1966 - You Have Yourself a Deal

by James Hadley Chase

They had gone to a small hotel in the Rue Castellane. The man behind the desk had given her a key. There was nothing to pay.

  Wolfert had seen a slight signal pass between the Vietnamese girl and the clerk but he was too excited to care. This could, he thought, as he followed the small hips up the stairs, be one of his most exciting adventures, and so it turned out to be.

  Western women, he thought, as he walked out into the hot narrow street an hour later, exhausted, but satiated, knew nothing of the technique of love. Of course, they imagined they did. Some he had known were quite adept at pleasing a man, but when it came to an explosive fusion of bodies, the Eastern women were supreme.

  He had met her three more times, and each time they had gone to the same hotel, then he had decided to make a change. Wolfert prided himself on variety. He ceased to go to Chung Wu’s restaurant. He found a Japanese airhostess at Orly whose technique charmed him. Then there was a serious Indian girl student at the Sorbonne, studying classical French . . . perhaps not quite so interesting, but at least amusing. Then there was the Thai girl.

  Even the thought of her made Wolfert wince. Inflicting pain on women nauseated him. This was something he couldn’t understand. He had quickly got rid of her, but the experience still slightly shocked him.

  Until this moment, he had forgotten Pearl, and he was puzzled, but still confident in his charms to be unworried.

  “It is a long time since we have met,” he said, watching her slip off her wet mac. “But how did you know I lived here?”

  She moved with flowing grace to an armchair and sat on the edge of it. In her black cheongsam with the white silk pants showing, her black hair oiled with a lotus bud behind her ear, she made an entrancing picture.

  “I want to know where Erica Olsen is,” she said softly.

  Wolfert gaped at her. For a moment he didn’t think he had heard aright, then sudden alarm flowed through him.

  “What do you mean? I - I don’t understand.”

  “The woman in the American hospital. She has been moved,” Pearl said, her black almond-shaped eyes glittering at him. “You work for Dorey. My people must know where she is. You must tell me.”

  Wolfert heaved himself to his feet. His fat face was flushed.

  He pointed a shaking finger at the door.

  “Get out! I won’t have you here! Get out at once or I will call the police!”

  She stared at him for a long moment, her face expressionless, then she opened her handbag and took out five glossy photographs.

  “Please look at these. You may not wish your friends to have them. I could also send them to Mr. Dorey. Please look carefully at them.”

  Wolfert gulped. He snatched the prints from her hand, examined them, turned white and shuddered. What he had never realised before was how disgustingly fat he had become. His nakedness revolted him. The blocked out face of the naked woman with him, he knew would be Pearl.

  “I have no time to waste,” Pearl said. “I must know where this woman is. Where is she?”

  Dropping the prints on the floor with a shudder of disgust, Wolfert said, “I don’t know. I know she was at the American hospital. If they have moved her, then I don’t know.”

  “You must find out.”

  “How can I?” Wolfert’s white face was flabby with fear. “Dorey wouldn’t tell me. You can see that? Of course, he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Then you must help me to find out.” She took from her handbag a small, flat box. “You will use this. It is a limpet microphone. All you have to do is to fix it under Dorey’s desk. We will do the rest. If it isn’t in place by tomorrow morning at ten o’clock at the latest, then these pictures will be circulated. I have many copies. You may keep those to remind you how urgent this is.”

  She got up, slipped into her mac and quietly left the apartment.

  Wolfert, his fiat body cold, stood motionless, his eyes on the box she had left him.

  * * *

  At the junction of the AutoRoute leading to Ville d’Avray, Smernoff reduced speed. It was now raining hard again and there was very little traffic.

  Malik said, “All right. . . now.”

  Smernoff stopped the ambulance.

  “Get out, both of you,” Malik said, a snub-nosed automatic appearing in his hand. He waved the barrel first at Ginny and then at Girland.

  “Well, thanks for the ride,” Girland said and opened the double doors of the ambulance. He paused to regard Malik, “Sure you don’t want to do a deal? It would be money well spent.”

  “Get out!” Malik said angrily.

  Ginny had already scrambled out and was standing miserably in the rain. Shrugging, Girland joined her. Malik slammed the doors shut and the ambulance took off again. In a few seconds its red taillights had disappeared.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Ginny exclaimed, her young face indignant and rain-wet. “Do you call yourself a man?”

  “My mother thought so otherwise she wouldn’t have named me Mark,” Girland said lightly. “Damn this rain! Looks as if we are going to have a long walk back.”

  “But aren’t you going to do something? This woman is being kidnapped! You’ve got to do something!”

  “You suggest something,” Girland said in a bored voice. He grimaced as rain began to trickle inside his shirt collar. “I’m getting wet.”

  “Stop a car and follow them!”

  “Yes, that’s an idea.” Girland regarded her with a smile. “Do you think if we caught up with them we could do much? They have an automatic rifle and revolvers.”

  Ginny seemed as if she was going to hit him.

  “Then stop a car and tell the police!” she cried, stamping her foot on the sodden grass.

  “All right . . . all right. Let’s stop a car then.”

  Girland turned to stare down the long straight AutoRoute. He saw in the distance, approaching headlights. He began waving.

  The car roared past, sending a fine spray of rain and mud over him.

  “The trouble with the French is they don’t care to stop on a dark road,” he explained. “But let’s try again. Here comes quite a fast job.” He moved slightly so that he was well in the centre of the first lane. “If this guy kills me, I hope you will send flowers.”

  Headlights flashed on and Girland, ready to jump back to safety began to wave. Tyres screamed, the car slid into a skid, came out of it, then came to a stop a few metres beyond where Girland was standing.

  “Well, at least he’s stopped,” Girland said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  He ran towards the car which was now pulling off the road onto the grass verge.

  Ginny, her white coat plastered against her by the rain, ran after him.

  Jack Kerman leaned out of the car’s window and grinned at Girland.

  “I was expecting them to drop you. Get in. The bleeps are coming through beautifully.”

  Girland opened the rear door and bundled the girl into the back seat. Then he ran around the car and got in the front passenger’s seat. As Kerman sent the car shooting down the road, Girland leaned forward and examined the radar screen.

  “Hey! Take it easy,” he said sharply. “They’re stopping. They’re probably changing cars. We don’t want to catch up with them.”

  Kerman slowed. A car with a blasting horn, snarled past them so he again pulled off the road onto the grass verge.

  After another look at the screen, Girland twisted around in his seat and smiled at Kerman.

  “Long time no see,” he said and gripped Kerman’s hand. “So the old fox still has no confidence in me. He has to stick you on my tail.”

  “Looks as if he had a reason,” Kerman said dryly. “You could have lost her.”

  “That’s a fart,” Girland said, lighting a cigarette. “Remember Malik who we thought we had left for dead? He’s handling this. Believe it or not, he got out of that hell hole the same way as you got me out.”

  Kerman whistled.

  “I’ll have to alert Dorey. You sure it
is Malik?”

  “Come on, Jack, how could anyone mistake that big ape?”

  The bleep on the scanner began to move again.

  “Suppose you drive while I talk to Dorey?” Kerman said.

  Girland jumped out, ran around while Kerman slid into the passenger’s seat. In a moment or so Girland had the car moving along the AutoRoute while Kerman called Dorey on the telephone.

  Girland listened to the one sided conversation and grimaced.

  When Kerman put down the receiver, Girland said, “I bet the old goat laid an egg.”

  “He’s pretty livid,” Kerman returned. “He’s holding you responsible. He wants to know if you want help. Do you want me to alert O’Halloran’s boys?”

  “If he asks that, then he still leaves this to me,” Girland said sending the car storming down the rain swept road. “Well, that’s a point in my favour. No, tell him I can handle it.” He glanced at Kerman. “You coming along?”

  “What do you think?”

  Girland grinned.

  “Okay, then tell him we can handle it.”

  Kerman spoke to Dorey again. When he hung up, he said, “He doesn’t seem to like it. It’s my bet he’ll turn O’Halloran’s toughs loose.”

  “Well, they have got to find us first,” Girland said.

  Kerman was now watching the scanning screen. He said suddenly, “Stop! They’re coming back! Looks like they are returning to Paris and they are coming like a bomb!”

  Girland stood on his brakes, stopped the car, reversed onto the grass as another car snarled by, its horn screaming a protest and in less than seconds, he was driving at a steady sixty kilometres an hour back towards Paris.

  “Here they come,” Kerman said and moments later a Peugeot Estate Wagon swished past them at well over 120 kilometres an hour. Girland caught a glimpse of Malik’s silver head as the car roared past. He slightly accelerated, moving up to seventy-five kilometres an hour. The bleeps from the scanner were very loud.

  “Our little friend at the back is strangely quiet,” he said to Kerman. “How is she getting on?”

  Kerman looked over his shoulder at Ginny who was shivering.

  “You all right, Nurse?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s fine,” Kerman said to Girland, “but she looks cold.”

  Girland laughed.

  “That’s her long standing trouble. She was born cold. She even has doubts that I am a man.”

  “Oh, I hate you!” Ginny said furiously.

  “Careful, baby,” Girland said as he again sent the Jaguar surging forward. “It is said hate is cousin to love.”

  * * *

  The Peugeot Estate Wagon slowed and drove into the gate-guarded driveway of an old chateau on the main road through Malmaison. As the car pulled up, lights flashed on over the entrance and Merna Dorinska came down the worn steps to the car.

  This woman, wearing a man’s red shirt tucked into black cotton slacks was slightly under six feet tall. Her age could have been anything from thirty to forty. Her black hair was plastered down over her dome-shaped skull and coiled in a small bun at the back of her thick neck. Her features seemed to have been chiselled out of stone: irregular, hard, flat nosed with paper-thin lips. Her big hands and her thick muscular limbs hinted that it had been a tossup whether she emerged from her mother’s body either as a boy or as a girl. Merna Dorinska was one of the Soviet’s most successful woman agents who like Malik had won through to the top by her complete dedication to the Cause, her utter ruthlessness and her needle-sharp intelligence.

  Even Malik who hated her treated her with caution.

  “Here’s your patient,” he said as he got out of the ambulance. “She is under sedation. She’ll be awake and ready for interrogation by nine or ten tomorrow morning.”

  “Get her into the house,” Merna said. Her voice was hard and masculine. “Have you been followed?”

  “Followed? What do you mean?” Malik snarled. Such a question infuriated him. He was convinced that women were inferior to men, but in the past, he had been forced to admit that this particular woman had proved herself superior to most of his men agents, but certainly not superior to himself.

  Merna regarded him. Her dark-hooded eyes expressed her dislike for him.

  “You are dealing with Dorey,” she said coldly. “He should not be underestimated.”

  “I know who I am dealing with!” Malik said furiously. “Your job is to look after this woman! Don’t tell me things I know!”

  Smernoff and Kordak carried the sleeping woman on the stretcher into the chateau.

  Merna, by no means intimidated by Malik’s manner, said, “Then you had better get rid of this car. It could have been noticed.”

  Malik resisted the vicious urge to slam his fist into the woman’s face.

  “This is my operation!” he exploded. “Look after the woman! That’s your job!”

  Merna stared steadily at him, her face expressionless, then she turned and with long swinging strides, walked up the steps and into the chateau. Malik, muttering, glared after her. But what she had said made sense, he decided. He must get rid of the car, but he hated her telling him.

  Smernoff came down the steps.

  “Now . . . what?”

  “We’ll get rid of this car,” Malik said. “They can’t trace her here. Who, besides, Kordak, is guarding her?”

  “Three of my best men. She’s safe.”

  Malik hesitated. He remembered what Merna had said about Dorey. What did she know about Dorey? he asked himself. Dorey was old and a fool. He used men like Girland . . . a wastrel and a man always looking for a deal. He decided he could safely return to Paris, report to the Embassy and come back tomorrow morning to make this woman talk.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  As the Estate Wagon moved down the drive and onto the highway, he said, “Imagine that fool Girland wanted to make a deal . . . a deal with me!”

  Smernoff grunted. He wondered at the slightly wistful note in Malik’s voice and looked sharply at him, then he shrugged.

  Neither of them noticed the black Jaguar parked in a row of cars.

  Girland nudged Kerman’s arm.

  “There they go. Now let’s walk in and take her out.”

  Chapter Four

  Dorey surveyed the three telephones on his desk. His thin lips were compressed and his eyes uneasy. He was more than worried. The Russians had beaten him to the punch. He knew he had moved too slowly. As soon as O’Halloran had told him about this woman, he should have taken a chance and got her out of the hospital to somewhere completely safe and inaccessible.

  This comes, he thought bitterly, of being too cautious. He had stupidly wasted time finding Wolfert to check the tattoo marks.

  He had again wasted time finding Girland. Now the Russians had her and he thought uneasily of Washington. His first reaction was to call O’Halloran and take the operation out of Girland’s hands. Yet he had a strong instinctive feeling that if anyone could pull this chestnut out of the fire it would be Girland.

  His hand hovered over the telephone which would put him in direct contact with O’Halloran, then like a gambler who pushes his last chip on the red, he picked up the receiver that was connected to Kerman’s Jaguar.

  “Jack?”

  “Right here, sir,” came Kerman’s brisk voice.

  “I want to talk to Girland.”

  “Hold it.”

  There was a pause, then Girland came on the line.

  “This is me.” The indifferent flippant tone made Dorey boil with fury.

  “You listen to me!” He exploded. “Where are you and what are you doing?”

  Girland winked at Kerman and slid further down in the driver’s seat.

  “I am somewhere outside Paris, and I know what I am doing,” he said. “For Pete’s sake, Dorey, relax. You gave me this assignment and you’re paying me good money - at least I hope you are. I’m going to do the job so what are you getting so wor
ked up about?”

  “Girland!” Dorey’s voice rose a note. “This could be the most important and vital assignment I have ever given anyone! What are you doing? This could be on Presidential level! You’ve already lost this woman! What am I going to tell Washington?”

  “Who cares about Washington? Just keep your big nose out of this,” Girland said. “I’ll deliver. Relax,” and he replaced the receiver.

  He looked at Kerman and shook his head. “He should have been retired years ago! Let’s go, Jack. I have to be in Eze by tomorrow morning.”

  Kerman laughed. It was a pleasure to work with a scatterbrain like Girland.

  “You are an irresponsible bastard, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re not proposing to walk in there and shoot it out with probably a dozen tough Soviets, are you?”

  “That’s the general idea,” Girland said. “You and I can take them. I’ll bet there aren’t a dozen of them, and who says the Soviets are tough?”

  “We can do better than that,” Kerman said, sliding aside a panel below the dashboard of the car. “We have a couple of gas guns and gas masks here. When Dorey sets up an operation, he sets it up.” He handed Girland a flat heavy gun with an inch wide barrel. “Watch it. There’s enough paralysing gas in that gun to put a Battalion out of action.”

  “It’s too easy.” Girland took the gas mask Kerman handed to him and fixed it over his eyes and nose. Then he turned and looked at Ginny. “Sit quietly, baby,” he said, his voice muffled. “We won’t be long, and then you’ll have a patient to look after.”

  Ginny, her small, immature breasts rising and falling with excitement, looked at him with wide eyes. All she could say was, “Please be careful.”

  “For your sake, I will,” Girland said and slid out of the car.

  Without waiting for Kerman, he ran through the rain, across the highway and into the grounds of the chateau.

  Kerman went after him.

  They paused for a moment, side by side, as they looked at the chateau. A light showed in one of the upper windows.

  “That’s where she is,” Girland said. “I’ll go round the back. You come in by the front. Kick a window in. I’ll go on ahead. Give me a couple of minutes before you start.”