bronze statue in an empty gallery hall?”
“I assume it didn’t go unnoticed.”
“You’d have thought the buzz bombs were back. Sure you don’t want any of this?” He took another long pull, then he tugged the bottle down suddenly, laughing and spilling a little over his lapels. “You should have seen me scarpering my aged arse down the scaffolding, the canvas under my arm, and balancing your damned bundle. All elbows and knees. No grace at all. Bells ringing and people shouting. Oh, it was an event, Jon.”
“Let’s see it.”
MacTaint took the Chardin from where it rested facing the wall and set it up on a chair in good light, then he dropped down onto the sofa beside Jonathan, his motion puffing out eddies of stink from within his clothes. “Ain’t it lovely, though.”
Jonathan looked at it for several minutes. “You have a buyer yet?”
“No, but . . .”
“I have five thousand.”
MacTaint turned and examined Jonathan, his eyes squinted under the antennal brows. “Welcome back, lad.”
“You’re an evil old bastard, MacTaint.” Jonathan rose and gave him the five thousand pounds he had set aside for the films, then he found the other five Strange had given him for expenses and handed that over as well.
“Ta,” Mac said, stuffing the wad of bills into the pocket of his tattered overcoat. “Not a bad night, taken all in all. But I’d best be off. Lilla gets nervy if I’m out too late.”
The Vicarage
Patches of mist on the low-lying sections of the road into Wessex were silvered by the full moon that skimmed through a black tracery of treetops, keeping pace with the Lotus as it twisted through back lanes, deserted at this early hour. Jonathan’s shoulder was still stiff, and driving one-handed was tiring, so he maintained a moderate speed. It had been a difficult week. His reflex time had been eroded, and to keep himself awake he reviewed the events that had brought him to here and this—driving out to meet Maggie, the black plastic cylinder of amateur sex movies jiggling on the seat beside him.
Because he was deeply tired, people and events, words and coincidences of the past five days rolled through his mind, the connections obeying subtler laws than simple chronology. One event passed through his mind, then as he came around the bend of another occasion . . . there it was. Obviously! The odd bits of tessera that hadn’t fit in anywhere suddenly fell into place.
Maggie . . .
He pressed down on the accelerator and switched off his driving lights so the plunges into wispy ground mist did not blind him.
He pumped his brakes and broadsided into the rough lane that led from the road to the Vicarage. As the car rocked to a stop, the door of the Vicarage burst open, and Yank rushed toward the car. The broad form of the Vicar filled the yellow frame behind Yank, something bulky in his hand.
Just as Jonathan ducked down, his windscreen shattered into a milky crystal web. A second bullet blew out the wing window and slapped into the back of the bucket seat. He grappled the .45 out of the map compartment, clutched open the door, and rolled out onto the damp grass. On the other side of the steaming undercarriage, Yank’s foot skidded to a stop. Jonathan shot it, and it became a knee. He shot that, and it became an unmoving head and shoulder, the face pressed into the gravel.
The roar of the gun reverberating beneath the car covered the stumbling run of the Vicar, who now stood over Yank’s inert body, a log of firewood poised ready to strike.
“Are you all right, Dr. Hemlock?” he called, wheezing for breath.
Jonathan got to his knees and leaned his head against the car. “Yes. I’m all right.” The cool of the metal dispersed his dizziness. “Is he dead?”
“No. But he’s bleeding badly. Seems to be missing a leg.”
Jonathan could hear a crisp, pulsing sound, as though someone were finishing up pissing into gravel. “We’d better get a tourniquet on him. I’ve got to ask him some questions.”
“You do have the films with you, I hope.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Padre!”
They carried Yank into the cozy den with its smell of furniture polish and wood smoke, and the Vicar set about attending to Yank with an efficient display of first-aid knowledge. He applied a tourniquet just above the missing knee, and before long the spurting blood flow was reduced to a soppy ooze.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” the Vicar mumbled each time he noticed the damage the blood was doing to the Axminster rug.
Jonathan helped himself to the Vicar’s brandy as he stood beside the fireplace, watching the older man work with quick trained hands. “He’s not coming around, is he?”
“I’m afraid not. Not much chance of regaining consciousness after a shock like that.” The Vicar looked up and winked, and for the first time Jonathan noticed a purple contusion across his forehead.
“Yank hit you?”
The Vicar rose with effort and touched the spot gingerly. “Yes, I suppose so. I’d forgotten about it. We had a bit of a tussle. When he got here, he was the worse for drink. He said something offensive—I don’t recall just what—and when I turned around, he was pointing a gun at me. He began babbling things about Max Strange, and needing the money to buy a ranch in Nebraska, and . . . oh, all sorts of things. He wasn’t quite right in the head, you know. The violence and danger of his double game had been too much for him. He was never the right kind of personality for this business.” He winked. “Then your car drove in suddenly and took his attention. I grappled with him. He struck me down with his gun, and out he went. I took up a stick of firewood, but by the time I could come to your aid, it was not necessary. I could do with a drop of that brandy myself.”
“Did he say anything about Maggie Coyne? Give you any idea of where she is?”
“I’m afraid not. You feel she’s in danger?”
“She’s in danger . . . if she’s alive at all. Yank must have told Strange about her. And Strange had a simple formula for dealing with spies and informers.”
“You sound as though you knew Yank was in the pay of Strange.”
“Only for the last fifteen minutes. The pileup of coincidences finally broke through my stupidity. Strange knew about your Parnell-Greene. He knew about me. He knew I had talked to Vanessa Dyke. Always a couple of steps ahead. He had too much information; there was too much coincidence. It had to come from inside. And Yank was at Van’s house after she was murdered—no police, just Yank. He was pretending to be drunker than he was. Later, he wanted to pick me and the films up at my flat. It all fits in. But the coagulating agent was just a phrase—something one of Strange’s men said after they had shot me full of dope. He told me I had struck out.”
“Meaning what?”
“That’s the point. The expression comes from American baseball. Only Yank would have used it.”
“I see.” The Vicar winked meditatively. “What shall we do about Miss Coyne?”
Jonathan pressed a finger into his temple and massaged it. “She could be anywhere. Her apartment, maybe.”
“Oh, I doubt that. I’ve called several times in the past two days. Never an answer. I was seeking information about you, because Yank had stopped reporting in—and now we know why. Finally, he did call this afternoon to tell me that events had altered your plans. He told me you had gotten the films, but the situation was such that you could not carry them on your person. He said you had mailed them. All of that, I see now, was Strange’s plot to neutralize any action of mine. I was supposed to sit here
awaiting the cheerful call of the postman, while they made the sale and got away. And, of course, I would have done just that.”
Jonathan’s concentration was still on Maggie. “I’ve got to do something. I guess I could start at her apartment, then—wait a minute! Why would Yank want the films?”
“That’s obvious, isn’t it? Strange will pay heavily for them.”
“But Strange’s dead. Yank knew that.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken there. Yank described to me the rather gaudy mayhem you wreaked on the staff of The Cloisters. He was proud of that, you see. The virile fury of a fellow American, and all that. And he mentioned that you had inflicted a ghastly facial wound on Strange. A certain Miss Amazing . . . or was it Miss Grace . . . well, whoever . . . she carried Strange away to a sanctuary.”
“Did he mention a name? A place?”
From the floor Yank gasped shallowly, then moaned . . . like a child struggling to awake from a nightmare.
Jonathan knelt beside him. “Yank?” he said softly. Yank was under again. “Hey!” Jonathan slapped the chill cheek.
“That won’t get you anywhere,” the Vicar said.
But Yank’s eyelids fluttered. His eyebrows arched in an attempt to tug open the eyes. But they remained closed.
“Where’s Maggie Coyne?” Jonathan demanded.
A moan.
“Where’s Strange?”
Yank’s voice was distant and mucous. “I . . . wanted . . . I only wanted . . . ranch . . . Nebraska.”
“Where is Strange?”
“Please? Not . . . Feeding Station.” Yank’s body stiffened and relaxed. He was unconscious again.
The Vicar stood up with a grunt. “Ironic. He’s frightened of the Feeding Station. Ironic.”
“What’s ironic?”
“He doesn’t realize that you have saved him from that grisly fate.”
“I have?”
“Oh, yes. There is almost no call at all for one-legged bodies.” The Vicar winked.
