The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  And then there was Gehn. Gehn the adjutant. Gehn, the Gofer, he grinned. Gehn could put his plans in train.

  He sent for Gehn.

  *

  The CRS guard outside the Elysée Palace in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré could see from his post straight up the Rue de Miromesnil, so he could see death coming, though he did not recognise it.

  Above the mutter of the slow moving traffic in one of the most famous shopping streets on earth, the angry bee buzz of the little motor scooter made an irritating intrusion on his cosy thoughts.

  He had just planned his evening with the pretty travel courier and was moving on to the excuse he would offer his wife, when he noticed the scooter rider was waving at him. He stepped forward to drive the nuisance away, and the blast from the shotgun hit him full in the face.

  The scooter went off against the flow of traffic in the Avenue Marigny, and emerged into the Avenue Gabriel and thence to the Champs-Elysées, where another CRS man saw it cut across the traffic and head for the Rond Point. Two traffic cops whistled at it and radioed its route to another patrol further towards the Arc de Triomphe, but it was never seen again.

  *

  In the little cottage on the edge of the pines near Mortagne au Perche, where the Percheron horse was invented, Madame Saint-André was preparing lunch.

  She looked up from the table when the doorway darkened, and smiled a welcome.

  “M. Le Cure. A cup of coffee? A fine? Michel is not home, yet, but I expect him any moment. He is never late for his food, that one. And today I have moules...”

  Her voice tailed off as she saw the expression on the priest’s face.

  “You must prepare yourself for a shock, madame. I fear Michel will not be coming back. Not today. Not ever again.”

  A tiny part of her mind told her that the message had not rung quite true. The words were irreproachable, but the manner was too clinical, almost callous. But she was too swamped by her anguish to notice it at the time, and by the time she did notice, it was too late.

  “But moules are his favorite,” she said stupidly, because they had been together many years and had loved one another dearly. “How...?” she said, sitting down because she could suddenly no longer trust her legs.

  “He was crossing a firebreak and dropped his shotgun. It went off and shot him in the chest. He must have been killed instantly,” the cure told her. His eyes were fixed on hers and he had a curiously intent expression on his face.

  “But he never carries his gun loaded,” she protested. “They laugh at him in the village because he is so careful. They call him an old woman...”

  “Any man can make a mistake,” said the cure. “Is there anyone else we must tell? Anything he should have done?”

  “Yes,” she said distractedly, willing her mind to work. “There are the people down at the gîte. They must be told they have to cater for themselves for a few days until I can get round to them. There is Michel’s round to do.”

  “You know all about the people at the gîte, then?” The cure’s eyes were as blank as a well.

  “With the little girls? Oh, yes, we take it in turns to look after them.”

  For a long moment the cure sat and stared at her. Then he put his hand in his pocket and produced a small brass box.

  “Would you like me to give you communion, daughter?”

  Numbly, dumbly, she knelt while he spoke the familiar words. Meekly, obediently, she put out her tongue for the wafer.

  Gently, compassionately, he placed upon it a cyanide capsule, and firmly, expertly, held her mouth closed while she swallowed it.

  He held her until the limbs stopped twitching.

  Then he took the loaded basket down the track towards the gîte.

  *

  In Brive, a minor official in the Mairie fell from a window. In Perpignan an airline pilot was killed in a traffic accident. The driver failed to stop.

  It took less than twelve hours to trigger all of Sigmund Dark’s exploding bolts.

  But he had triggered them too late. The chain he was breaking had already led his enemy to his lair.

  The enemy sat downstairs in his dungeons, and waited for Josef Lefeu.

  In the fullness of time, Lefeu came to him, along with Ducher. Foolishly, they came alone.

  Amy lay back on the cot in the cell, one arm across her eyes and the other lying lax beside her. Her breasts were clearly outlined under the thin shirt, and she had raised one knee, allowing her skirt to slip back up her thigh almost to the hip.

  She looked like a girl resigned to her fate.

  Lefeu was delighted. But he was also a careful man, and in any case, his employer had trained him and his fellows carefully in the handling and correction of slaves. It was merely a case of following the rules and being careful.

  He drew hard on his cigarette, opened the cell door and stepped into the cage, being careful to keep to one side, and just out of arm’s reach. The combat training the girls received was very deadly – but usually easy enough to avoid, providing one was warned beforehand.

  As he was.

  The girl scrambled off the bed, and stood with her back to the rock wall. She was clearly terrified, almost paralysed with fear. Lefeu circled to get her between him and the door, and to remove himself from the line of fire of Ducher, who was carrying the shotgun.

  “Out, girl!” he grunted.

  The girl remained where she was, her face now a mask of abject terror. Her legs began to give way and she had to lean against the wall for support.

  “No!” she begged. “Please, no!”

  Ducher sniggered. He was standing relaxed just outside the Cage, the shotgun hanging from his hand, its barrels pointing at the floor.

  “Bring her out. Or must I come and help you? She will not like it if I do!”

  Lefeu was watching her carefully. Now, she was crouched against the wall, hands crossed protectively over her breasts.

  “Strip!” he ordered.

  She was too far gone in fear even to speak. Truly, when they made a slave, they broke the spirit too much, he thought irritably. He would have preferred a struggling, wriggling girl.

  There would be no life to this one at all.

  “Strip! You hear what I tell you! Must I strip you myself?”

  He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it, took two paces forward and dragged her to her feet, easily evading her attempt to scratch his face. As he pulled her upright, the shirt tore, and her breast fell against his wrist, warm and firm. She was wearing no bra.

  Ducher stepped forward to get a better look, and suddenly the girl, braced against the wall, exploded like a watch spring.

  Her hand, splayed, hit Lefeu square on the nose with all her weight behind it.

  Bone broke, blood spurted, and Lefeu was fired back against the bars which divided her cell from the next.

  Ducher laughed scornfully.

  “I will teach you manners, girl,” he promised, stepping forward into the cell himself.

  As he did so, she reached through the bars and pushed the door to her cell closed again. It was a swinging door, and in its lock was the bunch of keys which operated all the locks in the dungeon block. When it closed, the keys hung conveniently to hand for a man standing against the dividing bars.

  Carver was there, waiting for it. As Lefeu flew backwards towards him, he reached through the bars and flicked a strip of plaited blanket into the end of which had been fastened several coins from the loose change in his pocket.

  When the blanket struck the nape of Lefeu’s neck, the weight of the coins carried it round his throat, and Carver’s left hand was there to catch it. He pulled backwards, hard, and knotted the blanket. Then he reached through the bars.

  As Ducher entered the cell, he saw out of the corner of his eye the flicker of the knotted blanket, realised there had been a trap and started to raise the shotgun. But the swinging door caught him in the back and threw him forwar
d. The gun went off, the charge going into the floor and spattering the wall.

  Lefeu bucked against the blanket strip as pellets smashed into his legs and Amy kicked hard against Ducher’s bent knee.

  As the man fell backwards onto the floor, Carver dropped, knees bent, onto his chest. There was a silence.

  “Where’s the control room for the surveillance system?”

  Carver asked Amy.

  She pointed up the stairs.

  “The top of the stairway.”

  “Take the gun. Get to where you can see the door,” said Carver. “Anyone comes out, kill him. Here’s some more shells.”

  Ducher had only four shells for the shotgun in his pocket, but the way Amy reloaded the gun reassured Carver. He looked down at the German and was amazed to find the man had fainted.

  Carver removed his considerable weight from the unconscious man’s chest and stood up.

  Ducher’s leg was bent at an odd angle, and Carver realised it had been dislocated at the knee by Amy’s kick. He made a mental note to keep a very sharp eye on her. If he had known about her training on the journey, he would have treated her with considerably more respect.

  Or more likely, he realised, he would have dropped out of the journey altogether.

  At the top of the stairs, Gehn paused on his way past the control room door and glanced at the view screens that showed him the cells of the slaves. There was nobody on guard in the room and he remembered that Lefeu should have been on watch and Ducher had been given permission to discipline the girl, Amy.

  He wondered how things were going and stepped forward to get a closer look at the screen.

  There were only two screens in the system. They showed, in turn, pictures from the eight cells below, and the operator could select the cameras in the exercise room and torture chamber by turning a switch. The exercise room camera could be traversed by remote control. That in the torture chamber was fixed, but showed the greater part of the room, leaving only a blind area by the door. By traversing the exercise room camera, most of that could be seen.

  He watched while the screens ran though their cycle with the slaves, all of whom were talking excitedly. He wondered what had stimulated them so much and was about to switch on the microphones and find out when the cycle finished.

  Instead, it occurred to him that something they had heard from the exercise room might have disturbed them – they were two floors down from him and within earshot of things which could not be heard from the control room – and he cursed Lefeu for starting his entertainment within earshot of the merchandise, instead of safely back in his own quarters.

  Gehn was a busy man this evening. He had been charged by Sigmund Dark with the job of getting rid of the staff, keeping an eye on Lefeu, and making sure neither Amy nor Yasmin survived the night.

  The betrayal of his legionnaires was a painful strain to Gehn. As straw boss of the mercenary unit which made up Sigmund Dark’s garrison, he felt responsible for his men. On the other hand, a job was a job and he had been given it to do.

  It was not a difficult matter. The men would not be needed after tonight, so a pinch of certain powders in the evening’s meal – lamb stew and couscous, a strongly flavoured delicacy they all enjoyed – had taken care of that. They would simply not awaken in the morning.

  There was another matter which troubled him deeply. Gehn was a simple man, trained in obedience as well as military matters and skills, but he was nobody’s fool.

  When his employer began to take him as deeply into his confidence as had Sigmund Dark, Gehn’s untrusting nature turned a very leery eye upon the phenomenon. With the rest of the unit gone, what reason would Sigmund Dark have for keeping Gehn alive?

  Gehn had never heard of the adage that you may pay Jack Ketch his shilling, but you do not invite him to dinner. But had he heard it, he would have understood it perfectly.

  Gehn had already had his shilling. He had performed his executions.

  And afterwards? He would be one of the few people on earth who could identify Sigmund Dark and connect him with the trade in human beings over which such a fuss was made. Gehn personally did not understand the fuss, but he did realise that people found the trade distasteful.

  Somehow, he could not see Sigmund Dark inviting him to dinner. If he did, Gehn would certainly not be foolish enough to eat it.

  Gehn’s plans, therefore, diverged from those of his employer very sharply.

  He had been reluctantly prepared to mix his deadly powder with his men’s evening meal. It was bubbling on the stove when he called in the kitchen, and adding in the poison had taken only a second.

  If their testimony could connect Sigmund Dark with the Château Bram, it could also connect Gehn with it. What was dangerous for the master was no less dangerous for the man.

  Also, Gehn could clearly hear the bubbling of water pouring into Sigmund Dark’s ship below the decks. It was time, he told himself, for the rats to pack their bags and make for shore.

  Gehn realised that he had been staring, unseeing, at the screens for several minutes and that they were halfway through their slaves’ cells cycle for the third time. The slaves appeared to have calmed down now, and were lying back on their beds or talking or playing their board games quietly again.

  He reached forward and turned the switch to bring in the exercise room – then stared, unbelieving, at the picture which appeared.

  Both cells were open and empty. The room was deserted.

  He flicked the switch to see the torture chamber, and swore viciously.

  In the picture, Lefeu was locked into the iron chair in the corner near the oubliette. His legs were roughly bandaged, and he appeared to have been locked into the head restraint.

  Ducher was sitting on a stool against the wall, his neck locked into an iron collar, his hands pinioned above his head by manacles. There was a strip of sticking plaster across his mouth. His leg was sticking out at a crazy angle, and he was clearly in some pain.

  There was no sign of either of the prisoners.

  Gehn swore, and made for the doorway. Then threw himself backwards as he remembered that Ducher had been carrying the sawn off shotgun last time he had seen him.

  The blast of the shotgun cut across the doorway at the exact second that he flung himself backwards. It missed him, but he felt its iron breath across his chest, and lay for a moment where he had fallen.

  Then he pulled his own Ruger revolver from his hip pocket, and crawled cautiously to the door again. With infinite care, he eased his head round the doorframe until he could look down the stairwell.

  He was looking straight into the double barrels of the sawn off shotgun.

  Behind it, Amy was methodically emptying the chambers and filling them again. As she snapped the weapon closed and looked up, Gehn withdrew his head.

  The shotgun was a hideous weapon, and before long it would occur to Amy that all she had to do was poke it round the doorpost and pull the triggers. In the confined space of the electronics room, there would be nowhere to hide from the blast.

  To prevent that, Gehn hooked the door closed. Then he picked up the intercom telephone and dialed Sigmund Dark’s room.

  The ringing tone went on for a while before Kiti’s voice answered.

  Gehn passed on the news that he was trapped in the surveillance room, and asked for reinforcements. There was a long silence.

  Then: “Master says he will come himself,” said Kiti. The phone was replaced and Gehn sat back, nervously.

  It was unusual for Sigmund Dark to become involved in physical activity. Normally he would have sent a couple of the guards to do the dirty work.

  Then Gehn remembered the lamb stew and couscous.

  *

  In the big chamber with the wonderful view, Kiti sat and composed herself on one of the settees. Her perfect face was perfectly tranquil, and when Sigmund Dark emerged from the bedroom, toweling his hair, she smiled a, perfect smile at him.r />
  “Who called?” he asked.

  “Gehn,” said Kiti.

  “What did he want? Has he carried out my orders?”

  “He wanted to know whether to lock up the cells for the night before going to bed.”

  “To bed already? Perhaps he wants to join in with Lefeu and Ducher,” said Dark. He chuckled.

  “It will be convenient, anyway. They must all go before morning.”

  He opened the big wooden cupboard behind the desk, and from it took an Uzi sub machinegun and a box of circular grenades. While Kiti watched expressionlessly from the settee, he methodically armed four of the grenades and loaded the Uzi. He left them on the desk while he returned to the bedroom and dressed in dark tracksuit trousers, a sweatshirt and tight laced trainers.

  “Later, I shall have to make the rounds and be certain that Gehn has done his duty,” he told Kiti. “In the meantime there is a chance to clear out the files. Open them and arm the self destruct devices.”

  She nodded, and watched expressionlessly as he armed himself and left. Then she rose and padded into the bedroom.

  Yasmin was lying on a couch near the bed, fast asleep. Kiti dressed herself in jeans and a dark sweatshirt and examined the sleeping girl, carefully. Her colour was bad and she was breathing stertorously.

  Kiti bent suddenly and sniffed at the girl’s lips. Then she straightened and stared down at her, and a tiny pair of parallel lines appeared between her perfect eyebrows.

  The girl’s breath smelled strongly of bitter almonds, and while she watched, Yasmin’s breathing suddenly stilled.

  From Kiti’s eyes, two tears welled slowly and ran down her cheeks. She laid gentle fingers at the side of the other girl’s neck, but the gesture was unnecessary. She knew already there would be no pulse there.

  Still weeping, she pulled the sheet up to cover Yasmin’s ruined face, and then walked through to the other room and opened the cupboard which contained the weapons.

  From it, she took the enormous pistol belonging to Carver, and a smaller, lighter weapon which she first loaded with an economy of movement which would have surprised Sigmund Dark, then slipped inside her waistband at the back.