The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  Amy was ominously still when Carter climbed back into the Fourtrek and stowed his heavy briefcase under the seat. His loose jacket covered the big gun, but he knew that he smelled of gun oil, and to an experienced shot, the smell was unmistakable.

  “Where now?” he said as he waited for the glow plug to light up. Amy, exasperated by being excluded, answered through clenched teeth.

  “South,” she said. “South to Montargis and Gien. We cross the Loire there and go on to Romorantin. I have chosen a route which stays away from the main centres. If they are looking for us, we will simply disappear.”

  Mentally, Carver had already chosen a similar route. Losing himself in France was not hard. The country has the same size population as Britain, and five times the land mass. The combination makes for a good country in which to disappear. With a huge network of tiny roads with light traffic they could even avoid main routes.

  Besides, it was only Wednesday. By hurrying they could easily be in Carcassonne by late Thursday, but as the girl had said, they would stick out like a sore thumb in a small town. From what Amy said, Bram was very small indeed. If Dark was regarded as being a local seigneur, newcomers would be automatically reported to him. The owner of the local castle probably provided most of the trade in the place.

  The time to arrive was late on Friday before the sale, when small parties of people trying hard not to be recognised would be travelling around the district anyway and the dealers would not have time to patrol the area. Then their security problem would be penetrating the castle. Carver was not aware what the castle looked like, but he was pretty certain that he would find a way in, one way or another.

  The slave dealers were, after all, expecting visitors and while their customers would be known to them, they could not possibly be familiar with the faces of all their retainers and minders.

  A gasp from Amy and a loud tooting from behind recalled his thoughts to the present, and he realised that he had been in danger of falling asleep. He waited until a small lay by gave him a chance to pull off the road, and stopped.

  “If I go on driving like this, we’ll never get to Carcassonne,” he told Amy. “I’ll get in the back and sleep. You drive.”

  He folded the rear seats down and padded the load space with luggage and a couple of rugs. When he was sure he could curl into the spaces he had left, he put his head down and was instantly unconscious.

  Amy watched him with exasperation, gingerly put the car into gear and pulled off as smoothly as she could.

  At least, she thought, as the car ran on down the road, she could pick her own restaurant for dinner that night. There was always the Cloud of Milk in Gueret. Now, that was a most unusual to eat. In the meantime, the weather was fine, the Daihatsu was a surprisingly pleasant vehicle to drive, and for the first time in years she was sitting high enough up to see easily over the surrounding fields.

  Despite her early had temper, she was enjoying herself. She began to plan the mid-day picnic, and to consider the possibility of a siesta afterwards.

  *

  Far, far to the south, Luther awakened late after a long and active night and smacked his lips. Today was the day, he decided, when he would make that little expedition into Carcassonne and find himself a nice bar. He could do with a good, long drink.

  He slapped the deliciously shaped buttocks lying next to him on the big bed and smiled contentedly when the slap elicited a sharp squeal.

  “We’ll have a bit more of that later on, my little lovely,” he said softly, and set off for his shower and a fresh set of clothes. From the bed, black eyes watched him go with saurian impenetrability. He had overlooked Yasmin’s gift for languages.

  Far more dangerous, he was beginning to forget the strictures Dark had placed on physical violence.

  *

  Sigmund Dark put down the telephone, and leaned back, steepling his fingers and peering through slitted eyes at the bright morning outside his windows.

  “If he is coming, let him come,” he told himself. “But let us be ready for him. Assuredly, let us be ready.”

  He sent for Josef Lefeu.

  *

  In a London office, Sergeant Lovegod put down a file and stared at the darts board which hung on the back of the door. The office was not his, and the darts board held no darts. But the file had made interesting reading.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Jimmy,” he said. “Would you step into the Super’s office for a moment? Please?”

  *

  Carver sat up and stretched, instantly awake, as Amy turned the Fourtrak down a rutted country lane alongside a small wood.

  He had awakened, briefly, when she stopped earlier in the morning to shop at a village which never seemed to have opened its eyes at all that day. Assured of what she was doing, he had gone instantly back to sleep.

  Now, he hung onto the cargo loops at either side of the tailgate and stared around.

  Outside, a field of hay stretched away into the rolling distance. Alongside the jeep, there was the dark of a wood, mainly pine trees. Beyond the hayfield and a further wood, there were mountains.

  “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock,” Amy told him over her shoulder.

  “Late for lunch.”

  “You were sleeping and I wanted to come here. There is a lake beyond the next rise, and no houses for many miles in all directions. It is very quiet.”

  She shifted the gears without a clash, and the engine note rose a little. But there was no sign of strain. The Daihatsu ate up this kind of terrain. It was, after all, what it was designed for. Carver sat back against his packed holdall with the Desert Eagle in his lap and checked the load. Amy glanced over her shoulder when she heard the action snap the first time, but then ignored him.

  The jeep topped the rise and stopped. Carver hauled himself higher and looked around him.

  Tree lined slopes plunged from the surrounding mountains to stand guard over their own reflections in a flooded valley which gave back the rays of the afternoon sun.

  They must be high up. The air was fresh and clear, and even through the tinted windows he could feel the heat of the sun.

  Amy ran the car down to a pebbly beach at the side of the lake, under the shade of the nearest trees, and stopped. In the sudden silence, he could hear the cry of a single bird out over the water, and the tiny splash of a stream not too far away, emptying into the lake.

  He opened the tailgate and climbed out stiffly. Some small creature suddenly rustled in the edge of the weeds and tiny feet ran away in the scented gloom under the trees. The world was still again.

  “I think this is as close to perfection as any place I have ever seen,” he told Amy softly, and was surprised when she smiled up at him. He realised how few times he had seen her smile, and was again surprised.

  “You should smile more often. It lights up your face,” he told her, and she immediately turned away from him, scowling, and started to pull paper parcels out of the passenger seat.

  He laughed out loud and walked down to the edge of the lake. The water lapping over the small stones was a clear, light blue shade and so clean he was tempted to scoop some up and drink it.

  A pebble went past his ankles and flipped a dozen times across the surface before falling into the depths. He glanced round, and Amy flipped another expertly across the lake.

  “You’re very good at that,” he said. “I counted twenty splashes, then.”

  “This is where I learned to do it,” she said without looking at him. “My best was thirty.”

  She flipped another; eyes screwed up against the glare of the sun off the surface, and then glanced at him mischievously.

  “You want a swim? It’s perfectly safe. I used to swim here every day when I was a child.”

  Suddenly, a swim was the very thing he did want. He pulled off his shirt, kicked off his shoes and trousers, and piled them on top of his jacket.
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  Naked, he walked into the water until it was at knee height, and then dived forward into the lake.

  It was cold, but she was right about the safety. The water was so clear that even with blurred underwater vision, he could see to the bottom which must be twenty feet down. Moving shadows through the sun dapple were small fish, and there were dead branches down there, among the waving pond weed. The whole world was a clear, lovely shade of blue.

  A disturbance and a cloud of bubbles over to his right resolved itself into a blue, smooth mermaid with short dark hair cruising towards him in the depths.

  Amy nude was even more disturbing than Amy clothed, and he wished deeply that he had some diving goggles, the better to appreciate the exotic change of shade.

  She surfaced next to him with a splash and a hoot of laughter, and he reached out and ran a hand over her bare, wet shoulders, gleaming in the sun.

  “The other side and back,” she said, squirting water at him, and turned away, legs flailing and arms reaching out in a splashy crawl action.

  He put down his head and trudged after her with a powerful stroke which had once carried him across similar lakes in the mountains near his home. But he had been two years out of the water and Amy must have been practising daily. Slowly but surely she outstripped him, and when they turned on the return journey, she was well ahead.

  Annoyed, he turned short of the shore, and put out more energy.

  Extra power began to tell. Carver’s muscles might have been rested, but they had not atrophied, and he was a strong man. Amy was fast, but she was also a showy swimmer.

  Neck and neck, they arrowed for the shore. In the last few yards he thought he would beat her, but at the last moment, she pulled an extra turn of speed from somewhere, shot past him and turned, panting and laughing in the shallows.

  “I was toying with you,” she said, flicking water in his puffing face as he grounded next to her.

  She leaned back, laughing at him, with the water washing between her small, high breasts. He thought he had never seen anything more desirable and reached out to take her waist in the crook of his arm. Through the cool of the water he could feel the smooth warmth of her nude body and suddenly she was very still.

  He pulled her towards him, and as their bodies touched along their whole length, he kissed first her throat, then her eyes and finally, with passion, her lips. They parted and her mouth was on fire within.

  He slipped his hand under her knees, and stood up, letting the water drain off them and the heat of the sun fall upon them, and carried her beck to the grass beyond the little shingle beach.

  Her arms tightened round his neck as he bent his head to her breasts, and his hand slid over the smooth skin of her hips to pert her thighs.

  He tasted her gasp as he entered her, and then her ankles looked in the smell of his back and the scent of the pines and the crushed grass mingled with the perfume of her body and the smell of the heat of the day.

  *

  “You are a very gentle lover,” she told him, holding the lighter for his cigar.

  He drew deeply, feeling the smoke curl into his lungs, and watched the cigarette smoke in turn slide out of her nostrils. Why was it, he wondered, that a smoke after making love should be quite such a satisfying experience? Perhaps because all of the appetites were now sated.

  Amy knelt by the blanket and he heard liquid gurgling and remembered one which was not satisfied. No, two. He was vastly hungry. On her back, which was crisscrossed by a complex of marks left by the hardy grass, some small fragments of twig still adhered to her flesh.

  He reached out to pick them off, and as his hand brushed her skin, she flinched away.

  “Idiot! Now I have spilled some of the wine!”

  She turned towards him and handed him a goblet of red wine which was cool enough to form a mist on the outside of the glass.

  “They took it from the Frigidaire and wrapped it in a lot of newspaper. It keeps it cool,” she explained. “The wine of this district is better cold. It tastes of strawberries. Try.”

  He sipped, and found she was right, both about the temperature and the strawberries. He finished the glass and refilled it from the wrapped bottle. There was no label, and it had been merely corked, not capped.

  Amy turned round and settled down on the blanket with her back against one of his cases propped in turn against a tree. When their first flush of passion had passed, it had been she who brought things from the car and made up a nest in the fringe of the trees.

  She passed him a fist-sized chunk of bread covered in pâté, and bit off a gargantuan mouthful from a similar sized chunk for herself.

  “Making love makes me hungry,” she said indistinctly, and damped down the mouthful with a draft of wine. Carver wondered if there was any activity which did not make her hungry. She seemed to live in a permanent state of semi-starvation.

  A bee buzzed sharply by his ear and something fell into the lake with such force that it produced a deep-throated “ohuzz” from the water.

  He frowned, reached over for the wine and heard the sound repeated at the lakeside behind him.

  Carver turned the action of reaching into a forward roll which carried him under the car and out the other side. This time he heard the shot itself, a flat slap of sound in the woods a little above him and to the left, back along the track they had taken to the hidden lake. It sounded like a silenced rifle, and he cursed himself savagely for having provided himself only with the Desert Eagle.

  Which was, he reminded himself, nestling in the back of the Daihatsu above his head.

  He peered back at the little nest of blankets and luggage and realised that since Amy had brought the luggage out of the car, he now had no idea at all where the weapon might be.

  Of the girl herself there was no sign. He remembered her rolling away at the same moment he did, and she was now securely tucked out of sight.

  “Amy?”

  There was a gentle whistle from the base of the tree against which she had been sitting.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course. Can you see him from there?”

  He peered between the rear wheels of the Daihatsu, moving his head from side to side, but the rise in the trail made a slight hump and he could see no more than a hundred yards. Too long for an accurate shot with the handgun, even if he had it with him.

  “Amy, where’s the gun?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you had it.”

  He rolled on his back and swore luridly. There was the sound of a stick breaking within the forest, and he knew the marksman was on the move, encouraged by the lack of returned fire.

  The sound was repeated, closer, and he fixed the man’s position in his mind. Much good it would do him, with nothing to shoot back.

  “Carver?”

  “What?”

  “I think it may be in the back of the car, by the tailgate.”

  “Oh, good!”

  Since the car was standing with its rear end towards the track, reaching up into the cargo space would expose him to the gunman, who was now a lot closer, had a silenced rifle, and could not, by the nature of things, go on missing all the time.

  In fact, he thought, it was odd that the man had missed at all. He had a static, unsuspecting target. With a rifle and only a little expertise, the top of Carver’s head should by now be floating messily in the lake.

  The coachwork gave out a solid thunk followed instantly by a “spat” sound from the weeds on his left. The gunman was in action again, firing probing shots.

  He fired twice more, each time hitting the rocks above and to the right of Carver, and then there was a lull.

  He’s found he can’t get quite enough depression from where he is, and he’s moving round to get lower, Carver told himself, and rolled out from under the Daihatsu and into the pines in a swift blur of movement.

  There was no firing as he rolled to the trees and stopped, flat on his
face, behind the biggest tree he could reach.

  There, he stopped and swore steadily under his breath for a full minute as he detached pine needles, tiny twigs and small pieces of stone from the more intimate parts of his body.

  Rolling in pine woods in the nude was a lot more fun, he decided, when you had someone else between you and the ground.

  He pulled one last twig from a cringing fold of skin and lay motionless, listening to the sounds of the forest.

  For a long count of a hundred, nothing moved at all. Then, very faintly, he heard the unmistakable sound of cloth being caught by the end of a twig, and then released.

  He remained still, breathing silently through his mouth, and heard a very, very careful footstep. It was followed, after a count of ten, by another.

  Under Carver’s hand as he sat was a lump of stone he had gathered from the sandy track under the car. It was about the size of a small orange, and egg-shaped. At the back of Carver’s mind was the thought that hand grenades were about the size of a small orange and egg shaped.

  And Carver was very, very good with a hand grenade.

  The movement at the other side of the screen of undergrowth behind him had now ceased. The gunman would be settling himself into shooting position and carefully surveying the Daihatsu from his new lie, trying to work out where Carver was.

  Just make one more noise, Carver begged him silently. Cough, or sneeze or even pant loudly. Just one noise and you’re dead, you bastard.

  The gunman cocked his rifle, and three things happened at once.

  Carver rose and stepped round the tree, hand cocked over his right shoulder for the whiplash throw of the true grenade expert.

  Amy shouted: “Look out, he’s right in front of you!”

  And the gunman fired almost at the same instant that Carver’s rock grenade hit him cleanly in the middle of the forehead.

  Behind him Carver heard the whining song of a ricochet, a horrified squeal of “Non!” from Amy and the thump of a falling body, But he was already moving, hurdling the bushes to drop with both knees on the back of the man lying across his gun.

  The attack was unnecessary, though it relieved Carver’s feelings mightily.