High Requiem: A Johnny Fedora Espionage Spy Thriller Assignment Book 6

by Desmond Cory

  Johnny continued to smile for some little time after the door had shut; until an unusual sound came to his attention. He waited a few moments, watching the door handle alertly; then lifted aside the blanket, lowered himself to the ground and went over to the door. Carefully, he tested it. It was locked.

  He went back to bed.

  As he readjusted the blanket, he noticed that its movement had dislodged from its position a small piece of paper. It now lay on the floor just before his feet. He picked it up. A few words had been scribbled on it in pencil.

  See you later. Or if not, best of luck. O’B.

  Johnny read this missive through twice; then smeared the words with his thumb until they had become indistinguishable. He then dropped the note into his pyjama pocket, and went over towards the french window. He and the large Military Policeman who had that moment arrived there looked at each other curiously.

  “Nice day,” said Johnny.

  “Very,” said the Military Policeman.

  3

  Now this, thought Johnny, was a perplexing situation; he sat down on the bed to ponder it. Merely because O’Brien had escaped … Escaped, why did that word come into mind? … Merely because O’Brien had departed … that seemed no reason why he, Fedora, should be placed under lock and key and Military Policeman … It was high-handed behaviour, to say the least of it, on the part of a doctor with so well-practised a bedside manner. Johnny felt called upon to protest, and went so far as to approach the door with a view to beating upon it. He changed his mind, however, at the last moment, and returned quietly to his bed. He was in no hurry. See you later, everyone had said; very well, Johnny would see everyone later. He could afford to wait.

  So he waited, lying on the bed with the blanket tucked comfortably under his chin. Time passed. It was so quiet in the ward that one could almost hear it passing. Eventually, there was a scraping of feet outside; a key turned in the lock; a medical orderly entered - not Parsons but another bearing a large tray on which was the invalid’s lunch.

  “Why,” said Johnny, coming straight to the point, “is the door being kept locked? And what’s that fellow doing outside? I would wish to be enlightened on these and other matters.”

  “Colonel’s orders, sir,” said the orderly.

  “Yes, that’s all very well. I think I’d like to have a word with the Colonel, if an audience can be arranged.”

  “I don’t know about that, sir,” said the orderly. He placed the tray on the table beside Johnny’s bed and wiped his hands against the seams of his shorts. “Busy man, the Colonel.”

  “Then perhaps I could see the doctor again. Captain what’s-his-name.”

  “Garrett, sir. Yessir. He’s not here at the moment. Be back at three o’clock, sir; I expect he’ll come and see you then.”

  Johnny said nothing further, there being nothing to say. He waited until the orderly had departed and the key had once more been furtively turned in the lock; then he began, thoughtfully, to consume a plate of soup.

  He then ate a small quantity of chicken with fried potatoes. Then a helping of pink blancmange. Then a piece of cheese, with two biscuits. Finally, a banana. Two or three flies gathered together to take a share in the spoil; and were, one by one, dextrously executed with a table-knife. The meal completed, Johnny lay once more on his back to contemplate the ceiling and to await the passing of time until three o’clock.

  At five minutes to three by his wrist-watch, the key rattled again in the lock and the door swung slowly open. Somebody came in. It wasn’t Captain Garrett, though. It was Jimmy Emerald.

  “… Well,” said Johnny, “I’m damned.”

  Emerald had not changed very much in the last ten years. He was, if anything, slightly dumpier and chubbier than before; his increase in paunch had compensated for a slight exaggeration in the scholarliness of his stoop. He was very brown and his little moustache had grizzled slightly; but the baby-blue eyes behind his spectacles were as studiously watchful as ever. He advanced towards Johnny, extending his plump right hand; Johnny sat up in bed to receive him.

  “So it is old Fedora. Well, blow me down. Of all the craziest things.” Emerald, puffing slightly, seated himself on the bed. “When they brought me the report, y’know, with your name on it, I thought to myself: No, it can’t be. Old Fedora would have too much sense to come horsing round this Godawful Africa place … But here we are; it is you, it absolutely is.” He patted Johnny’s shoulder tenderly. “Well, well, well, well, well. Lot of water flowed under the bridges, eh?”

  “It certainly has. I am glad to see you, Jimmy.”

  “And I’m glad to see you; my word, I am. We’ll have to have a real celebration tonight, won’t we? I haven’t seen any of the old gang since … Well, Johnny, you’ve no idea what a coincidence this is. You really haven’t.”

  “I heard you were in Africa, somewhere. I didn’t know where. And a Colonel now, I see.”

  “Oh yes. Since last October.”

  “And what in Heaven’s name is a C.E. Colonel doing in this revolting hole? Atom-bomb tests or something?”

  Emerald shook his head solemnly. “Terrible things, Johnny. Wish I could tell you, I really do. Bacteriological warfare.”

  “Bac …?”

  “Oh yes. We’ve really got it taped. That’s why we’re keeping you under observation, old man - just in case. Nothing to be worried about, of course. The chances are you’ve picked up nothing worse than bubonic.”

  “Look,” said Fedora, breathing deeply. “Do you know you almost had me worried? I wish you’d behave yourself.”

  Emerald chuckled. “You should know better than to ask questions, anyway, Johnny. Questions like that, I mean.”

  “So I should. I’m sorry.”

  “In fact, I fear the boot’s rather on the other foot. I’m going to have to fill in several pages of bumph explaining your arrival here. Would you like to tell me all about it?”

  “Well,” said Johnny. And paused obligingly, while Emerald loudly summoned an orderly and sent him forth to capture a bottle of whisky. “Not an awful lot to tell. We were driving up from the south towards Tripoli - I and a friend of mine—”

  “What’s his name,”

  “My friend’s? It’s Bill. Bill Cody.”

  Emerald’s eyes flickered, amusedly but rather tiredly. “Oh yes, I remember now.”

  “… We got caught in a haboob, somewhere … I don’t know where, precisely. The van packed it in and left us stranded. Then, about half an hour later your helicopter fellow picked us up and brought us here. End of a rather dull story.”

  “I wouldn’t call it dull exactly. You were driving up from the south, you said? From the Sudan?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And this fellow Cody - a particular friend of yours?”

  “No. We just got together for the trip. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. He sounds remarkably like a fellow name of O’Brien - we’ve had police notices about him. He’s wanted down in Kenya for killing a white settler.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” said Johnny decidedly.

  “No. Naturally not. Just another of these coincidences, no doubt. And as he’s a pal of yours, I don’t propose to open any investigations - though my report’ll have to go in, in due course. But have you any idea, just to satisfy my curiosity, where the hell he’s got to?”

  Johnny said slowly, “I might have.”

  “You mean - if it became really important, you might have?”

  “I mean precisely that.”

  “Well, that’s fair enough. I don’t want to make a fuss about things that don’t concern me. Still, there’s a chance - just an off chance - that your pal is going to concern me. Yes, and you, too.”

  At this juncture the medical orderly returned, carrying as though it were a casket of treasure a bottle of Dimple Haig. “How,” said Johnny, when the orderly had departed, “do we concern you in any way?”

  “Because,” said Emerald, his hand on
the neck of the bottle, “of what happened to that van of yours. I’ve heard something about it from Revie … you know, the pilot.” He kept his eyes fixed on Johnny’s, making no attempt to raise the bottle. “As far as I can make out, that accident you had happens to be more or less our responsibility. I can’t be more precise. But, Johnny … I just can’t overstress the importance of our knowing exactly what happened to you.”

  “Ah,” said Johnny, and emitted a long breath. “I was wondering if it wasn’t something like that.”

  “You understand, old boy? No questions, because I can’t possibly answer them. I’m afraid from that point of view I’ve got to treat you just like any other blooming civilian. I just want to know all there is to know about this … meteorite, as your little playmate described it.”

  He poured whisky into the tooth-glasses at his side. Johnny noticed that his hand trembled slightly as he did so; there was no doubt about it, Emerald was undergoing a period of nervous strain. Revie had had just that same air, too. Well, it was important, then; whatever it was. Indeed, it had to be. The British Security Services did not devote the time of their best officers to catching butterflies. Johnny propped himself up on his elbow, and accepted a Player from the packet placed before him.

  “Jimmy, the hell of it was, I didn’t see a thing.”

  “No. I realise that. You wouldn’t. But you can tell me, can’t you, how the darned thing came about? Your impressions of what actually happened, in fact?”

  “The whole thing was so extremely sudden. We were driving along the track at about twenty miles an hour, I suppose; going fairly straight. Except that we were swerving a bit to avoid the various pot-holes. Then there was this explosion … The trouble is that ‘explosion’ just isn’t exactly the word to describe it. It sounded more like … well, like a sort of giant hand-clap. And there was the hell of a strong blast, almost simultaneously. It bowled the van over on to its side. I was looking out of the window at the time, and I fell out when the door came open. That’s how I broke my arm. Then, what with the pain and the clouds of dust and the confusion, I … I can’t say I remember very much of what happened next.”

  “No. You describe it pretty well. Tell me - there was a hole of some kind, wasn’t there? A crater in the rock?”

  “That’s right. We went to look at it a bit later. Well, almost at once, in fact. This thing, whatever it was, had just blown a hole in the rock; about three feet deep, I should say, and maybe fifteen feet across. It was pretty nearly circular, as I remember it.”

  “Anything else you noticed?”

  “Not really. It was pretty hot, I think, in the crater. And there were crystalline formations in the rock, as though it had fused in the heat … Well, I’m no mineralogist, but something like that, anyway. That was all there was to see.”

  “Yes.” Emerald took off his spectacles and pressed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Well, that’s pretty clear. I’d just thought there was a chance, you see, that … Oh well. It doesn’t matter. You say you were actually looking out of the window of the van at the time?”

  “Yes,” said Johnny. “I was.”

  “Um. So there’s not much hope of your pal having seen any more than you did. Unless afterwards, of course … Oh well,” said Emerald again, “my boys’ll probably catch up with him. It would have been better, really, if he hadn’t done a bunk - he could have walked away after we’d questioned him, so far as I’m concerned. But now he’ll have the authorities waiting for him, too. Can’t be helped,”

  “You seem pretty certain he is O’Brien.”

  “Oh yes. The description was a good one. And I’ve checked the finger-prints.”

  Emerald cracked his knuckles and reached across for his glass. “I’ve got a gang out there now,” he said, “taking a look at the scene of the accident. You saw them on the way there, I rather gather. And from their preliminary reports, there’s nothing to be seen there other than what you’d noticed.”

  “Too bad,” said Johnny.

  “Yes, too bad. That damned haboob was the trouble. It’s blown everything to hell and gone. If there were any scraps left over, they’ll be miles away by now and lost in the desert.”

  “Then you’re looking for fragments of whatever-it-was that landed? Is that the idea?”

  “Exactly.”

  “The van,” said Johnny promptly. “I’ll be surprised if that van didn’t stop a few pieces, and hold them - haboob and all. With any luck, you’ll—”

  “Yes. Yes, that had occurred to me. And the blokes on the site will have thought of it, too, don’t worry. I should be hearing from them again before long.” Emerald sighed. “In fact, I’m going to have to move off again. These are my working hours and I have so many darned things to do … Anyway, I’ll see you later, Johnny. I’ll be through by seven, with any luck.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll have a lot to talk about.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, I’m looking forward to hearing the inside story of that Trieste affair. I can hardly wait till this evening. Anyway, come round to my office round about seven … or seven-thirty … Anyone’ll show you where it is. And we’ll have a real get-together.”

  “All right,” said Johnny. “The only thing is, I seem to be under guard at the present moment.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll cancel that right away. But with O’Brien disappearing like that, don’t you see, I couldn’t take any chances with my sole remaining witness. However - bring that bottle along, will you? if you haven’t finished it all off by then. I’ve only got two more left.”

  Emerald rose and made for the door, nodding to Johnny as he went. “Till half-past seven, old chap.”

  It was a little after half-past six.

  Johnny had just washed and shaved. He was now dressing himself, slowly and with difficulty, because of his broken arm. The medical orderly had obligingly provided him with K.D. trousers, a new bush shirt, socks and canvas shoes; the laces of the latter proved the hardest task of all. Johnny sat on the bed twiddling them to and fro, while dreaming vaguely of his forthcoming appointment.

  He was looking forward to it, which was rather strange. It was not that he especially wanted to exchange yarns about the Bad Old Days, about the time when he and Emerald had worked for John Squires’ private army of assassins, because such reminiscences had little appeal to him; even in that peculiar group of individualists, Johnny had walked very much on his own. Emerald had not been a particular friend of his. On the other hand, the knowledge that of all that group only he and Jimmy and Jean de Meyrignac had finished a somewhat strenuous war alive … that certainly induced a certain fellow-feeling, if only of mutual respect. The main thing, Johnny decided, was that this evening would herald his return to civilisation from so long a sojourn in Africa. With Emerald beside him, Europe was permanently in sight; whereas O’Brien, perhaps an equally tough nut, brought back memories of nothing but the rolling plains of Africa and the great purple deserts …

  Maybe no white man is ever truly comfortable in Africa. He comes nearest to comfort only when he has re-created for himself the closest possible approximation to European conditions. Johnny had almost completed a long and hard journey that had lasted many months; he had lived with Africa, and Africa had moulded him to its ways. It had moulded him by brute force on the one hand, with infinite subtlety on the other. Johnny had been made different; how different he did not know, could not tell until once again in contact with his ordained norm of Europe. He was waiting to rediscover himself, to find out his new potentialities; and he was impatient to begin.

  But he could not begin until he had first mastered the infuriating intricacies of his shoe-laces. He was still bending over his right foot, somewhat red in the face and muttering, when the door opened abruptly and Emerald came in.

  “Johnny,’’ he said urgently. And then, “Good, you’re up.”

  “Up and fighting,” said Johnny, “with this blasted shoelace.”

  “Well, listen.
Something extraordinary’s happened. Something that’s really weird. And what it all boils down to is that we’ve got to get hold of that damned O’Brien character and, what’s more, get hold of him damned quick. You said maybe you could help.”

  “I said I could if it was important,” said Johnny, straightening himself. The shoe-lace remained unfastened.

  “Well, it is. It really is. Hellishly. One of those things has happened, one of those unbelievable … We’ve got to find him, Johnny. And without a moment lost.”

  Emerald had not been stooping, but his face was almost as flushed as Johnny’s. He was considerably excited. Having said his little piece, he went for a brief walk over to the french window; then returned and took up a stance straddled on the floor directly at the end of Johnny’s bed.

  “Look, the whole gang’s waiting to go. If we’re given half a clue, we’ll find him before the day’s out; but the boys who’ve been out already haven’t picked up a sign of him yet. This is different. This is the works. I’ll have every man this side of Cairo after him, if I have to. Now all I want you to do—”

  “Hell,” said Johnny, open-mouthed. “What the blazes has he done?”

  “He hasn’t done anything. Except skip out of it. That’s just it; he doesn’t know himself … If he did …” Emerald checked his flow of words with some difficulty. “Look here, Johnny; give it to me straight. I want to know where O’Brien’s gone. You said you’d tell me if it was important; well, that’s just exactly what it is. Important. Well?”

  Emerald’s eyes were now so anxious as to seem almost horror-struck. Johnny did not hesitate for more than a moment. “Tripoli,” he said. “We were both heading for Tripoli.”

  “Tripoli. West. Good.” Emerald turned on the instant.

  “Good for you, old boy. If it’s any satisfaction to you, you may be saving his life. Coming?”

  “Eh? Yes. Wait for me.”