But always the mystery. David! The word had cut his own brain with all his imagination into two parts. And the ‘doctor’ part was working almost automatically!
There was no sign of local irritation, the shading purple edge of liver could be seen heaving below and a tense swelling bobbed upwards with every breath.
He packed the wound with a dressing square wrung out of hot water and prepared for the second stage of his approach. Success must depend, partly at least, upon gaining a perfect view of the wound depths. And, God, how he wished he could see into the depths of this latest mystery!
David! David!! It had been no mistake. She had said it. Which meant. Meant what? That . . . To hell with it. Live for the moment. How could a man do major surgery and worry about other things. Enough to worry about here. He had to sell himself to this megalomaniac Berber. Or else!
The man coughed and the wound suddenly heaved below his knife. His retractors were not self-retaining and he knew that if the girl failed to hold them properly the operation could end in chaos, with yards of small gut wallowing around the wound and slithering omentum thrusting out with every breath.
Two large packs and a long dressing strip were soaked in water which had now cooled to body temperature. The girl was intelligent and carried out every instruction to the letter but wisely did nothing without orders.
Lifting a pair of long forceps he controlled an urge to hurry and cautiously packed the roll, inch by inch, round the neck of the gall-bladder, easing stomach aside and avoiding duodenum as he identified the bulge of common-bile duct. Cautiously inserting two retractors he then passed control over to the girl and prepared for the most difficult part of an operation which until now had moved without a hitch.
And that was the time when something always happened. When you least expected it. Like this David business. Maybe he hadn’t been so bloody clever, after all, on the Canaries.
‘My uncle will wish to see this. From where he is standing I think he might as well be blind.’ The girl’s voice jerked him back to reality.
He had been dissecting whilst he talked, identifying each landmark in turn, and when the Caid stared into the depths of the wound he was able to point out every vital structure while the girl repeated his lecture. She had an astonishing memory and slipped up only when she gave the wrong name to the hepatic duct, confusing it with the cystic. And what did it matter, he thought, as he passed a stout ligature around the neck of the gall-bladder and eased it into position just above the point where the complex of biliary passages and blood vessels met.
Milking the impacted stone, which he could easily feel, back into the gall-bladder he then cautiously clamped a stout curved forcep around the neck and breathed with relief as he realized that the worst was over. The girl had kept her retractors firmly in position, but after almost fifteen minutes he guessed that her hands would be aching, and speeded up dissection. The bulging organ separated cleanly and there was minimal oozing from its attachment.
‘Right.’ He now moved with confidence. The man’s pulse was steady at less than eighty after an operation lasting just under an hour. ‘One thing more. It will be easier to sew up if your uncle will take out the cushion from below our patient.’
She translated without comment, and then after an instant of hesitation her uncle eased the cushion away. It was some sort of moral victory for himself but he still remembered instructions and spoke only to the girl. ‘Tell him I’m very grateful,’ he said as the patient flattened out and cut muscle edges fell together while he stitched up.
He had asked Miss Turquoise to arrange for their first patient to stay for a few days in a decent house but was surprised to hear the Caid snap his fingers and order two servants to look after him with their lives until the doctor said that he was fit to return to his family.
He had operated with no rubber gloves and returned to his room to wash and change. He was drenched in sweat and was sousing himself in tepid water when a note in Spanish was delivered by a servant:
My uncle expects you to join him for coffee in the patio whenever you are ready.
As usual it was unsigned, but the writing was unmistakable.
He took half an hour to complete dressing. Every instinct suggested trouble and his latest tropical suit was not out of place!
He left his room, thoughtfully filling a pipe, and was fumbling for matches when Sidi Achmet appeared from nowhere by his side, ushering him through a short tiled corridor to the door which gave to a small garden. The place seemed to be filled with people, his host surrounded by a group of small men wearing blue trousers and white shirts who stared at him impassively whilst a girl in white skirt and jumper sauntered towards him. ‘David,’ she said in English, ‘’ow nice to see you again.’
‘Well, well!’ Grant was apt to fuss about little things when there was nothing much to be surprised about, but when he was really shaken by some fantastically unexpected development he became unusually mild. ‘Jacqueline herself! And with all these Chinese gentlemen to make life interesting. Won’t you introduce me?’
Chapter Fifteen – ‘By the time I was sixteen I knew everything’
The Caid and Miss Turquoise were reclining on rugs, but neither spoke as one of the Chinese sauntered forward and joined them.
‘My friend Ling Tao,’ said Jacqueline in English. ‘’E wishes to talk and we have permission to use thees place as if it were our own ’ome.’
The man could have been any age from twenty-five to fifty and behaved with an assurance which Grant later discovered sprang from education in Harvard and the London School of Economics. ‘The language problem is difficult,’ he said seriously, ‘but our interpreters will keep the Sheikh and his niece posted about a conversation which ought to interest them very much.’
‘Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and English,’ said Grant. ‘An unusual combination, surely?’
‘Not in China,’ said Ling curtly. ‘Pekin prepares for everything.’
‘And what exactly do you want?’ Grant had found a corner stone by the fountain and sat down a few paces from Miss Turquoise. The girl was now fully dressed and wearing yashmak, her eyes anxious as they stared towards her uncle who was now sitting bolt upright below two bodyguards.
‘It will save time,’ said Ling, ‘if I tell you that Jacqueline de Massacré is one of our top agents. And, of course, since she had a key to your flat it follows that we have missed little of importance in your life during the last few months.’
‘Months?’ Grant’s voice was flatly neutral.
Ling smiled. ‘You became interesting to us only after your last trip to Russia.’
Grant sighed bitterly as everything suddenly clicked. Jacqueline’s sick leave. Force X and the question mark who had known where to lift Zero’s tapes. The girl was a double agent. Pekin and Force X! Mao and Zero! What a combination! He tapped out the bowl of his pipe. But let them set the pace. ‘And then you bugged my flat.’
Ling looked at him coldly. ‘International politics are complicated but Pekin did not monitor your flat.’ He bowed slightly towards Farrachi. ‘I mean to put the Sheikh fully into the picture and since it is unlikely that you will return to Paris we can be completely frank.
‘Then start by telling me who did fit those mikes,’ snapped Grant.
The Chinaman half smiled. ‘Experts say that beautiful women are no good in espionage. But it is not true, and Jacqueline de Massacré is a case in point.’ He stared straight into Grant’s eyes. ‘You know as well as I do that special agencies exist for collecting information which can later be sold at high level on a restricted market. Miss de Massacré not only worked for myself, which means Pekin, but we also succeeded in infiltrating her into such an organization. I understand that you have had some experience of this firm, that you have even met the Chairman of its Board and that you have caused him a lot of expense both in lives and money. Especially,’ he added softly, ‘when you killed several of his men on Gran Canaria before sailing for Africa.’
> ‘One,’ Grant interrupted. ‘The other two were hundred per cent accident. Bad driving. And what makes you think I had anything to do with the other?’
‘Because,’ said Ling gently, ‘the man who died in your hotel was as strong as a horse. And,’ he added softly, ‘his death resembled what Pekin has heard about one important Soviet agent earlier this year. In each case there was a puncture wound which couldn’t be accounted for and I am told that the Chairman suspects poison.’
‘Carry on,’ drawled Grant. ‘And let’s give this business organization a name. Force X. It will make things easier for the Sheikh.’
Ling nodded. ‘You might care to say more.’
Grant glanced towards Aniseeh. The girl looked strained and pale. ‘Force X was hired by someone still unknown to kill me in Paris,’ he said. ‘But the attempt ended by my getting the would-be murderer. Sometime later the same people did succeed in kidnapping me and I then discovered that they had fitted microphones and tape-recorders to my flat. Since they knew too much about my affairs it became necessary to try to fix them as well. Unfortunately, however, some of the leaders escaped. But later still, on the Canaries, I guessed that they were again after me and by sheer chance my would-be assassins killed themselves through bad driving on the mountains. Some hard thinking and a bit of luck then put me on to their local top man and I put him down just before sailing for Guerra.’
He hesitated. Be careful, Grant. They aren’t sure how much you know. Keep them on a slack line. Keep fishing. ‘I thought I was clean away. Until now,’ he added bitterly. ‘But it seems I was wrong.’
He was watching Ling’s slightest reaction. The man seemed vaguely relieved. His eyes were less hooded and a twitch in the neck had disappeared as he spoke. ‘Your phone call to Miss de Massacré on the night you were attacked took her by surprise. But it was good luck just the same, because when she arrived she discovered that you were far from dead. So she removed the tapes and took them to her superiors.’
‘Force X?’
‘Yes,’ said Ling. ‘Remember that she was a double agent and trained to handle emergencies. So she gave them to her immediate superior in Force X not far from your own flat.’
‘Without stopping on the way?’ asked Grant cynically.
Ling half smiled. ‘I admit that she called at another place and took copies.’
‘I see, so Pekin also scooped the whole of my talk with a lady official?’
‘With the news that you were going to be flown to London and passed off as dead on the following day.’
‘But, of course,’ interrupted Grant, ‘you knew that Force X was bound to cover that angle, so all you needed to do was find Jacqueline’s boss and make an offer. Which would be easy since she also worked for you.’
The Chinaman nodded. ‘Exactly.’
Grant almost laughed aloud. Zero himself would never have contacted Pekin in the first instance. Not this side of time. And Zero wanted more than money. He wanted a monopoly. With all the power which that implied in power politics. But he would also want to know how Pekin had discovered this interest in Grant! Little wonder that Jacqueline had taken sick leave. ‘And Force X accepted.’
Ling stared at him suspiciously. ‘Yes. We got transcripts of the recordings a few days later.”
‘Price?’ Asked Grant.
‘Half of China’s opium output for two years and most of the antiques collected from the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa.’ The reply was slam off the cuff. ‘Any more questions?’
Grant paused. The man had smacked out his reply with total conviction and the price was credible. It could even be paid without unduly disturbing China’s precarious economy. And Pekin wanted to stamp out poppy-smoking even if it would still suit her well enough to sell the crop at a price and help corrupt her neighbours. And who more suited to arrange that than Force X with all its ramifications of underworld influence.
But Lhasa’s antiquities would be a damn sight easier to sell than riodorium. A fortune which could be totted up at leisure in the world’s auction-sale rooms, with everything on the right side of the law! ‘So Force X washed its hands of responsibility and kept the original tapes as souvenirs.’
Ling nodded. ‘Why not? Originals mean nothing when a man may have taken a hundred copies. One has to have good faith even in this sort of business.’
‘One last point,’ said Grant quietly. ‘What does China expect to do with this new mineral when she still doesn’t even have a toy rocket?’
Ling’s face hardened. ‘It is possible that my government is thinking ahead. And in any case our first . . . toy . . . as you call it . . . rocket, ought to be in orbit within a very short time.’
‘You know best,’ said Grant easily. ‘But nothing in these tapes gave any clue whatsoever as to where I would go for final briefing with my own superiors. How did you get on to me?’
The Sheikh was listening and watching with a concentration which seemed to bore into the senses of both men as they suddenly broke off and looked towards him. Ling stared for a long second. A muscle again twitched in his cheek and he turned back to Grant. ‘The tapes proved that you must arrive, for sure, and sooner or later, in Las Palmas.’
‘As Dietrich Gunten?’
‘I shall continue to be completely frank, Dr. Grant. The tape was indistinct at that point and we missed your cover name. Nor did we know your hotel or when you were due to arrive. So our own local man on the Canaries felt pretty good when he found your picture in the newspaper and this story of your operation on the mountains. You have a real talent for surgery,’ he added cynically, ‘and it seems a pity that you left it for things so much more dangerous to yourself.’
Grant whistled. So Pekin had been after his blood at the same time that Force X was also trying to settle on his tail. ‘What had I done to you?’ he drawled.
‘Nothing. But our interests were bound to clash, and with your reputation I was taking no chances. You were better dead.’
‘All right,’ snapped Grant. ‘My picture gave me away. What happened next?’
‘By that time you had sailed for Guerra. But since we knew that Miss Farrachi’s caravan was camping far inland we felt that you could be forgotten for a couple of weeks.’
‘During which time you tied up loose ends and opened negotiations direct with her uncle.’ It was a convincing story, but somewhere along the line it didn’t quite ring true.
Ling bowed impassively. ‘My government provided funds and authorized me to buy the meteorite honestly.’
‘You being . . .?’
‘Shall I say that I am your opposite number in China’s security services and that Jacqueline de Massacré is one of my chief assistants.’
‘But again, leaving the main background for a moment,’ continued Grant, ‘how did she become involved?’
‘Ask her,’ snapped Ling, and pointed towards the girl, who was reclining on another folding chair.
‘And this time I shall speak French,’ she said viciously. ‘My father had a Chinese mother and French father. But my own mother was pure Chinese, and after living as a child in what used to be called French Indo-China I became Chinese in everything that matters. Even if I don’t look it.’
She was a different creature from the feminine nincompoop whom Grant had tolerated in the office, and different too from the seductive mistress who had been given the key to his flat.
‘My father was murdered by Chiang Kai-shek during a business trip to Macao, and the Nationalists sent his tongue through the post to my mother saying that he had talked too much. Then I discovered that my father had been a friend of Mao Tse-tung for years, that Mao trusted him as chief agent in Viet Namh and that he had been chosen for office in the government. I was only in the early teens at the time,’ she added slowly, ‘but I can still remember how my mother went mad and killed herself.’
‘Go on,’ said Ling curtly.
‘And then,’ she continued. ‘Ling Tao told me why my father had been murdered. He even showed
me his tongue.’
‘Did he say how he knew all this?’ asked Grant sourly.
The girl nodded. ‘Of course. He had been our number-one houseboy for two years but on that same day he said that my father had really been training him for work in the war against the Nationalists and he told me how Chiang Kai-shek hated my father because he had become so dangerous.’
It sounded plausible. ‘And then, of course, he trained you himself.’
Jacqueline smiled slightly. ‘He taught me. Yes. Taught me how to seem stupid. How to deceive men. How to learn secrets and encourage schemes which would help our work. I knew everything about men’s weaknesses by the time I was sixteen.’
‘Right.’ Ling’s voice snapped with command. ‘We shall leave it that I made her into a perfectly trained instrument for China. But who are you working for that you can deceive an Arab girl, promise to marry her under a false name and come here prepared to break every rule of hospitality, probably hoping to leave her in the lurch after you had stolen her country’s most important asset?’
There could be only one defence. ‘Prove it,’ said Grant quietly. ‘I did have orders to get that mineral concession. But after meeting Miss Farrachi I realized that however it might be done I would steal nothing and do nothing to hurt her. You probably also heard that I did save her life and everyone here knows that I mean to marry her.’
‘Not good enough,’ said Ling. ‘You had either to win that desert skirmish or die yourself.’
‘My fiancée has not had the advantage of education from men like you,’ said Grant coldly, ‘but she knows that I do mean to marry her.’
‘She also knows that you are only using her in order to steal the mineral.’
‘Whatever else she believes,’ said Grant steadily, ‘she does not believe that I would steal anything.’ A boy had poured more coffee and he was almost enjoying the situation. At least there could be no more deception of either the Sheikh or Aniseeh. He could guess now where the ‘David’ had come from. ‘Going back to the recent past,’ he drawled. ‘You were explaining how you were going to buy the meteorite. So I take it that you flew in here to start negotiations.’
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