Invaders

by Brian Lumley

  “Eventually she told me just about everything. And all the time—all through our ‘romance,’ if you want to call it that—I was aware that she was being watched; even when I’d first met her, there was this tall guy watching from the shadows. I didn’t tell her about it, but I knew I wasn’t mistaken. Finally she told me why we couldn’t be together. It was for my sake: she didn’t want me to get into trouble.

  “The time came when she said she’d have to be moving on. I knew I loved her, even though it had been less than a week. Maybe I needed someone to love. My mother was recently dead, and I guessed that at the rate I was burning myself up it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be joining her. And now there was Natasha to fill a void I had never thought would exist, and I just couldn’t see anything to stop us being together. But she could: the Mob. So I asked her why shouldn’t we go and tell her story to the local police, the Surete? She said they were in Castellano’s pocket. So I said she should think about something: next time she’d be in Marseille, let me know beforehand and I would be there to take her out of it; to England where she’d be safe. Or comparatively safe, anyway. And she said okay.

  “So on our last night together I was in a pretty frustrated mood. And wouldn’t you know it? Her tail was there as always. I would know him anywhere: this tall man with his thin white face and dark eyes. But we had made our plans and the next time Natasha was in town would be the last time. She would come with me into England on a tourist visa, we’d get married, and she would stay on as my wife. It seemed more than likely she’d be lost to the Mob for good. So maybe she thought we should seal our pact. Or perhaps it was more than that; maybe she simply wanted to be with me on what would be our last night for some time to come.

  “Anyway, she said yes, she would come back to my hotel with me. But there was no way I intended to have the tall fellow for company.”

  “We took a taxi to a bar a stone’s throw from my hotel, and when Natasha went to the ladies’ I waited just inside the door. Sure enough a car pulled up and the tail got out. And that finally did it for me; I’d had it up to here. So stepping outside I didn’t bother to introduce myself but simply lashed out and knocked him down. Some of the stuff the SAS had taught me was finally coming in handy. And before he was even nearly ready to get up again, I took Natasha off to my hotel.

  “Looking back on it now—oh, I was some kind of clown! To actually believe I could get away with it. Worse, I hadn’t considered the repercussions where Natasha was concerned. Though I certainly did the next morning … .

  “After breakfast, when I took her down to catch a taxi, the heavies were there. And this time I didn’t see them, didn’t see it coming—didn’t even feel it until I woke up at Castellano’s villa. Not that I knew where I was at the time; my location was something I found out later. Anyway:

  “ … I was tied to a chair in one of the bedrooms. And Natasha was tied to a bed. We were both in our underwear. I seem to remember windows with thick drapes, so that not even a chink of sunlight came through. But it felt like day. Midday, quiet, too hot outside to even think of movement. That was what it was: no movement. A humid, drowsy day. And the room was dimly lit; wall lights turned low, and a shaded bedside lamp. But I’m way ahead of myself. At first I didn’t see a damn thing, I only felt the pain in the back of my skull.

  “Then, as I gradually came to, I heard voices speaking in Italian. I knew the language well enough to know they were talking about me … and Natasha. ‘After the girl,’ one voice said, ‘then you can have him. But first, I want him to see and understand—the spoiled English brat! I would have had her myself a long time ago, except that might have been problematic. Even so, I was tempted. And if she’d been a little more willing … but I won’t force any woman, it’s too demeaning—to myself, I mean. Anyway, our colleagues in Moscow think highly, much too highly, of this bitch. And now this brat has spoiled her. Well for me, at least. I don’t take anyone’s leavings, Jean Daniel, so this is your lucky day; you get to do it for me. Let’s face it, you’ve watched her often enough, and I’m sure you’ve fancied her just as frequently, eh? So, what better way to pay him back for what he did to you?’

  “‘Fancied her?’ the other voice said. ‘Hey, I’m only human, Luigi! And this is … this is a lot … a lot of woman … .’”

  As for Jake’s own voice as he told or relived his story: it had sunk very low, become guttural, until at this point he was choking on his words, having difficulty getting them out. Trask saw this and said, “Jake, we can leave it there if you like.”

  But the other shook his head. “No,” he said grimly. “No, I think I’d like to finish it. Maybe it’s good for me to remember what went down. Because then I’ll be sure I was right in what I did. Yes, and it also serves to remind me of what remains to be done … .” And after a moment:

  “These voices,” he went on, “were very distinctive. The one belonged to Castellano, as I was about to find out. It was very deep and powerful; like a rumble, a purring sound, even when he was speaking quietly. And the other, this Jean Daniel’s voice, it had an obvious French accent in keeping with his name. But it also had something of a lisp, which explained itself as soon as I saw him.

  “Anyway, I must have twitched, moved my head or something. Maybe I groaned, but suddenly they knew I was awake. Then shadows moved in that dim room.

  “They came from behind me, one pausing to stand beside my chair, the other moving towards the bed, positioning itself in an easy chair on the other side of the lamp. They were men, of course, but to my blurred vision more like shadows. But as my eyes adjusted and my head stopped swimming, finally I saw Natasha, spreadeagled there on the four-poster. And because she’d lifted her head she could see me, too. Maybe that—that look on her face, expressing her relief that I’d finally come to—was how they knew I’d regained consciousness. But in any case, it was an expression that didn’t last much longer.

  “The one beside the bed spoke, and his deep purring voice told me that this was Luigi Castellano. ‘Ah, Natasha, Natasha!’ he rumbled, as she turned her pale, frightened face to look at him. ‘First the injury and then the insult, ’ he said. ‘To have spurned my friendship, my warmest offerings of affection, for this … this Englishman’s. Perhaps you didn’t understand that in the game we play it’s always business first—no such thing as mixing business with pleasure, Natasha. And if there was we might reasonably expect you to take your pleasures with one of us, not some stupid outsider. Perhaps it’s my fault; I allowed you too much leeway? But no, for I hate to blame myself.’

  “I tried to look at the speaker but he was still a shadow, a dark silhouette hunched behind the cone of faint yellow radiance from the bedside lamp. And he went on speaking:

  “‘But then again, what if this foreign playmate of yours wasn’t so stupid after all but a member of one of those agencies we haven’t yet got to, eh? You took too many chances, Natasha—took too much pleasure, I fancy—and now you must pay. Ah, but what price? Well, since you don’t seem to care too much for the company of a business partner, I was obliged to find a punishment to fit your … your what, your crime? Ah, but no—too harsh by far—your error of judgement, then. A punishment to fit both participants, that is. Tit for tat, if you like. Or better far, tits for tat?’ Castellano’s tone was much harsher, harder now. ‘Yes, and the rest of your more than ample charms in the bargain … .’

  “He looked up and beckoned to Jean Daniel. My chair was a swivel. The man beside me spun it, and I went turning, turning, feeling sick as a dog as the room revolved around me. At least it gave me a chance to identify my tormentor, his cold, smiling face passing before me as the chair slowed down. It was Natasha’s tail, of course, and Castellano’s tall pale-faced watchdog.

  “Finally he spoke to me in broken English through a broken mouth, which accounted for his lisp. I hadn’t realized how hard I’d hit him. ‘Bastard!’ he said. ‘Stupid, English, pig bastard! When I finish with her, then is your turn. We see who hit ha
rdest, eh?’ He made to move towards the bed.

  “‘If you hit her,’ I mumbled, ‘if you strike her just once, I swear I’ll—’ But he turned, cut me off, said:

  “‘Hit her? With fist?’ For a moment he frowned, looked puzzled. But then, grinning as best he could through split lips, he said, ‘No, stupid, I not hit. I fuck her!’

  “And he did … .” Jake’s voice was a growl now, a sob, a low moan. “With that dog Castellano watching, and laughing. And me: I couldn’t look away. I had to look! He ripped her underclothes right off her. The skinny bastard—he didn’t pause to get undressed—he just … he just … And Natasha, she didn’t even speak, didn’t cry out. But she did cry. I heard her sobbing … .”

  And Trask cut in. “I’ll take it from here, Jake, okay?” And before the other could protest:

  “You were found in an alley badly beaten. Four broken ribs, and your nose much as we see it now. The rest of your face was a mass of bruises. You’d been kicked, too—someone had really worked on you—so badly that for a day or two the French doctors couldn’t be sure they’d be able to save

  . everything. But you still had your plastic, and paper money in your pockets, so it looked like the motive wasn’t theft. In fact, they never discovered what the motive had been; even when you could talk you weren’t telling anyone, said you didn’t know. Now why was that, Jake?”

  “I was going to handle it my own way,” Jake answered, dispassionately now. “And I did, eventually.”

  “Yes, you did,” Trask nodded. “But that came later. Do you want to pick the story up again?”

  The other’s face was white, drawn, but he nodded.

  “I was three weeks in hospital,” Jake eventually continued. “No word from Natasha; I didn’t know what had happened to her, but I prayed it wasn’t physical. Or rather, nothing more than she’d already suffered. As for what I had suffered … I think it was as much mental as physical, worrying about Natasha, I mean. But at last they turned me loose. By which time there’d been plenty of time to think things out. Now it was up to her. If she still wanted out—if she still dared—I was her man. Huh! That old motto of mine: ‘Who Dares Wins.’ Well, I dared for sure, because I loved her. See, I still hadn’t learned my lesson. Then again, do fools in love ever learn?” He managed a wry grin. “How about that: Jake Cutter, philosopher!

  “About Jean Daniel, which was the only name I ever knew him under: my initial intentions towards that bastard had been very bloody. At first … well, I admit that I’d equipped myself. And I had gone looking for them, too—the Mob, I mean—but carefully. And as I healed, so I had quit abusing myself with booze and maybe some other stuff. The army had trained us hard: ‘body maintenance,’ my section commander had used to call it. But now I found it really difficult to get back into the routine. Oh, I was still young, but as you’ve pointed out, Mr. Trask, that Jean Daniel had done a hell of a good job on me. Such a good job, it took me four long months to put the damage right.

  “I completed my recuperation in England, went back to Marseille. But time was passing and I still hadn’t heard from Natasha. I had given her both my English and French telephone numbers; if she couldn’t speak to me, she should certainly be able to speak to friends of mine. Still I hadn’t heard from her, and time seemed against me, seemed to be flying. But where Natasha was concerned, it was like some kind of paradox: the months passing like so many years! I couldn’t forget her—I still wanted her—and the debt that the Mob owed us was slowly slipping out of memory and into the past.

  “Earlier, however, not long after leaving the hospital, I had found Castellano’s villa. I did it the easy way, by tailing the tail. I’d grown a designer beard, tinted my sideboards grey and changed my mode of dress, even developed a limp. Or rather, I had deliberately held onto the limp I’d been left with, legacy of Jean Daniel. In all I looked quite a lot older. And I was staying out of bars, places where people might have been warned to look out for me. But one lonely night—I don’t know, maybe I was hoping against hope that Natasha would be there—I went back to the bar where I’d first met her.

  “I suppose I was lucky I’d developed my disguise, for Jean Daniel was there. He was on his own, didn’t notice me. But when he left I was waiting in my car, followed him to the villa. And having found the place, I sat back out of sight and watched it, watched its clientele … hard men, all of them! Then, for some few weeks, I followed them, too. Well and good—now I knew the places to avoid if ever Natasha came back to Marseille; I mean, I knew which routes not to take getting her out of there. And I knew to get her out fast.

  “For despite all my earlier intentions, finally I was getting some sense. These people played rough, played for keeps. So maybe I’d be wise to forget the revenge thing, simply take Natasha and run for home. If she ever came back.

  “And eventually she did.

  “It was less than three years ago, in early November. I got a message from a friend, who gave me a Moscow telephone number. And when I called … I knew it could only be Natasha. She was scared. Castellano had done a job on her, ruined her reputation with the Moscow Mob. For a long time they’d left her alone, let her go to the dogs. She’d been unable to find work, and finally she’d become desperate. Then she’d begged a Mob boss to let her run drugs again. And now she was coming to Marseille. But Castellano knew she was coming and she was more afraid of him than ever.

  “I asked her if she remembered our previous plans. She did, and was ready to do whatever I’d worked out for us. But her own idea was a lot more daring: to dump her drug consignment cheaply on a rival French gang, and then to run with the money! Even cheaply it would still be worth a quarter million sterling.

  “At first I backed away from it. But the more I thought it over the more I liked it. Wouldn’t it be as good, even better, than the somewhat more physical revenge that I’d once planned? And it would hit them all, not just Jean Daniel, who obviously had been my principal target.

  “Natasha had already contacted her buyer; she was supposed to come by yacht but instead would fly into Marseille. That way she’d have time to dispose of her load and get out of France—with me, of course—before Castellano and his people even knew she was missing. My part of it would be simple: drive like hell for Lyon, Dijon, and Paris, finally the tunnel. I’d studied the routes, couldn’t find any fault with the plan. We’d be on board a train and passing beneath the English Channel before the Marseille Mob even thought to backtrack Natasha’s movements. So we reckoned, anyway.

  “Maybe it would have been easier to fly. But that way would have meant leaving my car behind. I had a beauty, an almost new Peugeot. Also, if we’d flown the Mob would find it a lot easier to track us. Idiot that I must have been, I still hadn’t fully appreciated just what kind of people I was fooling with … .”

  Jake paused to look at Trask. “You compared the modern Mob to terrorist organizations. Well, I thought I had learned something about terrorism in the SAS. Maybe I had, but plainly not enough. And anyway, that was just classroom stuff. Whatever, I thought of the Mob a lot differently from you: as just a bunch of hoods, I suppose. But you were right and I was wrong.

  “They were probably watching her all the way down the line. They’d probably always watched her … maybe they have watchers for all their couriers and dupes. Take Jean Daniel for example. That spindly bastard was just another watchdog. Not so hard to understand when you consider the street value of the merchandise …

  “Natasha was wearing dark glasses, a wig and all when I met her off the plane. But I knew her immediately. And so did they. Then … it was like a repetitive nightmare, almost a repeat of last time. Except this time there were five of them at the villa, and the way they went at it …

  “ … Oh God! Oh God!—I knew they wouldn’t be taking prisoners this time.”

  Jake’s face was ashen now. Earlier tonight he’d known more or less what to expect; even if he had only half believed in it, still he had been doing a job. But at the time
of his collision with the Mob, Castellano’s people—that kind of monster—he had been … what, naive? Well, no longer.

  Ben Trask knew it was time to step in, but more forcefully now. “That’s enough, Jake!” he said. “You don’t need to go into any further details. Why upser yourself? We’ve all heard enough and we’re on your side. As for ‘justice’—the justice you received?—I might know a lot more about that than you do. So for now, let’s skip that night at the villa.” But:

  “That long, long night,” Jake husked, sweating and shivering at the same time, his skin almost visibly crawling. “All of them, and that bastard Castellano watching it from the shadows. God, I still don’t know what he looks like! But afterwards, oh, I remembered the rest of them in minute detail, would never let myself forget them. And their laughter, like jackals. And their jokes. The way they went at her, leaving no marks, no signs …”

  “Skip it, Jake!” Trask’s grating voice, shaking him out of it.

  Jake sat back and gulped at the air, gradually quit shuddering. Eventually a little colour returned to his face, and finally he was able to continue.

  “I came to in the water. Underwater! My car’s windows were half open and we were sinking like a brick. At first I was disoriented, didn’t know what the hell was happening. I think I woke up because I couldn’t breathe. Like when I was a kid: I’d come screaming awake thinking I was drowning, only to discover that my head was under the covers. But this time it was river water. And I was stupidly trying to push back the covers … I mean, I felt stupid, drugged—which of course I was! But then, as I remembered what had gone down, I looked for Natasha in the passenger seat. She wasn’t there, and I thanked God—