The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘Just give me warning, Olaf—and I’ll put a lot of ground between us.’ Then to Wilkins, I said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to London. By the way, I’d like to have my gun back.’

  Wilkins stood up quickly. ‘I knew it.’ She stalked off.

  I looked at Olaf, wider-eyed now, and spread my hands, puzzled. ‘It is the maternal instinct,’ said Olaf seriously. ‘I work hard to overcome this. But it is not my forte. By nature I am the passionate, romantic type. All Swedes are, fundamentally.’ He gutted a great spoonful of egg from its shell and sighed before shovelling it away.

  I got my gun, and a low-pitched lecture from Wilkins in the hotel hallway as she said goodbye to me.

  ‘Stop being maternal,’ I told her. ‘I’m grown up now.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I get a cable from London saying you’re there. And just for the record, don’t think that Mr Manston hasn’t been to see me and told me to forget all about Mr Freeman and Mr Dawson.’

  ‘Which you will.’

  ‘Which I shall. And so should you—unless you’re a bigger damn fool than even I imagine.’

  I held out my hand, Continental fashion, to shake hands with her. She ignored it.

  ‘The gun,’ I said. ‘I thought the handshake would cover the handover.’

  ‘It’s already in your jacket pocket,’ she said.

  I looked at her, pop-eyed. I knew only one person who could have done that without my knowing, and that was Manston.

  Coming out of the hotel to take my taxi to the airport, I found my A.T. and his chum waiting by their Simca. I strolled over to them.

  ‘My compliments to Captain Asab, boys—but you can knock off now. I’m London bound.’

  ‘It is hoped that you have enjoyed your stay in this country,’ said A.T. He was a good-looking youth with a nice warm smile.

  ‘Thanks to you, yes.’ I held out a bottle of Black and White whisky which I had bought in the supermarket round the corner from the Uaddan. ‘I hope police regulations won’t make it difficult for you to deal with this.’

  A.T.’s hand was round it so fast there was no need for words. I left them, genuinely grateful for their help and care. Boy, how wrong can you be when you fall into the trap of taking people at their face value. Olaf had called me devious. What he didn’t know—and I should have done—was that there were people about who just weren’t happy unless they lived in a labyrinth with a fresh peril around each corner. As some people need drink, others need deceit.

  At the airport, as I came out of the ticket office with my boarding card, I found Captain Asab waiting for me. It was a blazing hot morning and he wore a heavy overcoat and a light grey astrakhan cap. His brown face was smooth with years of calm, reflective living.

  He shook hands with me and said, ‘I was out here on other business, so I thought I would wish you bon voyage.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m off to London.’

  ‘I am not interested in your destination, so long as you are leaving Libya. I like a reasonably quiet life, Mr Carver; just straightforward murders, smuggling, theft and assault. But you strike me as the kind of man who attracts—could we say encourages?—unusual complications.’

  ‘It’s a dull world. I do my best. By the way, thank you for the two men you’ve had following me. The young one, I thought at first, was a novice in training. He’s better than that. I recommend him to your notice.’

  He smiled. ‘You’ve made a mistake. I have had no one following you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. But it could have been your Embassy, of course. After all, they have to look after their nationals.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I gave him a big smile and moved off. But I didn’t even mean ‘Maybe’. The Embassy didn’t give a damn about me. They went along with the Perkins theory. The sooner I had my neck broken and was dropped in the sea the better.

  The aircraft was scheduled to stop at Malta and Rome on the way back. At Malta I got off and bought myself a flight on Swissair to Tunis. I got in at six o’clock that evening and had a taxi drive me up to Bizerta. I found myself a cheap hotel and lay back on a lumpy bed staring at the ceiling for about an hour before I turned out the light and tried to sleep. I didn’t sleep much, but in between staving off dive-bombing mosquito attacks I did a lot of thinking. My chief worry was, who the hell had put the Apprentice Tail on me? I didn’t come up with any answer and, anyway, I still thought that he had rated the bottle of whisky.

  The next morning I bought myself a map and made an enquiry at the Poste et Telegraphe office. From the sea at Bizerta there is a narrow cut—La Goulette—that runs back inland and opens out into a wide lake. Most of Bizerta is on the westward side of this lake. You can cross this cut by a ferry and, if you’re lucky, get a taxi on the other side. The Villa La Sunata was about two miles down the coast to the east.

  I didn’t bother with a taxi. I walked, with my jacket slung over my arm, the pocket with my gun in it thumping against my thigh bone. It was a tourist brochure day. Blue sky, sun blazing, cicadas sawing away in the umbrella pines, Arab women squatting amongst the myrtle and shrub watching their goats feed, a great yellow run of beach below the coast road, handfuls of terns dive-fishing in the shallow water off the sands, God in His heaven, and nothing much right with the world. You could have it all in a package tour, thirteen days, air travel included, for under forty pounds.

  Personally, I’d decided what I wanted. I didn’t want money, I didn’t want a woman, I didn’t even particularly want excitement—I was in good health now—but I thought it might be fun to have some kudos. Also it would be nice to teach Manston a lesson. I’d offered to help and been turned down. Good—I’d show him the mistake he had made, and maybe I’d collect an Order of the British Empire from a grateful government for services rendered. Possibly, too, I might be able to do something for those two incompetents, Freeman and Pelegrina. I did the last half-mile wondering why I had a soft spot for them. Perhaps it was the sheer audacity of their act which appealed. It is not every day you run into a couple of incompetent dreamers who have kidnapped the son of a British Prime Minister. Not that I go for kidnapping, of course. Who does?

  Mind you, if it had been the father and not the son who had been kidnapped, I couldn’t have cared less—such is the strength of political passion. They could have cut off his ears one by one and sent them to show they meant business, and slit his throat finally when they despaired of getting ransom money. Well, why not? I’m from the west of England and have been a Liberal all my life. And, anyway, if I hadn’t been from the West Country I would still have been a Liberal because I just naturally gravitate to lost causes.

  The villa stood up on a rising bluff of hillside surrounded by pines, scrub oak and thickets of oleanders. The driveway was barred with a wooden gate and there was a little wooden chalet lodge with an Arab custodian sitting on the ground outside it, his back to the wall, his eyes closed and a festoon of flies at each corner of his mouth. He didn’t move as I tramped by. I got a glimpse of the villa about two hundred yards back up the drive. It faced the sea. Behind it the land would slope down to the lake, and the lake was big enough to take shipping. Some night recently La Sunata had slipped in there and Bill Dawson had been off-loaded.

  Along the road side of the property was a fence—stout posts and four wire strands. When I was out of sight of the lodge I went up the sandy bank and had a look at it. The top wire strand was about five feet from the ground. The other strands were spaced evenly down from it. The lower two strands were newer and of a different gauge from the top two. I smiled at the naivety of Freeman and Pelegrina.

  I didn’t touch either of the two lower wires because I guessed that somewhere up in the villa a bell would ring. In their time they must have had quite a few heart-thumping false alarms from wandering goats and sheep.

  I followed the fence along until I came to a spot where it was screened from the road by a clump of hibiscus bushes, covered with brilliant flame-coloured bloo
ms that would have made my sister in Honiton itch with envy.

  I squatted down and began to scoop away at the loose sandy soil. A green lizard watched me from the top of a fence post and remained frozen until I had made a depression deep enough to allow me to crawl underneath without touching the wire. As I stood up on the other side, the lizard flirted its tail and was away down the post. I went forward through the pines. A squirrel chattered briefly at me, not enquiring but damning my business there. A yellow-and-blue bee-eater swooped from a tree and took a butterfly on the wing just for a change of diet. I took off my tie and stuffed it in my trouser pocket and put on my jacket to have my hands free. The day, I thought, that Carver won himself a decoration. I could hear the booming voice of the toast-master at the Savoy at the next annual dinner of the Association of Enquiry Agents and Private Detectives, announcing, ‘Pray silence for Mr Rex Carver, O.B.E.’ And I could see the seedy company in their rented tails, nudging one another and the whispers, ‘You know why he got it. That business of the Prime Minister’s son. Actually, I’m told he made a complete balls of it.’ Well, there are always the envious few who try to dim your glory. I went forward in a quiet and cautious state of euphoria, which isn’t easy because some kinds of euphoria have the kick of four large whiskies.

  The villa was stone-built with a wooden roof. It was all over the place in little turrets and outside balconies, and the main windows on the ground floor were a curious kind of triple-pointed African Gothic with stained glass in their upper sections. From the cover of a reed-thatched gardener’s shed I saw a dust-covered Humber station wagon standing below the front steps. In the cover of the encroaching trees I went in a half-circle round the place. At the back was a modern, flat-roofed addition with a wide run of french windows facing down through the trees to the lake. Green curtains had been drawn across most of the run of the windows to keep out the blazing morning sun. A door in the window entrance was half open.

  I stood there watching the door and then, in a momentary lull in the cicada chorus, I caught the sound of a man’s voice. It sounded like Pelegrina’s. I pulled the gun from my pocket. It was the.380 Model F, MAB breveté, which I had taken from Pelegrina’s thug in Florence.

  I went across the soft, pine-needle-strewn sand to the window, then moved along it, crouching low so that the sun would not throw my shadow against the green curtains. I reached the door on my hunkers and got a look at part of the room through the small gap the open door made above its lower hinge.

  They looked as comfortable as all get-out. Freeman was lying in a cane chair which had a hole in its right arm in which rested a glass of beer. His feet were up on a small stool. I recognized him at once from his photograph. Opposite him, across a small table, was Leon Pelegrina in the same kind of cane chair, a glass of beer in his arm-hole and his feet up on the table. He was gazing at the ceiling through his monocle, his face, red and weather-tanned, screwed up as though he were searching for the answer to some quiz question. They both wore white linen suits, Freeman’s neat and well pressed, Pelegrina’s rumpled and a little too small for him. It was hard to believe that these two between them had done something which, if it were known, would have set the press of the world immediately rearranging its front-page spread, had radio and T.V. announcers breaking in on ‘Housewives’ Choice’ and the morning schools programme for a special announcement, and made No. 10 Downing Street the genuine focus of world attention for the first time since Churchill left it.

  There they were, potential news dynamite, men of destiny—though perhaps not the kind they thought—relaxing before the next stage of the operation, cool beer to hand, pine-bowered sanctuary for quiet, meticulous planning—and they were talking about sardines.

  At least Freeman was.

  ‘The real difference between the French and the Portuguese sardine,’ he was saying, ‘is in the preparation before canning. The French always oven-grill theirs in olive oil before canning. The Portuguese just steam-cook theirs and then pack ’em in oil. There’s no doubt about the superiority of the French. They use a lighter type of olive oil too. This old boy I knew in Fleet Street had a vintage sardine cellar. Laid ’em down in cases. Turned the cases over every six months to get an even spread of oil. The great vintage year was 1959. And of ’em all, the French Rodel sardine is the king. Cost you something like eight bob for a tin. Marie Elisabeth, that’s Portuguese, cost less than two bob. Main thing is, there isn’t a sardine fit to eat unless it’s been in the can for at least twelve months.’

  ‘You think,’ asked Pelegrina, ‘that there will be a reply in The Times today?’

  ‘We’ll know when Bou-Bou gets back from Bizerta this evening. The airmail edition will be in by then. Of course, if you don’t want to spring eight bob for Rodels, you can go for the Amieux, Larzul and Cassegrain types. They come out at somewhere under four bob a tin. I could eat some on toast now. Go well with beer.’

  I stepped through the door, gun in hand.

  ‘How do you like them on toast?’ I asked. ‘Just cold, straight from the tin—or grilled hot?’

  Pelegrina jerked forward and knocked over his beer. Freeman didn’t stir a muscle, except to turn his head slightly and eye me. He was a pleasant enough looking type, fair brown hair, a rather long evenly tanned face, and friendly brown eyes overhung with bushy eyebrows that went up slightly at the outer corners.

  ‘And who the hell,’ he asked, ‘are you?’

  ‘Carver, Rex.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a silence while the penny went on dropping. I moved up to the table and sat down on an upright chair, holding the MAB brevete comfortably poised on one knee. There were some bottles of beer on the table and a bottle opener.

  I said to Pelegrina, ‘You’ve spilled your beer. Better have another. You can open a bottle for me too. I’ve had a long walk. Don’t bother about a glass for me. I’ll drink from the bottle.’

  Pelegrina just stared at me as though I were a snake and he a mesmerized bird.

  Freeman said, ‘Allow me.’

  He reached out for the bottle opener and began to dispense beer for Pelegrina and myself. He was cool and capable in a crisis clearly. It was a pity he hadn’t the same qualities when it came to planning.

  To Pelegrina I said, ‘This gun belonged to your man who visited me in Florence. Don’t think I won’t use it. Not to kill—but just to make a nasty mess of an arm or a leg. Your knife man from Tripoli sends his regrets at having botched up his assignment.’

  With my free hand I took the bottle which Freeman had opened and helped myself to a good pull. It was delicious, ice-cold.

  Very slowly Pelegrina spoke. He said, ‘Porca miseria!’

  I said, ‘Well, that disposes of the preliminaries. Now let’s get down to the real business.’

  ‘Which is?’ Freeman cocked one of his bushy eyebrows at me. ‘All our cards on the table. I’ll put mine down first.’

  ‘How,’ said Pelegrina, beginning to function late, ‘did you get in here?’

  ‘Under your nice new wire. Happy? All right—let’s get on. You two have cooked up one of the clumsiest kidnapping jobs imaginable. You’ve left a trail behind you three feet wide and painted red. Coming along that trail is a certain Mr Manston and a few of his friends from the dark depths of British Security, M.I.6, the Special Branch and God knows what other organizations. Don’t expect any mercy from that bunch. Their orders are—no headlines, get Mr William Dawson, son of the Right Honourable Henry Dawson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, back, and liquidate the kidnappers in such a way that they disappear without trace. That won’t give them any trouble. Particularly for you, Freeman, since you’re already dead and, even though the stomach scar on your body has slipped from right to left during immersion, they’re not going to fuss with a little detail like that. Am I going too fast?’ Freeman smiled, but it didn’t have a lot of heart in it. ‘Not for me,’ he said.

  ‘Your trouble,’ I said, ‘is that you go too fast, without enoug
h thought. Bill Dawson was your friend, working with an oil company in Libya as a geologist. Did you think when he disappeared that you’d get away with that phoney death trick of yours? And heaven help you if any harm has been done to him.’

  ‘He’s in first-class shape,’ said Freeman.

  ‘That’s more than you’re going to be—unless you listen to me.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Pelegrina. I could see that with him I was dealing with a slow-paced thinker and not a subtle one.

  ‘To help you. But I want a few questions answered first.’ Freeman wriggled his bottom against the cane seat and began to light a cigarette. ‘Ask away—if you think it’s necessary.’

  ‘I do. Because when I get in touch with Manston—and heaven knows why he hasn’t got here ahead of me, except that even the brightest of us have dull patches and this must be his first in ten years—then he’s going to ask me a lot of questions when I hand Bill Dawson over and suggest a grateful government make me an O.B.E.’

  ‘You go for that kind of crap?’ Freeman asked.

  ‘That noun reminds me of your sister. It’s one of her favourites. So—first—you steal from her to set up this kidnapping, yes?’

  ‘It has cost us much money,’ said Pelegrina. ‘Expense all along the line.’

  ‘It could cost you your necks unless you take my advice. Where did you get that phoney body?’

  ‘From a medical friend of mine in Athens,’ said Pelegrina.

  ‘So that Bill Dawson should think Freeman here had been kidnapped with him and then killed, so that Freeman here would then—ransom money collected—be free to go off to a happy new life with Jane Judd?’

  Freeman sat up at this.

  I went on, ‘It’s obvious that you, Pelegrina, have never shown your face to Dawson so that, when free, he can’t throw anything back at you. That means that the only person he’s ever seen is some hireling who services him first on La Sunata—whose name he’s never known—and then here in some handy cellar in a villa he’s never seen and will never see. Let’s face it, except for the wrong belly scar and a few other blemishes, it’s all almost reasonably neat and tidy—but how the bloody hell did you ever think you were going to collect the ransom money?’