Touchfeather

by Jimmy Sangster

  ‘Drink?’ I nodded and watched him while he mixed it. There was no need for him to ask how I liked it. He knew already. He carried my drink over to me and returned to his chair. Then he raised his glass towards me.

  ‘To what might have been,’ he said. I raised mine.

  ‘To what nearly was,’ I said. We both took a drink and I waited for him to start talking. I would have started myself, but there was nothing to say.

  ‘Shall we start with apologies?’ he said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For disappearing. For making you think I was dead. For Rome.’ He knew about Rome, then. My hand went to my breast involuntarily.

  ‘I didn’t know about that until afterwards,’ he said. ‘They promised they wouldn’t hurt you. Does it still hurt?’ I shook my head. ‘The scar will go?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, for all the world like a family doctor pronouncing on a case of chicken pox. ‘You had your revenge though. That should be some comfort.’

  ‘It’s a great comfort,’ I said.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned at me again. ‘Dear Katy, trying to play it cool as a cucumber. I’ll bet you’re like jelly inside.’

  ‘No, Bill,’ I said. ‘Not jelly. A little ice perhaps.’

  He shook his head admiringly. ‘You’re quite a girl, Katy. Quite a girl.’

  ‘So you said once before.’

  ‘I meant it then and I mean it now. Well, I’ve apologised. How about you?’

  ‘What have I got to apologise for?’

  ‘For deception, Katy. For deception.’

  ’You knew I wasn’t what I appeared to be. You saw my tan.’

  ‘I’m not referring to the fact that my brown love turned out to be not so brown. I’m talking about the deeper deception.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said, trying forlornly to buy a little time in which to sort out some of the new material I had just been handed.

  ‘I know that you’re a good air hostess,’ he said. ‘But not so good that you can work for Air India one day, BOAC the next and United any time you feel like it.’

  I didn’t reply to this. He was prepared to go on talking and, since I had nothing to say, I let him.

  ‘That’s the deception I’m talking about, Katy, that and the fact that a lovely girl can mew like a kitten in my arms at one moment and shoot a man’s head off the next. Which one is the true Katy? The kitten or the tigress?’

  ‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘You obviously know the answer.’

  ‘I honestly don’t. I thought the kitten was genuine—and I’m sure the tigress was.’

  ‘A kitten can turn into a tigress when something she loves is taken away from her.’ There, I’d said it.

  ‘Loved, Katy? Really loved?’

  ‘Really loved,’ I said. ‘And you knew it.’

  He gave a small sigh. ‘I think I did,’ he said. ‘And, believe me, it didn’t make things any easier.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t planned.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. These things can’t be legislated for. But what was planned, Katy? Why were you told to follow me to Bombay?’

  There didn’t seem much point in trying to deny the fact. ‘I was sent along to make sure you came to no harm.’

  He smiled. ‘Very delicately put,’ he said. ‘You were there to see that I didn’t pass any information, weren’t you?’

  ‘That, too,’ I admitted. ‘They didn’t know about you.’

  ’Were you surprised when I didn’t?’

  ‘No. Others may have been, but I knew you by then.’

  He stopped smiling, his face relaxing into what could have been sadness. ‘You were wrong, Katy. They were right. I was going to pass information.’ I started to say something, but he stopped me. ‘We’ll go into cause later,’ he said. ‘Let’s get rid of effect first. I was going to pass information, but due to your efficiency and that of your compatriots, I was unable to. You see, there was nothing written down, nothing photographed. It was all up here.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘It required a couple of hours at least to get across what I had to. And your people didn’t give me a couple of minutes. So the hijacking of the aircraft was arranged. The reasons were twofold. One was the actual passing of the information. But more important was the consideration that whoever you work for would know I was responsible, so it was necessary at the same time that I should bow out of the current scene.’ He stopped there, watching me closely for any reaction. I was still a little too numb to come up with anything bright; I could still remember his face covered with blood, and the way the sight of it had made me feel.

  He continued after a moment. ‘So we played our little pantomime in Cairo. Designed so that, when it was eventually discovered the information had gone and me with it, it would be assumed that it had been tortured out of me and that I had been killed. Another drink?’

  I shook my head; I’d hardly touched the first one. He stood up and moved over to the bar again. ‘You’re going to ask me the necessity for Rome now, aren’t you?’ he said from the bar. I hadn’t been going to, but I nodded nevertheless. ‘It was designed purely as a means of letting the world at large know that I was dead. As a bonus it also meant that for a few days at least, no one would know that the information had already been passed. It gave us time to clear it before the real panic started.’

  He walked back from the bar, carrying his drink. ‘You were meant to escape and report what you had been told. The boys were going to drive you back towards Rome and then rig an accident and allow you to slip away. But you rather took things into your own hands there. Nevertheless—I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—at no time were you meant to be more than just frightened; anything that happened on top of that was none of my doing. And that was to be an end of the whole affair. Bill Partman is dead; rest in peace.’

  I seemed to have thawed out a little by now, enough to start asking some questions anyway.

  ‘Why, Bill?’ It wasn’t much as questions go, but it was the best I could do for the moment.

  ‘Why what, Katy? Why did I want to betray my own secrets?’

  ‘That’ll do for a start,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll let someone else explain all that to you. He does it better than I do.’

  ‘Gerastan?’

  ‘A brilliant man, Katy. Intellect like a razor. One of the most intelligent, farsighted individuals I’ve ever had the fortune to meet.’

  ‘Queer, too,’ I said, unable to resist it.

  He laughed. ‘I believe he is,’ he said. ‘But what has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask Mary Youngman.’

  He stopped laughing suddenly. ‘She was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?’

  ‘You know she was. Otherwise she’d be alive today.’

  ‘Roger knew that you had seen her. He didn’t know how much she had said, or would say in the future. It was the only way.’

  ‘If he convinced you of that, he must be bright,’ I said. ‘What was her part in all this?’

  ’In this, nothing,’ he said. ‘But she knew Roger before.’

  ‘That’s what she told me,’ I said.

  ‘Not the truth though.’

  I had to admit that from what I had learned about Gerastan, he was probably right.

  ‘She worked for him before she married, when she was still an air hostess.’

  ‘Worked at what?’ I asked.

  ‘Fetching and carrying mostly. Nothing very dramatic, but sufficient to prove an embarrassment should it have come out.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Roger had been prepared to leave her alone after she got married. After all, she couldn’t hurt him without hurting herself. And everything was all right until she started getting chatty with you. Then I’m afraid things became a little too dangerous.’

  ‘I’ve known Mary for years. Why then all of a sudden?’

  ‘Because we haven’t known you for years, Katy.’ Poor Ma
ry, I thought, all that time with something like that hanging over her head. And she had tried to warn me in her own way. ‘Don’t go to see Roger Gerastan; it could mean big trouble.’ Well, she’d been right there.

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked.

  ‘Now we change for dinner,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to come dressed like that.’ He stood up and walked over to me. He put out his hand and touched my cheek, and I am delighted to say I didn’t feel a thing, no electric shocks, no weak feeling behind the knees; apparently I’d just become immunised.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us, Katy?’

  ‘That’s rather up to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be entirely up to you.’

  I decided that femininity wasn’t going to be too important to establish at dinner; they already had me established as a girl of considerable resourcefulness, and a frilly dress and a glimpse of lace wasn’t going to impress anyone. So I grabbed the first dress in my size and went into the bathroom to find that I had left the taps running, and the place was knee-deep in water. I thought about ringing for someone to come and clean up the mess; then I didn’t bother. Fat lot I cared if the carpet went mouldy. So I sloshed my way over to the bath, had a quick rinse, then went back into the bedroom to review strategy. But I was rather in the position of a tennis player who couldn’t make any plans until his opponent sent the ball over to him. It was in their court and I was going to have to wait until they served it before I could work out how I was going to play it. One thing was clear: I didn’t have an ally in the whole bloody place. Apart from the fact that Marvin was besotted with Gerastan, it was a pretty fair chance that Gerastan also had something on him, so he was out. Perhaps I could pitch a few of my curves at Bill, relying on memory of things past to do the rest. But we would have to wait and see about that later.

  At six-thirty there was a tap on my door and Angel stuck his head round before I could tell him to come in. He looked a little disappointed to find me fully dressed, but then he announced that the other guests were gathered for cocktails and would I like to come along.

  I followed him into a section of the house I hadn’t been in before, along half a dozen passages and through two more vast rooms. Then he tapped on a door and pushed it open. The room was smaller than the others and distinguished by the fact that there was a huge log fire blazing away in an open fireplace. To compensate for this, the air-conditioning was turned up full blast. It wasn’t as disastrous as it sounded; the temperature was comfortable and one had the visual benefit of the open fire. Not that I looked at it for long; as soon as I came into the room with Angel, Roger Gerastan, dressed in a dinner jacket, came over and took my arm.

  ’You look enchanting, Katherine,’ he said, in his soft voice. ‘I think you know everyone.’

  He turned with me into the room. I knew two of the other guests, Bill and Marvin. The third I knew only by sight. But he had been a part of my bad dreams for so long now that I felt we must have been better acquainted than we were. It was the Eunuch, the firelight sparkling off his shiny baldness, his huge bulk encased in a badly fitting dinner jacket.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ I said, nodding towards the Eunuch, who was regarding me flatly across the room.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Gerastan. ‘I’m sorry.’ He guided me across towards the Eunuch, who continued to watch me expressionlessly as I approached.

  ‘Hamid, this is Miss Touchfeather. Katherine, Hamid El Mullah.’

  The Eunuch inclined his head a fraction of an inch, making no other acknowledgement of the introduction.

  Then Gerastan steered me past him over towards the bar. ‘Martini?’

  ‘I’d prefer it with vodka,’ I said.

  ‘Of course.’

  I watched him while he mixed my drink expertly. Everything he did he seemed to do with a minimum of fuss or wasted effort; he was neat, compact and efficient, and I think I disliked him even more than I disliked the Eunuch. There was enough tension in the room to suffocate a person sensitive to atmosphere. I had noticed it as soon as I had come in. Most of it was coming from Bill and, to a lesser extent, Marvin. Gerastan didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word, any more than the Eunuch did. I wondered whether I could funnel any of this atmosphere to my own benefit, but until I knew the cause I’d have to wait to see. Gerastan handed me my drink. Naturally it was completely perfect.

  ’I hope William didn’t give you too much of a shock,’ he said, after allowing me to take a swallow.

  ‘Who?’

  Then I remembered that Gerastan didn’t like shortened names. I glanced across at Bill. Funny, I’d never thought of him as a William before. I decided to try to do so from now on; it might help me to detach the past more effectively. He looked as miserable as hell. So did Marvin, and I wondered what they had been talking about before I came in. Gerastan answered my unspoken question.

  ‘We were just talking about you, Katherine,’ he said.

  I could only play it by ear until I knew more of what was going on. ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

  Gerastan grinned. ‘What a very normal female reaction,’ he said. ‘When a woman hears she is being talked about, she automatically assumes that it is something pleasant.’

  ‘It’s a defence mechanism,’ I said. ‘We can’t afford to analyse the situation too clearly in case we find out we’re wrong. If we were, then we’d rather not know about it.’

  ‘It’s gratifying to discover that a girl in your line of work is still capable of ordinary female self-deception,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean by “my line of work”, but surely self-deception isn’t the prerogative of the female. Don’t you all indulge in it?’

  ‘Do we?’ said Gerastan. ‘Tell us. Tell us about our self-deception.’

  Here goes, I thought. Bull by the horns and all that jazz.

  ‘Let’s take Marvin first,’ I said. Poor Marvin, I was about to cut his throat, but he probably deserved it, if the facts were known. ‘Marvin feels that he is the queen of the fairies around town. The big swinger, carousing with the kinkies, flying with the junkies, every pansy’s dream of home.’

  ‘Whereas?’ said Gerastan, enjoying himself.

  ’Whereas he’s just a sick little man involved in an unrequited love affair with another man who would as soon step on him as look at him.’ Gerastan chuckled. Marvin didn’t say a word, but I’d hit him hard enough to make him bleed.

  ‘And Hamid?’ said Gerastan.

  ‘I don’t know Mr. Mullah,’ I said. ‘But anyone who looks like he does must indulge in self-deception. If he didn’t he’d cut his own throat.’ The Eunuch didn’t move a muscle, nor did his expression change. It would obviously take a larger knock than that to make a dent in his monolithic hide.

  ‘And William?’ asked Gerastan. ‘What about William?’

  I looked across at Bill. ‘On William I am an expert,’ I said. ‘The urbane, sophisticated, brilliant Professor Partman—’

  ‘Stop it, Katy,’ said Bill.

  ‘Go on, Katherine,’ said Gerastan.

  ‘A wow with a transistor and a devil with the ladies is William. But what is he really? He’s a man with an obvious talent for getting mixed up with things and people so far out of his league as to be laughable. He’s a man who’d sell out what he creates because another man tells him it’s the thing to do. He’s worse than Marvin in his dependence on this other man; at least Marvin’s hormones are bent and he’s got the excuse that his dependence is physical. Whereas William is allowing himself to be seduced mentally.’ Bill had turned away from me, ostensibly to sit down, but he had sat with his back towards me so that I couldn’t see his face.

  ‘And what about me, Katherine?’ said Gerastan, still enjoying himself. ‘Where’s my self-deception?’

  ‘It’s all around you,’ I said. ‘It’s in those guards, with their dogs, and the helicopters and this ridiculous place built in the middle of nowhere. You are deceiving
yourself into believing you are valuable and important enough to need all this protection. Nobody is that important. I think you indulge in this pantomime to feed your own ego. Nobody is that bothered about you, Mr. Gerastan. If they were, they’d do something about it regardless of where you are, or how well you’re guarded.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No. Whatever it is that you are doing, it is for your own self-gratification. You’ve constructed a legend around yourself and your whole life is devoted to feeding that legend and keeping it alive. I’m not quite sure what it is you’re up, to but whatever it is, I’ll bet your motives aren’t what Bill and Marvin think they are. You use them all for your own self-aggrandisement, sniggering up the sleeve of your five-hundred-dollar suit because they allow themselves to be used.’ Even Bill had turned round now and was looking towards us. But Gerastan refused to be put out. He allowed himself a smile before taking me apart.

  ‘What about you, Katherine?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Shall we examine the circumstances that brought you here?’

  ‘Do,’ I said. ‘If it will please you.’

  ‘You no doubt consider yourself an able person, one who does her job efficiently. But let us look at the facts. One, you were recognised for what you were the moment you boarded the flight to Bombay. In actual fact I knew about you before you boarded. Your employers aren’t the only people who have an entrée to airline personnel. Two, you allowed yourself to be seduced by the man you were supposed to be watching, and don’t try to excuse it by saying it was all in the line of duty. We know better. Three, you made it ridiculously easy for my men to abduct you in Rome. Four, having escaped from the lion’s den once, you were stupid enough, not only to reenter it, but to place your head in the lion’s mouth. Five, you will no doubt consider it unjust when the lion closes his mouth with your head still inside.’

  Every shot a bull’s-eye, I thought. Thank God Mr. Blaser wasn’t there to hear my deficiencies laid out on the line like that; he’d have sent me back to school at best, or pensioned me off at the other end of the scale.