It was a long wait. From time to time Mikhail went outside and came back to report no sign of Stolnik. After a while Nicholas went out to keep extended watch. Mikhail was restless, very uneasy now. Shard’s wrists were still tied; Mikhail wandered over to the door into the boatyard, wandered back, went away again, his footsteps muted as he moved on tiptoe.
In a low voice Shard spoke to little fat Annie. “Who’s this Stolnik?” he asked.
She shook her head; she didn’t know, or wasn’t saying. Her hair fell across Shard’s face, smelling of cow field. He asked, “What about Tex and his hippies? Still waiting for the UFOs, and heaven?”
She didn’t know that either. Tex, it seemed, was old hat now. She didn’t seem interested. There was certainly something mental … but she was interested in other things, things of more immediacy. Proximity, to little fat Annie, was all. Shard felt pressure on his thigh. Little fat Annie was like a cat, rubbing. It was dark and she couldn’t help taking advantage. Mikhail’s attention was concentrated wholly on the door, on the outpost provided by the old Russian, on the non-arrival of Stolnik.
Little fat Annie pressed harder, moving lasciviously. She wanted a response; but there was nothing Shard could do about it, even if he wanted to, unless the girl was willing to assist. He said as much, in a whisper.
“Rope, Annie. On my wrists.”
“Oh, yes, I know.”
“Untie it, Annie.”
The pressure stopped suddenly. She drew in a breath, then giggled. “Oh no. Mikhail would be angry.”
“Yes, he would be.”
“Promise you wouldn’t tell?” she asked after a while.
When it came to the crunch, he couldn’t do it to her. It was the way she had spoken, the odd trust in her voice. Poor, simple little fat Annie … Mikhail would flay her alive. He thought of Hedge, of the Russian delegation in danger. He had a duty, but in all probability he’d never get away with it in any case, never get past Mikhail or the Kalashnikov in the hands of old Nicholas. All he would do would be to ensure trouble for little fat Annie. The non-persons wouldn’t have any scruples, any emotions probably. They had been dehumanised and the struggle to exist was all.
As it turned out, there was no need to involve the girl. He hadn’t yet answered her question when Stolnik arrived, complete with transport. Engine sounds were heard distantly, coming closer. At the door, Mikhail was watchful behind his revolver. After a few minutes, by which time the oncoming vehicle had stopped, Nicholas came back. There was a brief conversation with Mikhail, then Nicholas went away again. The engine sounds were resumed, stopped again close to the boathouse. Nicholas came in with two more men. Orders were passed to the non-persons. Mikhail shut the door and flicked on a torch, played it over the men with the rifles, over a long, low barge. The non-persons got to work, opening up the cargo hatches and starting to unload. Case after case, the artefacts of terrorism. Shard stared. It was nothing short of an arsenal. Enough to blow a very big hole in Paris. And God alone could tell what Plan Two, the alternative, might be.
When all the stuff was out and piled on the concrete landing stage, Mikhail flicked off the torch, opened the door and went outside. The darkness inside the boathouse was the more intense after the light from the torch.
This might be the only moment on offer. Shard took a big chance. Wrists still bound, he moved fast for the door, coming from behind the line of unloaded cases, using the faint loom of the outside air as his guide. Nicholas was by the door; Mikhail had moved right out to the lorry, with one of the new arrivals. Shard took the old man on the shoulder, something like a football-field charge. Nicholas spun round like a top and clutched for the doorpost. Shard ran like the wind, with no idea where he was going. There were sounds from behind, but subdued ones, and the phut-phut of silenced guns. The boatyard was littered with gear, discarded stuff, and it was still very dark, a mixed blessing. But Shard managed to keep on his feet, dodging around the piles of junk, round crummy buildings. Bullets smacked into rotting woodwork. One or two came close; he felt the wind, heard the angry buzz. But he was gaining on the pursuit: he was very fit and hard. The non-persons were not, and Nicholas was an old man. Ahead of him he saw the gateway, the exit from the boatyard.
Like a fast shadow, he went through. The gunfire followed him and bullets zinged and ricocheted but he made it. The pursuit wasn’t showing itself beyond the gates: Shard was a valuable property all right, but Mikhail and Nicholas would be likely to find more trouble from any disturbance in the locality, such that would bring in the police. They wouldn’t be taking risks and it had been obvious they were on the point of leaving the barge in any case. Shard found himself in a narrow thoroughfare, a street in what seemed to be a small town, or perhaps a suburb of Paris. The darkness was as thick as ever: there were no street lights. But he saw small shops, what looked like a boat chandler’s store, a café, a food shop, a draper’s. He heard running footsteps behind: someone as yet unseen was taking a chance after all. He dodged down a side street, ran into another that led across, then another and another, back and forth through the rabbit-warren; the footsteps could no longer be heard. Shard found a narrow alley and went in, breathing hard. The alley ran between two sordid houses, joined a cross-alley at the back. Shard moved past dustbins and heaps of filth, disturbed the mutual spitting of two tom-cats, then found a shed that turned out to be a latrine, a simple hole in the ground under a ramshackle roof. Here he waited until he considered it safe to emerge. Back again in a main thoroughfare after a while he found no-one about, not even a solitary nightworker making his way home, not a reveller rolling back from a party, not a policeman. At the end of the street he came upon a house with one wall fallen away, a derelict building looking like the long, long aftermath of wartime bombings. The bricks stood jagged, raw. He backed up to them, got his bound wrists into position and started sawing away at the rope. When the strands parted he went on, came to what seemed to be a main road.
He found a signpost: one way Rouen, the other Roissy. He was not far off Paris. Roissy, said the signpost, was two kilometres ahead. Call it a total of four miles and he would be in the capital. He walked on, swinging his arms, getting the circulation back. After around half an hour’s walking he heard something heavy coming up behind. He dodged down into a ditch that ran alongside the road, which was now in open country. As the vehicle passed, moving at speed, he caught a glimpse of Nicholas in the cab. That was all: the number plate was unlit and he was unable to read it.
He came out from cover and went on.
*
“Frankly,” Hedge said from the floor of the cellar, his mind still roaming fearfully around treadmills, “everywhere’s at risk. Or that’s how we’re looking at it. Even the Elysée Palace. Even the National Assembly — there’s to be a reception there. And of course the routes through Paris. They’ll be well watched, of course. But if you ask my opinion, I’d say this man Mikhail has a very wide field.”
“Sure. You’re here to narrow it down, right?”
“Yes,” Hedge agreed.
“Go ahead, then. Narrow it.”
“But I can’t. It’s Mikhail’s choice, after all.”
Tex stared at him. “Look. What’s the official view of the most likely place? There’s bound to be some place where the Frogs see, or think they see, a good chance for it to happen. That’s what I want.”
Hedge pondered frantically. The sweat was pouring still. His feet, his heart … he would never stand the strain even for five minutes, he knew he wouldn’t.
“Come on,” Tex said warningly.
Hedge said, “Do I take it you don’t in fact know the whole programme for the visit?”
“Something like that. So cough. I guess we’re getting a little warmer, aren’t we.”
Convicts used to be put in treadmills, the early nineteenth-century version of hard labour. Donkeys were put in them, to draw water and so on. Once, Hedge had seen one, in Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight — horrible! It would b
e an act of the most extreme cruelty and it wasn’t fair … he gave a sound like a whinny and said, “Yes, all right, very well. I’ll tell you — so far as I’m able.”
“Great,” Tex said, still staring like a gimlet, searching out lies. “Remember it’s the changes I want to know about. Just in case the brass doesn’t agree to sign your personal reprieve by restoring the original set-up. Got it?”
“You want to know what the new programme is?”
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it? If I were you, I wouldn’t be playing for time. Time won’t help you, Hedge. The treadmill’s patient, right?”
Hedge shook. Playing for time was all he could do; he had no idea in the world what the new proposals were, it had all been in the melting-pot when these people had kidnapped him, but Tex was never going to believe that a big shot hadn’t been consulted in advance. Hedge said desperately, “Really, I don’t see how it can help you whichever programme’s decided upon!”
“Our worry, Hedge. I need to know so I have the best chance of getting a line on Mikhail Asipov.”
“But he won’t know either — won’t know about any changes. So he’ll stick —”
“I wouldn’t bank on it. Talk, Hedge. Me, I’m not as patient as the treadmill.” Tex lifted a hairy wrist and looked at his watch. “One minute, Hedge. Sixty seconds.”
He began counting.
*
Shard called the Embassy by telephone from the first police station that he found on his route. Roberts-White, he was told by a minion, was not yet up — not surprisingly, since it was just after two a.m.
“Get him,” Shard said. He waited. The First Secretary didn’t take long, but sounded sleepy. Sleep vanished fast when he realised who the caller was. Shard passed the encapsulated facts and Roberts-White absorbed them fast.
“That barge. Better get it looked at,” he said.
“The police are on their way. In the meantime, Mikhail’s lot know the programme’s changed — there was a leak, they have a plant, name of Henri, surname unknown —”
“Just —”
“Hang on till I’ve finished. I’ve found out some useful facts. There’s a man called Stolnik, a Russian presumably. I suggest you check him out, see if he leads anywhere. In the meantime, I believe — I’m certain in fact — that the attempt was to be made while the Russian brass was on the river. Now that’s out, seeing that the programme’s apparently changed, and you can forget the river. It’s the alternative plan now, whatever that is. I’m sorry I didn’t get any info on that.”
Roberts-White had been trying to get a word in all the way through. Now he said, “It’s not so simple, old chap. The programme’s on again. The river’s on again.”
Shard was rocked. “What the bloody —”
“Our PM,” Roberts-White said.
13
Hedge had been right: the American didn’t believe him when he insisted he knew nothing about the changes. Big shots always had the facts, right?
“No,” Hedge said, almost in a squeal. “I’m not — not such a big shot as you call it. I’m really not.” He was close to panic, close to pleading abjectly for his life. There was just nothing more he could reveal and revelation would be the only way out of the treadmill.
And Tex was as good as his word. Hedge was propelled up the stone steps, through the heavy door at the top, made to turn to his right, walk along a dirty passage, and then down into another cellar, a larger one than the other and containing the dreadful instrument of torture, a huge wheel with steps in it, going round and round on an axle when Tex set it in motion by giving it a push.
“Electrically controlled,” Tex said, “when connected up. Moves fast. Get in, right?”
“Please, no!”
“Going to talk?”
“I’ve told you —”
“Sure. So get in.”
Hedge had to be forced in. He was heavy, but Tex was a strong man and was assisted by the lantern man, who was still around to cast light. Hedge was thrust in through a sort of bird’s nest of wooden staves and spokes and Tex went across to a wall and fiddled with a switch in a metal box. The thing started up — fast, as Tex had said. Hedge’s feet moved rapidly and he gave a high moan of utter despair.
*
When Shard reached the Embassy, Roberts-White was in his office and looking worried. There had been no word of Hedge; presumably, now that the kidnappers’ terms had been met by Prime Ministerial intervention, he would be released. But so far there had been no communication from the Communist Alliance Transatlantic, and there was, naturally enough, no known avenue of making contact with them.
“No public announcement?” Shard asked. “About the scheduling reversion?”
“Good heavens, no.”
“In Hedge’s interest?”
Roberts-White shook his head. “Regretfully, no. Security has to come first —”
“But they all know the original programme,” Shard pointed out.
“Yes, but there’s nothing like a foxed enemy, don’t you agree? Keep ’em guessing. I refer, of course, to Mikhail’s lot — CAT will naturally be told when they make contact. In Hedge’s interest, you see. Poor old Hedge,” Roberts-White said without much conviction. “I doubt if they’ll harm him, though.” He added, “What do we do now? Any ideas?”
Shard let out a long breath. There was still all to learn; not a lot of progress seemed to have been made. He said, “Well, for a start, we can’t disregard the river after all, evidently. Mikhail could get to hear about the Heffer antics —”
“Via Henri?”
“Yes. Did you get a line on who he might be?”
“Sorry. Not enough to go on. I met a brick wall.”
“Stolnik?”
“Ditto. So far, that is. I have a man working on it.”
Shard nodded. He said musingly, “There is another point, you know.”
“Yes?”
“About the river. It could still be an impossibility from Mikhail’s angle — seeing I got away.”
“Yes, true. On the other hand, he might see it as his best bet notwithstanding, mightn’t he? We wouldn’t now be expecting him to go into river action.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The whole bloody thing’s still wide open, really.”
Shard agreed. The report from the police, when they had returned from the boatyard, was bleak: there was no barge. And no-one could be certain that the high explosive had after all left in the lorry. After Shard’s escape, it could have been reloaded into the barge. Of all the men aboard that barge, Shard from his ditch had seen only old Nicholas in the lorry. His own belief from his observations had been that Mikhail’s original intent had been to somehow or other impact the explosive-laden barge against the river boat carrying the Russian delegation on its sightseeing trip. This he put to Roberts-White, who regarded it as highly unlikely: the river would be under heavy and constant patrol and no other traffic would be permitted on the sections of river to be navigated by the VIPs. But the barge could, Shard said, be remote-controlled from the shore and could batter its way through any police interference, and then be blown, also by remote control, as soon as it had been manoeuvred alongside the pleasure boat. If the barge had indeed been reloaded it still could be. Mikhail had seemed in a foul mood on hearing about the changed programme; clearly enough, it had been a case of second best when he’d gone into his alternative. Now, Mrs Heffer could have played into his hands.
“She’d never live that down,” Roberts-White said. He looked more worried than ever. Whilst in France, the Prime Minister’s actions were to an extent an Embassy responsibility; after all, HE represented HM, a bigger fish than the PM … and HE was supposed to offer his advice, which often enough originated from his underlings. It was all a great anxiety to a career diplomat and in any case Roberts-White had voted for Mrs Heffer and thought she was doing rather well. He would be sorry to see her vanish politically in a cloud of smoke basically engendered by the Soviet Union.
Shard sa
id, “I’m going to take a look along the river.”
“For what?”
“That barge. In the meantime I suggest you arrange for the police and troops to be on the lookout for anyone with what might be a remote control outfit — later, I mean, as the time gets nearer to that river trip. What time is it scheduled for now?”
“Which one — the day trip or the evening booze-up?”
“The first, primarily. The one with just the Russians.”
“1500 hours tomorrow,” Roberts-White said. “The other’s also tomorrow — 1930 hours, both leaving from the quay below the Eiffel Tower. The Russians will be leaving in a motorcade from the Ecole Militaire — but you know that, of course.”
Shard nodded. “Can you arrange a disguise? I’m kind of tired of being a hippie … and I could be spotted. Likewise for my WDC. I’ll take her with me. I assume she’s around?”
Roberts-White grinned. “Raring to see you again. I said I wanted a word first. What sort of disguise have you in mind?”
“Pure tourist. The respectable sort. A little facial alteration would help.”
“Right.” The First Secretary took up a telephone. “I’ll fix it with the Police Judiciaire.”
Inside ten minutes Shard was on his way with WDC Brett to the Rue de Saussaies. The job was done thoroughly and it took time. When they emerged Shard was smartly dressed — lightweight, cream-coloured coat, dark brown trousers, sunglasses, plus a revolting peaked cap in bright blue, far from his natural taste, and there were subtle differences in his face, nothing elaborate but very effective, at any rate at a distance. By this time he had put Eve fully in the picture as to Mikhail’s set-up so far as he had observed it. She was intrigued by little fat Annie’s inconstancy. Down in the hippie commune the girl had seemed totally absorbed by Tex, as later she had been absorbed by Mikhail.
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