The End Game

by Michael Gilbert

  He had been waiting for her. On the table behind him was a full glass. He reached back and handed it to her. “A special drink,” he said with a grin. “I’ve been keeping it for you. No heeltaps.”

  Susan took a cautious sip.

  “What on earth is it?” she said.

  “Firewater,” said Brandreth. “Drink it and all your cares will fly away.”

  “Drink it and I shall be flat on the floor,” said Susan.

  At this moment one of the directors of Holmes and Holmes surged up and got between them. Susan backed away, holding the glass. She had a suspicion that it held neat vodka.

  The crowd was thinning out now, and to repeat the manoeuvre with Mr Lambie would have been difficult. As she reached the back of the room she realised that a row was brewing. She heard Simon say, “Three’s quite enough. If you drink anything more, I won’t be responsible for getting you home.”

  “And who asked you to be responsible?”

  “Your mother. Among other people.”

  “That was very kind of her. But quite unnecessary.”

  “If she’d known that you were going to stand here swilling gin all evening—”

  “If you call three weak gin-and-tonics swilling, I don’t. And what’s more, you’ve got no right to count every drink I take.”

  To emphasise what she was saying, Eileen had put down her own glass on the table and swung round on Simon. It was a private battle, conducted with low-pitched venom, absorbing to the contestants and ignored by everyone near them.

  The opportunity was too good to be missed. The glasses, hired for the occasion, were all the same shape and size. Susan placed her own on the table and picked up Eileen’s. Then she set a course which would bring her back towards Brandreth. She was tired of his oafish tactics. She thought that the time had come to ring down the curtain on the act. Conclusively, but artistically.

  With the departure of the Holmes and Holmes contingent there was only a hard core of drinkers left. Brandreth said to her, “When you’ve finished that drink, I’ve got a proposal to make.”

  “A proposal or a proposition?” Susan managed to get a little artistic thickness into her voice.

  “A suggestion, really. As soon as we can slip away, I’ll run you up to London and give you a proper meal. These bits and pieces are no fodder for a growing girl.”

  “Had you any particular place in mind?”

  “When I celebrate I like to do it properly. I suggest La Terrasse.”

  “Okay by me. But it’s very popular just now. You probably won’t get a table.”

  “I’ve already booked one.”

  The devil you have, thought Susan. What she wanted was a diversion. She was presented with one immediately. A table at the far end of the room went over with a crash.

  Susan said, “That’s Eileen. I’d better give a hand.”

  Several people were helping already. Simon, white-faced and furious, was saying, “She’ll be quite all right if you get her outside. It was the heat.”

  Susan said, “We’ll put her in the annexe. If she’s going to be sick, there’s a lavatory there. You needn’t all come. Put an arm under her shoulders, Simon. See if she can walk.”

  “I told her,” said Simon. “It was that last drink that did it.”

  “It’s always the last drink that does it. Put her in that chair by the window. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  There were two telephones with outside lines. One was in her room, the other in Brandreth’s. She thought it would be safer to use his. She hoped that the person she wanted was in and would answer her call quickly.

  She was back inside five minutes. The room was nearly empty.

  Brandreth said, “What’s that silly girl been up to? I always thought she was a steady type.”

  “Showing off,” said Susan. “They all do it. She’ll be all right now.”

  “Then let’s beat it.”

  Brandreth was a showy driver. His attention for the next forty minutes was devoted to passing cars, slipping between cars and beating traffic lights. Susan fastened her seat belt tight and uttered a short prayer to St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers.

  Brandreth’s luck was in. They arrived in one piece, and he even managed to find a parking space. He took Susan’s arm as they went into the restaurant. The headwaiter said, “I have your table, Mr Brandreth. We are a little crowded, but I have managed the additional place.”

  Brandreth stared, first at him and then at the table from which a middle-aged, grey-haired, grey-moustached man had risen politely to his feet. He knew him, of course. Andrew Holmes, senior partner of Holmes and Holmes, one of the largest advertising agencies in London and the principal customer of Sayborn Art Printers.

  Holmes was holding a chair for Susan, who sank into it. Brandreth was very red and seemed disinclined to sit. Holmes said smoothly, “It seemed to me that we had a double event to celebrate, Martin. First our signal triumph over Merry and Merry. Hearty congratulations. A joint effort, but you did most of the work. Secondly, Miss Perronet-Condé’s move to our firm.”

  Brandreth sat down slowly. He seemed to be having some difficulty in finding words.

  “Since I have, as it were, intruded on this dinner party,” continued Holmes, “I have compounded my offence by daring to order the first course. I hope you are both as fond of smoked salmon as I am. I have bespoken a bottle of Chablis Moutonne to go with it.”

  “Lovely,” said Susan. “I’ve hardly had time for a drink all evening.”

  18

  Rayhome had, once again, taken rooms for their party at the good-class hotel which overlooked the Filippo Strozzi Park. David was glad of this. He was bleakly conscious that all he had gained by agreeing to come on the trip was a breathing space. A very temporary breathing space. He was under no illusions about that. He was a prisoner out on bail, and at the end of the trip, or maybe sooner, his bail was going to be called in. Meanwhile he thought that he might as well enjoy all the comfort that was available.

  The surveillance was extensive and unremitting. There was a new floor waiter on the fourth floor, a sulky youth who seemed to spend most of his time using the house telephone; a middle-aged lady in tight black who sat in the entrance hall doing an endless piece of petit point; and a gang of boys with mopeds, one of whom was always on duty outside the front door of the hotel and a second near the service door which opened on to an alley alongside the hotel.

  In the galleries and restaurants, standing behind him admiring the pictures, or sitting at the next table intent on their meals, were different and heavier types of watcher, men who had the appearance of Milanese industrialists, but spoke with the accent of the south—serious men from Naples or Sicily.

  The most alarming aspect of this surveillance was that it was carried out so openly. David wondered what would happen if he tried to break out. Suppose he jumped, without warning, on to a bus and went somewhere, anywhere, out of the city. Stupid idea. There were cars on call which could keep any bus under observation. Or dived down a side street where no car could follow. But there were few places where a boy, with or without a moped, could not keep on his heels.

  “Take it easy, David, lad,” he said to himself. “Don’t let the bastards panic you. Let them sweat, not you.”

  Things were made a bit easier by the fact that he had found a drinking companion. Lewis Hobart, a cheerful brown-faced man of much the same size and drinking capacity as David, formerly a captain in the African Rifles, now on indefinite leave pending discharge.

  “It’s my eyes,” he explained, indicating the tinted glasses which he wore. “Let me down badly; got what they call double sight. Thought I was aiming at a black buck and nearly shot the Adjutant. Bad show.”

  Captain Hobart’s interest in museums and galleries was small and easily satisfied. As a companion David found him much preferable to Collings, and over a succession of evenings they drank and yarned together, mostly in Harry’s Bar on the Lungarno, but sometimes in mor
e disreputable places. David learned a number of curious facts about Africa.

  “It really is a fascinating country,” said Captain Hobart. “Ex Africa semper aliquid nova. That’s what I learned at school, and it’s true. You could find anything there, from diamonds to dinosaurs. A pity we’ve given it all back to the Africans. It’s wasted on them.”

  Another thing David noticed, and it gave him a cold and uncomfortable idea of what he was up against, was that his watchers seemed to expect cooperation from the authorities. On one occasion, when a car which had followed him from the hotel to a restaurant had experienced some difficulty in parking, a patrolling carabiniere had peremptorily ordered another car to move.

  As the six days of their stay went by, under hot sun and skies as blue as they are in cinquecento paintings, David could feel the meshes tightening round him. He thought, not for the first time, that he should have cut and run for it when he was in London. There would have been immediate trouble certainly; but it would have been better than this cat-and-mouse game, and he would have been in his own country, with the police on his side and not, at the best, neutral or, at the worst, against him.

  He realised that Italy was, for the time being, a country in which the rule of law had ceased to mean very much. Criminals and terrorists had got hold of the wheels. A politician who opposed them could be maimed in front of his family. A judge who condemned a criminal might be signing his own death warrant. Over this dark abyss the tide of tourism flowed, unknowing and uncaring.

  On the last evening Collings had, unexpectedly, asked David to come out with him for a drink. It was unexpected because it was, on this occasion, unnecessary. On this trip the black bag was innocent of any illicit cargo and would remain so. Of that David was certain. He wondered what Collings, who had been unusually silent, could have to say to him.

  When it came, it was startling.

  Collings, his elbows on the table and his muddy face close to David’s, said, “You know you won’t be allowed to come back with us tomorrow.”

  “Who’ll stop me?”

  “The police. That boy who looks after us on the fourth floor is going to say you propositioned him. When he turned you down, you pulled him into the bedroom and tried to rape him.”

  “His word against mine. No court will believe him.”

  “It won’t come to court. The men who take you away won’t be carabinieri. They’ll be in plain clothes. And they won’t take you to a police station. They’ll take you out to a farm. Somewhere quiet, outside the city, where they can work on you.”

  David finished his drink and put the glass down slowly on the table. Then he said, “Perhaps you’ll tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “You know bloody well what I’m talking about. Last time we were here you took something out of the pocket in that bag and put something different back.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” said David, “stop talking like a bloody Dolgelly lawyer and say what you mean. You think that I removed six packets of high-quality heroin and substituted six similar packets of old-fashioned photographic developer. Then, when the Chevertons and their backers found out, you got stick. Because you were supposed to keep an eye on me and you fell down on the job. Right so far?”

  Collings said sourly, “Put it any way round you like. It’s you who’s for it now, not me. They know you didn’t bring the stuff back to England, so it must be here. If you don’t hand it over, they’ll make you talk. And once they start, there’s no guarantee they’ll stop, even if you do talk.”

  “I see,” said David. He was trying to speak normally, but his mouth was dry.

  Collings said, with a curious note, almost of pleading, in his voice, “I don’t know what your game is, but if you’ve got as much sense as I think you have, you’ll back down and do it quick. You’re out of your depth. These people have got everything going for them. Police, politicians, the press, the lot. I’m telling you. If they came in now”— he looked at the door as he said it—“and picked you up, bundled you into a car, did whatever they wanted to you and dropped what was left of you into the river, do you think anyone would worry about it? With politicians blown up in their cars and policemen with their kneecaps shot off, you’d hardly rate a quarter column.”

  While Collings had been talking, David had been thinking. He said, “Suppose you’re right. Suppose I did string along with them.”

  “Hand over the stuff?”

  “Yes. But it’s not all that easy. I haven’t got it with me. I left it with a friend. And I’m not having him involved. He’s got to live here.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “It’s the timing I’m thinking about. It’s in his office safe. The office doesn’t open before half past eight. Our coach leaves at nine and doesn’t hang about.”

  This was true. The congestion in front of the hotel was such that it was only by concession that the Rayhome coach was allowed to stop there for five minutes while the tourists and their luggage got aboard.

  “However, I think I can manage it, if you’ll settle up at the hotel and put my stuff on the coach.”

  Collings said, “If you get there only at the last minute, the people you give the packet to won’t have time to examine it properly. They’re a suspicious lot of buggers. They won’t like it.”

  “Agreed,” said David. “But don’t forget, we’re stopping that night at Como. They’ll have all evening to check it as thoroughly as they like. Believe me, I’m not going to try any funny stuff. Como’s still in Italy.”

  Collings thought about it, turning it all ways round in his mind, trying to shake the tricks out of it. He had seen enough of David in the past few weeks to distrust him profoundly.

  He said, “I don’t like it. They won’t like it, either.”

  “It’s the way I’m going to do it.”

  “How are you going to get to your friend without being followed?”

  “I’ll manage,” said David.

  Next morning he was dressed and ready and out of his room by eight o’clock. He sidestepped the sulky floor waiter, who seemed to want to say something to him, got into the lift and went down to the ground floor. As soon as he arrived, without getting out he pressed the button again and went up to the second floor. The corridor was empty, as also was the service room. David hooked down one of the long, white overalls which was the staff working dress, carried it to the service staircase and put it on as he was going down to ground-floor level. At the foot of the staircase a short corridor led to a side door opening on the alley.

  Tuesdays and Fridays, as he knew, having studied the workings of the hotel, were rubbish collection days. There were six cans just inside the door. David hoisted one of them on to his left shoulder so that it hid his face, pushed open the door and went out swinging to the right and away from the watcher as he did so.

  As soon as he was round the corner he put down the can, removed his white coat, stuffed it into the can, shut the lid and walked off down the street. Two girls who were passing observed his actions with surprise. David walked quickly away and out into the main street beyond.

  His first call was at a shop he had already marked down, which sold all manner of stationery and office gadgets. Here he bought a stout padded envelope of the type used by publishers for the dispatch of books, a roll of reinforced tape, a stapler and six packets of envelopes. With these he retired to a cafe across the way and ordered breakfast. He had a feeling that it was going to be a long day and he saw no reason to start it starving.

  When he had finished eating he got out his purchases. The six packets of smaller envelopes went into the large padded envelope, the open end of which he fastened with three separate strips of tape. He then stapled each piece of tape into position with four staples. When he had finished, he paid for his breakfast and departed, leaving the stapler and tape on a ledge under the table and putting the package inside the front of his jacket.

  A quick walk through side streets took him to the mouth of the alleyway
opposite the hotel and on the other side of the road. The time was a few minutes past nine o’clock. David peered round the corner.

  The coach was there, the last of the luggage was being put aboard and Collings was standing beside the driver’s seat looking worried. There were two men on the pavement in front of the hotel. Collings went across and had a word with them. The traffic policeman blew his whistle and waved to the coach. Collings came back and stood by the open door, looking up and down the street.

  “Now for it, boyo,” said David.

  He sprinted down the alley, jumped into the coach and took his seat. Collings climbed in after him.

  “It’s all right,” said David. “Off you go.”

  The policeman whistled again urgently.

  David took the envelope out from under his coat, opened the black bag which was by the driver’s seat and put it in as the coach moved off.

  They stopped for lunch outside Bologna. David had time for a word with Collings. He said, “Sorry I was late. My friend didn’t turn up until twenty to nine. I had to run for it.”

  Collings said, “Tell you the truth, I thought you’d bolted.”

  “I may be a fool, but I’m not such a bloody fool as that,” said David. “Everything’s all right now. The stuff’s in that envelope. Nothing to worry about.”

  This was not true. There was still a good deal to worry about. But the situation had improved. He had had two reasons for suggesting a handover at Como. The first was that the opposition, although no doubt they would be there in sufficient strength, would be less well organised than in Florence. The second was that he was a great reader of escape stories. He knew that the only four prisoners of war who had got out of Italy before the Italian armistice had all gone the same way. By train to Como, then five miles up the road to Chiasso, then through the wire about a mile above Chiasso Station and so into Switzerland. He reckoned that, if he could get clear of the hotel, he could be in Switzerland in a couple of hours.