The English Assassin Page 17

  “There’s a lot of hungry people waiting on the docks for unwary yachts. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be wise.”

  The motor boat started up again and went away.

  “If he can move, why can’t we?”

  “He’s smaller. He’s got less to lose. I mean, there’s less risk for him.” From the pocket of his white silk dressing gown he took a white box. He opened the box and took a pinch of white powder from it, sniffing it vigorously first into one nostril and then into the other. He put the box back and continued to stare out of the porthole.

  She went to the big radiogram and picked up a record. It was her own, from last year’s hit Only You. She put it on and listened to herself singing the blues number which came in the middle of the show, ‘Gonna Kill That Man’.

  She smiled wistfully.

  Gonna kill that man, if I can.

  You have to be cruel to be kind.

  I can’t get him out of my mind.

  He’s the worst sort of guy you could possibly find

  To his vices, I guess, I am utterly blind.

  But if he should try to two-time me

  He’ll discover that I won’t sublime be.

  I’ll take out my gun

  And I’ll stop all his fun.

  I’m gonna kill that man—

  If he loves a she who ain’t me.

  It was not her usual sort of material, yet it had been the number they’d liked best, especially in London. She’d used a sort of Hoagy Carmichael technique for it. But she still didn’t think much of it herself. She stopped the record and turned it over to ‘Dancing on the Clouds’ which was much more her: bitter-sweet but essentially gay. Yet even this reminded her of the fog outside and she turned the Bakelite volume knob off with a snap, though she could still hear her voice, very, very faintly from the turntable. It was like a ghost. It made her shiver.

  Her lover came towards her.

  Was it all over? she wondered. The whole thing? Was she finished?

  He was handsome in his white sweater, his white gown and white flannels, but he was pale. Another ghost in this foggy purgatory.

  He embraced her.

  “Una.”

  THE FLYING BOAT

  They were going back.

  Captain Nye steered the DoX over the choppy waters of the harbour. Behind them, Rowe Island lay in ruins, her airship masts buckled, her hotels blasted, her streets wasted, her mines and mine-workers buried under the tumbled granite of the great volcanic hill. The placid Indian Ocean, a sheet of burnished blue steel reflecting a brazen sun, remained.

  “Well, that’s bloody that, then,” said Frank Cornelius, stripping off his coolie blouse to reveal a loud, orange pullover. He wiped the best part of the make-up from his corrupt features. “And that’s Jerry down the drain, if he isn’t very careful indeed.”

  “I hope not.” Catherine stood behind the two men who had already taken their seats. She dried her face with a Rodier towel. “It’s such a beautiful day, isn’t it?” She wore an open-necked white shirt and white jodhpurs. Her calf-length riding boots were light tan. Her longish hair fell in two tight waves to her shoulders. She wore little make-up. She looked wonderful.

  “Best weather in the world on Rowe Island,” said Captain Nye. “A great pity.”

  Miss Brunner was absent, as was the skeleton of the child. Nothing had gone right, really.

  Captain Nye switched on all the engines and opened up the throttle, roaring out to sea. The floats began to rear beneath them, the wing-flaps whistled, and up they went into the clear, blue yonder.

  Catherine wandered into the ballroom which had been refitted as a spacious lounge. Nobody felt like dancing at the moment. There were violently coloured Bakst murals on the walls. She looked enviously at the rich, fantastic scenes of fairyland forests and exotic oriental princesses and Nubian slaves. It was a world she would feel happy in at the present moment. She was exhausted. She needed a rest, but she wanted a voluptuous rest. Hashish, honey and a handsome Hindu lover.

  Professor Hira appeared, climbing the steps into the lounge and yawning. “I was asleep. I hadn’t realised we were taking off so soon.” His round, genial face held a faintly puzzled look. “How long have we been up?”

  She nodded out of the nearest window. “Not long. You can still see the island. Look.”

  “I won’t, thanks. I’ve seen quite enough of Rowe Island now. A terrible fiasco. I feel so guilty.”

  “Guilty? You shouldn’t feel guilty.” She closed her eyes, leaning back on the Beaumont tapestry cushions. She wished he hadn’t come to interrupt what had promised to be quite a thrilling reverie. He was always too talkative when he got up. She pretended to doze.

  “Yes,” he said soberly. “It was all my fault. The ritual was infallible, in itself, and with the right sort of cosmic energy, we should have succeeded. But how was I to know that the majority of the coolies had been replaced by Malays? Those Moslems, they’re the next best thing to an atheist. And then there was all the trouble with the time-concept, nobody quite agreeing on that. Again, the Malays…”

  “Well, then—” She took a deep, lazy breath and drew her legs up on the couch. “It was their fault. It doesn’t matter now. Though it’s a pity about the Governor’s residence. Wasn’t that a charming building?”

  “Did you like it? I’ve had to look at a spot too much of that type of thing in Calcutta, I’m afraid.”

  Catherine caught only the last words. “Afraid? It’s a relief to know someone else is.”

  “Afraid? What of? I’ve never seen you looking better.”

  “The future, I suppose. And yet I hate the past. Don’t you?”

  “I’ve never quite understood the difference. I don’t see it like that.”

  “A woman—well—I’m forced to. In some ways, at least. I know it would be better for me if I didn’t.”

  “If time could stand still,” said Hira reflectively. “I suppose we should all be as good as dead. The whole business of entropy so accurately reflects the human condition. To remain alive one must burn fuel, use up heat, squander resources, and yet that very action contributes to the end of the universe—the heat death of everything! But to become still, to use the minimum of energy—that’s pointless. It is to die, effectively. What a dreadful dilemma.”

  Captain Nye stepped from the pilot’s cabin into the lounge. “Your brother’s steering. He picks things up fast, doesn’t he?”

  “Anything he can get.” Catherine regretted her waspish tone and added: “He’s very intelligent, Frank.” She looked into Nye’s blue-grey eyes and smiled.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think it’s time I hit the hay. It’s been a long—long…” She yawned.

  She nodded to Hira and followed Captain Nye to the stairs, down past the cocktail bar, the cabin area and into the cabin. As he kissed her she held him tightly, saying: “I’d better warn you. I’m very tired.”

  “Don’t worry.” He unbuttoned his jacket. “So am I.”

  She saw him shiver slightly. “Are you cold?”

  “A tiny touch of malaria, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’ll cuddle up to you and keep you warm,” she said.

  Professor Hira, feeling both lonely and jealous, joined Frank in the control cabin. Frank was wearing his fur-trimmed tinted flying goggles and looked a bit like a depraved lemur. He patted Hira’s knee as the Indian physicist sat down. “’Ello, ’ello, old son! How goes it?”

  “Not so dusty,” said Hira. “Are you sure that chap Nye’s all right?”

  “What? Nye? One of the best. Why?”

  “Well—going with your sister…”

  “He’s been sweet on her for years. Cathy knows what she’s doing.”

  “She’s such a lovely girl. A generous girl.”

  “Yes,” said Frank vaguely. “She is.” He laughed. “I quite fancy her myself. Still, I’m not
the only one, eh?” He nudged Hira in the ribs. Hira blushed. The plane veered and started to dive, banking to starboard with the engines screaming. Frank inexpertly righted her, but didn’t seem worried by the near-miss; he continued to chat cheerfully, telling Hira a succession of bad dirty jokes (mostly about incest, bestiality and Jews) until Hira thought he would cry.

  He changed the subject as soon as he could. “I wonder what the political climate’s like, back there.” He motioned towards the West.

  “Bloody hell! Not worth thinking about. That’s as good as finished, anyway, nowadays, isn’t it?”

  “Does it ‘finish’?”

  “Well, you know what I mean. We’ve got our plane, we’ve got our health, we’ve got the Cornelius millions— or will have soon. We’ve got each other. Why should we worry?” Frank moved the joystick from his left to his right hand and stretched out towards Hira.

  “I was thinking of the moral question,” said Professor Hira.

  “Oh, fuck that!”

  Frank’s hand dived into Hira’s lap and squeezed.

  The Indian physicist shrieked and was his.

  The plane flew perilously close to the water and then began to climb as Frank took it up towards a cloud.

  THE RAFT

  Sun-baked, salt-caked, it lay in the middle of the Arabian Sea on a waterlogged raft made of oil-drums, ropes and rush matting. The raft had no mast, held nothing but the shapeless heap of flesh and rags which might have been dead save for the spasm which occasionally ran through it when a small wave lifted the raft or swept over it, so that it sank a little further into the warm sea. One of the drums had been holed by what looked like a series of machine-gun bullets; it was this which had helped to deprive the raft of its buoyancy.

  The flesh was blistered as if it had been exposed to fire; it was blackened in places. In other places bones stuck through at odd angles. There was a flake or two of dried blood. From time to time there were sounds: a grunt, a moan, a few babbled words.

  The raft was drifting out to sea. The nearest land was now Bombay, 400 miles away, where a great sitar master, dying of cholera, was the only man with any notion of the raft’s whereabouts. There was not much chance of rescue, even if rescue had been desired.

  * * *

  Jerry felt nothing. He was one with the flotsam of the great sea; almost one with the sea itself. He was content, listening absently to the odd voice; remembering the odd image. If this were dying, it was a relaxing experience, to say the least.

  “Remember the old days?” said Miss Brunner’s voice. “Or were they the new days? I forget. The usual tense trouble.” She laughed gently. “Echoes.”

  “Nothing but,” murmured Jerry.

  “But echoes from where?”

  “Everywhere?”

  “They would be, I suppose. Lapland won’t be the same. Caves. Large bodies of water. The sky. The pleasures are constant, even if the problems change.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are the simple pleasures the only realities?”

  Jerry couldn’t reply.

  “Oh, what a lovely, drifting sea this is.” The voice faded away. “Who are we, I wonder?”

  “Resistance,” said a child, “is useless.”

  “Absolutely,” Jerry agreed.

  “The schizophrenic condition finds its most glorious expression in Hinduism,” remarked Professor Hira. “Whereas Christianity is an expression of the much less interesting paranoid frame of reference. Paranoia is rarely heroic, in the mythical sense, at least.”

  But Jerry found this argument barren. He didn’t encourage a discussion. Instead, he remembered a kiss.

  “Feeling seedy? I know I am.” Karl Glogauer came and went. Jerry had confused him with Flash Gordon.

  “Time,” said the sad voice of Captain Cornelius Brunner, “ruins everything.” They would not be meeting again for another thirty-five years. “So long, Jerry.”

  “I love you,” said Jerry.

  With an effort he raised himself on his wounded hands.

  “I love all of you.”

  He looked at the sea. The sun was setting and the water was the burning colour of blood.

  “Oh!”

  A few tears dripped from his awful eyes. Then the head sank back. The night came and the raft dropped lower in the water until an observer might have thought that the body floated unsupported on the surface. The sun rose, pink and mighty on the western horizon, and Jerry raised his head for one swift glimpse. The sea ran through his burnt hair and made it float like weed; it washed his torn flesh and moved the rags of his black car coat; it ran into his reddened mouth and the sockets of his eyes, and Jerry, at peace, hardly noticed.

  A little later, lizardlike, he crawled to the edge of the raft and slid quietly into the water, disappearing at once.

  It was going to be a long century.

  PROLOGUE (concluded)

  … and in spite of their maudlin sympathy, self-interest finally dominated everything else and so I was betrayed again, left alone. I think it must have been the final straw. Certainly, I ceased to trust anyone else for several years, then when Monica came along I forgot all that. I trusted her absolutely. And, of course, she let me down. Perhaps she didn’t mean to. Perhaps it was too much of a strain. She should have kept the baby. I don’t know how long I stayed in the kitchen with her after I’d done it. You could say that the balance of my mind was disturbed. I mean, what’s a country for? What do you pay taxes for? What do you give your patriotism to? You expect something from your own country, your parents, your relatives. And then they don’t deliver. Nobody cares. Every promise society makes to you, it doesn’t keep. They kill babies before they’re born, after they’re born, or they do it the slow way, prolonging the moment of death for scores of years. I am not pleading guilty. By pleading insane, I am pleading innocent. Surely, I’m the victim. What does it mean? But I want to die. It’s the only solution. And yet I love life. I know that seems strange. I love the lakes and the forests and all that. But it seems unnatural now. We’ve got to go, haven’t we? I never asked to be born. I tried to enjoy it, I tried to be positive and optimistic. I’m well-educated, you know. It was mercy-killing. Any killing is, if you look at it one way. I am trying to control myself. I’m sorry I’m sorry.

  —Maurice Lescoq, Leavetaking

  SHOT FOUR

  POLICE DIG UP MORE HUMAN REMAINS

  Police digging at Leatherhead (Surrey) where a woman’s hand was found on Thursday found more remains yesterday in a navy blue zip bag at a shallow depth.

  Wrapped separately in polythene were two portions of thigh, a left leg and a foot with a blue slipper on it. Police said they thought other parts of the body were ‘somewhere else’.

  Morning Star, 4 September, 1971

  OBSERVATIONS

  “There’s a future in chemicals, if you ask me,” said Lieutenant Cornelius. He lifted binoculars to his bleak eyes and stared without interest at the Indian aircraft carrier his CA class destroyer Cassandra had been tracking for two days.

  Overhead flew five or six small helicopters of different nationalities, including a British Wasp; below floated three or four of the latest nuclear submarines, among them the Remorseless, the Concorde and the Vorster. The Mediterranean fairly swarmed with busy bits of metal. Not too far off, a frigate of the Imperial South Russian Navy was keeping its eye on Lieutenant Cornelius’s ship, and a Chinese ‘flying ironclad’—an armoured airship of obscure origin—observed the Russian.

  “Chemicals and plastics,” Cornelius’s No. 2, Collier, agreed, leaning over the rail of the bridge and looking down at the rather dirty decks where bored seamen lounged in each other’s arms. Under the barrel of the forward 4.5-inch gun, the deck cargo creaked in its ropes. It was a single box, marked AMMUNITION/DANGER. “That’s what I’d put my money in. If I had any.”

  “Buy the plants,” said Frank Cornelius. “Take over. Go for the durables. Oil. Water. Steel. Air. Chemicals. Plastics. Electronics. That’s surv
ival. My brother’s got the right idea—or had—or will have…” He frowned and changed the subject, handing the glasses to Collier. “See if you can spot any change.”

  Collier was happy to get a turn with the binoculars. He straightened his shoulders and peered self-importantly through the eyepieces. “Are they having a party or something on deck?”

  “They’ve been up to that since this morning. It’s disgusting. I think it’s meant to distract us from whatever they don’t want us to know about.”

  “Big girls, ain’t they?” said Shakey Mo.

  “Hermaphrodites.”

  “I thought they were on our side.”

  Frank went down into the Operations Room and consulted his grubby charts. He could have done with something a bit more up to date. He’d inherited the charts from his father and the political boundaries shown were nothing less than ludicrous. He moved a couple of counters to cope with the recently arrived South Russians. There was hardly space on the chart for another marker. Fragment split into fragment. Was it society or himself that was breaking up?

  He was getting tired of the whole thing. A bloody great Prussian dreadnought had been after them for a week, taking a particular interest in their deck cargo. That meant a leak. Frank wondered if it wouldn’t be wiser to turn round and go back to their Marseilles base or, failing that, make straight for Aden. With radio silence, there was no chance of getting his orders changed until he reached a port. He wished he hadn’t taken on the responsibility of the cargo, now. If he could have been somewhere suitable when word came, he might have been able to turn a profit, given a slight shift in the balance of power at home. That was why he’d volunteered. Now he realised what a stupid idea it had been. He was never any good at the big deals. At little deals, he was great. He should have stuck at what he knew he could do well. Here he was, in the middle of the bleeding Med, while his nearest customers were at the other end of the North Sea. Fuck a duck, it was just his luck. He rubbed his greasy chin, flipping through his Boatswain’s Manual for the right order to give the coxswain and the engineers. He’d make for Hamburg and hope for the best.