The Danger

NINETEEN

Rain came again, at first in big heavy individual drops, splashing with sharp taps on the dead leaves, and then quite soon in a downpour. I stood up and let the rain act as a shower, soaking my hair, running down my body, cold and oddly pleasant.

I drank some of it again, getting quite good at swallowing without choking. How really extraordinary I must look, I thought, standing there in the clearing getting wet.

My long-ago Scottish ancestors had gone naked into battle, whooping and roaring down the heather hillsides with sword and shield alone and frightening the souls out of the enemy. If those distant clansmen, Highland-born in long-gone centuries, could choose to fight as nature made them, then so should I settle for the same sternness of spirit in this day.

I wondered if the Highlanders had been fortified before they set off by distillations of barley. It would give one more courage, I thought, than chicken soup.

It went on raining for hours, heavily and without pause. Only when it again began to get dark did it ease off, and by then the ground round the tree was so wet that sitting on it was near to a mud bath. Still, having stood all day, I sat. If it rained the next day, I thought wryly, the mud would wash off.

The night was again long and cold, but not to the point of hypothermia. My skin dried when the rain stopped. Eventually, against all the odds, I again went to sleep.

I spent the damp dawn and an hour or two after it feeling grindingly hungry and drearily wondering whether Giuseppe-Peter would ever come back: but he did. He came as before, stepping quietly, confidently, through the laurel screen, wearing the same jacket, carrying the same bag.

I stood up at his approach. He made no comment; merely noted it. There was a fuzz of moisture on his sleek hair, a matter of a hundred per cent humidity rather than actual drizzle, and he walked carefully, picking his way between puddles.

It was Tuesday, I thought.

He had brought another bottle of soup, warm this time, reddish-brown, tasting vaguely of beef. I drank it more slowly than on the day before, moderately trusting this time that he wouldn't snatch it away. He waited until I'd finished, threw away the straw, screwed the cap on the bottle, as before.

'You are outside,' he said unexpectedly, 'while I make a place inside. One more day. Or two.'

After a stunned moment I said, 'Clothes…'

He shook his head. 'No.' Then, glancing at the clouds, he said, 'Rain is clean.'

I almost nodded, an infinitesimal movement, which he saw.

'In England,' he said, 'you defeated me. Here, I defeat you.'

I said nothing.

'I have been told it was you, in England. You who found the boy.' He shrugged suddenly, frustratedly, and I guessed he still didn't know how we'd done it. 'To take people back from kidnap, it is your job. I did not know it was a job, except for the police.'

'Yes,' I said neutrally.

'You will never defeat me again,' he said seriously.

He put a hand into the bag and brought out a much-creased, much-travelled copy of the picture of himself, which, as he unfolded it, I saw to be one of the original printing, from way back in Bologna.

'It was you, who drew this,' he said. 'Because of this, I had to leave Italy. I went to England. In England, again this picture. Everywhere. Because of this I came to America. This picture is here now, is it not?'

I didn't answer.

'You hunted me. I caught you. That is the difference.'

He was immensely pleased with what he was saying.

'Soon, I will look different. I will change. When I have the ransom I will disappear. And this time you will not send the police to arrest my men. This time I will stop you.'

I didn't ask how. There was no point.

'You are like me,' he said.

'No.'

'Yes… but between us, I will win.'

There could always be a moment, I supposed, in which enemies came to acknowledge an unwilling respect for each other, even though the enmity between them remained unchanged and deep. There was such a moment then: on his side at least.

'You are strong,' he said, 'like me.'

There seemed to be no possible answer.

'It is good to defeat a strong man.'

It was the sort of buzz I would have been glad not to give him.

'For me,' I said, 'are you asking a ransom?'

He looked at me levelly and said, 'No.'

'Why not?' I asked; and thought, why ask, you don't want to know the answer.

'For Freemantle,' he said merely, 'I will get five million pounds.'

'The Jockey Club won't pay five million pounds,' I said.

'They will.'

'Morgan Freemantle isn't much loved,' I said. 'The members of the Jockey Club will resent every penny screwed out of them. They will hold off, they'll argue, they'll take weeks deciding whether each member should contribute an equal amount, or whether the rich should give more. They will keep you waiting… and every day you have to wait, you risk the American police finding you. The Americans are brilliant at finding kidnappers… I expect you know.'

'If you want food you will not talk like this.'

I fell silent.

After a pause he said, 'I expect they will not pay exactly five million. But there are many members. About one hundred. They can pay thirty thousands pounds each, of that I am sure.

That is three million pounds. Tomorrow you will make another tape. You will tell them that is the final reduction. For that, I let Freemantle go. If they will not pay, I will kill him, and you also, and bury you here in this ground.' He pointed briefly to the earth under our feet. Tomorrow you will say this on the tape.'

'Yes,' I said.

'And believe me,' he said soberly, I do not intend to spend all my life in prison. If I am in danger of it, I will kill, to prevent it.'

I did believe him. I could see the truth of it in his face.

After a moment I said, 'You have courage. You will wait. The Jockey Club will pay when the amount is not too much. When they can pay what their conscience… their guilt… tells them they must. When they can shrug and grit their teeth, and complain… but pay… that's what the amount will be. A total of about one quarter of one million pounds, maximum, I would expect.'

'More,' he said positively, shaking his head.

'If you should kill Freemantle, the Jockey Club would regret it, but in their hearts many members wouldn't grieve. If you demand too much, they will refuse, and you may end with nothing… just the risk of prison… for murder.' I spoke without emphasis, without persuasion: simply as if reciting moderately unexciting facts.

'It was you,' he said bitterly. 'You made me wait six weeks for the ransom for Alessia Cenci. If I did not wait, did not reduce the ransom… I would have nothing. A dead girl is no use… I understand now what you do.' He paused. 'This time, I defeat you.'

I didn't answer. I knew I had him firmly hooked again into the kidnapper's basic dilemma: whether to settle for what he could get, or risk holding out for what he wanted. I was guessing that the Jockey Club would grumble but finally pay half a million pounds, which meant five thousand pounds per member, if it was right about their numbers. At Liberty Market we would, I thought, have advised agreeing to that sort of sum; five per cent of the original demand. The expenses of this kidnap would be high: trying too hard to beat the profit down to zero would be dangerous to the victim.

With luck, I thought, Giuseppe-Peter and I would in the end negotiate a reasonable price for Morgan Freemantle, and the Senior Steward would return safely home: and that, I supposed, was what I had basically come to America to achieve. After that… for myself… it depended on how certain Giuseppe-Peter was that he could vanish… and on how he felt about me… and on whether he considered me a danger to him for life.

Which I would be. I would be.

I didn't see how he could possibly set me free. I wouldn't have done, if I had been he.

I thrust the starkly unbearable thought away. While Morgan Freemantle lived in captivity, so would I… probably.

'Tomorrow," Giuseppe-Peter said, 'when I come, you will say on the tape that one of Freemantle's fingers will be cut off next week on Wednesday, if three million pounds are not paid before then.'

He gave me another long calculating stare as if he would read my beliefs, my weaknesses, my fears, my knowledge; and I looked straight back at him, seeing the obverse of myself, seeing the demon born in every human.

It was true that we were alike, I supposed, in many ways, not just in age, in build, in physical strength. We organised, we plotted, and we each in our way sought battle. The same battle… different sides. The same primary weapons… lies, threats and fear.

But what he stole, I strove to restore. Where he wantonly laid waste, I tried to rebuild. He crumbled his victims, I worked to make them whole. His satisfaction lay in taking them, mine in seeing them free. The obverse of me…

As before he turned away abruptly and departed, and I was left with an urge to call after him, to beg him to stay, just to talk. I didn't want him to go. I wanted his company, enemy or not.

I was infinitely tired of that clearing, that tree, that mud, that cold, those handcuffs. Twenty-four empty hours stretched ahead, a barren landscape of loneliness and discomfort and inevitable hunger. It began raining again, hard slanting stuff driven now by a rising wind, and I twisted my hands to grip the tree, hating it, trying to shake it, to hurt it, furiously venting on it a surge of raw, unmanageable despair.

That wouldn't do, I thought coldly, stopping almost at once. If I went that way, I would crack into pieces. I let my hands fall away. I put my face blindly to the sky, eyes shut, and concentrated merely on drinking.

A leaf fell into my mouth. I spat it out. Another fell on my forehead, I opened my eyes and saw that most of the rest of the dead leaves had come down.

The wind, I thought. But I took hold of the tree again more gently and shook it, and saw a tremor run up through it to the twigs. Three more leaves fell off, fluttering down wetly.

Two days ago the tree had immovably resisted the same treatment. Instead of shaking it again I bumped my back against it several times, giving it shocks. I could feel movement in the trunk that had definitely not been there before: and under my feet, under the earth, something moved.

I scraped wildly at the place with my toes and then circled the tree and sat down with a. rush, rubbing with my lingers until I could feel a hard surface come clear. Then I stood round where I'd been before, and bumped hard against the trunk, and looked down and saw what I'd uncovered.

A root.

One has to be pretty desperate to try to dig up a tree with one's fingernails, and desperate would be a fair description of Andrew Douglas that rainy November morning.

Let it pour, I thought. Let this sodden soaking glorious rain go on and on turning my prison into a swamp. Let-this nice glorious fantastic loamy mud turn liquid… Let this stubborn little tree not have a tap root its own height.

It rained. I hardly felt it. I cleared the mud from the root until I could get my fingers right round it, to grasp. I could feel it stretching away sideways, tugging against my tug.

Standing up I could put my foot under it; a knobbly dark sinew as thick as a thumb, tensing and relaxing when I leant my weight against the tree trunk.

I've got all day, I thought, and all night.

I have no other chance.

It did take all day, but not all night.

Hour by hour it went on raining, and hour by hour I scraped away at the roots with toes and fingers, baring more of them, burrowing deeper. The movement I could make in the trunk slowly grew from a tremble to a protesting shudder, and from a shudder to a sway.

I tested my strength against the tree's own each time in a sort of agony, for fear Giuseppe-Peter would somehow see the branches moving above the laurels and arrive with fearsome ways to stop me. I scraped and dug and heaved in something very near frenzy, and the longer it went on the more excruciatingly anxious I became. Given time I would do it. Given time… Oh God, give me time.

Some of the roots tore free easily, some were heartbreakingly stubborn. Water filled the hole as I dug, blocking what I could see, hindering and helping both at the same time. When I felt one particularly thick and knotty root give up the contest the tree above me lurched as if in mortal protest, and I stood up and hauled at it with every possible muscle, pushing and pulling, wrenching, thudding, lying heavily against the trunk, digging in with my heels, feeling the thrust through calves and thighs; then yanking the tree this way and that, sideways, like a pendulum.

A bunch of beleagured roots gave way all together and the whole tree suddenly toppled, taking me down with it in rough embrace, its branches crashing in the rain onto a bed of its own brown, leaves, leaving me breathless and exultant… and still… still… fastened.

Every single root had to be severed before I could get my arms out from under them, but I doubt if barbed wire would have stopped me at that point. Scratching and tugging, hands down in water, kneeling and straining, I fought for that escape as Pd never thought to fight in my life; and finally I felt the whole root mass shift freely, a tangled clump of blackly-sprouting woody tentacles, their grip on the earth all gone. Kneeling and jerking I got them up between my arms, up to my shoulders… and rolled free into a puddle, ecstatic.

It took not so very much longer to thread myself through my own arms, so to speak, bottom first then one leg at a time, so that I ended with my hands in front, not behind my back; as unbelievable improvement.

It was still raining and also, I realised, beginning to get dark. I went shakily over to the laurels on the opposite side of the clearing from where Giuseppe-Peter had appeared, and edged slowly, cautiously, between two of the glossy green bushes.

No people.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself, trying to make my knees work efficiently instead of wanting to buckle. I felt strained and weak and in no shape for barefoot country rambles, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered at all beside the fact of being free.

I could hear only wind and rain. I went on and came shortly to a sketchy fence made of strands of wire strung between posts. I climbed through and walked on and suddenly reached tie top of an incline, the wood sloping away in front; and down there, through the trees, there were lights,

I went down towards them. I'd been naked so long that I'd stopped thinking about it, which was somewhat of a mistake. I was concerned only to get away from Giuseppe-Peter, feeling that he still might find me gone and chase after. I was thinking only, as I approached what turned out to be a very substantial house, that I'd better make sure it wasn't where Giuseppe-Peter was actually staying before I rang the doorbell.

I didn't get as far as ringing the bell. An outside light was suddenly switched on, and the door itself opened on a chain.

A pale, indistinguishable face inspected me and a sharp, frightened female voice said 'Get away. Get away from here.'

I started to say 'Wait,' but the door closed with a slam, and while I hovered indecisively it opened again to reveal the business end of a pistol.

'Go away,' she said. 'Get away from here, or I'll shoot.'

I thought she might. I looked down at myself and didn't altogether blame her. I was streaked with mud and handcuffed and bare: hardly a riot as a visitor on a darkening November evening.

I backed away, looking as unaggressive as I could, and presently felt it safe to slide away again into the trees and reconsider my whole boring plight.

Clearly I needed some sort of covering, but all that was to hand easily were branches of evergreen laurel. Back to Adam and Eve, and all that. Then I'd got to get a householder - a different one - to talk to me without shooting first. It might not have been too difficult in the Garden of Eden, but in twentieth-century suburban Washington D.C., a proper poser.

Further down the hill there were more lights. Feeling slightly foolish I picked up a twig of laurel and held it, and walked down towards the lights, feeling my way as it grew darker, stubbing my toes on unseen stones. This time, I thought, I would go more carefully and look for something to wrap round me before I tackled the door: a sack, a trash bag… absolutely anything.

Again events overtook me. I was slithering in darkness under a sheltering canopy-roof past double garage doors when a car came unexpectedly round a hidden driveway, catching me in its lights. The car braked sharply to a stop and I took a step backwards, cravenly ready to bolt.

'Stop right there,' a voice said, and a man stepped out of the car, again bearing a pistol. Did they all, I thought despairingly, shoot strangers? Dirty naked unshaven handcuffed strangers… probably, yes.

This native wasn't frightened, just masterful. Before he could say anything else I opened my mouth and said loudly, 'Please get the police.'

'What?' He came three paces nearer, looking me up and down. What did you say?'

'Please get the police. I escaped. I want… er… to turn myself in.'

'Who are you?' he demanded.

'Look,' I said. 'I'm freezing cold and very tired, and if you telephone Captain Wagner he'll come and get me.'

'You're not American,' he said accusingly.

'No. British.'

He came nearer to me, still warily holding the gun. I saw that he was of middle age with greying hair, a worthy citizen with money, used to decision. A businessman come home.

I told him Wagner's telephone number. 'Please,' I said. 'Please… call him.'

He considered, then he said, 'Walk along there to that door. No tricks.'

I walked in front of him along a short path to his impressive front door, the rain stopping now, the air damp.

'Stand still,' he said. I wouldn't have dreamt of doing anything else.

Three orange pumpkin faces rested on the steps, grinning up at me evilly. There was the sound of keys clinking and the lock being turned. The door swung inward, spilling out light.

'Turn round. Come in here.'

I turned. He was standing inside his door, waiting for me, ready with the gun.

'Come inside and shut the door.'

I did that.

'Stand there,' he said, pointing to a spot on a marble-tiled hallway, in front of a wall. 'Stand still… wait.'

He took his eyes off me for a few seconds while he stretched a hand through a nearby doorway; and what it reappeared holding was a towel.

'Here.' He threw it to me; a dry fluffy handtowel, pale green with pink initials. I caught it, but couldn't do much with it, short of laying it on the ground and rolling.

He made an impatient movement of his head.

'I can't… ' I said, and stopped. It was all too damn bloody much.

He parked the pistol, came towards me, wrapped the towel round my waist and tucked the ends in, like a sarong.

'Thank you,' I said.

He put the pistol near an adjacent telephone and told me to repeat the number of the police.

Kent Wagner, to my everlasting gratitude, was in his headquarters half an hour after he should have gone off duty.

My unwilling host said to him, ''There's a man here says he escaped…

'Andrew Douglas,' I interrupted.

'Says his name is Andrew Douglas.' He held the receiver suddenly away from his ear as if the noise had hurt the drum. 'What? He says he wants to give himself up. He's here, in handcuffs.' He listened for a few seconds and then with a frown came to put the receiver into my hands. 'He wants to talk to you,' he said.

Kent 's voice said into my ear, 'Who is this?'

'Andrew.'

'Jee… sus.' His breath came out wheezing. 'Where are you?'

'I don't know. Wait.' I asked my host where I was. He look the receiver temporarily back and gave his address, with directions. Three miles up Massachusetts Avenue from Dupont Circle, take a right onto 46th Street, make a right again on to Davenport Street, a quarter mile down there, in the woods.' He listened, and gave me back the receiver.

' Kent,' I said, 'bring some men and come very quietly. Our friend is near here.'

'Got it,' he said.

'And Kent… bring some trousers.'

'What?'

'Pants,' I said tersely. 'And a shirt. And some shoes, size ten English.'

He said disbelievingly, 'You're not…?'

'Yeah. Bloody funny. And a key for some handcuffs.'

My host, looking increasingly puzzled, took the receiver back and said to Kent Wagner, 'Is this man dangerous?'

What Kent swore afterwards that he said was, 'Take good care of him,' meaning just that, but my host interpreted the phrase as 'beware of him' and kept me standing there at gunpoint despite my protestations that I was not only harmless but positively benign.

'Don't lean against the wall,' he said. 'My wife would be furious to find blood on it.'

'Blood?'

'You're covered in scratches.' He was astonished. 'Didn't you know?'

'No.'

'What did you escape from?'

I shook my head wearily and didn't explain, and waited what seemed an age before Kent Wagner rang the doorbell. He came into the hall half grinning in anticipation, the grin widening as he saw the pretty towel but then suddenly dying to grimness.

'How're you doing?' he said flatly.

'OK.'

He nodded, went outside and presently returned with clothes, shoes and impressive metal cutters which got rid of the handcuffs with a couple of clips. 'These aren't police issue handcuffs,' he explained. 'We've no keys to fit.'

My host lent me his cloakroom to dress in, and when I came out I thanked him, handing over the towel.

'Guess I should have given you a drink,' he said vaguely; but I'd just seen myself in a looking glass, and I reckoned he'd dealt with me kindly.