‘They paid a commission,’ said Pol. ‘It was not large.’
‘What were your motives?’
‘I like to spit in the eye of Goliath. It is more satisfying than killing him — and a lot easier. Besides, if the operation had failed, I had nothing to lose. I was not there at the time.’
‘You used mercenaries, of course?’ The Ruler began to turn the pages of the file. ‘On at least two other occasions in your career you have cheated the French, Soviet and British governments, and earned yourself approximately a million dollars playing one off against the other. You also appear to have successfully organized several African terrorist movements against the whites. These, I assume, were not so remunerative?’
‘They paid my expenses.’
‘Monsieur Pol, you have amassed great wealth through great cunning and enterprise, and yet when my agents finally contacted you, you were living in a cheap hotel where it seems you were having trouble paying your bills. You are also banned from entering the United States and the Soviet Union, and a number of smaller countries where you have indulged your adventurous appetites. I understand that you are not very welcome here in Switzerland, after they rescinded your Resident’s Permit last year and sequestered your villa on Lac Léman in order to settle your debts. Nor do I hear that your own compatriots are very happy about you, following certain double-dealings you did with the OAS after the Algerian War. It seems that only your reputation during the Resistance has kept you out of a French gaol.’
‘I congratulate you on the thoroughness of your Intelligence Service,’ said Pol. ‘But as you will have seen from my dossier, I too have some experience of the spy trade and have usually found its practitioners disagreeable, incompetent, and prone to exaggerate. I have no wish to correct their mistakes for them, except to point out that I am still gainfully employed as the legal owner of a shop for ladies’ undergarments behind the Gare St Lazare. As for my relations with the French authorities, I can assure you, Your Majesty, that while not official they are, in certain circles, more than merely cordial.’
The Ruler sat inspecting the knuckles of his manicured hands, on one of which he wore a single gold ring with a square emerald. ‘Your views on Intelligence agents do not interest me, Monsieur Pol. I did not summon you here, in the middle of my short winter vacation, in order to discuss irrelevancies.’
‘Why, then?’
The Ruler appeared to hesitate. He was not used to direct questions. ‘How would you describe your present political leanings?’ he said at last.
Pol began to pat down his kiss-curl. ‘Where you are concerned, Your Majesty, my politics are what you pay for them. The more extreme, the higher the fee;. What are you paying now?’
The Ruler closed Pol’s dossier and pushed it away from him. Then he sat back and steepled his fingers together under that much photographed, deep-cleft chin. ‘I am offering you two million English pounds sterling, Monsieur Pol. It will be paid in gold or any equivalent currency you choose to name. This sum will be sufficient to cover your personal fee, and all expenses.’
‘To do what?’ Pol’s lips were parted, unsmiling, and the sweat had broken out again on his pink brow.
The Ruler was looking at him with his steady black stare. ‘I want you to kill me, Monsieur Pol.’
Charles Pol gave a cooing giggle, almost a girl’s giggle; and his right hand darted back under his jacket and beneath his waistband, groping into the deep recesses of his immense buttocks. Considering his extreme corpulence and the tightness of his clothing, this whole movement displayed an astonishing dexterity.
Before the Ruler fully realized what was happening, Pol’s fat little hand had reappeared, clutching another folded white handkerchief. With a further giggle he thrust out his arm until his hand was less than twelve inches from the Ruler’s face.
The Ruler flinched back, but quickly checked himself. Pol had unclenched his fingers and the handkerchief slowly opened like the petals of a flower, giving off a faint puff of pollen-like powder. The Ruler made another involuntary movement backwards, and remembering where the handkerchief had just come from, raised a hand to his nostrils; then he recognized the smell — it was the same talcum powder that he himself often used after bathing. For a moment he stared at Pol’s hand with an expression of distaste and curiosity.
In the centre of the white petals lay what looked like a small grey cigarette lighter. Pol crooked his little finger and there was a tiny snap. A blade, less than two inches long and a centimetre wide, had transformed the object into a knife which was now pointing at the Ruler’s throat. One edge was serrated with minute hook-like teeth, cut inwards so as to inflict the maximum damage on being withdrawn. It was also slightly hollowed, forming part of a metal tube protruding from the end of the handle. As the Ruler watched, Pol’s thumbnail snicked some hidden catch and a small leaden object rattled on to the desk and rolled across, almost into the Ruler’s lap.
The Ruler’s hand closed over it, and slowly lifted it as if he were inspecting a card at baccarat. ‘Very neat,’ he said. ‘Neat and nasty. You were thoroughly searched when you came in, were you not?’
‘Twice. But remember, we fat men possess certain advantages. The night before his execution, Hermann Goering secreted enough cyanide crystals in his body to have killed twenty men.’
‘We also use metal detectors.’
Pol grinned. ‘Yes. But you will observe that this little toy is made entirely of plastic, except for the soft-nosed bullet.’
The Ruler was looking at the .22 cartridge. A cross had been cut into the lead nose of the bullet. With a look of contempt, he dropped it into his pocket, then wiped his fingers on the desk top. ‘A Mexican knife-gun,’ he murmured, and reached out just as Pol pushed the blade back into the slim plastic handle. ‘You will give me that, please. I do not like my employees carrying unauthorized weapons. The dum-dum bullet alone is proscribed by the Geneva Convention.’
Pol chuckled. ‘I know. It is a toy that breaks all the rules — the only firearm that is banned throughout the United States, including Texas and Arizona. Very handy on a dance floor or in a crowded reception. You press it into the kidney or spleen, the blade shoots in, and pop! — no louder than a champagne cork. The dum-dum splits up inside and there is usually no exit wound.’
‘Give it to me, please,’ the Ruler repeated. Pol handed it to him, and the Ruler dropped it into his side pocket. ‘Why did you show me this little toy? Possession of it would be enough to get you a prison sentence in most countries in the world — including my own.’
Pol gave a fat cherubic smile. ‘Surely you do not begrudge me one small effort to impress you, Your Majesty? After all, you have asked me to kill you. I could have done it just now.’
This time the Ruler smiled back. ‘Yes. But you would not have got away with it. Nor would you have been paid. That is what distinguishes the professional assassin from the random lunatic. I do not want a lunatic, Monsieur Pol. I want a genius. A man capable of committing the impossible crime. Of penetrating not only my National Security system, but also my personal Praetorian Guard.’
‘And then escape?’
The Ruler sat back and gazed at a point above Pol’s head. ‘Whatever else I think of you, Monsieur Pol, I certainly do not underestimate your intelligence and sense of self-preservation. You do not imagine that an attempt on my life — whether it were successful or unsuccessful — would meet with clemency? Your death — and the death of any accomplices or hirelings you decided to use — would be a horrible one.’
‘You must forgive a certain naïveté, Your Majesty, but even I am used to some degree of straight dealing. What you are suggesting sounds more like a fantasy — even a whim. But hardly a business proposition.’
‘Monsieur Pol, I have already mentioned a straight fee of two million sterling. That is not a whimsical proposition. I am now going to give you brief and precise instructions on what you are to do. You will take no notes. When you leave here you will be searched a
gain — thoroughly this time, I promise you — and if you are foolish enough to be carrying some clever little recording gadget, you would be wise to tell me now.’
‘I have an excellent memory,’ Pol replied. ‘But before we begin, might I ask a favour? I would like a whisky. A large one, with no water or ice.’
‘You shall have one.’ As he spoke, the door opened and the retainer reappeared.
CHAPTER 2
‘It’s going to rain,’ the girl said, staring out across the canal at the steep narrow houses. ‘If you’d got up earlier we could have done the whole round trip and been back by now.’ It was an assured, arrogant voice, the voice of a girl who is used to getting her own way. ‘And while we’re about it,’ she added, without turning her head, ‘I think I’m being followed.’
‘You’re always being followed,’ Owen Packer said, feeling the first drops of rain on his bare head. The motor launch had come into sight under the bridge and the row of tourists pressed up to the edge of the landing stage. The girl glanced behind her, seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. Instead, she set her mouth in an exaggerated pout. ‘You knew I wanted to look at the tulips. It’s typical of you. You’re so selfish.’
‘We’d have been in perfectly good time for your bloody tulips,’ Packer said sourly, ‘if you’d just let me screw you this morning.’
‘Please! Half the people here speak English!’
‘To hell with the people here.’ He avoided looking at her, aware that she was already attracting her fair share of looks from the tourists and passers-by. She was a small dark girl in tan culottes, with matching jacket and high-heeled boots. A scarlet beret had been arranged at a precarious angle on her fine black hair, and a pair of octagonal green-tinted sunglasses covered half her face. Her lipstick was blood-red and glistened even under the grey Dutch sky.
The motor launch chugged round and bumped against the rubber tyres hanging under the landing stage. The girl took another glance behind her before stepping nimbly aboard, and without waiting for Owen Packer she made her way to the front of the glass-covered cabin. Packer allowed a few elderly women tourists to go ahead of him, before joining the girl. The seat beside her was already taken by a plump man with pebble-glasses and a pork pie hat.
It was typical of her, Packer thought. Although his legs were much longer than hers, she somehow always managed to keep several paces ahead of him, whether they were entering hotels, restaurants, aeroplanes, or just walking in the street. Perhaps it was something to do with breeding, he decided gloomily.
His face was set to the window, already streaked with rain, and he looked out at the familiar postcard views of canals, houseboats, belfries, the replica of Van Gogh’s swing-bridge. At least they had been spared a morning in the Rijksmuseum, filing through those rooms full of gloomy Dutch Masters. For although Sarah worked as what she called a ‘personal secretary’ to the director of a Bond Street art gallery, she showed no interest whatever in art. He often wondered what she was interested in — between the narrow giddy social life she led among her select friends in West End clubs during the week, and at country house parties at weekends. What Packer called the Backgammon-Bollinger Brigade.
He was honest enough to realize that part of her attraction for him — perhaps the greater part — lay in her exclusiveness. In the early days after they had first met, when she had still shown some passion for him, she had taken him to a famous London shop and bought him a silver pen. Sarah Laval-Smith had paid by cheque, and when the assistant politely asked for her name and address on the back, she had pointed, with chilling arrogance, to the inscription at the top of the cheque. The name of the bank matched that of her signature.
He turned his head, enough to see her neighbour trying to talk to her. She was giving the man that wide alluring smile which she reserved for strangers. Owen Packer had long discovered that her sulks and wilful petulance were inflicted only on her intimates: a bitter privilege which he had learned to endure.
A girl had stood up in the front of the boat and was intoning a list of names and places, in Dutch, English, French, and German. It was raining hard by the time they reached the Grutsmolen. ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, you see one of the most famous windmills in Holland. As you will know, Holland has many hundreds of windmills. But the Grutsmolen is one of the largest and best preserved.’
Packer caught a glimpse of Sarah’s neat profile beside the plump bespectacled face under the pork pie hat. Very deliberately she lowered her large tinted glasses on to the end of her nose and gave Packer a wink. Like the spectacles, her eyes seemed a little too large for the rest of her face, which was of a startling prettiness, fine-boned and feline, with a fresh-skinned innocence that belied her natural self-confidence and aggression. Yet it was her eyes that remained her most striking feature: very dark, and sloping at an odd angle, as though a photograph of her had been cut exactly in half then put together again fractionally out of line. They gave her a sly, muckle-mouthed expression that was not conventionally beautiful, but extraordinarily attractive. For Owen Packer this attraction lost nothing in the knowledge, as her current consort, that much of her allure depended on artifice, including a set of false eyelashes and a broad colour scheme of skilfully applied eyeshadow.
When the boat stopped, Packer tried to take her arm, but she evaded him and reached the quayside well ahead of him. He caught up with her as she stood huddled, urchin-like in her rain-spattered beret, under the canvas awning. ‘Still being followed?’ he asked, with a forced grin.
She looked away. ‘The man next to me said there are some wonderful tulip nurseries about two miles from here.’
‘Bully for him. And you’re ready to walk there in this pissing rain?’
‘Why do you always have to sound so cross?’ she pouted. ‘You stay here and look at your windmill, and I’ll take the bus. There’s one every ten minutes. I’ll see you back at the hotel this evening.’
‘Thanks,’ said Packer. He made an ineffectual attempt to kiss her, but she ducked artfully away.
‘Please, my make-up!’ she cried. ‘The rain’s done enough damage as it is.’ She turned, smiling. ‘Now go along and have a good look at your lovely windmill. It’ll cheer you up.’
‘I’m perfectly cheerful,’ he said. ‘I’m cheerful enough to take a running jump into the canal.’
She shrugged and adjusted the angle of her beret. ‘You’ve been in a foul temper ever since you got up. I just hope you’re nicer this evening.’
He watched her walk over to the bus. The man in the pork pie hat was already aboard. Packer didn’t wait to see if she sat next to him again, but turned and walked towards the mill.
Follow the rule book, he thought grimly: if I start a quarrel now, it’ll just get worse. Though it couldn’t be much worse than it was at the moment. This weekend expedition had gone badly from the start. The plane had been three hours late leaving, and Packer had mislaid his passport and traveller’s cheques just before take-off. ‘God, you’re hopeless!’ she’d cried. ‘However did you become a Captain in the army?’ ‘I wasn’t in the army,’ he’d replied, ‘I was on special duties.’ ‘Oh, how exciting and mysterious!’ she’d taunted him, with her spiteful laugh. As with art and windmills, she appeared to have no interest in Packer’s past career.
He entered the blue and white door of the Grutsmolen. The windmill stood on six storeys, of which the first three were living quarters — painstakingly preserved seventeenth-century Dutch interiors, like the inside of a giant dolls’ house. Packer began to forget his frustrations as he climbed to the fourth floor; this would contain the machinery that never failed to fascinate him. But there was little machinery to be seen. Between the sloping walls were a couple of wooden bins and some rusted wheels. He climbed to the next floor and saw with disgust that the stones, ‘horses’, and grain chutes had been stripped out and replaced by a large circular table with a relief map of the Low Countries, showing a network of dykes and canals.
He started back down, scowling at the old Dutchman who had relieved him of two guilders for the entrance fee. Outside, both the launch and the bus had gone. He walked out into the rain and kicked viciously at the gravel path, and heard a shrill voice behind him — ‘Engleesh?’ — followed by a high-pitched laugh.
Packer turned and saw a short, immensely fat man, wet and flushed and grinning, swaying in front of a stationary taxi.
‘Your wife, she leave you, hein?’ The man wiped some rain from the tip of his pointed beard. ‘So we follow, hein?’
Packer took a step towards him; and even through the rain he could smell the gin on his breath. ‘Who are you?’ The man was obviously not English, which he had spoken with an absurdly distorted Cockney accent.
At this moment the fat man reverted to French. ‘I thought I would catch you at the mill, but then the lady decides to disappear — poof! Comme toutes ces femmes emmerdantes!’ He stepped back and grappled unsteadily with the rear door of the taxi. ‘Please, monsieur!’ he cried, in his cooing voice.
Packer took another step forward and stopped. ‘I didn’t see you on the boat,’ he said fiercely, ‘so they must have told you at the hotel, and you came by taxi.’ The man gave a giggle, which exploded into a belch. ‘Who the hell are you?’ Packer yelled.
‘’Oo the ’ell am I?’ the fat man repeated, again in English; then with some difficulty he reached under his raincoat and pulled out a stout crocodile wallet from which he handed Packer a card.
Packer read, in embossed copperplate: CHARLES AUGUSTE POL (Légion d’Honneur) Conseil d’Affaires, P.O. 248, Genève, La Suisse
Packer started to hand it back, but the Frenchman brushed him aside, at the same time managing to drag the taxi door open. ‘Please, you are my guest!’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Packer. ‘Where do you want to take me?’
‘To find the young lady, of course! Cherchez la femme!’ He gave Packer a boss-eyed grin and rolled almost head first into the back of the taxi. The driver sat watching him with mild reproof; he had switched off the engine, but the meter was still running and showed over fifty guilders. Monsieur Charles Auguste Pol was being an unusually lucrative customer.
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