Who Guards a Prince?

by Reginald Hill

  McHarg followed in close formation.

  Here I am again, he thought ironically. Back in the same old nursemaid job. Only this time no one can say I’m neglecting my family to do it.

  Ahead of him Arthur burst through the doorway of the Lodge and halted instantly, so that McHarg almost ran into him.

  Over the Prince’s shoulder he saw a strange tableau. A naked girl, with her hair chopped so short that in places the scalp had been torn, was sobbing convulsively in the arms of a very old white-haired man. Kneeling beside them among the tangles of the girl’s shorn locks was a younger man, dark and saturnine of expression, with his arms encircling but not touching the other two. Behind them with a gun in his hand which was trained on the door was a third man who had “cop” written all over him.

  The Connollys, identified McHarg. And one of their minders. A strange way for Prince Arthur to meet the family at last.

  “Dree!” said Arthur, taking a step forward.

  The girl looked up.

  “Oh Art!” she cried. “Thank God.”

  She struggled to free herself from the old man’s arms. His bright birdlike eyes flickered from her face to Arthur’s. There was a wildness in them which McHarg did not like the look of.

  Then the girl was free and in Arthur’s arms. They looked as if they might be occupied together for some time. McHarg stepped by them into the room and instantly the cop-like man was by his side, gun ready.

  “Who are you?” he demanded harshly.

  “Who are you?” replied McHarg indifferently.

  “I look after things for Mr Connolly,” said the other. “Sam Nixon. And you?”

  “McHarg. I used to look after things for His Highness here. We haven’t done so well, either of us, have we?”

  Sam lowered his gun. “McHarg,” he said hesitantly as though trying out the name.

  “That’s right.”

  Something about the man’s reaction puzzled him. He said, “Does it mean something?”

  “There was a girl. In Boston,” said Sam slowly.

  “My daughter,” said McHarg. Then with a violent intensity which penetrated even to the embracing lovers he said, “What do you mean—was?”

  Only Old Pat Connolly was unaffected. All his ears heard and his eyes saw was the English voice and the English face of this English Prince who had brought his beloved granddaughter to this pain and humiliation. Under his hand was the gun which his great namesake had put into his hand all those years ago, not long before he, Young Pat Connolly then, had fled from the ruins of the Dublin Post Office waving his American passport before him like a talisman.

  For sixty years he had never told a soul of those moments of terror and total surrender, but the shame of that memory had been with him night and day ever since.

  Now here, now at last, there was a chance of expiation.

  The face before him became the single mocking face of all those evil Protestant bastards who had riven apart his beloved country, driven his grandfather and his family into exile, and foully murdered his own darling grandson in a Belfast bar. Destroy this face and he would be destroying everything he had hated for all these years.

  Trembling, he raised the gun.

  Sam was speaking, slowly, reluctantly.

  “She’s dead, Mr McHarg. There was an accident in the car. No, not an accident. It was meant for Miss Deirdre…”

  McHarg’s head reeled.

  “Dead?” he cried. “Dead!”

  And again he had been miles away, protecting others, looking after this Prince and his Irish whore, while his own beloved Flora…

  Old Pat Connolly cried, “Death to the persecutors of Ireland!”

  “No!” cried Conal, stepping forward.

  “No! No!” cried Deirdre as Arthur pushed her aside.

  And “No!” screamed McHarg in a long wavering cry of pain as the gun exploded.

  PART FIVE

  THE LONG DESCENT

  The Preceptor looked down on Boston from a great height, like Jesus on the exceeding high mountain, and did not need to be tempted.

  It went without saying that all this was desirable. And there was no doubt in the Preceptor’s mind that sooner or later it would all be obtained, along with the rest of the wealth and power of this great country.

  But now it seemed likely to be later rather than sooner. There should have been a signal from Ember the previous night and none had come.

  What had come was word from a contact in the coroner’s office that the man blown to pieces in McHarg’s room had not been McHarg. So, no signal; and McHarg alive.

  In the Preceptor’s mind there was no doubt that the two things were connected.

  And the fact that twenty-four hours later not all the careful probings of the New England craft-brothers had been able to pierce the security blanket thrown over events up in Maine confirmed beyond doubt that the Prince was safe. Protection was for the living, not the dead.

  The Preceptor took it all phlegmatically. It had been a fiasco. But business ventures had to be able to take losses as well as gains, and there was as yet no indication just how great or small this loss had been.

  The longer there failed to be an indication, the smaller the loss was likely to be, thought the Preceptor, not without amusement.

  Killing the McHarg girl instead of Deirdre Connolly had clearly been the plan’s ruination. On the other hand, paradoxically, the girl’s death could now mean salvation if, as seemed likely, McHarg had got his hands on Captain Jopley. For, if the Preceptor read McHarg aright, he would want to keep it purely personal now.

  The phone rang. Leaving the balcony on to which the huge penthouse window opened, the Preceptor moved back into the hotel room and picked up the receiver.

  “They’re here, both of them. They’re on their way up. Is that OK?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  Replacing the receiver, the Preceptor went to a chair in front of a large television set and sat down. By the chair on a low table was a VTR machine with a cassette in position. The Preceptor lit a cigarette, and studied for a moment the thin elegant fingers that held the burning match. Did they tremble slightly? No, not a jot, though it would have been no surprise if they had done, considering the dangerous moments ahead. Were there safer ways of dealing with the situation? Probably, but every way they had attempted since this chain of disasters began had proved ineffective. In the end, no matter what your elevation, there were some things you had to do yourself.

  Besides, the Preceptor was not above curiosity, and had always enjoyed the thrill of personal danger inherent in a long career of manipulating potentially violent and ruthless men.

  There was a tap on the door. It was a good start. A blinding, door-smashing fury might have proved impossible to deal with, but where reason controlled, reason was controllable.

  “Enter,” called the Preceptor.

  The door opened.

  Edward Jopley stood there. Not the dapper Captain Jopley familiar to the denizens of that privileged triangle bounded by the Palace, Whitehall and St James’s, but an unshaven, haggard man dressed in boots, cords, a tartan shirt and a fleece-lined hunting jacket.

  But the voice was the same that might have ushered a visiting dignitary into a royal drawing-room.

  “Someone to see you, Preceptor.”

  He stepped into the room and to the side. Behind him, McHarg.

  A big man, not tall but broad.

  A face which looked as if weariness had tried its worst and finally itself grown weary.

  Eyes blank, unblinking, like peepholes in a dungeon door behind which some unimaginable captive sits, calmly waiting to crash out.

  Grizzled hair; a brow corrugated like the tundra by endless winds driving across immortal ice; a strong, square jaw.

  And black-gloved hands which held a dull black revolver.

  It hardly seemed necessary. The man brought with him into the room an aura of menace like a force field. Indeed, thought the Preceptor, seekin
g reassurance in fantasy, he felt alien enough to have just arrived from beyond the stars, coldly defying the earth’s powers to resist.

  The fancy brought no comfort but a sudden touch of real fear.

  Then an emotion touched McHarg’s face. It was surprise, the Preceptor realized. Surprise that there was no one else in the room. It made McHarg mortal once more. And therefore malleable.

  The Preceptor let out a high, trilling laugh.

  “Mr McHarg. You look surprised. Really, Edward should have warned you.”

  “I kept my oath, Preceptor,” said Jopley, adding honestly, “But he didn’t really make serious enquiry.”

  McHarg spoke

  “I thought Partington. Or Hunsingore maybe. But no matter.”

  The Preceptor made a moue of disapproval. “Partington? Useful but limited. And Hunsingore? That poor old fool has suffered the worst of fates. He is what he seems to be, though he provides a nice ironic kind of cover for my travels. But I’m disappointed that it doesn’t matter to the great McHarg that I’m a woman!”

  And Rose le Queux laughed again, but this time the deep throaty laugh which put men at their ease and invited their complicity.

  McHarg said, “It didn’t matter to my daughter.” And raised the gun.

  “Now hang about!” protested the woman. “Not so hasty. Surely your male arrogance is curious to know how it arises that a mere woman controls this organization?”

  He laughed now, a single bark like a gun-shot, making her start slightly despite all her efforts at calmness.

  “Controls!” he mocked. “It’s a shambles. That’s why I’m here.”

  Rose le Queux relaxed slightly. Once get them into intercourse, of whatever kind, and the reins (metaphorically or physically) were in your hands.

  “No,” she said seriously. “You’re here because I knew you’d come and I cleared the way for you. I wanted to see you, to talk to you. But first there’s something I’d like you to see.”

  Her finger pressed the start-button on the VTR. At the faint click, McHarg’s finger tightened on the trigger, but relaxed again as a picture formed on the television screen.

  It showed the interior of a large hall, not unlike a gymnasium. At one end a narrow strip of matting about twenty yards long was laid between two hand-rails.

  A woman in a white towelling robe was setting off to walk along it. Her progress was painfully slow and for long periods she was clearly dragging her whole weight along by the strength of her arms alone.

  The camera zoomed in to close-up. It was Betty Wood-stock, her face contorted with effort and pain.

  Then, a few feet from the end of the walk, she suddenly drew herself upright, her face a blank of concentration, released her hand-holds, and took three unfaltering, unsupported steps forward, before collapsing over the rails once more. But this time her face was alight with the joy of achievement. It radiated almost tangibly from the screen.

  A young white-coated man moved towards her smiling too and obviously congratulating her, though the sound was turned down.

  Rose le Queux touched a button and the girl’s face was held in big close-up.

  “The man’s Dr Kitchingman,” she said approvingly. “He’s very good, I believe. That’s really remarkable progress in a couple of days, isn’t it? That was yesterday. I had the tape flown in overnight as soon as I realized I might be going to need it.”

  “Need it for what?” grated McHarg.

  “For you, Mr McHarg,” said le Queux. “As soon as we knew you were in Boston we had Betty traced. It wasn’t difficult. And it’s odd, this may amuse you, but the hospital she’s being treated at is a Masonic foundation! I mean, a genuine charitable institution, nothing to do with us directly, except of course that we have influence. Oh, believe that, Mr McHarg. It’s a complex course of treatment that Betty’s undergoing. Manipulation, psychology, exercise, drugs, and a bit of surgery too. The prognosis is good, but there are dangers. One slip and she could be back not just to what she was, but even further. Total paralysis. Messages by flickering the eyelids. Food through tubes. It doesn’t bear thinking of.”

  Her finger moved. For a moment Betty’s happy face loomed even larger. Then the picture faded.

  Rose le Queux studied McHarg’s face closely. She was long an expert in reading men’s expressions but this one gave nothing away or at least nothing that she wanted to see. There was another button on the table at the base of the VTR. Press this and help would move in fast. But not fast enough, she felt. And besides, her vanity was at stake. The basis of her power was that men were vulnerable. She could only hope that behind that iron mask her threats were working. She was relying on his superhuman powers of control. The second important discovery she had made about men was that their strengths were as useful to her as their weaknesses. In some you channelled passion, in others control. It was just a matter of getting it right. She felt an impulse to stand up, move around, remind him (and perhaps herself too) that she was a woman. But until she was sure she’d got it right, she wasn’t getting out of reach of that alarm button.

  “Edward,” she said seeking momentary diversion, “tell me, what’s happening up there?”

  “Chaos,” he said promptly. “Prince Arthur’s alive and well. The Connolly girl too. Once the local police realized just who was involved they had the wit to go right to the top. I expect the whole thing’s being controlled through the White House and the British Embassy by now.”

  “And who is not alive and well?” enquired le Queux.

  “Your two men,” said Jopley. “Mr McHarg saw to that. The Prince’s bodyguard is seriously wounded. Old Pat Connolly is in hospital with a stroke. And his son…”

  “Conal, you mean?”

  “That’s right. Conal,” said Jopley. “A bit of a disappointment there, Preceptor. Conal Connolly is dead. He took a bullet meant for the Prince. Fired by his own grandfather.”

  For a second the calm brown eyes screwed up in thought and the woman’s true age appeared. Then all went smooth and calm again. She’s worked it out, thought Jopley, admiring. Her men dead, no evidence. Conal Connolly dead, no profit. So forget it all. Only McHarg remains.

  “And Mr McHarg, I take it, when he heard about his daughter, decided to keep his mouth shut and with your help to deal with things personally?” she said.

  She felt quite pleased with herself. It was exactly as she had worked out. Except perhaps McHarg. He was way out, beyond anything she would have guessed at. She focused all her attention back on him.

  “Mr McHarg,” she said, “I’m deeply sorry, believe me. We have unwittingly caused each other a great deal of trouble but I admit that in the end you have been the greater sufferer.”

  Jopley regarded her admiringly. Years of work wasted, the glittering prize of control of the White House snatched from her grasp, and here she was, earnestly, sincerely, assuring McHarg that his loss was the greater!

  “Your daughter’s involvement with the Connollys was a desperately unhappy and unforecastable coincidence. But do remember, it was the Connollys themselves who got her mixed up in this, not us.”

  McHarg’s expression did not change but after a few moments he moved, walking in a small arc to a table stocked with decanters and glasses. The muzzle of his gun held as fast to Rose le Queux’s breast as a compass needle to magnetic north, but the woman felt her tension ease by another notch.

  “Us? Who’s us?” said McHarg, unstopping a decanter with his left hand and pouring himself a finger of Scotch.

  “Our organization,” she said. “Or rather, federation. It’s grown pretty large, you see. A loose union of near-independent entities, bonded by common interests and old loyalties. Rather like the Commonwealth used to be.”

  “With you as the Great White Mother?” gibed McHarg.

  She smiled, relaxed another notch. This was going well.

  “I was a whore, Mr McHarg,” she said calmly. “A good one too. But intelligent enough to recognize it as a limited career. I
worked in England and America. In fact I was a bit of a pioneer in being one of the first to work the transatlantic jets. Better than the motorways where I started, I can tell you!”

  “So, a jet-bag,” said McHarg. “So?”

  “I started making a bit on the side by doing jobs for interested parties. Sometimes it was straightforward blackmail, setting up a naughty tableau, then in bursts the photographer. Sometimes it was Mata Hari stuff, wheedling a bit of information out of a man, or going through his pockets. In the end this became more profitable than the screwing and when I began to establish my own little houses here and there on both sides of the Atlantic, I set them up as much as information agencies as knocking-shops. It wasn’t easy at first, there was a lot of bother, a lot of mistakes. In the end I began to get tired of just being a middle-man, so to speak, and I looked for ways of using this intelligence-collection service for myself. I found plenty of businessmen, captains of industry and politicians who were interested. I knew them because they’d sought to buy information from me. Or some I knew because they were my other clients and I could recognize, and of course encourage, their readiness to join us.”

  “You mean, you blackmailed the poor sods,” corrected McHarg.

  “Some, of course,” agreed le Queux. “But before you jump too quickly to their defense, Mr McHarg, you should be one of the first to recognize that most men given a choice of being blackmailed or bribed will usually opt for making a profit. Well, to cut a long story short, once things got moving, they really moved. Secrecy was of the essence, of course. The secret world of women is a sexual one, that’s where their power lies. I had wide control of that. To find an equivalent male secret world didn’t seem possible until one of our executives who was a thirty-two-degree Mason said, why not Freemasonry? Once suggested, it was obvious. An internationally recognized secret society ready made for us. Even the suspicions and opposition it aroused worked to our advantage. They had gone on so long that no one really took much notice of them any more. The best place to hide a poisoned needle, Mr McHarg, is not in a haystack but in a sewing-box. You’d have to prick yourself with each in turn to find out the deadly one.”