The Whip Hand

by Victor Canning

  The line ran just west of north from Venice, missing Treviso to the west and then, farther on, leaving Cortina d’Ampezzo to the east and then, from there on, running slap across the Tirol between Innsbruck and Kitzbühel to Munich, a fat stretch of country, without any large towns, full of mountains and lakes, where a small deviation in flight would cause no comment.

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Is this Hesseltod a regular crew member?”

  “No. He appears only on and off.”

  I said, “Would Malacod have anyone reliable in Munich?”

  “Herr Stebelson would be able to arrange it.”

  “Then I’d like you to phone him or Malacod and ask them to put a man at Munich Airport right away – to catch this flight from Venice if he can – and to check on this helicopter until further notice. I want to know whether the same pilot, crew and cargo that leave Venice also turn up at Munich. Tell them I’m particularly interested in Hesseltod and would like to know whether he walks with a limp when he reaches Munich. I’d like them to phone you a report direct here.”

  Katerina had said ten o’clock. But as it was light very late in the evenings now and I felt that a preliminary survey of the Villa Sabbioni would do no harm, I took the usual surveying instruments with me, field-glasses, and the Le Chasseur rubbing a hole in my jacket pocket.

  Severus was waiting with the launch. We went down the main channel to the Porto di Lido mouth that ran out to sea. We crossed it and headed up the Treporti channel, which in its deepest places was no more than four fathoms and mostly between one and two fathoms. On our port hand was the long, low line of the Isola San Erasmo, and on our starboard hand the great stretch of the Littorale di Cavallino, which hid the sea from us. Treporti was about a couple of miles up the channel at the head of a small inlet which ran deep into the Littorale di Cavallino. It was a flat, uninviting stretch of land, studded with the occasional clump of trees and the stubby silhouettes of one or two farm buildings.

  Severus told me that the Villa Sabbioni was two or three hundred yards up the inlet to Treporti, well away from the village. It had been built some fifty years previously by a businessman from Rome – who had seldom used it because he had found that the place was mosquito-ridden. The kind of mistake any businessman should have been ashamed of making. He was dead now and the place was owned by his son, who never used it, but let it to anyone who was prepared to pay the modest rent and dose themselves with mepacrine morning, noon and night. It sounded to me like the kind of folly that didn’t attract crowds of sightseers and casual ramblers to its gates.

  Severus landed me at the mouth of the inlet and I had five yards of marshy bog-wading before I hit firm ground. I made my way across a long stretch of sandy wasteland towards a clump of three Lombardy poplars which, Severus had told me, were about four hundred yards from the villa. A hare got up and went away in front of me, ears flat, and then stopped at a safe distance and sat up on its haunches and watched me. A curlew came over, slanting down the slight breeze, and with every step I took little puffs of sandflies exploded underfoot. Now and again one bit the back of my neck and it was like a jab from a rusty hypodermic needle. The place was going to be pleasant when the mosquito squadrons took the air for their night flight. It was no place to bring a girl courting on a summer evening. Far away on my right hand, Venice was lost in the flatness of land and water and marked with a brown pall of summer evening mist.

  I picked the middle one of the three poplars and I went up about twelve feet.

  I settled in a leafy fork and got the field-glasses out. Villa Sabbioni was a long, two-storey building with a red-tiled roof. So far as I could see, it was surrounded on the three sides away from the inlet with a wall about eight feet high, topped with a coping of red tiles. In the angle of the wall nearest me there was a white door, its top third filled with an ornamental grille. Through it I could see part of an inner and walled garden. I went up an extra six feet and could see the inner walls of this garden plainly and, beyond them, a wide expanse of gravel running up to the house front. On this side there was a creeper-grown loggia stretching the full face of the house. If Katerina were playing fair with me, I knew that the white doorway would be unlocked.

  From behind me, from the direction of Venice, I suddenly heard the sound of an aircraft engine, a heavy, laboured noise. I screwed my neck round, and there it was, coming low up the seaward side of the Littorale, an orange-painted helicopter, like some clumsy flying insect. It changed course beyond the trees and swung in towards the villa.

  I kept the glasses on it, and from the moment that it sank, clanking and coughing, on the open gravel space in front of the villa things happened fast. I couldn’t see everything because part of the far wall of the enclosed garden cut off some of the ground view. Two men dropped out of the machine, a stowage door was opened, and I saw them manhandling cases out. I counted three, and then, beyond the machine, I caught the movement of people coming out of the villa, partly obscured by the helicopter. I had a glimpse of Siegfried, a flick of skirt or dress which could have been either Katerina or Madame Vadarci, and then saw the two men from the helicopter lugging the cases towards the house. I couldn’t see them go into the house because my angle of vision was wrong. I should have been in the tree five yards to my right. There was a lot of movement on the far side of the helicopter. Then three men came round to my side, carrying between them a long case which they loaded aboard. From the way they moved it was obviously damned heavy – and looked about ten feet long by three wide. The stowage door was closed and, with a swirl of dust from the gravel as the rotor blades cartwheeled into action, the machine was up, hovering, and then away.

  The whole operation had taken about forty seconds flat, and in another twenty seconds it was away, lost behind the house and heading inland, on its proper course now, I guessed, which would just miss Treviso and take it on to Munich, except – and I’d have taken any bets on this – somewhere along the line there would be another quick deviation and temporary stop.

  I lit a cigarette safely behind my leaf screen and wondered, among other things, if the pilot were a member of the Atonement Party. Maybe the proprietor of the company was, too. And all planning to go to the grand rally.

  I sat it out in my tree for two hours while the daylight finally faded and a moon, which had been lurking somewhere out in the Adriatic, slowly came up like a blood orange, and the mosquito flights below me gradually gained altitude and began to dive-bomb my neck and hands. There wasn’t another woman in the world but Katerina who could have kept me tree-squatting for so long, and now I wasn’t even sure that she was still in the villa, waiting to come out and keep her tryst with me.

  At ten minutes to ten I dropped to the ground, stumbled from cramp in the knees, and then began to move carefully towards the white door.

  It was unlocked, but there was a key on the inner side. I slid through and closed the door after me. The garden was about the size of a tennis court. All around the sides were little flower beds edged with box which had grown long. The flower beds themselves were a mass of weeds. Nobody in the Vadarci party clearly cared for gardening. In the centre the ground was open and paved with great slabs of stone and there was a small pedestal with a sundial on it. On the far side of the garden was another white door, grilled at the top, which led into the big driveway at the back of the house. To my right, shadowed in a corner of the wall, was a small summerhouse with most of its window-panes broken. I moved into this, half-closed the door, and stood back so that I had a clear view of the open space with its sundial and of the short run of path up to the other white door.

  I took out the Le Chasseur and put it on the window-ledge at my side, dismissed the idea of having a cigarette, and settled down to wait for Katerina.

  It was fifteen minutes past ten when I heard a noise from the direction of the house. The far door was suddenly thrown back with a jerk and three men came through into the garden. For a moment they were in deep shadow. Then they came down the sm
all path and into the open space which was flooded with moonlight.

  There was Siegfried, walking ahead, carrying something wrapped in a cloth under one arm. Behind him came another man in shirtsleeves, and behind him I could see the panama of the elderly number who had been in the Piazza San Marco.

  Siegfried was dressed in a dark shirt and dark trousers. He walked up to the sundial and dropped his cloth bundle with a clank on to the ground. It was then that I saw clearly the man behind him and that the grey and white nightmare slowly began to take shape and gather momentum. The man was about forty, strongly built, short and bald. He wore striped canvas trousers and his hands were tied in front of him. He walked in front of panama hat docilely and stopped near the sundial. Siegfried turned and said something to him. It sounded to me as though they were talking in German. The bald man shook his head and then, almost with a resigned movement, held out his bound hands.

  Siegfried stood back from him. The other man moved forward and, with a certain amount of awkwardness, undid the bonds on the bald man’s hands. Then he moved back to the edge of the open space. As he did so, Siegfried bent down, whipped the cloth away from the bundle on the ground, and then straightened up. Something flew through the air, glittering briefly. The bald man caught it and the moment he had it in his hand the whole of his body tautened as though a spring had suddenly been tightened in him.

  And then there they were, the two of them, a few yards apart, each crouching a little, each moving a little in a slow circular dance, each with his right hand a little advanced and held high, and in each of their hands was a sabre. It was like watching the slow crab-like stalk of a couple of murderous insects, their elongated right arms great shining spikes, ready to slash and kill.

  And killing, I knew, was intended. Clear through the nightmare came the shock of understanding ... Baldy, cook ... short-wave transmitter. Fitted back of store-room fridge. The lines came back from Lancing’s notes. And here I was, with a front-stall seat, at the gutting which Siegfried was staging in his own sadistic manner. I guessed now that Katerina was no longer in the villa. She’d gone off in the helicopter. This show would never have been put on with any chance of her seeing it.

  There was a clash of sabres and the moonlit square was alive with the sharp movement of men and the sharper glitter of sabres. The two men drew apart, circling warily, watching each other and already I could see a dark line of blood down the right-hand side of Baldy’s face. Beyond them, coolly sitting on a stone pillar at the edge of a flower bed, the dignified number in the panama lit a cigar and watched.

  It wasn’t, for my money, anything that was good to watch. Baldy was no fool with the sabre, that was clear, but he was way out of Siegfried’s class. He must have known that it was going to be slow murder. There would be a flurry and clash of blades, the lightning leap in of Siegfried, a whirl of movement, and then the quick withdrawal with Siegfried untouched and another streak of blood on Baldy’s cheek. After his face came the body’s turn ... and whenever Siegfried’s face swung so I could see it he was smiling, calm, eyes bright and perfectly composed.

  I don’t have any strong feelings about blood sports generally, and I suppose, if I’d lived then, I’d have paid my drachmae or whatever and sat in the gallery of the Coliseum and backed net against trident with the best of them, but this was too much for me.

  I reached out for the Le Chasseur. As I did so Siegfried came in again at Baldy. The man was forced back across the open space towards my end of the garden, and the great blade of his opponent played around him like lightning. Then Baldy staggered, dropped his sabre, and I saw his hand go down to his left side.

  Siegfried paused, said something, with a gesture of his blade to the sabre on the floor, and waited. I stepped out then. I made two yards before any of them knew I was there. I raised the gun and covered Siegfried, and I said:

  “Baldy – the door behind me is open. Get going!”

  He began to turn and I saw Siegfried’s face swing towards me and then the movement as he went for the other man. I fired. A foot ahead of him at the paving stones. He pulled up and I saw the point of his sabre dip towards the ground as he dropped his right hand slowly.

  “The door. There’s a motor launch at the end of the waterway.”

  Baldy turned fully then, both his hands pressed against his left side. His face was wet with sweat and he nodded and began to move. He went past me and I covered Siegfried, who stood watching me, his body relaxed now, no movement from him. And there was no movement from the man in the panama hat. He sat on his little pillar, the cigar stuck in his mouth, and he watched me, too.

  There wasn’t an idle question in either of them. They just watched me, and I stood there, heard the door go and then the dying sounds of Baldy going fast across the ground outside. I gave him a few minutes, not knowing how fast he was able to travel. Then I began to back slowly towards the door. I wasn’t going to go a foot nearer Siegfried than I needed, not even with a gun in my hand. Manston had told me enough about him to make it clear that allowing him up close was asking for trouble.

  I reached behind me and got the key out of the lock. As it came free Siegfried spoke. He had a good firm, pleasant voice, and there wasn’t a trace of accent in his speech, or even a note of anger or any other emotion.

  He said, “I look forward to the day when I find out who you are.”

  I said, “You don’t want to bother with me. I was just passing and heard the sound of cold steel. Write me off as a nosey-parker with a love of fair play.”

  I went through the door quickly, jammed the key in the outside lock and turned it. Then I ran, hoping Baldy would be well on his way. I didn’t let up until I reached the launch. I looked back a couple of times but no one was following. I sloshed out across the bog to Severus. Baldy was not with him.

  I made him pull out into mid-stream and hang off there waiting for the man to turn up. We waited twenty minutes, listening all the time for the sound of any launch coming downstream, and watching the bank for any sign of the man. In the end we gave him up. I’d got him out of one mess and I didn’t intend to get myself into trouble by searching for him. He was the kind who, given enough start, could look after himself.

  Eventually we turned away, going fast down the Treporti channel for Venice, and it was a faint sort of comfort to me that all the time I had fronted Siegfried in the garden the moon had been behind me and my face well in shadow.

  *

  I was dreaming that I was facing Siegfried, both of us with sabres, and he was smiling all the time as he went for me. Then a telephone bell began to ring somewhere and Siegfried frowned and said, “For God’s sake, why can’t they leave us alone to enjoy ourselves?”

  I woke then to see Vérité in a dressing-gown moving around the end of the bed to answer the phone which was ringing in the sitting-room. I sat up, rubbing my neck which was as lumpy as rhino skin with mosquito bumps. I listened to her talking in the next room. My wristwatch showed that it was six o’clock.

  I reached for the water carafe and drank from it without benefit of glass. My throat was dry as though I’d had a late night and too many cigarettes.

  Vérité came back into the room and sat down beside me. She put her arms around me and kissed me and then, after a few moments, she pulled away but left one hand on my neck.

  “You’ve been bitten to death. I’ve got something I can rub on those.”

  She started to get up but I held her and said, “Who was the call from?”

  “Munich. What time did you come in last night?”

  “About three. You were sleeping.”

  Severus and I had come back to Venice and taken up station off the Lido shore watching the Komira. At two-thirty the Komira’s launch had turned up from Treporti and Siegfried and the panama-hat man had gone aboard. At three-thirty the Komira had pulled out. I didn’t need a clairvoyant to tell me that the Villa Sabbioni would not be used again. I was due to meet Severus in an hour and go back there to have a look
round, not with any great hope of finding anything. They would have cleaned up nicely. Everything destroyed or tidied away. And the tidying would have included Baldy if I hadn’t butted in.

  Vérité said, “So, I was sleeping. What had you been doing?”

  “I’ll dictate a full report later. I could never concentrate with a secretary in a short nightdress. What did Munich say?”

  “It landed at Munich just after eleven last night.”

  Munich was about a hundred and ninety miles from Venice as the crow flew, and I suppose there have been a few crows that have done it. The helicopter could do a hundred an hour easily. Three hours to do two hours’ flying. They’d made a leisurely stop somewhere.

  She went on, “There was a crew of two, the pilot, Brandt, and another man, Hesseltod. Only this Hesseltod didn’t limp.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. What about the cargo?”

  “Exactly as listed on the manifest from here.”

  “Neat. I saw the Venice cargo unloaded not three miles from here. They must have had a duplicate cargo waiting at their stopping point before Munich.”

  “What happens now?”

  I looked at my watch. It was ten past six.

  I said, “I’m meeting a man at seven o’clock. I’ll need thirty minutes to shave, shower and dress and get to him. When I come back we’ll probably have to start heading north. Meanwhile we’ve got twenty minutes for you to do something about these mosquito bumps.”