Die Rich Die Happy

He tried the balcony windows, and found them locked, and spoke to the girl. The gun barrel flashed once, then again, and a pattern of cracks showed on the glass as Sherif flicked his lighter. She jabbed then at a square of cracks near the window latch, and glass made a brittle splash of sound as it fell. Sherif reached in and opened the window. They entered the offices of Stanley East and Partners, Solicitors. For a long time afterward Mr. East was to wonder why nothing was stolen, and why so many policemen came to investigate.

Selina and Sherif went from the solicitors' office to the lift, and Sherif wasted two frantic minutes explaining what a lift was, then they went down to the ground floor, and Sherif opened the main door, reset the catch, and locked up again as they went through.

London boiled in front of her, a long, wide street that seemed an endless river of cars, with here and there a bus, a floating island, moving always past her, cutting off any chance of escape. She squeezed hard on the butt of the Browning, now in her pocket, but it gave her no comfort. Sherif touched her arm gently.

"We must go, princess," he said.

"We can't," said the girl. "We'll be killed. All these cars—" Sherif's hand came round her elbow. Wide-eyed with fear, she faced the impossible task of going over a zebra crossing to enter a tube station, to be carried in a machine that went through a hole in the ground.

e e o

It had been terrible. You went into a great hall like a desert, a hall that contained nothing but machines and people, and the people pushed and scurried, the machines made their noises and vomited tickets and coins. Selina clenched her fists so tightly that the nails broke the skin, and willed herself to go down, down with Sherif, on the staircase that moved, to the empty platform, to stand near the shining serpents of track until the red monster roared up, halted, the doors slid open, and she must go inside. Her legs went rigid then; she could not move, until Sherif had said: "It is God's will, princess. If you do not do this thing, we shall both die." She had moved then, endured the alternation of blackness and hght; how beautiful the platforms were—open, spacious, gleaming; how terrible the tunnel, with its blackness so close to her, and the carriage a tube inside a tube. For half an hour she endured it, and then Sherif took her arm once more, the doors opened, and she was free to step outside, to get out of the blackness, up to street level and more cars, which seemed so harmless now, after the enveloping dark.

Sherif had hailed a taxi then, and after that ride they had walked, through streets that were mean and grubby, where the grit crunched under her feet and she could smell the river nearby. They had gone to a boarding-house, and the owner, a Chinese with a permanent smile as meaningless as the register Sherif signed, showed them a room. Sherif took it at once, and paid in advance. The room contained a bed, a chair, a table with a basin and jug of water, a towel hke tissue paper, and a cupboard. The cupboard was locked. The room cost five pounds a day.

"You will be safe here," said Sherif. "The Chinaman never betrays his guests. That is why he is so expensive." He looked in his wallet. "I paid for three days," he said. T have only five pounds left. Have you money, princess?"

Selina dug into the pocket of her pants, poured a shining golden stream on to the rickety table.

Sherif said: "My father used to tell me about the old days. The way the great ones hved. Gold in one hand, death in the other. And they offered both as princes should. You belong in those times, princess."

"You have served me well," said Selina. "Why?"

"First because I feared you," Sherif said, "then because I admired you. Also I think that Schiebel will kill me.

"Go on," Sehna said.

"I believe in everything he has done for Zaarb," said Sherif. "But I think the cobalt scheme is wrong—wicked. I do not think he should give the cobalt to China or to

anyone else. I would stop him if I could, and I believe he knows this. What am I to do, princess?"

"Let my father protect you," said Selina.

"I hate everything about your father," said Sherif. "I hate everything about you—except your courage."

"Go away, then," said Selina. "Start again elsewhere. Here." She picked up a handful of coins, held them out to him. He took them, and mumbled his gratitude.

"It is only money," said Selina. "The way you escaped —that was good. It deserves a reward."

"Schiebel taught me that way," said Sherif.

She looked at him more closely: a weak man, but gifted, intelligent, and with a sense of duty that tormented his weakness.

"You should kill Schiebel," she said.

"I can't," said Sherif.

"It would be better for you, and for what you believe, if Schiebel died." Sherif nodded. Selina said: "I want you to help me find a man called Craig."

« · «

Loomis stuck his thumb on the bell-push and held on. After ten seconds he began to jab at it as if it were a face he disliked. After twenty-five seconds Craig's voice said: "Yes?" and Loomis said: "It's me, dammit." The door opened slightly then, and Loomis saw no one. He pushed the door open, and went inside, and found Craig was behind him, the Smith and Wesson a weight in his hand.

"You take a hell of a time to open a door," Loomis snarled, then he noticed that Craig wore no coat or tie, one shirt button was undone. In the secrecy of his mind, he scored a point to Craig. When the doorbell rang, Craig dressed, because clothes were armor; he put on shoes, because shoes were weapons, and he waited by the door with a gun. Craig was the best he had, because his thoroughness was absolute. If only he weren't so bloody sentimental. He looked at the bedroom door and frowned.

"Company?" he said.

"Board meeting," said Craig. "You'd better take the

chair."

"The Busoni person?"

Craig nodded, went inside the bedroom door, whispered for a while, then came out and locked the door from the outside.

"I don't think she'd better see you," said Craig. "She's sensitive."

He glowered at Loomis, then grinned, reluctantly. "You bastard," he said.

Loomis chose the biggest chair and sat, cautiously. The chair groaned, but held.

"You found out we planted her, did you? I had to be sure about this one, son. It's important, d'you see? I couldn't leave it to a boozer." He leaned back in the chair and clasped his great hands over his paunch.

"Big excitement at AZ Enterprises," he said. "Looks as if the Sehna person may have escaped."

"She went back to the Haram," said Craig. T put her on the plane."

"No," Loomis said. "She got as far as Aden, we know that. Then she reached Zaarb. There was a bit of a disturbance at her hotel, I gather. People killed, that sort of thing. There was a very British sort of chap involved in it too, so I hear."

"Schiebel?"

Loomis nodded.

"I think he's here, too, Craig. He has to be. He can't just let Naxos go."

"But how did he get in?" Craig asked. "Couldn't you have had a watch out for him?"

Loomis cocked his head on one side, and grinned round his beak of a nose. He looked like a monstrous, world-weary parrakeet.

T did, son," he said. T knew it wouldn't do any good but I did it anyway. Just in case he changed his technique. But he hasn't. The Zaarb Embassy had a packing case dehvered last week. Bloody big one. Hundred-and-forty-four-piece dinner service. Sent from East Germany via Zaarb. That's the third this year. They must eat the bloody plates. I think they were both inside it. After that they'd send her to the AZ place."

"And now she's escaped?"

"We think so, son. We've had the place watched, d'you see? Chap coming off duty spotted a couple of Arabs in the tube station. Tall, thin man called Sherif—we know

him. Had an Arab-looking girl with him. Beautiful. Wore slacks and a sweater. Scared stiff of the tube." "Did he foUow them?"

"Of course not," said Loomis. "He'd had no instructions and he'd finished his shift." He scowled. "Policemen," he said. "But, anyway, he heard where they were going— Wapping. I got a search out now, Craig. We got to find her."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?" said

Craig.

The answer was as fast as a reflex.

"Because it's none of your bloody business. You work for the department; you know what I want you to know and that's all, son. Besides"—he raised his voice effortlessly as Craig tried to speak again—"you're a sentimentalist. I have to watch that. It slows you up." He looked at the door Craig had locked.

"Why tell me now?" Craig asked, and thought how smug Loomis could appear. That was his size of course. Whatever expression Loomis chose it was inevitably bigger than anyone else's.

"I want her back, son," said Loomis, "and so do you. Got any ideas?"

"I thought she'd have tried to contact me anyway."

"Maybe she can't," Loomis said. "She's got Sherif with her. And even if she's free, where does she start looking? You're not in the telephone book—and even if she went to the police—they wouldn't help her. They can't. Only Special Branch knows we exist, and they aren't allowed to tell where we are. If she did get that far they'd hold on to her of course, but it's dicey, son. And anyway, the only coppers she knows are the ones in Zaarb. And they arrested her. She just might not fancy the police."

"East End?" said Craig. "That where the tube went?"

Loomis nodded. "Down by the docks. Know anybody

there?"

"It's possible," Craig said. "If he's still in business. Chap I met years ago, as a matter of fact. Versatile sort of fellow but a little bit shy. Not at all keen on policemen. They'd like to arrest him, you see. He's a criminal."

"I don't care if he writes rude words in ladies' toilets," said Loomis. "All I want him to do is find Selina."

Craig unlocked the bedroom door, and went in.

When he came out he wore a coat and tie, and the gun was no longer visible. Loomis came out of his chair like a rhino leaving a mudbath, and they went down to his car.

The sign outside the door said: "Arthur Candlish, Boats." It was an elegant handmade sign of teak, with neat, precise lettering. It looked considerably more valuable than the building it adorned. Loomis stared at the sagging door, the low, grimy wall of unpainted brick.

"You sure this feller's any good?" he asked.

"I'm sure," said Craig, and pulled on a rusty bell chain. It screamed its lack of oil, extended a foot and a half, then contracted back to normal in a series of convulsive jerks as its bell clattered. Loomis liked it. A man in a white apron opened the door. In his hand was a chisel. He looked at Craig, and the chisel's cutting edge no longer faced them.

"John," he said. "Nice to see you. Arthur will be pleased—he's in the office."

He led the way along an alley of worn brick, moving down to a workshed filled with boats of every kind: punts, canoes, outriggers, skiffs, prams, and sailboats, too, including the most beautiful cutter Loomis had ever seen. The men who worked on them were slow yet sure in their movements, and Loomis could sense at once the pleasure their work gave them.

At the bottom of the shed a tiny slipway led to a dock, and beyond that was the river. Near the slipway was a glass cage of an office, and here Craig led the way.

The man inside wore a blue-serge suit and a bowler hat of antique cut that Loomis found endearing. He was a lean, big-boned man of fifty, who remained unimpressed by Loomis, who was piqued, and addressed Craig in a dialect Loomis found unintelligible.

"Arthur's a Geordie," Craig explained, then began making similar noises himself. Candlish produced rum from an unlabeled bottle, and poured three generous tots.

"You want a girl?" he said to Loomis, and Craig snorted. "Got a picture?"

"You'll get one tonight," said Loomis.

"Arab. Not many Arabs round here. Not like back home." He winked at Craig. "Still, we'll do what we can. I'll ask around. Put the lads on to it. We do a lot of work round the river."

T believe you," said Loomis, and looked at the unlabeled bottle.

"I'm a Free Trader," said Candlish. "Always have been. Voted Liberal all me life."

Craig wrote a telephone number on a piece of paper.

"Ring me here if you get anything," he said.

Candlish mouthed the letters and numbers slowly, then burnt the piece of paper.

"You got a good lad here," he said to Loomis. "I used to go fishing with his da. You ever want anything, just come and ask. I'm not cheap, but I'm reliable."

"I'm obliged to you," said Loomis, and finished his rum. It was a hundred proof.

"You're welcome," said Candlish, and finished his.

Craig said: "We'd better be off then."

Loomis didn't move.

"This is confidential," he said.

"John and I have done business before now. It's always been confidential," said Candlish. Loomis stood up then.

* Chapter 20 *

They needed money. Sherif had looked for Craig in the phone book. There were many Craigs, including seven Johns and twelve J's. Sherif had rung them all, and by midnight all had answered. He had addressed each one in Arabic, but none had understood, none was the Craig she sought. Then they had talked of the police, but Selina remembered Zaarb, and was wary. Sherif was afraid that Schiebel might hear of him. He thought at last of an advertisement in a newspaper, and she agreed to that. It was why they needed money. They took turns to sleep and watch, and next morning, Sherif went out to change some of the coins.

In a sense, Sherif died of bad luck. Schiebel had gone through Selina's luggage, and found that the necklace was missing. He had asked questions at the tube station too, and the clerk had remembered Selina, and the tickets to Wapping. Schiebel sent men there to watch jewelers' and pawnbrokers', and to ask questions. One of them saw Sherif as he came out of a pawnbroker's, and Sherif saw him. To Sherif, there was only one chance of escape. The watcher must be overpowered, knocked out until Sherif could disappear. He attacked at once, and a small crowd of connoisseurs watched, and hoped there wouldn't be any coppers along to spoil it. They hadn't seen two Arabs fight before.

Sherif fought hard, making up in determination what he lacked in skill, and the watcher, surprised, struck out as he had been taught, feeling his knuckle jar as his hand clenched round a solid plug of lead. Sherif fell toward him, and the watcher lashed out again, two appalling blows, one to the head, the other to the heart; then Sherif fell, and the watcher turned and ran, and the way he ran was as dangerous as his fighting. No one tried to stop him. Sherif had been murdered—that was obvious to the crowd. A broken rib had pierced his heart and he was dead, fifty pounds spilling from his pocket.

* « *

Craig spent a lot of time talking about Selina, describing her, commenting on each feature while Grierson listened and sometimes contradicted, and the artist Loomis conjured up, sketched and threw away, sketched and threw away again. At last he put down his charcoal and said firmly to Craig: "I'm not Graham Sutherland doing the Maugham portrait, you know. Not at the rates your department pays me. All we want is a recognizable likeness."

Craig started again, and this time he tried to forget how much he had liked Selina, her courage, her beauty, her bewildering honesty. The artist, who was bearded and fat and skillful, drew on and on, and first her nose came right, then her chin, her mouth, her eyes, and the charcoal lovingly confined them in a perfect oval, blocked in the darkness of her hair. It was his eighty-seventh sketch, and it was Selina.

"He's better than an Identikit," Loomis had said. "He puts some life into his stuff." Loomis was right.

He came in and looked at what the artist had done, and leered at Craig.

"Being sentimental has its compensations," he said. "Try and find her before Schiebel does."

"What about you, sir?" Grierson asked.

I'm going back to the nursing home," said Loomis. "Got to keep an eye on Mrs. Naxos. You stay here and help poor Craig. Too many girl friends—that's his trouble."

He leered again and left them, and Grierson said: "Where do we start?"

"There's only one way," Craig said. "We get our pictures and we go out and ask questions."

Grierson sighed. "I'm afraid you're right," he said. "We'll probably have to walk about a great deal."

Loomis came back in again.

"You'll be on your own for a bit," he said. T want Craig to take Swyven to see his mommy."

* « ·

A Daimler ambulance pulled into the nursing home, and went through the elaborate charade of carrying out a blonde-haired dummy on a stretcher. Two men got inside with the dummy, another rode with the driver. All four were armed. The ambulance drove off, blue light flashing, and Craig waited. Half an hour later the driver's mate rang in to say that he was in the traffic on the London road, and there was nothing to report. Craig took out a Colt Woodsman and a soft leather harness, strapped it on, put on his coat. At the tradesmen's entrance a van waited: "Phee, Groceries and Provisions. The Best Things in Life Are Phee's." Inside the van was Swyven.

He wore a pink suit, a white blouse, pink high-heeled shoes and nylons. A white scarf was tied over his blond wig. In his lap was a handbag with the initials P.N. picked out in diamonds. Craig sat on a carton of evaporated milk, and said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Whoever had made Swyven up had done a wonderful job; soft long-lashed eyes, a luscious, troubled mouth; even his fingers had been manicured, the nails painted. The van started.

"That's right, look at me," Swyven snapped. "I suppose this is that ghastly fat man's idea of a joke? And I thought he was going to be reasonable with me." Craig said nothing. He could think of nothing that could be said.

"I told him everything," said Swyven, "and he promised I could see mommy. And now he's sending me to her— like this."

And the voice went on in shrill, feminine complaint, and Craig said nothing, because to talk would mean involving Philippa, and Swyven was infinitely more expendable.

The van pulled up, and Craig waited until the driver rapped on the cab's back panel, then got out at once. They were in a deserted country lane, and behind the van was a Mark 10 Jaguar. Craig helped Swyven down— in spite of his protestations, he couldn't cope with high heels—and into the car. He produced the keys, switched on, and the engine roared at once. He drove past the van on to a secondary road, and kept on going. He reached the roundabout for the London road, cut in front of a lorry so that Swyven gasped and shut up for once, then into the overtaking lane with his foot hard down. The car had the new 4.2-liter engine and it had been tuned by a master. The needle moved up and over, and still Craig kept his foot down, then flicked in the overdrive and the car seemed to leap, the traffic behind receded. Craig kept on going for five more miles, then eased back to ninety, eighty, seventy-five. Swyven squirmed in his seat.

"More punishment I suppose," he said. "What could it possibly matter if someone saw you?"

Craig eased down a little further.

"Stop picking on me," he said. "Remember you're a lady."

Swyven spoke no more for seven miles.

Craig stopped at an ancient garage for petrol, and spoke to the man in charge, who promptly put up a "Closed" sign and disappeared. Craig waited a moment then motioned Swyven out, took him into the decrepit living quarters and found a bathroom. In it were a shirt, a suit, socks, tie, and shoes, all belonging to Swyven.

"Go ahead and change," said Craig. "AH the stuff should be here. You've got five minutes."

He settled down with a back number of Autocar. It

had been a very good year for Lagondas, he learned. He must buy some.

Swyven came out in four minutes, reeking of nail-polish remover and aftershave. Craig got up at once, and looked in the bathroom. The woman's clothes were all over the place; the blouse viciously torn. Swyven, it seemed, was not happy. He sulked all the way to Kensington, said nothing at all while Craig parked, got out and locked the car. It was only when Craig walked along beside him to his mother's house that he spoke.

"You're coming in with me?" he asked. Craig nodded.

"But you can't—you mustn't," said Swyven.

"I have no choice," said Craig. "Neither have you. Come on."

Swyven looked at him, despairingly, then rang the

bell.

Amparo, the Spanish housekeeper, opened it at once, and they went through the hall and into the little drawing room that his mother made so gay and attractive, and Amparo said nothing at all. No doubt because the other beast was there. She usually found enough to nag him about. And then he realized. Of course, they would be expecting him. That awful fat man would have rung up and said things. Then they were at the drawing-room door, and Amparo knocked, then stood aside as they went in, and the first thing he saw was his father, and my God his father looked old, so old, and then there was his mother, coming to him, her arms out, saying: "Mark, darling," and Swyven was happy in her embrace.

Craig said to the old man, letting him see his mouth as Loomis had told him: "I think we'd better talk in private, sir," and Swyven said: "Yes, of course," and led the way into a study crammed with the treasured junk of a lifetime. Charts and sextants, commemorative silver ashtrays, samurai swords, Chinese idols, Indian brasswork, photographs of Fiji, Sydney Harbor, Capetown, New York, Bombay, and of the Aegean. Temples, churches, bays, and M.T.B.'s and caiques at anchor, and a convoy under attack, and suddenly Craig remembered Lord Swyven, and wished that of all the rotten jobs he'd been handed, he might have been spared this one.

"Hope you'll excuse the clutter," Swyven said. "I used to be in the Navy. Started bringing things back for

Jane—my wife, you know. It all seemed to end up in here." He floundered in an agony of embarrassment. "Like a drink?"

"Yes, sir," said Craig and hoped the old man would have one too, and relax just a little. Swyven poured two whiskeys and pushed over the soda siphon. The two men nodded at each other and drank. Swyven made an enormous effort at self-control and said at last: "Now then, what's my son been up to this time?"

Craig said: "It's bad."

"I didn't think you'd make my wife a thief just to arrest my son for a misdemeanor."

'The charges have been withdrawn, sir."

"So I should bloody well hope. But my wife hasn't. She still has to go out and let people see her."

"We had to have him, sir. There wasn't any other

way."

"What has he done?"

"He's working for Zaarb," said Craig, "and Zaarb's working for Red China. He's going to send cobalt to Peking."

"You're sure?"

"Quite sure, sir. We found some of the stuff on a Greek island—Dyton-Blease's place." The old man nodded. "It's like no other cobalt in the world, sir. Tremendously— rich, the physicists call it. That means high-yield explosions in very small warheads. And you won't need a very sophisticated atomic pile to get it. In fact the Chinese have already exploded one."

"But why on earth—?"

"He hopes we may be involved in Zaarb in a couple of years. And if we are, the Chinese might lend the Zaarbists the odd bomb. If we did have to go in, it would be a naval strike action. Like Suez. One bomb could finish a whole fleet. He doesn't like us, sir, and he hates the Navy. He thinks one bomb like that is the lesson the imperialists need."

"He's right, of course. It would drive the American Fifth Fleet straight out of the Med." He paused. "You really think they'd use it?"

They'd have to, sir—if Zaarb gets Chinese backing, and if we're forced into attacking first."

"Have you—stopped him, then?"

"We think so, sir."

"Will he stand trial?"

"No," said Craig. "He's done nothing that we can prove—in law."

"What about his cousin? Dyton-Blease?"

Craig said carefully: "He met with an accident. I understand he's a very sick man."

"An accident," said Swyven. "Of course. It would be." He drank.

"So," he said, "your troubles are over." Craig shrugged. "What happens to my son?"

"He can go back to Venice," said Craig, "li he does anything stupid, we know how to reach him."

"Yes," said the old man. "You're in a very dirty business." Craig drank his whiskey. "You trump up charges that wreck an old woman's life so that you can blackmail her stupid, clever, homosexual son into coming into your clutches. The one thing with guts in it poor Mark ever did. And for what?"

"To prevent a massacre," said Craig.

Swyven sighed. "Never argue with Intelligence. They always have the last word," he said. "Look ah—er—No good asking your name, I suppose?"

"I'd only he to you."

"Yes. Well. Can he have a few days with us—with his mother?"

"Yes," said Craig. "He can do that. He mustn't leave the house."

"I'll guarantee that," said Swyven.

"Yes, sir," Craig said. "He'll be watched anyway. There's nothing I can do about that."

"I beheve you," Swyven said. "You want a word with his mother?"

Craig said at once, "No, sir. Just pass the message

on."

"I will," Swyven said, then, with an old man's delight in his memory outweighing everything else: "I remember you."

"I don't think so," said Craig.

"You went on a raid to Andraki. Had to shoot the schoolmaster—he was a Resistance leader until the Gestapo got him. You killed a lot of Germans that night. I doubt if you were nineteen years old."

"I think you're mistaken, sir," said Craig. The old man hesitated.

"Of course I'm mistaken," he said. "Nothing's what it seems to be anymore. I'll show you out."

He took Craig past the drawing room and Craig had a sudden glimpse of a man kneeling by a chair, weeping, while an old woman stroked his hair. He kept on going. Outside there were a couple of Special Branch men, Detective Chief Inspector Linton's squad. He got into the Jaguar and drove off to Regent's Park.

· · *

When he got there, Pia was giving a party. The room swarmed with actors and agents of the kind to be found in the Pickwick, or Gerry's, or the Buckstone, sleek people, successful people, witty people, the people who had made it, or who were on the way there, or who were simply seen around, and in the middle of them Pia in gold lame pants just that essential bit too tight and a frilled and frothy blouse in explosive red, looking as Italian as minestrone soup.

"John," she screamed. "Angel," and dashed across to him, embraced him, dragged liim into his own flat as if he were an unwilling guest. "John," she said, "this is Howard and Margot and Eddy and Alan and Rachel and—oh, you'll soon know everyone. Somebody give John a drink please.

"Here," said Eddy, a plump, durable producer. 'Try some of this."

Craig looked at the glass of champagne.

"Nasty spumante," said Eddy.

"We must be celebrating," said Craig.

"Indeed we are. Pia's just signed with us for a thirteen-part TV series. The Woman in the Case. She's going to be great."

"I'll say she is," said Rachel, "and believe me I should know. I'm her agent. Who are you with, darling?" "I don't act," said Craig.

"Don't you, darling? I thought you might be a stunt-man. You look like a stuntman." I'm in nuts and bolts."

"What hell for you, darling. So uncomfortable."

Craig drank his Italian champagne, and went to look for more. There was plenty of it, and no shortage of clever, witty people who knew all sorts of clever, witty things to

IDS HAPPY B

169

about nuts and bolts, and Craig was glad when the first b kle toward dinner began, round about eight o'clock. About nine, Rachel took him by the arm, and led him into a corner, lx>ked at him with the shrewd, appraising eye that agents and producers share with butchers and judges of catde shows.

T want a word with you," said Rachel. "About Pia." A lady television director made her famous, swooping exit, cannoned into Rachel and sent her sprawling into Craig's arms. He righted her neatly, easily, like a deft postman handling a messy parcel.

"Christ, you're a hard bastard," Rachel said.

"Are you working round to thumping me?" Craig

asked.

"In a way, sweety. In a way. I want you to give Pia up." Craig made a silence. "You're not helping her, you know. She wants to run after you the whole time. That won't help her career."

Craig said: "Are you telling me she's got a career?"

"Believe me, darling," said Rachel, "our Pia can act. I saw her tests, and she's good. That's why I'm her ■gent. I only take the good ones. She's going to go a mile high."

"She was never any good before," Craig said.

"And now she's bloody marvelous. Something must have happened to her. Have you any idea what it is?"

Craig thought of the two of them cooped up in the cell like battery hens, of the frantic terrible fights with D\-ton-Blease, the agony of loving in his cabin in Naxos's yacht.

"Not the slightest," he said.

"That girl is going to go so high," said Rachel, "unless you're going to be nasty. You know, I think you ought to leave her alone for a bit. Let her work. I don't want to threaten you, darling, but—"

"No, don't do that," Craig said. T might burst into

tears."

"Well then," said Rachel.

"Quite so," said Craig, and Rachel frowned.

"Don't laugh at me, darling," she said. "I'm serious."

"If only," said Craig, "you had a whip."

At 9:30 only Eddy and Rachel were left, and Eddy cleared his throat and turned to Craig. Rachel said: "I've had a word with him," and Eddy looked happy and took Rachel out to dinner.

"What scrumptious friends you have," Craig said.

"You're not angry with me, darling?" said Pia.

"Should I be?"

"Of course," she said. "Look at the mess I made in your flat."

"You let me stay for the party. What's for supper?"

"I found an Italian restaurant three doors away; they make the most marvelous spaghetti Bolognese. I'll get some."

She ordered, and the food sent up was splendid. Craig began to relax.

"You've had more work," said Pia. "Does it show?"

"Not to others. I know you very well. Something has happened?"

"The past caught up with me," said Craig. "Italy?"

"Greece," he said. "I was eighteen and a half years old. You would have been four I suppose—making big eyes at G.I.'s for chocolate."

She climbed into his lap.

"Tell me," she said.

"No," said Craig. "It's over. Finished. Let's talk about you. I hear you quit the espionage business."

She stiffened then, tried to get up, but Craig's arm came round her so tightly that she gasped, forcing her back to him.

"Don't be silly," he said. "Loomis hired you to keep an eye on me, didn't he? He was worried because I was a lush. Isn't that right?"

Her face burrowed into his coat. "That morning you had the orange juice and champagne already mixed—you remember—wasn't that a test for poor old Craig? And you tried to stop Tavel beating me up. Right?"

"I didn't know you then," she whispered, "but how did you find out?"

"You did a job with Grierson," Craig said. "It made me think about all sorts of things."

"I thought there was nothing else for me," Pia said. "I really thought I had no talent for acting. And if that was true, I had nothing. Then Grierson came to Rome and talked to me. What's wrong?"

Craig laughed aloud.

"Nothing," he said. "I always forget how professional Grierson is. No wonder he was embarrassed that day on Naxos's yacht." His hands grew tender. "You saved me from that suntan oil. Ill never forget that."

"And now I can act, after all that happened," Pia said. Her voice was tentative.

"Loomis won't stop you—if we get Schiebel. You'll be cleared straight through."

"What about you?" said Pia.

"Honey, all I did was hand you the key to the madhouse," said Craig.

"You're safe and sound outside now."

Her hps closed on his then. Her eyes were shut, and the tears flowed warm down her cheeks and on to his. Craig knew it was good-bye. Soon he would have to look for Selina.

* Chapter 21 *

Extract from an autobiographical fragment written by Edward Billings, known as "O Level Edward." It was composed as therapy initiated by the psychiatrist of the Borstal Institution where Billings was then confined (larceny of motor vehicle, actual bodily harm, obstruction of a police officer in the performance of his duty). The psychiatrist concluded from the fragment's contents that Billings was "utterly and uncurably mendacious," but nevertheless resorted to Freudian analysis. Inevitably he failed. Billings had written the truth.

o o o

Harry is talking to this Arab geezer in a coffee bar, and this doesn't surprise us. Harry doesn't worry about all that color-bar crap; spades or wogs or the Forty Thieves—it's all the same to Harry. And after a bit he starts getting like angry, and leaves the Arab, and Jigger says: "Looks like trouble," but Lonesome—we call him Lonesome on account of his B.O.—he says: "Nah! Harry's putting it on," and he's right, because one thing about Lonesome, he's got all his marbles even if he is a stinker.

So Harry comes over and he says: "That geezer wants us to find a bird for him."

"Let him find his own birds," I say.

"No," says Harry. "This is a wog bird. He claims he's lost her. This bird."

And he shows us a picture of this bird, and I go off Claudia Cardinale for ever, because this is a real crazy bird, believe me.

"Nobody ever lost that," I say. "Nobody's that careless."

"Where d'you get it?" asks Lonesome.

"Mr. Candlish. He says to look out for her too," Harry says. 'That's why I tell the wog I don't know. All he offers is money." What Mr. Candlish offers is anything from a fortune to a belting, depending on success or failure, and we know this. We always act respectful with Mr. Candlish.

"I seen her," says Lonesome. "I seen her yesterday when I was on the bike."

Lonesome has a 1,000-cc. Norton about the size of a cart horse, and he covers quite a lot of country in our corner of Prolyville.

"You're sure?" asks Harry.

"Look at the picture," says Lonesome. "There's only one bird round here looks like that. I see her. With a tall wog."

The Arab gives us a dirty look and we survive it and he leaves.

'There's a tall wog dead in the papers," says Jigger, and pulls out an Evening News, and we read how evil has been done in our fair city and the tall wog has been belted by another of the same, and is fatally dead.

"I'm sorry I miss that," says Harry, and then he looks at Lonesome, and Lonesome's eyes are sticking out like chapel hat pegs, so then we look where he is looking, and we see the bird. And I know that I am right about Claudia Cardinale.

She sits at a table near us and orders meat pie and

egg and chips and when it comes she attacks it like it is her first for many weeks, and I am displeased at this behavior because she is beautiful, and one thing I am not adjusted to is birds with big appetites. She sees us staring, and she looks back at us, and when I see her eyes I know something else; this bird is not only beautiful, she's dangerous. Because we have the gear on, and it is black leather, the best; and Lonesome with the gear on would frighten a Martian—but the bird just looks at him as if she could cool him off without trying. She knows this without having to worry; it's just a fact. Then she goes back to her meat pie.

Then Harry remembers he's the leader and promotes some action. He gets up and we follow, and old Charlie behind the counter says: "Now, boys. Don't let's have trouble," and is silent. Harry gets between the bird and the door, so no one can see her. This is good thinking, and we do likewise.

"Evening," says Harry.

"Good evening," says the bird, and goes on eating chips like there's a famine starts in ten minutes.

"There's a feller wants to see you," Harry says, and she stops eating.

"Name of Candlish." She starts on the egg.

"You're mistaken," she says. "I don't know anybody of that name."

And when I hear the voice I know there is trouble, because I know this kind of voice. Last year there is this other bird comes among us from up West, and she claims she is a reporter from the Whores' Gazette, but what she really is is a seeker after kicks of a carnal nature, and this bird commits unpleasantness with Harry and Jigger and even Lonesome, but not with me because I never joined the three musketeers, and the bird resents this, and she is the one who begins to call me "O Level Edward," on account of my education, and I am unhappy till Harry kicks her out on account of she is ancient. Twenty-six if she's a day. But what she had, besides old age, is the voice: B.B.C. voice, Declare This Bazaar Open voice, I Name This Ship voice, and I am nervous all over again. This bird is debsville. What's she want with the peasants? And I see that Lonesome is thinking the same thing, because like I say, Lonesome is no dummy, only lacking in fragrance.

"He wants to see you," says Harry. "No," says the bird.

"You better," says Harry, "or 111 bust you one."

What bird could resist such winsome charm? This one puts down her knife and fork, and her hands go into her pockets. I think she is looking for a fag—that's how dim I am.

"Sit down," she says to Harry, and lacks a chair out for him, and Harry does so, and I am aware that Lonesome has withdrawn from behind me as the air is much clearer, and I am surprised because Lonesome doesn't usually chicken. Then I dig. The phone is near by, and the jukebox is going loud, and the bird is preoccupied, so Lonesome moves.

"What's in my pocket?" says the bird, and Harry looks down at the shape of her coat, and he can't believe what he sees.

"You're kidding," he says.

"Am I?" says the bird. "Touch the barrel then—but be careful."

Harry's hand goes out, and he touches her coat, like reverently, and he says, "It's a shooter all right," and the bird says, "I told you," sort of impatient, as if she's tired of explaining the obvious. 'You others sit down too," says the bird, then looks up quick, but Lonesome is behind me again and we are okay.

"Why does this Candlish want me?" she asks, and we say we don't know and explain how it's best just to do what Mr. Candlish says and she laughs in our faces and we take it, because this is a bird who does what she wants, and nobody else. Then I say she better go with us on account of the wog who's looking for her, and the wog worries her, but she can handle it, and she asks us do we know a man called Craig and we don't and she is unhappy. But she sees we're okay and lets go of the shooter and goes back to the calories, and even while I realize this is the way out night of my life I think how terrible it will be if she gets fat.

She tells us how she stays with the Chinaman, and about Sherif, and how the Chinaman comes into her when she is like worried and tells her how it's in the paper that Sherif is dead, and she must go because he never takes murderers, and gives her back their money less two quid use

of the room, and she agrees to go at once because the Chinaman has a gun and two assistants. Then she looks at us, one after the other, and she sighs.

"Very well," she says. "I really haven't any choice, have I? Let's go and meet your terrifying Mr. Candlish."

And we go out of the caff, and it is dark outside, and like deserted, and we go to where we park our bikes, and this girl is as wary as a leopard in the Hons' playpen. There is a light by the bikes and we stand under it, reaching for our keys, then suddenly a wog geezer steps out of the darkness, and what he is holding is a gun. And he says: "Stop there." The girl starts to turn. "You too, princess," he says, and two more blokes appear out of nowhere, and the bird is still. "You have a Browning automatic in your pocket," he says. "Take it out and put it on the ground." She does just that.

"Now you boys can go," says the wog, and maybe Harry is a bit slow in starting. I don't know, but one of the other wogs taps him on the cheekbone with a cosh and he yells, and turns, and like lurches away and we follow, feeling like children, and the wogs move in on the bird. And then it happens—like Harry's yell was a signal.

A big black Jag comes roaring up, and suddenly its headlights go on full and its horns blare and we are blinded, and so are the wogs, and it is still moving when this man gets out, and believe me, Rodney, he moves. And he hits these wogs like a bomb. For a moment they can't even see him, and he is into the first one and I see what happens. His fist comes curling up from his hipbone and he hits this wog in the ribs, and while he is doing so, not wishing to be idle, his other hand comes out flat and the edge of it connects with the wog's ear and he drops him and the second wog lunges at him with his gun, and the new man swings his arm and blocks the blow, and his other hand moves forwards as if it had a knife in it, only there isn't a knife—just his fingers, and they stab into the wog's gut, so then the third wog comes behind him and grabs him around the shoulders and gives the second wog time to straighten up and try again with the gun. And as he comes in the new guy sticks one arm out straight, crooks it and brings the elbow back into number three's belly, and there's a noise like wet cement and number three is falling and as he goes the new guy twists and throws him into number two's way, and number two hesitates, and this is fatal because the new guy doesn't punch this time, he leaps in the air like he's Nureyev's brother and as he goes his right leg straightens and connects with number two's neck, then he's down again ready for more of the same but the wogs aren't ready to go on, being unconscious, and the bird is in his arms, yabbering in wog, and all this time I still haven't moved, and my mouth is open, and I feel about six years old.

Then the new guy puts the girl to one side and turns to face us, and he has one fist clenched and the other straight, like the blade of an ax, and I see this is a very hard man indeed. His clothes are sharp but he doesn't overdo it on account of he is old, and his body moves inside them like a V8 engine. He has very dark-brown hair and eyes gray as the Thames that tell you nothing except he'll kill you if he has to, and I want more than anything to be like this man, and I am afraid. Then I hear gravel crunch behind us, and I look round and there is another man behind us all the time, in the shadow of the Jaguar, but now he comes toward us and he is a deb's delight, curly bowler and all but instead of an umbrella he carries an automatic pistol, and there is what can only be a silencer screwed on to the barrel. And this one's eyes are blue, and screwed up at the corners like he's tired, but the pistol isn't.

He comes over and looks at the wogs lying nice and peaceful, and "Ah good," he says. "You chaps did a splendid job."

Then he kneels beside the wogs and searches them, and takes away the coshes and the shooter, and in each of their free hands he finds a lead plug, and he looks displeased and shows them to the other man.

"Nasty," he says. "These boys were really quite heroic."

"We didn't do anything," says Harry.

The man with the empty hands says, "You laid out these three. You found them trying to steal your bikes and you laid them out. Now call the police."

"The coppers won't believe it," says Jigger.

The sleepy one says: "They will, I promise you," and I believe him. Then he takes out a wallet the size of a briefcase and distributes five-pound notes—two each, except Lonesome. The All-England halitosis champ gets four.

Then the two men and the bird get into the Jag and go, and I realize how dull the rest of my life is going to be.

* * *

They telephoned Loomis from a call box, and he told them to go back to the nursing home. He wanted Selina where she would be safe. It was Schiebel's one piece of luck. Another search party in a Mercedes spotted them, and followed them, then radioed to Schiebel, who used two more cars, an old Peugeot with an astonishing engine, driven by a very fair Albanian, and a Mini-Cooper S which he drove himself. They took it in turn to follow the Jaguar, and never stayed behind it for long. Once the Peugeot cut out and passed it, and shadowed it for a while from in front, until Schiebel called the driver on the radio to leave the hunt, and it was the Cooper's turn to hang on and to leave when the Jaguar left the main road, and Schiebel followed until they turned off again, then switched off his lights and felt his way through the darkness, his eyes straining for the ruby tail lights ahead, until at last the Jaguar stopped at a lodge gate. There was a pause, then the car went through, the lodge gate swung back, and Schiebel waited in the darkness, then slipped out, wary, silent, to look at the defenses of the house.

The lodge gate was a sheet of steel, the windows of the lodge itself were tiny, and the men inside it would be armed. The lodge was built of solid stone, and would withstand direct assault from anything less than a tank. The walls were of smooth stone, ten feet high, and, he discovered when he climbed on to his car roof, wired for alarm bells. Above the powerline was barbed wire, held in position by steel angle irons, and in each of the angle irons was a photoelectric cell. From inside the house he could hear the hum of a generator. It would do no good to try to cut off their power supply; they made their own, and guarded it. The place was impregnable.

Schiebel let the Cooper coast down the road past the house, then switched on the ignition and drove back to London, flogging the car as if it had been a horse, yelling obscenities in his mind in German, Russian, Arabic, repeating them solemnly, as if it were a ritual, dragging out each phrase in an ecstasy of fury, then ceasing at last, braking, easing his speed as the houses began, driving decorously, cautious of policemen, while his mind grappled with the problem that the princess of the Haram had sent him.

He had underestimated her. She had warned him when he had hunted her down that night in Zaarb, and he had believed in her courage, but not her competence. That had been a mistake. She would have been so useful too, for acquiring the cobalt. Her father would surely have— Schiebel closed his mind to that thought. He had made a mistake. If it proved to be too great, he would answer for it, not to Zaarb but to Peking. That must not happen; the mistake must be rectified. He thought again of the two women. Selina would have been useful, but Mrs. Naxos was vital, if he were to get the British out of Zaarb. Somehow he must get Phihppa Naxos. Somehow, and soon. She was in a fortress, but her husband had left it—gone back to his yacht ready for the treaty negotiations that opened next day. Mrs. Naxos's place, he decided, was with her husband.

He went back to the embassy, up to the radio room where Selina and Sherif had escaped, and had a long, snarling conversation with Zaarb's president and commanding general. Their displeasure didn't worry him, so long as they would move when the time came. The army had some tanks now, old Russian stuff, and Chinese crews for them. They had field guns too, and a squadron of MIG-15's. The Haram had nothing bigger than a machine gun, in a country made for modem war. If the British didn't interfere, the whole operation would take a couple of days at most —and if he could get at Naxos the British wouldn't interfere. He extracted his promises at last, and gave his in return, then switched off on the cursing president. He began to imitate Loomis's voice using the carefully remembered words and phrases he had heard when the big man had interviewed him as Andrews. At last the speeches came together, and sounded right.

"Look, cock," he began, "we can't afford to offend Naxos now d'you see."

It wasn't quite Loomis, but it was near enough, particularly as the telephone he would use would have a bad fine. Tomorrow he would make two calls, and perhaps have Phihppa Naxos as a result. Now it was time to deal with a traitor.

He dressed himself in black sweater and pants, stuck a Russian automatic in his pocket, and drove to a street near the mews behind Swyven's house. His shoes were rubber-soled, and made no noise. Schiebel moved like a shadow to the mews itself, and waited for the tiny sound he needed. He was lucky. The man on duty struck a match, and Schiebel heard his sigh as he inhaled smoke, then began to walk slowly up and down. Twenty paces. Turn. Back. Twenty paces. Schiebel grinned. This one had been too long in the army. Schiebel waited until he moved down again, then sped to the doorway the watcher had used. He made no sound at all. When he came back—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty—Schiebel waited till he turned, then struck with the barrel of his pistol along the side of the man's head, jumped from the shadows to catch him as he fell, and dragged him into the doorway. Then he broke into the house next door to Swyven's.

The whole operation took seven minutes. Break in, go up to the attic—past the master bedroom, the nursery, the empty guest room, the maid's room where the au pair girl dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees in unattainable Sicily, up to the deserted attics, a litter of toys, books, discarded furniture, the squeak of a rusty window hinge, and Schiebel was on the roof, moving velvet-pawed across the leaded guttering to the attic window in Swyven's house. He used a diamond with four neat strokes, waited for the glass to fall—a tiny brittle whisper of noise— then put his hand into the hole he had made, opened the window and lowered himself into the house. In the comfortable darkness he checked his pistol by touch, screwed on the silencer, then moved into the house, past the attics full of unacceptable souvenirs, the maid's room where Ara-paro dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees in unattainable Burgos. The stairs were carpeted and the noise he made was less than a sigh; he went down to the drawing room and the sound of voices. Swyven's voice, then an older female voice, and then another older voice, a man's. Schiebel heard words in his mind he thought he had forgotten. "Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me," said the voice in his mind, "but showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." The voice spoke in German.

Schiebel grinned in the darkness. The voice had got it wrong. He was going to visit the sins of the child on the father—and mother. Two parents had chosen to spend an evening with their son, and there was nothing wrong with that, except that it meant their death. He couldn't wait for another chance, and there must be no survivors to send for the police until his work was accomplished. Schiebel listened, concentrating on the clipped, half-swallowed noises that English bourgeois made. They were quarreling. If you had Mark Swyven for a son, Schiebel thought, what eke could you do but quarrel?

Mark Swyven was saying: "But you say yourself I haven't done anything illegal—and that chap Craig admits it. If I choose not to go back to Venice, they couldn't make me."

"Don't be a fool," said his father.

Lady Swyven said: "Mark's right, you know, dear. He hasn't committed a crime."

"He's a traitor," said Lord Swyven. "There aren't many worse crimes, surely? He's betrayed bis own country."

"I don't believe in countries," said Swyven. T believe in mankind."

"And you've done your best to put fifty millions of them in a damned difficult position."

"Fifty million "haves.' I wanted to do something for the "have-nots.' It's about time somebody did. And anyway it's not your business. It's mine."

"And theirs."

"The point is there's nothing Britain can do about it."

"Mark," said his father. "Use your brains. Just this once. You've got them. Use them. They want you out, and you must go out. If you insist on staying here—good God, man, can't you see? Look what they did just to fetch you back here—damn near sent your mother to prison. If they did that to her, do you suppose they won't do it to youF'

Schiebel went into the room then. It was interesting stuff, and Swyven's concern with the masses was correct enough, even touching, but he hadn't got all night. Lady Swyven and Mark were facing him. Their reactions were obvious at once. Lady Swyven, bewildered yet indignant, Mark abject with terror. The father, because he was deaf and had his back to the door, took a little longer to understand. When at last he did turn, and saw the gun, he was neither bewildered nor terrified. He saw danger, and at

once began to look for a means to resolve it. This was a man Schiebel could understand.

"Your father's right, Mark," he said. 'They won't let you stay."

Swyven stared, petrified by the pistol and its bulging, extended barrel. Swyven's father moved deliberately in front of a small drinks table and said: "You have no business here. Our discussion is quite private. If you have come here to rob, get on with it, but don't pry into family affairs."

Schiebel shot him between the eyes, and the force of the bullet slammed him backward, scattering gin, sherry, glasses, siphons, jugs. It was as he had expected. As he fell, Swyven's father gripped a bottle of whiskey in his fist. Facing danger, he at once looked for a weapon.

Young Swyven's reaction was very odd to SchiebeL who knew every detail of his life. He ran at Schiebel.

"You swine," he screamed. "That's my father."

Schiebel shot him in the chest, and the running stopped at once, then Swyven very slowly crumpled to the floor. Lady Swyven made no move at all. She sat bolt upright in her chair, and looked into the barrel of the pistol, and said nothing, did nothing, because her world was over. Mark, she thought. Oh, my darling Mark. And then, almost too late: Poor Jack. Then Schiebel killed her. He went over to each in turn, felt his pulse, then unscrewed the silencer, put it in his pocket. He went out by the back door. On the way he passed the watcher, breathing now in great snoring gasps. The watcher was well out of things. Schiebel walked to his car. As always, when he had done something right and proper, he felt marvelous.

* Chapter 21 %

When Grierson and Craig got back, Loomis was away, and Flip was with Sir Matthew. They ate a meal, and Selina ate with them: the fight had made her hungry again. As they ate, she told them what had happened to her: the kidnapping, the trip to England, the escape, and then the fight.

"That was splendid," she said. "The hand, the fist, the elbow, and then you jump. My brothers will want to learn this—"

"Karate," said Craig. 'It's a Japanese technique."

"You learn from your enemies?"

Tf they have anything worth learning. The way you escaped, for instance—by using the house next door."

Sehna grinned.

Grierson said: "I don't understand why he brought you to England. Wouldn't you have been safer in Zaarb?"

The girl put down her fork, and looked at him.

"Schiebel hates me," she said. "He hated the other girl too—the one you persuaded to betray him. You know what he did to her?"

Grierson nodded. "He was going to do it to me. I was being kept for his pleasure—when it is all over." She turned to Craig. "One of us must kill him," she said. "He means what he says about the cobalt, Craig. Hurting, destruction: they're all he knows. He'll use them until he's killed."

Craig said nothing, and Grierson thought: Schiebel will die, all right. And Craig will kill him. Loomis had it set out that way from the beginning—victim and executioner; and I've known it all along, because Craig is useful in any sort of situation, to drive a car, guard a millionaire, steal a secret, seduce a girl. But his speciality is death, and that's what Loomis wanted him for. At death he's a genius.

Aloud he said: "Don't worry. Schiebel will be taken care of."

Craig grinned at him.

"You're talking like a politician," he said.

That night and the next day they waited for Loomis, taught Selina to play poker, and used her gold coins for chips. Sir Matthew called, and went at once to Fhp. The day dragged slowly on, and Sehna yawned and fought to stay awake. An angry fat man wanted to speak to her. She would not sleep until he came.

A vehicle purred to a halt outside the room at last, and Grierson raised the ante, two sovereigns, a napoleon, and an American double eagle.

"Our leader's back," he said.

Craig passed, and Grierson waited for Selina. He had dealt her four aces. It would be amusing to see how greedy-she was. The vehicle purred into life again, and Sehna looked hard at Grierson. His eyes were bland, innocent, boyish. Selina said something in Arabic, and Craig rocked with laughter. Then she passed too.

Grierson groaned, and scooped in the heavy shining metal. It wasn't much of a pot for a royal flush.

"She learns very quickly," Craig said, and took up the cards, his hands rapid and precise as he fitted them together and began to deal.

Sir Matthew came in, elegant in gray, a carnation in his buttonhole, in his hands a bowler hat and a pair of doeskin gloves, the kind you buy for driving, if the car you drive is a Bentley. He looked quickly from Craig to Grierson, then on to Selina. These men had a knack of acquiring pretty girls that might almost be a reflex, it functioned so inevitably. He wondered whether one day he might be allowed to chart their behavior patterns—and their girls'? So often one read of the superior sexual attraction of the French male and the Italian, and Spaniard. It was reassuring to sep two Britons holding their own. Sir Matthew permitted himself a small glow of patriotism.

Grierson said: "Sir Matthew, I'd like you to meet the Princess Selina."

Sir Matthew strode napoleonically across to her, and shook the strong, beautiful hand. When he turned, Craig had somehow moved from his chair. The door was closed, and he was leaning against it.

"Were you thinking of going out, Sir Matthew?" Grierson asked.

"I'm going home," Sir Matthew said. "No point in hanging about here now."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Grierson said.

"Surely it's obvious?" said Sir Matthew. "Now that Mrs. Naxos has gone—"

Grierson came out of his chair and towered over the little man in one frantic leap. For a moment Sir Matthew thought he was about to be assaulted, then Grierson made a tremendous effort, and resumed his habitual sleepiness. An extremely well-integrated personality, Sir Matthew noted gratefully.

"Tell me," he said. "And make it quick."

"We spent a very profitable evening," said Sir Matthew. "She's making excellent progress. Then just before lunch her husband telephoned her. They conversed for a while, and then he spoke to me. He wished his wife to go aboard their yacht, and Mrs. Naxos confirmed this. I saw no reason to prevent her leaving.

"In any case Loomis telephoned me at my consulting room today and said I could let her go, if her husband insisted on it. He passed on his instructions to you men here, too, I believe."

"When was this?" Grierson asked.

Sir Matthew looked at his watch.

'Two hours ago, just before I returned here," he said.

"Did he telephone from London?"

"Naturally."

"Loomis has been at Chequers since ten o'clock this morning," Grierson said.

"When did Mrs. Naxos go?" asked Grierson.

'Ten minutes ago. He sent an ambulance for her. His own crew members were driving it. He seemed obsessively anxious for her safety, I thought."

"What sort of ambulance?"

Sir Matthew shrugged. 'The kind one hires, I assume," he said.

"It didn't occur to you to tell us, I suppose?" Grierson

asked.

Sir Matthew shrugged again. "I had no idea you had returned. I merely instructed the guard at the gate." He stared back at Grierson. "I am a doctor," he said, "not a cloak-and-dagger man. My responsibility is to my patient. I felt that she would benefit from being with her husband, and agreed that she should do so. In fact I had no alternative. She insisted on going back to Naxos, and I had no legal right to stop her, and she had every legal right to go. After all, she'll be safe enough on the yacht."

"If she ever gets there," said Grierson.

Sir Matthew turned to look at Craig, but he had moved once again. He was no longer there.

"You'd better sit down," said Grierson.

"You're sure my presence isn't distasteful to you?" Sir Matthew asked.

"That's irrelevant," said Grierson. "There's a man

DIB HAPPY ffl

185

outside who may kill you—if he hasn't got Mrs. Naxos. Do you play poker?"

Sir Matthew sat down.

"Stud," he said. "One joker. No wild cards, if you please."

* » *

Craig found the ambulance. It was parked in a layby. The Greek at the wheel was unconscious, the one beside him dead. Craig put on a pair of thin leather gloves and went to the back of the ambulance, opened the broken door and went inside. He switched on the interior light and found another dead Greek on the stretcher. Beside him was Theseus, a knife in his side, sitting in his own blood, his torso propped up by the side of the ambulance. Across his knees lay an Arab, his neck broken. Theseus's massive right hand still clutched his hair. Craig crouched down beside him, and Theseus's eyes focused wearily.

"Brandy," he said. "Pocket." His great voice was muted to a rumbling moan.

Craig found the flask and held it to his hps, and Theseus choked it down. Craig looked at the knife in his side. If he drew it out, Theseus would die at once.

"Last time I did this for you," Theseus said. "Different now. I'm dying."

"You don't die so easy," said Craig. "Ill get you a doctor."

"I'm dying," Theseus said. "It hurts like hell." His breath ratded in his throat. 'Two cars together in front of us. We think it's a crash. We stop. Men come from side of road. Shoot—in front. Use lever. Break open door. Kill Dimitri. I put up hands. This one comes in. I kill. Then— knife. And Mrs. Naxos screaming. They take her—they take her—"

"Where?" Craig asked.

"The knife," Theseus whispered. "Craig it's like fire inside me."

"Where?" said Craig.

"Big cars," said Theseus. "Russian, I think. Little round plaque—CD, Craig—does that help?"

"Yes," said Craig. "I know where she'll be." "Harry—fool. I tell him. Trust you. He won't listen." Theseus gasped aloud as pain pierced him again. "It burns," Theseus said. "All the time I wait for you,

it bums. Now I've told you." He paused, then his voice pleaded: "pull the knife out, Craig. I waited. I told you. You owe me that." Again he gasped at the pain.

Craig looked at him. Already he was very close to

death.

"All right," he said. "You're a man, Theseus. A real

man."

"You also, Craig."

Then his voice yelled out—he could no longer control it—as Craig's hand curled to the knife haft and drew it free. Craig let the knife fall, and waited. Theseus's great body relaxed as his blood flowed again, then his head lolled on his shoulder, and he sighed in the joy of relief from pain.

"Thank you," he said.

Then he died.

· · · ·

Craig went back to the nursing home, and told Grierson what had happened, then waited as Grierson put in a 999 call to the police and told them where to find the ambulance. Sir Matthew and Selina were locked in the office labeled "Matron." Sir Matthew was teaching her how to play be-zique.

"Loomis was at Chequers," said Grierson. "He'd started back before all this happened. I reached him by radio. He's mad as hell."

"He would be," said Craig.

"He thinks Naxos will try to get away," said Grierson. "I've phoned London. They're watching the yacht now. It hasn't got steam up yet."

"He won't leave without his wife," said Craig.

"He will if Schiebel tells him to. We're to make plans to stop her. Have you got any ideas?"

Craig thought for a moment, then picked up the telephone and dialed a number. It rang twenty-three times before Candlish's voice answered, blasphemous and sleepy.

Craig said: "Never mind that. You know who this is?"

"Aye," Candlish said. "You're the only one who'd have the bloody nerve to get me out of bed this hour of the morning."

"Got a job for you," Craig said, and began to explain. At last Candlish said, "When?"

"Soon as I tell you."

"All right," said Candlish. "Cost you two thousand. Old one-pound notes. No receipt."

"Payment on completion," said Craig, and hung up, then turned back to Grierson. "She'll be in the AZ building," he said.

Grierson nodded.

"I suppose he wants us to get her out," Craig said. "He does," Grierson said.

Craig pushed his hand through his hair, and was suddenly very tired. There were all sorts of things he wanted to tell Grierson: it couldn't be done; Loomis was sending them to their deaths; Schiebel would kill her rather than let her go back to them; but Grierson knew all this as well as he did himself.

"I need some kip," he said. "Let me know when Fatty gets back."

Ninety minutes later he woke to find Loomis and Grierson standing beside him. He sat up on the settee and looked at Loomis, expecting an empurpled travesty of rage that he could jeer at, yield to, and ultimately come to terms with. Instead he found an old man, his pale face mottled with red, and somehow not nearly so fat as he'd remembered.

"It's bad, son," said Loomis. "Couldn't be worse. First off Schiebel's killed Swyven, and his parents. But that's the least of it. The Zaarb army's mobilized and moving west. That can only mean the Haram. Naxos isn't going to sign any treaties with us, and his wife's in the AZ building. You got the Selina person back and I'm grateful, believe me, but it doesn't make a scrap of difference now."

The red, scrambled telephone rang. Grierson picked it up and handed it to Loomis, who said "Loomis" almost politely, listened in patience to its metallic quacking, then put it down. "A bit more cheer," he said. "There's a rumor in New York that the Zaarb representative's going to speak in the UN tomorrow. He's going to demand the withdrawal of British troops and the setting up of a commission to determine Zaarb's western frontier, which he claims is beyond the Haram. Albania's going to second the motion. And while the debate continues Zaarb's going to send its army into the Haram—to suppress the bourgeois bandits who are interfering with the progress of a free people. This is an internal

matter and nobody else is to interfere—least of all us. We can't anyway. We've lost Naxos's vote." For a moment he regained his usual vitriolic disgust. "That bloody Chinn," he said. "I could pull the petals off his carnation." A manservant brought in a thermos jug of coffee and three cups. Despite his dark coat and deferential politeness, he looked like, and was, a Commando unarmed-combat instructor. He caught the tail end of Loomis's scowl, and vanished like a genie. Loomis poured coffee.

"I had it made," he said. "The P.M. was giving me a cigar every three and a half minutes. With Naxos sewn up, Zaarb would stay as it was, and when you two picked up the princess we could walk into the Haram any time we wanted. He poured me brandy with his own hands. Even offered to discuss next year's estimates. Now this." He sipped the coffee, hot, bitter, black as his mood. "The little yellow brothers have been busy," he said. "Buying equipment—nuclear stuff —and making a bit themselves. They've also recalled a lot of their best students from Iron Curtain universities. The post graduate lot. The ones who got firsts in nuclear physics. They're all ready for that cobalt, son. And there's only one way to stop them now. We'll have to go to war. Just what our reputation in the Middle East needs. Great Britain invades a developing nation. Look great in the People's Daily—and Pravda."

"Better than a cobalt bomb," said Craig.

"The P.M. wants a police action," said Loomis. "He thinks we should tell Russia and the U.S.A. what's happening —then all three countries would be involved. But that's messy, son. Who would be in charge? How many men would each country send? What would happen to the cobalt when the police action's finished? And how long would it take to set up a deal like that? Zaarb might get enough cobalt out before we were ready to move. We'd be in a worse state than China. A hell of a lot worse." He blew his nose with startling suddenness into a vast and dazzling handkerchief, then turned to stare at Craig.

"You'll have to go in and get her," he said. "I got no right to ask it, but I'm asking it anyway. You get her, Naxos votes, and we're okay. Any other way—we've had it, son."

Craig said: "I don't know." He stood up, hard and tall beside Loomis's unwieldy mass. "I'll go in if I have to— but I want some chance, Loomis. There's no point in going there and getting myself knocked off."

I'll come with you," Grierson said. "That goes without saying."

"No," said Craig. "That isn't the point. Look, supposing we both go—and get nothing—where the hell are we? Schiebel either has us killed or denounces us as assassins, and either way it's the department's loss and he's still got Fhp Naxos."

"You realize what he'll do to her?"

T realize it," said Craig. "If he does, I'll kill him."

Unnoticed by Craig, Grierson looked up at Loomis. The fat man gave an infinitesimal shake of the head.

"But I need an edge—the thing's got to have some chance of success," Craig said.

Gradually the color came back to Loomis's face, and somehow his paunch swelled out again to the proud curve of a three-decker's mainsail.

"I'll get you an edge, son," he said. "I promise you."

Then the red telephone shrilled again, and Loomis scooped it up, listened, barked once and slammed it down.

"Naxos's yacht's very active all of a sudden," he said.

"Did you do anything about stopping it?" Craig nodded.

"We better go there then," said Loomis and picked up the red phone again. As he talked, Craig looked at Grierson, trying for words that were hard to find.

"If I don't have some advantage, I just can't manage it any more," he said. "Dyton-Blease taught me that."

Grierson squirmed, because he was British, and found it impossible to cope with that kind of honesty.

"You had the guts to say it," he said. T didn't."

"You can do your penance later. We've got a helicopter coming," said Loomis. His great hands slammed together, the fingers interlaced, and one by one the knuckles cracked like gunshots. The other two men winced.

"You can always get service cooperation when it's too late to need it," said Loomis.

oo«

The helicopter chattered its way through the blackness of the night, until London lay below, a million spangles of light, the river curling among them, a dark, glistening

snake. The helicopter thrashed its way past Tower Bridge, dropping gently to explore the bulk of ships riding at anchor, derricks like robots at rigid attention in the metallic blue of lamplight. At last Craig spotted the Philippa, and pointed her out to Loomis. The helicopter drifted onwards, landing at last in a waste of sawn timber near Candlish's boatyard. Craig went to look for Candlish, leaving Loomis to cope with an outraged nightwatchman.

Candlish had everything prepared, and collected Loomis and Grierson in his elderly Daimler, leaving behind a bemused old man with a whistle in one hand and a truncheon in the other, trying to touch his cap. They drove to the river and transferred from the Daimler to a luxurious launch, and after a while Candlish left them to go aboard a barge. It was the leading one of three immense steel boxes taken in tow by an old and ailing tug. Grierson took the launch's controls, and followed the procession. As they went, Loomis outlined his plan for getting into the embassy, and Craig saw that there was a chance after all, as the dawn came up, pale and tender, and the river was suddenly, momentarily beautiful.

The Philippa had steam up when they reached her. her sleek white lines an aloof contrast to the lumpy drab-ness of the tug and barges, four peasants approaching a queen. Suddenly, the barge's towrope snapped as she swung in a wide arc past the yacht, and Craig watched the work of three master craftsmen. Candlish struggled with his tiller, but somehow, despite all his efforts, drifted straight under the Philippa's bows and crashed into the wooden dockside. Almost at once another barge scraped alongside the yacht, and slammed into her stern; the third slumped wearily on her rudder and propeller. Then all three barges began to sink.

Loomis snorted happily.

"What's in the barges?" he asked.

"Scrap iron and concrete," Craig said. "Naxos will be here for weeks."

"Well have a bite of breakfast, then well go and talk to him," Loomis said. "After that we'll see about organizing a riot."

When they did see him he was a wreck, dead beat for sleep, near crazy with the need for a drink, yet willing himself to stay sober in case anything should happen and Fhp should need him. He looked at them, half stubborn, half eager, and Loomis said at once: "We know it's Schiebel who's got her. Whatever he said about not seeing us it's too late now, and you can forget about trying to leave. I don't care what threats Schiebel made, you're not going, Naxos." "I won't sign," said Naxos.

"Not yet," said Loomis. "Wait until we get her back."

"He'll give her heroin," Naxos said. "You know what that means? If she goes back on it now she's hooked for life." He looked at Loomis, and there was defeat in his eyes.

"Please," he said. He had no hope at all.

"What on earth made you do it?" Loomis asked.

"He rang me on the radiotelephone. Told me what he'd done to Swyven, and his parents. Then he swore Philippa would get the same tomorrow. He sounded so certain—he was even enjoying it. That's why I believed him. That's why—"

"You decided to get her out tonight," said Grierson.

Naxos nodded heavily.

"You poor bloody fool," said Loomis. "Just stay here like a good lad and we'll get her back for you. I mean it. But don't waste our time trying to run away. We've got enough to do without fetching you back. And you're all in quarantine anyway. Nobody's allowed ashore." His head jerked at the door. "Come on," he said.

BOO

Mostly she dreamed of horses, great rearing, piebald beasts, with flaring red nostrils, leaping through tall golden trees. They went round her in a circle, and as long as she stayed still she was all right, but if she moved the horses would turn on her, and it might be a horse's head she would see on top of the high-arched neck, or it might be a man's. She tried very hard not to move, but the need for the drug made her restless.

Schiebel had been to see her once, had offered her the drug, and she had refused. Christ, it had been like tearing your heart out to see the stuff, white and clinically pure in his hand, and then say "No." And it was stupid too. Because he'd be back, and next time she couldn't say no—she loved Harry, he was all she had, but she couldn't refuse heroin twice. And the second time, Schiebel had warned her, there would be conditions before she got the drug. There always were. But this time it would be Harry who would be humiliated, degraded, as well as she herself. She wanted to die, but hadn't the strength to kill herself, and anyway, he would be there to stop her.

Schiebel said: "Mrs. Naxos," and she opened her eyes at once. He was bending over her and she was wide awake, but the horses were still there, rearing among the golden trees. She opened her mouth to scream and Schiebel struck her. The blow gave no pain, no meaning, but her head whirled, and when it cleared the horses became a picture of a carousel on the wall. "I've brought your medicine," Schiebel said. "Would you like it now?"

And there was the white, essential packet in his hands, and she tried to say "go away," but the words would not come. Instead, her head nodded feebly.

"I want an answer," said Schiebel.

"Yes," said Flip. 'Tlease. Yes."

"I see," Schiebel said. "Good. First you must sign a receipt."

"Don't torture me," she whispered.

Schiebel put the packet down, took a notebook and pen from his pocket.

"You are torturing yourself," he said. "All your sickness is in your mind, Mrs. Naxos. Master it and I can never hurt you again—in that way. Take these." He put pen and paper in her hands. "Now write."

"I can't," she said. "My hand is shaking too much."

"Master it," said Schiebel. "Control it. It is your hand. Make it obey you."

But her hand would not obey.

"Give me the stuff first. It'll help me."

"Afterward," said Schiebel. "You always get your medicine afterward. Don't you know that yet?"

And at last her hand began to obey, and she wrote what he dictated.

Harry, my darling,

I am with Schiebel, and everything is fine. Don't worry about me. Nothing will happen so long as you don't sign the agreement. If you do, you will destroy me.

I love you Harry. Please help me.

She wrote it all. Her handwriting was a mess, but she wrote it. Only she couldn't sign it. Whenever the pen touched the paper to write Fhp, her hand shook uncontrollably, and at last she could understand why. The knowledge was terrible to her, but she accepted it, crumpled the paper, threw it away.

Schiebel shrugged.

"Very well," he said. "Ill give you the medicine myself in a little while. You'll soon need more, once you've had the first dose."

Then he began to hurt her.

» Chapter 23 *

Further extract from "O Level Edward" 's autobiographical fragment.

Mr. Candlish sends word he wants to see us and we go—we always act respectful to Mr. Candlish—and anyway, all I miss is four hours' hard labor in the supermarket where I am gainfully employed at the time, unloading the bargains so the nits can get threepence off. And when I get there, Harry is present, and Jigger and Lonesome, and Mr. Candlish drinking rum out of a tin mug and looking pleased.

"I got two gentlemen coming to see you lot," he says. "They got a job for you and it pays good money—so no hp from you."

We agree, and if we had forelocks we would tug them, because this old bastard scares the hell out of us, and then the gentlemen come in and there will be no hp from me, because one of the gentlemen sorted out three wogs with his hands and feet the night before, and the other one held a gun on us while he did it, and almost fell asleep. The hard one says: "Those Arabs that attacked you last night—they had friends. Those friends have

been picking on you. Messing up your bikes, knocking you about. That's not right," he says. "You ought to do something about it."

"You want us to duff up some wogs?" asks Lonesome.

"Good God no," says the sleepy one. "We want you to organize a protest, present some petitions—that sort of thing."

"Where to?" I ask. "The Zaarb Embassy?"

"Something like that," the sleepy one says. "Their trading offices anyway. We've got four petitions all ready for you as a matter of fact," he says. "But there ought to be more of you. I always think the more the merrier with petitions, don't you? You'll need some people to watch the back entrance too. It would be too bad if the people you wanted to speak to got away."

"How many you want?" Harry asks.

"All you can get'" says the hard one. "Fifty at least. I want you to take your bikes and leave them in the way."

"Way of what?" Harry asks. He's a very careful leader, Harry.

"Anybody, anything that tries to leave," says the hard

one.

"All damage will be liberally paid for," says the sleepy one, and I can see old Candlish doesn't like that "liberally," but he says nothing, just sits there, and I realize again how bad these two must be.

Then the hard one gets down to details, and we believe everything he says, even when he tells us the police won't bother us, because this one knows what he's doing. And he draws a map for us, and tells us how to divide our forces, and where to congregate, then he says: "The Zaarb lot won't be too keen to let you in. Remember that. If you want to present those petitions, you'll have to get them inside the best way you can." This we understand, and are happy about in the extreme. Breaking doors and windows in a good cause appeals to simple, unspoiled natures like ours. Then the sleepy one pulls open his briefcase and hands Harry the petitions, which are typewritten, and have a lot of room for signatures. And he explains why we must handle them with care. Then he says: "Everyone who signs and turns up will be paid a fiver. You, of course, will receive much more." And this is music, too. Harry looks at the petitions, then looks at the sleepy one.

"Who are you, mister?" he asks.

"Didn't I tell you?" the sleepy one says. "We're your fairy godmothers."

0*0

They had brought Selina to the house in Queen Anne's Gate, where she told Craig and Grierson all she knew of AZ Enterprises, its staff, its layout, over and over, remembering every detail of the curve on the stairs, the position of the fortified room, the way out to the back of the house. When she had done, the two men went down to the armory in the basement, where each man sought out and tested a pair of Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums, firing them until each was as familiar to them as the hand that held them. Craig insisted, too, that they use metal-piercing ammunition. Grierson had protested at having to master a new gun, but Craig had insisted.

"What we're going to do is street fighting," he said. "That means stopping everything with the first shot. And that means a Magnum. A feller once killed a bear with one of these." They were satisfied at last, and Craig went to search among what is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of small arms in Great Britain. He came back with two weapons that made Grierson raise his eyebrows. One was an Armalite .22 long rifle, a semiautomatic with a fiber glass stock recessed to hold the barrel and magazine.

"Lease-lend," he said. "It won't knock any elephants over, but it'll stop anybody you hit in the right place." He looked at the other one. "This is lease-lend, too," he said. "Riot gun." He handed over what looked like a twenty-gauge pump-action shotgun with a sawn-off barrel. "Twenty gauge is illegal for a riot gun," he said. "Whoever made this doesn't seem to have heard the news." He looked at the magazine. "Seven-shot," he said. "If you get close enough you could knock over an elephant with this one."

"How close is close?" asked Grierson.

"Six feet," said Craig. Grierson winced.

"I'd better get in some practice," he said.

Craig left the armory and went back upstairs, remembering the last man he had seen with a gun like that.

He'd been an American Ranger, a tall, easy man from Montana, and they had made one raid together, on the company headquarters of an S.S. panzer group. Their orders had been to bring back a prisoner, and they had brought back one, and only one. The Ranger had hated Germans; his mother and father were Polish Jews. To the end of his life Craig was to remember the effect of that gun. He went back to where Sehna was waiting. If he failed, her country would take a terrible mauling. The People's Republic of Zaarb had a lot of old scores to settle with the Haram.

"You will go there today?" she said. Craig nodded. "Maybe I should go with you. I know the way."

"No," Craig said. "We can't risk you twice."

"You risk yourself many times."

"I'm expendable," said Craig. "Ask Loomis."

"The fat man gives you the hardest work because he honors you most," Selina said.

"He honors nobody and nothing," Craig said. "He uses me because I can do what he wants. No other reason."

Because I can kill, he thought. He sought me out, sobered me up, showed me a girl to worry about—and all because someone has to die, and I'm the one who can kill him.

Jaunty in fresh tweeds and bang on cue, Loomis waddled massively in. Under his arm was a great roll of blueprints. He looked at Selina, looked at the door, then raised his eyebrows inquiringly. She walked out slowly, head up, with a superb and arrogant sexuality.

"Don't you know any ugly girls?" Loomis asked.

"I haven't time," said Craig.

"Been doing me homework," Loomis said. "Found these plans. Fifty years old, but they should give us some idea. Fifty years ago the Zaarb Embassy was a gendeman's town house. Ah, well. That's progress for you." He opened out the blue linen paper, and it crackled dryly. As they pored over it, Grierson came in, the guns under his arm.

"Christ," said Loomis, "what you going to do—depopulate China?"

"We can get in easily enough," Craig said. "We'd like to get out as well."

"So long as you bring Mrs. Naxos with you, you can have a squadron of tanks," Loomis said.

"No," Craig said. "People might talk. All we need now is a fire engine."

« « «

The crowd outside the Zaarb Embassy had an average age of nineteen, a standard uniform of black leather and a high-rating skill in the handling of motorbikes. From the topmost window of the office building across the road, Grierson looked down on them, riding round and round the block in an unending stream, like Indians round a covered wagon. Up the main road round the corner, across the mews, back to the side street and along the main road again. It was impossible to get a vehicle in or out of any building in that block—and there wasn't a policeman in sight. Grierson thought of how they had got into the office. He'd worn a dapper pinstripe suit and carried a briefcase, and Craig had shuffled behind him, all dungarees and an enormous tool bag. Grierson had been very sorry, but a suspected gas leak was a very dangerous affair, and in their own interests he must insist that all the staff go home. A tall, bony, harassed sort of man had locked up the safe and been far more worried about what Mr. Benson would say when he got back from Birmingham than about the threat of coal-gas poisoning. And the typists had made an occasion of it, and gone out to tea before they caught their buses home. One of them had been pretty. Very pretty. They had giggled when the Thames Gas Board van had arrived with a tool chest, and two sweating workmen had humped it in. Grierson had nearly forgotten his role then, and lit a cigarette.

They'd waited until the typists had gone, the pnetty one, the very pretty one, last, and looking so hopefully at Grierson, then they'd opened the chest and tool bag, taken out the walkie-talkie, the firemen's helmets and uniforms, and the weapons they'd brought. Grierson assembled the Armalite, while opposite him Craig sat absorbed, patiently checking his Smith and Wessons, aware of nothing now but the task he had to do, and the tools he must use to do it.

There were two Craigs, Grierson thought. There was the genial extrovert, strong, secure in his own strength, witty, gentle with women, cautious not to hurt—that was Jekyll Craig. Then there was the killer. Hyde Craig. The massive physical power, the fury of nervous energy, all concentrated into a terrible patience, ready for the moment to destroy. Good with guns, good with a knife, terrifyingly good with hands and feet. Grierson remembered what Craig had said about karate. "You've got to believe it'll do what you want it to do. You have to know that everything is inevitable. It has to happen in your head first. When my hands were right I could break bricks with them—because I never doubted. If I had, even for a minute, I'd have ended up with a broken hand."

That was the way Craig felt now. Loomis had given them an edge, and Craig believed he must win, with the same terrifying certainty as when they'd gone to France and killed a renegade colonel. The killer Craig never doubted, and if he ever did, he'd lose. Grierson thought how clever Loomis was to harness all that lethal certainty, and use it so sparingly, and to such effect, then he took off the pinstripe suit, folded it carefully, and put on the fireman's uniform, rammed his feet into the boots, slid the riot gun down one of them. Craig put a Smith and Wesson into each of his side pockets, picked up a smoke mask, then grinned at Grierson.

"Make sure the safety catch is on. You might do yourself a mischief," he said.

He had an ax in a sling at his side, a knife in the top of one boot. On him, Grierson thought, a fireman's helmet looked like a gladiator's. He wished he wasn't so fond of Craig.

"Time for phase two," he said.

A group of policemen came up. None of them appeared to rank higher than sergeant, but they were Special Branch men, led by Detective Inspector Linton. Loomis had briefed them personally. They tried, without much enthusiasm, to regulate the stream of traffic. The rockers used them as an extra hazard, and zigzagged happily round them. Craig watched with the same terrible patience as the motorbikes stopped at last in a circle round the block of houses, and Lonesome, Jigger, and "O Level Edward" lined up behind Harry, and marched up to the door, each carrying a petition. Jigger leaned on the bell, Lonesome swung the door knocker like a hammer, and no one answered. Grierson murmured into the walkie-talkie, then slowly, reluctantly, a scuffle evolved as the police moved in closer.

"I'd better get down there," said Craig. Grierson

nodded. The two men looked at each other for a moment, then Craig was gone. Grierson watched Harry yell through the letterbox, then, as he pushed his petition through, Grierson opened the window, lowered the Venetian blind, and waited for action.

Inside the petition were incendiary leaves of a kind first used in World War II, but these had a triggering device Loomis's scientific staff had had fun with. Grierson hoped Harry had remembered to press on the sealing wax before he posted it. The police were moving in more closely now, and one of them had drawn a truncheon. He wore a constable's uniform, but it was Linton. He aimed a clumsy blow at Jigger, missed, and with the follow-through he smashed a window. Jigger dropped another petition through the hole he'd made, and almost at once a steel grille slammed down. Farther up the road, Lonesome threw a brick, and another window smashed, broken glass splashed out. But there the steel shutters were already in place. "O Level Edward" laid his petition on the window ledge. There was movement at the top of the house. Grierson picked up the Armalite and waited. He noticed, appalled, that his hands were shaking, and that he had to struggle to control them. A puff of smoke appeared from the letterbox, then from Jigger's window. Then Edward's window ledge glowed, crackled, roared into fire. Grierson turned to the walkie-talkie again.

"Now," he said.

Almost at once he heard the clatter of a fire-engine bell, and a fleet of apphances roared up, manned by Special Branch men. Two vast tenders blocked off both ends of the street, a fire escape swung into position near Grierson's office, another appliance swung round by the AZ offices, reversed, and crashed into the blazing window, smashing the grille, scattering flame, then pulled forward again as a masked fireman dashed from the office block to the shelter of the fire engine. Grierson saw a flutter of curtains from a window opposite, then picked up the Armalite, aimed, and waited. The fireman, now with a gun in his hand, darted for the gaping hole the engine had made, and the curtains parted. Grierson fired three quick shots, and the dark bulk at the window pitched forward and was still. Then he raised the Venetian blinds as the ladder extended slowly toward his window. His hands were shaking once more, but at least Craig was inside. The next part was up to him.

Craig went in in a smacking dive, feeling the heat sigh like wind as he moved, and even in the spht second of contact, singeing his eyebrows, pulling his skin tight. He was in a conference room with a long, heavy table and leather chairs. The carpet and one of the chairs were burning. Craig went to the door and opened it from the wrong side, hugging the shelter of the wall. At once someone fired a shot into the empty space he should have filled. Craig took a smoke bomb from one pocket and lobbed it into the corridor. It dissolved on impact into a greasy cloud of lung-choking, gaseous ooze. Craig counted three, swerved into the corridor, and dropped flat. From the shelter of the stairs, an Arab with a machine pistol tried to stop coughing and aim at him. Craig fired, hit him in the arm and the Arab pulled the trigger, squirting bullets in a flailing circle as the smoke made him cough and weep. Craig fired again and killed him.

He raced up the corridor then, but the other rooms facing the street were empty. He went past the staircase to the back of the house—empty storerooms, butler's pantry, stairs leading to the cellars. He hesitated, but there was another ground-floor room. He jammed a metal table against the cellar door, then approached the last ground-floor room, kicked its door open, and swung back against the wall. Cooking knives thrashed like hail through the air. The room was the main kitchen and in it were two very angry chefs. From the window behind them Craig had caught a glimpse of another fire engine, its vast, scarlet bulk sealing off the mews. He lobbed another smoke bomb into the kitchen, locked it, and raced back to the stairs. The cellar would have to wait. Fhp would almost certainly be in the cell-like room Sehna had described to him. As he reached the foot of the stairs he heard the sound of water under pressure smashing into the conference room. The fire would be well under control by now, but the bombs he had thrown created more smoke than ever.

The stairway was empty of hfe. Craig moved more slowly now, conscious of the taste of rubber from the mask, the wet taste of the air he breathed. He reached the dead Arab, and took the machine pistol from his hands. The magazine was empty. He let it fall, and moved on upwards.

At the top of the stairs a door swung open slowly, and Craig dropped. What felt like a blow from a sledgehammer smashed at the side of his helmet, and he fired the last four shots from the Smith and Wesson on reflex alone. There was one answering shot from inside, but Craig heard nothing, not even the crack of his own gun. His four shots had hit the door in a diamond shape, its lowest point the height of a man's chest, its highest that of his head, and all had gone through. Craig waited till the booming noise in his head modulated to a steady hum, then reloaded the Smith and Wesson and summoned up the energy to dart for the door, push it open. Something inside jammed it. Craig shoved the thing aside with his foot, let the door swing open again. The temptation to pass on was almost overwhelming, but he had to be sure.

He burst into the room and a blast of gunfire again made his head boom, and once more it was instinct that made him drop below the angle of the shot, swerve, drop his gun and grab. His hand held a wrist and twisted upwards as the next shot blasted like thunder in the confined space of the room, then Craig twisted further, the gun dropped, and he levered and threw, heard the slam of a body hitting the wall. He stooped, picked up the Magnum and aimed in one fluid movement, but the one he'd thrown lay still. It was a woman.

Craig picked up the little Bernadelli pistol she had used, and dropped it in his pocket, then went over to her. The room was a bedroom. He picked her up and laid her on the bed. She was young, slender, hght-boned, a bruise darkening her pale gold skin from forehead to cheekbone. He had thrown her with appalling force, but the part of his mind in control noted only that she'd be unconscious until the job was done. He went to the body by the door then. It had been a man, and two of the high-velocity bullets he had fired had pierced an inch-thick oak door then slammed straight through his head and chest. He was messy and horrible, and in times to come Craig would remember it, but now all he did was pick up the man's automatic and remove the magazine. He had been in the house for seven minutes. It was time to move on. The next floor was the crucial one. The prison room was there, and inside it, Philippa. And Schiebel. Craig took off the helmet and removed his mask for a moment. He was above the smoke, and the pure air was good. He looked at the helmet then. A line was incised into one side so deeply he could lay his little finger in it, and that side of his head was a throbbing, painful lump. Cautiously he put the mask and helmet back on, then moved again toward the door.

At once an automatic rifle rattled and chattered from above him. Craig leaped back into the room, grateful that Schiebel had at least one overanxious novice on his staff. He began to work at frantic speed, lifting the woman from the bed, dragging the mattress off, placing it to cushion the hail of bullets that must come through the door. He carried the unconscious woman with him and knelt in the corner opposite the door. The man he left where he was. He took out the last of his smoke bombs then, laid the spare revolver beside it, and waited. The next move was Schiebel's.

From the floor below him he heard the crack of a shot, and a great, jagged hole appeared in the floor a foot from where he crouched. Another shot, and then another, and another, tracing an exploring pattern towards the angle of cover. Craig thought the man below must be using a high-velocity rifle, a weapon with a stopping power far more terrible than his pistol. The shots pierced the ceiling of the floor below, then the joists and floorboards, and still came through with enough force to slam into the walls and ceiling. A bullet that weighed less than an ounce, a muzzle energy of 2% tons. Technology was a wonderful thing. And they'd filed the bullets too. He could tell by the holes they made. There was a pause. Craig wondered how long it took the man below to reload. He had no doubt at all that if a bullet reached him, it would kill him, or immobilize him enough to long for a quick death if he fell into Schiebel's hands. He felt for the front flap of his uniform jacket. Sewn into it was a tiny philter, filled with cyanide. Just bite hard on it, the doctor had said. You won't feel a thing. How many had the doctor swallowed?

Incredibly, the telephone rang. Craig saw it was an internal phone, with a row of numbered buttons and Arabic lettering beside them. The man by the door must be pretty important, he thought. The phone rang again and he pulled back his mask and wriggled on his stomach toward it, cautious not to place too much weight on the floor. It

was on a low table by the bed, and Craig lifted it off slowly, slowly, holding the receiver down on the cradle as he wriggled back to the corner and picked up the receiver. At once three shots crashed into the table and smashed it. Craig yelled, and threw the receiver on to the floor. Schiebel's voice said: "You had better come out, Craig." Craig lay still, and another shot slammed up past the table, ricocheted from the wall and whined across the room. Craig lay down on his stomach and waited. It was up to Grierson now.

Grierson watched the ladder extend toward him. There was another turntable near by, waiting his orders. When he gave the word into the walkie-talkie, it would move fast up to the AZ building, its steel-shod ladder aimed like a battering-ram at the shutters that guarded the window of the prison room. And when the shutters gave, the ladder waiting for Grierson would swing him over the road, and he would dive inside, as Craig had done. Grierson picked up the walkie-talkie. His hand was shaking again, but it was time to go. Then he looked again at the steel shutters, and knew that he couldn't do it. Knew it utterly and completely. Schiebel would be in there, waiting for him, and Schiebel would kill him as he had killed Swyven, and his mother and father. He could not face the thought of death.

He remembered Craig's doubts and hesitations, his flat demand for some advantage; remembered also how cheerful and confident he himself had been. It was different now. Craig had gained the concessions he had asked for, and gone at once. Now he was inside the building, waiting for him, depending on him. He had to do something. His hand still shaking, he picked up the walkie-talkie, and spoke into it quickly. "The shutters business is off," he said. "I'm going onto the roof instead."

That was the alternative plan, if anything hindered the attack on the shutters, and all the dregs of his courage would allow him to do.

He stepped on to the window ledge before he could change his mind, the ladder came up to meet him, and he found himself whirled in the air, twenty feet above the roof of the AZ offices. Below him he could see hoses playing on one window after another, shutting off the view in a curtain of water. There was no sign of the rockers. They had suddenly and completely disappeared. Their work was finished. ("We'll give you all the cover we can," Loomis had said, "but you'll have to go in and do the job on your own.") The ladder contracted, and he stepped on to the roof and moved, stiff-legged and clumsy because of the riot gun, toward the skylight. When he reached it, he signaled to the men below, then ducked behind a chimney as a concentrated jet of water searched and probed and found its target. Even behind shelter, Grierson was soaked. The skylight was a jagged, gaping hole. He signaled again, and the great arc of water, solid as a steel bar, disappeared. Grierson counted to three, then leaped for the center of the hole, landed in six inches of water beside two men who choked and sputtered and wept at the force of the water that had struck them. One of them bled from a flesh wound of flying glass. He didn't even notice. The brutal force of the water filled his mind. Grierson hit him with the Magnum's barrel as he landed, and turned to the other, who was groping for a pistol. Grierson struck again, and dropped him, then turned to put the wireless room out of action. There was no need. The water had done it for him. He opened the door, letting loose a miniature waterfall, then slammed it shut behind him and locked it from outside, leaving the key in the lock, then put on his smoke mask, and pulled out the riot gun from his boot. At the foot of the first flight of stairs he found a heavy wooden door. It was locked from the other side. Grierson went back to the wireless room, and searched the two unconscious men. Neither of them had a key. He locked them in again, and went back to the door. There was only one possible way in. He had no picklock, no lever, and no time, and his nerve was running out. He aimed the gun at the lock, and fired three shots in such rapid succession they sounded like one sustained crack of sound, then drew back his leg, slipping on the film of water that spread about him, and brought his foot against the lock. Wood splintered and the door swung open, the water cascaded joyfully down like a dog turned loose. Grierson followed it warily, and no one came to stop him. Then he discovered why. He heard first the rattle of automatic fire, then the heavy boom of a high-velocity rifle. Grierson moved down more quickly. He reached a landing window, and signaled from it to the fire engine below, then continued slowly downward. The rifle boomed again, three times, then there was silence,

then one more shot. When that too was still, Grierson heard the urgent clanging of the fire engine's bell, and hoped that Craig was alive to hear it too. It would tell him that at least Grierson had got into the house.

Craig heard it all right, and moved slowly closer to the door, ready to act when the time came. There was more than one man outside, he was sure of that, but the riot gun would give them all the edge he needed, if Grierson could only get close enough. It was too bad he hadn't got into Schiebel's room.

Grierson moved down a bend in the stairs. Below him four men were facing a doorway. Two of them held automatic carbines, one held a pistol, one a heavy rifle. The rifleman wore a chefs white overalls and hat. None of them was Schiebel. Behind them was a steel door; that was where Schiebel would be. Suddenly one of the men fired a stream of bullets at the door he faced. Grierson moved in closer, walking as if a fast tide were moving against him. Twelve feet, ten, eight. The man who had fired extracted an empty clip. Grierson pumped the action of the gun, and as the men spun round he took one more step, fired, pumped the action, and fired again. The effect was immediate and horrifying. The nearest man fell at once, the second was blasted back against the banister rails, the third looked in horror at the raw wound the buckshot had torn in his arm. Grierson pumped the action again and the fourth man looked at the gun's wide mouth, dropped the rifle and raised his hands. Craig appeared softly behind them and pushed up his mask.

"I told you that gun gave us an edge," he said.

Grierson tried not to think of the man who had taken the first appalling blast of shot. This was the most terrible thing he'd ever done. He gestured at the fourth man. Craig struck with the edge of his hand, and he fell. The third still gaped at his wound. Craig pushed him down on to the stairs, and passed him the fourth man's handkerchief and his own. The Arab was too dazed with shock to know what to do with them. Craig covered the wound, and left him, then his hand went into his pocket, and emerged holding a long, slotted key of hardened steel.

"There's an Arab in there had this on him," he said. "I think it opens the prison door. He and his woman nearly killed me." He looked at Grierson; his hands were clasped so tight round the riot gun that the knuckles showed white, and he hadn't moved. Craig touched his arm. "Come on," he said.

Slowly, with leaden heaviness, Grierson turned and followed him.

They went up to the door, and Craig slowly, silently, inserted the key, standing square in front of it. The bullet wasn't made that could penetrate that steel. The key turned easily, without a sound. Opposite the door was a mirror in a gilt frame. Craig tilted it slightly, then went to kneel by the door. Across its frame Grierson stood, holding the gun. Craig motioned him to get down, and he knelt slowly, like an old peasant at the confessional, then Craig reached out to push open the door. In house-to-house fighting it was always the same. Open the door and face the death behind it. That was how it had been today, until now, and here was another door that Grierson should have opened, but this one was different. Behind it was a man he must kill, and a woman who, whatever happened, must not die. And the door was of steel. He leaned his weight on it, and it swung in massive slowness as he crouched and looked into the mirror out of its angle of reflection.

He saw what he had expected to see. Schiebel had Phihppa in front of him, and a gun at her back.

"You're too cautious, Craig," he said. "The door wasn't locked."

Craig lifted the bomb in his hand, and Schiebel continued:

"li you do anything at all, I'll shoot her. She won't die quickly, I promise you. No more bombs, Craig."

Craig put the smoke bomb down, and looked across at Grierson, once again motionless, on his knees.

"I'm going out," Schiebel said, "and she goes with me. And so do you. You'll take me out of this house, and you'll drive us to where I want to go. Then you can have her. A fair exchange—my life for hers. All right?"

Craig said nothing.

"You have to trust me," said Schiebel. "And you've won anyway. I concede that. Once I give you the woman you can do what you like. But as far as she and I are concerned, this is stalemate. If I live, she lives. You try to kill me and she dies. Now put your gun down, like a sensible fellow."

"No," said Craig.

"Try to be rational," said Schiebel, and his voice was detached, cool. "I can't kill you today. I need you as much as you need the woman. But later I will kill you. I promise you. Now put down your gun. Stick it forward where I can see it. I mean it, Craig. If you won't I'll shoot her and take my chances."

Craig slid the Magnum across the floor.

"Now the other," said Schiebel.

"All right," said Craig, and inevitably, because of his trade, he cheated. The other Magnum slid across the floor, but there was still in his pocket the little .22 Bernadelli he had taken from the Arab woman. The magazine had six shots, and she had fired at him once. He could afford to wait.

"Good," said Schiebel, and pushed Philippa forward to the door. Craig stood up to meet them, and moved into the doorway, blocking their view of Grierson.

"Take us out," Schiebel said, "or she'll suffer. And you will suffer after her. That wouldn't be so good as getting away, but it would be good enough." Suddenly the voice lost its detachment. "I'd enjoy that—making you watch what happens to her, then doing the same to you."

Flip said: "He means it."

Her voice was a hoarse whisper of remembered pain. "I'll take you out," said Craig.

Grierson heard it all, and remembered Loomis's instructions: whatever happened Schiebel must die. His mind held on to that fact, and no other. As Craig walked to the door, he pumped the action of the shotgun again. Without hesitation Craig kicked out at the gun barrel, knocking it aside as Grierson squeezed the trigger. The mirror shattered, and Craig lashed out at Grierson's neck, the only point unprotected by the mask and helmet, in a knife-hand strike, the hard edge of gristle and bone hitting the nerve. Still kneeling, Grierson slumped face forward, then rolled over. Schiebel laughed aloud, and Phihppa's head jerked upright, her glazed eyes cleared, her body cringed. Craig realized that she understood that laughter. She looked down at Grierson and saw a man in uniform with the face of an animal—round, straining eyes, the gross snout of a hog. And the man who had attacked him, he was like that too—wide, sightless eyes, hog snout, but below it the mouth and chin of a man whose strength she had so desperately needed. She began to scream, over and over, then the scream muted to a whimper of pain as Schiebel drove the muzzle of his pistol into her back, and pain brought her to full consciousness, and the realization that the animal face in front of her was a smoke mask.

"Good work, old chap," said Schiebel. "Now let's go, shall we?"

He pushed Philippa forward, then hesitated as he saw the dead men on the stairs. The hesitation made him loosen his grip on her arm for a second, then pain scalded through her as he grabbed her again.

Schiebel said: "You did this?"

"Yes," said Craig.

"Alone?" Schiebel asked, and Craig nodded. "You he," Schiebel said: "The other man held the shotgun."

He made a half turn, still holding Philippa between himself and Craig, then fired a snap shot at Grierson. As he did so, Philippa stumbled and stepped back, and the long spike of her heel, a pressure of more than a ton to the square inch, came down on his foot. Schiebel yelled, and Philippa stamped down again, then hauled down her arm, breaking his grip, and ran. Schiebel hesitated too late between the woman escaping, and the menace of the man. He fired at last at the woman, and Craig saw her stagger and then he reached out for Schiebel in one long, flailing leap, and the two crashed down the stairs, rolling over and over each wide, shallow tread. All the time Schiebel rained blows on him with his free hand, as he held on to the wrist that held the pistol. He twisted the wrist as they rolled, then slammed a punch into Schiebel's armpit. The gun dropped, and they reached the bottom of the stairs. Schiebel drove a fist into Craig's stomach, and wriggled free as Craig grabbed his shoulders, fell back and threw him judo style. Craig landed on the parquet flooring, slamming down with his forearms to break the impact of his fall, and lay still instead of squirming away as Schiebel dived for him, drawing back his foot to smash into Schiebel's chest. Schiebel twisted like a fish in midair, rolling with the blow, his arms breaking the fall. He was up at once, moving backward. He pulled out a knife. Craig slipped off his helmet then, pulled off his mask. The smoke was finished now, leaving nothing but a taste of bitterness in the air. He moved in on Schiebel, his great boots clumsy on the elegant floor. There was a pistol in his pocket—a puny little gun—but deadly enough at six feet. Once Craig would have used it without hesitation, but he and the riot gun had immobilized Grierson, and anyway, he, Craig, was an amateur, Loomis said. A sentimentalist. He had seen what Schiebel had done to Phihppa. His hand went to the top of his boot and he too held a knife.

He had no doubt that Schiebel would be good. The Russians had trained him, and their only standard was perfection. Warily he circled, watching the knife point, waiting, waiting, and his mind took him back to Andraki, and it was Stavros that he faced. Schiebel laughed again, and there was madness in his laughter as well as cruelty, and Craig waited a little longer. Then Schiebel leaped in, the knife point swung in a great arc from knee to chest, and Craig had swerved outside it, his left hand slammed out, punching for Schiebel's knife arm. But Schiebel, slender, lightning fast, had spun with the knife blow, twisted like a dancer beyond Craig's arm, then checked and came in again. Craig's knife hand moved just in time, parrying the blow, and again Schiebel danced back, then aimed a karate kick at Craig's kneecap. Craig gasped. Even the thickness of the boot he wore couldn't protect him completely. He limped now as he waited, limped, and moved too slowly, for this time Schiebel's knife point ripped a gash down his cheek from ear to chin. Craig remembered the "give to take" technique that Stavros had taught him. The pain in his knee warned him that it was all he had left. But Stavros was no better than this man, and Craig was tired. Yet in the end, all his fights had been a gamble, as this one must be. If he had to lose, it might as well be now.

He faced Schiebel too squarely, limping as the blond man moved, offering too wide a target. This time he watched Schiebel's eyes, gambling that they would warn him when he would move. They were very blue, very Nordic eyes, wide and clear; the eyes of a boy who had looked on Hitler and adored him; the eyes of a man who had been taught never to love, to honor, to share, ever again. Eyes that looked only to destroy. Suddenly they narrowed, and Craig swerved at once, and Schiebel leaped, the knife blade ripped through the heavy cloth of the uniform, and Craig felt pain like a thread of fire across his chest and struck back under Schiebel's ribs, and Schiebel stared down at the fist clenched round the knife handle at his side. A look of intense astonishment came over his face; then he fell. Craig looked down at him, then limped over to the stairs, and sat down. An utter weariness came over him. He knew that he must go up, find Phihppa, see if she were wounded— or dead. See Grierson. Tell him the riot gun was all right. Their only chance. His body sagged sideways, his gashed face smeared the painted wall. In a minute he would go. Just one minute.

a a a

There was a long tunnel, and he was rushing down it. There'd be a bend in it soon, and he must open his eyes and face the hght at the end of the tunnel, and the people shouting. He felt someone pull him away from the wa 11, felt fingers touch his face, and the softness of gauze, then he opened his eyes and saw Linton bending over him. "Dead," he croaked. "Tell Loomis Schiebel's dead. And the woman too. Schiebel killed her."

"No," Linton said. "She's up on the roof. Won't come down. You're the only one she'll talk to, Craig."

He opened Craig's coat and taped more gauze across his chest, parallel with another, still angry scar, then offered him a flask.

"No," Craig said. "If I drink now I'll fall asleep."

He hauled himself up, and Linton put an arm round him, helped him to climb the stairs. Up and up they went, past Grierson, who moaned sofdy—Craig would have stopped there, but Linton forced him on—past the men Grierson had killed, and wounded, up past the room where the dead man lay, and the unconscious woman.

"There's another cook downstairs," Craig said. His voice was a hoarse, choking gasp.

"We got him out," Linton said. "We'll get the others out too. Those that are left. Just see to the girl."

They reached the stairs that led to the wireless room. Water slopped and soaked into everything. There was a table in the middle of the room, below the shattered skylight, and a chair on top of the table. One edge of the skylight was smooth and harmless, its shattered splinters thrown down to crunch underfoot on the floor.

Two men got out through here," Linton said. The* seemed quite happy about it. Come on, sport. Up you go."

Somehow he got Craig on to the table, then on to the chair. Somehow Craig reached up to the skylight, grasped the edge and hauled himself slowly upward, feeling every muscle in his arm ache with the effort of it, then he rolled forward on to the roof, staggered to his feet. The roofline cut patterns of elegant abstraction against the summer sky. He walked forward along the leads toward a woman who stood at the edge, looking down with mild interest at the street below. She was the goddess, golden-haired, polished, immaculate, the dream reserved for multimilhonaires. But now she was disheveled, barefoot, dirty. And she had sent for him.

"Hello," said Craig softly.

She spun round so fast because death was of no importance to her. Now or twenty minutes later, that movement said, it was all the same to her. She was three inches from the edge of the roof, a hundred and twenty feet above the ground, and she could jump at any time she chose.

"Don't come any nearer," she said. "I'm warning you. Ill jump if you do."

Wearily Craig sank down, legs in front of him, his back soothed by the warmth of a chimney.

"Don't let the disguise fool you," he said. "You're supposed to have sent for me. Name of Craig."

He raised his head then, looking into her eyes that were serene, untroubled, and quite mad.

"I came here to get you out," he said. "Fire engines, hoses, smoke grenades, policemen disguised as firemen, policemen disguised as policemen, Grierson doing his sheriff of Dodge City bit. We revived a bit of the war for you. Old-fashioned street fighting. I killed a couple myself." She winced at the bitterness in his voice. 'Then I killed Schiebel."

Carefully, her bare, beautiful foot feeling its way, she took one step toward him.

"I thought he'd killed you," Craig said.

"I ran away," the woman said. "I heard him fire, and my heel broke. I just lay there. Then I heard you fighting, took off my shoes and ran."

Craig touched the gauze on his face. He said: "He gave me this. He was very good. But he wanted to hurt too much. It made him a bit careless. And I knew one trick he didn't."

"You're sure he's dead?" Phihppa asked.

"I'm sure," said Craig. "I watched him die. That's the other reason I was sent here."

He sprawled back farther, his right hand searched for cigarettes, found a packet, offered it to the girl. She shook her head. Craig took one, then fumbled for matches. His hand shook, and they spilled on to the leads.

"You'll have to help me," he said. "Please, Fhp." He looked from her to his shaking hand. "You'll have to help me."

Her feet moved slowly, unwillingly toward him, then at last she crouched, picked up a match, struck it, and held it out to him. He drew in the smoke, and she backed slowly away. Craig reached out his hand, and deftly, neatiy, stowed matches into the box. Every movement was sure, steady, confident.

"I could have grabbed you then if I'd wanted to," he said.

"Why didn't you?"

"There are other roofs," Craig said, "and other ways. If you want to die, you'll die. I can't stop you. Nobody can."

Philippa said: "He hurt me, Craig. Christ, he hurt me. Only he was careful. He didn't want me looking too bad in case Harry came to see me. He said he'd put me back on heroin. He meant it, Craig."

Craig said: "He always meant what he said."

"He tried to make me write a letter to Harry. Beg him to do what Schiebel wanted. I almost did write it. I couldn't go back to heroin. I couldn't."

Craig said: "You don't have to."

She looked at him warily, but he made no attempt to move.

"Schiebel's dead. I told you that," Craig said. "We can go down any time. Harry will sign with us, Loomis will get a K.B.E., and 111 get some sleep." He lounged back, unutterably weary.

"There's something else, isn't there?" he said. "You'd better tell me what it is or jump. It's the only choice you've got."

"You'd let me do it?" Fhp asked.

"I couldn't stop you," Craig said. I'm too tired."

Philippa said, "You are without doubt the most arrogant, self-satisfied bastard I've ever met in my life—and that includes Hollywood."

"I'm lazy, too," said Craig. "Make up your mind."

She came up to him then, knelt beside him, took a cigarette from him, and lit it.

"All right," she said. "I'll tell you. But nobody else is to come up here."

"Nobody else is that daft," Craig said. "Get on with it."

"I used to go to Venice quite often with Harry," Philippa said. "He had a lot of business there. He had to leave me alone quite a bit. I was bored, I guess—and edgy, too. You get that way. You can't help it if you've been on heroin. Then I met Trottia—a real comic I thought. Very European, very civilized—straight out of Henry James—but a comic. He introduced me to his friend Swyven. Another comic. But they could be very attractive, you know. Even likable. No man knows what pleases a woman the way a fairy does.

"Then they introduced me to their friend Tavel. He was supposed to fall in love with me. I don't know. Maybe he did. Not that I fell for him or anything. I thought—you'll never believe how stupid I can be—I thought they were smugglers. They told me that that's what they were and I believed them. I could be that stupid. I could do even better than that. They told me you worked for Interpol. That you wanted to trap them—just because they smuggled a few cigarettes. Then Trottia had a good idea. He would set a spy on you. The spy was Schiebel and I asked Harry to give him a job on the boat. And when he came he said he would get me the stuff again. He said the steward, Nikki, would give it to me any time I wanted it. He told Swyven to warn Harry about you too. I suppose they planted stuff on you. Then Harry searched your room, found what was there. That was the night you beat up Tavel."

"I know," said Craig.

"But how could you?" the woman asked.

"He had a thread on his coat; it came off on his chair. Black thread I'd left over my door lock. You picked it up and threw it away. At one time I thought Tavel had dropped it. Then Harry made me fight Dyton-Blease and I knew it was Harry. And you were the obvious link between your husband and a dress designer."

"It was all my fault, you see," said Phihppa. "I got you into it and I guess in a way I got Harry into it too. That bomb. That bloody bomb. Schiebel told me about that. And I would have been the one who did it. That's why I came up here. I had to think."

She threw her cigarette away, and Craig shook out another. This time, when her fingers reached out for it, his free hand moved like a whiplash, caught her wrist, drew her irresistibly down to him.

"All right," he said. "You've told me, and I've listened. Now you listen. Swyven's dead, Schiebel's dead, and you're alive. Harry can vote the way he wants to—and the Haram's safe. Nobody got hurt who matters to you—or me"—except Grierson, he thought, and Serafin, and Lord and Lady Swyven. Once you started it was quite a list.

"You got hurt," Fhp said. "So did I."

"We'll mend," said Craig.

She looked down at the hand on her wrist. He hadn't hurt her and yet she was utterly helpless. Slowly, reluctantly, she grinned at him.

"My, but you're strong," she said, and her free arm came round his neck. She kissed him lightly on the mouth.

"Now let's go down," she said. "You can interrogate me in your office, Herr Commandant. I promise I won't scream too loud."

Craig struggled up and walked to the edge of the roof. The two waited, as the escape ladder probed upward toward them. The two of them stepped aboard, and the turntable lowered them down. Phihppa looked up at Craig.

"Cinderella shall go to the ball," she said.

There was an ambulance waiting, and the two of them got in, the door slammed. Phihppa put her arms round Craig once more.

"See what I mean?" she said.

* Chapter 24 *

The Hastings transport droned wearily across desert, rose to the air from a range of foothills, climbed higher as the mountains appeared at last. On either side of it were other transports like fat, ungainly birds. The jumpmaster waved up the men, watched as the paratroops hooked on the ripcords, settled their kit. One after one the troops moved off in a stick. The rear man asked: "What the hell is this place Haram, sarge?"

"If you don't go now," said the jumpmaster, "You'll miss it. Go on, son. Out."

Loomis beamed across at Craig, dumped a bottle of brandy, a dozen Du Barry roses, and a pineapple on the table, and beamed again. Craig looked fine. Three days in a Sussex nursing home, and there was nothing to show he'd ever done anything more violent than cut himself shaving. Even the strip of sticking plaster, an obscene pink against the hard brown of his skin, might have been the result of a car accident, and the other fellow's fault at that. He looked at the immaculate pajamas, the silk dressing gown.

"What are you supposed to be now?" he asked. "The lead in Private hives?"

Craig settled back smugly into his chair, adjusted the pillow at his back.

"Please," he said. "No excitement. The doctor says it isn't good for me."

He reached out an arm, picked up two medicine glasses, and poured some of Loomis's brandy. The two men drank.

"Naxos signed," said Loomis. "Jolly glad to. We put a battalion of Jocks into Zaarb and two companies of paratroops into the Haram. Sort of military mission. Everything's nice and quiet."

"What about AZ Enterprises?" asked Craig.

"We put the fire out," said Loomis. "The attempt to steal the payroll failed."

Craig choked on his brandy.

"Is that the story?"

"A gang of men broke into AZ Enterprises. They killed a lot of people but they couldn't find any money. Under cover of the fire they escaped."

"Do you honestly think the Zaarb lot will swallow that?"

"Swallow what?" asked Loomis. "They got no witnesses. Your leather boys were out of the way hefore the fight started, we blocked off the whole street, and AZ isn't an embassy. They can't claim diplomatic immunity. They'll have to swallow it or admit they kidnapped Mrs. Naxos. You sent her back to her husband, I hear?"

Craig nodded.

"She tell you much?"

"Nothing relevant," said Craig.

"And Schiebel's dead. We'll get some nice Chinese stuff from the Russians now." Loomis reached out for the brandy bottle on the strength of it, and poured two more.

"Help yourself," Craig said. "How's Grierson?"

"Not good," Loomis said. "I've put him on indefinite leave. He's in a nursing home too, as a matter of fact. Not like this one."

He looked out of the window at the close-shaven lawn, the expensive trees in whose branches the more melodious kind of bird was allowed, within reason, to sing. "His place is top security, d'you see. He's unbalanced—and he knows a hell of a lot."

"That bad?" Craig asked.

"I've got two psychiatrists on him. That Chinn feller's one. Working like a beaver. Doesn't think it'll do any good for a long, long time. Grierson did a lot of jobs you know. Some of them were messy. He got on with it. He's a professional, son. I suppose it had to catch up with him some time. And what he had to do in that house—it was just too much for him. And anyway, he was scared before he went in. That's why he chose the roof."

"Would it do any good if I went to see him?" asked Craig.

"No good at all," said Loomis. "You gave him the riot gun."

Craig sat silent. There was nothing left for him to say.

Loomis cleared his throat and heaved in his chair like a dolphin coming up to blow. Craig recognized the signs. Loomis was about to be tactful. "I don't think you'd better see that Philippa Naxos person again," he said. "We can't afford to upset her husband."

Craig said: "That's what she said."

"Thinks a lot of you—that young woman."

"Is she cured yet?"

"Matt Chirm thinks so. Reckons you helped her a lot while you were with her. God knows how. And don't tell me," Loomis said. "Well you've done your whack of good works. I reckon you're entitled to a spot of leave. Two months if you like."

I'm back on the strength then?" Craig asked.

"As of the first of last month. Official Secrets Act. All that. You may even get some pay, eventually. You got another visitor now." He heaved himself out of his chair, waddled to the door, and flung it open. Selina, in a cool green linen sheath by Dior, erupted into the room, poured presents into Craig's lap, and kissed him. Craig found that he owned a gold cigarette case, more brandy, more roses, and a stone of grapes.

The cigarette case is from my father," she said. "I talked to him today by radio. He is very happy. The Haram will stay as it is and the mountain also."

"You'd better be getting back there yourself," said Loomis.

Selina said: "Not by myself. I still have many enemies in Zaarb."

"Well fly you," Loomis said.

"My father wouldn't permit it," said Selina. "No. You must provide me with an escort. Him!" she pointed at Craig.

"No," said Loomis. "He's due for a rest."

Selina giggled, and Loomis looked at once furious and embarrassed.

Craig felt better every minute.

I'll tell my father you cheat us. You want our friendship and deny us your best men," said Selina.

Loomis's color dimmed back to normal, and only the embarrassment remained.

"All right, blast you, you can have him," he said.

Selina looked at Craig. "I wish to start at once," she said.

Craig spoke sharply to her in Arabic, harsh and searing words that brought her head up proudly, fiercely, like a falcon's, but as the words went on her eyes lowered, her hands came submissively together across her breast, then she bowed to him and left.

"You got me sweating again," said Loomis. "What was all that about?"

"I told her we'd go when I'm ready." Craig looked at him seriously. "She's an Arab, Loomis. A desert Arab— a hundred generations of warriors. They have very fixed ideas. I don't want her to think I'm getting soft."

Loomis's face darkened to magenta, to purple, to violet; he wheezed horribly, and found relief at last in a moaning bellow of laughter. At last he said: "I quite agree. That wouldn't do at all. You want to rest here a bit more?"

"No," said Craig. I'm all right. I just want to see somebody for a while."

"You know, Selina may be right," said Loomis.

Craig didn't answer. He was looking for his clothes.

The Jaguar purred to a halt like a sleepy kitten, and Craig went into his flat. He remembered another return when he'd sat alone and waited for a girl to come back to him, a girl who was dead. But this time the girl was very much alive, sprawled flat on her stomach on a leather sofa, frowning at a yellow-covered typescript. She heard his footsteps and looked up, still muttering a half-learned line. Then she saw him, and the fine was forgotten altogether.

"Oh," she said.

"Buona sera," said Craig.

"I meant to get out of here, honestly," said Pia. "But I've been so busy, and I didn't know where to find you to leave the key—" She rolled from the sofa, a movement at once erotic and touching, and completely female, and stood facing him.

I'll go and pack now," said Pia. But she made no move to go. "Are you still working?"

Craig touched the plaster on his face.

"No," he said. "It's finished. Except—Loomis tried to palm a girl off on to me. I prefer to find my own."

She looked at him again and he was smiling at her, a grin of anticipatory happiness.

"I don't have to go just yet, do I?" she asked, and she was smiling too.

'Tour agent said I'd be bad for you," said Craig.

And Pia told him, fluently and precisely, exactly what her agent could do.