The Secret War
Page 7
They read the particulars about Zarrif’s habits and employees, then Valerie yawned. “Well, we’ve had a long day. I’ve flown you from Rotterdam to Brindisi since dawn, you know, so I’m off to bed.”
“You’ve done us darned well,” Lovelace agreed quickly. “All the same, I can’t help wishing you were out of this.”
“Thanks, but I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.” She gave him a lazy smile over her shoulder as she left the room.
“Why the hell don’t you insist on her remaining in Italy?” Lovelace shot at Christopher once they were alone.
“What!” Christopher looked up vaguely from the papers he was studying. “But you heard what she said. It’s true, too. Valerie’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Besides, we need her to fly us to Athens to-morrow.”
“Surely we can make other arrangements?”
“It’s a bit late to try and do that now, and even if we could, no hired pilot would be so dependable as Valerie. You see, we must be in Athens by midday to-morrow, because Zarrif’s due to leave the day after. If we miss him I shall have failed the Millers.”
Oh, damn the Millers,” snapped Lovelace angrily.
Christopher stood up and stared at him in surprise. “What’s wrong? D’you want to back out? You’re quite free to do so if you like.”
“No, it’s not that,” Lovelace shrugged impatiently. “I’ve promised you my help so you may rely on it for what it’s worth. But the whole thing’s so damnably dangerous that it’s monstrously unfair to drag Valerie into it. You love her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Christopher’s smile was quite unperturbed, “and she loves me. That’s why I couldn’t stop her coming with us even if I wanted to. So we’d better make the best of it. Good night.”
“Good night,” Lovelace muttered in reply as the pale-faced young man turned away. He saw that it was useless to argue further, and settled down to spend another hour over two more rations of the pale golden Arum liqueur he always drank when in Italy, while he endeavoured to memorise every detail in the plan of Zarrif’s house.
By nine-fifteen the following morning they were in the air again; the waters of the Adriatic sparkling below them in the sunshine, and seeming bluer than the Gulf of Genoa had the day before. Half an hour later they were over the tattered Greek coastline with its ragged fringe of islands. At a few minutes before twelve they landed at their destination.
“Nowhere near a record,” said Valerie as she climbed out of her plane, “but better than a hired pilot would have done for you any day.”
“Bless you!” One of his rare smiles lit Christopher’s handsome face for a second. “This is a horrible show, but it helps a lot to have you with me.”
Hand in hand they walked into the airport restaurant, and Lovelace watched them go a little grimly. While Christopher ordered lunch Lovelace was telephoning in the name of Mr. Jeremiah Green.
When he rejoined them ten minutes later his face was even grimmer as he said:
“Paxito Zarrif is still in Athens. He’s agreed to see me at four o’clock this afternoon.”
CHAPTER VII
INTO THE LION’S DEN
“And now,” Lovelace insisted when they had finished their meal, “we must face facts. Even to have allowed Valerie to land us here was an abominable risk. It connects the three of us together, and if you, Christopher, succeed in what you’re out to do, the police will start hunting for her directly they find out you came in on her plane. If she’s determined to stay we can at least separate. She’d better take a room here in the airport hotel while we get fixed up somewhere in the city—although I’d rather she flew back to Italy this afternoon.”
“How shockingly ungallant you are.” The dimple in Valerie’s cheek deepened as she smiled at him.
“Honestly!” he raised a grin, “‘we don’t want to lose you but we think you ought to go,’ as the war song had it.”
“The worst the police could do is to hold me as a witness.”
“Yes, the police perhaps; but you may run into far greater danger from another quarter if you remain with us.”
“Well, I’m remaining until …” she laughed rather shakily, “until the deed is done, but I’ll take a room here if you like.”
She registered at the hotel and then they all drove into the town together. Athens was hot, dusty, airless. Its streets of shoddy modern shops proved disappointing to Christopher, who had never visited it before, and had always visualised it as still the Pearl of the Ægean. Nothing but the ruins of the Parthenon, dominating the city, remained to testify to its ancient glory, and the arid, treeless wastes on the outskirts of the town shattered his dream-image of a palm-decked southern capital. He was glad to get out of the sun glare into a cool courtyard at the hotel Lovelace selected for them.
Valerie dealt tactfully with him, as she always did when these moods of depression were upon him, and they agreed to remain where they were until Lovelace returned when he left them to drive out to Zarrif’s house in the heat of the afternoon.
He found it to be a walled property some way outside the town, and its only entrance a pair of rusty iron gates. Telling his cabman to wait, he jerked the old-fashioned bell-pull. A dismal clang sounded inside the porter’s lodge, and a surly-looking fellow came out to peer at him between the bars.
When he gave the name of Jeremiah Green the porter unlocked the big padlock that secured the gate and let him through. Having fastened the gate again behind the visitor the man accompanied him up the short drive to the house.
The garden was a dismal sight. Some withered palms, olives, and cypresses struggled for existence in the stony soil. Ragged cacti, aloes, and myrtle bushes formed a jungle on either side. There were no flowers except upon the semi-wild creepers which straggled across the grass-grown paths.
The house, by contrast, was in good repair, but all the ground-floor windows were shuttered, as Lovelace had expected. At the front door the porter rang another bell; a grille was lifted and two eyes peered out at them. Lovelace gave Green’s name again and the door was unlocked, upon which the porter left him. A second man, whose hip pocket displayed a bulge which suggested a large calibre pistol, relocked the door and led the way upstairs. On the first-floor landing a third guardian sat reading a newspaper; after being given the visitor’s name he opened the door which Lovelace knew led to the secretary’s room.
A thin man with shiny black hair sat there behind a desk. His quick eyes searched Lovelace’s face as he bowed. “Mr. Green, I was expecting you. Please to sit down.”
He spoke in English, but from his accent and appearance Lovelace judged him to be French.
“You have a letter for Mr. Zarrif,” he went on. “May I see it?”
“The letter is personal, I’m afraid,” Lovelace replied, settling himself in the nearest chair. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to let Mr. Zarrif know I’m here.”
The dark man smiled. “Certainly—in a little moment—but first I must see the letter, please. I have knowledge of all Mr. Zarrif’s affairs, and no one sees him before I have, er—what you would call—vetted them, first.”
Without further argument Lovelace produced the stolen letter.
The secretary scanned it quickly and returned it with a flourish. “That is quite satisfactory. Now your passport, please, Mr. Green.”
Lovelace was almost caught unawares, but he was poker-faced by habit and managed to mask his dismay as he said lightly: “‘Fraid I left that in my dispatch-box at the hotel.”
The black eyes on the far side of the desk showed sudden suspicion. “How am I to know then that you are Mr. Jeremiah Green? That letter might have been lost or stolen. You must return to your hotel and produce your passport before I can allow you to see Mr. Zarrif.”
Lovelace knew he was up against it. If he once confessed that he was unable to produce the passport he would never get as far as the secretary’s room again, let alone penetrate to Paxito Zarrif’s sanctum.
The secretary considered for a moment. “Tell me how you left Ras Desoum and his children,” he said.
“He has none,” Lovelace answered at once. He was gambling on the Ras not having married in the last few years, and his memory of him as a tall effeminate man with many vices but no love of women.
After that the secretary fired questions at him with the rapidity of a machine-gun. It was a gruelling experience, and Lovelace had to think like lightning while expecting to be caught out every moment in some hopeless blunder. He would never have come through it but for the knowledge acquired during his Abyssinian visit, and if Christopher had been in his shoes, as was originally planned, the young American would not have survived the ordeal for two minutes.
At last the man behind the desk appeared satisfied. He smiled again. “Forgive, please, the little traps I set for you, Mr. Green, but there are certain people most dangerous who seek to gain entry here. We have to be very careful of our visitors.”
“So I have observed,” replied Lovelace dryly.
The man on the landing was then called in to keep him silent company while the secretary disappeared into the inner room. About three minutes later he reappeared with the announcement: “Mr. Zarrif will see you now.”
The curtains of the bigger room were drawn, and it was only lit by a single desk lamp, the shade of which had recently been adjusted so that the light shone full upon the visitor. Paxito Zarrif sat still and silent behind it, a presence rather than a man, almost invisible in the heavy shadows.
At first Lovelace could see nothing but his eyes, green, searching, vital; then the presence spoke in a thin, sharp voice, and the substance of the man became clearer. He was smallish in stature with narrow shoulders; a thin-bridged, beaky nose, and a much fairer skin than Lovelace would have expected in an Armenian. His forehead was broad and lofty, his hair grey, and a little goatee beard decorated his angular chin.
He glanced at the letter Lovelace handed him and plunged at once into a series of rapid questions on the state of affairs in Addis Ababa. The secretary’s cross-examination had been difficult enough to deal with, but Mr. Paxito Zarrif’s was infinitely more so.
His brain moved from subject to subject with the speed of a prairie fire, yet devoured every scrap of information on each before passing to the next.
Lovelace felt his forehead grow damp as the interview progressed, from the double strain of both faking up plausible particulars about the progress of the war, of which he knew nothing except what he had learnt from the papers, and at the same time inventing an excuse which would enable him to secure a second interview. Suddenly the thought of his pretended illness gave him a line. He gasped, leaned forward, and gripped his sides with both hands.
Zarrif ceased questioning him for a moment. The perspiration on his forehead now served a useful purpose; it was obvious that he was ill. He groaned again and muttered something about having gone down with dysentery in Africa.
“You should have told me of this before.” Zarrif spoke now in a softer tone; he seemed all at once to have become quite human. “Give me your arm. This way. I have suffered myself. It is an agony.” He led Lovelace towards the further door beyond which lay the bath and valets’ rooms.
When Lovelace returned the older man was busy with some papers. “You had best go back to your hotel now,” he said kindly, “but there is much which I still wish to ask you. Do you think you will be well enough to come out here again this evening?”
Lovelace leaned heavily on the table. “Yes. I haven’t had a bout like this for some days now. It must have been something I ate for lunch, I think, that started it up again, but I’ll be all right in an hour or two. What time d’you wish to see me?”
“Nine o’clock. If you are too ill, telephone, and we will appoint a time to-morrow morning. It must not be later, as I leave here in the afternoon.” Zarrif touched a bell upon his desk and the secretary appeared.
Promising to be back at nine, Lovelace gave the impression of making an effort to pull himself together. Heartily glad to escape further questioning, he allowed himself to be led downstairs and escorted off the premises.
Outside the gates he found a tall thin man talking to the porter. The man glanced at Lovelace, who noticed that he had deep, sad eyes set in a delicate, aristocratic face, which was marked by a heavy scar running from the corner of his mouth down to the left side of his chin.
Slumping into his taxi with a groan, Lovelace let himself be driven away, but after he had gone half a mile he stopped the cab, got out, and walked back to make a more careful survey of Zarrif’s property. Both the porter and the tall man had disappeared.
The road curved round the garden and ran up a hill at the back of the house. Two hundred yards from it he had no difficulty in seeing over the wall and picking out the first-floor windows of the rooms he had visited. The wall was not a high one and a man could scale it easily by standing on another’s shoulders, but a wire, which glinted faintly in the late afternoon sunlight, ran along it about six inches from the top; an electric alarm evidently. If it were cut, depressed, or pulled in scrambling over, bells would rouse the guards into instant activity.
Having found out all he could about Zarrif’s defences, Lovelace walked back to his waiting taxi and was driven into the city.
On his way back he thought over the situation. If Zarrif was leaving Athens the following day, the coming night was virtually the only opportunity Christopher would have in which to get him. They must act at once, and Lovelace thought he could see a way in which the business could be done.
He visited a wireless store and then an oilshop, at both of which he made certain purchases, and packing most of these into a kitbag he had bought for the purpose, he took it to a garage near his hotel, where he arranged with the proprietor for the hire of a car. By six o’clock his preparations were completed and he rejoined his friends.
“I saw the old boy and I’m going out there again to-night,” he told them. “D’you really mean to go through with this, Christopher?”
“I do.” The young American’s dark eyes lit up with almost savage determination.
“All right. I think I can give you your chance. How does that ether pistol of yours work?”
“It contains little cylinders of highly poisonous gas. They are smashed and the puff of gas ejected with tremendous force by compressed air. One breath of it is enough to kill almost instantly.”
“Good. I’m glad it’s to be a painless business. It must be done silently too, if you’re to stand any chance at all of getting out alive yourself, because the whole place is lousy with gunmen.”
“There’s no chance of getting him away from the house, then?”
“Not an earthly. I had the devil of a job even to get in. You’ll have to do it in the house, or not at all—that’s certain.” Both of them listened intently as Lovelace told of his experiences that afternoon.
“It seems almost impossible for me to get at him at all then,” Christopher said gloomily. “How d’you propose that I should set about it?”
“Let’s leave that till after dinner—shall we?”
They dined early, and Lovelace thought he had never sat through a more trying meal. Christopher displayed alternate moods of pessimism and gaiety. Although almost a teetotaller, he ordered a magnum of champagne and began to talk of his last wishes in the event of his being caught and killed by Zarrif’s men. Valerie grew paler and paler as the meal dragged on until Lovelace feared that she would faint at the table; but with almost superhuman pluck she managed to keep her end up and laugh with Christopher
during his outbursts of forced hilarity.
When at last coffee was served, Lovelace produced a small map of Athens and its environs. Passing it to Christopher, he explained to him the route he must take to reach Zarrif’s house. It was not difficult, being a straight main road except for the last quarter-mile, and, as the house stood alone on the slope of the hill, Christopher agreed that he would have no trouble in finding it.
“Right, then,” Lovelace went on. “I shall have to leave you in a few minutes now, to keep my appointment, but I want you to follow me in a private car which I’ve hired for you from the Delphic garage. It’ll be handed over to you here by their man at a quarter to nine. In it there’s a pair of folding steps and a kit bag containing various other things we’ll need. You will drive yourself out, but you’re not to stop at the house; go straight on round the bend at the back and up the hill for about two hundred yards. Stop then, and wait until I join you there. I’ve ordered your car a bit early to make certain of it arriving up to time; but don’t start before nine, because I don’t want you hanging about there longer than necessary. I hope to be out of the house by half-past, but in any case I’ll manage to be with you, somehow, before a quarter to ten. He turned to Valerie: “Could you fly the Adriatic by night if need be?”
“Oh, yes,” she nodded; “I’ve done far more difficult trips than that.”
“Then I want you to return to the airport when Christopher sets off. See that your plane’s in readiness, then wait at the hotel. If you don’t hear from us by eleven o’clock you’re to leave at once for Brindisi. Is that all clear?”
As the others nodded he lifted his glass of champagne. “Well, here’s lots of luck to all of us,” he said briefly. Finishing his wine, he stood up and left them.
On his second visit to Zarrif’s house he paid off his taxi. The guards made no difficulty about letting him through, and the secretary, who was still at work, led him at once into the inner room.
Zarrif inquired courteously if he was better, and on learning that although still shaky he was fairly fit, settled down to bombard him with a fresh series of questions. Lovelace dealt with them to the best of his ability, but one almost took him off his guard. It was a sudden inquiry. “Do you know anything about the Millers of God?”