The Whip Hand

by Victor Canning

  He laid the silver-knobbed cane down between us, sighed a little with the heat, and then lit a long thin black cigar which smelt as though a hundred acres of good steppe were going up in flames. I lit a cigarette.

  He said, “Poor Howard Johnson has a broken arm.”

  “Clumsy fellow.”

  He laughed gently. He had a very distinguished face, the skin grey and grained like pumice stone, wore a brown tussore suit, and a panama which sat on his head dead in line with the horizon. He could have been a Berlin family lawyer on holiday. Maybe he wished he were.

  “May I talk frankly, Mr Carver?”

  “Just as long as you keep it simple.”

  He nodded, and then said, “Oh, I forget. All this stupidity ... I should say, Mother Jambo. That is the correct introduction, eh? You will forgive me. I have been in this business so long that I forget or find tiresome all the archaic paraphernalia.”

  “You want to watch your language. Simple, I said.”

  He blew a cloud of smoke at a cloud of midges and the midges moved off.

  “It has been decided,” he said, “between London and Moscow that this should become a combined operation. The decision was taken at high level, naturally. Where else are such decisions taken? Frankly, I’m glad. This uneasy pursuit of separate courses towards a common end only leads to confusion, double work, and – more unfortunate – distrust. It makes me very happy. Why? Frankly, because I am getting old, and it is pleasant to have a young, active man to do the ... how shall I say?”

  “Donkey work is a good phrase. Try it.”

  “Donkey work, yes. But no disparagement meant. Also – since it is intimated that you are specifically not on the establishment, but a private individual, co-opted because of special talents, then you are naturally concerned with the remunerative aspects.”

  “You mean money?” Perhaps he was too old for the job, because he was giving it far too much. Or maybe he had just gone gaga with the strain. I’d met someone who had once. Or maybe he was a furlong ahead of me and about to pretend to pull a tendon. God knows. Sometimes I got real homesick for simple insurance recovery.

  “Money, ah, yes.... As I was saying – co-operation has been decided on, so frankness becomes possible. In retrospect you will forgive Howard Johnson for his rather clumsy stratagem.”

  “I’ll forgive him anything, if the money is right.”

  “Splendid!” He brought out an envelope and delicately put it alongside the silver-knobbed cane.

  I didn’t rush. I could match delicacy with delicacy, too, when it came to deceit. Mother Jambo. He was going to feel foolish when his ciphers’ link got around to letting him know about Ringmaster. I just let the envelope rest, and said, “And my instructions?”

  “Exactly the same. We all want to know where Mrs Vadarci is going, and you have – vive l’amour – a special contact there. Just keep in touch, that is all we have to do. Though, naturally, when I leave this seat we will act as strangers. The only difference is that we now work together. I am at your service and you at mine. Happy would it be, if one could think that this unique example of co-operation might be the first of many, a broadening and strengthening of international feeling.”

  “I’ll second that,” I said, and I picked up the envelope and opened it. There were a hundred crisp, clean five-dollar bills in it. I counted them carefully and he watched until I looked up straight into his age-worn, cold agate eyes.

  “A monthly retainer,” he said.

  “Very generous.” I put the money in my pocket. Then, since we were now old buddies, I tried him with the oldest ploy in the business.

  “If only the people at the top would trust us a little more, they’d get better results from us. I get tired of working in the dark.”

  He nodded. “We are too far down the pyramid for truth to be trusted to us. Of all the cases I have engaged in, I have never known the truth of more than, say, five per cent. Like cart-horses, we pull hard, but we wear blinkers so that we can only see the road ahead.”

  “You’re damned right,” I said feelingly, and I could see that it warmed him to me, a couple of outside men grumbling about the bosses.

  “Matter of fact,” I said casually, “if it hadn’t been for a book I picked up in Howard Johnson’s car, I’d be even more in the dark. Stigmata, by Professor Vadarci.”

  “Oh....” He grinned. “The required reading. The master-race cracking the symbolic whip. But let us not forget that beyond the lunatic fringe there often....” He tailed off, gave me a look and then smiled. He knew and I knew that he had caught himself just in time. There was no more to be had from him. But of all he had said it was the phrase “symbolic whip” which rang in my mind.

  I picked up the silver-knobbed cane and gave the water-lily boss a half-turn and pulled. A thin ice-bright blade came out with a faint whisper like a finger being run down the length of a silk stocking. “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Toledo. I bought it in Spain in 1939. I was a tank commander. They were good days.”

  “Before my time,” I said.

  “Naturally.”

  I slid the blade back and the silky whisper sent a small shiver through me.

  He stood up, took his stick, levelled the brim of his panama, and said, “I go now for my morning swim.” He gave me an avuncular smile and went on, “Always we watch. You and I. And always we co-operate. It is a good arrangement.”

  “Splendid,” I said.

  And it was, at five hundred dollars a month.

  After lunch, I hired one of the little canoes that the hotel kept for the use of guests. It was a two-seater affair with one double-sided paddle. I went around the back of the island, away from the hotel, and pulled into the bank just below an old burial tomb of the monks, a tall white vault set partly back into the slope of the ground. They’d buried them standing up, each in a narrow compartment, for the same reason that New York has sky-scrapers. The canoe let water a little because the seams wanted caulking, and I dabbled my bare feet in it and smoked a cigarette until she appeared.

  She wore a green linen dress, buttoned all the way down the front, and her arms and legs were bare, and the sun set a dazzling burnish on her blonde hair. She got in and I set off, paddling westwards towards the far end of the lake where a narrow neck of water led out into a sea estuary. All the way, by hugging the shore, we were out of sight of the island. A new road had been cut, low around the shore of the island, but no one ever seemed to use it. Gorse pods cracked, the cicadas fiddled, the sun blazed down, and the air was full of scents, pine, broom, arbutus, thyme. Overhead a couple of buzzards circled lazily, and somewhere, no doubt, what mongooses there were were taking a siesta. It was a perfect afternoon for taking a girl out. It grew hot and Katerina unbuttoned her dress and slipped it off. She was wearing a green bikini underneath it.

  I found a small beach, overhung with pines and tamarisks, and pulled in. We walked up the sand a way and flopped down in the shade of a rock. I lit a cigarette for her and one for myself, and told myself sternly that this must be strictly business before pleasure. She must have felt the same way for she hunched up her legs, rested her chin on top of her knees and looked solemnly at me through a loose trailer of blonde hair. Every line of her body made business seem a waste of time, but I stuck to my guns.

  I said, “Have you ever heard of a man called Malacod?”

  “No.”

  I resisted the temptation of trying to decide whether she was lying. It was too big a job. I kept at the questions and accepted the answers. I could sort them out afterwards.

  “Stebelson works for him. And now I do.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Following you. Or, more specifically, Mrs Vadarci.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t like the way she was beginning to take over the questions, but I let it ride.

  “I don’t know. My brief is just to follow Mrs Vadarci and let Malacod know where she ends up. Simple. Do you know where she’s going eventu
ally?”

  “No.”

  “A lot of other people are also interested in where she is going.”

  “Government peoples?”

  I smiled. “That’s a good way to put it. But how did you know?”

  “We have our rooms searched in Paris. Nothing is stolen, so it is not ordinary thieves, no?”

  “Good deduction. Now, let’s come to you and Mrs Vadarci. She meets you in your shop, likes you, gives you a job as her travelling secretary – correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you’ve never seen her before?”

  “No.”

  “A good secretary would let her know that she was being followed. Why don’t you? In fact, why do you go out of your way to make it easy for me to follow you?”

  She took a deep draw on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle up the front of her face like a veil, and she dug one toe deep in the sand.

  “Why? For two reasons. One, personal. I like you very much. I like the look in your eyes. I like the things you do. I like it when you touch and kiss me. I like everything about you. So, is nice to have you come everywhere with me.” She put out a hand and just touched my bare foot. Business nearly broke down at that moment.

  “One good personal reason,” I said. “Now the other.”

  “Also, personal perhaps. You look at me – what you see? Beautiful body, nice to get into bed with? That’s all most men want. But me, I want more. So, being a poor girl, I work for myself to get those things. Mrs Vadarci can show me how.”

  “Has she said so?”

  “In a way. She talks a lot, and sometimes she says things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Some you won’t like.”

  “Try me.”

  “She is ... how you say....” She put the tips of her fingers to her brow, “... seeing the future ... das Medium.... She tells me things about me.”

  “What things?”

  “I am special ... there is a destiny for me. Soon now my life changes. Everything which is me now, my beauty ... this good body ... this thing inside me which makes me feel life is good – I soon have the life outside which goes with it. Money, a great house, and everyone know me ... like it is that everyone know of Brunhild or Helen of Troy....”

  “You believe that?”

  “There is harm in believing it? I would like that. Also there is another thing – I get married.”

  “You don’t need a fortune-teller to tell you that.”

  “But to someone special. More than special. Someone splendid like me.”

  “No name given?”

  “No. Except that he is tall and blond and strong and like a god.”

  “You believe all this malarky?”

  “Malarky?”

  “Nonsense. You believe it?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. But it is nice to think about. You are jealous about this man?”

  “Naturally.”

  “There is no need. Always I will like you.”

  “Good. Now let’s come down to the real business. A lot of people are interested in Mrs Vadarci and where she is going. But you and I are keeping an open mind about everything. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Like you, I’m a poor boy with nothing but a splendid body, a zest for life, and an eye to the main chance.”

  “Please?”

  “If I can see a way of making something on the side out of this job, I’ll take it. So will you. After all, the Helen of Troy business may not come off. But if we help one another there could be a nice profit. And, when it’s all over, we could find some place where we could spend it.”

  “Why you think there must be a profit in it?”

  “Because too many people are interested in Mrs Vadarci. Something is going on ... somewhere along the line there must be something or some information which is worth a lot of money. Now, do we do a deal or not?”

  Slowly she uncurled her arms and legs from the foetal position and lay back on the sand, staring up at the sky. Little flecks of quartz and felspar made a stippling along the smooth curve of her flanks. I sat entranced, wondering who the hell would ever bother about money at such a time and place, but then common sense whispered coldly that there is always a moment when you get out of the warm bed, shiver as your feet hit the cold linoleum, and there isn’t a shilling in your trouser pocket for the gas fire.

  “How we do this deal?”

  “You see that I don’t lose track of Mrs Vadarci. And we keep our eyes and ears open. The moment will come. Okay?”

  She turned her head towards me, and her eyes had that deep, misty violet haze.

  “Okay,” she said. “We work something out.”

  She rolled on her side towards me, flipped a hand behind her back to brush sand from her shoulder-blades and then reached up for me. As her arms came up the bikini slipped free from her breasts.

  Her lips were about mine, open and eager, and my hands were holding her and I didn’t care if every word she’d uttered had been a lie. All I knew was that I wanted her, no matter what she was, no matter what lay ahead. I loved her, and if love wasn’t the right word then there was no right word. And close to me, I could feel the same wildness leaping in her, and knew that the same fire that burned beneath my hands as I moved them over her also burned in hers as they moved over me.

  Then, close by, a transistor radio began to play, loud, breaking the idyll into a thousand noisy pieces.

  I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair....

  And send him on his way....

  I rolled over and sat up. Walking down the beach a few yards away was Frau Walter Spiegel. She had on a red bathing cap, a nylon leopard-skin swimsuit, and her legs and arms and back looked like grey dough. She set the transistor down carefully on the edge of the strand and waded in. Then, when she was a few yards out, she turned towards us, half squatted, and splashed a little water over her shoulders. She then collapsed backwards in the water, and once or twice she waved a friendly hand at us. If I’d had a rifle I would willingly have shot her and left her to the buzzards.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHORE EXERCISE FOR SIEGFRIED

  Time ran out. Frau Spiegel splashed and wallowed in the shallows. I smoked four cigarettes and held Katerina’s hand. The transistor went through all the crumby old theme songs from crumby old American musicals, and all the magic had gone from the crystal-clear air. Somewhere back in the Hotel Melita Madame Vadarci would be beginning to stir, heavy-eyed and dry-mouthed from her siesta, and Katerina had to be back.

  We went down to the canoe and I resisted the temptation to kick the transistor into the water, and then again, the urge to hit Frau Spiegel over the head with a paddle as we passed her.

  Out in the lake Katerina in a husky voice said, “Never mind, darling. We make it some other time.”

  I paddled hard in a fury of sublimation.

  Then as we came into the back of the island, she turned and kissed me, so that the canoe rocked wildly. As she got out, she said, “We have a deal, no? Always to be truthful with each other, to look for this profit?”

  I nodded.

  “So ... anything might be important? Small things?”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I began to unfold it.

  “I make copy of a telegram Madame Vadarci got while we were in Dubrovnik. Maybe it helps.”

  She turned and began to walk up the path that led back to the hotel. I watched the thrust of her long brown legs against the slope and the bright flutter of her dress until she was out of sight. The cable in my hands read:

  Luka Pomina. Date as arranged.

  Komira.

  Underneath this Katerina had added a comment—

  Sent in German from Athens.

  I put a match to the message, let it burn away, and then dropped it overboard. I paddled around to the front of the hote
l and ran the canoe ashore by the generator shed. Pomina and Komira didn’t mean a thing to me, but somewhere in my mind the word Luka was recently familiar.

  An elderly woman was in the reception office, making out bills. I stopped and bought a couple of picture post-cards, and then asked her if she had a map of the island. She ferreted around in a cupboard for a while and finally produced a tourist map which looked as though someone had wrapped sandwiches in it. I took it up to my room and flopped out on the bed with it.

  Mljet was a long, thin strip of island running roughly north-west to south-east. There were very few villages on it and most of the island was labelled – Nacionalni Park. On the southern side of the north-west end, a great arm of sea ran into the body of the land with a small entrance into the Veliko Jezero – which was the lake that had the island with the hotel on it. At the western end of this lake was a narrow entrance to another and smaller lake, the Malo Jezero. Beyond this lake a narrow strip of land separated it from the sea. There, marked in a small bay, protected by a few off-shore islands, was the word Pomina. Polace, the place where we had left the steamer, was marked on the northern side of the island, and in front of it was the word Luka. So, I guessed, Luka meant harbour or port. Fodor was silent on the subject.

  At some date, already arranged, something was going to happen in – or off – the small port of Pomina. The map gave no clue to Komira.

  There was a knock on the door. I slipped the map under my pillow, and called out.

  Herr Walter Spiegel came in. He sat down on a chair, rested his silver-knobbed stick across his legs, gently mopped his face with a silk handkerchief, then beamed at me.

  “You have a pleasant afternoon spent?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You learn things?”

  “Self-control mostly.”