Cloak of Darkness (12 page)

He stared at her.

She drew apart, led the way downstairs. Her voice was raised to normal once more. “I saw you at the market. But you were so fascinated by two old ladies—”

“Not so old. Just lost.” A kidnapping? My God...

“Lost?” Laughter sparkled in her eyes.

“Very lost. They didn’t understand a word of French.”

“Of course you had to help them!”

“Who else was there?” Kidnapped how? he wondered.

“Where did they come from?”

“America—by their voices.” Perhaps drugged and forced onto a dhow...

“You didn’t ask?”

“We never got around to that.” Taken to Yemen? Questioned? That would be no bloody joke.

“Will you see them again?”

“No. They aren’t my type.”

She laughed out loud, almost danced across the paved floor of the courtyard. The old servant emerged from behind a pillar, silently opened the heavy door just enough for Claudel to slip through.

He halted on the threshold. “Please give my thanks to your grandfather. I wish him happiness, a long life.” And I hope the old bastard wishes as much for me—if it doesn’t inconvenience him.

Emilie’s face had lost its humour, her voice was almost inaudible. “Remember,” she said. Careful, her eyes warned; be careful.

He nodded, kissed her wrist, stepped into the night.

In the lane, the houses seemed deeper into sleep. Their lights were out. The scattering of windows had become black patches behind iron bars. There was one lamp fixed to a plaster wall half-way to the street, aiming a bright circle on the unpaved ground. Outside of that solitary beam, deep shadows took over. But the distance before Claudel was short: only two doors to pass before he reached the corner.

He set a brisk pace, his eyes watching the first door on the right-hand side of the lane. Suddenly, he felt a warning, just a hint of the sickly-sweet odour he remembered so vividly from the marketplace. His eyes switched to his left, to an indentation in the wall of a house, a shallow recess with a door half open, hidden by the shadows as he had approached it. A dark, thin figure leaped out, stick upraised, aiming at Claudel’s head.

Claudel whirled around, caught the man’s taut wrist, partly diverted the blow’s strength and direction. It fell on his shoulder, a moment of intense pain, but he held on to the wrist, twisting it back, tried to loosen the man’s grasp on the heavy stick. The door opposite had opened; a second man slipped into the street, a third... Claudel saw the glint of a knife and yelled.

For a moment, the three men stood motionless as the yell shattered the dead silence, reverberated between house wall and house wall. Claudel heard a wrist crack, seized the stick as it fell from the man’s limp hand, aimed a blow that sent the thin figure reeling to the ground. The other two came on, two knives now shining. He backed against a wall, tightened his grip on the stick as he faced the two men, watched the glinting blades. One circled around him, avoiding the stick; the other lunged, gashing Claudel’s left arm as he fended off the knife from his body.

Running feet. A voice shouting. The knives paused, as the two men turned to glance toward the street. A brief second, scarcely time to draw a breath, and they were gone, vanishing into the doorway opposite, with the third man following at a stumbling run. The door clanged shut as Alexandre reached it, a heavy lock turned.

“You are hurt?” he asked, coming over to Claudel.

“Not much.”

“Blood—”

“Could have been worse. Where’s your brother?”

“He had to leave.” Alexandre looked around him nervously. “No use trying to follow these men. That is a spice warehouse they entered; it has other exits.”

Strange, thought Claudel, now that the danger is over, Alexandre’s fear of this lane is returning. Completely forgotten when he raced down here to help me. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, handing over the stick so that he could grasp the slit in his forearm, hold the wound together, staunch the flow of blood. His shoulder hurt like hell.

“They wanted your money?” Alexandre asked as they walked quickly toward the street. Some people had gathered at the corner. Three curious boys had followed Alexandre halfway down the lane.

My life, more like it, thought Claudel. “I guess so.”

“Robbers... My brother would have arrested them. He will be sorry he missed all this.”

“Too bad,” Claudel said.

Alexandre looked at him sharply. “There was a call for all police officers to report for duty. An emergency.” Then the defensive note left his voice. “It’s something big. A special raid. Very important. The military will send units, too.” A raid on Asah’s warehouse—a search for previous deliveries of weapons that were being hoarded. For what?

“Come on,” he urged Alexandre, who was besieged by questions from the curious. They pushed their way through the gathering crowd, the three small boys at their heels telling everyone how they had routed the robbers. Claudel looked at Alexandre’s taxi, standing unguarded. “I tell you what—if your radio has been stolen, I’ll buy you a new one.”

Claudel entered l’Univers by its service door, reached his room by a rear staircase. He was bathing his arm when Aristophanes entered. “Alexandre told me,” he said, his alarm growing. “Nasty, nasty,” he pronounced as he looked at the wound. “It needs stitches.”

“Haven’t time.” There’s a report to be prepared for transmission to London, and I’ve to encode it first. Not that ciphers aren’t easily broken by the new wonder machines, but a code keeps messages safe from the casual eavesdroppers—that new breed of radio buffs who listen to the world’s private business with a twist on the dial and hope to make the headlines. Not with my report, thank you.

“The hospital—”

“No. I’ll have Interintell’s doctors took at it once I get home.” No strange hospital for me; no quick injections, no truth serum.

“That may be too late.”

“This wasn’t any ordinary mugging, Ari. They meant to knock me over the head, kidnap me. When that failed, they tried to shut me up. Permanently.”

“Kill you?”

“They weren’t playing games.” Claudel paused. “Ari, I need your help. Telephone Georges Duhamel. It’s urgent. Ask if I can meet him at his office—within the hour.”

Aristophanes nodded, his eyes on the blood-soaked towel around Claudel’s arm. “I’ll send Sophia—she knows about wounds,” he said hurriedly as he left.

First, decided Claudel, I’ll write out the message, keeping it short but clear. After that I encode it and take it to Duhamel. No one else handles it, and I’ll stand beside him. Six items in all. He found his memo pad and pencil near the phone, began noting.

(1)   Erik—alive, seen in town, has friends.

(2)   Exports Consolidated—US military supplies (illegal) for Ethiopia, and consignment of US weapons (false declaration) to Djibouti; all crates shipped on SS
Juanita
Barcelona origin) from Algiers.

(3)   Klingfeld & Sons—sent message (intercepted) to their informant in The Hague, asking further details of my mission here.

(4)   Klingfeld, again—may have engineered an attack on me tonight. (Arm sliced, but not to worry.)

(5)   The agent Husayn—can no longer be trusted.

(6)   Duhamel—port security, co-operating fully, help invaluable.

That about covered it, Claudel thought. The arm had to be mentioned (all wounds and severe illnesses had to be reported— Bob Renwick insisted on that), but no need to include the shoulder: not dislocated, not broken, thank God; just a heavy bruise, a tendon made painful for a week or two. No need, either, to name William, the sweet old Englishman, not until Claudel could report in detail when he was back in London and explain the little he had guessed about Jean. He owed her that delay.

The door opened. He tore off the page of notes and thrust it into his pocket. Madame entered, every henna-red curl in place, with a bottle of peroxide, antiseptic bandages, and a small first-aid box. “All we have,” she said, and set to work. “This needs stitches.”

“Later.”

She shook her head. “There is so much infection—”

“I know, I know. I have visited the tropics before. Many times.”

Madame raised a pencilled eyebrow but asked no questions. “So much violence tonight! It comes all at once. A quiet week, and then nothing but trouble. You are lucky, monsieur. You are not dead like that poor sailor, all his clothes taken, left lying in a back street dressed like an Arab. Some Arab! Blue-eyed and face blistered by the sun.”

“Navy or merchant seaman?”

“A sailor,” she repeated. “From the
Spaarndam.
But that took an hour to find out. They say he was in the bar with the others. Then he left with someone. So many were here, no one could remember when he left. Or who was with him.” She finished cleaning the wound, began bandaging the arm. “Hold still, Monsieur Claudel! Perhaps he went out to meet a woman. Men take such chances. But stabbed to death—so silently! No one heard even one small cry for help.”

“The other seamen from the
Spaarndam?”

“Never knew a thing. They left to join their ship before the poor boy was identified.”

“Were they together?”

“Why, no—in small groups, some singly.” She looked up at him in surprise. What made him interested in sailors who drank so much that they could hardly walk to a taxi?

“When was the body discovered?”

Her surprise increased. “About eleven o’clock.”

“Near here?”

“A short distance away. Thank the Lord it wasn’t found on our doorstep.” She tucked the ends of the bandage neatly in place, said, “You ought to be a lawyer in court, Monsieur Claudel. So many questions.”

“Sorry. And thank you. Perhaps you should be a nurse. You have gentle hands.”

That won her completely. She even blushed under the circles of rouge on her plump cheeks.

“But you have,” he insisted. “One last question, if I may. You said the man’s clothes had been taken. Does that mean everything he owned?”

“Everything. Why else was it so hard to identify him?”

Stripped completely. Papers that he might have carried for safety in a belt under his shirt, his boarding pass—Claudel drew a deep breath. “A thorough job.”

“A cruel one. So many evil people in this world!” She gathered up the last of her equipment. “I’ll have brandy sent up to you, Monsieur Claudel. But the hospital would be the place—”

“Thank you, no. I have some things to do.”

Both thin-pencilled eyebrows lifted. “At this time of night?” The question had been forced out of her. She didn’t wait for a reply, perhaps knew from her experience with Aristophanes that none would be given. With tact and a sympathetic look, she left.

Yes, Claudel verified from his watch, it was almost twelve thirty. The
Spaarndam
would have sailed. With Erik? In the right clothes he could have slipped on board, mixing with a group of drunks who were hardly capable of noticing anything beyond their own footing. And the officer in charge? Like those at the entrance to the dock, he would be counting heads and passes. And the fake Englishman would be waiting to hide and help the stowaway. I may, thought Claudel, have to rephrase my report.

Angry and frustrated, he reached for the telephone and asked to be connected with the duty officer at the dock where the
Spaarndam
had been berthed. There was a tedious wait, of course, but at last he had his information. The
Spaarndam
had sailed at midnight—no delay.

“Any of the crew left on shore?” He turned quickly as the door opened, but it was Aristophanes with a bottle of brandy and two glasses.

None. Those at liberty had all returned. Earliest arrivals at twenty-three fifteen; the last man at twenty-three fifty.

“Cutting it fine,” joked Claudel and thanked the unknown voice. So the correct numbers were accounted for; between quarter past eleven and ten minutes to twelve, all crew members had gone on board. Including a dead man.

Erik... “God damn him to everlasting hell,” Claudel said, and faced Aristophanes.

A moment for diplomacy, thought Aristophanes, and offered a glass of brandy to Claudel. “You sound more like yourself, my friend. Drink up!”

Hardly the right advice for brandy, thought Claudel, but he did. Aristophanes poured again, along with a glass for himself. Now what deserves two free brandies? Certainly not one small wound on my arm. “So you couldn’t reach Duhamel. Or you did, and he couldn’t see me tonight. Right?” He cursed softly, steadily.

Aristophanes waited. “He is dead. Duhamel is dead.”

There was a long silence. “How?”

“His car went out of control. It crashed, exploded.”

“Where? When?”

“Tonight. As he was leaving the port. He had been working late, so his assistant told me, and he was on his way to town—a special meeting.”

An official meeting, guessed Claudel. If the raid on Asah’s warehouse had uncovered a cache of weapons, then there would be one hell of a discussion. His thoughts broke off, and for a moment his brain seemed to have stopped functioning. He gathered his wits. “His car went out of control?” Georges was an excellent driver, and he babied that little Renault. “There was nothing wrong with it this morning. I drove it.”

“I think,” Aristophanes said slowly, “you should return to France. Tomorrow.”

“Were there witnesses?”

“Yes.”

“Which came first—the explosion or the crash?”

Aristophanes studied his glass, dropped his role as innkeeper. “They could have come together. The wheel could have controlled an explosive device. At the first sharp turn—and one is necessary when leaving the docks—there would be an explosion.” He finished his drink. “Yes, my friend, you take the first plane to Paris. There is a flight leaving tomorrow.”

“First, I must send an urgent message to London. May I use your transmitter, Ari?”

“Very urgent?”

“More urgent than ever.”

“Perhaps send it to Athens? London may be too far.”

“I’ll try for London.”

“I’ll show you how to—”

“I have to encode it.”

“Of course.”

“Not because of you, Ari,” Claudel said quickly. “But there are unfriendly ears. You understand?”