Caravan to Vaccares

Chapter 9

The hot afternoon sun beat down mercilessly on the baking plains beneath, on the étangs, on the marshes, on the salt-flats and the occasional contrasting patches of bright green vegetation. A shimmering haze characteristic of the Camargue rose off the plains and gave a curiously ethereal quality, a strange lack of definition, to all the features of the landscape, an illusion enhanced by the fact that none of those features was possessed of any vertical element. All plains are flat, but none as flat as the Camargue.

Half-a-dozen horsemen on steaming horses galloped furiously across the plain. From the air, their method of progress must have seemed peculiar and puzzling in the extreme as the horses seldom galloped more than twenty yards in a straight line and were continuously swerving off course. But seen at ground level the mystery disappeared: the area was so covered with numerous marshes, ranging from tiny little patches to areas larger than a football field, that it made continuous progress in a direct line impossible.

Bowman was at a disadvantage and knew it. He was at a disadvantage on three counts: he was, as his strained face showed and the blood-stains and dirt-streaks could not conceal, as exhausted as ever – this full-stretch gallop, involving continuous twisting and turning, offered no possibility of recuperating any strength – his mind was as far below its decision-making best as his body was of executing those decisions: his pursuers knew the terrain intimately whereas he was a complete stranger to it: and, fairly accomplished horseman though he considered himself to be, he knew he could not even begin to compare with the expertise his pursuers had developed and refined almost from the cradle.

Constantly he urged his now flagging horse on but made little or no attempt to guide it as the sure-footed animal, abetted by experience and generations of inborn instinct, knew far better than he did where the ground was firm and where it was not. Occasionally he lost precious seconds in trying to force his horse to go in certain directions when his horse balked and insisted on choosing his own path.

Bowman looked over his shoulder. It was hopeless, in his heart he knew it was hopeless. When he had left Mas de Lavignolle he had had a lead of several hundred yards over his pursuers: now it was down to just over fifty. The five men behind him were spread out in a shallow fan shape. In the middle was El Brocador who was clearly as superb a horseman as he was a razateur. It was equally clear that he had an intimate knowledge of the terrain as from time to time he shouted orders and gestured with an outflung arm to indicate the direction a certain rider should go. On El Brocador’s left rode Czerda and Ferenc, still heroically bandaged: on his right rode Simon Searl, an incongruous sight indeed in his clerical garb, and a gypsy whom Bowman could not identify.

Bowman looked ahead again. He could see no sign of succour, no house, no farm, no lonely horseman, nothing: and by this time he had been driven, not, he was grimly aware, without good reason, so far to the west that the cars passing on the main Arles-Saintes-Maries road were no more than little black beetles crawling along the line of the horizon.

He looked over his shoulder again. Thirty yards now, not more. They were no longer riding in a fan shape but were almost in line ahead, bearing down on his left, forcing him now to alter his own line of flight to the right. He was aware that this was being done with some good purpose in mind but, looking ahead, he could see nothing to justify this move. The land ahead appeared as normally variegated as the terrain he had just crossed: there was, directly ahead, an unusually large patch of almost dazzling green turf, perhaps a hundred yards by thirty wide, but, size apart, it was in no way different from scores of others he had passed in the last two or three miles.

His horse, Bowman realized, had run its heart out and was near the end. Sweat-stained, foam-flecked and breathing heavily, it was as exhausted as Bowman himself. Two hundred yards ahead lay that invitingly green stretch of turf and the incongruous thought occurred to Bowman of how pleasant it would be to lie there, shaded, on a peaceful summer’s day. He wondered why he didn’t give up, the end of his pursuit was as certain as death itself: he would have given up, only he did not know how to set about it.

He looked back again. The five horsemen behind had now adopted a deep crescent shape, the outriders not much more than ten yards behind him. He looked ahead again, saw the greensward not more than twenty yards away, then the thought occurred that Czerda was now within accurate shooting range and Bowman was certain that when the five men returned to the caravans he would not be returning with them. Again he looked backwards and was astonished to see all five men reining in their horses and reining them in strongly at that. He knew something was wrong, terribly wrong, but before he could even start to think about it his own horse stopped abruptly and in an unbelievably short distance, forelegs splayed and sliding on its haunches, at the very edge of the patch of greensward. The horse stopped but Bowman did not. Still looking over his shoulder, he had been taken totally unprepared. He left the saddle, sailed helplessly over the horse’s head and landed on the stretch of green grass.

He should have been knocked out, at the worst broken his neck, at the best landed heavily and bruised badly, but none of those things happened because it was at once apparent that the greensward was not what it appeared to be. He did not fall heavily or bounce or roll: instead he landed with a soggy squelching splash on a soft, cushioning and impact-absorbing material. Into this he slowly started to sink.

The five horsemen walked their horses forward, stopped, leaned on their pommels and gazed impassively downwards. Bowman had assumed a vertical position now, although leaning slightly forward. Already, he was hip-deep in the deadly quicksand with the safety of firm land no more than four feet away. Desperately he flailed his arms in an endeavour to reach it but made no progress whatsoever. The watchers remained motionless on their horses: the impassiveness of their faces was frightening in its suggestion of total implacability.

Bowman sank to the waist. He tried a gentle swimming motion for he realized that frantic struggling was only having the opposite effect to what was intended. It slowed up the sinking but did not stop it: the sucking effect of the quicksand was terrifying in its remorselessness.

He looked at the five men. The total impassivity had disappeared. Czerda was smiling the pleased smile he reserved for occasions like this, Searl was slowly, obscenely licking his lips. All eyes were fixed on Bowman’s face, but if he had any thoughts of shouting for help or begging for mercy no sign of it showed in his expressionless face. Nor were there any thoughts of it in his mind. Fear he had known on the battlements of Les Baux and in the bullring at Mas de Lavignolle, but here, now, there was no fear. On the other occasions there had been a chance, however slender, of survival, dependent upon his own resourcefulness, his coordination of hand and eye: but here all his hardly won knowledge and experience and skill, his exceptional reflexes and physical attributes were useless: from a quicksand there can be no escape. It was the end, it was inevitable and he accepted it.

El Brocador looked at Bowman. The quicksand was now almost up to his armpits, only shoulders, arms and head were now in view. El Brocador studied the impassive face, nodded to himself, turned and looked at Czerda and Searl in turn, distaste and contempt in his face. He unhooked a rope from his pommel.

‘One does not do this to a man like this,’ he said. ‘I am ashamed for us all.’ With a skillful flick of his wrist he sent the rope snaking out: it landed precisely midway between Bowman’s outstretched hands.

Even the most ardent publicist of the attractions of Saintes-Maries – if any such exists – would find it difficult to rhapsodize over the beauties of the main street of the town which runs from east to west along a sea-front totally invisible behind a high rock wall. It is, like the rest of the town, singularly devoid of scenic, artistic or architectural merit, although on that particular afternoon its drabness was perhaps slightly relieved by the crowds of outlandishly dressed tourists, gypsies, gardiens and the inevitable fairground booths, shooting galleries, fortune tellers’ stands and souvenir shops that had been haphazardly set up for their benefit and edification.

It was not, one would have thought, a spectacle that would have brought a great deal of gratification to Le Grand Duc’s aristocratic soul, yet, as he sat in the sidewalk café outside the Miramar Hotel, surveying the scene before him, the expression on his face was mellow to the point of benevolence. Even more oddly in the light of his notoriously undemocratic principles, Carita, his chauffeuse, was seated beside him. Le Grand Duc picked up a litre carafe of red wine, poured a large amount in a large glass he had before him, a thimbleful into a small glass she had before her and smiled benevolently again, not at the passing scene but at a telegram form that he held in his hand. It was clear Le Grand Duc’s exceptional good humour was not because of Saintes-Maries and its inhabitants, but in spite of them. The source of his satisfaction lay in the paper he held in his hand.

‘Excellent, my dear Carita, excellent. Exactly what we wished to know. By Jove, they have moved fast.’ He contemplated the paper again and sighed. ‘It’s gratifying, most gratifying, when one’s guesses turn out to be one hundred per cent accurate.’

‘Yours always are, Monsieur le Duc.’

‘Eh? What was that? Yes, yes, of course. Help yourself to some more wine.’ Le Grand Duc had temporarily lost interest in both the telegram and Carita, and was gazing thoughtfully at a large black Mercedes that had just pulled up a few feet away. The Chinese couple whom Le Grand Duc had last seen on the hotel patio in Aries emerged and made for the hotel entrance. They passed by within a few feet of Le Grand Duc’s table. The man nodded, his wife smiled faintly and Le Grand Duc, not to be outdone, bowed gravely. He watched them as they went inside, then turned to Carita.

‘Czerda should be here soon with Bowman. I have decided that this is an inadvisable place for a rendezvous. Too public, too public by far. There’s a big lay-by about one mile north of the town. Have Czerda stop there and wait for me while you come back here for me.’

She smiled and rose to leave but Le Grand Duc raised a hand.

‘One last thing before you go. I have a very urgent phone call to make and I wish it made in complete privacy. Tell the manager I wish to see him. At once.’

Le Hobenaut, Tangevec and Daymel were still in their bunks, still manacled to the caravan wall. Bowman, his pierrot suit now removed and his gardien clothes saturated and still dripping, lay on the floor with his hands bound behind his back. Cecile and Lila were seated on a bench under the watchful eyes of Ferenc and Masaine. Czerda, El Brocador and Searl were seated at a table: they weren’t talking and they looked very unhappy. Their expression of unhappiness deepened as they listened to the measured tread of footsteps mounting the steps of the caravan. Le Grand Duc made his customary impressive entry. He surveyed the three seated men coldly.

‘We have to move quickly.’ His voice was brusque, authoritative and as cold as his face. ‘I have received cabled information that the police are becoming suspicious and may well by this time be certain of us – thanks to you, Czerda, and that bungling fool Searl there. Are you mad, Czerda?’

‘I do not understand, sir.’

‘That’s precisely it. You understand nothing. You were going to kill Bowman before he’d told us how he broke our ring, who his contacts are, where my eighty thousand francs are. Worst of all, you cretins, you were going to kill him publicly. Can’t you see the enormous publicity that would have received? Secrecy, stealth, those are my watch-words.’

‘We know where the eighty thousand francs are, sir.’ Czerda tried to salvage something from the wreck.

‘Do we? Do we? I suspect you have been fooled again, Czerda. But that can wait. Do you know what will happen to you if the French police get you?’ Silence. ‘Do you know the rigorous penalties French courts impose on kidnappers?’ Still silence. ‘Not one of you here can hope to escape with less than ten years in prison. And if they can trace Alexandre’s murder to you. . .’

Le Grand Duc looked at El Brocador and the four gypsies in turn. From the expression on their faces it was quite clear that they knew what would happen if the murder could be traced to them.

‘Very well, then. From this moment on your futures and your lives depend entirely on doing exactly what I order – it is not beyond my powers to rescue you from the consequences of your own folly. Exactly. Is that understood?’

All five men nodded. No one said anything.

‘Very well. Unchain those men. Untie Bowman. If the police find them like that – well, it’s all over. We use guns and knives to guard them from now on. Bring all their womenfolk in here – I want all our eggs in one basket. Go over our proposed plans, Searl. Go over them briefly and clearly so that even the most incompetent nincompoop, and that includes you, can understand what we have in mind. Bring me some beer, someone.’

Searl cleared his throat self-consciously and looked distinctly unhappy. The arrogance, the quietly cold competence with which he’d confronted Czerda in the confessional booth that morning had vanished as if it had never existed.

‘Rendezvous any time between last night and Monday night. Fast motor-boat waiting–’

Le Grand Duc sighed in despair and held up a hand.

‘Briefly and clearly, Searl. Clearly. Rendezvous where, you fool? With whom?’

‘Sorry, sir.’ The Adam’s apple in the thin scraggy neck bobbed up and down as Searl swallowed nervously. ‘Off Palavas in the Gulf of Aigues-Mortes. Freighter Canton.’

‘Bound for?’

‘Canton.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Recognition signals–’

‘Never mind that. The motor-boat?’

‘At Aigues-Mortes on the Canal du Rhône à Sète. I was going to have it moved down to Le Grau du Roi tomorrow – I didn’t think – I–’

‘You never have done,’ Le Grand Duc said wearily. ‘Why aren’t those damned women here? And those manacles still fixed? Hurry.’ For the first time he relaxed and smiled slightly. ‘I’ll wager our friend Bowman still doesn’t know who our three other friends are. Eh, Searl?’

‘I can tell him?’ Searl asked eagerly. The prospect of climbing out of the hot seat and transferring the spotlight elsewhere was clearly an attractive one.

‘Suit yourself.’ Le Grand Duc drank deeply of his beer. ‘Can it matter now?’

‘Of course not.’ Searl smiled widely. ‘Let me introduce Count le Hobenaut, Henri Tangevec and Serge Daymel. The three leading rocket fuel experts on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Chinese wanted them badly, they have been so far unable to develop a vehicle to carry their nuclear warheads. Those men could do it. But there wasn’t a single land border between China and Russia that could be used, not a single neutral country that was friendly to both the great powers and wouldn’t have looked too closely at irregular happenings. So Czerda brought them out. To the West. No one would ever dream that such men would defect to the West – the West has its own fuel experts. And, at the frontiers, no one ever asks questions of gypsies. Of course, if the three men had clever ideas, their wives would have been killed. If the women got clever ideas, the men would have been killed.’

‘Or so the women were told,’ Le Grand Duc said contemptuously. ‘The last thing that we wanted was that any harm should come to those men. But women – they’ll believe anything.’ He permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction. ‘The simplicity – if I may say so myself, the staggering simplicity of true genius. Ah, the women. Aigues-Mortes, and with speed. Tell your other caravans, Czerda, that you will rendezvous with them in the morning in Saintes-Maries. Come, Lila, my dear.’

‘With you?’ She stared at him in revulsion. ‘You must be mad. Go with you?’

‘Appearances must be maintained, now more than ever. What suspicion is going to attach to a man with so beautiful a young lady by his side? Besides, it’s very hot and I require someone to hold my parasol.’

Just over an hour later, still fuming and tight-lipped, she lowered the parasol as the green Rolls-Royce drew up outside the frowning walls of Aigues-Mortes, the most perfectly preserved Crusader walled city in Europe. Le Grand Duc descended from the car and waited till Czerda had brought the breakdown truck towing the caravan to a halt.

‘Wait here,’ he ordered. ‘I shall not be long.’ He nodded to the Rolls. ‘Keep a sharp eye on Miss Delafont there. You apart, no others are on any account to show themselves.’

He glanced up the road towards Saintes-Maries. Momentarily, it was deserted. He marched quickly away and entered the bleak and forbidding town by the north gate, turned right into the car park and took up position in the concealment of a barrel organ. The operator, a decrepit ancient who, in spite of the heat of the day, was wearing two overcoats and a felt hat, looked up from the stool where he had been drowsing and scowled. Le Grand Duc gave him ten francs. The operator stopped scowling, adjusted a switch and began to crank a handle: the screeching cacophonous result was an atonal travesty of a waltz that no composer alive or dead would ever have acknowledged as his. Le Grand Duc winced, but remained where he was.

Within two minutes a black Mercedes passed in through the archway, turned right and stopped. The Chinese couple got out, looked neither to left or right, and walked hurriedly down the main street – indeed, Aigues-Mortes’s only street, towards the tiny café-lined square near the centre of the town. More leisurely and at a discreet distance Le Grand Duc followed.

The Chinese couple reached the square and halted uncertainly on a corner by a souvenir shop, not far from the statue of St Louis. No sooner had they done so than four large men in plain dark clothes emerged from the shop, two from each door, and closed in on them. One of the men showed the Chinese man something cupped in the palm of his hand. The Chinese man gesticulated and appeared to protest violently but the four large men just shook their heads firmly and led the couple away to a pair of waiting Citroëns.

Le Grand Duc nodded his head in what could not easily have been mistaken for anything other than satisfaction, turned and retraced his steps to the waiting car and caravan.

Less than sixty seconds’ drive took them to a small jetty on the Canal du Rhône à Sète, a canal that links the Rhône to the Mediterranean at Le Grau du Roi and runs parallel to the western wall of Aigues-Mortes. At the end of the jetty was moored a thirty-five-foot powerboat with a large glassed-in cabin and an only slightly smaller cockpit aft. From the lines of the broad flaring bows it appeared to be a vessel capable of something unusual in terms of speed.

The Rolls and the caravan pulled clear off the road and halted so that the rear of the caravan was less than six feet from the head of the jetty. The transfer of the prisoners from the caravan to the boat was performed smoothly, expeditiously and in such a fashion that it could have roused no suspicion in even the most inquisitive of bystanders: in point of fact the nearest person was a rod fisherman a hundred yards away and his entire attention was obviously concentrated on what was happening at the end of his line some feet below the surface of the canal. Ferenc and Searl, each with a barely concealed pistol, stood on the jetty near the top of a short gangway while Le Grand Duc and Czerda, similarly unostentatiously armed, stood on the poop of the boat while first the three scientists, then their womenfolk, then Bowman, Cecile and Lila filed aboard. Under the threat of the guns they took up position on the settees lining the side of the cabin.

Ferenc and Searl entered the cabin, Searl advancing to the helmsman’s position. For a moment Le Grand Duc and Masaine remained in the cockpit, checking that they were quite unobserved, then Le Grand Duc entered the cabin, pocketed his gun and rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

‘Excellent, excellent, excellent.’ He sounded positively cheerful. ‘Everything, as always, under control. Start the engines, Searl!’ He turned and poked his head through the cabin doorway. ‘Cast off, Masaine!’

Searl pressed buttons and the twin engines started up with a deep powerful throb of a sound, but a sound by no means loud enough to muffle a short sharp exclamation of pain: the sound emanated from Le Grand Duc, who was still looking aft through the doorway.

‘Your own gun in your own kidney,’ Bowman said. ‘No one to move or you die.’ He looked at Ferenc and Czerda and Searl and El Brocador. At least three of them, he knew, were armed. He said: ‘Tell Searl to stop the engines.’

Searl stopped the engines without having to have the message relayed through Le Grand Duc.

‘Tell Masaine to come here,’ Bowman said. ‘Tell him I’ve got a gun in your kidney.’ He looked round the cabin: no one had moved. ‘Tell him to come at once or I’ll pull the trigger.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘You’ll be all right,’ Bowman said soothingly. ‘Most people can get by on one kidney.’

He jabbed the gun again and Le Grand Duc gasped in pain. He said hoarsely: ‘Masaine! Come here at once. Put your gun away. Bowman has his gun on me.’

There was a few seconds’ silence, then Masaine appeared in the doorway. No profound thinker at the best of times, he was obviously uncertain as to what to do: the sight of Czerda, Ferenc, Searl and El Brocador busy doing nothing convinced him that nothing was, for the moment, the wise and prudent course of action. He moved into the cabin.

‘Now we come up against the delicate balance of power,’ Bowman said conversationally. He was still pale and haggard, he felt unutterably tired and stiff and sore all over: but he felt a prince compared to the condition he’d been in two hours previously. ‘A question of checks and balances. How much influence and authority can I exert on you standing here with this gun in my hand? How much of my will can I impose? So much – but only so much.’

He pulled Le Grand Duc back by the shoulder, stepped to one side and watched Le Grand Duc collapse heavily on a settee, a well-made settee which didn’t break. Le Grand Duc glared at Bowman, the aristocratic voltage in the blue eyes turned up to maximum power: Bowman remained unshrivelled.

‘It’s difficult to believe just looking at you,’ Bowman went on to Le Grand Duc, ‘but you’re almost certainly the most intelligent of your band of ruffians. Not, of course, that that would call for any great intelligence. I have a gun here and it is in my hand. There are four others here who also have guns and although they’re not in their hands at the present moment it wouldn’t take very long for the guns to get there. If it came to a fight, I think it extremely unlikely that I could get all four before one of you – more probably two – got me. I am not a Wild Bill Hickock. Moreover, there are eight innocent people here – nine, if you count me – and a gun-fight in this enclosed space would almost certainly result in some of them being hurt, even killed. I wouldn’t like that any more than I would like being shot myself.’

‘Get to the point,’ Le Grand Duc growled.

‘It’s obvious, surely. What demands can I make upon you that wouldn’t be too great to precipitate this gun-fight that I’m sure we all want to avoid? If I told you to hand over your guns, would you, quietly and tamely, with the knowledge that long prison sentences and probably indictments for murder awaited you all? I doubt it. If I said I’ll let you go but take the scientists and their women, would you go along with that? Again, I doubt it, for they would be living evidence of your crimes, with the result that if you set foot anywhere in Western Europe you’d finish in prison and if you set foot in Eastern Europe you’d be lucky to end up in a Siberian prison camp as the Communists aren’t too keen on people who kidnap their top scientists. In fact, there’d be no place left for you in any part of Europe. You’d just have to go on the Canton and sail all the way home with her and I don’t think you’d find life in China all it’s cracked up to be – by the Chinese, of course.

‘On the other hand, I doubt whether you’d be prepared to fight to the death to prevent the departure of the two young ladies and myself. They’re only ciphers, a couple of romantically minded and rather empty-headed young holidaymakers who thought it rather fun to get mixed up in these dark goings on.’ Bowman carefully avoided looking at the two girls. ‘I admit that it is possible for me to start trouble, but I don’t see I would get very far: It would be only my word against yours, there wouldn’t be a shred of evidence I could offer and there’s no way I can think of how you could be tied up with the murder in the cave. The only evidence lies in the scientists and their wives and they would be half-way to China before I could do anything. Well?’

‘I accept your reasoning,’ Le Grand Duc said heavily. ‘Try to make us give ourselves or the scientists up – or their wives – and you’d never leave this boat alive. You and those two young fools there are, as you say, another matter. You can arouse suspicion, but that’s all you can do: better that than have two or three of my men die uselessly.’

‘It might even be you,’ Bowman said.

‘The possibility had not escaped me.’

‘You’re my number one choice of hostage and safe conduct,’ Bowman said.

‘I rather thought I might be.’ Le Grand Duc rose with obvious reluctance to his feet.

‘I don’t like this,’ Czerda said. ‘What if–’

‘You want to be the first to die?’ Le Grand Duc asked wearily. ‘Leave the thinking to me, Czerda.’

Czerda, obviously ill at ease, said no more. At a gesture from Bowman the two girls left the cabin and climbed the gangway. Bowman, walking backwards with his gun a few inches from Le Grand Duc’s midriff, followed. At the top of the gangway Bowman said to the girls: ‘Get back and out of sight.’

He waited ten seconds then said to Le Grand Duc: ‘Turn round.’ Le Grand Duc turned. Bowman gave him a hefty shove that set him stumbling, almost falling, down the gangway. Bowman threw himself flat: there was always the off-chance of someone or ones down there changing their minds. But no shots were fired, there was no sound of footsteps on the gangway. Bowman raised a cautious head. The engines had started up again.

The powerboat was already twenty yards away and accelerating. Bowman rose quickly and, followed by Cecile and Lila, ran to the Rolls. Carita gazed at him in astonishment.

‘Out!’ Bowman said.

Carita opened her mouth to protest but Bowman was in no mood for protests. He jerked open the door and practically lifted her on to the road. Immediately afterwards he was behind the wheel himself.

‘Wait!’ Cecile said. ‘Wait! We’re coming with–’

‘Not this time.’ He leaned down and plucked Cecile’s handbag from her. She stared at him, slightly open-mouthed, but said nothing. He went on: ‘Go into the town. Phone the police in Saintes-Maries, tell them there’s a sick girl in a green-and-white caravan in a lay-by a kilometre and a half north of the town and that they’re to get her to a hospital at once. Don’t tell them who you are, don’t tell them a single thing more than that. Just hang up.’ He nodded to Lila and Carita. ‘Those two will do for a start.’

‘Do for what?’ She was, understandably, bemused.

‘Bridesmaids.’

The road between Aigues-Mortes and Le Grau du Roi is only a few kilometres long and, for the most part, it parallels the canal at a distance of a few feet: the only boundary line between them, if such it can be called, is a thin line of tall reeds. It was through those reeds, less than a minute after starting up the Rolls, that Bowman caught his first glimpse of the powerboat, fewer than a hundred yards ahead. It was already travelling at an illegally high speed, its stern dug into the water, spray flying high and wide from the deflectors on the bows: the wash set up by the wake of its passing was sending waves high up both sides of the canal banks.

Searl was at the wheel, Masain, El Brocador and Ferenc were seated but keeping a watchful eye on the passengers, while Le Grand Duc and Czerda were conversing near the after door of the cabin. Czerda looked most unhappy.

He said: ‘But how can you be sure that he can bring no harm to us?’

‘I’m sure.’ The passage of time had restored Le Grand Duc to his old confident self.

‘But he’ll go to the police. He’s bound to.’

‘So? You heard what he said himself. His solitary word against all of ours? With all his evidence half-way to China? They’ll think he’s mad. Even if they don’t, there’s nothing in the world they can prove.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ Czerda said stubbornly. ‘I think–’

‘Leave the thinking to me,’ Le Grand Duc said curtly. ‘Good God!’

There was a splintering of glass, the sound of a shot and a harsh cry of pain from Searl, who abandoned the wheel in favour of clutching his left shoulder. The boat swerved violently and headed straight for the left bank: it would unquestionably have struck it had not Czerda, although older than any of his companions and the farthest from the wheel, reacted with astonishing speed, hurled himself forward and spun the wheel hard to starboard. He succeeded in preventing the powerboat from burying – and probably crushing – its bows in the bank, but wasn’t in time to prevent the wildly slewing boat from crashing its port side heavily against the bank with an impact that threw all who were standing, except Czerda, and quite a few who were seated, to the deck. It was at that instant that Czerda glanced through a side window and saw Bowman, at the wheel of the Rolls-Royce and less than five yards distant on the paralleling road, taking careful aim with Le Grand Duc’s pistol through an open window.

‘Down!’ shouted Czerda. He was the first down himself. ‘Flat on the floor.’

Again there came the sound of smashing glass, again the simultaneous report from the pistol, but no one was hurt. Czerda rose to a crouch, eased the throttle, handed the wheel over to Masaine, and joined Le Grand Duc and Ferenc who had already edged out, on all fours, to the poop-deck. All three men peered cautiously over the gunwale, then stood upright, thoughtfully holding their guns behind their backs.

The Rolls had dropped thirty yards back. Bowman was being blocked by a farm tractor towing a large four-wheeled trailer, and balked from overtaking by several cars approaching from the south.

‘Faster,’ Czerda said to Masaine. ‘Not too fast – keep just ahead of that tractor. That’s it. That’s it.’ He watched the last of the north-bound cars go by on the other side of the road. ‘Here he comes now.’

The long green nose of the Rolls appeared in sight beyond the tractor. The three men in the cockpit levelled their guns and the tractor-driver, seeing them, braked and swerved so violently that he came to a rest with the right front wheel of his tractor overhanging the bank of the canal. Its abrupt braking and swerve brought the entire length of the car completely and suddenly in sight.

Bowman, gun cocked in hand and ready to use, saw what was about to happen, dropped the gun and threw himself below the level of the door sills. He winced as bullet after bullet thudded into the bodywork of the Rolls. The windscreen suddenly starred and became completely opaque. Bowman thrust his fist through the bottom of the glass, kicked the accelerator down beyond the detente and accelerated swiftly away. It was obvious that, with the element of surprise gone, he stood no chance whatsoever against the three armed men in the poop. He wondered vaguely how Le Grand Duc felt about the sudden drop in the resale market value of his Rolls.

He drove at high speed past the arena on his left into the town of Grau du Roi, skidding the car to a halt at the approaches to the swing bridge that crossed the canal and connected the two sides of the town. He opened Cecile’s bag, peeled money from the roll of Swiss francs he had taken from Czerda’s caravan, put the roll back in the bag, thrust the bag into a cubby-hole, hoped to heaven the citizens of Grau du Roi were honest, left the car and ran down the quayside.

He slowed down to a walk as he approached the craft moored along the left bank, just below the bridge. It was a wide-beamed, high-prowed fishing boat, of wooden and clearly very solid construction, that had seen its best days some years ago. Bowman approached a grey-jerseyed fisherman of middle age who was sitting on a bollard and lethargically mending a net.

‘That’s a fine boat you’ve got there,’ Bowman said in his best admiring tourist fashion. ‘Is it for rent?’

The fisherman was taken aback by the directness of the approach. Matters involving finance were customarily approached with a great deal more finesse.

‘Fourteen knots and built like a tank,’ the owner said proudly. ‘The finest wooden-hulled fishing boat in the south of France. Twin Perkins diesels. Like lightning! And so strong. But only for charter, m’sieur. And even then only when the fishing is bad.’

‘Too bad, too bad.’ Bowman took out some Swiss francs and fingered them. ‘Not even for an hour? I have urgent reasons, believe me.’ He had, too. In the distance he could hear the rising note of Le Grand Duc’s powerboat.

The fisherman screwed up his eyes as if in thought: it is not easy to ascertain the denomination of foreign banknotes at a distance of four feet. But sailors’ eyes are traditionally keen. He stood and slapped his thigh.

‘I will make an exception,’ he announced, then added cunningly: ‘But I will have to come with you, of course.’

‘Of course. I would have expected nothing else.’ Bowman handed over two one-thousand Swiss franc notes. There was a legerdemain flick of the wrist and the notes disappeared from sight.

‘When does m’sieur wish to leave?’

‘Now.’ He could have had the boat anyway, Bowman knew, but he preferred Czerda’s banknotes to the waving of a gun as a means of persuasion: that he would eventually have to wave his gun around he did not doubt.

They cast off, went aboard and the fisherman started the engines while Bowman peered casually aft. The sound of the powerboat’s engines was very close now. Bowman turned and watched the fisherman push the throttles forward as he gave the wheel a turn to starboard. The fishing boat began to move slowly away from the quayside.

‘It doesn’t seem too difficult,’ Bowman observed. ‘To handle it, I mean.’

‘To you, no. But it takes a lifetime of knowledge to handle such a vessel.’

‘Could I try now?’

‘No, no. Impossible. Perhaps when we get to the sea–’

‘I’m afraid it will have to be now. Please.’

‘In five minutes–’

‘I’m sorry. I really am.’ Bowman produced his pistol, pointed with it to the starboard for’ard corner of the wheel-house. ‘Please sit down there.’

The fisherman stared at him, relinquished the wheel and moved across to the corner of the wheel-house. He said quietly, as Bowman took over the wheel: ‘I knew I was a fool. I like money too much, I think.’

‘Don’t we all.’ Bowman glanced over his shoulder. The powerboat was less than a hundred yards from the bridge. He opened the throttles wide and the fishing boat began to surge forward.

Bowman dug into his pocket, came up with the last three thousand francs of Czerda’s money that he had on him and threw it across to the man. ‘This will make you even more foolish.’

The fisherman stared at the notes, made no attempt to pick them up. He whispered: ‘When I am dead, you will take it away. Pierre des Jardins is not a fool.’

‘When you are dead?’

‘When you kill me. With that pistol.’ He smiled sadly. ‘It is a wonderful thing to have a pistol, no?’

‘Yes.’ Bowman reversed hold on his pistol, caught it by the barrel and threw it gently across to the fisherman. ‘Do you feel wonderful too, now?’

The man stared at the pistol, picked it up, pointed it experimentally at Bowman, laid it down, picked up and pocketed the money, picked up the pistol a second time, rose, crossed to the wheel and replaced the pistol in Bowman’s pocket. He said: ‘I’m afraid I am not very good at firing those things, m’sieur.’

‘Neither am I. Look behind you. Do you see a powerboat coming up?’

Pierre looked. The powerboat was no more than a hundred yards behind. He said: ‘I see it. I know it. My friend Jean–’

‘Sorry. Later about your friend.’ Bowman pointed ahead to where a freighter was riding out in the gulf. ‘That’s the freighter Canton. A Communist vessel bound for China. Behind us, in the powerboat, are evil men who wish to put aboard that vessel people who do not wish to go there. It is my wish to stop them.’

‘Why?’

‘If you have to ask why I’ll take this pistol from my pocket and make you sit down again.’ Bowman looked quickly behind him: the powerboat was barely more than fifty yards behind.

‘You are British, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are an agent of your government?’

‘Yes.’

‘What we call your Secret Service?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are known to our government?’

‘I am to your Deuxième Bureau. Their boss is my boss.’

‘Boss?’

‘Chief. Chef.’

Pierre sighed. ‘It has to be true. And you wish to stop this boat coming up?’ Bowman nodded. ‘Then please move over. This is a job for an expert.’

Bowman nodded again, took the gun from his pocket, moved to the starboard side of the wheelhouse and wound down the window. The powerboat was less than ten feet astern, not more than twenty feet away on a parallel course and coming up fast. Czerda was at the wheel now, with Le Grand Duc by his side. Bowman raised his pistol, then lowered it again as the fishing boat leaned over sharply and arrowed in on the powerboat. Three seconds later the heavy oaken bows of the fishing boat smashed heavily into the port quarter of the other vessel.

‘That was, perhaps, more or less what you had in mind, m’sieur?’ Pierre asked.

‘More or less,’ Bowman admitted. ‘Now please listen. There is something you should know.’

The two boats moved apart on parallel courses. The powerboat, being the faster, pulled ahead, inside its cabin there was considerable confusion.

‘Who was that madman?’ Le Grand Duc demanded.

‘Bowman!’ Czerda spoke with certainty.

‘Guns out!’ Le Grand Duc shouted. ‘Guns out! Get him!’

‘No.’

‘No? No? You dare countermand–’

‘I smell petrol. In the air. One shot – poof.’

‘Ferenc, go and check the port tank.’

Ferenc departed and returned within ten seconds.

‘Well?’

‘The tank is ruptured. At the bottom. The fuel is nearly gone.’ Even as he spoke the port engine faltered, spluttered and stopped. Czerda and Le Grand Duc looked at each other: nothing was said.

Both boats had by now cleared the harbour and were out in the open sea of the Gulf of Aigues-Mortes. The powerboat, on one engine now, had dropped back until it was almost parallel with the fishing boat. Bowman nodded to Pierre, who nodded in turn. He spun the wheel rapidly, their vessel angled in sharply, they made violent contact again in exactly the same place as previously, then sheered off.

‘God damn it all!’ Aboard the powerboat Le Grand Duc was almost livid with fury and making no attempt to conceal it. ‘He’s holed us! He’s holed us! Can’t you avoid him?’

‘With one engine, it is very difficult to steer.’ Under the circumstances, Czerda’s restraint was commendable. He was in no way exaggerating. The combination of a dead port engine and a holed port quarter made the maintenance of a straight course virtually impossible: Czerda was no seaman and even with his best efforts the powerboat was now pursuing a very erratic course indeed.

‘Look!’ Le Grand Duc said sharply. ‘What’s that?’

About three miles away, not more than halfway towards Palavas, a large and very old fashioned freighter, almost stopped in the water, was sending a message by signalling lamp.

‘It’s the Canton!’ Searl said excitedly. He so far forgot himself as to stop rubbing the now padded flesh wound on top of his shoulder. ‘The Canton! We must send a recognition signal. Three long, three short.’

‘No!’ Le Grand Duc was emphatic. ‘Are you mad? We mustn’t get them involved in this. The international repercussions – look out!’

The fishing boat was veering again. Le Grand Duc and Ferenc rushed to the cockpit and loosed off several shots. The windows in the wheelhouse of the fishing boat starred and broke, but Bowman and Pierre had already dropped to the deck which Le Grand Duc and Ferenc had to do at almost exactly the same moment as the heavy oaken stern of the fishing boat crashed into the port quarter at precisely the spot where they were standing.

Five times inside the next two minutes the manoeuvre was repeated, five times the powerboat shuddered under the crushing assaults. By now, at Le Grand Duc’s orders, all firing had ceased: ammunition was almost exhausted.

‘We must keep the last bullets for when and where they will do the most good.’ Le Grand Duc had become very calm. ‘Next time–’

‘The Canton is leaving!’ Searl shouted. ‘Look, she has turned away.’

They looked. The Canton was indeed turning away, beginning to move with increasing speed through the water.

‘What else did you expect?’ Le Grand Duc asked. ‘Never fear, we shall see her again.’

‘What do you mean?’ Czerda demanded.

‘Later. As I was saying–’

‘We’re sinking!’ Searl’s voice was almost a scream. ‘We’re sinking!’ He was in no way exaggerating: the powerboat was now deep in the water, the sea pouring in through gaps torn in the hull by the bows of the fishing boat.

‘I am aware of that,’ Le Grand Duc said. He turned to Czerda. ‘They’re coming again. Hard a starboard – to your right, quickly. Ferenc, Searl, El Brocador, come with me.’

‘My shoulder,’ Searl wailed.

‘Never mind your shoulder. Come with me.’

The four men stood just inside the doorway of the cabin as the fishing boat came at them again.

But this time the powerboat, though sluggish and far from responsive because of its depth in the water, had succeeded in turning away enough to reduce the impact to the extent that the two boats merely grazed each other. As the wheel-house of the fishing boat passed by the cabin of the powerboat, Le Grand Duc and his three men rushed out into the cockpit. Le Grand Duc waited his moment then, with that speed and agility so surprising in a man of his bulk, stood on the gunwale and flung himself on to the poop of the fishing boat. Within two seconds the others had followed.

Ten seconds after that Bowman turned round sharply as the port door of the wheel-house opened abruptly and Ferenc and Searl stood framed there, both with guns in their hands.

‘No.’ Bowman spun again to locate the voice behind him. He hadn’t far to look. The guns of Le Grand Duc and El Brocador were less than a foot from his face. Le Grand Duc said: ‘Enough is enough?’

Bowman nodded. ‘Enough is enough.’