Black Gold

by Paul Kenyon

  She took the can from him and put it in the other side pocket. "Brand loyalty, darling," she said. "That's my motto."

  She finished putting things in her pockets and went to the wardrobe. Tony raised his eyebrows as she unpacked two custom-made Krieghoff shotguns that must have cost at least four thousand dollars apiece. "Taking your own guns, are you?"

  "Of course, darling. Shooting is like making love. You don't use borrowed equipment."

  They descended the stone stairs to the great hall. It was jammed with people who were milling around with guns, rechecking gear, and helping themselves to the enormous buffet breakfast set out on trestle tables.

  Sawney MacCaig came over, leading a dusty little man in a tweed cap and threadbare sweater. "Ah, there ye are, Baroness," the gamekeeper said. "This is Jock Dee, your loader."

  The little man reached out for the shotguns. "I'll take those, Miss. Why do ye na' hae a wee bit o' breakfast?"

  She handed them over. Two shotguns more or less in the hands of the Banes wasn't going to make any difference.

  "Hae ye been on a drive before?" MacCaig said, watching her narrowly. He was kilted, despite its impracticality for the day's work, with heavy knee-length hose with the wee knifie stuck into the top. He wore an old tweed jacket with bulging pockets, and he had a whistle on a chain around his neck.

  "Yes, but never with an army this size,"

  His freckled face creased in a good imitation of humor. "Aye, the laird does things in a big way. I ken we'll bag five thousand birds today."

  Five thousand birds, she thought. Plus one Baroness. She could read the signs. Her cover was hopelessly blown: Sir Angus couldn't ignore the disappearance of Slippery Donald, the skewering of the skin divers on a night she'd disappeared, her chase of the estate car that had disabled the Japanese whaleboats. Most especially, he couldn't ignore the twenty thousand pounds he owed her. If she failed to come back alive from the grouse shoot, he wouldn't have to pay her.

  She'd have to watch them all — the Banes, the Germans, and Tony.

  "Five thousand birds!" she said innocently. "My goodness! The laird ought to go into the restaurant supply business on the side!"

  "Ye should take Jock's advice and hae breakfast," he snapped. "Ye may not hae another chance."

  "Oh, I think I'll last till lunch," she said, looking him in the eye.

  MacCaig stalked off without a word and began to herd the shooting party outside. The Germans had outdone themselves for the grouse drive. One of them was wearing ballooning yellow-checked plus-fours and a golfing cap. Another wore leather lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat. Konrad was there in his imitation kilt, and Schmidt was dressed as a White Hunter in a safari jacket and a floppy hat with a leopard-skin band. They were stuffing themselves at the buffet and filling their pockets with the hard-cooked eggs and Cornish pastries that had been provided as snacks.

  A convoy of estate cars took them to the site of the first drive. The beaters were waiting for them there, a strangely silent crowd of almost a hundred people from the surrounding crofts and villages. They were young men and boys, mostly, with a smattering of little girls. They were dressed poorly. The Bane features were preponderant among them. Each carried a stick with a white flag tied at the top.

  They listened with idiot freckled grins while MacCaig gave them their instructions, then disappeared into the undergrowth.

  The butt Penelope was standing in was shallow, a couple of feet deep, lined with peat and built up a little with logs and rocks. Her loader, Jock, was crouched behind her, holding onto the collar of a black Labrador retriever named Wallace.

  She looked across at the next butt. It was about thirty yards away. Konrad was there in his African hunter's outfit. He waved cheerfully at her. She looked over at the butt to her left. Tony was there, staring intently ahead at the patch of woods beyond the heather. He took a silver flask from his pocket and had a swig, then settled back to watch again.

  "Here come the beaters," Jock said, and handed her a shotgun. At his feet, Wallace whimpered.

  She heard somebody blowing a police whistle like a maniac: that would be MacCaig. Then there was a lot of hooting and chirping: the beaters advancing through the wooded patch, trying to raise the birds. She strained to see, and then there was a line of advancing white flags, bobbing up and down as the beaters whacked away at the vegetation. A squirrel and a couple of hares broke cover in panic and tried to run away. One of the hares ran past a little girl in an outgrown dress that showed chapped knees. With a look of glee she clubbed the animal with her stick. It dragged itself a foot, its spine broken, and she clubbed it again, killing it. She picked the hare up by the ears and dropped it into a burlap sack she had tied to her belt, then skipped ahead to catch up with the rest of the line.

  There was a vast flutter of wings as the birds finally took to the air. All down the enormously extended line of butts, shotguns swung upward. The flags twitched against the blue sky, waving the birds toward the guns. There was a blast to her right: Konrad, shooting too low, almost hitting a beater, who dived to the ground.

  The shotgun blasts were going off continuously, all up and down the line now, and feathers were raining from the sky like brown snowflakes. Dead birds rained down. Wallace was whining with excitement. Penelope fired, hardly bothering to aim, and Jock handed her the other gun. She fired mechanically, feeling the padded stock slam into her shoulder again and again, while Jock loaded and reloaded, passing her one gun as soon as she'd emptied the other.

  The birds were thinning out now, and it shouldn't have happened; Jock wasn't that hurried anymore. But as he reached toward her with a loaded gun, he seemed to stumble. She was waiting for it, and she hurled herself to one side. There was an enormous blast, and she felt something tug at the skirt of her shooting jacket as the pellets tore through it. She caught the shotgun in case he was tempted to try the other barrel.

  In the same move, she stumbled herself, so that Jock got his fingers twisted painfully in the trigger guard. He let out a howl of pain. It was a good policy to punish people immediately when they tried something. It conditioned them after the first couple of times. When they made their next attempt, they instinctively flinched a little. Sometimes it gave you an edge.

  He flexed his fingers, tears running from his eyes. The fingers weren't broken, but she'd come close.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry, Jock!" she said contritely. "I don't know how it happened."

  "I'm sorry myself, Miss," he mumbled. "I must have slipped."

  "Yes," she said. "You did."

  She looked at her shooting jacket. One side was shredded, half torn away. Something wet was running down her side. She reached in her pocket and took out the little flask of brandy the laird had provided. It was riddled with holes.

  MacCaig came sauntering up. He looked at the riddled jacket. "Jock Dee!" he scolded. "How could ye be sae careless?"

  "I'm sorry, MacCaig," the little man said. "I'll be more careful next time."

  MacCaig stalked off, blowing his whistle. The beaters crowded around him for their next instructions.

  Another attempt was made at the next stand. The butts were the same shallow affairs, this time facing the rise of a hill. Penelope was getting tired of the slaughter. They must have killed close to a thousand birds at the first drive; the beaters had collected the dead and dying and loaded them into the backs of the estate wagons. The wagons had driven off, and now they had come back, waiting for another load. It was nothing but a bloody provisions business, with Sir Angus as the head butcher. He was out there, somewhere to the right, banging away like the rest of them. Tony was nowhere in sight; he'd been replaced by the fellow in the yellow plus-fours, but Konrad was in the butt to her right again.

  Now here she was again, deafened by the continuous roar of the shotguns, the air filled with floating feathers and the smell of gunpowder and blood. The birds rained down from the heavens, thumping when they hit, like a continuous tattoo on a drum. The Germans were making a lot of
work for the dogs, shooting poorly, leaving too many cripples to flutter along the ground, wings broken.

  Another great flight of birds rose into the sky, a speckled cloud tossed out of the heather. Jock handed her a gun. He seemed to be awfully anxious to give it to her. He almost dropped it, letting go too soon, and stepped back out of the way. The Baroness flung herself to the ground. There was a rattle of shotgun pellets against the stone facing at her left. She looked ironically at Jock. He was face down, hugging the turf. He didn't rise, so neither did she. She snatched off his cap and tossed it into the air. She wasn't able to pick out the individual shot from the continuous blasting going on around her, but Jock's cap jerked in midair and fell to the ground full of holes. A moment later, a grouse fell down from above and thrashed about a few seconds before it died. Jock picked up his ruined cap and stared at it sorrowfully. He stood up, and the Baroness did, too.

  Konrad was hurrying over, the kilt flapping about his chubby knees. "My dear, dear Baroness!" he said. "Are you all right? The bird was too far back. I shot in error."

  "Twice?" she said coldly.

  "I was carried away."

  "When I was a little girl, my daddy used to send guns like you off the hill."

  His red face grew redder. "My dear Baroness…"

  She picked up the dead bird and tossed it at him. It almost caught him in the face. His expensive tweed jacket got bloodstains on it.

  "Take your bird, Herr Konrad," she said. "You've earned it."

  She walked away from him. The second drive was petering out. There were a few desultory shotgun blasts up and down the line. The feathery snowstorm was as thick as ever, but there were no more birds hailing down in the middle of it. MacCaig was hurrying the beaters as they collected the mountains of dead birds and loaded them in the estate wagons. He was blowing his whistle like a traffic cop.

  The beaters disappeared over the hill toward the next stand. MacCaig was circulating among the shooters, pointing out directions. Konrad and Schmidt stopped to talk to him. She saw them nod and walk on. He was saying something to Tony now. Tony loitered, as if he were trying to avoid catching up with her. Now MacCaig was talking to another one of the Germans.

  She advanced with the rest of the shooting party in a long line across the moor. She was almost at the end of the line, she noticed. MacCaig was coming down toward her, pausing to speak to each gun he passed. When he reached her, he said, "It's about a quarter of a mile past that next hill. This is the last drive before lunch." He hurried off.

  Jock was dragging his feet. The little man, the black retriever at his heel, had fallen a good many yards behind. She looked over to her right. Somehow the entire line of shooters had wheeled around and fallen back. They were all facing her, and she was in the middle of a shallow arc that was already circling to embrace her.

  Just behind the line, Sir Angus and MacCaig stopped to watch. "Now," Sir Angus said, and MacCaig blew his whistle.

  They saw the Baroness stumble and fall, and then pick herself up immediately. She was on her feet just in time to make a fine target against the sky, as the Germans all raised their shotguns simultaneously.

  Thirty shotguns went off with an ear-splitting roar, both barrels at once. A solid hail of buckshot, sixty shells' worth of it, visibly darkened the sky for a moment, like the blink of a giant eyelid.

  They saw the figure of the Baroness literally torn to shreds by the incredible shower of lead. Her head disappeared and there was a fractional moment when they could see an explosion of torn fragments. She must have had time to feel something, because there was a short, piercing scream, abruptly cut off.

  MacCaig turned to Sir Angus. "That's one troublemaker gone," he said.

  "Pity," Sir Angus smiled. "Dreadful shooting accident. Imagine, popping up in front of a grouse drive like that."

  They walked toward the spot where the Baroness had fallen. The heather was high, but they could make out the remnants of her, a dark shape with fragments of the rest of her lying about.

  One of MacCaig's assistants, a muscular lad named Duncan, got there first. They saw him bending over; then he drew back in surprise, and, incredibly, the Baroness had sprung up again like a jack-in-the-box, whole and alive.

  They broke into a run, but with a speed that was not to be believed. The Baroness had grasped Duncan by the wrist and half spun him around before he could gather his wits. Her hand came up, flat and horizontal like an axe blade, and struck him at the side of the neck. Then Duncan was falling, and the Baroness was bounding across the heather like a deer, heading for the woods.

  The Germans were caught by surprise, but their guns were empty, and the loaders were unprepared. There were shouts of "Geben Sie mir!" and little fumbling struggles for boxes of shells. By the time the first man was able to get off a shot, the Baroness was already disappearing into the trees.

  "After her!" Sir Angus shouted, and the entire line began running awkwardly toward the woods.

  He stopped to look at Duncan. The lad was dead, his neck broken. Sir Angus stooped over to look at the tattered ribbons in the heather. They were made of some kind of plastic or rubber, painted a variety of colors. One flesh-toned piece lay near his foot. There was a realistic green eye painted on it. The whole thing reminded him of a burst balloon.

  There was something else in the heather. He picked it up. It was a spray can. It was a ladies' hair spray, and there was a picture of the Baroness on the label, looking out at him with mocking green eyes. Part of a plastic foot, in shreds like the rest of the balloon, was still attached to the nozzle.

  * * *

  The Baroness ran through the woods, branches lashing at her face. Behind her she could hear confused shouts. There were shots, but she wasn't worried about them. They'd be more likely to hit each other than her.

  She grinned, wondering if they'd found the spray can. When you're out hunting, you need a decoy. Only this time it was the quarry that had provided it: a life-sized, inflatable plastic Baroness.

  The timing had been tricky. The decoy wouldn't have fooled them for more than a few seconds. They were already raising their shotguns when she'd pretended to fall. Then came the quick explosion of the release valve, and the plastic form inflating instantly, and that incredible shower of lead tearing it to bits.

  She worried about that nice lad who'd come to see what had happened to her. She was afraid she hadn't killed him.

  There were chirrups ahead and the sound of thrashing branches. She kept running. In a few moments she saw a flutter of white past the trees and bushes.

  The beaters! They were advancing toward her.

  A frenzied hare ran past her. Then a squirrel. Now a speckled tide of birds, running along the ground, keeping low, cheeping in panic.

  She could see the line of white flags through the trees, almost upon her. Now, startled faces. A shout of "Hare up!" The beaters — men, boys, and little girls — began running toward her.

  She bowled a lanky youth over by pushing against his chest. Hands snatched at her, and she pushed them away. A little girl in a shabby sweater kicked at her ankle, but she avoided the kick.

  Then she was past them, and they were turning to run after her with their sticks and white flags.

  She dodged past bushes and tree trunks, leaped over fallen logs. Someone threw a stick at her like a spear. It flew past her head and bounced off a tree.

  "She's here, she's here!" someone shouted.

  Shotguns went off, one after another, and there were screams. The Germans! They'd encountered the pursuing beaters, and the damned fools had fired without knowing what they were shooting at. They must have killed quite a few of the Bane clan. She hoped they'd got the little girl who tried to kick her.

  An hour later, she'd circled around behind them. She had no illusions. She couldn't stay too far ahead of the Banes. They knew these woods, and there were experienced trackers among them. Some of them probably poached on their eminent relative's land. All she could hope for was to stay ali
ve until dark. Then maybe she could slip out of the area and regroup with Skytop, Sumo, and the others.

  She paused to rest. She took a long, grateful drink from a little spring. She was about done in. She needed to stop, to get some food into her.

  A twig snapped. She turned. Someone was blundering through the underbrush like a rhinoceros.

  He was about to burst into her clearing. With a lithe spring, she caught the branches of a tree and pulled herself up. The leaves were thin, and she was in plain view to anyone who glanced up.

  Only it was Schmidt, and he wasn't thinking to look up. He came into the clearing in his African hunter's outfit, holding the shotgun as carelessly as ever.

  She dropped down on top of him and took the gun away. She tossed it out of reach and let him have a knee in his fat belly. He doubled over with a grunt. She clasped both hands together and brought down the great killing blow on the back of his neck. He slid down between her feet, his neck broken.

  She retrieved the shotgun and examined it. She threw it away in disgust. It was empty. He must have been one of the ones who'd fired at the sound of the beaters, and he hadn't reloaded. Probably got separated from his loader.

  She searched the body on the off chance that he might have a box of shells. He didn't. But there was a hard-cooked egg and a sausage roll in one pocket. She wolfed them down. She began to feel better immediately.

  She got to her feet and chose a direction. She was just about to go when a voice behind her said, "Where do you think you're going?"

  She turned slowly. It was Tony. He stood there, rakishly handsome in his houndstooth jacket and twill trousers, pointing a shotgun at her.

  Chapter 13

  Tony looked down at the crumpled body of Schmidt. "You've killed him," he said.

  "Sorry about that, darling," the Baroness said. "Killing your business partner like that."

  "But you're not going to kill me."