Redcap

by Philip McCutchan

  “But,” Shaw pointed out, “her daddy’s not here, so far as I can see.”

  “Uh-huh . . . she’s English. That could be why, I suppose.”

  “Oh? How d’you tell she’s English?”

  Debonnair curled her lip in mock scorn. “My God, for a man in your job . . .” Then she smiled sweetly, patted her body. “Clothes, darling. She’s darned good to look at, but she hasn’t quite got Frenchiness. And there’s a general air of . . . well, dew-of-the-morning. Did you get that scent?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Why? It was—nice and fresh.”

  “That’s what I mean, dope! Not the sort of scent the girls who use this joint a lot care to dab on. Too much like Great-aunt Matilda’s withdrawing-room—if you see what I mean.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I do.” He ran a hand through his brown hair, rumpling it, crushed out a cigarette in a jade ashtray. He frowned. His lined, tanned face hardened suddenly. “Somebody’s got to do something, Deb—”

  “Well, maybe.” The anxious look deepened. “Still no reason why it has to be you who risks a stiletto in the back. You know these boys as well as I do, darling. And your boss told me to see you didn’t get into any mischief . . . he’s not going to like either of us very much if you get badly bent when you’re supposed to be on leave. I wasn’t in the Foreign Office for nothing, you know. I learned a thing or two before I left. Listening out, and getting into real trouble—they’re two very different things, my pet. You’re supposed to be inconspicuous. Besides, you’re precious to me too, as well as the Outfit.” Her hand slid under the table and found his. She looked into his eyes, tawny and compelling. “Remember? If you’re not careful, I’ll go completely mad and marry you. Then I’ll have a right to nag!”

  Suddenly he grinned. “You’re jealous. She’s a damn good-looker.”

  She gave a little gurgle of laughter. “My dear Esmonde, you’re as transparent as an indecent nightie! You aren’t after her for her looks—I don’t ever need to be jealous. That’s what frightens me . . . you nice, kind men get into more real trouble than the other sort ever thought of.” She squeezed his hand, looked demurely resigned, then smiled into his eyes again. She said, “I wouldn’t love you so much if you weren’t such a dope. And I suppose I’d really like to see those two smarmy boys have the skids put under them. Only —be careful, that’s all.”

  Shaw leaned across and kissed the tip of her nose lightly. Then he got up, grinned down at her, slipped some thousand-franc notes on to a plate. He said, “Settle up, Deb, there’s a good girl. Give me five minutes. Then meet me at the car.”

  He went outside.

  He saw the girl about fifty yards down the street, with the men. There seemed to be a bit of a struggle going on, and they were trying to force her along, probably towards a car farther down the parked line. A cat strolled by, its tail arched. A man’s urgent, pleading voice floated from a lighted window, and then a girl’s high-pitched protests which subsided into a throaty chuckle. An old woman walked slowly up the other side of the street, bent over a stick, minding her own business. In Paris no one bothered very much about this kind of thing. . . . Shaw’s long chin thrust forward and he ran ahead, caught up with the group.

  He asked the girl, “What’s the trouble? These men bothering you?”

  She gave a little choking cry and turned to him appealingly. She said, “Oh, yes . . . yes, they are. Please, can you make them go away?”

  Shaw thought: Debonnair’s right, she’s English, maybe a student on holiday and just seeing the sights. Silly little fool. He went into action then. He didn’t rush in, just put a hand on the shoulder of one of the men and spoke calmly and quietly. He said, “Look here. Be sensible. You heard what the lady said. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll just disappear.”

  The man stood there and tried to bluster it out. Shaw moved in then. He got a tight grip on the lapels of the Frenchman’s jacket, lifted him close, then gave a heave and let go. The man shot backwards into the roadway, picked himself up, and ran. Shaw turned just in time to see the second man coming for him, and as the tall, slender body came up he bent suddenly, took him by the legs. The man shot over Shaw’s doubled body and landed on his face with a crash.

  Shaw looked down at him, said briefly: “Your pal’s gone. You’d better do the same unless you want me to call a gendarme.”

  As the man scrambled up and disappeared rapidly into the shadows at the end of the street, Shaw had a nagging thought that a couple of apparently lustful Latins had been disposed of just a little too easily; he was, in fact, about to ask the girl one or two pertinent questions when he saw that she was crying; and that finished him. She was saying something about being taken home to a hostel, and he interrupted her.

  He said, “Of course I’ll take you home, my dear. Hop in the back.”

  “Thank you . . . so much.”

  She looked at him gratefully as he opened the rear door of the hired Renault. She got in and Shaw slammed the door after her. When Debonnair came along and got in the front with him he drove off fast over the greasy cobbles of the little street, past the lighted windows and the dark doorways and the vague shapes that flitted in and out of alleys. Following the girl’s directions, he turned to the right out of that narrow place and headed south-westward for the river.

  After he’d crossed the river and was making up in the general direction of the Gare Montparnasse he sensed a movement behind him and then he felt the hard, round, cold pressure of gunmetal in the back of his neck and he stiffened, hands jerking a little on the wheel from sheer surprise.

  The girl said, “Forget where—where I told you to go, Commander Shaw. Just—do what I say from now on.”

  Shaw heard Debonnair’s quickly indrawn breath beside him, saw her head turn in sudden alarm. He put out a hand, touched her thigh, murmured: “All right, I know you warned me . . . but it’s all right. Just hold on and keep out of it.”

  His body had slackened again now. That pretty voice had held a very scared quiver, had been uncertain of itself. The girl wasn’t used to this kind of thing, that was obvious. Shaw, after that initial bad moment, just laughed. Then he stopped the car, pulled in to the kerb. The girl gave a despairing sigh, as though everything was too much for her, and Shaw decided he could take a chance. He swivelled in his seat suddenly and grabbed for the gun. When he had it in his hands, he found that it wasn’t even loaded.

  He looked at her. “Well? Why the melodramatics—and how did you know who I was?”

  She said shakily, “I—I’m awfully sorry. It’s my father, you see.”

  There was a silence. Then Shaw prompted, “I don’t see at all, I’m afraid. Please go on. I’m most anxious to know, before I hand you over to a gendarme.”

  She was crying softly now. “Please, please don’t do that. My father wants to speak to you . . . urgently, very urgently. This was the only way the contact could be made safely. He gave me the gun in case you didn’t believe what I was going to tell you—but I couldn’t bear to think it—it might go off . . . so I unloaded it.”

  “That was all faked up, then, back in Fouquier’s? You knew my movements and the way I looked at things, and knew I’d fall for a line like that?”

  She said, “Yes, those men were helping Daddy.” Then she added in a low, hopeless voice: “I’ve made such a mess of everything. He’ll be so angry.”

  Shaw murmured, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Now, come on, young lady. Who is your father?”

  Then she said something that shook him. She said, almost haltingly and in a whisper, as though it was something that must never be said aloud in case some one should hear, “John Donovan.”

  “Donovan?” Shaw stiffened. “My dear girl, Donovan’s dead!” At once his thoughts flew back into the past. John Donovan had been one of the leading lights of M.I.5. . . . Donovan, that big, lovable bear of a man who’d been sent to Norway early in the war and had become so completely identified with the Norwegian underground that he’d become one
of the heroes of the Resistance . . . and then, as the end of the war came in sight, things had changed for Donovan; he’d been accused—framed, in Shaw’s opinion and that of many other Englishmen and Norwegians—of traitorous activities, of causing the deaths of loyal Norwegians. His Southern Irish connexions had counted against him, and he’d been sentenced to death by an Allied military court in Norway; but he had escaped, and gone back underground among good friends. Soon after that, news had come out that he’d been burned to death in a fire at an apartment house in Bergen. A big funeral had been held in spite of an official ban on it, and there had been fighting between the authorities and men of the former underground who still believed passionately in John Donovan’s loyalty. In those old days Donovan had been a very good friend and comrade of Shaw’s. But now Donovan was dead. Very dead.

  Shaw said tautly, “You’ll have to think up something better than that.”

  She leaned forward, pleading. “But it’s true! He’s not dead. You’ve got to listen.”

  Shaw switched on the inside light and turned right round in his seat. The girl’s face was a picture of misery, of frustration, of supplication. Debonnair gave her a shrewd sideways look, said softly: “She’s speaking the truth, I think, Esmonde.”

  “Just a minute, Deb.” Shaw studied the girl, noticed the wet handkerchief being twisted about in her fingers. When he looked closely like that . . . this was why he’d felt he had met her before, of course . . . she was a petite and very feminine version of John Donovan. Possibly he was just thinking himself into it now she’d told him, but it did seem to him suddenly that there was no doubt of the likeness at all, that she was indeed speaking the truth—up to that point at least. There was the same frankness in the eyes, the same openness in the face, the same quality of honesty and directness and resolution and the same Irish love of life. This girl was John Donovan’s daughter, right enough.

  He said quietly, “All right, my dear. You’d better explain.”

  She said, “He’s not dead. His friends spread that story of his death. It was the only way, you see. After that he changed his identity. He meant to stay underground—he was used to that sort of life anyway—and then, one day, he was going to show up the people who framed him. He never managed to do that, but. . . .” She hesitated, then went on earnestly, passionately: “He wasn’t a traitor, Commander Shaw. He wasn’t ever that.”

  “I know,” Shaw told her. “I never believed he was. And I’m delighted to hear he’s still alive. It’s the best news I’ve heard for a long time.”

  She asked eagerly, “You do believe me, then?”

  Slowly he nodded, rubbed his nose with his forefinger. “Yes, I do. I don’t think John Donovan’s daughter would tell that kind of a lie. . . .” He added, “I remember he’d had a girl born, the only child, back in England—two or three years before he was arrested. The name was . . . ?”

  “Judith.”

  “Judith it was. And your mother?”

  She said softly, “She died when I was born.”

  “All right, Judith, I knew that too—”

  “I lived with an aunt—she’s dead now—and Daddy sent for me to join him in Norway when I was older. Now I’m partly in England and partly with him.”

  “Uh-huh. . . . Now, why does Donovan want to see me?”

  “He’s got some information he wants to give you. It’s terribly important. It’s got to go very urgently to London.” The girl leaned forward, and Shaw felt her breath fanning his cheek, caught her fresh scent in his nostrils. A tendril of hair fell across her face; she pushed it back, gave her head an impatient little shake. “You’re the only man in the business left alive that he can talk to safely, the only one he can be sure won’t give him away to the authorities. He trusts you absolutely, you see.” She hesitated. “He did say I could tell you that he’s been approached by a man called Karstad. He says you’ll know that name.”

  Shaw gave a harsh, involuntary laugh, a laugh which had no hint of humour in it. He said, “Your father says I’ll know the name, does he!”

  “Yes,” she said urgently. “Why? Don’t you?”

  A long exhalation of breath came through his teeth. He said, “By God I do!” He twisted, turned away and looked un-seeingly through the windscreen. “I’ve only seen him once, years ago and very briefly. We didn’t meet and he didn’t see me at all . . . but I know of Karstad all right!” Shaw felt a cold tremor, felt that nagging stomach pain increasing to a sudden agonizing thrust, acidulous and gripping in his entrails. Karstad. What could that man want? Karstad, who really had been a traitor—a Norwegian, a double agent who had worked for the Germans in the war, who had caused the deaths of so many innocent people, a man who was known to be one of the coldest-blooded, slipperiest killers in the game —on any side. Shaw sat there for a moment in silence, frowning anxiously, plagued with doubts. Why should Karstad contact Donovan—why? Where Karstad turned up, there had always been trouble. Real trouble. It was his plain duty to follow this up.

  He made his decision quickly after that. He said, “Hold tight and tell me where to go.”

  He slipped in his gears and he drove fast to the girl’s directions. He drove out of Paris on the Autoroute du Sud through a light rain, drove south-eastward for some seventy kilometres.

  Some way beyond Fontainebleau the girl told him to turn off on to a secondary road. Along this road, just beyond a sharp bend, they came to the drive of a biggish house set well back from the roadside, in the heart of wooded country; and there the girl told Shaw to stop.

  And there they found John Donovan.

  John Donovan met them on the roadway at the foot of the wide drive, and the first sight of him made Shaw’s heart turn over with pity. Donovan had gone to nothing; his big frame had shrunk, his shoulders drooped so that his worn clothing looked like a sack. His face was thin and white, blood-drained. His neck sagged with folds of flesh. There was a dreadful nervous urgency in his manner, a pathetic eager anxiety which caught at Shaw’s heart. He hardly knew what to say, but Donovan didn’t waste any time in greetings. The two friends just gripped hands through the car’s window without speaking, for a brief moment. There was a distant car sound from back along the way they had come and then Donovan, who seemed to be looking from side to side all the while, spoke quickly.

  “Don’t get out, Esmonde. Now—first, there’s Judith. I want you to take her back with you to England—she knows that. See she’s safe. Will you do that? There’s no relatives left now, but I want her to be there, Esmonde.”

  Shaw nodded. There was clearly no time for a discussion. He said, “You don’t have to explain. Of course I will.”

  There was a sound of muffled weeping from the back of the car. Donovan appeared to take no notice, but Shaw could almost feel the man’s terrible restraint. Donovan went on, “Get back as fast as you can, tell Latymer—tell him personally—tell him Lubin’s left Russia—”

  “Lubin!” Shaw broke in. “Lubin . . . you mean the Russians’ top electronics expert, the chap who was working on their end of the MAPIACCIND agreement?”

  “Damn it all, Esmonde—there’s only one Lubin.” Donovan was shaking uncontrollably now. His hand came through the window, gripped Shaw’s arm. “There’s damn little time left, so just listen, Esmonde. You see, Lubin’s been gone quite a while, though that’s only just been found out. It’s a threat—a damn serious one—directly to Redcap—”

  “REDCAP!”

  “—and in general to the whole MAPIACCIND organization.” There was an odd staring quality about his eyes now, and the hand that was gripping Shaw’s shoulder tightened. Donovan said tensely, “You know the feeling between Russia and China today. Well, Lubin’s gone—”

  He didn’t get any farther than that.

  There was a jab of flame, and the harsh stutter of automatic fire came from the bushes. Donovan froze, seemed temporarily panic-stricken like a rabbit caught in a headlight’s glare. Bullets whistled past his head. Shaw yelled at him to
get into the Renault. Debonnair leaned back, shoved the rear door open as Shaw pressed the starter. Donovan took no notice, but moved stumblingly away from the car. Shaw’s Service revolver was out from its shoulder-holster now, and he fired into the blackness towards the stabs of flame; and as he did so, Donovan took a stream of bullets in his body, a vertically raking stream of lashing lead which bisected him neatly. He spun round, gasped as though in surprise, his emaciated frame shuddering and jerking and disintegrating before their horrified eyes. In the back, the girl screamed, high and shrill, was trying to fight her way out of the car when the second burst drove into Donovan’s twitching body and then spattered in a deadly arc towards the Renault. Debonnair had leaned right across the seat-back and had got hold of the girl’s shoulders, was using all her strength to force her backwards. Now she reached out and slammed the door shut. By this time Shaw had the car moving, and it was only just in time. Bullets pumped across, hammered into the bodywork, the sharp tang of gunsmoke billowed across on the slight night breeze which had blown the rain away. Shaw’s foot slammed down on the accelerator. His duty was to get to Latymer as fast as he could, and to do that he had to stay alive. It would be useless to try to shoot it out in this spot where the close-growing bushes gave cover to the men with the guns, while he was vulnerable in the open—and he had the women to consider. In any case there would be a pursuit—that car, the one he’d heard behind, had probably been the gunmen’s—and he might be able to fight under more favourable conditions.