11 Harrowhouse

by Gerald A. Browne

  He couldn’t turn on a light. Fortunately, he knew where Maren had put them. In her Vuitton satchel. He found it and removed the Mausers, one at a time, tucked them snugly into his belt. He dug into the satchel and his fingers identified the cellophane wrapping and shape of a pack of cigarettes. He quickly put it into his pocket and again felt in the satchel to find the box of extra cartridges, heavy, compact. What he didn’t realize was that the end flap of the box was partially open and, as he brought the box to him, several cartridges fell from it, landing sharply on the hard enameled floor. As soon as they hit, his instinct told him to hell with caution. He ran out through the double doors. Someone immediately shoved open the door from the hall and was after him.

  Chesser leaped over the balcony railing without thinking of the drop. He landed on the dry, packed ground with such force it felt as though he’d come down directly on two long blades, piercing all the way up to his knees.

  But there was no time for pain. He ran around the end of the hotel, through the scrubby brush and across the path, and kept on running until he estimated he could afford a glance back. He didn’t see them but was sure they were hunting for him. So, instead of taking the shortest route back to Maren and possibly leading them to her, he hurried in the opposite direction to the fortress. Then he circled back on the outer side of the island and was relieved when he came to the spruce grove, because his bare feet were badly bruised and cut. He hoped to God Maren’s impatience hadn’t made her return to the hotel. She couldn’t possibly still be way out on those rocks in the dark.

  He reached the point, sighted out, searching desperately for her. He couldn’t risk calling out. He didn’t see her out there where he’d left her.

  She was sitting safe and quite content on the top of the bunker, not more than ten feet from him. She let him know she was there by singing a fragment of a song they shared.

  He lives all alone

  in his great big house

  with his Jacobean chairs

  and his marble stairs,

  and he sleeps …

  He hushed her, and she climbed down quickly.

  He told her what had happened and his idea of trying for the first ferry in the morning. She thought what they’d better do was swim out to one of the yachts that usually anchored in the channel between Ste. Marguerite and its brother island St. Honorat. They’d noticed there were usually one or two vessels there, using the channel as a stopping place. And many more on nicer days, because owners would sail out from Cannes especially to stop there, swim, and have lunch aboard rather than in crowded Cannes. It was the thing to do.

  The channel was only about a quarter mile across. Maren and Chesser would have to swim a hundred fifty to two hundred yards at most. Easy. And it certainly wasn’t beyond Maren’s physical talents to persuade someone to take them aboard and give them passage back to Cannes. Then, at least, they’d have running room.

  Chesser agreed to it. The channel was just around the point. At dawn they’d make their way along the rocky shore, and if the tide was out it would be even less difficult.

  For the night they’d take shelter there in the above-ground bunker. They went in and sat on its concrete floor, against the deepest wall, facing the entrance. The bunker had three other openings. The largest was in the wall at their backs, above them, the opening through which the muzzle of the Nazi artillery gun had once extended. Now that space was completely overgrown by brambles, inaccessible. The left and right walls had rifle ports, horizontal slots approximately thirty-six inches by ten inches, too narrow for a man to squeeze through. So, for Toland or any of his men, the entrance was the only way in.

  For the moment, Chesser and Maren felt relatively safe. It was night. They could be anywhere on the island. Toland wouldn’t know where to look, probably wasn’t even aware of the bunker’s existence. But tomorrow—tomorrow would be a different matter entirely.

  Chesser placed his gun at hand on the floor. Maren held hers in her lap. Both off safety. One thought was turning over in Chesser’s mind. Finally it came out: “How the hell did they know where we were?”

  Nothing from Maren.

  “They couldn’t have figured it out.”

  Maren remained silent.

  “Someone must have told them.”

  “Yes,” she said, low.

  “But who?”

  After a while, she told him, “I called because we left London without even saying good-bye.”

  Chesser knew immediately she meant she’d called Mildred. He was suddenly too angry, so angry that at that moment he stopped loving Maren. She was stupid, careless. To hell with her. And that Mildred. He’d been right about her all along. No wonder she’d refused the certified check he’d offered her. She was holding out for a bigger pay-off. From The System. The fucking phony runt, thought Chesser bitterly. The small medium had done them in.

  “I didn’t do it purposely,” Maren said, her voice discernibly controlled to keep from breaking.

  Chesser began loving her again. He felt what she had to be feeling. Perhaps there is no pain as excruciating as when faith is shattered. He put his arm around her, drew her against him. His hand brushed her cheek and found it wet. He was glad it was dark so he couldn’t see her tears. But he felt them and hated the hurt they represented, hated Mildred more for that than anything.

  “I really didn’t do it for any other reason,” said Maren, meaning this time she hadn’t invited danger just for the excitement of it.

  “I don’t believe it was Mildred who told them,” lied Chesser.

  “You don’t?” hoped Maren.

  “No,” lied Chesser. “She had too much to lose, her power and all that.” He invented quickly. “I think it was Catherine at the hotel. She was on the phone a lot, wasn’t she? She probably just happened to mention to the wrong person that we were here. Her kind of friends are a network of gossip.”

  “Catherine?”

  “Sure,” said Chesser with exaggerated conviction. He let her think about it a while.

  It helped. Maren didn’t completely believe it, but instead of expressing her doubt she accepted its possibility and used it. It was better than nothing.

  Chesser remembered he’d brought the cigarettes. He lighted two. “My feet hurt,” he complained, trying to distract Maren’s thoughts.

  “Poor baby,” she soothed.

  He drew his legs up and she touched his feet tenderly. “You’re always losing your shoes,” she remarked.

  He recalled the last time. The Lady Bolding night. He changed the subject. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

  “Try not to think about it.”

  It was all the running he’d done. He was really thirsty and said so again.

  “Suck on something,” she advised. “That’s what they do on the desert when they’re lost. They put a pebble in their mouth for some reason.” Her fingers found one of the buttons on her dress. She tore it off and put it in his mouth.

  “Hell of a place to spend what might be our last night,” he said.

  “It won’t be our last.”

  “They’re killers, Toland and the others with him. They had the look.”

  “At least it’s better than dying in bed.”

  Chesser scoffed.

  “Really.” She was serious. “Too many people just lie there and let death happen. They just die out, when actually there are so many better ways. I think people should meet death, not let it come and get them.”

  It’s coming to get us, thought Chesser.

  “I never told you about my uncle, did I? My old Uncle Olan?”

  “No.”

  “They put him to bed and said he was going to die in a few days. Uncle Olan knew it was true, so, rather than just lie there, he got up, put on his best clothes, went to Stockholm, got half drunk, shoved his way into the National Assembly, cursed the government, was thrown in and out of jail, got more than half drunk, went to bed with three sixteen-year-old girls ensemble, ate everything most expensive at the
best restaurant and refused to pay because he didn’t have any money, robbed a bank of fifteen million kroner and was killed making his get-away in the direction of the most famous sauna bath-whorehouse in all Sweden.”

  Chesser had to laugh. “What a lie.”

  “It’s true,” insisted Maren. “Well, some of it.”

  “You probably never had an Uncle Olan.”

  “Yes I did. He used to tell me bedtime stories. When he wasn’t out trying to get killed.”

  “It would be ridiculous to die here, for this,” said Chesser.

  “It’s a good enough cause.”

  “The cause doesn’t bother me,” he told her, “as much as the effect.”

  “You’ll never learn,” sighed Maren.

  She slept some in the cave of Chesser’s arm. He didn’t once close his eyes, kept them almost constantly on the upright rectangle that was the entrance opening contrasted by the lighter outside. He had time to think, couldn’t stop it. Fragments, quick changes … women he had known, vague first names, nebulous bodies, intimacies experienced and forgotten, as forgotten as meals. Sylvia doing her dance costumed in only a sanitary belt. Followed by Meecham and Weaver and Watts and Lady Bolding and Massey. A big-as-life revue, building to the main attraction. His father, who started a remonstrating soliloquy, but Chesser beat him to the word, brought up the subject of mother, forcing father just to stand there on stage, with his mouth open. Chesser claimed she’d died from malignant lack of attention. He’d never seen his mother, that he could remember, not even a photograph. That was how much she had been eliminated. There must have been photographs, at least. He’d studied his birth certificate once and that inscription of her name officially linked with his caused him to imagine her more vividly. She must have been beautiful, too beautiful, and not really unfaithful, which was the eventual claim that replaced her death when he was old enough to be allowed to understand such things. He had never confronted father with the subject, but this time he brought mother into it and father couldn’t take the blame, did an abrupt exit threatening never to make another personal appearance, ever.

  The contrast in the rectangle began to increase. Chesser knew dawn was about to happen.

  Maren was sleeping so nicely against him that he put off waking her, to give her a few more minutes of peace. Now, in the predawn light, he noticed fondly that she had her legs drawn up to get as much as possible of herself in warm touch with him. Her hands were clasped together, fingers interlaced, as though she was wishing very hard. She stirred her cheek against his chest and resumed sleeping, but it was full dawn by then. He whispered her name twice and she opened her eyes. “Good morning,” she greeted softly.

  He doubted the first of those two words.

  She stood and stretched, arched her back, and extended her arms straight up. It looked a bit strange because she had her gun in her hand. “I don’t know how those clochards do it every night,” said Maren, referring to those homeless human bags of rags one sees sleeping on the sidewalks of Paris.

  Chesser had difficulty rising. He’d remained in one position so long that his hinging parts, especially his lower back and knees, felt crystallized. Painfully, he flexed them back into working condition.

  Meanwhile, Maren was checking her gun. She released its clip, examined it, saw the full gray noses of the cartridges it contained. She told Chesser he’d better do the same.

  He did. And then they were ready to go for the channel.

  Chesser went out first. He took three steps before his eyes caught a movement on the perimeter of the spruce grove, about two hundred feet away. A figure in black. It was the one with the Prussian face.

  Chesser retreated into the bunker, silently indicating the situation to Maren. They went to the rifle port on the right wall, looked out and saw there were now two figures in black. Prussian Face and the Gaunt One. The two men were standing on the edge of the grove, surveying the area. They couldn’t help but notice the bunker; its concrete structure obviously contrasted with everything around it.

  Prussian Face and Gaunt One each had a gun. They spoke quietly to one another, then proceeded warily toward the bunker, taking opposite, flanking approaches.

  Maren went to the rifle port on the other wall to take position there.

  Chesser saw Toland then, coming down the path to the left. And following Toland was the fourth man, a head taller than Toland and, from Chesser’s vantage, the two men created the illusion that Toland had two heads, one atop the other. When Toland stopped to call attention to the bunker, the fourth man came into full view.

  Chesser recognized the fourth man immediately, the huge man, Massey’s man. Hickey.

  Hickey and Toland? That meant … that meant Toland was also Massey’s man.…

  Suddenly Chesser understood, saw it all. Massey’s deceit, his treachery and manipulation. The preplanned highway robbery. The phoney film report from the private investigation, which probably never existed in the first place. The way Massey had set him up, duped and used him from the beginning. Chesser felt so much anger he thought he’d explode with it.

  At that precise moment a face presented itself on the other side of the rifle port, not more than twenty-four inches from Chesser, as though it were a close-up shoved into place by a slide projector. Prussian Face.

  Chesser squeezed and heard the silencer’s spitting compression. He saw the nine-mm. hunk of bullet enter Prussian Face just above his upper lip, smashing flesh and teeth roots and bone, tearing through the soft matter inside his skull, and, having spread itself without spending half its velocity, carry flesh and brain and bone with it as it made its larger exit.

  In that split second, Chesser noticed the gray blue eyes of Prussian Face petrified, like the incapable eyes of a store-window dummy. He saw Prussian Face’s head blown back six feet, the impact so great that it snapped up the rest of the body. Chesser believed Prussian Face had screamed, but not because he’d heard it.

  Chesser turned to Maren to see if she knew what he’d done. Just in time, as the Gaunt One jumped down from the thick roof of the bunker and appeared in the entrance opening. Again that same impression of merely a projected image within the linear confines of a rectangle. Chesser wasn’t ready for it.

  Gaunt One’s aim was right, but he hesitated for a fraction of a moment because of the darkness inside the bunker.

  Time enough for Maren to shoot him, as she had the dressmaker’s dummy in the London cellar, exactly where his heart was, blasting him back from the entrance way and into a tight net of brambles that held him partially upright, not looking as dead as he was.

  Now they were equal as before. Maren and Chesser. They both had killed. And now the odds were also even. Two against two.

  Hickey and Toland stood just beyond range, reappraising the situation. They’d expected some resistance, but not this much, not this violence, and the bunker was an unexpected obstacle. Massey’s orders had been explicit. By no means were they to kill both Chesser and Maren. If possible, both were to be taken alive. However, if things got rough, Massey had said, all he needed was one, preferably Maren. To reveal where the twenty million carats were hidden.

  Toland glanced at his watch. In another two hours the first public ferry would arrive and the island would be scattered with tourists. Toland studied the bunker a moment and decided, “We’ll gas them out.”

  Hickey read Toland’s lips.

  “You hold them in while I get it. I’ll be back in less than an hour.” Toland turned and hurried away.

  Hickey remained where he was, even more alert now that he was alone, his eyes ready for any movement.

  Observing from the bunker, Chesser thought Toland was going for reinforcements. He told Maren that.

  “Or a flamethrower,” was her sardonic opinion.

  “We could make a run for it.”

  “One of us might make it,” she estimated.

  Chesser was afraid he would be the one. He glanced at the entrance, had the urge to make the
dash alone, confront Hickey. Maren could go for the channel while he kept Hickey busy. He imagined Maren telling some future lover about the somebody named Chesser who’d gone to meet death rather than wait for it to come get him.

  A much less quixotic plan prevailed. Maren went to the rifle port in the left wall. She reached through, gripped the outer edge and made her body rigid. Chesser grasped her ankles and lifted so her entire length was on a horizontal plane with the narrow port. He pushed slowly, and, when she was partially through, she was able to help herself the rest of the way. She was just thin enough to clear the dimensions of the port and drop outside on the growth of brambles, which almost made her cry out.

  Chesser went to watch from the right port. He saw Hickey was still in the same place, his attention on the bunker’s entrance. He appeared gigantic to Chesser, larger than ever.

  Soon Chesser noticed a movement of white that was Maren deep in the spruce grove. She was running crouched, travelling swiftly, disregarding noise because Hickey couldn’t hear. But if Hickey happened to look even half way around he would see her.

  Afraid for her, Chesser had to restrain himself, and, finally, she reached the point that was his starting signal. He shoved his gun into his belt and walked outside, his arms straight up in obvious surrender.

  Hickey saw him at once, withdrew his gun from under his jacket.

  Chesser took ten steps, counting them aloud, then halted. Hickey, uncertain, waved him forward, but Chesser remained where he was, still out of range. “Move, you fucking dumb giant,” shouted Chesser.

  Hickey only motioned Chesser forward with his free hand, his other hand holding the gun ready, leveled.

  Chesser had planned to stay there, not get into range, make Hickey come to him. But Chesser dared ten more steps and kept his arms raised and that started Hickey walking slowly forward.

  Hickey seemed completely diverted now, as they had hoped. But then, with the instinct sharpened by his handicap, he suddenly turned and saw Maren, in the clear, no more than thirty feet to his left.