James Maxted 03 The Ends of the Earth

by Robert Goddard

  ‘I should warn you, monsieur,’ said Max, dropping the butt of his cigarette and crushing it beneath his shoe, ‘that Count Tomura may not be alive to witness his son’s ruin.’

  ‘Because you intend to kill him?’

  ‘He killed my mother. What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Exactly what you propose. But you are likely to fail. So, I hoped you would be pleased to know that, if you do, the Tomuras will still have me to contend with.’

  Max smiled ruefully. ‘That’s a comfort, monsieur. I’ll keep it in mind.’

  ‘Please do. Of course, you may not feel so murderous towards Count Tomura when you have read Jack Farngold’s letter to your father.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Laskaris took the letter out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to Max. ‘I have some information regarding the Dragonfly which you may wish to hear about when you have had a chance to reflect on the contents of the letter. You can contact me at the Kojimachi Hotel, where I am registered under the name Quinquaud, of course. I will look forward to hearing from you.’

  Max hardly heard him. He recognized the envelope at once: frayed manila, addressed to Sir Henry Maxted, British Embassy, Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya, Petrograd, Soviet Russia, with a green stamp illegibly franked and assorted jottings in Japanese and Russian, along with one word in Russian rubber-stamped in red capitals.

  ‘Not everything is as you suppose,’ said Laskaris. ‘As you will see.’

  MAX DID NOT look at the letter until he had returned to the privacy of his hotel room. He poured himself a tot of whisky from his emergency supply and sat by the window. The turbid late afternoon air carried the rattle of trams and the cawing of crows. He slipped the letter out of the envelope and began to read.

  At that moment, several miles away on the outskirts of the city, a car drew up in front of the main gate of Sugamo prison. Gordon Trumper, United States Embassy consular official, was the driver. Beside him sat Lewis Everett and behind him, in the back seat, Al Duffy.

  Trumper sucked his teeth anxiously as a guard emerged from the gatehouse and began to walk towards the car. ‘Jumpy, are we, pal?’ asked Everett.

  ‘You’re not, I suppose,’ Trumper retorted.

  ‘Why should I be? We’re armed and they’re not. We know what we’re going to do and they don’t. Sounds like we have the upper hand. So long as that damn docket of yours gets us in.’

  ‘It’ll get us in.’

  ‘Then we can do what we came to do.’

  ‘And get out of this stinking country,’ said Duffy.

  The guard appeared at the window and inspected Trumper’s pass. He asked a couple of questions in Japanese, which Trumper answered fluently. Then he signalled for the gate to be opened and waved them through.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ asked Everett as they moved forward.

  ‘That you’re consular officials, like I am.’

  ‘Diplomats, hey? Hear that, Al?’

  ‘I heard,’ said Duffy.

  ‘Ready for some diplomatic killing, are you?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘It has to look like self-defence,’ cautioned Trumper.

  ‘And it will,’ Everett reassured him. ‘Not much like it, maybe. But enough.’

  The twenty-four hours Max had asked Malory and Sam to sit tight for had passed without further word from him. They knew he would be in touch as soon as he had definite news. But that did not make sitting out the daylight hours in the clammy heat of the house in Shinjuku any easier. Nor did Malory’s attempts to teach Sam the rules of mah-jong – a previous occupant had left a board and tiles behind – do more than exasperate both of them. In the end, they were reduced to swapping apologies for their increasing snappishness.

  ‘It’s Saturday afternoon,’ Sam complained as he lit his umpteenth cigarette. ‘By rights I should be canoodling with my sweetheart under a tree out Chingford way.’

  ‘It’s Saturday morning in London,’ objected Malory. ‘Besides, you don’t have a sweetheart. You distinctly told me yesterday she married a myopic milkman. If this is Doris the cinema usherette we’re talking about.’

  ‘It is,’ Sam sighed. ‘You’re right. She didn’t wait for me.’

  ‘And she’d have had to wait several years. So, waiting several hours shouldn’t be too much for us, should it?’

  ‘No. It shouldn’t.’ Sam suddenly brightened. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

  Now it was Malory’s turn to sigh. ‘Why not?’

  Morahan was surprised to hear Trumper had come to see them again so soon. Ward struck an uncharacteristically optimistic note by suggesting he might have good news. Morahan was less confident. But he was happy to go and find out.

  They were marched towards the room where they had been closeted with Trumper the previous day, but he was waiting for them in the corridor, briefcase in hand, shod for the street and smoking a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve greased a palm to get us the use of the yard,’ he announced with a smile. ‘It’s not so infernally hot out there.’

  None of them raised any objections to a breath of late afternoon air. They had become accustomed to the rank smell and stultifying heat of the cell they shared with nine others. But the exercise yard, a bare rectangle of beaten earth about the size of two tennis courts, flanked by high walls of tightly bound bamboo, was a welcome alternative.

  The guard opened the next gate, then fell behind as they headed towards the wide, low-lintelled door leading into the yard. The light outside was dazzling, dust swirling in the glare.

  As Morahan stooped to clear the lintel, Trumper stepped close to him and whispered quite distinctly, ‘Everett and Duffy are here to kill you.’ Then he pressed a gun into Morahan’s hand.

  Several judgements of risk and probability formed in Morahan’s mind during the next few seconds. Ward was first through the door. Morahan and Djabsu were half a pace behind. Trumper slowed, letting them take the lead.

  Morahan shaded his eyes with one hand and cocked the gun with the other as he entered the yard. Two men were waiting there, with their backs towards the door: Everett and Duffy. As they turned, he saw the light catch the barrels of the guns they were holding.

  The advantage of surprise was lost to them as far as Morahan was concerned. And he was not unarmed, as they would have expected him to be. He closed the gap between them in several long strides, took aim swiftly and fired.

  The first bullet took Everett in the chest, the second in the neck. He crumpled and fell with a groan, firing harmlessly into the ground. But concentrating on Everett, as Morahan had done instinctively, exposed him to the threat from Duffy. He heard the shot and felt the impact beneath his raised right arm in the same jolting second.

  As he fell, he heard a roar from Djabsu and saw the Serb launch himself bodily at Duffy, whose second shot flew wide as he was flung to the ground, with Djabsu landing on top of him. The breath was knocked out of his body and the gun out of his hand.

  Morahan tried to rise, but a wave of pain and weakness swept over him. He saw Ward run into view, stoop and gather up Duffy’s gun, then stamp on Duffy’s wrist.

  ‘Let me see him, Gazda,’ said Ward. Djabsu spat into Duffy’s eyes and rolled clear. Duffy opened his mouth to speak, but whether he meant to plead for mercy or curse them defiantly was never to be known. Ward shot him several times in the head and chest, then turned to Everett and shot him several more times as well, for all that he was clearly already dead.

  ‘Trumper slipped me the gun,’ Morahan said through gritted teeth, foreseeing that otherwise Ward might shoot their saviour as well.

  ‘I’ll want consideration for that,’ said Trumper in a faltering voice. ‘But for me, you’d all be dead.’

  Shouts and rapid footfalls echoed out into the yard from the doorway. Soon, they would be overrun by guards.

  ‘Put the gun down, Grover,’ Morahan said, discarding his. ‘Don’t give them an excuse to shoot you.’

  War
d tossed the gun to the ground. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  Morahan stretched his left hand across his chest and felt the wound in his side. Blood was bubbling out of him. Maybe the bullet had pierced his lung. He did not know. For the moment, gazing up at the hazy blue sky above him, he did not especially care. What mattered was that he was alive. While Everett and Duffy – especially Everett – were not.

  WHEN MALORY AND Sam’s patience finally ran out and Malory called the Station Hotel that evening, she was surprised to be told Max was in his room. And she was even more surprised by his tone when he answered the telephone.

  ‘Hello, Malory.’ He sounded subdued or distracted, neither anxious nor exultant. Perhaps he was slightly drunk. She was puzzled. And soon she was confused.

  ‘Have you heard from him?’ By him she meant Lemmer.

  ‘I should have told you. Sorry. We have the names. I’ve sent them to London.’

  ‘You have them?’

  ‘Every last one.’

  ‘When were you going to tell us?’

  ‘There have been … complications.’

  ‘What kind of complications?’

  ‘I can’t go into them over the phone. Maybe we could speak tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow? I—’

  She broke off. Sam was tapping on her shoulder. ‘There’s a car outside,’ he said. ‘Looks like the police.’

  ‘Coming here?’

  As if in answer there came a loud knock at the door. Sam peered through the window. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s Fujisaki.’

  Malory put the receiver back to her ear to speak to Max again. But, to her astonishment, the line was dead. He had hung up.

  The mystery of Max’s state of mind was forgotten in the wake of what Fujisaki had to tell them. The deaths of Dombreux and Monteith; the suicide of Anna Schmidt; Lemmer’s abrupt departure from Tokyo; the shootings at Sugamo prison: tumultuous events that had followed hard on the heels of each other.

  Morahan had been taken to the University Hospital on Fujisaki’s orders. The Commissioner did not propose to leave him in the prison infirmary. As he explained during their drive to the hospital, Trumper had already made a statement undermining the evidence against them. And their principal accusers were now dead.

  It was Fujisaki’s opinion that Trumper had got wind of his imminent exposure as a spy of Lemmer’s and had decided to sabotage the killings of Morahan, Ward and Djabsu ordered by Lemmer in the hope of gaining some credit with the US Secret Service when they caught up with him.

  ‘This was fortunate for Mr Morahan and his friends,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they would have been helpless. And we would have had to believe that Everett and Duffy had defended themselves against an attack with knives. We found the weapons on them that they planned to say they had been threatened with.’

  As for Morahan’s injury, Fujisaki was as reassuring as he could be, praising the expertise of the University Hospital surgeons. But Malory was white with worry. And Fujisaki could not deny he did not really know how serious the injury was.

  ‘At least you are free to visit him, Miss Hollander. I have cancelled the arrest orders against you and Mr Twentyman and I am confident the charges against your friends will soon be dropped. Count Tomura will not object, I think. He will wish to dissociate himself from Lemmer at a time such as this.’

  Morahan was still sedated following emergency surgery when they reached the hospital. His surgeon said the operation had gone as well as could be expected. ‘He is a strong man. But the injury to his lung is quite severe. And I see …’ The surgeon hesitated. ‘I see … he has had other recent injuries. You should not expect him to recover quickly.’

  Malory said she would sit by his bedside until he regained consciousness. She suggested Sam go to the Station Hotel and tell Max what had happened. Fujisaki for his part found a summons awaiting him. The Chief of Police wished to confer with him at headquarters as soon as possible. Fujisaki’s expression gave little away. All he said was, ‘The Chief does not like cases that involve politics.’ Then he left.

  Fujisaki had stationed two policemen on the door of Morahan’s room, though it was not clear who they might be protecting him from. The ranks of Lemmer’s operatives would be thinning fast now they had all been identified. Sam could not help thinking of Nadia and wondering how she would react to the turn of events. He doubted she would be willing to go down with a sinking ship.

  Morahan himself looked to be sleeping peacefully, despite being swathed in bandages and attached to an assortment of tubes. Malory wept when she saw him. The sight of this man Sam had come to think of as a tower of indomitability reduced to an unconscious figure in a hospital bed was a reminder of just how foolhardy their decision to challenge Lemmer and Tomura had been. They had never been likely to escape unscathed.

  ‘You heard the doc,’ Sam said in an effort to comfort Malory. ‘Schools has got what it takes to get over something like this.’

  But Malory’s expression did not suggest she was comforted at all. ‘I hope so, Sam,’ she said dolefully. ‘I blame myself for talking him into coming to Japan.’

  ‘We all talked ourselves into it. He wouldn’t blame you.’

  ‘I know.’ Malory clasped Morahan’s hand. ‘But that doesn’t make me feel any better.’

  ‘What would?’

  ‘Schools opening his eyes and smiling at me.’

  ‘Well, he will. You just have to be patient.’

  Malory sighed. ‘Then I guess that’s what I’ll be.’

  Sam had been perturbed by Malory’s account of her telephone conversation with Max. When he reached the Station Hotel, he was informed ‘Mr Greaves’ was in the bar. It was thinly populated at that hour of the evening and Max was sitting alone in a booth, staring into a glass of whisky. A drink to celebrate getting the better of Lemmer was understandable, but Max did not look to be in celebratory mood.

  This was partly explained by his revelation that Lemmer’s son had drowned during the kidnapping operation in Switzerland. An unintended death was something Lemmer himself would probably have dismissed as unimportant if the boot had been on the other foot. Max was not made of such ruthless stuff. Nor was Sam. He had never even met the boy. Neither of them had. But still it was, as Sam said and Max agreed, ‘a crying shame’.

  It was also the obvious explanation for Lemmer’s order to kill Morahan, Ward and Djabsu. He wanted to punish those nearest to hand for his son’s death. He was, in the immediate sense, more dangerous than ever.

  ‘You and Malory should probably leave Japan with Schools as soon as he’s fit to travel,’ said Max, nodding at the wisdom of such advice as if it was obvious to him for the first time. ‘None of us is safe with Lemmer looking for revenge and Tomura willing to help him.’

  ‘Maybe Tomura won’t be willing to help him, sir,’ countered Sam. ‘Trumper thought better of it, didn’t he? So will a few others. Lemmer could find himself short of friends.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Did Fujisaki tell you what I’ve learnt about my father and Matilda Farngold?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about that, sir.’

  ‘No? Well, that was decent of him. He probably thought it would come better from me. You have to know. Malory and Schools too.’ Max gulped down the last of his whisky. ‘Though how …’ His voice trailed into silence. Sam was astonished to see his eyes welling with tears.

  ‘What’s wrong, sir?’

  Max shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve had a shock. Probably the biggest shock of my life.’ He pressed his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘Let’s go to the hospital and see how Schools is. Then …’ He summoned a weak smile. ‘Then I’ll explain.’

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN, bringing rain, yet little relief from the heat. The hospital seemed to have lost most of its population in Sam’s absence, its corridors empty and echoing, its courtyards a-splatter from overflowing gutters. Sam could never before recall being worried by Max’s state of mind. But now h
e was. Something had happened beyond the realm of danger and daring where Max normally dwelt, something fundamental to all he was. And Sam could only wait to learn what it might be.

  Malory was in much better spirits than when he had left. Schools had regained consciousness and, though drowsy from the painkillers he had been given, was able to talk, at least for short periods. ‘We mustn’t tire him,’ she instructed them.

  Max’s appearance at his bedside brought a smile from the patient. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, slurring his words slightly. ‘I guess you know things haven’t exactly gone to plan.’

  ‘There were always lots of ways things could go wrong, Schools. I’m sorry one of them ended like this for you.’

  ‘Don’t be. I chose Everett. And I let him choose Duffy and Monteith. They were my mistakes, not yours.’

  ‘There’s a lot I have to tell you. But it can wait until you’re feeling better.’

  ‘It’s true I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders. I can’t recommend a bullet in the lung. But I reckon I’ll be sitting up and taking notice tomorrow. Nurse Hollander permitting.’

  Malory looked sceptical at that, but before she could suggest they leave him to rest, one of the policemen on the door came in, jabbering to the effect that they were wanted outside.

  Fujisaki was waiting, newly returned from a grilling by his chief. He ushered them into an empty office and closed the door.

  ‘I have had my instructions,’ he announced. ‘I hope you understand I have to carry them out.’

  ‘You sound as if we aren’t going to like them, Commissioner,’ said Malory.

  Fujisaki grimaced. ‘The incident at Sugamo prison requires a prompt response. The charges against Morahan, Ward and Djabsu cannot be proceeded with, since Everett, Duffy and Monteith are all dead. And Trumper states Everett and Duffy were killed in self-defence. There is also political embarrassment about Count Tomura’s involvement in the original arrests following what we gather is the, ah … discrediting … of his ally Lemmer. So, the Chief has been told what to do and he has told me to do it. Ward and Djabsu will be held at Sugamo until they can be deported to the United States, probably on the next passenger ship to San Francisco. Morahan will be deported with them, or later if he has not sufficiently recovered to leave the hospital at that time. There is no challenge to this ruling. Deportation of any foreigner can be ordered by the Home Ministry without giving any reasons. From their point of view, it is the best solution to the problem.’