The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (10 page)

He left. Georges considered possible reasons why he should be left hungry and arrived at the alarming theory that during the move he would be put out of action by some drug which must be administered on an empty stomach.

The only comfort was that they knew nothing whatever of Zia's existence. He paced the room, muttering excitedly to himself until he realised that the walls might be bugged. About midday he heard someone else complaining to himself with a rich selection of Spanish expletives, presumably the guard outside the door. All that could be guessed was that he had received some order which he was not going to obey.

‘What part of Spain is your home,
compañero
?' Georges asked.

There was silence. It might be due to the guard's surprise at being addressed in his own language or because he was forbidden to speak to the prisoner.

‘Vizcaya. And you?'

‘Also the north, but from León.'

‘What have you done?'

‘They say I am a British agent.'

‘That cannot be true. You would have been protected.'

‘It is human to err.'

‘
Foder
! Then you could help me!'

Close to the door in a voice that hardly carried the guard told his troubles. He had been ordered to accompany the prisoner on board a boat which would take them out to a rendezvous at sea. He did not want to go. He was a communist, yes, but he longed to return from exile to his Vizcaya now that the Spanish Government allowed it. The KGB would see that he didn't. He knew too much.

‘And so this afternoon before it is too late I shall bolt. Where to I do not know. They will kill me if they can find me.'

‘Take me with you!'

‘I cannot. It will be hard enough to get away myself. But I will give a message if it can be done secretly.'

‘To the police?'

‘They will not come in time. They will hesitate, for the man who owns this house is above suspicion. But I will give a message to your chief if I can reach him. At least I can say where you are and how you will leave. And then for me he might find a place of safety and a way of travel.'

The man sounded honest and desperate. If only Georges had in fact been a British agent delivery would have been in sight, but whom was he to approach? Zia and Paul Longwill were the only possibles but neither could undertake a rescue operation at short notice.

‘Can you open the door?'

‘No. The Czech has the key.'

So there could be no meeting to judge the man eye to eye; his plausible story and his voice must suffice. He sounded sincere and desperate, prepared to take the chance that his prisoner—if it would do him any good—might report his intention to Appinger. There was a risk in sending him to Zia, but it could be accepted since the true identity of Mrs Fanshawe was not easily discoverable and her involvement in the Kren affair quite unknown. Assured of that, she could return to Hungary.

‘Do you know the country east of Oxford?' he asked.

‘Well enough. I ride a motorcycle when I am free. For two years I have been the manservant here. I look after the house while he is in London and sometimes I report on his visitors.'

‘Go from Thame to Alderton Abbas. At an inn called the White Hart ask for Mrs Fanshawe. She is the French wife of a British general and has the contacts which could help us. Tell her first that these people know nothing of her or her movements. For the present she is quite safe. Then tell her where I am and what they mean to do with me.
De acuerdo
?'

‘Never fear! I cannot hope that we shall meet again. But if we do I am Diego Irata at your service.
Salud, compañero
!'

From then on there was the usual silence, emphasized by the line of trees stirring in a light breeze without a sound. Above the tree tops the strip of sunlit downland offered the sanity of freedom. He heard a car or two drive up and quickly leave, probably delivering mail or supplies. In how many secluded country houses was there, he wondered, a guest unknown to police or neighbours or to the normal services of daily life.

In the afternoon a motorcycle drove away at unusually high speed. That could be Irata. For the first time he heard an excited voice loudly calling from the house below him. Alarmed they would certainly be until, after thinking it over, they could be pretty sure that Irata would not return with police. What was a Spanish manservant's improbable story against the utmost respectability and a room by then tidied up without a trace of a captive? And was Irata likely to proclaim himself a defected agent of the KGB when all he wanted was to go home to Spain in peace without any police record?

Georges waited for Appinger to come with the syringe or an apparently harmless drink. Without Irata to hold him down there might be a chance of resistance unless that superior fellow, his host, lent a hand. Till now it had hardly occurred to the peaceable Georges that he himself might turn to violence—not that he had much chance of success in a free-for-all if Appinger used that automatic of his. It was possible that no one else was in the house besides those two, for the van had driven away after unloading him. The driver who had offered him that fatal lift could be there, but Georges came to the conclusion that he was on the outside sale staff rather than an executive of the firm. He had looked startled and shocked when Appinger swooped from the door of the van.

A boat, Irata had said. Well, the house could not be anywhere near the sea but could be on or near the Thames. He knew little about the river but presumed it was easy to borrow or hire some roomy, seaworthy craft for a week. And who would disturb a sleeping passenger down below? Dear old Rivac—or whatever name they chose to give him—drunk as usual!

Night fell and still nothing happened nor was likely to happen till the complete darkness after midnight. He was far from forgotten, however, for when he pressed the switch no light followed. He stared out of the window, his only communication with the world, night sight growing keener until he could just distinguish the bare skyline: a strip of black between the faintly moonlit sky and the darker black of tree tops.

At last Appinger came in accompanied by a physically powerful partner whose face might be that of any European nation. He was probably English since Appinger had to communicate with him in his own scrappy version of the language.

‘I'll hold him down,' the newcomer said.

‘Later. On boat. Not want carry him.'

Georges was efficiently gagged and ordered to clasp his hands behind his head. It was no use to resist. Appinger was weighing the automatic in his hand, showing rather than pointing it. Georges was reasonably certain that he would not be killed until Prague had got what it wanted from him, but there could be no objection to disabling him, if necessary, by a bullet through arm or leg.

He was taken downstairs through the dark hall and out into a gravel drive. The presumed owner of the house was waiting with his back to them and led the way down through two terraces to a landing stage, keeping the pool of light from his torch on the ground so that the captive should have no chance of recognising his surroundings. Apparently the boat should have been waiting but it was not. They decided excitedly that Irata had returned and cast off the mooring. They were sure of that though it seemed to Georges highly unlikely in view of what Irata had said to him; but the motives and intentions of all concerned were as impenetrable as the pool of black water among reeds.

A white cabin cruiser was slowly drifting in midstream. The beam of his torch played over the banks of the pool, revealing nothing at all but mud, rushes and the stern of a punt among them. The big man who had brought the boat from the Thames into this puddle—for it was he who denied that he had moored her carelessly—wasted no time. He launched himself in a running long jump on to the punt, poled it to the cruiser and gave her a touch of power, going astern and then maneuvering to come alongside again.

Meanwhile Irata's employer had rushed along the bank in the hope of spotting him hidden among the reeds. He must have decided either that it was hopeless in the dark or that Irata was safely stuck in the mud, for he turned back almost immediately. As soon as he had done so, something splashed into the water behind him.

‘Here!' he shouted.

Georges could faintly discern the lower twigs of a willow shaking. Appinger too must have seen the movement and fired two shots, one above and one on the level of the branch. The reports woke Georges from his helplessly disinterested observation of what the hell was going on. Appinger was alone with him and his gun was pointing away. The punt drifted in the pool broadside on. He dived from the stage and came up on the far side of it.

A respite, but little hope. He was hidden from the two on the bank but in full view of the man on the cruiser. He drew a long breath, ducked under the punt and swimming on his back with his arms against the bottom propelled the punt back into the rushes. When it was aground forward and the mud began to catch at his legs he knew a moment of panic—black night, black wood against his forehead, black slime to breathe, jammed under the punt until he suffocated. But it was not as bad as that. His head easily came clear and in the cover of the reeds he could safely put one hand on the side of the punt and remove the gag with the other.

The cruiser could get in no further and reversed out. Appinger, however, was not a man to be beaten. He had lost a prisoner through a moment of carelessness and was open to reprimand for failing to prevent the disappearance of a useful Spanish underling. Perhaps pride and patriotism also counted. At any rate he decided that if Rivac could reach the punt so could he. He flung off his coat and plunged in; but the punt was now firmly aground and he could only approach it by walking or frog-like squirming. He chose to wade; and that, till he could pull out a leg, was the end of his advance.

Georges meanwhile was hauling himself through the mud by the stems of rushes, using the long punt pole as horizontal support. A clump of stems pulled out under the tug of his hands with several pounds of black sludge attached to the roots. It was too good a chance to miss. He whirled the clump round his head and let fly. It caught Appinger full in the face just as he was hauling himself into the punt.

‘This way, Georges!'

The voices was not Irata's but, amazingly, Zia's. Then he distinguished her outline crouched on hands and knees between the shoots of a willow branch which had dropped into the water. His recent host, the only man left on the bank, also saw her and managed to grab her ankle with both hands. He was leaning forward at full stretch and the left side of his throat was exposed. George, encouraged by his magnificent piece of slapstick which had spattered and momentarily blinded Appinger, went over to the attack. With his feet now on a firm clump of roots he gathered up the heavy punt pole like a lance and lunged with such force that he himself fell forward. The little brass crescent at the end of the pole took the man in that inviting throat and whirled him against the hard bank. Georges climbed out and looked at the mangled mess of gullet and muscle and the fast stream of blood.

‘Good God! I'm afraid I've hurt him!' he exclaimed.

The ludicrous understatement released Zia's tension. Her nerves had been stretched to the limit by the risk she had taken in creating a diversion, by a bullet which had gone through her hair and the final loss of hope when Fyster-Holmes grabbed. She burst into a peal of half-hysterical laughter, quickly swallowed.

There was no doubt that Fyster-Holmes was dead or rapidly dying. Whichever it was, they had only seconds to get clear. The boatman had thrown a rope to Appinger and hauled him on board. The cruiser was already nosing the landing stage.

George was slow off the mark, his clothes a flapping mass of mud—but so were Appinger's. Zia by now knew the lay-out of the garden. She led the way straight up the lane, across the road and over a gate into a field of young potatoes. Georges signalled to her to drop down and lie flat in a furrow. In the darkness they were indistinguishable from clods of earth.

Their two pursuers could faintly be heard searching the belt of trees which bordered the road. They soon gave up. They might have picked up the black trail which showed that the fugitives had crossed the road and were hopelessly lost in the night. After that there was silence.

‘Do you know where we are?' George whispered.

‘More or less. We went over a bridge at a place called Wallingford.'

‘Who's we?'

‘The Spaniard who came with your message. I made him bring me here on the back of his motorbike and sent him back to Paul Longwill with my compliments.'

‘He knows who you are?'

She told him her part of the story, assuring him that Paul would help if anybody could.

‘We have only to get back.'

‘I can't. Look at me!'

She could hardly recognise him as human till he sat up.

‘Someone will give us a lift. We'll say you fell in the river.'

‘And when he is found, when his—er—body is found? The chap who gives us a lift will go straight to the police. Hopeless! Hopeless! Accused of murder! I shall give myself up.'

‘Georges, patience! You have only to tell your story.'

‘This chap you call Fyster-Holmes—Irata said he was above suspicion. I've no proof. I'm a bloody burglar from Lille. Or one of Fyster-Holmes's boy friends. Tried to rape me. Sloshed him with the punt pole. But I ought to have let him, so the judge says. Hell!'

‘Georges, your imagination! Come back to earth! They'll think it was Irata. They quarrelled. Irata killed him and ran away.'

‘That's worse still. Poor Irata! And they won't think it long. Fingerprints on the punt and the pole. There must be some when the mud dries in the sun.'

‘What happened to your case?'

‘Appinger has got it. And a lot of good it will be to him!'

In the distance they heard the slow beat of a marine engine and the change to full power as the boat reached open water.