The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  Secondly, Saraband Two had been contacted through a Times advertisement and Perkins was acting as the link man. Saraband Two had been told that the exchange deal was on, and that I had been eliminated, as requested, because it was vital that no outsider should be allowed to wander around with such high State secrets as I knew.

  ‘In fact,’ said Manston coolly, ‘Sutcliffe was actually rather in favour of killing you.’

  ‘He always was fond of me.’

  ‘But I persuaded him that you might have a use.’

  ‘Well, he can always kill me if it turns out you’re wrong.’ Thirdly, they had picked up Olaf—unknown to Perkins—just after I had gone to them, and he had stubbornly insisted that all he knew was that Wilkins had been kidnapped and that I had asked him to trace a certain ship.

  ‘Just as you never let on that you had told him about the kidnapping of Dawson, so he never admitted that he knew. In fact—’ Manston glanced across at Olaf—‘his mind has room for only one thought at the moment, Wilkins.’

  ‘What about her?’

  Manston considered this. ‘At the moment there are thirty days in which to arrange the exchanges. I don’t think they will start wiping out Freeman, Pelegrina or Wilkins until they are absolutely certain that it is going through. They don’t present any security risk at the moment because they are being held.’

  ‘Which brings us to the real reason why you didn’t kill me. No?’ He nodded, and explained, ‘The Prime Minister has agreed to the exchange. He wants his son back. Nothing must go wrong and there mustn’t be even a rumour about the affair. You can imagine Sutcliffe’s private reaction to that one. His hands are tied officially. You know how big a part pride plays in an organization like ours. We don’t like to be outmanoeuvred by another organization. It hurts. We’d like to go on with the exchange arrangements, but also in the thirty days do our damnedest to find Dawson and upset Saraband Two’s apple cart. But if we do that and anything goes wrong—then the P.M. will have heads rolling. You get the dilemma?’

  I not only got it. I could imagine how Sutcliffe was squirming. He had been outsmarted by Saraband Two. It was a rare discomfort for him—and I couldn’t shed a tear about it. Wilkins was the only person on my mind.

  ‘So what’s the score with me? Your hands are tied. And I’m back from the dead.’

  ‘With a new identity.’ Manston flipped a passport across to me. I opened it. There was the usual bad passport photograph of me, and I had become Duncan Hilton.

  ‘I don’t care for the Duncan,’ I said.

  ‘You’re on your own,’ said Manston. He handed me a sheet of paper. ‘Olaf traced the ship for you. There’s a list there of her ports of call and route over the last two weeks. At the moment she’s coaling in Algiers. My bet is that Dawson and company have already been shipped ashore somewhere. If we can arrange it, we’re going to get a customs or quarantine check on her in Algiers—but it won’t be easy because our hands are tied officially. Meanwhile, as I say, you’re on your own.’

  ‘And what the hell do you think I can do?’

  ‘You want Wilkins back—’

  ‘She must come back or I kill someone,’ said Olaf in an angry-bear tone. We both ignored him.

  ‘Think of something,’ said Manston. ‘There’s money waiting for you in Paris. Credit Lyonnais, Place de l’Opera. You’ve got a little under thirty days. Get to work. You’re an enquiry agent, aren’t you? And we’re employing you on this job—it took me a long time to get Sutcliffe to accept that. Find something, anything, any lead. The moment you can finger where Dawson is—then let us know. The moment you have anything get on to me, or the nearest British consulate, and give the code word “Python” and he’ll pass the message. That’s the most we can do for you.’

  ‘And if it comes to nothing?’

  ‘Then it comes to nothing.’

  He looked uncomfortable, and I knew why, but I saw no reason to spare him. All right, in his way he liked me, even regarded me as a friend of a kind, but his true love was the damned service he worked for. That, first, second, third and always.

  ‘Let’s get it straight,’ I said. ‘I’m a big boy and used to hard facts. If I fail, the only person who’s going to come back and keep a shut mouth forever is Dawson. Right?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It’s no good trying to make any deal about Wilkins. You know that.’

  ‘Come on, Manston. Spill it all. If I don’t find Dawson for you, then pretty soon after the thirty-day limit Olaf and I will go too—won’t we?’

  He looked at me, tight-mouthed, but he said nothing. He didn’t have to. We would go, in a car accident, somehow, somewhere. And he was tight-mouthed because it wasn’t his decision—but Sutcliffe’s.

  ‘Remember one thing,’ he said. ‘It’s vital that the Saraband Two people get no idea you’re alive. You go to Paris this afternoon by yourself. Olaf can join you tomorrow. You’ve both got rooms at the Hotel Balzac. Know where that is?’

  ‘Yes. And blast you and Sutcliffe.’

  I stood up and did a bit of angry pacing. Manston watched me. Olaf sat with his big head hanging down, staring at the pavings. A wagtail flirted along the edge of the pool and a few busy bees mined away at a row of tulips. A warm, late spring day, birds fidgeting on their eggs, water beetles skating on the swimming pool, church service just over, and a thousand Dads putting their two thousand feet up with the News of the World while Mum sweated over a hot stove . . . and Carver sweated over an impossible job. Oh, I knew how the minds of men like Sutcliffe worked. He didn’t think I had a ghost of a chance. But he was prepared, just prepared, to give me any kind of chance if by a long shot it would save his departmental pride. But if it didn’t come off—then he would want all record of that long chance expunged from the book. The last bell would ring for me. Hear it not, Duncan, I told myself, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or hell—and when that came there wouldn’t be any reassuring wink.

  Olaf stood up. He glowered at the both of us and then said, ‘I think I go back to London and see the Swedish Embassy. Maybe they can do something. After all, Hilda is my fiancee.’

  I went over to the cane drink table that had been wheeled out, poured him a stiff rum, and handed it to him.

  ‘Just drink that, Olaf. And do exactly as you’re told. Wilkins is coming back—and you’re going to help me get her.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Manston, ‘that after all that treatment at Sutcliffe’s place, there isn’t anything you’re holding back. Anything vital?’

  ‘If there is,’ I said, ‘I can’t think of it. But there is one thing which hasn’t been settled.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Sutcliffe is employing me. We haven’t discussed terms.’ Manston smiled. ‘You must be feeling better. Anyway, you know the usual rates. Plus expenses, of course.’

  ‘Stuff the usual rates. This is an unusual job. If I don’t pull it off. . . well, there won’t be any question of payment.’

  ‘And if you do?’

  ‘Five thousand pounds and an Order of the British Empire.’ Manston’s mouth gaped, which was unlike him, for he was a well-brought-up chap.

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘I do—and you’re going to fix it. Five thousand pounds for me—and the O.B.E. for Wilkins. Right?’

  He paused, tickled his chin with the tips of his well-manicured fingers, and then said, ‘Yes. My personal promise.’

  CHAPTER 11

  Sic Transit Gloriana

  A hired car from a local garage took me to Lympne, and from there I got a plane to Paris—only it didn’t go to Paris, it went to Beauvais, and then there was a long coach ride in.

  A fourteen-year-old boy sat alongside me in the plane, going through a pile of Batman comics. He passed a couple over to me and I leafed through them. They didn’t give me any ideas that I thought would work.

  I got into the hotel around seven, and flopped on the bed with my shoes on, too tired and depressed to order myself a drink. I pulled
the list of ship details from my pocket and went over it again. It wasn’t any more helpful than staring at the ceiling but it made a change.

  Olaf had done a good job. The ship was the Sveti, cargo boat, timber trade from Odessa, Russian owned. She did a regular route to Istanbul, Athens and through the Mediterranean to Algiers, where she now was. Olaf had made a note that she had arrived two days over normal schedule at Algiers. In the coach air terminal in Paris I had picked up a B.E.A. red-white-and-blue flight brochure—About your flight, votre vol, ihr Flug—which was full of good maps. From Athens through the Mediterranean the Sveti had to pass between Sicily and North Africa. That brought her route very close to Bizerta, close enough for Duchêne to have quietly slipped his party aboard. The run from Bizerta along the coast to Algiers was straightforward, but somewhere along it I guessed that the Sveti had made a two-day diversion. That put within her range Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Majorca and the rest of the Balearic Islands, even Spain itself—though I had an idea that the U.S.S.R. did not trade with Spain. Even so, that would not have stopped the Sveti heaving to at night off the coast while a party went ashore. I dropped the brochure and asked the ceiling how in hell one man, and a love-stricken Swede, could cover that area of possibilities? Looking for a needle in a haystack was easier. At least you only had the stack to deal with. The Prime Minister’s son could be in any of dozens of haystacks. I settled back on the bed and considered praying for the miracle of second sight. I even considered taking a pin and trying a jab over the map. In fact I did it. The oracle announced that Dawson was a hundred miles south of Rome in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Rome made me think of Duchêne. Duchêne made me think of Paulet. Clever Paulet, who kindly brought me beer, sandwiches and a backhander—yet still I liked him. Not that that was going to stop me breaking his neck or putting a bullet into him if it would get Wilkins out of her jam. A dead Paulet would upset his girl friend Thérèse. To lose you, my darling, would make life empty for me. A thousand embraces. That’s what she’d written to him.

  I sat up suddenly. Manston had asked me if there was any detail I had not mentioned. Well, there was—because I had forgotten it myself until now. Paulet’s office address I’d kicked over—they knew it, anyway. And they knew his real wife’s address. But only I knew Thérèse’s address.

  I got a cab to the top of the Avenue Wagram, and then walked down to the Place des Ternes. I went into a bar and had two pernods. Suddenly I was feeling good and hopeful for no reason at all.

  I went out into the velvety, spring-warm, Gauloise-flavoured Paris evening. It was an old house on the Avenue des Ternes, turned into apartments. There was no concierge. Just a row of name plates in the hallway with bell pushes alongside them. Mademoiselle Thérèse Diotel was apartment Number 3. I went up two floors. There was one door on the landing with Thérèse’s card slipped into a brass holder. There was a fanlight over the door. No light showed through it. That didn’t mean she was not in. She didn’t know me—but she was a clever girl, would have to be to be hitched up with Paulet. Any excuse I made would have to be a good one. The trouble was I couldn’t think of a good one. Nobody comes to sell Larousse dictionaries on a Sunday evening, and I couldn’t say I was an old friend of Paulet’s from the K.G.B. training school in Moscow. So I did something which I hadn’t done since my small-boy days. I rang the bell good and hard and ran away. Up the next flight of steps to the turn where I could just hang my head down and watch the door. Nothing happened. I went down and repeated the performance just to be sure. She could have been taking a bath or even entertaining a lover—after all, Paulet had been away some time. Nothing happened.

  I went back and did the door lock with a piece of perspex. The small hallway was in darkness. I let it stay that way and went through into the main room, after checking a kitchen to the left of the hall and a bathroom to the right. The main room was in darkness. I pulled the curtains and switched on the light. A door across the room led into a bedroom. I could see the end of the bed, and a red dress draped over a small chair. I went in, pulled the curtains and switched on the light. The bed was made and had a frilly sort of canopy over the top end. There were frills like candy floss over the dressing table, and a yellow-and-black stuffed Esso tiger sprawled over a little sofa. Everything was neat and tidy. I did a quick tour again of the kitchen and bathroom and main room. The whole place was neat and tidy, and with the feeling of not having been used for some time. No washing-up left, no evidence of meals, nothing in the kitchen bin, half a carton of sour milk in the fridge and a packet of sausages; no cigarette stubs in the ashtrays, no newspapers; on the table in the main room a vase held an arrangement of wilted mimosa. I had the conviction that Thérèse was away and had been for some days. So I took a good look around. One of the things I enjoy is going over other people’s rooms. In ten minutes you can often learn more about them than they could tell you themselves in an hour.

  She was a great one for Colette, had all her books in paperback. Her favourite aperitif was something called Ambassadeur—three bottles in the sideboard. There was whisky as well, half a bottle. I made myself a drink and carried it with me on the tour of inspection. She used Jolie Madame scent, favoured short nightdresses, one of them a rather nice number in blue and white spotted silk. She kept Paulet’s love letters—about twenty of them—in a bureau drawer, tied up with a red ribbon that had Galerie Lafayette printed on it in gold. I struggled through them; they were dated from long before the Dawson affair and were mostly repetitious—Paulet, even my bad French told me, had no literary style or true lover’s felicity of expression. In fact he was mostly quite earthy and direct about his need and feeling for her. There was only one thing of interest in them. It was in a letter just over eighteen months old, written from Rome. Just one sentence which read, translated, ‘J. has died suddenly so the whole D. business has been cancelled’.

  I stood there, pondering this. D. could, of course, have stood for Dawson. Who was J.?

  I put the letters back. Under them, wrapped in a yellow duster, was a 9 mm Browning pistol—obviously a spare to the one Paulet carried—and some ammunition. I took the gift without leaving a thank-you card.

  I washed my whisky glass in the kitchen and put it back in place and made for the flat door, head down with the dejection of failure. It was just as well, otherwise I might not have seen it. On entering, the opening door had pushed it back far to one side from where it had fallen through the letter box on to the thick carpet. It was a confirmatory cablegram in a little envelope—the kind they always send you the next day to confirm a telegram which has been passed over the phone.

  I opened it. It was in French. Translated, it read: We need a good cook at V.V. immediately. Meet Mimo, Tristan’s Bar, any midday next three days. It was signed Francois, and had been sent from Bizerta the day they had released me. Thérèse had received it—over the phone—late the same day, and had been away early the next morning before the postman had dropped the confirmation through the letter box. But where the devil were V.V. and Tristan’s Bar? I went to the flat telephone and called Directory Enquiries. There was no Tristan’s Bar or Bar Tristan listed in the Paris area.

  I went back to the hotel and to bed, but not to sleep. I stared at the ceiling and kept saying to myself, ‘J. has died suddenly so the whole D. business has been cancelled.’ If D. stood for Dawson, could it have been that Saraband Two and company had had this affair lined up—maybe a straightforward job they were going to do themselves—nearly two years ago? And if so, why was J. so important that his or her death had made them cancel the deal?

  *

  The next morning—Olaf wasn’t arriving until after midday —I went round to see Letta. I needed company and also I hoped that I would get some information. All right, so I was breaking a Manston rule not to let anyone know that I was alive. But I was prepared to break all the rules in the book if it would give me a chance of getting Wilkins back. And, anyway, if I told Letta to keep her mouth shut she would.

&nb
sp; She was having breakfast near a wide window, the sunlight gold-leafing her skin, her dark hair piled up close around her head in some morning coiffure that made it look as though she were wearing a cossack hat. She wore a loose morning coat, red and white stripes, had her legs up on a stool and her feet were bare. She looked so good to me that I wished this were just a social call and that I had all the time in the world and no worries and could start off on a little interregnum of pleasure and dalliance such as a man must have now and again to rejuvenate the mind and the spirit.

  It was clear, too, that she felt the same way. She came out of her chair in one long graceful movement and her arms went round me in a warm tackle. It was nice to know that I meant so much to her. I just let the mutual disentanglement come gently and in its own sweet time. Then I sat down on a chair and lit a cigarette. She sat on the arm and with the tips of her fingers did things to the top of my head. It was pleasant but made thought difficult.

  I said, ‘Can we talk frankly or are there any snakes around?’

  She nodded towards the top of the window. Lilith was up there, coiled around a fat transverse curtain pole.

  ‘Poor Lilith,’ said Letta. ‘At the moment, you know, she is not well. She won’t eat and is so irritable. She is all nervous and tensed up and I cannot use her in my act. Last night she kept me awake for hours, twisting and rattling in her basket. Why should she be off her food—the guinea pigs in Paris are very good? And now she won’t come down from there.’

  She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. The housecoat flapped open and I put a hand on the golden brown curve of one of her breasts to steady her from falling into my lap.

  Her flesh warm under my palm, I said, ‘Officially I’m supposed to be dead. You haven’t seen me. You won’t say anything to anyone about me. Okay?’