Seven Lies South

11

When Beecher regained consciousness he was half-sitting, half-lying in a deep leather chair. His head ached blindingly, and his stomach was twisting with nausea. When he swallowed, the saliva in his mouth burned his throat like lye. In front of him was a desk covered with papers and ledgers and a tray of bottles and glasses. The wall behind the desk was lined with books. He was alone, he thought, enveloped in a close, warm silence.

Then someone moved behind him. He tried to turn around, but the effort sharpened the pain in his head unbearably, and he settled back weakly in the chair, laboring for breath. The frantic stroke of his heart pounded frighteningly in his eardrums.

Don Willie came into his view. He looked down at Beecher with an expression of troubled sympathy on his round flushed face. In Beecher’s foreshortened view, Don Willie seemed enormous; he wore a white silk suit, and he looked as big and solid as a barrel, with his head almost touching the wooden beams of the ceiling.

He bent forward and put a hand gently on Beecher’s shoulder. “Are you feeling a little better, Mike?” he asked solicitously. “Your head, it is better, no?”

“It hurts,” Beecher said, speaking with as little effort as possible; he didn’t want to do anything that might rake up the smoldering pain in his head. He felt very sick; and the fear and pain made it impossible for him to think clearly.

“Can you get a doctor?” he said.

“Ach! It is only a little bump. You want a brandy, nothing else. I have looked at your wound. It hurts, no?” But Don Willie’s expression contradicted these assurances; his thick white eyebrows were drawn together in frowning, impersonal concern. He might have been looking at a flat tire, Beecher thought helplessly.

“What happened to me?” he said, hardly moving his lips. “Did you hit me?”

“Me? No, of course not, Mike.”

“Is this your place?”

“Yes, my study.” Don Willie smiled about the room, his manner changing somewhat; he became almost jaunty with pride. “It is cozy, no? I do the confidential things here.” He smiled and rubbed his hands. “A businessman must have secrets, no? Even from his associates.”

“I wish you’d call Doctor Gonzalez,” Beecher said.

“I forget your pain. You must have a drink.” Don Willie poured brandy into a glass and gave it to Beecher. “Here is your medicine. It is pleasant to be sick and have brandy for medicine, no?”

“It’s just great,” Beecher said and sipped from the glass. The brandy cleaned the hot sick taste from his mouth. He closed his eyes. For a moment he thought he would throw up, but the feeling passed; and after a little while he realized that strength was coming back into his arms and legs.

“What about the Frenchman?” he said. “He’s dead?”

“Yes, of course,” Don Willie said. He paced the floor breathing heavily. “He is dead. It is better all around, no?”

“How would I know?”

“But of course.” Don Willie’s smile was embarrassed. “You don’t understand. It is not your fault.”

“Thanks,” Beecher said dryly.

The door opened and Lynch came in. “Hallo!” he said, smiling down at Beecher. “The patient’s taking nourishment! Good show!”

Here was the familiar voice! Beecher stared up at him. “You hit me,” he said, and he knew his voice was high and unsteady. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course, old man. And I’d rather like to apologize. I hope you’ll forgive me. Nothing else to do, considering, but still and all—” Lynch smiled charmingly. “Hardly in the best form, was it?”

Don Willie looked anxiously at his wrist watch. “We must leave soon for the airport. I will tell the maids to make sandwiches and coffee. Excuse me.” He hurried off rubbing his hands together nervously.

Lynch poured himself a drink and sat down in a chair facing Beecher. He got out his cigarettes and crossed his long legs, very casual and correct in cavalry twill trousers, and a hacking jacket with leather shooting patches at the elbows.

“How’re you feeling, old man?”

“Lousy,” Beecher said, and finished the brandy.

Lynch nodded approvingly. “That’s the stuff. Care for another?”

“No. I want to know about the Frenchman.”

Lynch paused in the act of lighting a cigarette; the flame of the match flickered in his clear blue eyes, and made a golden spark in his fair hair. “Well, I killed him, of course,” he said, and lit his cigarette and dropped the burnt match in an ashtray. “Messy, I grant you, but quite unavoidable. He was a peculiar piece of goods. I shouldn’t wonder he was homosexual.” Lynch studied his glass with a frown. “I must say, I was never very comfortable with that sort. Live and let live, it’s all very well in principle, but one doesn’t want to kip in with a gang of bloody queers, does one?”

“Why did you kill him?”

Lynch looked at Beecher with a steady smile. “Chiefly because he didn’t like you, old boy.”

“What’s his not liking me got to do with your killing him?”

Lynch sighed. “It’s a complicated business. Supposing I try to clew you in from the start. The Frenchman, you see, was hired by Don Willie to do a job. But it became apparent he wasn’t up to it.” Lynch smiled and pointed his cigarette at Beecher. “You seemed much more the type. Steady, dependable, all that sort of thing. Poor old Maurice felt he’d been done dirty. Blamed you for losing his golden opportunity. That’s why he flared up like a fighting cock every time he saw you.”

“The job in Rabat,” Beecher said slowly. “Is that what the Frenchman wanted?”

“There’s no sense hopping back and forth this way. Let’s proceed in a straightforward fashion. Now where was I?” Lynch took a thoughtful sip from his drink. “Oh, yes. Well, after that ruckus in the café this afternoon, Maurice went up to your villa. I’d seen what was happening, so I tagged along to talk some sense into him. But it was quite hopeless. He planned to kill you.” Lynch shook his head. “Frightfully unstable fellow. Thought that would make Don Willie reconsider, give him another chance, and so forth. Well, I couldn’t have him killing you. And if he tried and failed, it might even have been worse. Police, and all that.” Lynch put out his cigarette with a strong twist of his wrist. “So I killed him. Then you drove up. I couldn’t let you call the police, so I tapped you on the head, slung you into your car, and popped back here.” Lynch smiled at Beecher. “And how is the head now? Feeling better?”

“What will you tell the police when they arrive?”

“I don’t imagine they will. You don’t have a dog at your villa, do you?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I tucked poor old Maurice behind those bushes along your front wall. A dog might sniff him out, but your maids won’t find him till morning. We’ll be gone by then.”

Beecher managed to work himself up to a sitting position. “You assume we’re flying off to Rabat on schedule? With a dead man lying in my garden?”

“We’re not going to Rabat,” Lynch said mildly. “In your useful American phrase, we intend to hijack that plane.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I know this is all something of a surprise to you,” Lynch said. “I’d suggest you let me finish. The job Don Willie offered you in Rabat doesn’t exist. And I have no business there, of course. The old pal from Dakar and so forth, all that was bunkum.” Lynch sighed and lit another cigarette. “I rather wish it weren’t. This business has become frightfully confused. But Don Willie will see us through. He’s terribly German, which makes him a bit absurd, but he’s got a good head for plans and timetables and that sort of thing.”

“Why did Don Willie offer me a nonexistent job in Rabat?” Beecher said, rubbing his forehead. Lynch’s words seemed to be drifting to him through a fog of absurd confusion; they made hardly any sense at all.

“To get you on the plane,” Lynch grinned amiably. “You’re going to fly it for us.”

This made no more sense than anything else Lynch had said, but it had the virtue of being quite funny. “So I’m going to fly the plane,” he said.

“Yes. It’s an old trustworthy C-47. Shouldn’t present any problems.”

“Oh, no. They’re sound ships.” Beecher felt as if he were humoring an idiot. “Anyone who’s flown a kite could handle one. But why did you pick me?”

“Backs to the wall, that sort of thing.” Lynch glanced at his watch. “Would you mind terribly just listening to me, old chap? It will go much faster that way.”

Don Willie’s German shepherd dogs suddenly set up a roaring clamor.

“Nasty brutes, aren’t they?” Lynch said. “Nervous as virgins. Half-mad wondering what’s expected of them. Discipline’s one thing, but fear’s another, isn’t it?”

The barking stopped abruptly, and they heard Don Willie’s voice rising in anger. Then came the heavy measured sound of the riding crop at work, the pounding whack! of leather on meat and bone.

“They’ll take his face off one day, I shouldn’t wonder,” Lynch said, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “But let’s finish up, shall we? The Frenchman was originally hired to pilot the aircraft. Don Willie knew him years ago in France, where Maurice was sucking up to the Vichy crowd, which is what you’d expect of him, I must say. He’d been a first-class pilot in his time. And he needed money so it seemed like a good idea to bring him down here for the job. But one look at him, and we saw it was hopeless. The beggar couldn’t keep a drink straight in his hands, let alone a control stick. It’s that deviate business, I imagine. Rots a man faster than brandy, doesn’t it?”

“So that left me,” Beecher said.

“Yes. As I say, backs to the wall. It was common knowledge you’d been a pilot. We decided you might do.” Lynch smiled easily. “We couldn’t make you a straightforward proposition. No telling how you’d react. Might hit the panic button, or something equally silly. We didn’t know anything about you, that’s the long and short of it. So we had to be a bit devious. But the balloon’s gone up, so our cards are on the table.”

“What’s your job in this business?”

“Navigator. I’ll point out the route.”

“Where do you intend to take the plane?”

“That’s a little complicated. But it’s not necessary to go into it just now.”

Beecher laughed quietly. “I wish my head didn’t ache so much. I might enjoy this a lot more.”

“I dare say it sounds fantastic.” Lynch’s eyes were suddenly cool and steady. “But we’re quite serious. I’d remember that.”

Beecher straightened himself in the chair with an effort; a current of anxiety was running through him. “Okay, you’re serious,” he said. “But there’ll be other passengers on that flight to Rabat. An American girl for one. What do you propose to do with them?”

“You needn’t concern yourself about that. You’ve got nothing to do but fly the aircraft.”

The door opened and Don Willie came in. He was perspiring and flushed with anger, but his emotions were obviously running in cross currents for large tears stood out in his eyes. The heavy crop swung in his big fist. He threw it on the desk and said hoarsely, “My little babies were bad. But it is not their fault. Their spirits know something is wrong. They are used to kindness and love. And we play nice music all day.” He blew his nose. “You are a fool!” he shouted suddenly at Lynch. “Why did you kill him?”

“It couldn’t be helped,” Lynch said, shrugging.

“Anything can be helped if you know how to think,” Don Willie cried. He pointed to his forehead. “This is where you think. Not with your fists.”

“At any rate, it’s over and done with,” Lynch said with another shrug. “Meanwhile I’ve explained the drill to Beecher. But he doesn’t seem to think I’m serious. Perhaps you’d better have a go at it. It’s now ten o’clock. We should be leaving here in forty-five minutes. No later.”

Don Willie turned to Beecher, an anxious smile flickering over his damp red face. “You know I am a serious man, Mike. I like to joke sometimes, too. With my friends I laugh. Ha, ha,” he said, and rubbed his hands together nervously. “I am a good sport.” He was perspiring heavily; blisters of sweat glinted on his forehead, and his flushed features were twisting and working to produce an expression of jolly good humor. The effect was the opposite of what he intended; he reminded Beecher of a bear dancing on hot coals, performing comically for the most painful of reasons. “But I am not joking now, Mike. You must believe me.” Don Willie pulled a chair close to Beecher’s, and patted his shoulder clumsily. “I must take that airplane away tonight. It cannot go to Rabat. No one will be hurt. It is all planned. But I must take it. Otherwise I am destroyed.” The strain he was under sounded in his voice; it trembled with tension. “Help me, Mike. We have been friends, no?”

“You’re talking like madmen,” Beecher said.

“There is money for you, Mike. I don’t ask you to help me for nothing.”

“No, no!” Beecher said, almost shouting the words.

“Please listen, please,” Don Willie said. Beecher had attempted to rise, but Don Willie pressed him gently down into the chair. “I must tell you everything. After the war I came to Spain a poor, beaten man. The world had scorn for all Germans. Germany was wrong! Ja! Ja! Everybody knows — knew that. German people were monsters! Ja! Ja! Everybody knew that too. Our leaders were tried and hung. Our soldiers were put in camps like animals. But no German can say anything about these things. We bow our heads! We take the blows! It is not important. But we must show that the world is wrong, that we are not monsters. So I came to Spain, a poor little man, and went to work. I had brought a few little things from France.” Don Willie made a face to indicate their lack of value. “Trinkets, nothing more. I sold them and started a business. I built houses, did construction work, anything. I worked with my men at the jobs, with the masons, the plumbers, the carpenters, showing them how we do it in Germany, and teaching them not to be careless and lazy like Spaniards. But—”

“I think you’d better come to the point,” Lynch said casually.

“Yes, yes, but first I must explain!” Don Willie’s fingers dug into Beecher’s shoulder. “I was working like a slave for all Germans. To show to the world that we can be good people. So that the feeling against my country would die away.” Don Willie blew his nose. “Not for me, Mike. Not for myself. For my country. And listen: I am a success. Today I have offices in many cities. My firm builds theaters, railroad stations, we work on the American air bases at Cadiz and Seville. I am trusted by the Spanish and the American government. The best people know me, come to my home here in Mirimar, to my apartment in Madrid. This is a triumph for Germany, a thing of pride for all Germans. To see the poor beaten man the world called a monster rise to such heights.” Don Willie spread his arms. “I have helped my countrymen to raise their heads in pride. Do you understand, Mike?”

“I understand you want me to help you steal an airplane,” Beecher said. “How’s that going to help the fatherland?”

“Everything is in danger,” Don Willie said, the words tumbling feverishly from his lips. Beecher could smell the rank sweat of fear on the man and see the glint of desperation in his deep-set little eyes. “I am in danger. Long ago, many years ago—” He shook his head and a soft cry of despair sounded in his throat. “Ach! How can I make you understand! Years ago my company did work in Spanish Morocco, near Tetuán. Roads, bridges, the things with water, irrigation, no? We had a contract with the Spanish government, but the money came from Morocco. You understand? Spain was in control of Morocco. Spain made the decisions on what was needed, and the Moroccans paid for it with taxes. There was much work, too much work. The bids were very low. Down here.” Don Willie stooped to place the palm of his hand on the floor, and the exertion pumped a tide of purple color into his cheeks. “Down here! Rock bottom. But the specifications were up there,” he cried, straightening and pointing a thick finger at the ceiling. “I was caught in the middle. I could not do all the work that was contracted for.”

“And paid for?” Breecher asked.

Don Willie laughed loudly and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “You have the American head for business, no? You understand now?” He stopped laughing abruptly, and his face became lugubriously solemn. “It was business, nothing more. The Moroccans are savages. They don’t need roads and bridges and irrigation schemes. They carry water in goat skins, they climb the mountain trails on donkeys. It is foolish to change them. Here in Spain was serious work to be done. Hospitals, office buildings, housing developments — should I stop this to give a trickle of water to savages? To give them bridges they wouldn’t use? Roads they didn’t need? I tried to do what was best for everybody. I took — what is your word?” He frowned anxiously. “I took short cuts. That is it. Short cuts. It didn’t matter to anybody. But now, Mike, there is no more Spanish Morocco. The Moroccans run their own country. And in Rabat, their government is looking into all these old contracts with Spain. They have asked to see the bids, the specifications, invoices, receipts, all these things. They will find short cuts I took years ago. They will ask where is this bridge, where are these roads?” Don Willie blew his nose again. “I cannot work miracles. I cannot make bridges and roads spring up in the deserts overnight. Everything I have accomplished will be destroyed. But I don’t care for myself. It is the good name of Germans everywhere that is threatened.”

The curious logic made Beecher’s head ache. “And this information, it’s on tonight’s flight to Rabat?”

“Yes, yes. I have knowed — known of this inquiry for months. I have a friend in Madrid, many friends. The papers, dozens of boxes of them, are being flown to Mirimar by a military plane, then transferred to the commercial flight to Rabat. Originally the military plane was flying straight to Rabat. But my friend, who is in the government, arranged everything to be transferred to the plane here in Mirimar. Many friends of mine will be destroyed if the information gets to Rabat. And Germans the world over...”

“That’s a very decent sentiment,” Lynch said, covering a small yawn with the back of his hand. “But the point is, Beecher, we’re going to put that plane down where it will never be found and destroy the evidence of Don Willie’s—” He paused, smiling. “Well, shall we say overzealous concern for his country’s good name? In addition to certain fiscal indiscretions.”

“He will help,” Don Willie said and turned entreatingly to Beecher. “You must fly the plane for me. Please, Mike.”

“Go to hell!” Beecher said, spacing the words deliberately. “You’ve killed a man tonight. For Germany’s sake, I suppose. And you damn near killed me.” Beecher struggled up in his chair. “I’m not saving your hide. Don’t tell me about the sacred honor of Germany. Save that for the Generalissimo in Madrid. He can use a good laugh these days.”

Don Willie snatched up the crop from his desk and slashed at Beecher’s face. “You will obey me!” he cried hysterically. The crop rose again in his huge fist, and Beecher threw up his arms to block the blow. A hot, savage pain flamed on his wrists. He slid from the chair, too weak to stand and fight; like a pain-crazed animal, he scuttled across the floor on his hands and knees, but Don Willie followed him slowly, inexorably, the crop rising and falling to the cadence of his measured strides. “I will make you do what I wish,” he said, gasping out the words. “Like my dogs, I will train you.”

“I say, ease up,” Lynch cried sharply. “The poor beggar won’t be in any shape to fly the aircraft.”

Don Willie lowered the crop. He was panting for breath. “Mike, I don’t like to hurt you,” he said, in a soft, anguished voice. “It makes me sad. I like to be friends with you, with all peoples.”

“Goddamn you!” Beecher said hoarsely. He was still on his knees, shaking his head slowly against the throbbing pain of the blows.

“Don’t use that bloody whip any more,” Lynch said. “Didn’t you get enough of that sort of thing in your jolly little camps?”

“He must obey!”

“That’s all very well, but you’ll get bloody little obedience from a corpse. Let’s try another tack. Just hold on a minute.” Lynch went to the door and opened it. “Laura?” he called sharply. “Come in here. See if you can’t do something with your stubborn American friend.”

Beecher raised his head slowly. He felt the heavy, protesting lurch of his heart, and the tight knots of pain burning in his arms and shoulders. A stream of blood ran down his forehead into his eyes. The room was blurred with red fog.

Laura came into the room. He heard her murmur a hello to Don Willie. She sat in a deep chair and crossed her legs. Lynch strolled to her side and put a hand lightly on her shoulder.

“Please talk to the bloody fool,” he said.

“What shall I say?”

Lynch shrugged. “What does a woman say under these circumstances? Something kind, I expect. Promise him a nice sisterly buss on the cheek if he behaves himself.”

Beecher couldn’t raise his head; he couldn’t look into her eyes. Something was shriveling and dying inside him, filling him with intolerable pain. He felt the sting of helpless tears in his eyes.

“Are you in this?” he said, in a soft, anguished voice.

“Yes, I’m in it,” she said.

He could not lift his eyes to her face. Kneeling at her feet, his head swinging slowly with pain and despair, Beecher heard the German’s heavy breathing and the strike of a match as Lynch lit a cigarette, and a whispering silken sound as Laura twisted in the chair and recrossed her legs. He saw the hem of her trim black skirt, and the gleam of light on her slim smooth legs. She wore small, black velvet pumps, and one of them was swinging casually before his eyes.

“Why?” he whispered, still unable to raise his head.

“Jimmy needed me. Jimmy asked me to.”

“But you told me—” He wet his lips. “You knew my sister.” Beecher felt a desperate stir of hope. “You’re lying. They’re making you lie.”

Lynch cleared his throat. “Now, old man, you’d best be realistic. When the Frenchman let us down, you were our only hope. We pinched a few letters addressed to you in the Bar Central. They were from your sister with the cute name. Bunny. I expect she wrinkles her nose when she laughs. At any rate, that gave us enough on your background. I sounded you out at the golf course and tried to get you to come with me to Don Willie’s party. You and Willie weren’t friends, so we had to bring you together casually. But you turned me down. So we put Laura in to bat. She had been waiting for me up the coast at Estepona. It seemed wiser to keep well apart until we got on the Rabat flight. But you needed more convincing than I was up to. It was her idea, as a matter of fact, that you might be a bit homesick for an American girl. And she did a jolly good job, I must say. If it weren’t for the bloody Frenchman, it would be sunny skies all the way home.”

“It was all a fake?” Beecher said. He couldn’t think or feel anymore; he knew nothing but a dumb blind pain.

“That’s right,” she said quietly. “But I’m sorry it went as far as it did.”

“All a fake,” he said again, in a thick, bewildered voice, as if the deepest mysteries at the heart of the universe were contained in that one phrase. He recalled with a splintering irrelevance what Don Julio, the policeman, had said of national masks; you saw a man with a monocle, and you thought of a British aristocrat. And you saw a sweet exciting girl from America, who covered her eyes at the bullfight and made love shyly but generously, and you thought any damn thing she wanted you to think; that was it.

“You’re sorry,” he said. “Sorry it went as far as it did.”

“Yes. I’d hoped all that wouldn’t be necessary.”

“Did you have a line of propriety drawn somewhere?” He tried to laugh, but it came out a sob. “A kiss on the cheek? A hand on your leg? That far, and no farther?”

“I say, old man!” Lynch cleared his throat. “Would you mind awfully not going on this way?”

“Would I mind awfully?” Beecher rubbed his bleeding mouth. “Mind forgetting our roll in the hay, you mean?”

“I’d smash your face for that, if we didn’t need you tonight,” Lynch said coolly.

Beecher raised his head and looked at Laura. It was part of a pious folklore, he realized, that the scales fell from a man’s eyes in the presence of truth. He had expected to see the evil he had been blind to; the shrewd coldness of eye, the cruelty in her lips, a pitiless calculation in her face. It would be there now, he thought, naked and exposed for him to see. But it wasn’t that way at all; she seemed as fresh and lovely as ever, with the light shining on her blonde hair, and her clear blue eyes as beautiful as the seashells at sunrise.

“I really think you should help us,” she said, leaning toward him and speaking gently and distinctly. “For your sake as well as ours.”

“For my sake! God!” He almost strangled on the words.

“There’s a dead man at your villa. Do you want to stand trial for his murder?”

“Now that’s a sensible point,” Lynch said.

Beecher worked himself up to his knees slowly and painfully. They watched his progress with varying expressions and reactions: Don Willie’s face was flushed and swollen, as if he were hardly daring to breathe; Lynch was smiling around the smoke curling up from his cigarette, but his eyes had narrowed down to bright, anxious points of light; and Laura was smiling too, but pleasantly and casually, as if she were waiting for his answer to a polite and gracious question.

Beecher was suddenly filled with a murderous hatred for the three of them; but he managed a weak smile, a shrug of painful indifference. It was deception of a high order, for his heart was pounding with hate, and he wanted nothing from the world but a chance at their throats. Don Julio, the policeman, had said that maturity came from betrayal. If that were true, he was a thousand years old now, aged and seasoned to perfection. There was no dross left; the impurities of love and pity and tenderness were all burned out of him by hate.

Lynch took a gun from his pocket and pointed it at Beecher’s head. “You’re playing the fool,” he said quietly. “You’ll die here on your knees if you don’t do what you’re told.” Beecher did not want to die; he wanted to live and destroy them. Somehow he would do that. He had never wanted anything so much in all his life. And he realized suddenly that he felt no anticipation of losing, no foreknowledge of defeat. It almost made him laugh; if this was a final gift of the gods, it was a perfect one.

“All right, I’ll fly your kite,” he said.

He saw them grinning at one another, saw their anxiety dissolving into relief and confidence.

“I knowed — I knew you would help us,” Don Willie said.

“I’d better get cleaned up,” Beecher said.

“I’ll show you to the lavatory,” Lynch said, gesturing with the gun. “We’ll be sticking close together now, Beecher.” Beecher turned and looked thoughtfully at Laura; this for him was like closing a door, a final good-by. Then he walked out of the room with Lynch.