Anne’s breath exploded in an urgent whisper as Douglas stripped the tape from her mouth. “Douglas! Zoltan will kill you if he finds you here! Get out!”
Douglas laughed shortly. “That’s a strange request. What’s he going to do to you if I leave you here?”
The girl said nothing.
Douglas knelt beside her and examined the ropes. They were thin, and an expert had tied the knots. There was blood on the girl’s wrists and ankles where the rope had cut into the flesh. He searched through the cubicle but could find nothing sharp to cut the ropes so he went to work on the knots with his fingers.
“Who are you?” Douglas asked quietly.
“I’m a British agent,” Anne said after a pause.
Douglas smiled wryly. “That’s your game?”
“That’s my game.
“Well, it certainly isn’t very ladylike.”
Anne smiled. “Don’t talk like a male chauvinist pig, Douglas.”
“Chauvinist, hell. None of my opponents has ever tried to tie me up.
“It adds a different dimension,” Anne said dryly.
“You like to play word games, too,” Douglas said seriously. “The Four Knights Game you referred to: that’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right?”
Anne winced but did not cry out as Douglas pulled the ropes free from her wrists. Her hands and feet were swollen and inflamed. “Death, war, pestilence and famine,” she said through clenched teeth. “Zoltan deals in death: drugs, guns, adulterated medicine. If the price is right, he’ll smuggle anything in or out of any country in the world.”
“I’ve seen the guns. Where are they going?”
“Northern Ireland. Special delivery to the terrorists. My job was to notify my superiors when and where the drop was to be made. I had a portable transmitter, but they found it.”
“I don’t suppose you can explain to me how I got involved in all this.”
“Somehow, Zoltan found out about my cover and mission, but he didn’t dare move against me until he could be sure I was working alone. My playing in the exhibition aroused his suspicions. He became even more suspicious when he saw I was beating you, and that you wanted my score sheet. He thought you might be a contact, and the score sheet might contain some sort of code. That’s why Hawkins—”
“Hawkins. He’s the one who’s allergic to soap?”
Anne nodded. “You might say Hawkins is the executive director of the seamier side of Zoltan’s business enterprises. In any case, they realized they’d made a mistake when they examined the score sheet. They tried to cover up, but by then you’d already talked to me. They knew I’d make the connection, and that’s when they moved in.”
Douglas finished removing the ropes. Anne eased her legs over the side of the couch and tried to stand. The blood drained from her face.
“Can you walk?”
“Just give me a minute to get the circulation back.”
She bent over and started to massage the muscles in her legs. “I acted toward you the way I did because I didn’t want you involved,” Anne said quietly, without looking at Douglas. “I must say, I’m glad you’re so persistent. It must be that Grandmaster egomania.”
The odor hit Douglas’ nostrils a split second before he heard the words.
“You should have minded your own business, sonny.”
The voice and smell belonged to the man with the yellow eyes, the one Anne had called Hawkins. Douglas spun and crouched. Hawkins was standing in the doorway, his legs braced. His lips were drawn taut as a bowstring in a strange, cruel smile. The pistol in his hand was aimed at Douglas’ head.
“Checkmate, sonny,” Hawkins said, and pulled the trigger.
However Douglas was already moving, warned by his sensitivity to other people’s moods. He knew that Hawkins intended summarily to execute him and that he had little to lose by trying to fight back. He ducked low and drove for the man’s legs.
Douglas’ speed saved him. The sudden movement caught Hawkins by surprise, throwing off his aim. The bullet smashed into Douglas’ wrist, shattering the bone. Numbed by the effects of a massive surge of adrenaline, Douglas barely felt the pain as he hurled himself through the air and hit Hawkins at the knees. Douglas hit the floor hard. Hawkins crumpled over the top of him.
“Run, Anne!” Douglas heard himself shouting. “Get out of here! There’s a hatch cover around the corner!”
“Douglas—!”
“Run!”
He was vaguely aware of a lithe body hurtling through the air over his head, then the sound of footsteps turning the corner. A few seconds later there was the sound of a steel hatch cover clanging shut.
He was not dead yet. Douglas interpreted that as meaning that Hawkins had lost control of his gun. The yellow-eyed man’s breath was coming in short gasps, and he was moaning with pain.
Douglas started to wiggle out from beneath the other man’s body. It was then that the pain hit him, exploding in his wrist and coursing through his body like bolts of electricity. He cried out and clutched at his wrist. The fingers of his right hand were immediately enveloped in a warm, sticky fluid.
Hawkins rolled off of him. Douglas lifted his head and almost vomited with terror as he saw the gun lying on the floor a few feet away. There was no way he could get to it before Hawkins.
Hawkins took a step toward the gun, and then screamed in pain, clutching his right knee as he slumped to the floor. He then began crawling across the floor toward the gun.
Douglas pushed himself to his feet with his good right arm. His head swam with pain, and for a moment he was afraid he would pass out. Then it cleared enough for him to see that Hawkins had the gun. Douglas wheeled and ran out through the door at the same time as a loud explosion thundered in his ears and a bullet smashed into the wood paneling beside his head.
Douglas sprinted around the corner, let go of his wrist and pulled himself up the ladder to the right. He managed to turn the wheel gear, then, bracing his legs on the rungs of the ladder, he pushed against the hatch cover with his shoulder. The steel cover was jammed.
He started to climb down, intending to try the other cover. He froze when he saw Hawkins suddenly emerge from around the corner. The man was staggering, clutching his ruined knee with one hand. His eyes were clouded with pain and hate.
For the second time Douglas pulled himself up the ladder and pushed against the hatch cover with his shoulder. His head was filled with a sound like crashing surf—the sound of terror.
Hawkins leaned against the wall, lifted his gun and fired, but the pressure on his shattered knee ruined his aim. The bullet bit into the metal inches from Douglas’ left side, and then whined off down the corridor.
The hatch cover suddenly burst open. Douglas scrambled up through the opening as a second bullet whined through the air beneath him. He slammed the hatch cover shut, then lay on his back, gasping for air, drinking in the cold, wet sea breeze.
He would have given anything to be able to lie there, not moving, and wait for them to come and get him. There seemed no sense in resisting; Anne and he had not really gotten away, but had merely escaped into a larger pen. They were still trapped on a ship at sea.
The thought of the girl brought him to his feet. He was not ready to die yet, and he would not be a Grandmaster if he had not learned to play out some end games that were apparently lost. He looked around him and immediately saw that he had made a tactical error—he had come out the wrong hatch. He was on a narrow walkway, blocked off from the passenger section by a steel bulwark.
Hawkins’ voice, fogged by pain and rage, came out of the darkness above him. “You should have taken the trouble to learn the layout of the ship, sonny. You came up the hard way—I took the freight elevator.” There was a pause filled with hoarse, heavy breathing, then, “You’re going to have a lot of company in a few minutes, sonny. But I’m going to take care of you personally.”
Douglas pressed flat against the bulkhead. To his left, separated from him by
twenty yards of moonlit walkway, were dark, undefined shapes in the open storage area at the stern of the ship. Twenty yards.
“Where’s the girl?” Douglas asked.
“We’ll find her,” Hawkins said. The voice seemed closer, almost directly above Douglas.
Douglas tensed, clutching his injured wrist to his side. “You can’t afford to do a lot of shooting, Hawkins. It’ll wake the passengers.”
The answer was a soft, spitting sound, like the cough of a cat. The wood on the walkway to Douglas’ left splintered.
“End of the line, sonny”.
Douglas pushed off the bulkhead and dashed toward the black shapes at the stem. Bullets whined in the air like angry steel bees. Finally he dove through the air, landed heavily on an oil drum and rolled off on the other side. His wrist felt as if it was bathed in molten metal, and he bit off the scream that formed at the back of his throat.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the pain subsided. Douglas lifted his head slightly and looked around him. He was on the edge of a forest of oil drums that had been loaded on pallets and lashed onto the deck. He lowered his head and crawled backward, deeper into the tangle of steel drums.
Somewhere in the darkness in front of him a door opened and closed. Then he heard the curious, shuffling footsteps of a man dragging one foot behind him. The drums could explode from the impact of a bullet, Douglas realized. Hawkins knew that too. The yellow-eyed man would be very careful, wait for a sure shot at close range.
Douglas turned as far as he could without making noise and desperately searched for something with which to defend himself. His knee brushed painfully against something—a chain. Douglas’ mouth went dry. He reached down and caressed the thick, rusted links with his fingers.
The chain was heavy, perhaps too heavy for him to use in his weakened condition. Still, it was the only weapon he had. One end was anchored firmly beneath a wooden pallet, probably having become lodged, and then abandoned, during the course of loading. He estimated the loose end to be about eight feet long.
Douglas peered over the top of a barrel. Hawkins was about fifteen feet away, moving carefully, the gunmetal extension of his hand glinting in the moonlight. Douglas sank back down to the deck. It was only a matter of time before Hawkins or one of the other men moving out in the dark found him, and the longer he waited the weaker he would be. He would be executed, shot like a helpless, wounded animal. His left arm had begun to smolder with a white heat. He could wait no longer if he hoped to take Hawkins with him.
Douglas kicked at the nearest barrel. The drum produced a dull, thudding sound. The shuffling footsteps stopped, then started again, coming directly toward him: twelve paces, ten paces.
“Where the hell are you, you stinking—”
Douglas gripped the chain in the center with his right hand and sprang to his feet, shifting his weight and pulling on the chain with all his strength. The steel links clanged against the drums, skipped free and described a wide, whistling arc. The end of the chain caught Hawkins in the center of the forehead. There was a sound like the popping of a knuckle and the yellow-eyed man fell to his knees, and then crumpled onto the deck.
Douglas leaped from behind his barricade, intending to search for Hawkins’ gun. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two crewmen, guns drawn, converging on his position. He ducked down, frantically groping in the dark for the gun.
“Douglas!”
Douglas glanced up at the sound of Anne’s voice. He could see the girl standing at the railing on the upper deck, silhouetted by the moonlight. She was frantically waving her arms and could not see the man coming up behind her.
“Anne!” Douglas yelled. “Behind you!”
He didn’t see what happened next. He ducked down behind a barrel as a bullet ricocheted off steel. He heard Anne call out his name again; he looked up in time to see her body hurtling down. The sound of her body hitting the water floated up to him through the darkness.
Douglas reacted instinctively, although he probably would have done the same thing if he’d had time to think about it—he would be no worse off in the water than he was on the ship. Bending low, using the barrels as a shield, Douglas raced for the side of the ship, and then leaped over the rail, aiming for the area where he had seen Anne fall.
His own fall seemed interminable, and when it finally ended he wished it hadn’t. The water came up to meet him like a slab of concrete and once more pain shot through his wrist, blinding him, tearing the breath from his lungs. The icy cold of the water kept him conscious, but his strength was gone; the water was closing over his head and his lungs burned. In a moment, he knew, he would end it all, open his mouth and suck in the water.
Someone was yanking at his hair, pulling him up. Douglas kicked the last few inches to the surface, drinking in great drafts of air. Anne was supporting him in the water. “Hey,” Douglas sputtered at last, “I was supposed to rescue you.”
Anne smiled. “I didn’t want you to rescue me, I just wanted you to follow me.”
Douglas shook his head. “I can’t swim. My wrist is broken.”
“Can you float?”
Douglas slowly lay on his back in the water, resting his left wrist on his chest. “Uh, I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but I’m not sure this is a solution. It’s cold out here.”
Anne glanced toward the east. The sun was just breaking over the horizon. “If you can hold out for an hour or so, we’ll be eating breakfast on a British destroyer.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“By being unladylike toward a. very surprised radio operator. That’s why I had to leave you down there with Hawkins. Duty and all that. Besides, I thought you’d be able to handle him.”
“Thanks a lot. What about Zoltan?”
“Well, I suspect he’s going to have to take a big loss on this particular shipment. That ship will be a lot lighter by the time it pulls into Glasgow. By the way, did I thank you for saving my life?”
“I don’t think you had time. Did I thank you for saving mine?”
“We can properly thank each other later.”
Douglas smiled. “Are you any good at blindfold chess?”
“Pawn to king four.”
Douglas thought for a moment, and then said, “Pawn to queen bishop four.”
THE CLUB OF VENICE
John Parve watched the rat with mild interest, trying to decide whether it was real, or merely one more imaginary terror leached out of his subconscious by the alcohol in his system. The animal was nimbly stepping its way toward a hillock of garbage floating in the gutter next to Parve’s head.
The rat paused and sniffed, then, sensing the presence of fresher meat, veered and headed toward Parve. The rat was the size of a terrier to begin with, and from Parve’s angle of perspective on the sidewalk it looked big as a horse. Parve thought he should move, and couldn’t. He blinked his eyes a few times, but the animal ignored the slight movement.
The rat sniffed at Parve’s face, then bit deep into the soft flesh of his cheek. Blood, warm and salty, flowed down across Parve’s lips. Parve still couldn’t move, but he could feel.
Parve laughed soundlessly. The thought of being gnawed to death by a rat amused him. There were worse ways to die; he’d seen most of them.
Something metallic glittered out of the corner of Parve’s eye. The rat saw it too and slid its teeth out of Parve’s cheek. The silver tip of a cane flashed in an arc that ended in the rat’s belly with a dull, hollow sound, like somebody beating a mattress. The rat squealed and rolled over into the gutter. It came up wet and mad, braced on its hind legs, its teeth bared. It was looking at something above Parve’s head. There was a soft sound, like a man spitting out a wad of gum. The bullet smashed into the rat’s head, splattering its brains among the rest of the offal in the gutter. The animal’s body skittered down the sidewalk, out of Parve’s field of vision.
Now Parve heard a strange set of footsteps, like those of a man with three legs. The thi
rd leg was the cane that came to rest on a spot not far from Parve’s nose. Two highly polished, black leather shoes flanked the tip of the cane. Conservative, banker’s shoes, Parve thought; there were all types of animals down on the Bowery, and he was about to be rolled by one of the more bizarre types.
The tip of the cane came up and poked him on the shoulder. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but the action caused something to stir inside Parve’s brain; he decided he wasn’t about to be poked around and rolled by some kinky dandy who might just decide to leave a bullet in his brain as soon as he was finished.
Suddenly Parve found his feet under him and he was lunging toward a dark shape, his rigid thumbs describing two deadly arcs aimed at the man’s kidneys.
Then the shape wasn’t there anymore. Something hard crashed down behind his right ear and Parve crumpled back to the sidewalk.
He woke naked between perfumed sheets. His body felt clean and there was a bandage on his face where the rat had bitten him.
The room was decorated in an odd combination of Victorian and Sanitarium, a white-walled hospital room with a Tiffany lamp and leather upholstered chairs. One of the chairs had a man in it. He was tall and wore tweeds. A silver-tipped cane rested in his lap, along with a black bowler hat. Parve again thought of a banker; only the man’s eyes didn’t fit the image.
Parve was an expert on eyes; for years they’d served as traffic signals for him: Caution, Stop, Go. Often his life had depended on noting the subtle shifting of gears and drawing of curtains that took place in the depths of men’s eyes.
This man had eyes that revealed nothing, and that was an accomplishment that required years of training and practice. The man’s hair was full and black, with streaks of silver that perfectly matched the tip of his cane. He had high cheekbones parenthesizing a narrow, aquiline nose.
The man spoke. “I see you are awake, John Parve.”
Strange Prey Page 12