The widows war, p.8
The Widow's War, page 8
The young man was now smiling down at him. ‘Your moral and political judgements do not trouble me, Señor Ryan. But I would advise you, please, to be more respectful. You are an older man, yes, but you are no longer the boss — the man who speaks with money that he has made out of the vanity of rich parasites.’ He smiled again. ‘It seems, Señor Ryan, that our opinion of each other is — how would you say?’
‘I’d say, Pedro, that perhaps we just aren’t cut out for each other.’ Yet there was a perverse streak in Ryan which could not help admiring the sheer audacity and scale of Pedro’s apparent achievements. ‘Get me the sandwiches and whisky, will you?’
The young man nodded and went out, locking the door behind him. He must have given some orders to someone, for he returned almost at once, sighed and sat down primly on one of the chairs. ‘May I say, Señor Ryan, that I am not displeased with you. I did not expect you to be polite — that would have been a sign of weakness. No, you are a brave man. You behaved last night with great courage and initiative. But then, of course, you are an expert in these matters.’
‘Do you want me on your payroll?’
The young man held up his hand. Ryan noticed that it was soft and well-kept, like a woman’s. ‘Please, I do not believe in hasty decisions.’
Ryan suddenly went into Spanish: ‘Why did you kill Señor Merton?’
‘I had reasons,’ the other replied, also in Spanish. ‘I do not kill for pleasure.’
‘Does that go for your friends who nail people down onto carpets?’
The young man ignored the remark. He took out a packet of cigarettes and, without moving the gun from his right hand, which was now pointing at Ryan’s head, skilfully tapped a cigarette into his mouth and snapped a gold lighter to it. ‘Let us just say that if it had not been for your meeting last night with your friend, he might still be alive.’
‘You had no reason to have Merton killed. He was no threat to you.’
Pedro breathed smoke slowly through his nostrils. ‘Why did you meet him last night, Señor Ryan?’
‘Why shouldn’t I? We were old friends. We were also neighbours.’
‘But you knew that Señor Merton was an important member of your British Intelligence Service?’
‘He used to be. Until last night he was on an index-linked pension. He hasn’t worked for the Service for years.’ He was speaking English again, his temper beginning to rise for the first time.
Fraga de Sanchez sat watching him through his blue-tinted glasses. ‘Your assumption is incorrect,’ he said. ‘Intelligence officers are like your politicians and judges. They only retire when they are forced to. Your friend Señor Merton was still actively engaged in work which was becoming embarrassing to me and my friends.’
‘Meaning your lady-friend who calls herself Madame Achar?’
The young man’s features hardened, but he pulled at his cigarette and said nothing.
‘She’s not in good shape, Pedro. She’s as jumpy as a virgin at her first dance. She’s also hitting the bottle. What was old Ivor Childs treating her for?’
‘Señor Ryan, you take terrible risks.’ Pedro’s voice was as gentle as falling leaves. ‘What happened to the doctor should have been a lesson to any sensible person. Instead, you tried to intimidate your client. Not satisfied with that, you arranged a confidential meeting with a senior Intelligence officer who specialized in the affairs of Central America. What did you discuss at that meeting, Señor Ryan?’
‘Will you believe me if I tell you?’
This time, Pedro’s body was tensed back against the straight chair. ‘These decisions were not taken by me.’
‘All right. I told Merton that I knew about La Vuelva. And he told me all about you, and of your possible connection with the good lady. Okay?’
‘That is not quite all, Señor Ryan. On your way to meet Señor Merton, you stopped and talked to the police.’
‘I was stopped by the police.’
‘Why?’
‘Exceeding the speed limit. Satisfied?’
‘Not entirely.’ Pedro stopped only to stub out his half-smoked cigarette and light himself a fresh one. Ryan noticed that for someone who smoked so much, his teeth were surprisingly white. ‘Did you perhaps tell them that you were being followed?’ he added.
‘Yes. I thought they were a couple of joy-riders trying to out-gun me. I don’t like dangerous drivers — they kill people — and that’s a stupid way to die.’
‘I agree with you.’
‘As it was, the police didn’t act. They were too busy clearing up the mess after an express train had run off the rails. That was a nice touch, Pedro. Set off an explosive charge under the bridge and smash up three carriages. Then get every police force in the area called out. So you and your boys had that small road through the village of Rushdale entirely to yourselves.’
Pedro sat smoking calmly for several moments; then he stood up and stared at a point just above Ryan’s head. ‘How did you hear about this railway accident?’ he said at last.
‘On my car-radio back from the restaurant.’
‘I also heard it on the radio, but there was no mention last night of a bridge being blown up. So how did you hear about it, Señor Ryan?’
‘Get me that whisky, you bastard.’
‘When you have answered my question.’
‘A couple of cops called on me late last night. They told me.’
‘Why did they question you?’
‘Because I’d had dinner with Miles Merton. And because the whole bloody evening looked to them like a set-up.’
‘Did they talk about anything else, besides the death of Señor Merton?’
‘You know bloody well what else they talked about. Though they didn’t say exactly what it was you stole. Perhaps they weren’t sure. But you’re sure, aren’t you, Pedro? Quite a coup. You must be very proud of yourself. Why don’t you tell me?’
Pedro relaxed and looked at the ceiling, the gun still steady in his hand. ‘It is beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘So terrible, yet so beautifully simple.’ He brought his head forward slowly and smiled. ‘We took a lot of things, but that was only to confuse the authorities. The only important ones were six small capsules.’ He demonstrated their size between the thumb and forefinger of his free hand. ‘Have you ever dreamt of the ultimate weapon, Señor Ryan? The equivalent of a nuclear bomb that destroys the insects but not the plant?’
Ryan lay listening, saying nothing.
Pedro went on: ‘You have heard of Lassa fever? It is one of the most virulent killers in the Tropics, and there are few cures. But at that nice little place in Rushdale, they’ve come up with a few refinements. Not only has the disease been made more intense, but they’ve added to it a form of chronic shingles, combined with a nervous complaint that turns the skin into a scaly crust. A crust that resembles almost exactly the skin of a snake. You will admit that it would be a neither pleasant nor dignified way to die?’
Ryan felt an involuntary nausea. ‘Have you got these cartridges with you?’
‘No. But I know where they are.’
‘And how much damage would one of them do?’
‘It would destroy perhaps a town — or a whole army. Of course, it would depend how it was used, and which way the wind was blowing.’
Ryan said: ‘The Rushdale Centre’s a top-security Government establishment. How did you get in?’ As he spoke, he wondered why Pedro had even bothered to answer his question about the fever in the first place, unless it was just another example of the young terrorist pushing his luck.
‘It was not difficult. The security was lamentable. Even the alarm system was out of date. You British are so complacent, so confident. It is comic. You have lost your power, your glorious Empire, even your money. Now you run around the world with your begging bowls, yet you still think you are so superior — and so safe. One day you will wake up and find you are wrong.’
‘Roll on the Revolution,’ Ryan said cheerfully. ‘But I don’t suppose a few dozen passengers killed on that train are going to make much difference, one way or the other. Or even old Miles Merton, dead or alive, for that matter.’
The young man had picked up the carrier-bag and now handed him a bottle of Scotch and some plastic-packed sandwiches. He stood just out of reach of Ryan’s free arm, and with the gun still pointing accurately at his head twisted the cap off the bottle with his teeth and handed it to him. Ryan drank deeply from the neck. The liquid seared his bruised gums like iodine, but the warmth in his throat and gut braced his cold cramped limbs.
Pedro removed the bottle but left the sandwiches lying on the bed. He sat down again. ‘You don’t like us, do you, Señor Ryan?’
Ryan lay back with the taste of whisky still burning in his mouth, and smiled at the ceiling. ‘Oh I love you. I just adore you. You world revolutionaries are a wonderful mob. You’re all so concerned with the destinies of mankind — with all those starving millions being washed away by floods and potbellied with drought and crushed by earthquakes. I’m surprised you don’t all break down and go round weeping and moaning, and covering yourselves in sackcloth and ashes.’
Pedro spoke without emotion: ‘We are not sentimentalists, Señor Ryan. We are realists. One does not eradicate the injustices and indignities of humanity by writing letters to the newspapers and making speeches in your parliaments or in supporting your so-called free institutions which are based on greed and selfishness and corruption, and, above all, on the inherited power of a small elite.’
Ryan wanted to yawn, but it would have been painful. He listened to the young man’s soft pleasant voice, steady and fluent:
‘Your fine liberal ideals — what do they achieve against poverty, injustice, disease?’
This time, Ryan brought his head up and managed to give a cracked laugh: ‘Certainly not much against a good dose of “snake-fever”! But since the stuff’s never been tested — under natural conditions, that is — you’ll be doing the boffins a big favour, Pedro. Like the Yanks did when they dropped those two lollipops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just think — if they hadn’t done that, nobody would have really known what the results would be. Scientists are like politicians — they hate theories. They like practical results.’
Pedro stood up, and without removing his cigarette came across the room and brought the butt of his pistol down on the damaged side of Ryan’s head. For a moment Ryan thought he heard himself scream, then unconsciousness came over him again.
The first thing he remembered was that he had not touched the sandwiches; yet he was no longer hungry.
Nor was he any longer cold. He was still in bed, but in a much narrower one this time, with a sheet drawn up under his chin and tucked tightly down round his shoulders. The bed was also vibrating, to the regular rhythm of a loud pulsating roar that came from all round.
His mind adjusted slowly. He was wearing pyjamas, and there was a bandage on the side of his head, and his left eye was still closed. There was also a foul-smelling antiseptic smeared across his upper lip.
From the seat at his side a face peered down at him. It was a young, chubby face and it had blue-tinted glasses. The mouth gave a faint smile, which Ryan did not acknowledge. He was aware that there were other passengers aboard, but he lacked the energy to count them. He lay back and stared dreamily at the red metal plaque with white letters: EMERGENCY EXIT — PULL LEVER TO THE RIGHT. His hands lay at his side, held by the strap, his fingers limp and heavy.
He felt drowsy; his mouth was dry; and above the sticky smell of the antiseptic he became conscious of the after-taste of Pentothal. As one whose profession included the dispensing of soporifics of varying strength and specious legality, Ryan had a natural dread of all drugs. Yet at the moment he felt no emotion whatever. He had been kidnapped at gun-point, pistol-whipped and slugged unconscious by a political epileptic, shot full of dope and put aboard a private aircraft. Yet he was not surprised: he was not even excited — merely ready to be excited.
He felt the bed rock and the popping pains in his ears as the plane began to go down: a couple of bumps, a screech, then a howl as the airscrews were reversed. They slowed to a halt, the engines died, a door opened somewhere near him, and he felt the clean rush of air. His bed lifted quite gently, swayed and began to move forward, tilting down feet-first, and he found himself looking up at a heavy sky.
A man’s broad back under a beret moved in front of him. They carried him across the tarmac, through a modern shed with posters on the wall — colour photographs of caravans and of children bathing, and advertisements for hire-car firms. There was no visible Customs or Immigration formalities. He was carried straight through, outside again, to where the stretcher was slid into the back of a Citroen DS Safari. Fraga de Sanchez, alias Pedro, climbed in beside him, while two men got into the front.
They started off very fast. Through the windows he was beginning to get his bearings. The country was flat and featureless, except for stone walls and the occasional bungalow with a neat little garden. At one bend he glimpsed rocks and a dark, unwelcoming sea. The few trees were bare, but the fields were still green, and he thought — with a sudden awakening of consciousness — of his native Ireland.
They reached the edge of a town. It had the same grey-stone fronts, often with pretty little porches, with names like ‘Mon Repos’, ‘Beau Rivage’, and ‘Que Sera Sera’. They turned into a square where he could feel the tyres drumming on cobbles. It was called Marais Square, and underneath was written La Place Marais. He caught a glimpse of a pub; a hideous granite church; a sweet shop advertising Benson and Hedges and the News of the World.
From the corner of his eye he saw Pedro sitting in the seat beside him, smoking a cigarette. He was paying no attention to Ryan. And Ryan knew that there is one serious disadvantage in doping a man: his captors can never control exactly when he is going to regain consciousness.
In front, the driver and his companion in the beret were facing out ahead. They were now driving down the High Street, subtitled ‘La Grande Rue’. There seemed to be few people about, and Ryan guessed by the light that it was early morning. He licked the stubble on his upper lip, avoiding the antiseptic, and calculated that it must be Sunday.
They were going downhill now, between high stone walls and a glimpse of bigger houses behind trees. Unless they had passed only through the outskirts of the town it was scarcely larger than an extended village; and since it lay so near an airport, he reasoned that it must be either very remote, or be the main town — in which case he must assume he was on an island. An island whose street names were written in both English and French. He still felt dazed, but at least he was making progress.
The road had flattened out and they were now driving along the bleak coast. His good eye — its lid still drooping for the benefit of Señor Sanchez — now glimpsed across the sea a dim, grey coastline. Probably France. He was now fairly certain where he was.
A few minutes later they left the road and began bouncing along a track inland. After about a quarter of a mile they stopped outside what looked like a decrepit farmstead: a huddle of single-storey sheds, and a grim little house with its curtains drawn.
Ryan was still feigning half-consciousness as they carried him out, into a corridor and up a flight of wooden stairs, into a room lit with a single naked light from the ceiling. As they did so he heard a mutter of voices below, then the sound of the car being driven away.
They had laid the stretcher down on some kind of sofa. Pedro had come in, and with him the broad man with the beret. The strap across the blanket was undone, and Ryan remembered that he had seen no sign of a gun since he had recovered consciousness on the plane. He thought Pedro should be easy: but his companion looked bigger, solider, probably more muscle than brain. Yet for the moment Ryan had no idea of his own strength; and if he was to take the big man first, there was always the risk that Pedro might be armed, as he had been in London — if it had been London. Pedro was not a lad to take chances.
The problem was academic, but in his present state it exercised Ryan’s mental energies just a fraction too long. He felt the sheet and blanket pulled back, his right arm lifted and the sleeve rolled up above the elbow. His reaction was too slow. As he moved his left hand, it was grabbed by the wrist and he saw Pedro’s blue glasses bending over him, and in the next second he felt the quick dull ache as the needle went skilfully into the vein.
Here we go again, he thought. Roughhouse Ryan, the grey-haired Glory Boy from the Bog, ex-SS and Brigade of Guards, now flat on his back and weak as a suckling babe, being put out for the count for the third time in less than two days, and without even a whimper. Yet despite that nasty taste swelling up in his mouth, the sensation was exhilarating, almost ecstatic, as the room became blurred, then faded into total darkness.
His return to consciousness, as well as his sense of time, were now sharper, more concentrated. He had the distinct feeling of having been out for, at most, only a few hours. The room was in darkness, except for two dull strips of daylight from behind the drawn curtains. From under the door there was also a bar of artificial light which lay across the room to his right. He began to observe this with some interest — if only because it seemed the one feature of interest in the room. It was not precisely a single bar of light, but broken at intervals, regularly spaced by two shadows, each about three inches wide and a foot apart. It took Ryan several seconds to realize what they meant. Someone was standing outside the door.
He lay for a few minutes testing his reflexes. He was still not sure that when the moment came his muscles would not betray him. Then slowly, without any sound, he slid out from under the tight sheet, and very carefully rested his bare feet on the wooden floor. The slightest creak would give him away. The house was as quiet as a church.
He stood up, swayed for a second and felt a surge of nausea. He sat down again. He needed a weapon — but what? Unless he risked drawing the curtains, it was going to be difficult to find one, at least without risking some noise. Apart from the sofa on which he was sitting, the room appeared to have no furniture.
