by John Gardner
As the two pedallos began the sweeping turn Boysie squeezed the trigger three times. At the first shot, Zizi’s pedalling became erratic and the craft dipped. He saw the tiny plunging spray in the water to the right of Chiliman’s pedallo. He did not see where the second and third shots went. They did not do any damage. He was trying to pedal and aim for another burst, realising that the angles were getting very dangerous, the point of aim becoming more and more in line with the beach, when the crack and thump of Gest’s pistol made him duck.
Gest was swivelled round in the pedallo, obviously intent on emptying his weapon. But only three shots came. The first had passed harmlessly overhead, the other two were more accurate. There was a ripping, metallic clanging noise, low down on the front of the pedallo.
“Keep going,” encouraged Boysie, for Zizi’s strokes were getting less and less effective.
“I am out of breathing,” she panted back. “Will zey kill us?”
“Not a chance,” Boysie made himself laugh. “They’ve run out of caps.”
“Caps?”
“English-type joke,” he gasped, hoping he was right.
They were certainly putting every ounce of strength into their race for the beach, shouting and gesticulating - pointing back towards Boysie and Zizi - to the people on the beach.
“They’re putting us in it,” Boysie puffed.
“Een it?”
“In the merde, sweetie. They’re dropping us in the old horse feathers; they’re telling the people on the beach that we’re the baddies. They’ll go berserk when we hit the Mingles.” He looked across at her, “And you in your ... well,” he grinned, “you look jolly pretty.”
“You ‘ave seen me like this before, Boyzee,” panting.
“I know, must be my age.” Then, before he had time to swallow the words he was saying, “Zizi, love, I know it’s old fashioned, but if we get out of this, will you marry me?”
They stopped pedalling, Zizi looking at him, face blank except for the contusion and cut lips, her mouth hanging open.
“You are joking?”
“No, I’m not bloody joking. It’s time I settled down.”
Zizi laughed, “Boyzee, you are so shellfish?”
“Real crabby.”
“You mean eet? You mean will I make the nuptuals and we, what you say, we fabriquons, we manufacture, zee babies?”
“The full moment. If we get out of it. Yow ...” The pedallo was lurching violently and there were ominous glugging noises coming from the nearside float. “Jesus, we’re sinking.”
“Oh, Boyzee, what can I do?”
“You can’t swim?”
“I can swim, but my ... what I am wearing, zey will be seen through ...”
The last two bullets must have ripped through the float which was filling with water, keeling the pedallo hard over. Ahead, Boysie saw Gest and Chiliman, sloshing through the surf, still shouting and pointing back. Some of the people on the beach were running as well. Scared of the mad rapists, Boysie thought. Boysie Oakes and Zizi Portobello Inc. Zizi and Boysie Oakes? He smiled, knowing that it was one of those ear to ear smiles which lit up his eyes.
“We’re going to get wet,” he chuckled. “Sink or swim together?”
“Oh, Boyzee, zis iz so sudden. We ‘ave already, well, we ‘aven’t been innocents. You must know zee screwing has for me been, well, a sort of ‘obby.”
The pedallo was really keeling over badly now, pushing them together.
“You can’t ride ‘obby ‘orses for ever. I’m in the same boat. Anyway, it isn’t just that, it’s time you settled down as well.”
The pedallo settled down, beginning its final moments.
“Dive, dive, dive,” muttered Boysie, for a second allowing his fantasies full rein-Commander Boysie von Oakes, Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Captain of U408, the Basset hound of the Atlantic. The sea claimed his trousers and they scrambled out together, struggling shorewards. From the beach came an ominous sound, the hee-hawing noise of police arriving in large quantities.
“Should have gone down with me ship,” spluttered Boysie.
Zizi took a mouthful of water on board, lifted her head and shouted to him, “Yes. Yes, Boyzee. Yes, I will. It is romantic, no?”
XVIII - CADENCE
A progression of chords giving the effect of closing a sentence in music
When they scrambled onto the beach at last there were four gendarmes waiting for them, one holding back a knot of rubbernecks who were muttering, “Rhubarbe-rhubarbe-rhubarbe.”
One of the gendarmes had his pistol out and was pointing it at them. As Boysie helped Zizi up out of the surf, a couple of lads in the crowd made nudge-nudge-wink-wink noises and one of the coppers came over and wrapped his cape around her.
The gendarme with the pistol made agitated French sounds which, in turn, made Boysie angry.
“Look,” he exploded, “I know you’re a flick, but you’ve been conned, you should have nabbed the other two. I’m tired, I’ve been shot at, screwed up, and I’ve saved the princess here from a fate worse than rape. If you want to know what it’s all about, you’ll have to get hold of Couperose, he’s at the bleeding Negresco in Nice, and take your filthy paws off me, I’m a British Intelligence officer.” He reflected for a moment on the last statement. It was pretty ludicrous.
“Pardon?” grunted the French law.
“You heard,” snapped Boysie, and stalked off up the beach with Zizi on his arm chattering away, explaining matters nineteen to the dozen. “Can’t think why the blighters don’t learn a proper language like English,” he chuntered.
Needless to say, there was no sign of Chiliman or Gest.
The gendarmes took them off to the small police station at Roquebrune where several telephone calls were made, and somebody brought a skirt and blouse for Zizi.
Eventually they were shown into a small drab office which housed a melancholy Inspector who spoke moderate English.
“Your superior appears to be disenchanted with you, Monsieur Oakes.”
Somewhere along his family tree the Inspector had acquired ancestors not unrelated to the bloodhound, the heavy folds of skin around his mouth and cheeks giving him a perpetually sorrowful look.
“Ah,” said Boysie, clutching at Zizi’s hand.
“In fact,” continued the Inspector, “he asked me if there was any chance of us bringing charges against you which would ensure a life sentence in the Bastille.”
“I’m not surprised.”
The Inspector tried to smile through the fleshy folds. “You are to await his arrival here. He asked me to say that he will be descending upon you like the four apocalyptic horsemen.”
Boysie nodded. He had known since their first meeting that he would never really see eye to eye with William Edith. Couperose and Edith, he thought, would be better off combing the area for Gest and Chiliman.
***
Gest looked at Caesar Chiliman and thought that here was a man not long for this world. The events at the Villa Veronique had wrought havoc, and their undignified escape had undoubtedly brought the fat slug near to a stroke.
Chiliman lay on the bed while Gest sat near the telephone. Since they had booked into the small pension on the outskirts of Nice, he had made one telephone call but had failed to raise the man who was contracted to hit Oakes.
Gest was surprised at his own sense of calm, for he knew that this was probably the end of the nightmare. For years, as he was trying to climb the ladder of success, he had mingled with the ruthless and cold-blooded elements of the criminal world, for they were the people who controlled the clubs and dives in which he could display the modest talent he knew was his.
That, he supposed, was why he had been such an easy mark for Castervermentes and Chiliman. Castervermentes had his own contacts, but with Gest they had constructed a modest little empire. After all, Castervermentes arranged the bookings and Gest’s position as an entertainer afforded good cover enabling them to flit from city to city, setting u
p the contact work of death well in advance.
Chiliman had said many times that, once they completed this series of immolations, they would have a reputation in the international criminal market which could set them up for life: a kind of worldwide murder incorporated divorced from organised political or criminal groups, a fact which would make their services extremely attractive to many people.
A gangster wished some rival out of the way, or a political faction required some public figure dead, then all Castervermentes had to do was book Gest into a club in the right geographical location and the set-up could be easily organised.
But Gest was sick of it. He wished Chiliman would die, there and then, on the bed of this cheap hotel room.
The telephone buzzed and it was the man in Nice. Gest spoke to him for a few moments and then passed the instrument over to the wheezing Chiliman.
Chiliman listened for a short time and then asked, “You think it can be done then? ... Good ... Good.” He paused, listening to the voice at the other end of the line. Then, “Yes, I think it best if we go out that way, it will be fast and safer, they will not expect us at the airport. Good ... We will see you then.”
He replaced the telephone and smiled wearily at Gest. 177
“He assures me that it will be done and we will then go as planned.”
“Into Italy?” asked Gest.
“If you are still capable of flying.”
“I’m capable, but what do we do after that?”
“You leave it to me,” Chiliman took a deep breath.
“I am far from finished, James. You underestimate me.”
***
“You sociopathic corybanatic loon, Oakes. Mostyn warned me about you. Many times he warned me, but I did not think that even you would sink to such dangerous, disruptive and cretinous depths.”
William Edith appeared to be out of sorts.
“You were wrong, you know,” said Boysie, maintaining bland indifference to the verbal assault.
“Wrong, by great Kama Sutra, how wrong, Oakes?”
“Tonight would’ve been too late for a start. The birds would have flown, and Zizi would have been faded.”
“They’ve flown anyway.”
“Two of them, but they’ll turn up. They weren’t alert and waiting for us at dawn, like you said they would be.”
“That’s beside the point, you moron. I was setting up an operation. You had to go and do it all by yourself, leaving a trail of carnage that’s going to take a lot of explaining.”
“You think we wouldn’t have left a trail of carnage anyway.”
“We? That’s it. We, not you, Oakes. What in hell do you think you are, a knight-errant?”
“Something like that. Zizi and I are going to be married.”
“God help me,” William Edith’s knuckles were white as he clenched his fists in rage. “Well, you’ll be the subject of a hundred enquiries before you’re finished. Married? Yes, you’ll be married all right, lad, married to a work party on the Moor. Shackled to a ball.”
“Durance vile,” Boysie said calmly. William Edith might well be a nasty little man, but his bark would be worse than his bite.
“Your honeymoon,” continued Edith, “will be spent at Her Majesty’s expense, and when she’s finished with you, I should think the authorities of this country will want you. They’ll reopen Devil’s Island for you. Seven star treatment.”
Zizi listened, fascinated and not a little blanched. There was much coming and going among both Couperose’s men and those whom Edith had summoned from London. Telephones rang and the suite at the Negresco took on the atmosphere of an operations room.
Boysie and Zizi were left alone for much of the time, after Edith had completed his verbal lashing, but the little man returned to the attack around four-thirty.
“Get your gear then,” he said in his usual soft tones which had now acquired an overlay of military authority. “There are people in London who require your presence.”
“People?” Boysie smiled, “What kind of people?”
“People in Whitehall. People who feel that you should never be allowed out on your own again. Important people.”
“People from Political Intelligence?” Boysie hazarded.
Edith gave a superior smirk, “And others. They’ve sent a lovely little Royal Air Force jet for us. It’s sitting down at the airport with the crew at the ready.”
Boysie’s stomach whipped into a frenzy. He had not expected to be reaching for the skies that quickly.
“Can Zizi come?”
“Mlle. Portobello is requested to come. She can refuse, but if she does, some of Couperose’s nasties will almost certainly bring her.”
“I weesh to come,” Zizi stood up straight, her eyes misting like Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver, jaw set as she had seen them do in a hundred French Resistance movies. “Nothing would keep me from Boyzee’s side now. ‘Ee needs me, only ...”
“Don’t overdo it,” Boysie hissed. “We will both come with you under protest,” he looked Edith straight in his little gimlet eyes. “I have served my country well, and I have nothing to fear.”
“Cut the crap, Oakes, and get yourself ready, there’s a car waiting outside.”
They drove out to the airport, Boysie, Edith and Zizi crammed into the back seat of a Merc, one of Couperose’s men driving and an Edith heavy acting as bodyguard.
A few moments before the Merc arrived at Nice Airport, an expected VIP passenger was taken through the lounge reserved for important travellers. His clearance had been arranged earlier in the afternoon and formalities were cut to the minimum. He was an elderly, sick industrialist called Grotte, crippled and confined, for most of the time, to a wheelchair. On this occasion his personal pilot, a tall slim young man with a drooping moustache and thick dark glasses, pushed Grotte through the lounge.
Grotte was short, fat and slug-like. His aircraft, a little PA-11 Cub Special, was drawn up on the apron to the right of the main terminal, near to the line of World War One aircraft which were already warming up their engines prior to their second air circus display of the day.
Near the aircraft stood a mechanic in white overalls. He was looking neither at Grotte nor the ancient biplanes. His eyes constantly swept the area leading from the main buildings to a Royal Air Force VC10 which was obviously being held in readiness for some departing top brass.
As Gest pushed the wheel-chair up to the Cub, the mechanic nodded, “Take your time, gents,” he said. “They haven’t arrived yet.”
“Get in, get started up and get clearance,” Chiliman moved irritatedly in the wheelchair. “I want us out as quickly as possible. It’s only a short hop over the frontier, but the quicker we do it the better.”
“You had no trouble getting through, then?” queried the mechanic.
“I never have trouble getting through,” Chiliman was lifting his bulk out of the wheel-chair, Gest going through the motions of helping him. “I haven’t used the aircraft here for nearly six months, but they never forget me. The police are watching the commercial exits, now get moving.”
“Ah,” said the mechanic, “here they come, I think. Best be ready, Mr. Gest. I’ll be back in a tick.”
Plenty of police were ready to greet them inside the terminal building. Zizi held Boysie’s hand tightly as the courtesies were exchanged, Edith looking sour in a pale blue lightweight suit.
There were posters everywhere advertising the air circus and Boysie perused one as Edith spoke with one of Couperose’s men and an airport official. From the French he deciphered that the circus gave treats of great aeronautic nostalgia, including a dog fight with Baron von Himbeere and a demonstration with live ammunition fired into the water from a genuine relic RE 8.
“You ready, Oakes? They’ve sent a VC10.” Edith all officious.
“Couldn’t we hang about and see the air show?”
“You’ll get all the air shows you want, lad. They’re waiting to get us off so that they can begin the wre
tched air carnival. They work to a tight schedule here and apparently they’ve got a private light aircraft they have to get off as well.”
Boysie shrugged and followed the others through the checkpoints, indulging in a couple of fantasies as they were saluted by French police officers.
As they emerged on the departure side of the terminal, Boysie’s ears were filled with the roar of engines from the string and fabric aircraft lined up to the right, the three Nieuport 17s, the Fokker and the RE 8, all chugging and trembling away in discordant cacophony.
The VC10 stood lowering on the taxi track with its hatch open, the ramp out and a little WRAF stewardess waiting patiently.
“Come on, Oakes,” snapped Edith, striding briskly towards the aircraft.
“We ‘ad better go, Boyzee,” Zizi tugged.
Boysie tore his eyes away and took two steps forward. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a white figure coming round from behind the tail of the RE 8, the nearest aircraft. Something made him look back. The man was wearing overalls and when he saw Boysie had spotted him he raised an arm.
“Hey,” Boysie muttered to Zizi, “Hey, it’s Charlie Griffin.”
“Sharlie,” squeaked Zizi, and taking no notice of Edith they both turned towards their old murderous colleague.
“Where the bloody hell did you get to?” Boysie was only a few paces away from him now.
“Sorry, I haven’t got time to explain now, Mr. Oakes. Really I’m sorry, but I have to take my work where I can find it and they do pay well. It’s a pity really.”
“What’re you on about? ...” Boysie began.
“It’s like a sort of parting shot, Mr. Oakes.”
Then Boysie saw Griffin’s gun hand come up. The sun, low across the Alps, glinted off the blue barrel of a wicked little automatic, and he could have sworn there were tears in Griffin’s eyes.
Zizi screamed and there was a shout from Edith, now twenty yards away towards the RAF aircraft, the whole almost drowned by the backdrop of ancient engines.