by Wilbur Smith
‘Ramón!’ There was no reply, and she ran through to the bedroom. His valise was open on the bed, and a crumpled shirt lay in the middle of the floor. It was stained with blood – patches of old dried blood, almost mulberry black in colour, and also newer brighter blood.
‘Ramón! Oh God! Ramón! Can you hear me?’
She ran to the bathroom door. It was locked from inside. She stood back and kicked the lock with her heel. It was one of the judo kicks he had taught her, and the flimsy lock snapped and the door flew open.
Ramón lay on the tiled floor beside the toilet. He must have grabbed at the shelf above the washbasin as he fell, and her cosmetics had cascaded down into the basin and across the floor. He was naked from the waist up, but his chest was heavily strapped with bandages. She could tell at a glance that the bandages had been tied by a professional hand. Like his abandoned shirt, the white bandages were soaked with concentric rings of blood, some dark and old, some fresh and wet.
She dropped on to her knees beside him, and turned his head. His skin was pale, almost opalescent, with a sheen of nauseous sweat upon it. She lifted his head into her lap. Then she snatched up the face-cloth that hung over the edge of the bath. She could just reach the cold-water tap from where she sat. She soaked the cloth and wiped his face and neck.
His eyelids quivered and opened, and he looked up at her.
‘Ramón.’
His eyes focused. ‘I keeled over,’ he murmured.
‘My darling, what happened to you? You’ve been badly hurt.’
‘Help me to the bed,’ he said.
Kneeling beside him, she propped him into a sitting position. She was almost as strong as a man, with arms and torso trained by riding and tennis. However, she knew that even she could not lift him unaided.
‘Can you stand, if I steady you?’
He grunted and made the effort, but halfway to his feet he winced and clutched at the blood-stained bandages as the pain knifed him.
‘Take it easy,’ she whispered, and for a minute he remained doubled over, then he straightened slowly.
‘All right.’ He gritted his teeth, and she led him through, taking most of his weight on her shoulder, and lowered him on to the bed.
‘Did you come all the way from Athens in this condition?’ she asked incredulously.
He nodded the lie. He had summoned Isabella to Athens to act as a courier. The need had risen urgently and unexpectedly. There had been no other agent available immediately, and it was time for her to be blooded in the field. She was ripe for it. By now she had been conditioned to accept his orders without question, and it was an easy first assignment that he planned for her. She was the perfect innocent, an attractive and pregnant female who would instantly evoke sympathy. She was unmarked, unknown to any of the world’s intelligence organizations, including Mossad. In the jargon of the trade, she was a virgin. In addition, she carried a South African passport, and Israel had cordial, indeed intimate, relations with that country.
The plan was for her to catch the flight from Athens to Tel Aviv, make the pick-up and leave by the same route. It would have been a day’s work. The plan had foundered when she had not been able to make the flight to Athens. The pick-up was crucial. It involved details of the cooperation between Israeli and South African scientists in the development of tactical nuclear weapons systems. Even though there was a high probability that he was marked by Mossad, Ramón had been forced to make the pick-up in person.
He had disguised his appearance as best he was able, and of course he had gone unarmed. It was madness to attempt to carry a weapon through an Israeli security check. He had used his Mexican passport in an assumed name. However, they must have got on to him at Ben Gurion Airport and tailed him to the pick-up.
He had spotted the tail and taken emergency evading procedure, but they had cornered him. He had broken the neck of one Mossad agent and in return had taken this hit. Even severely wounded, he had made it to the PLO safe house in Tel Aviv. Within twelve hours they had smuggled him out on their pipeline to Syria.
However, London was his safe ground. Despite the risks and his injuries, he had too much in play to remain in Damascus. The local KGB head of station had escorted him on to the Aeroflot flight to London. He had made the call to Isabella as he staggered into the flat. Then he had just managed to reach the bathroom before he collapsed.
‘I must call a doctor,’ she said.
‘No doctor!’ Despite his weakness, his voice took on that cold sibilant tone which she was so conditioned to obey.
‘What must I do?’ she asked.
‘Get me the telephone,’ he ordered, and she hurried to bring the instrument through from its jack in the sitting room.
‘Ramón, you look awful. At least let me get you something – a bowl of soup, darling?’
He nodded agreement, but did not look up from the telephone as he dialled. She went through to the kitchen and heated up a can of thick vegetable soup. As she worked she could hear him speaking to somebody in Spanish on the telephone. However, her recent exercise with the Linguaphone course was insufficient to allow her to follow the conversation. She took the tray of soup and Pro-Vita biscuits through to him as he hung up.
‘Darling, what has happened to you? Why won’t you let me call the doctor?’
He grimaced. If a British doctor saw that injury, he would be bound to report it. If the Cuban embassy doctor came to the flat, it would almost certainly compromise this address and Ramón’s cover. So he had made alternative arrangements. However, he did not answer her question directly.
‘I want you to go out immediately. Go to the westbound platform of Sloane Square Underground station and walk the full length of it slowly. Somebody will put an envelope in your hand . . .’
‘Who? How will I recognize him?’
‘You won’t,’ he answered brusquely. ‘He will recognize you. You will not speak nor acknowledge the messenger in any way. In the envelope will be a doctor’s prescription and a detailed list of instructions to treat my injury. Take the prescription to the all-night chemist in Piccadilly Circus and bring the supplies back here.’
‘Yes, Ramón, but you haven’t told me how you hurt yourself.’
‘You must learn to do as you are told – without all those tiresome questions. Now, go!’
‘Yes, Ramón.’ She picked up her jacket and scarf and then stooped over the bed to kiss him.
‘I love you,’ she whispered. Halfway down the stairs, she stopped suddenly. Nobody, with the possible exception of Nana, had ever spoken to her in such forceful terms since childhood. Even her father made requests; he did not give her orders. Yet here she was scampering breathlessly as a schoolgirl to obey. She pulled a face and ran on down into the street.
She had not reached the end of the Underground platform when, from behind, she felt a light touch on her wrist and an envelope was slipped into her hand. She glanced over her shoulder, but the messenger was already walking away. He wore a blue wool cap and dark overcoat, but she could not see his face.
At the chemist’s the dispenser read the prescription and remarked: ‘You have somebody badly injured?’ But she shook her head.
‘I’m just Doctor Alves’ receptionist. I don’t know.’
And he made up the package of medicines without further comment.
Ramón seemed to be sleeping, but he opened his eyes immediately she entered the bedroom. All her previous fears for him returned in full force when she saw his face. His eyes seemed to have sunk into dark bruised cavities, and his skin had the pallor of a two-day corpse. However, she thrust aside her personal misgivings and steeled herself to act calmly.
While she was at university she had taken a course in first aid with the Red Cross. At Weltevreden she had often assisted the visiting doctor at his weekly clinic for the coloured employees. She had seen enough missing fingers and crushed feet and other injuries inflicted by farm machinery to have overcome any squeamishness.
She laid o
ut the supplies from the chemist and read swiftly through the simple typed instructions from the envelope. She washed in the bathroom basin, adding half a cup of Dettol to the water; then sat Ramón upright and began unwrapping the bandages.
The blood had dried, and the dressing stuck to the edges of the wound. He closed his eyes, and a light sweat dewed his forehead and chin as she worked it loose.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m trying not to hurt you.’
The dressing came away at last, and she suppressed an exclamation as she saw the wounds. There was a deep puncture low down in the side of his chest and a second corresponding ragged aperture in the smooth muscles of his back that was clogged with a black plug of clotted blood. The skin around the wounds was hot and inflamed, and there was the faint sickly smell of infection.
She knew instantly how those injuries had been inflicted. On her last visit to her brother Sean’s hunting concession in the Zambezi valley, they had answered a call for assistance from a nearby Batonka village that had been attacked by terrorists. That was where she had first seen the distinctive entry puncture and enlarged exit of a through-and-through bullet wound. Ramón was watching her face, so she made no comment and tried to keep her expression neutral as she cleaned the area around the wounds with disinfectant, and then strapped fresh dressings in place with crisp white bandages.
She knew that she had done a proficient job, and he murmured as she eased him back on the pillows: ‘Good. You know what you are doing.’
‘Not finished yet. I have to give you a jab. Doctor’s orders.’ And then in an attempt at humour; ‘Show me your gorgeous bum, chum!’
She stood at the foot of the bed and removed his shoes and socks, then took a grip on the turn-ups of his trousers and, while he arched his back and lifted himself slightly, she pulled them off.
‘Now your underpants.’ She drew them down, and sighed with mock relief. ‘At least you didn’t damage any of my special goodies. That would have made me really mad.’ This time he smiled, and then rolled cautiously on to his side.
She filled the disposable syringe and injected an ampoule of broad-spectrum antibiotic into the smooth hard swell of his buttock. Then she covered him carefully with the down-filled duvet.
‘Now,’ she said firmly, ‘two of these pills – and rest.’
He did not protest and when he had taken the sleeping pills she kissed him and switched out the bedside light.
‘I’ll be in the sitting-room if you need me.’
In the morning his colour was much improved and obviously the antibiotic had done its work. His temperature was down, and his eyes were clear.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asked.
‘Those pills are dynamite. It was like falling over a cliff, and now I could use a bath.’
She ran the bath and helped him through. Once he was seated waist-deep, she used the sponge to clean around the edges of the bandage, and then her attentions moved lower and she plied the soapy sponge with cunning.
‘Ah, you may be damaged on top, but down below things are all working very satisfactorily, I am glad to report.’
‘Merely as a matter of interest, Nurse, is what you are doing at the moment business or pleasure?’
‘A little of one and considerably more of the other,’ she confessed.
Back on the bed, he protested half-heartedly when she filled the syringe with another measure of antibiotic, but she told him sternly: ‘Why are men such cowards? Bottoms up!’ And he rolled over obediently. ‘Good boy,’ she nodded as she withdrew the needle and swabbed the puncture mark with alcohol. ‘Now you’ve earned your breakfast, and I’ve got you a kipper as a reward.’
She enjoyed nursing him. For once she was in a position to give him orders and have them obeyed. While she was busy in the kitchen, she heard him on the telephone, talking Spanish that was too rapid and complicated for her to follow. She listened, trying, despite her limitations, to make sense of it, and the misgivings that had troubled her most of the night returned in full force. To fend them off she slipped down the stairs and ran to the flower and fruit stall on the corner opposite the entrance to the Tube station.
She chose a dark red Papa Meillon rosebud and a perfect golden peach, and ran all the way back. Ramón was still speaking on the telephone when she let herself in.
She arranged the rose and the peach on the breakfast-tray. When she took them through to him he looked up from the telephone and rewarded her with one of his rare and treasured smiles.
She sat on the edge of the bed and carefully forked the succulent flesh off the kipper bone and fed it to him, a mouthful at a time, while he continued his telephone conversation. When he had finished, she took the tray back to the kitchen, and while she was washing up she heard him hang up the telephone receiver.
Quickly she returned to the bedroom and settled down on her own side of the bed with her legs curled up sideways under her in that feminine double-jointed fashion impossible for a man to emulate.
‘Ramón,’ she said quietly and seriously, ‘that is a bullet wound.’
His eyes went cold and deadly green, and he stared back at her without expression.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked, and he was silent, watching her. She felt her resolution fade, but she steeled herself to continue.
‘You are not a banker, are you?’
‘I am a banker most of the time,’ he said softly.
‘And at other times, what are you then?’
‘I am a patriot. I serve my country.’
She felt a hot rush of relief. During the night she had imagined a hundred horrid possibilities: that he was a drug-smuggler, or a bank-robber, or a member of some criminal syndicate involved in a gang war.
‘Spain,’ she said. ‘You are a member of the Spanish secret service, is that it?’
He was silent again, watching her with careful calculation. He was the master of progressive revelation. She must be drawn in gradually, a little at a time, so that she was neither unwilling nor resistant, an insect being entrapped and slowly engulfed in a puddle of honey.
‘You must realize, Bella, that if that were indeed the case I would not be able to tell you.’
‘Of course.’ She nodded happily. She had known another man from this dangerous and exciting world of espionage and intrigue. He was the only man before Ramón with whom she had believed herself to be in love. He had been a brigadier in the South African security police, another powerful ruthless one who could match her spirit and control her wilder emotional excesses. She had lived as man and wife with Lothar De La Rey in the Johannesburg flat for six marvellously stormy months. When he had ended it suddenly and without warning, she had been shattered. Now she realized that it had been shallow infatuation, nothing to compare even remotely with what she had found in Ramón Machado. ‘I understand completely, Ramón darling, and you can trust me. I won’t ask any more silly questions.’
‘I have trusted you with my life already,’ he said. ‘You were the first person I called upon for help.’
‘I’m proud of that. Because you are Spanish and because you are my lover and the father of my baby, I feel myself to be in a large part Spanish as well. I want to help you any way I am able.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘I understand that. I have thought about the baby.’ He reached out and touched her stomach, and his hand felt cool and hard. ‘I want my son to be born in Spain, so that he, too, will be a Spaniard and his claim to the title will be secured.’
She was startled. She had taken it for granted that she would have her baby here in London. The gynaecologist had already made a tentative reservation at the maternity home.
‘Will you do that for me, Bella? Will you make my son a full Spaniard?’ he asked, and she hesitated not a moment longer.
‘Yes, of course, my darling. I will do whatever you wish.’ She leant over him and kissed him. Then she snuggled down on the pillow beside him, careful not to jostle his injuries. ‘If that is what you want, then
we will have to start making arrangements,’ she suggested.
‘I have already done so,’ he confessed. ‘There is an excellent private clinic just outside Málaga. I have a friend at the bank’s head office in Málaga who will find us a flat and a maid. I have arranged a transfer to the head office, so that I will be with you when the baby is born.’
‘It sounds so exciting,’ she agreed. ‘And if you get to choose where the baby is to be born, then I choose where we marry when we eventually can. That’s fair, isn’t it?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, that is fair.’
‘I want to be married at Weltevreden. There is an old slave church on the estate, built a hundred and fifty years ago. My grandmother, Nana, had it completely restored and renovated for my brother Garry’s wedding. It’s exquisite, and Nana filled it with flowers for Garry and Holly. I will have arum lilies. Some people believe that they are unlucky, but they are my favourite flowers and I’m not superstitious, or not much anyway . . .’
Patiently he let her ramble on, occasionally murmuring encouragement, awaiting the precise moment for his next revelation, and she gave him the opening.
‘But we are cutting things a little fine, Ramón darling. Nana will want at least six weeks to make all the arrangements, and by then I am going to be the size of a house. They’ll play the “Baby Elephant Walk” as I come down the aisle.’
‘No, Bella,’ he contradicted her. ‘At your wedding, you will be slim and beautiful – because you will no longer be pregnant.’
She sat bolt upright on the bed. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Ramón. Something has happened, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes. You are right. There is bad news, I’m afraid. I have heard from Natalie. She’s still in Florida. She is being obstinate, and there are legal delays.’
‘Oh, Ramón!’
‘I am as unhappy as you are about it. If there was anything I could do, believe me, I would do it.’
‘I hate her,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, sometimes I feel that way. But truly it is not a disaster, only an inconvenience at the most. We will still be married, and you will still have your little slave church and your arum lilies. It is just that our son will be born before that happens.’