Hunter Killer

3 MAM ' ZELLE ADELE

Mam'zelle Adele's smile was welcoming, but her eyes were shadowed. It seemed almost as if a light had been deliberately dimmed above the high cheek-bones and it gave to the sensitive, volatile face and expressive lips a strangeness which, in the unusual tropical half-light before the dark, set my pulses racing. She answered my knock at the DNI'S cottage door and stood holding it open for me to enter. With her was a Limuria creature as strange and elegant as she was-a small pale-grey ring-tailed lemur. I was later to know him as

Nossi Be. He rubbed himself gently against her unstockinged legs, watchful, friendly, but with reservations, like Mam'zelle Adele herself. She could not have been thirty and the pinkish cotton dress-a flushed coral colour favoured by the islanders-did nothing to hide her exquisite figure.

She wore coconut fibre sandals. Her face was tanned, her light hair sun-bleached. That perfect vignette of her standing at the door in the half-dusk is with me yet. You're staring.' She smiled. As she said it, I knew that it was important for me to remember every detail about her. Her voice had a strange, dammed-up quality, like a current race through a reef passage. When I did not reply, there was a touch of light somewhere in the back of those shadowed eyes, like sun striking on the flash of a frigate bird's wing. You'll be John Garland, Commander Peace's friend.'

Somehow the voice had drawn a subtle distinction between myself and Peace by using his title. I was glad of it.

Yes,' I said, at a loss under her scrutiny. Yes, that's right.'

A silence fell between us and she said, I'm Mam'zelle

Adele.',

Not Adele someone or other but-just Mam'zelle Adele?'

She laughed a quiet, easy laugh which met my query halfway.

' In the Grands Carreaux-those are the big fishing-grounds north of St Brandon-there's a poison-fish which they call

Mam'zelle Adele. So it's difficult for anyone in these parts to say simply, Adele-they must add Mam'zelle.' She looked hard at me. A title gives status, you know.'

Was she perhaps trying to explain her relationship with the Dm? I didn't want to discuss it, looking at that unusual face. St Brandon-I like that better than the Portuguese Cargados Carajos.'

Before she could reply, there was a soft tap-tap from inside the bungalow, like a blind person's cane.

My father-I'm French, you know-held the oil puissance for St Brandon.'

Jouissance?'

Concession.' She gave a soft value to the syllables, like a pirogue's keel on sand.

She added, St Brandon has a ring about it.'

I shared her warmth, remembering a grey old ruined abbey on the Atlantic shore of Ireland, where once I had made a pilgrimage to St Brendan's grave. When the squadrons of clouds come to obscure the mountains above the saint's grave, they will tell you in the soft Connemara tongue that it is St 31

Brendan's angels bringing him safely home across the sea from America 800 years before Columbus. I wanted to tell her. The soft tap-tap came to my ears again. It reminded me of the intruder's stethoscope against Peace's coffin. It broke the chain. She sensed it.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

You've been there, then?' Her voice was flat, as if she already knew the answer.

Commander Peace and I called there on our way from Mauritius here,' I replied. An ancestor of his, Sir John Peace was the first Englishman there. He charted it. Peace thought it might be fun to do the same.'

A bit of fun!' she exclaimed ironically. Yes, that is what Commander Peace would have said.'

So Peace had been in touch with the DNI. The shadow of his death lay between us.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

She looked at me, a little puzzled, then said formally, ' Sir George is expecting you.'

Sir George!-the DNI to me. I wondered less now that I saw her why he had set up with Mam'zelle Adele, but it left me with an inexplicable resentment, nevertheless.

She led the way into the fair-sized bungalow. Pressurelamps gave a comforting sizzle. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Steel against steel. Mam'zelle Adele opened a door. Taptap. Tap-tap. The toughened steel punch was against the white bone. He was tapping it with a tiny hammer: tap-tap, tap-tap. The skull lay on a cushion, surrounded by blue-grey chips. The

DNI did not look up but tap-tapped again. A flake came away and the bone stood out, dirty-white.

Got it!' he exclaimed with satisfaction. He blew the chips away. ' Isn't he a beauty? Scarcely distorted at all-look at those teeth.'

The skull was the size of a horse's, bat the teeth were predatory-as long as a man's finger-and hooked. Above the eye-sockets its shape broadened like an aeroplane's tail. If he's not an Aulacephalodon, I'll eat blue shale,' the DNI remarked.

I drew closer to the grotesque thing on the cushion. Much of the bone was free of its stone matrix.

Aulacephalodon?' I queried.

This chap was a reptile which wandered about Africa two hundred million years ago. Up to now specimens have been confined to the semi-desert Karoo region of South Africa32 never found anywhere else. Now I'll rock them-here's blue Karoo shale among the corals of the Saya de Malha Bank.'

Peace and I had skirted Saya de Malha after St Brandon on our way to the Seychelles. It is a vast collection of shoals, atolls and cays scarcely above water-level, extending over thousands of square miles in the Sea of Limuria.

You're talking Greek to Captain Garland and me,' Mam' zelle Adele chided him gently.

The DNI laughed. ' Why yes, I am-Aulacephalodon is Greek for a winged head: look at the winged formation of the back of his skull'

Mam'zelle Adele was reproving. I think we all need a drink, don't you, Sir George?'

Usual, please.'

I asked for whisky, wondering at his commanding tone. Well, he'd been used to ordering people around all his life. He got up and sat on the edge of the table, swinging a leg. He asked didactically, You realize what this means?'

I'm afraid I don't.'

The Karoo,' he said with a schoolmasterish air, is a unique semi-desert area of South Africa which is the richest repository of reptile fossils in the world. Man, of course, had not yet appeared on the scene when they lived.' He looked at me penetratingly. Man is still young in the scheme of things-only a million years, maybe-and some of these creatures were adaptable enough to survive for sixty million. But in man's short stay on the face of the earth he has evinced one characteristic which may cause him to survive longer than any other creature-there has never been a killer like him. There is nothing man will not kill, has not killed. He knows the lesson these creatures never learned-kill first, have the best weapon, and you live.' His voice was precise, prim. Man must kill in order to survive.'

Geoffrey Peace's philosophy,' I replied. But before the words were out, I knew I was wrong: Peace had learnt his killerphilosophy from this man. I looked away. The room commanded a panorama of the fleet anchorage, the isles, and the sea beyond. There was still enough light to see the white tip of Recif where we had buried Peace. The full-width glass doors were closed against the sea-breeze and below them stretched lawn and flowerbeds. Was it coincidence that the DNI was in the Seychelles for the mighty resurgence of British naval power, the Limuria Squadron? What had been his part in restoring the Royal Navy's power and prestige?

Mam'zelle Adele's arrival with the drinks broke the spell.

You see what this means?' he repeated. Although the didacticism was there, the fervour had gone from his voice. I sipped the whisky. No.'

It contradicts all previous theories that Saya de Malha was due to subsidence, not upsurge, of the land mass underneath.' I winced at the academic sophistries. Mam'zelle Adele said, with that odd pitch to her tone,

He's trying to say, the Karoo and Saya de Malha are related.'

What did it matter to me whether the Karoo was or was not related to a bank in the Indian Ocean? At that moment I was more interested in Mam'zelle Adele.

' Where do you figure in this?' I asked her.

The DNI replied before she could answer. Mam'zelle Adele knows the islands. She speaks Creole like a native.

She is my guide on my fossil-hunting expeditions. St Brandon.. She sipped a cloudy drink. It wasn't alcohol but her own mixture of fruit juice and the nectar of coconut-flowers.

The silence was oppressive.

The DNI went on, ' You find these fossil reptiles only in blue shale. This piece was overgrown by coral at Saya de

Malha. It had enormous implications.'

I waited politely. If it had not been for that flash of his while Mam'zelle Adele was fetching the drinks, I would have been bored stiff.

Implications?' , Why, yes-it means I have definitely proved the existence of Limuria.

' I'm afraid I'm not with you.'

He sat swinging a leg. The presence of blue shale in midocean thousands of miles away from the Karoo itself proves the existence of a common tie hundreds of millions of years ago. Here I've found a Karoo creature in Limuria.' He tapped the skull. It shows that Africa was once linked to

Limuria-by land. It is not fantastic now to speak of Limuria as an Indian Ocean Atlantis. Of course, there's a great deal yet to be done, but I am inclined to think the same upheaval which threw up the Karoo mountains was the one which drowned Limuria: under the sea'

Very interesting,' I murmured.

He went off at a tangent, speaking rapidly to Mam'zelle

Adele, asking if dinner was nearly ready, offering me another drink.

She took my glass. There was a lot in her eyes I wanted to understand.

` What were we talking about?' he asked when she had gone.

Here was my cue. The clear eyes watched me intently.

Killers,' I replied. Man the killer.'

Good,' he said. Good.'

There had been a message and I had got it. The voice became more precise, and I knew I was in deep waters.

All man's long tale of killing-' he tapped the grotesque skull-' from this fellow onwards has one short moral: kill, first-' he tapped the hooked fangs with a finger-nail' have bigger and better teeth.'

Or-' I said it very slowly= the weapon to end all weapons.'

The voice was gentle, almost prim. The ultimate weapon yes.' The words came from deep inside the man. The soft tones belied the steel beneath.

I put the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. In this age?'

The clear eyes probed me, assessed. Then he walked over to the glass door. It was dark now and the lights of the fleet stood out. The DNI jerked his head towards them. In this

A cold thrill went through me, for Peace had spoken of that slightly world-weary, compassionate tone which the DNI was given to use in times of great crisis.

I joined him. We stood, saying nothing.

Then he sighed, glanced at his watch, and threw open the doors.

A lovely night! I wonder if one gets nights like these anywhere else in the world except South Africa?'

I did not hear Mam'zelle Adele in her soft sandals. She handed us new drinks. The DNI stood looking. No one spoke. Then he said, Turn out that light, will you, John-it rather spoils the effect.'

It was an order, not a request. John, not Garland, or Captain Garland, but John. For him to address me like that, I knew I had surmounted some obstacle he had laid in my path. I was surprised to see Mam'zelle Adele put out a bottle of Glenfiddich and a glass. I turned out the pressure-lamp. My eyes were blinded by its closeness. A soft arm was slipped through mine and Mam'zelle Adele said, Let me guide you.'

She was close. I smelt the sun-smell of her and was glad I had come. I stumbled to the doorway, still half-dazzled.

I didn't see him, only the gleam of the knife.

I jerked aside, dragging Mam'zelle Adele with me. I can35 noned into the door-frame. Then, as he laughed, I froze. It was Geoffrey Peace.

He pulled off the black rubber cap and grinned at the DNI. " Nothing much wrong with John's reflexes, is there?'

I blinked in disbelief. Peace stood on the terrace in the same black rubber suit in which I had seen him in his coffin. A long diving-knife was in his hand. I tried to speak, but the words would not come.

Peace said ruefully. Next time you want an arse-overelbow stunt, you'd better give me some astronaut training beforehand. I thought the bloody thing would never stop cartwheeling.'

The DNI laughed too. You went up a lot higher than I expected.'

Peace said, I'm black and blue, despite the foam rubber.'

The ejector gear work all right?' asked the DNI.

Peace laughed again. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be here now.'

The DNI said, Get inside, will you, Geoffrey? Nobody saw you?'

Peace shook his head.

I gasped, Geoffrey!'

Pour me a whisky, boy, will you, if there's such a thing in the house? Christ, to watch that bloody MacFadden pour the stuff all over my face and I dying for a drink!'

Mam'zelle Adele was still on my arm. Peace's greeting to her was level, comradely. Hello, Mam'zelle Adele.'

She detached herself. Good evening, Commander. Was it a good trip?'

Get me a drink and I'll tell you,' he replied.

Geoffrey – I started again.

He cut me short. The funeral act must have been pretty convincing, judging from your reactions then-and now.'

The DNI locked the glass doors and drew the thick coconutmatting sunblinds. He relit the lamp. Peace glanced at the bottle. Hmmm, Glenffiddich for the returning prodigal.'

My hands shook so that the drink slopped. What is all this about?'

Later,' Peace grinned. What I need is whisky, food, and lack of adulation-in that order.' He swallowed the smooth spirit at a gulp.

Your clothes are in your room,' said Mam'zelle Adele. '

What's to eat?' he demanded.

Varra-varra,' replied the DNI. Varra-varra and turtle steak.'

Excellent! You want to live on those bloody spaceman pills inside a steel coffin for days to appreciate what a square meal means. If I'd been one of those blokes who first got up on to the moon, I'd have come back to earth just for a decent meal.' He laughed and added, ' I nearly indulged in an old Limuria remedy-drink a pint of turtle's blood to restore your own.'

I felt the amused twitch of Mam'zelle Adele's lips was meant for me, as she said, I should have kept some of tonight's dinner gravy for you, then, rather than Scotch-it's. turtle steak'

Peace dropped his gay mood and turned to me. Don't look so damned serious, John-the whole thing was a hoax.

The DNI and I engineered it. I breathed air from Scuba bottles they stacked in the bottom of the coffin. When you mourners weren't grieving over the dear departed, I took a whiff through my face-mask.'

I remembered the sharp hiss I had heard while hiding behind the bar. The CIA man had heard it, too. Peace swung on me as if he were reading my thoughts.

Thanks-for that other business'

Other business?' The DNI was sharp.

I pulled out the Colt with the hocked hammer and held it in my palm. Peace gave a low whistle. The DNI took it while I explained about the intruder. I realized from his reaction that it was not the intruder who had told him about Mac and the Glenfiddich. Adele's eyes never left my face.

The DNI and Peace stared at one another. Peace's face was bleak, which always spelled trouble for somebody; the DNI'S impassive, cold.

The DNI addressed himself to Peace. This puts a different complexion on-a lot of arrangements.'

How are you sure he was a CIA man?' asked Peace abruptly.

I told them about the three smalls moles' under the armpit. The DNI permitted himself the ghost of a smile. This is the man we want, Geoffrey.'

I told them about the man's disappearance from the engineroom. Peace pursed his lips. No other identification?'

' Nothing except-' I nodded at the weapon-' that.'

The DNI sniffed the barrel. High-velocity powder. Been fired recently, too. Undoubtedly-' He stopped, looking at Peace for confirmation.

Hand-load,' he replied. Therefore probably American.

Bears out what John says about the CIA marks.'

The tense silence fell again. I had not yet recovered from the shock of Peace's return. I remembered the die-cut lettering

on the coffin '.

It seems to me far too many people were on the inside of this hoax-the C-in-C, for example.'

Peace became uneasy. What makes you say that, John?'

I told them about the Cammell-Laird nameplate. The DNI frowned. Too many loose ends, it seems, Geoffrey-especially when a man like John smells a rat. No, the C-in-C was not in our confidence.'

Nor am I,' I retorted.

' Touche,' replied the DNI, inclining his head. ' The coffin was built specially for the job, in England. It was-ahinsinuated in the right place at the right time'

I looked at the three. It was clear that Mam'zelle Adele knew all about it, too. I remembered the strange undertones in the DNI'S voice earlier.

You're not a couple of schoolboys to play a practical joke

– let's take it from there,' I snapped.

Mam'zelle Adele started to withdraw. My dinner is spoiling,' she excused herself.

The DNI did not give me the chance for further questions when, she had gone. He said to Peace, Was the pirogue in the right place, Geoffrey? No other leaks? No one in sight?'

We had an island boat waiting in a cove at Recif for me,'

Peace explained to me. I paddled here under cover of darkness. The coffin had an ejector device. I pulled the chain and it shot me clear. There wasn't anyone around.

How deep were you?' I asked.

Sixty, seventy feet.'

It seemed fishy to me that the C-in-C refused me a ride in the helicopter.'

He had his orders,' replied the DNI in his precise voice. Peace went on, I had to get out tonight. Tomorrow there was a chance that someone might have taken a boat o'er the grave where our hero was buried. They would have seen the coffin half-submerged.

I took the Colt from the DNI. The owner of this, for example.'

How much did he suspect?' Peace demanded.

' I didn't give him much of a chance. But we both heard the hiss of air escaping from the coffin. I don't like the idea of that coffin still floating around.'

The DNI shook his head. No. It was loaded with two explosive charges, one for Geoffrey's ejector seat, and the 38 other for a demolition charge. Geoffrey Peace is at the bottom of the sea, to the best of everyone's knowledge.'

Mam'zelle Adele came back. ' Dinner in ten minutes, whether you're changed or not changed.'

Her arrival broke the tension. Peace and the DNI went off. I stood silent, an avalanche of questions in my mind. Nossi Be rubbed himself softly and affectionately against me.

Adele said,, Another drink-John?'

Her eyes were level, unsmiling. I started to say yes, but stopped. Peace might drink whisky like that, but not me if I wanted to catch the 'undercurrents-there were plenty-of the DNI's words and Adele's.

She paused fractionally at my refusal, then picked up the elegant lemur and put him on the table. She was relaxed, easy. Come, my lovely one,' she said. ' Shake hands with our tough fellow-conspirator'

Nossi Be extended a jet-black paw. He was as much a creature of Limuria as Mam'zelle Adele-strange, lovely, sun-warmed, gentle. The creature's action momentarily stilled the tumult in my mind.

I scratched his chin. It's sheer magic.'

The eyes warmed above the high cheek-bones. Magic?'

Less than a fortnight ago I was sitting in an air-conditioned skyscraper office in Johannesburg,' I replied. My whole world revolved round NACCAM and its affairs. A touch of the button and-'

She smiled. A man under authority.'

I sounded a little' unreal to myself.

And now?' she prompted, when I fell silent.

Nossi Be,' I replied. Limuria. Mam'zelle Adele.'

' The languid charm of the islands,' she teased. Then that odd quality of light round her eyes dimmed. You underrate yourself,' she said quietly. I'd add, a man who half-kills another with a karate blow to the throat and is quite prepared to rough up a semi-conscious man to extort information from him. The chosen companion-in-arms of Commander

Geoffrey Peace.'

The suddenness of it took me aback. She picked up Nossi

134, who was grumbling under his breath.

There are things about you which also don't add up,' I said. You're French, for example, yet your English is impeccable.'

She knelt, putting Nossi Be on the floor, and looked up into my face. The V of her breasts under the slight cotton sent the blood into my ears.

I act as the DNI'S interpreter,' she replied evenly. He told you so himself. I speak Creole-well.'

But your English-'

She shrugged. I went to school in England. I learned my trade there.'

Trade?' I echoed, but she stood. up and turned away.

There were as many questions I wanted to ask her as I wanted to ask Peace and the DNI. Then, with an odd little gesture, she swung back and slipped her arm through mine and led me in to dinner.

Her dinner was a masterpiece, but my preoccupation prevented my enjoying it fully. The varra-varra was served with a beurre vert in tiny flat wicker baskets on a bed of fern-like langue de vache: the turtle steaks were sweated in butter with a thickish sauce of coconut flour flavoured with sherry. The wine was a favourite of Peace's, a superb South African Bellingham Grand CAI served in an ice-bucket' made from the famous double coconut-shells of the Seychelles.

Mam'zelle Adele sat at the head and the DNI at the foot. I faced Peace. We had just finished the varra-varra and I reached forward for the wine. The Colt fell, like a reminder, on the table. Mam'zelle Adele picked it up and handed it back to me.

The Colt Python's better,' she remarked. A sort of

Cadillac among hand-guns.

I saw Peace stiffen. He stared at her. His eyes were deadly cold and his mouth hard. The DNI caught the look. From that moment the meal seemed to go dead. The DNI's voice became more precise and he talked palaeontology. Peace was withdrawn. My conversation, I felt, fell flat. Mam'zelle Adele alone seemed unaffected, though she must have sensed the tension. She was gay, beautiful in her strange way as Nossi Be, who jumped on to her chair and curled his long tail round her neck in imitation of a fur. A frozen lemon sherbet rounded off the meal. We went back into the big room overlooking the harbour. Mam'zelle Adele brought coffee and cognac. The silence was intense.

The DNI swirled his Napoleon brandy round in its balloon glass. He said to me, ' You must be asking yourself what this is all about?'

His glance went over the rim of his glass to Peace, then to Mam'zelle Adele, and back to me. The prim voice was slightly defensive. I had to convince-ah-a number of people that Geoffrey Peace was dead.'

' Including John Garland,' I rejoined.

He went on, ' " The deep damnation of his taking off " had to be spectacular, something everyone could see for themselves.'

At least the CIA man had his doubts.'

Peace stirred in his deep cane chair. I wonder if you didn't overdo the business of the depth-charge mortar?'

There was that risk,' replied the DNI., But everyone had to see Geoffrey Peace go to his grave.'

It all looked very real and decorous on TV,' interjected Mam'zelle Adele.

Was the glass hatch a calculated part of the display?' I asked.

The DNI nodded. It was armour-plated, of course. Did you see anything publicly in the set-up to make you think it might be a fake?'

Nothing, except your flippant attitude on Loch Ven- nachar's bridge.'

He frowned at my tone. You're on the inside of this.' I wasn't then-I'm not sure now.'

Now,' he went on, having publicly disposed of Geoffrey

Peace, I bring him back because I-'

I interrupted him. It strikes me as peculiar the way you keep saying "I". You're retired. You're spending your declining days messing around with reptile fossil and learning Creole.'

I froze when I saw his eyes. I'm doing neither.'

He looked at me thoughtfully, calculating. It was the most frightening glance I have ever had directed at me. It struck me that he was assessing how, if he had to kill me, he would have done it. The gentle, slightly weary voice lent high drama to his words. Mam'zelle Adele sat very upright and still. Peace no longer lolled in his chair. Maybe he was, remembering his own excoriation by that same gentle, deadly voice.

The DNI rose and sat on the arm of his chair. I, of course, have a secret. Geoffrey, of course, has a mission.'

And some hellish weapon is involved,' I added grimly.

His smile was wintry. Ultimate-it softens the concept, somehow. A small handful of people share this secret. They include the Prime Minister of England and the President and Vice-President of the United States.'

I shot a glance at Mam'zelle Adele. The skin was stretched tight across her cheek-bones, as if someone had put hands over her ears and pulled it back. She pushed Nossi Be absently from her knee.

There was a long pause. The only sound was the swish of the trade wind through the broad leaves of the latanier trees.

The DNI placed the tips of his fingers together. In my heightened state of mind I saw the gesture as akin to the crablike pincers of the cannibal centipede of the islands when it throttles its victim. Their rasp was in his voice, too.

We are going to launch the Vice-President of the United States into space.'