Cloak of Darkness

by Helen Macinnes

  “Only three bags, all neatly tied. They’ll dig it in when they’re good and ready. Not tonight, I hope.”

  Perhaps when the next delivery of food arrived—a nighttime job, obviously. “I hope not,” Renwick agreed fervently, his eyes studying the house once more. No balcony here, either, where it could have been useful, for this side of the chalet was in deep shade. “They must be suffocating in there,” he added as he scanned the five shuttered windows, heavy black rectangles set into dimly white stucco walls. Then, “These bottom windows—something different...” And he unzipped a pocket to pull out his mini-telescope, and pressed its infrared release button. Claudel drew out his small binoculars and got them functioning for night work.

  The two windows changed from dense black to the colour of bleached blood. Every line on the board shutters was shown as a dark seam. And at the centre there was a very broad seam—an opening, a definite opening. But it revealed nothing beyond, only a blank smooth surface, the same ghastly colour in infrared as the shutters themselves.

  Renwick and Claudel exchanged a glance, pocketed their pint-sized instruments. Quickly, they crossed over the rough ground—grass with some outcrops of rock—and reached the dark shadows of the chalet. Claudel took one window, Renwick the other.

  And there his question about ventilation was answered. A black blind, opaque, covered the glass panes, but from the outside. Concealed behind it, the window could be opened wide. As it was now. There were voices.

  He signalled to Claudel, who came hurrying to join him. Renwick held up two fingers, raised an eyebrow. Claudel nodded: two people were talking, a man and a woman. Not clearly heard, only an occasional word recognisable, as if the speakers were at the far side of the room. Renwick and Claudel drew out their heavily rimmed glasses, put them on, pressing the frames close above their ears. The words became as clear as if the man and woman had been standing beside them.

  Words spoken in some small argument, complaining, bickering, using German—probably as a common language: the woman’s accent showed traces of French, the man’s was heavily Slavonic. She was saying, “Stop searching! And sit down. There’s no more beer. You’ve drunk it all.”

  “What there was of it.” Footsteps wandered over a wooden floor. “They send you plenty of food and nothing to drink.”

  “Nothing? You drank six—”

  “Six bottles of nothing. Where d’you keep the cigarettes? They sent cigarettes, didn’t they?”

  “No. You had two packs.”

  “They’re finished. Empty.”

  “Oh, sit down!”

  “Can’t even phone.” The footsteps stopped. “Why shouldn’t I try to—”

  The woman’s voice rose. “No phoning! Orders.”

  “Stupid orders.”

  “You’re stupid. The calls go through the town exchange. Do you want someone down there asking who is up here?”

  “The two-way radio doesn’t go through the exchange. I’ll call, tell them we need some real booze and cigarettes—it’s a long night ahead.”

  “No! Only to be used in an emergency. Only then!”

  A chair scraped on the floor. “Think I’ll have a breath of fresh air.”

  “The car could arrive—”

  “He won’t arrive until midnight. Or later. It’s a long haul.”

  “What about her? Don’t leave me—”

  “She’ll give you no trouble. She’s out cold.”

  “Do we keep her quiet until he leaves tomorrow?”

  “He’s in the big room; she’s upstairs. And gagged. Who’s to hear her? No one did today. If you ask me—it’s a damn stupid mistake having them in this house at the same time.”

  “I’m not asking you. And it isn’t a mistake. It wasn’t planned. It just happened. She is—”

  “She’s a damned nuisance.”

  “An important nuisance. Remember that! Where are you going, Stefan?”

  “Out.” Heavy footsteps were crossing the room.

  “Where?” she insisted.

  “Up to the big house—get cigarettes and something to drink, find out what’s new. You clean up here, have the place looking good for our visitor. Who is he? Did they say?”

  “No. And tell them she isn’t talking, won’t speak. Yes, better tell them that.”

  “I’ll tell them it would be easy to make her talk if they didn’t want her kept alive. And how long will that be, anyway?” There was a grunt, short and contemptuous. “Switch off the light. Can’t open the door until you’ve got that light turned off. Move it!”

  Renwick and Claudel didn’t wait for the light to go out. They raced to the nearest tree, glasses safely in their pockets, their rubber-soled shoes both sure and soundless on the grass, and slid behind its shelter. Propped on their elbows, they watched that back door. They were aware when it opened—in the stillness of the night, the turn of a heavy lock was audible. But it was only when Stefan stepped out from the house’s shadow that they realised the door was closed. Not locked again, thought Renwick. Why?

  They watched the tall, heavy figure in its dark clothes plodding slowly toward the road. Stefan stopped twice, looked around. Perhaps he really was enjoying the air. Perhaps he was checking to make sure everything was as peaceful as it should be.

  And in the house he had left? The woman busy tidying the kitchen; someone in a room overhead, gagged and unconscious—a bad combination, thought Renwick. She could be smothered to death—orders or no orders from Klaus Sudak.

  Stefan had reached the road, was lost from view as he turned to follow it uphill. “How much time?” Claudel asked. “Ten minutes to the big chalet. Fifteen minutes for supplies and some talk—and ten minutes back here. Give him half an hour?”

  Renwick nodded. “The door wasn’t locked. An invitation to enter, I’d say. Let’s accept it.”

  “Marchand?”

  “We’ll scout around first. Time enough to call when—” Renwick, about to rise, broke off both words and movement. The door must have opened. The woman came out of the shadows, almost invisible in the dark cloak she had thrown around her. A shoulder tilted as she walked toward them. Carrying something? A large black plastic bag that glistened in a ray of moonlight as it bulged out from under her cape. They let her pass, scarcely fifteen feet away from where they lay under the tree. She veered to her left, up toward the bushes that disguised the garbage dump.

  Renwick rose, gestured to Claudel, and they followed. She was out of sight behind the screen of bushes. “Deal with her now?” Claudel whispered and stood to the side of the path the woman had taken through the shrubbery. Renwick faced it. She came out, saw him, stopped. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t cry out. Claudel’s karate chop caught the back of her neck. She pitched forward, lay still.

  “Sorry about that,” Claudel told her, “but how else do we keep you quiet for the next half hour? Come on, Bob. Lend a hand. She’s the weight of two men.”

  Together they pulled her heavy bulk near some stones, dropped her head beside the largest of them. If any of her friends came prowling around, they might think it was a fall in the dark and a case of concussion. “All right, all right,” Renwick said. “Let’s go!”

  They raced down the slope, stepped into a darkened kitchen with its door ajar. Renwick closed it, used his pen flashlight to find the switch and turn on a ceiling lamp. On the far wall was a narrow door. Quickly, they moved to open it: the woman’s room—underclothes on a chair and a dress, smeared with blood, hooked onto a wall.

  Back into the kitchen, out into the hall. A small place, stretching from back to front of the house, lit by a table lamp near the main entrance. Opposite them, a narrow staircase leading up the wall, beginning almost at the doorway to a back room. Stefan’s room: city clothes dropped on the bed, a soiled towel on the floor near a washstand and a basin of red-tinged water. There was a front room, too, its door under the top rise of the stairs.

  “Well,” said Renwick as they entered it and switched on the lights, “a
ll the comforts of home.” It was larger, better furnished than the others, with even an adjoining bathroom. The wardrobe held a man’s suit and overcoat—new, apparently unworn. New shirt, new underclothes, new shoes. A complete and natty outfit even to the dark-red tie. On the bureau, there was an innocent display of lace mat, brushes, and comb. Inside a drawer, at its back, lay a wallet packed with French francs and German marks. “Okay,” said Renwick as he replaced it exactly and switched off the light.

  They climbed the steep flight of wooden steps and reached the upper hall, lit by a lamp on a rickety table that stood almost at the head of the stairs. Hall? More like a corridor stretching the breadth of the house with a window at either end. Four doors here; and three of them half open, leading into unused rooms. The fourth was locked. With the key in place, Renwick saw in astonishment. But then, they hadn’t expected any intruders and by habit had locked the door from the outside. Not that they had anything to fear from the inside: their prisoner couldn’t have made even the feeblest attempt to escape. Renwick and Claudel paused at the threshold to the brightly lit room, stared at her in horror.

  She was naked, bound with rope to a high-backed wooden chair, her body scored with vicious red slashes, one wrist broken, her legs covered with congealed blood. Her head fell sideways, as if she had tried in her last conscious moment to avoid the glare of light from a powerful lamp aimed at her face. Her mouth was savagely bandaged with a broad swathe of adhesive tape that stretched from ear to ear. Red hair, its loose tendrils lank and matted, had been hacked off at the neck and lay scattered with shreds of clothing thrown onto the bare floor.

  Renwick thrust aside the lamp, began peeling the wide strip of plaster away from her cheeks and lips. Claudel had his knife out, was trying to judge where he could safely start cutting the rope that had bitten into her waist.

  She moaned, tried to open her eyes, could only see two figures bending over her, didn’t even hear Renwick’s voice saying, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.” He grimaced in sympathy as he pulled the last shred of plaster away from her skin. The moan became a strangled sound of abject fear. Renwick looked at the white face now fully revealed. “God in heaven,” he said. Quickly, he snapped his knife open, began freeing her arms. This must hurt like hell, he thought. The least touch is agony.

  “No, no more—no more.” She flinched away from the hands that were helping her. “No more—please. I’ll tell you.” Her eyes closed. “Zurich. Cathedral. Poste restante. Karen—Karen Cross.” The hoarse voice became a whimper that ended in a strangled sob. Suddenly, it ended. Her head drooped, fell motionless.

  “Dead?” asked Claudel.

  Renwick felt her pulse. “Barely alive.”

  The ropes were cut. They carried her over to a cot, laid her on the grey blanket which had covered her on the journey here.

  Claudel looked at Renwick’s tight face. “You know her?”

  “Lorna Upwood.”

  “Lorna?” Claudel stared at her. He drew a long breath. “And how do we get her out of here? I’m afraid to touch her.”

  Renwick nodded and took out Marchand’s transmitter. “Five-mile radius, he said. I think I’d better find a way onto that balcony.” This is one report that I want to go out loud and clear. “We can leave her here. You nip downstairs, Pierre, and find that two-way radio they talked about. Put the lights out of action, too.” He locked the door behind them, pocketed the key, and hurried to the hall’s French window as Claudel raced downstairs.

  Renwick’s exit onto the balcony was speed combined with destruction. He forced the window so angrily that a pane smashed, he slashed the opaque blind with his knife, he shouldered the shutters apart after a heavy kick at their lock. And now, his back close to the stucco wall, a wooden railing in front of him, he faced the view of the road as it wound its way down into town. He pressed the signal on the transmitter. Immediately, Marchand’s voice said, “Identity.”

  “Victor.”

  “About time. Where are you?”

  “Inside.”

  “So that’s where you went. Who welcomed you?”

  “No one. The man left.”

  “We saw him.”

  Saw? I ought to have guessed, Renwick thought: Marchand and his boys followed us up here. “Then you saw us, too.”

  “Until you vanished,” Marchand admitted. “Anything interesting?”

  “Police business now. We’ll need a stretcher. Serious injuries.”

  “An ambulance?”

  “Later. Can’t alarm the neighbourhood.”

  “Give us five minutes.” Then Marchand’s voice changed to a warning whisper. “Man coming down the road—another following, carrying a box.”

  Beer and cigarettes? “Better hurry.”

  “They’ll be ahead of us.” Marchand was worried.

  Bring flashlights,” Renwick said and switched off communication. He stepped through the torn blind, found the hall now in darkness, and signalled Claudel with a whistle.

  “Finished here,” Claudel called as he left the ground floor.

  “Fourteen steps,” Renwick said softly as Claudel’s flashlight pointed its beam on the stairs to bring him up at a run. “We’ve got company. Stefan and friend.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Marchand did. He’s out there somewhere—near enough.”

  “And the troops?”

  “With him, I bet.” Renwick raised a warning hand as the back door opened. Claudel switched off his flashlight. Footsteps entered the kitchen, stopped. Renwick glanced at the broad stream of moonbeams seeping through the hole he had slashed in the blind. He gestured to the head of the stairs and its wooden railing. Claudel nodded, took cover behind the balustrade. Renwick reached the window, leaned out through the torn blind to close the shutters. One of them balked. It would be easy enough to yank it forcefully if he could risk any noise. He altered his grip, pulled firmly. The shutter almost creaked. He stopped.

  Downstairs, the voices sounded angry and baffled. One was American—Barney? The other was Stefan, his words more limited as he struggled with English. “Door unlocked! Magda, where are you? Magda!” He shouted upstairs, “Magda—you there?”

  “Open the door, let’s have some light in here,” Barney said. Someone stumbled and dropped a heavy load. “Where’s that goddamned switch? Got it!”

  “She is not in her room. Outside, perhaps. I look.”

  “It doesn’t work. A fuse? Where’s your flashlight?”

  “Two of them. Near radio. Beside stove.”

  Silence, while Barney searched and Stefan had his look outside. It was brief.

  Too brief, thought Renwick, trying to persuade the shutter to swing inward. The blind hampered his movements, and he couldn’t tear it fully apart without sending a warning down to the kitchen. Every sound seemed to travel in this tight little house. He tried another grip. Careful, he told himself, careful.

  Barney swore steadily. “Won’t work. Batteries are dead in both of them.”

  “We signal the house.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, goddammit. I get nothing— nothing! The radio’s useless. You telephone while I search this floor.”

  Renwick’s silent battle with the shutter ended. He swung it steadily toward him. It tilted as he was about to close it—one hinge must have slipped when he had shouldered it open— and showed a gap, small but definite, a finger-wide streak of moonlight, bright against the hall’s darkness. He tried to straighten it, force it even. And its good hinge, now bearing the shutter’s weight, creaked loudly.

  Instantly, footsteps hurried to the bottom of the stairs and stopped. From the kitchen, Stefan called, “Telephone out! Kaput.”

  Silence from Barney.

  He’s listening, thought Renwick and didn’t even risk crossing the wooden floor to reach Claudel. Quickly, he drew himself to the side of the window. The table was near enough, a black shadow among shadows, flimsy protection but the only cover within reach. He stretched out his a
rm, ventured two careful steps, touched its corner. He felt the lamp tremble, steadied its base before it could topple. Then he crouched low at the side of the table, putting it between himself and the staircase.

  Barney had started to climb the stairs, slowly, cautiously, trying to muffle the tread of his heavy shoes. Renwick counted the steps. One, two... He withdrew his hand from the lamp, tracing its cord to avoid tangling his heel and found that it ended at an outlet on the wall behind him. He eased the socket free. Then he took out his automatic. He was still counting. Eleven, twelve—and there Barney came to an abrupt halt.

  There was no movement, no sound from Claudel or Renwick.

  A minute passed. Barney relaxed. “Just the shutter. Lost its catch,” he said over his shoulder, and took the last two steps in one stride. He flicked his lighter and held its flame high, his right hand grasping a revolver. He saw the slashed blind. “Someone was here!” he yelled, whirled around, stared at the man rising from the side of the table, and instinctively pointed his revolver.

  Renwick hurled the lamp at his face, deflecting his aim. A bullet splintered the staircase wall behind Renwick as he fired, caught the man’s right shoulder to send him spinning. His pistol dropped on the floor.

  Barney regained his balance, threw his lighter at Renwick and missed, tried to pick up the revolver. One sharp blow from the side of Renwick’s hand on the nape of his neck and Barney went down, lay motionless.

  At the first shot, Stefan had bounded onto the landing with his pistol drawn and ready to aim at Renwick’s spine. Claudel lunged at Stefan’s legs with all his weight behind the tackle. It brought Stefan crashing down on his face. Claudel rose, stamped hard on the hand that still held the revolver, kept it pinned under his foot. He drew his automatic, pressed it into the back of Stefan’s head. “One move,” Claudel said softly, “just one move.”

  Suddenly, a blaze of lights. Powerful beams flooded into the dark hall from the staircase. Men’s heavy footsteps clattered up the steps. And Marchand, reaching the landing, was looking at the splintered wall above his head, then at the two men on the floor, then at Renwick and Claudel. “Explanations!” Marchand said, his voice tight with anger.