Touch The Devil

by Jack Higgins

  And then Jean-Paul leaned out of the wheel-house, his voice full of excitement. “We’ve got them!” he cried exultantly.

  Anne-Marie and Devlin hurried into the wheelhouse. Jean-Paul and Claude bent over the blue box on the chart table. Lines moved across the screen, there was a rhythmic pinging sound, and the red illuminated figures on the digital read-out altered with incredible rapidity and finally stopped.

  Jean-Paul made a quick calculation. “That’s it,” he said to old Marcel at the wheel. “They’re about a mile to the northeast. Steer two-four-two.” As they altered course, he said to Devlin, “When the regular beat of that signal becomes continuous and high-pitched, we’re there.”

  Anne-Marie held Devlin’s hand, and together they stood there watching the screen.

  Brosnan was cold, and his face and eyes were sore from the salt water. He was tired, completely at the end of his tether. When Savary’s light went out, he tugged on the line, but got no response and when he tried to haul the Frenchman in to him, realized he didn’t have the strength.

  A few moments later, the light on his own life jacket went out. So that was it then, and now that it had come it didn’t seem to matter. He floated, eyes closed, head back, and was lifted high on the crest of a wave. He opened his eyes and saw the lights of a ship to the right of him.

  It was enough, and as he went down into a trough he opened his mouth and yelled at the top of his lungs. Yet, in the roaring of the sea, he couldn’t even hear himself.

  He lifted on another wave, Savary trailing behind him. The ship was closer now, close enough for him to see that it was a trawler, her lines plain in her deck lights. He shouted and waved, all to no purpose, went down again, and then suddenly remembered Devlin’s parting present at the prison, the signaling ball.

  He felt for it in his right hand pocket, got it out, desperately clutching it in numb fingers, and tore at the plastic covering with his teeth. The phosphorescence dazzled him with its beauty, shining in the night like a glowworm, and he cupped it in his right palm and held it aloft.

  It was Big Claude who caught sight of the light to port and ran to the wheelhouse instantly. Marcel cut back the engines and brought the trawler around, curving in. Devlin and Anne-Marie ran to the port rail where Jean-Paul and Claude were throwing a boarding net over the side.

  “What do you think?” Devlin demanded.

  “It’s got to be them. Must be,” Jean-Paul said savagely.

  He took the spotlight Claude passed him, switched it on, and played it across the water.

  “Nothing!” Anne-Marie said. “Not a damn thing!”

  And then Brosnan rose high on the crest of a wave, arm raised, Savary trailing behind him.

  ELEVEN

  Brosnan coughed as the whisky caught at the back of his throat. He looked up at Devlin sitting on the edge of the bunk. “Bushmills?” he asked hoarsely.

  “What else? I brought the bottle specially. And now that you’re back in the land of the living, there’s someone to see you. I’ll see how Savary’s getting on.”

  He moved out of the way, and Anne-Marie sat down. She still wore the oilskin and pushed damp hair back from her forehead in an inimitable gesture.

  “Here we are again then,” Brosnan said.

  “So it would appear.” She reached over and touched his face briefly. “You’re still cold.”

  “Frozen to the bone. I’ll have nightmares about the Mill Race for the rest of my life. How’s Jacques?”

  “Dr. Cresson is working on him in the next cabin.”

  “You mean he’s still unconscious?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Brosnan sat up, pulling the blanket around him. “Show me.”

  She led the way to the next cabin. Jacques Savary lay on the bunk swathed in blankets, his face white and shrunken, eyes closed. Jean-Paul watched anxiously with Devlin while the doctor worked over his father.

  “He’s cold,” he said. “Too cold. At his age…” He filled a hypodermic and injected the contents into Savary’s right forearm. “The most powerful stimulant I dare use.” He turned to Jean-Paul. “The pulse is very weak. He needs hospitalization as soon as possible.”

  “Who the hell says so,” said Jacques Savary in a low voice.

  His eyes were open, he smiled weakly, and Jean-Paul seized his hand and dropped to one knee beside the bunk. “What were you trying to do, scare the hell out of me?”

  “Something like that.”

  Savary’s eyes sought Brosnan and found him. “We showed the bastards, eh?”

  “Definitely,” Brosnan said.

  Cresson said, “Everybody out. He needs sleep.”

  Savary grabbed Jean-Paul’s coat as he got up. “I’m not going back to that place, not ever. You understand?”

  “Sure, Papa.”

  “So now we’re out, the most important thing is dumping those bodies in the right place. Get on with that, and never mind about me. Lots of time to sleep later.”

  Brosnan went back into the other cabin, followed by Devlin and Anne-Marie. He sat on the bunk. “What happens now?”

  “The captain is going to land us at St. Denis about an hour from now. Jean-Paul has his own plans for his father. We three will move on to Anne-Marie’s farm in the hills above Nice.”

  “And Barry?”

  “Plenty of time for him when you’ve rested a few days. Now I suggest you lie down again and get a little shut-eye before we land.”

  “He’s right, Martin,” Anne-Marie said. “We’ll leave you for a while.”

  They went out, and Brosnan pulled the blanket around him, lay back, and closed his eyes; but there was no comfort there, simply a distorted pattern of images, waves breaking in the darkness, and his eyes were sore from the salt. But he was free, that was the amazing thing. Free again after four years in one of the grimmest prisons in Europe, and the strange thing was, it had no effect on him at all.

  He slept for a short while in the end, came awake suddenly, and realized that the trawler had virtually stopped. He lay there for a moment thinking about it, then got up and dressed in the clothes which had been provided—jeans, a heavy fisherman’s sweater, and a reefer.

  When he went out on deck it was still raining, but the sea was calmer as they rode in the lee of the shore. Anne-Marie stood at the rail watching while Devlin and Jean-Paul lowered one of the corpses over the side to Claude in a dinghy. The other lay on the deck on its back. The face was bound with a cloth to mask the mutilation, and it had been dressed in Brosnan’s prison uniform, reefer, and the two life jackets.

  “Your other self.” Devlin knelt down and pushed up the sleeve, baring the tattooed prison number.

  “You think of everything,” Brosnan said.

  “Jean-Paul, not me. I can see why that boy is such a successful crook.”

  They picked up the corpse between them and lowered it over the side to Claude and Jean-Paul, who had joined him. Brosnan said, “Roped together, don’t forget that. The authentic touch.”

  “I won’t.” Jean-Paul started the outboard and turned the boat toward the shore.

  The three of them leaned on the rail and watched it go. “And how does it feel, attending your own funeral?”

  “Like Lazarus, risen again,” Brosnan told him. “Washed clean.”

  “What for?” Anne-Marie said. “A reprise of the old life? Or a fresh start?”

  “After I’ve dealt with Frank Barry, perhaps.”

  She shook her head. “There’s the smell of death on you, Martin, do you know that? You’ll never change.”

  She turned from the rail and went below. Brosnan said, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Well, if you don’t know, son, I can’t tell you,” Liam Devlin said.

  There was considerable activity on the fish pier at St. Denis, as more than twenty trawlers unloaded their catch. Jacques Savary sat in the back of a black BMW limousine with Cresson. He looked much more his old self. He wore a cashmere sweater and an expensive
sports jacket. Jean-Paul leaned in to tuck a traveling rug around his father’s knees.

  Brosnan, Devlin, and Anne-Marie stood watching, and as Jean-Paul stepped back Brosnan leaned in the car and took Savary’s hand. “Maybe we can do it again some time?”

  Savary held his hand for a moment and then, in an excess of emotion, pulled Brosnan close and embraced him.

  Brosnan turned away, and Jean-Paul took his hand, his face serious in the yellow light of the lamp bracketed to the wail of the warehouse above their heads.

  “To repay what you have done is an impossibility, but just remember this. We of the Union Corse can accomplish most things.” He took out his wallet, extracted a card and passed it across. “My private numbers,” He smiled crookedly. “All four of them. If there is ever anything you need, and I do mean anything…”

  He embraced Brosnan, holding him for a moment, shook hands with Devlin and Anne-Marie, got into the BMW, and nodded to Claude who had the wheel. The big limousine moved away along the wharf.

  Brosnan watched it go, suddenly tired, at the end of things in some strange way. He turned to Devlin and Anne-Marie. “Now what?”

  Anne-Marie took his arm. “Come on, soldier, from the looks of you I’d say you need to sleep for about a week.”

  She took the wheel of the rented Citroën, Devlin beside her, leaving Brosnan on his own in the back. “How long?” he asked as she drove away.

  “This time in the morning, three hours if we’re lucky. Go to sleep.”

  He closed his eyes, leaning back against the seat. At first there was only the Mill Race, the waters passing over him, his head filled with the stink of it, and then, suddenly, darkness.

  It was just after six o’clock, dawn touching the horizon with light, as Pierre Gaudier left his cabin in the sand dunes a mile outside St. Denis. A packer on the day shift at the fish pier, he always started the day at first light, scavenging the beach before anyone else got there.

  The handcart he pushed in front of him sported old automobile tires which moved well over the wet sand, and he paused every so often to pick up driftwood. When his cart was almost full, he was at the end of the beach where the final kick of the Mill Race hammered in across jagged black rocks. He paused to light a cigarette before turning back, and then noticed a flash of orange in the rocks up ahead. He flicked his match away and walked forward.

  One of the bodies was draped across a rock, the other floated beside it in a pool, and the waves broke across both of them constantly. Gaudier crossed himself, then waded into the water, caught hold of the body in the pool and tried to pull it back to the beach. It was only then that he became aware of the line that held them together.

  He scrambled up to the body on the rocks and fumbled at the line to untie it and immediately saw two things. The legend, Department of Correction—Belle Isle, stamped on the life jacket and the prison number stenciled in white across the back of the coat.

  “My God,” Gaudier said, crossing himself again, and he tried to turn the corpse over.

  He saw the face then, or what was left of it, and staggered back in horror, losing his balance and falling into the pool beside the other body. He pushed it away from him with a hoarse cry, scrambled out of the water, and ran back along the beach to St. Denis.

  It was just after nine o’clock, and Pierre Lebel sat in the anteroom of the governor’s office at Belle Isle, totally crushed. What had happened was so unbelievable that he had been unable to take it in. His discovery of the empty cell on the upper tier at seven o’clock had coincided with the phone call from the chief of police in St. Denis to the governor.

  How it had happened, how Savary and Brosnan had managed to achieve the impossible, was not relative now. The only important thing was the consequences. For Lebel, they could only lead in one direction. Instant dismissal, twenty-five years of service down the drain, and no pension.

  The door opened and the governor beckoned to him. Lebel went in and stood at the desk while the governor lit a cigar and went to the window and peered out. What he said next was a total surprise.

  “To enter such a sea as was running last night—quite incredible.” He shook his head. “Magnificent idiots, that’s what they were, Lebel. Why would they do such a thing, risk everything?”

  Lebel amazed himself by saying, “To get off the rock, sir.”

  The governor was still looking out to sea. “Yes, well, we’d all like to do that, wouldn’t we?”

  There was a knock at the door, and the chief officer appeared. “The bodies have arrived from St. Denis, sir.”

  “Good,” said the governor. “We’ll take a look, shall we?”

  It was cold in the mortuary, bitterly cold, and the two bodies dripped seawater as they lay on the slabs, still wearing the clothes and life jackets. The governor pushed back the sleeve of first one corpse and then the other and examined the tattooed numbers. He lifted the sheets to peer at the faces and replaced them hurriedly.

  “So, that’s what the Mill Race and those rocks at St. Denis do to a man.” He turned to the chief officer. “Pity we can’t show photos to every convict in the place.”

  “Yes, sir.” The chief officer hesitated. “What happens now, sir?”

  “I’ve spoken to the Minister of Justice in Paris. The story will be released to the press. No reason not to. All it proves is what we’ve known all along. That nobody escapes from Belle Isle.”

  “And the bodies, sir?”

  “Disposed of in the usual way, exactly according to regulations, and today. I don’t want any nonsense with relatives trying to claim them, particularly that son of Savary’s. He’s as big a crook as his father was.” He turned to Lebel. “As for you, taking all the circumstances into consideration, I don’t think you were really to blame for any of this. On the other hand, I must do something, if only for the records, so I’ll fine you a month’s salary.”

  Lebel, overcome with joy, could hardly speak. “Thank you, sir,” he stammered.

  The governor went out, and the chief officer said, “You’re a lucky man, Pierre.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Lebel said fervently.

  “Just as I don’t have to remind you you’ve still got the funeral detail, so get on with it.”

  He went out, and Lebel turned and found old Jean, the mortuary orderly, standing between the two slabs. “Jacques Savary and Brosnan, eh?” He shook his head. “Who’d have thought it?”

  He leaned down and examined the number on the forearm of the body on his right, then turned to the other. “Strange,” he said.

  “What is?” .

  “Savary’s number. The seven is done the way the English do it.”

  Lebel put on his reading glasses, raised the arm and checked the number. The old man was right. The figure seven was plain, no line across the stem in the continental manner.

  The old man gazed at him searchingly. “Maybe the tattooist made a mistake?”

  Lebel put his glasses away and said quietly, “Bag them up, Jean, now. And this one, we do together. Okay?”

  The old man smiled and shuffled away to his post.

  They took them out through the main gate and pushed the handcart up the winding road to the funeral rock. Lebel got the necessary weights from the store, and they threaded them through the straps, taking one body each, not speaking.

  It was a fine day, no rain now, only the sea stretching to a gray horizon where the sun was trying to come through. They pushed the cart to the outer edge of the rock, tipped it, and slid both bodies off together. They plunged into the swirling waters below and disappeared instantly.

  Old Jean said, “The only way anyone gets off Belle Isle.”

  He turned and walked away, pushing the cart in front of him. Lebel said, “That’s right,” and then he added softly, “and good luck, you bastards, wherever you are.”

  Ferguson was working at his desk at Cavendish Square when the phone rang.

  Harry Fox said, “Bad news, sir, just over the wire fro
m Paris. Not had time to make the papers yet. Brosnan and Savary were drowned last night trying to escape from Belle Isle.”

  Ferguson put down his pen. “Are you sure about this, Harry?”

  “No doubt about it, sir. The bodies were found on the beach outside a place called St. Denis this morning.”

  “So that’s that,” Ferguson said.

  “Afraid so, sir. Any word from Devlin?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “I should think he’ll probably phone in any time now, sir, in view of what’s happened.”

  “Very probably. Carry on, Harry. I’ll see you later.”

  Ferguson replaced the receiver and sat there brooding for a moment, then got to his feet and stood at the window.

  “Damn you, Brosnan,” he whispered. “Why couldn’t you have waited?”

  Nikolai Belov’s plane had been delayed for fourteen hours in Berlin because of fog, and he didn’t arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport until noon. He drove straight to the Soviet embassy and was taking off his overcoat, when Irana Vronsky came in with a cup of coffee.

  She was a handsome, full-bodied woman of thirty-two, with calm eyes, black hair tied back with a velvet bow. The neat gray skirt, white silk blouse, dark stockings, and good shoes only accentuated her undeniable attractiveness.

  She had been Belov’s secretary for eight years, and he had seduced her within a month of her taking up the appointment. She was totally devoted to him and brushed aside his affairs with other women as being of no consequence. She was the one certainty in his life and was content.

  There was nothing that went on in the office that she was not fully conversant with, and he had already spoken to her on the telephone the previous night.

  “A bad flight, Colonel?” She always addressed him formally in the office.

  “I prefer to forget the entire experience. That airport really is appalling, but never mind that now. Has Barry been in touch again?”