by Jack Higgins
Her face went a little bleak, she started to turn away and I grabbed her arm. "All right, so I'm a pig. What's your name?"
"Simone Delmas."
"Oliver Grant." I reached for another glass as a waiter went past. "You want to know something, Simone Delmas? You're like a flower on the proverbial dung heap." I gestured around the room. "Don't tell me you're in the movies."
"Sometimes I do a little design work, just for the money. When I do what I prefer, I paint water colors."
"And who needs them in this world of today?"
"Exactly. It's really very sad. And you--what do you do?"
"Well, that's a matter of opinion. Write, I think. Yes, I suppose you could say I was a writer."
Langley's voice was raised behind as he moved into another public performance. "Surely we're all agreed that Vietnam was the most obscene episode of the century?"
I turned and found him in the center of an eager group of girls. They all nodded enthusiastically. He smiled, then noticed me watching. "Don't you agree, old stick?" he demanded and there was a challenge in his voice.
I was a fool to respond, I suppose, but the last two drinks were like fire in my belly. I didn't like him and I didn't like his friends and I wasn't too bothered about letting the whole world know.
"Well now," I said, "if you mean was it a dirty, stinking, rotten business, I agree, but then most wars are. On the other hand as a participant I tend to have rather personal views."
There was genuine shock on his face. "You mean you actually served in Vietnam?" he said. "My God, how dare you. How dare you come to my party."
I was aware of Gatano moving in behind me and Simone Delmas tugged at my sleeve. "Let's go!"
"Oh, no," Langley told her sharply. "He doesn't get off that easily. I know he didn't come with you, sweetie." He moved closer. "Who brought you?"
"Richard Burton," I said and kicked him under the right kneecap.
He went down hard, but without making much of a fuss about it which surprised me, but I had other things on my mind. Gatano grabbed my shoulder and I gave him a reverse elbow strike that must have splintered three of his ribs.
I wasn't too sure what happened after that. There was a great deal of noise and confusion and then I surfaced to find myself leaning against the wall in an alley at the side of the house. It was raining slightly and Simone was pulling my coat collar up about my neck.
"So there you are." She smiled. "Do you do this kind of thing often?"
"Only on Fridays," I said. "My religion forbids me to eat meat."
"Have you got a car?"
"A white Alfa. It should be around here somewhere."
"Where do you live?" I told her and she frowned. "That's forty miles away. You can't possibly drive that far in the state you're in."
"You could." I fished the keys from my pocket and held them out. "Nice night for a drive. You can stay over if you like. Plenty of room and bolts on all the bedroom doors."
I followed this up by starting to slide down the wall and she caught me quickly. "All right, you win, only don't pass out on me."
I leaned heavily on her all the way to the car and only passed out when she'd got me into the passenger seat.
When I woke up the following day it was almost noon and she was painting on the terrace using some old oil paints she'd found in a cupboard in the living room. It seemed she liked the view as much as I did. She was still there at sunset. And after that....
Two months --probably the happiest I'd known in years, I told myself as I sipped the drink she pushed across the bar to me.
"Is it all right?" she said.
"Perfect."
She folded her arms and leaned on the bar. "What do I know about you, Oliver? Really know?"
I raised my glass. "Well, for a start, I drink Irish gin."
"You write," she said, "or at least you once showed me a detective novel under another name and claimed it as yours."
"Come on, angel," I said. "If I'd been lying I'd have chosen something good."
"You have a scar on your right shoulder and another under the shoulder blade that suggests something went straight through."
"A birthmark," I said lightly. "Would you like me to describe yours? Strawberry and shaped like a primula. Back of the thigh just under the left buttock."
She carried straight on in the same calm, rather dead voice. "An American who could just as easily pass as an Englishman. A soldier because you did let slip at Justin's party that night in Almeria that you'd been in Vietnam, although you've never mentioned it since. An officer, I suppose."
"And gentleman?"
"Who can half kill a professional heavyweight boxer twice his size in two seconds flat."
"Poor old Gatano," I said. "He shouldn't have joined."
She seemed genuinely angry now. "Can't you ever be serious about anything?"
She moved to the end of the bar as if to put distance between us, took a cigarette from an ivory box and lit it with shaking fingers. She inhaled deeply once then stubbed it out in the ashtray.
There was a direct challenge now as she turned to confront me. "All right, Oliver. This afternoon. What was it all about?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," I told her with perfect truth.
For a moment I thought she might make a frontal assault. Instead she hammered on the bar with a clenched fist in fury. "I'm frightened, Oliver! Scared to death!"
I moved to take her hand. "No need to be, I promise you. Not as long as I'm here."
She gazed at me, eyes wide for a moment, then sighed, shaking her head slightly, and moved across to the window. She stood looking out into the night, arms folded in that inimitable way of hers, rain drifting across the terrace.
"Rain, rain, go to Spain, never come my way again," she said in a lost little-girl voice.
I moved in behind her and slid my arms around her waist. "Come to bed."
"Do you know what's the most frightening thing of all?" she said without looking round.
"No, tell me."
"That man out there in the marsh. He was a professional, you said so yourself, and yet he didn't stand a chance, did he?"
She half-turned, looking up at me. I kissed her gently on the mouth. "Come to bed," I said again and took her hand and led her out of the room.
I came awake from a dreamless sleep to find her gone. The windows to the terrace stood open and the white nylon curtains rose and fell in the gray light of dawn. I reached for my watch. Six-thirty.
I got out of bed, found a bathrobe and went into the living room. There was no sign of her there either, but somewhere a car door banged. I went out on the terrace and looked down to the drive.
The Alfa stood outside the garage. Simone was standing beside it dressed in slacks and sweater. A black leather suitcase was on the ground at her feet and she was stowing another behind the driver's seat.
"Good morning," I called cheerfully.
She looked up at me. Her face was very pale and there were faint shadows under each eye as if she had not slept too well.
She hesitated and for a moment I thought she was going to get into the car, but she didn't. Instead, she put the second suitcase inside and came toward the outside steps, her feet crunching in the gravel.
I returned to the living room, went behind the bar and poured myself a large gin and tonic. A bit early in the day, even for me, but I had a feeling I was going to need it.
She paused at the window, looking in. I raised my glass and smiled brightly. "Join me for breakfast?"
But she didn't smile. Not then or later. I don't think it was in her anymore.
"I'm sorry, Oliver," she said. "I'd hoped you wouldn't waken."
"What, not even a note?"
Her voice was full of pain, ragged and unsteady. "I can't take it--not any of it. What happened yesterday afternoon especially."
She shuddered visibly. I said, "Where are you going to go?"
"I don't know. It doesn't really matter. Paris maybe. Do
you mind if I take the Alfa?"
I wasn't angry. There wouldn't have been any point. I said, "You were going to anyway."
"I'll leave it in Almeria. At the station."
"How are you for money?"
"I'll get by."
I dropped to one knee behind the bar and prised up one of the ceramic tiles. Underneath was a black tin cash box containing my mad money, just in case of emergencies. An old habit. I counted out ten one hundred-dollar bills and put them on top of the bar.
She didn't argue, simply walked across and picked them up. She looked around the room for a long moment and there was an infinite sadness in her voice when she said, "I was happy here. For the first time in years I was truly happy."
I said, "One thing before you go. That night after Langley's party when I passed out on you. Well, I didn't. I just wanted you to know that."
She said bitterly, "Damn you, Oliver! Damn you to hell!"
She walked out, her footsteps echoed across the terrace. I poured myself another large gin with a steady hand. From somewhere a thousand miles away a door slammed. There was a pause, the engine started and then she was gone.
So that was very much that. And why worry? As a great man once said, a woman was only a woman. I raised my glass and found that my hand was not so steady after all and that would never do. I put the glass down very deliberately on the bar top, went into my bedroom and found a pair of bathing shorts. Then I went out onto the end terrace and descended the three hundred and twenty-seven concrete steps which zigzagged down the cliff to the beach below.
The morning was dull and gray and the white sand cold to my feet as I crossed to the boathouse by the small stone jetty. I opened the door and went in. Skin-diving being closer to a religion with me than a sport at that time, I carried a pretty comprehensive range of equipment. Everything from my own compressor for recharging air bottles to an Aquamobile.
I took down a neoprene wetsuit in black and pulled it on because from the look of that sky it was going to be cold down there this morning. I slipped my arms through the straps of a fully charged aqualung, found a face mask and went back outside.
I had an inflatable with an outboard motor on the beach beside the jetty, but I didn't bother with it. Simply pulled on the mask, waded into the sea and struck out toward the entrance to the cove. I did this most mornings. So much so that it had become a habit, mainly because of the fascinating wreck I'd discovered about a hundred yards beyond the point.
There was a heavy sea mist rolling in toward me pushed by the wind and it started to rain again, not that that bothered me. There wasn't much of a current and it took little effort to reach the appropriate spot. I dropped under the surface, paused to adjust my air supply and went straight down.
Visibility was excellent in spite of the gray morning and the water was clear as glass. At fifty feet I entered a neutral zone, colors muted, a touch of autumn and then a ship's stern moved out of the gloom.
I hung onto a rail with some care for they were covered with black mussels and her plates were encrusted with dog's teeth, a razor-edged clam quite capable of opening you up like a gutting knife.
The name across the counter was clearly visible, S.S. Finbar. I'd checked up on her after that first discovery. A Clydeside freighter of three thousand tons. Strayed from a Malta convoy in the summer of 1942 and sunk by Stuka dive bombers.
She was tilted slightly to one side, her anti-aircraft gun still in place on the foredeck and remarkably well preserved. I moved toward it and paused, hanging on to the rail, adjusting my air supply again.
There was a sudden turbulence in the water and I glanced up and saw an Aquamobile descending, two divers hanging on behind. It drifted to a halt ten or fifteen feet above me. The divers were wearing bright orange wetsuits and black masks. One of them waved cheerfully, dived down and hung on to the rail beside me.
I leaned close, putting my mask close to his. The face seemed oddly familiar, which didn't make much sense and then he reached over and in one quick gesture ripped my air hose away from my mouth.
The whole thing was so unexpected that I took in water at once. I started to struggle, instinctively clawing for the surface and he moved fast, grabbing for my ankles, pulling me down.
I was going to die and for what, that was my final thought as everything started to go. And then I became aware of the other diver dropping down, towing a spare aqualung, holding its air hose out towards me, silver bubbles spiralling out of the mouthpiece. It seemed to grow very large, to completely envelope me, then I blacked out.
I surfaced to a world of pain, my head twisting from side to side as I was slapped into life like a newborn baby. I suppose I must have cried out because somewhere, someone laughed and a voice said, "He'll live."
I opened my eyes. I was lying in the bottom of an inflatable boat. Justin Langley was bending over me wearing an orange wetsuit, his long blond hair tied at the nape of his neck in a kind of eighteenth-century queue. Gatano, in a similar suit, worked the outboard motor.
Langley smiled. "You don't look too good, old stick."
I tried to sit up and he pushed me down without the slightest effort. At the same moment his friend called, "We're here," and cut the engine.
A Cessna seaplane drifted toward us through the mist, we slid in under the port wing and bumped against a float. I tried to sit up and Langley shoved me down again. There was a hypodermic in his right hand now and he smiled.
"Go to sleep like a good boy and we'll try to see you don't get airsick."
Whatever it was, it was good. I felt the needle going in, but he probably enjoyed that part. And then, total darkness. A split second in time that must have been in reality five or six hours before I returned to life again.
It was cold and damp and very dark. I was walking, supported on either side, descending some steps that seemed to go on forever. When we finally stopped, there was only a narrow circle of light. I was aware of Langley's face looming very large, serious now and two men on their knees levering a round iron grid out of the floor. It was very dark down there and quiet.
Langley slapped my face. It didn't hurt at all. He said, "Still with us?" And then he turned and nodded to the others. "Down he goes."
I didn't attempt to struggle, I was incapable of that. A rope or a strap of some sort was looped around me and I was lowered perhaps ten or fifteen feet into darkness. There was a clang as the iron grid was replaced, footsteps echoed away.
I became aware of two things almost in the same instant. That I was only wearing the bathing shorts I had put on that morning and that when I stretched out my arms on either side, I immediately touched damp stone walls.
Not that it mattered, not then, for as yet, nothing touched me. I slumped down in a corner, knees to my chest in the fetal position and drifted back into my drugged sleep.
2
The Hole
It was the cold which brought me awake more than anything else and I crouched there in the dark comer, trying to get my bearings. A ray of sunlight drifted out of a channel in the stonework high above my head. I squinted up at it, tried to get to my feet and lost my balance for the excellent reason that I was wearing leg irons and the foot of steel chain between my ankles restricted movement more than a little.
I lay there in the darkness thinking about it for a while, considering the possibility that the whole thing was simply a particularly vivid nightmare, when the iron grating at the top of the shaft was removed and Justin Langley peered in.
Gatano's battered face appeared at his right shoulder, something which at that stage of the game didn't surprise me in the least. He laughed hoarsely. "He don't look so good to me, Mr. Langley."
"A good hot meal inside you, that's what you need, old stick," Langley called. "Try this for size."
He lowered a large biscuit tin on a length of string. It contained a bottle of water and a plate of some kind of cold stew that smelled like a newly opened tin of inferior dog food.
I crouched there
like some dumb animal, helpless with rage. Gatano called, "Hey, you down there."
When I looked up he was urinating into the hole. I tried to toss the plate up in his general direction, a futile gesture as I got most of the dogmeat back on my own head.
Langley chuckled. "You'll change your mind, old stick. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, you'll eat it. I promise you."
My voice, when I answered him, was so calm, so much outside myself that I hardly recognized it as my own. "All right," I said. "What's it all about?"
The iron grid clanged into place shutting out all light and I sank down into the corner. Some sort of complicated revenge for that evening in Almeria? But that didn't make any kind of sense. The divers, the seaplane, this place. It was all too elaborate. There was some hidden meaning here, a deeper purpose and I drifted into sleep again thinking about it.
Most men spend their lives trying to claw their way out of one kind of a hole or another, but mine was something very special indeed. A stone shaft fifteen feet deep and four feet square and unclimbable, especially in those leg irons. It was only possible to lie down corner-to-corner, but it was so damn cold that I usually preferred to curl up in as tight a ball as possible.
No blankets and definitely no sanitary arrangements so that by the third day, the stench in that confined space had to be experienced to be believed. I could mark the passage of time simply enough by the light which filtered in through the narrow channel in the stonework above my head and there was always the daily ration lowered in the biscuit tin, although after that first day, it was never possible to see who was up there. I tried calling a few times, but nobody ever answered, and after a while I gave up, for it was obviously the intention to isolate me from any kind of human contact.
It was always the same--a bottle of water and the dog food and Langley was right. By the third day I was cleaning the plate, but boredom was the main problem. There was always sleep, but the cold didn't help too much there so I tried passing the time by undertaking a kind of personal psychoanalysis.