The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  I picked up a gun from the floor and the next moment I was at the window with Dawson. We went through after Olaf and Wilkins in another minor explosion of glass and wood. Dawson fell and rolled over on the hard-baked ground. I jerked him up and we ran. I heard him sobbing and cursing to himself and he pulled back from me. I grabbed harder and kept him going. In the fall he had ricked his left ankle. Ahead of us in the growing dawn I saw Olaf running, pulling Wilkins along, heading up a small path that led to the headland.

  *

  As we crested the rise to the top of the headland plateau the sun began to lip the eastern edge of the sea away to our left. It was a good sunrise, as sunrises go, a fancy affair of orange and tangerine flame, with a high wash of slowly fading pearliness in the upper sky, and we had time to admire it because Dawson really had done something to his ankle. He could only just limp along.

  Olaf said, ‘We’ve got a mile and over to the end of the headland. Then a path to the beach. I’ve got a motorboat standing off.’ He looked at Dawson. ‘I carry you?’

  Dawson shook his head.

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ I said. ‘Here comes the helicopter.’

  It came up the wind, rising, crabbed around in a circle and found us. It came down to about two hundred feet and hung above us, the racket deafening.

  Olaf fired a shot at it.

  I said, ‘Don’t waste your shots.’

  We made about two hundred yards as fast as we could with Dawson, the helicopter hanging over us. I couldn’t see who was in it, but it was a Westland Whirlwind.

  Wilkins looked back and said, ‘They’re coming.’

  I looked round. Topping the headland crest now were Duchêne and Paulet and Peter Brown, running hard along the scrub-lined path towards us.

  The path ahead of us twisted into a wide patch of scrub oak and pines, the trunks of the trees hidden some way up by a thick undergrowth of heath and myrtle. We were fifty yards into the trees when Dawson fell, pulling away from Olaf s great hand that held him.

  ‘I carry him,’ said Olaf. ‘You cover us.’

  He picked Dawson up and slung him over his big shoulders in a fireman’s lift. I was puffed and blown. At the side of the path was a big notice on a pole. The best thing for me to do, I thought, was to get behind it and cover the path. I couldn’t hold them up for long.

  Ahead Olaf was trotting along slowly with Dawson. Wilkins stayed with me. ‘Get going,’ I said.

  Overhead the helicopter clattered away like a crazy washing machine. She looked at me, tight-mouthed, eyes bright with anger at the indignity of it all. She shook her head.

  ‘Have you got any matches on you?’ she asked.

  ‘No. A lighter. Don’t tell me you’re taking up smoking? Now get moving.’

  She shook her head. Two hundred yards away I could see Paulet lumbering along.

  ‘Look at the notice,’ she said.

  I did. It was Spanish and not much help to me. Something about Cigarillos . . . Cuidado. . .

  ‘Lighter,’ she insisted.

  I fished in my pocket and gave it to her. She turned and ran along the path after Olaf and Dawson.

  I got behind the notice and let off a warning shot at Paulet. I couldn’t hit him at the range but I could stop his headlong rush. I did. He went off the path and I saw Duchêne and Peter Brown do the same behind him.

  I fired another shot in their direction and then left the notice and sprinted up the path. As I did so the first acrid breath of smoke came wafting down on the wind to me. Then there was a spurt of flame ahead and just off the path. I got it then; the notice had been a fire warning.

  I found Wilkins moving through the trees at right angles to the path, scrabbling up bunches of dried grass and scrub and lighting them from my lighter.

  I didn’t stop to tell her what a treasure she was. I was in there, grabbing tufts of last year’s bracken and grass and helping to spread the line of flame. For a few moments the whole thing sulked and then suddenly there was a small whoof and the fire went away, racing and crackling down through the trees towards our pursuers.

  On the path in the middle of the trees I saw Paulet suddenly stop. Then a great coil of smoke obscured him. A small pine suddenly went up like a Roman candle.

  I swung round and made for Wilkins who was still spreading the line of fire.

  ‘Enough,’ I shouted, and grabbed her. We turned and ran, and the noise of the spreading fire behind us was music. If you really want a good blaze there is nothing like a sun-baked, scrub-and-pine-and-heath-packed Mediterranean headland . . . a pyromaniac’s dream. In a few minutes the whole headland behind us was ablaze, leaping flames and great clouds of smoke barring the way against pursuit. Two days later, I was told, it was still smouldering.

  And that was that. Except for a few minor details.

  Duchêne, Paulet and Peter Brown couldn’t face it. But Aunt Saraband had a go. She was in the helicopter. It came down to fifty feet above us, and she hung out, gun in hand. I knew that now, knowing there was nothing to be saved of the grand design, she had to be full of old-maidish spite. She just wanted to hurt someone because she knew that when she reported back to Mr Semichastny she was going to be hurt.

  She would have hurt someone, too, if it had not been for Freeman, coming fast up over the top of the cliff from the beach, hunting rifle in hand. He stopped and took a couple of pot shots. However bad he was at other things, he could shoot. One of the shots must have got the helicopter in a non-vulnerable spot. But it was enough. The pilot suddenly opted for discretion. The machine lifted, wheeled and circled away.

  After that there was the beach path down to the sea, and waiting a few yards out a motorboat with José Bonifaz at the tiller.

  *

  There were a few high points after that. I remember particularly Manston’s fury because he had arrived at the airport to find no one there. No Olaf, no Freeman, no José.

  It was José’s lust for pesetas, of course, linked with Olafs rum-whipped impatience to come to grips with the people who were holding his precious Wilkins, that had left Manston and company high and dry, without a single shred of information to work on.

  José’s parents lived in a small fishing village called Purriog, up the coast from the airport. One could go by sea to the Villa Las Vedras and his father would gladly hire Olaf a motorboat, and, yes, a hunting rifle. Olaf didn’t stop to count the cost. They were off, Freeman dragged with them.

  ‘Charging in,’ said Manston, ‘like a bull in a china shop. They could have spoiled everything.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ I said. ‘Anyway, don’t let’s argue about the way it should or should not have been handled. A man in love can only do what at the moment he thinks is the right thing. And don’t forget Wilkins’s M.B.E. or O.B.E. or whatever it is.’

  He didn’t.

  José, not caring what it had all been about, went happily back to San Antonio, loaded with pesetas. Spain will be hearing from him, I’m sure.

  Freeman got a discreet pardon and was ordered to leave the country for good. I heard later that Jane Judd had joined him. Some women are gluttons for punishment.

  There was never any publicity, of course.

  But there was Sutcliffe in his London flat, mild-mannered but still disapproving of me. He handed me a letter from the Prime Minister which thanked me for my services, but didn’t invite me down to Chequers for the weekend. Sutcliffe took the letter back and destroyed it.

  I said, ‘There’s still the cheque for my services.’

  ‘You’ll get it.’

  He pressed a wall switch and one of his modern paintings slid aside and on a twenty-one-inch screen I had a view of Paulet and Duchêne in the waiting room, shivering on the camp bed and looking miserable. They were the only two they had managed to pick up.

  ‘No music?’ I asked. ‘No brass bands?’

  ‘Wagner. They hate it. But the sound is switched off up here. I hate it too.’

  I said, ‘It’s a pity Pe
rkins turned out not to be a traitor. I’d like to see him down there.’

  And then it was back to work—without Wilkins because she was still off with Olaf catching up on her holiday.

  Some days later, going back to my flat, after a hard day repeatedly turning the basset hound off my desk chair, I found Mrs Meld hanging over the gate enjoying the summer evening.

  ‘Nice evening, Mr Carver.’

  ‘Splendid, Mrs Meld.’

  ‘You look a bit baggy under the eyes these days.’

  ‘I have worries at the office.’

  ‘You got one waiting for you up in the flat.’

  I went up and into the flat. As I stood at the door, a voice shrieked, ‘Shut that bloody door! Shut that bloody door!’

  It was Alfred in his cage on the table, a note from Miggs pinned to it: ‘This bastard is losing me business, so back to you. M.’ Alfred carolled, ‘Bloody! Bloody!’

  I ignored him and went into the bedroom. Letta was lying on the bed reading Vogue.

  I said, ‘I thought you were in Athens?’

  She smiled and said, ‘I was. But now I’ve got two free weeks. If I stay here, though, you’ll have to choose between me and that bird.’

  I said, ‘Friend of mine keeps a pub round the comer. He’ll love him.’

  ‘Good.’

  She sat up, her dark hair taking the evening sun through the window in a hundred burnished points.

  I said, ‘Isn’t it a bit early in the evening only to be wearing a copy of Vogue?’

  She dropped it to the floor.

  Outside, Alfred cried, ‘Shut that bloody door!’

  I did.