The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  “Beziers, yes,” said Dark sharply. “What else did tell you?”

  “Oh, a whole passel of stuff,” said Carver. “How you get the girls and boys, how you train them, how you sell them and who buys them...”

  “What?” Dark’s composure slipped again, this time visibly.

  “Your client list, baby. The sickoes that come in to drink sherbet and buy little boys and girls off you customers, you know?” Carver’s accent was getting thicker as he changed languages into English and gauged the of his enemy’s rage.

  “That’s enough!” Sigmund Dark was on his feet. “When did you have this meeting with the police? When?”

  Carver looked for the first time directly at Amy.

  “Sorry, kid. You blew it,” he said quietly.

  Shocked eyes stared back at him.

  “You weren’t supposed to let me talk to anybody at all. Just bring me down here and stand me up against as many walls as you could on the way to let the boys have a shot.”

  Her jaw actually sagged as she stared at him.

  “You knew?”

  “Oh, come on, kid,” he said easily. “A guy has a go at the Sacré-Coeur, where you took us to set me up. There’s a blonde with a karate black belt waiting for me in the flat of a prostitute, which you set up. When I clearly identified myself in there, you tried to shoot me yourself, and when it looked like the blonde was going to talk, you shot her to shut her up. Then we’re having a little romantic adventure all of our own in the little lake you used to learn to scuba dive as a little girl. And a roving assassin with a rifle just happens by in time to blow my goddamn’ brains out when I’m bare-assed naked on the beach and well away from the artillery. Quel cute coincidence, kiddo! Even then, you get yourself such a lousy shot that I practically have to climb on the end of his rifle before I’m in any kind of danger – and then you’re shouting directions to the lamebrain, for chrissake!”

  She coloured angrily. “I shouted to warn you of him!”

  “Look out,” you shouted, “he’s right in front of you! Tell me what you’d have shouted if you’d been warning him of me! And when we do get here, within spitting distance of the castle, you’re trailing me in full sight round all the tourist bars in the district just in case there’s some local pick-pocket who hasn’t noticed we’ve arrived, yet. You’d have thought the only people who hadn’t seen us in the whole goddamn district had guide dogs and white sticks! But even then, I have to get you to drive me up to the castle before Father friggin’ Christmas here and his hired ape-men can find me. I was beginning to think I would have to hire a bloody band and carry a flag before they’d notice!”

  He drank down another flagon of Perrier water, spat and coughed in disgust.

  “Mind you, I’m hardly surprised. Any organisation run by a guy whose strongest drink is orange juice has to be kinda second rate. This stuff even tastes like monkey’s pee.”

  “How long have you known?” she whispered.

  “Since I first met you, kid. That first day. And you know why? Because Graeme Lovegod, who is one man who appreciates a good looking woman, told me I would be meeting Paris’ equivalent of Alison Sugrue. Alison Sugrue may be one helluva clever lady – but she looks like my old grandma. And my old grandma used to smoke a pipe and brew whisky that would make the dead rise up and sing in churches. Graeme Lovegod is a man who could not bear to give me your name without describing your ass. Did I tell you that you have one remarkable ass, lady? Yeah, but Lovegod didn’t tell me. So when I met you I knew you were not Amy Varzon. Who are you, by the way?”

  Sigmund Dark stirred at the head of the table.

  “It is a relief to find there is something you do not know about her,” he said drily, and Amy’s eyes died a little at the sound of his voice.

  “I had hoped better of you, Amy,” he said. “This was your big chance, and it would seem you did, as Carver eloquently says, blow it.”

  He turned to Carver again. “Her name really is Amy, though not, of course, Amy Varzon, as you guessed. I had not realised that Lovegod and the original Amy had met, though I suppose I should have allowed for it.”

  Carver watched him from eyes, which would have told Dark much had he cared to read them. But he was too concerned with his own thoughts to bother.

  “What I do not understand is why you allowed yourself to be lured here and trapped.”

  Carver grinned back at him.

  “I came here to find you and to find my little girl, and for that I had to get into the castle,” he said. “And here you are and here am I – inside the castle. Now, where’s Irene?”

  But Sigmund Dark had finished playing at host. He stood up from his place and shouted, once. Ducher and Brinkman were instantly inside the room, guns leveled. From the spiral stair from the Great Hall came Gehn and Lefeu. They were carrying ropes and grinning.

  “No,” said Dark. “Not now. After the sale tomorrow. We can give them a demonstration they will never forget. Take him down to the cells and lock him up. But do not” – his eyes were on Lefeu – “do not touch him now.”

  As he turned away his eyes swept across Amy.

  “She on the other hand needs a lesson. Teach her one tonight. But on your life, do not mark her permanently. She can go in the next sale. In the meantime I want all of you to set up the sale rooms.”

  Amy stared at his departing back.

  “But you promised!” she shouted. “You promised me freedom!”

  “Rewards are for the successful,” he said.

  *

  The gun was in Carver’s back again and he started up the stairs and across the courtyard to the door beside the tower. Ducher marched close behind him. Gehn off to one side and Lefeu brought up the rear. He was pushing Amy in front of him, his face alight with lust and cruelty. When they stopped by the head of the staircase, his hands were on her, quick as lizards, and he whispered something into her ear which made her turn her head away.

  Carver watched the byplay carefully, filing away the details in his head. As they locked him into the barred cell that fronted onto the exercise room, Lefeu pushed Amy into the next cell and pulled the door closed.

  “Later, I will come for you,” he said. “It will be a long night, but I promise you will not be bored.”

  Then he came to Carver’s cell and stared at him. Carver had the impression that lice were crawling on his skin, but it was not the first time he had experienced the feeling, and he knew how much of the domination of captor over victim is a psychological superiority.

  He met the man’s eyes and smiled a long, knowing smile.

  “Josef Lefeu,” he said. “I know you.”

  That brought a reaction. A look of surprise. Carver went to the back of the cell where a metal frame bed hung against the wall from chains. There was a thin mattress on it and a pair of blankets, folded. In the corner was a shelf with a bowl, a jug of water and a chemical toilet. The whole cell was made up as a cage in a corner, with two walls formed by solid rock and the remaining two – the front of the cage and the wall which divided it from Amy’s cell – made from steel bars.

  “Where you know me from?” asked Lefeu.

  “Beirut,” said Carver.

  “Beirut? I never been to Beirut,” said the former Legionnaire scornfully.

  “Yeah? Must have been some other cockroach, then,’ said Carver, his back still turned. There was a hissing intake of breath from the outside of the cage, and a smothered snigger which he took to be from either Gehn or Ducher.

  When he turned, the three of them were staring at him curiously.

  “Man,” said Bucher. “Are you mad that you court suffering so eagerly?”

  “Tomorrow,” said Carver, “we shall see. Will anything I say today make it less?”

  “No,” said Gehn. “It is true.”

  Lefeu was fiddling with the keys.

  “Can this monkey work equipment?” asked Carver with interest. “Is he allowed
keys and such complex mechanisms?”

  The two other guards grabbed their colleague as he flung himself at the cell, howling with rage.

  “He said the man was not to be touched. Not tonight,” said Ducher. “Contain your soul in patience, you ape. Tomorrow is time enough. Tonight, there is the woman.”

  They led him away, arguing, but Carver had seen what happened to employees who failed to please Sigmund Dark. Josef Lefeu’s arguments were not very convincing.

  He pulled down the cot and spread the blankets on it. Then he laid himself on his back and watched Amy.

  The girl was surprisingly calm. First, she made her own bed and straightened her clothes. Then she sat on the bed cross-legged and put her wrists on her knees. Her head went back and her eyes fluttered closed.

  “Amy!” said Carver, urgently. The last thing he wanted was a girl in a self-hypnotic trance. “Amy, come here!”

  After a second, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

  “What?”

  “Come here!”

  He stood against the bars and looked directly up. Above each cot in the ceiling was a small inequality in the ceiling. Overhead at the bars there was none. The microphones were intended to pick up the talk between two prisoners lying on their cots against the wall, a natural posture for normal prisoners.

  On the other hand, any prisoners held in here might easily have a working knowledge of the place. There must be some other surveillance device, somewhere.

  He stared round the exercise room. The second stage must be secret, and considering the advanced state of the art, probably involved hidden television cameras. There were a number of pieces of equipment which might easily hide such a device.

  “Come here!” he said again.

  She came to him, slowly.

  “When will they come for you?”

  “Around ten. Until then they will be working and eating.”

  “What will they do then?”

  She gave him a long, scornful look.

  “No, I mean will they take you away or stay here?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? Does it matter?”

  “If they take you away, will they bring you back in the morning?”

  “Probably not,” she shrugged. “But if he decides to make me watch them question you, they will bring me back. Why do you ask? You want to gloat, Carver?”

  “Where are the microphones?”

  “Over the beds. They can pick us up anywhere in the cell from there. They are hearing us now.”

  Carver stood by the bars looking down at his hands. After a moment, she followed his gaze and stared. Down by his belt, shielded by their bodies his hands were busily forming shapes and letters.

  “Are you afraid?” While his voice was making desultory conversation, his hands were talking eloquently.

  Keep talking! they said. Can you understand sign language for the deaf and dumb?

  “Afraid? For a little while they will play with me. It has happened before, and it hurts, but it will pass. I am a slave. What can I do?”

  I understand, said her hands. What do you want me to do?

  “Well, you must admit you brought it on yourself,” said Carver’s voice.

  Not let them take you out of the cage. Get them into it. Get one close to bars. Keep others busy!

  She raised her head and stared at him. Behind the dark eyes, hope began to glow.

  Yes.

  “Ah, you make me sick. Sniveling cow!”

  Rest now. Remember later!

  He flung away from the bars, and threw himself on the cot.

  “If I were you, baby, I’d get ready to be very, very friendly to those three guys. I’d be making them real welcome down here.”

  “Why? You want to watch? That the way you get your kicks, Carver?”

  She climbed on her own cot, showing an awful lot of thigh, and lay back angrily, staring at the ceiling.

  Carver checked his watch. The time was after six. They had four hours to wait.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In his office looking over Bram, Sigmund Dark sat back in his chair and gave a sigh of deep, deep sadness. Kiti removed the telephone he had been using for the past two hours and poured him a tumbler of Vichy water with ice cubes. Then she dropped to her knees beside his chair.

  “Kiti, my love,” he said, absently stroking her hair. She remained on her knees, head bent submissively. He could not see her face.

  “It has been a long time – and a good time, has it not?” he said. Under his hand, the head quivered a little as though she were repressing sobs.

  He smiled and reproved her gently. “Not a time for tears, little Kiti. Regrets, yes, but there was always a possibility that they would catch up with us. I have always had my plans for this time. Tomorrow, we have the last sale. It is too late to cancel it, now. Anyway, I see no reason to lose the money. A lot has been laid out. After tonight, the last people on earth who can identify us will be here, in the Château Bram.”

  He sighed again, a theatrical gesture from a theatrical man.

  “Tomorrow, we sell and pack and leave, my Kiti. I have another place waiting. I think you will like it, for it is hotter than here and closer to your home.”

  Again the head under his hand quivered, and he smiled fondly down at her. Faithful, loving Kiti, he thought. Could a man have done better than to manufacture for himself the perfect confidante? Eager to please, desperate to delight. Never a cross or a complaining word from her in the years he had owned her.

  He thought back over the past two hours. Dark had organised his supply lines on the principle of cells and cutouts. Each link in the chain that led to him and the Château Bram could be separated from the next by the removal of just one man or woman, and his telephone calls over the past two hours had activated his system for the removal of that one man or woman.

  In the next twelve hours, like exploding bolts, the cut-outs would activate. Instead of a chain linking Sigmund Dark and the Château Bram with London, Naples and Seville, there would remain only half a dozen cells, not one of which knew anything about the other five.

  There would also be a few unavoidable deaths, of course, among people who had served him well, and that was regrettable. His staff had been hard to recruit and arduous in the training.

  But he had always known that sooner or later a more than usually dogged and inquisitive policeman could turn up, too honest to bribe, too clever to kill. If Carver was telling the truth, it looked as though that man had now turned up.

  The advent of Carver had shaken Dark deeply. He had been sure that his cutout system would keep any potential tracker away from him, and his fail-safe in Amy would bring anyone too persistent within range of his organisation, which could stop him long before he reached the Château Bram. The idea that some wily tracker might use the system against him had never occurred to Dark.

  He would be sorry to leave the Château Bram and his penthouse in London. But there were other Châteaux and other apartments. He was fond of Rome, for instance, and there were lovely villas at Orbetello. A small gentilhommière he had long admired in Normandy popped into his mind and he smiled gladly at the memory. It lacked the medieval magnificence of Bram, but there were grounds and outbuildings and it stood, he remembered, in the warm loop of a river amid the trees.

  Too big to be a manor farm, too small to be a Château, it would suit his purpose admirably.

  There remained the people in Bram to be neutralised.

  The merchandise, of course, would be gone with their new masters tomorrow night. If tomorrow night were allowed to come. He considered instead the advisability of disposing of the lot tonight and being gone by tomorrow morning.

  Arriving would-be purchasers would be angry to find their visits had been in vain, it was true. He certainly needed the good will of his clientele to re-establish himself in the market.

  He was loath to lose the money that the slaves represented, too.
There were a dozen of them, and at 70,000 dollars each on average, they represented nearly a million. No man, however rich, he told himself, could afford to lose a cool million in cash.

  On the other hand, the slave market was hardly crowded with dealers, and his reputation for dealing in only the very best of merchandise was well established.

  It would be stupid to lose all for the sake of a million dollars. The risk was high. If Carver had been in continuous contact with the police they might even now be on their way to the Château.

  Was it likely that Carver had been in continuous contact with the police of two nations? Well, not unlikely, he thought.

  But the man’s reputation was as a tracker and finder, not as man of action. He would depend on the police to take action rather than himself.

  It seemed likely, then, that Carver would have arranged a fail-safe device of some kind, in case of precisely the current position.

  If such a device had been constructed, though, it must take into account Carver’s being out of contact for a period while he penetrated the castle’s defences. A reasonable period of time would be, surely, about twenty-four hours.

  Dared he risk another twenty-four hours on the chance that Carver’s fail-safe might not go off?

  A million in anybody’s language was a lot of money, he reasoned. And he would have to write off the Bram unit altogether. A total loss.

  He would risk it. But when the last satisfied customer left tomorrow, so would Sigmund Dark.

  He would keep Kiti, he decided. He recalled the awful gap left in his life when a much loved cat had died in his childhood, and shrank from experiencing it again.

  Yasmin must go with the castle, and so must Amy. He was fairly certain that she had formed some kind of attachment for Carver, and in any ease, she was now unreliable. He would never be able to turn his back and leave her to work by herself.

  So Yasmin and Amy must go. Lefeu, of course, he had already decided to replace. Ducher, Brinkman, Ghosni, Schwenke, Ledermann and Jenkins, the Englishman, were mere muscle, replaceable whenever he needed.