Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (30 page)

“Keep it that way,” Farrell told her. “If you hit a squall and get scared let the tiller go, the boat’ll come about by itself. If the wind increases but you’re not scared then move the tiller slightly left or slightly right—you’ll be tacking then. The important thing for now, though, is to get the hell out of sight of land as fast as possible.” With his one useful arm he was pulling the tarp over his head and shrugging it into position so that it would shade the Genie.

Mrs. Pollifax, tiller in hand, dedicated herself to getting them the hell out of sight of Albania as fast as possible.

Toward five o’clock that afternoon the
Persephone
, a seagoing tug returning to its home port of Otranto from Port of Venice, was making its way southward when the first mate sighted a sailboat with someone waving what looked to be a white petticoat. “Another damned tourist,” he growled, mentally and savagely condemning those pleasure-loving hordes that descended upon the Adriatic believing anybody could sail a boat. He reported it to the captain, who ordered their course slowed, and presently the small boat drew alongside the
Persephone
.

The first mate looked down into the boat and gasped.
“Mon dieu,”
he whispered, for seated at the tiller was one of the wildest-looking women he had ever seen, white hair in shreds, face filthy and blistering from the hot sun. Yards of voluminous skirt surrounded her, but although he recognized the clothes as Greek or Albanian the woman’s features did not match them. Then he saw the tarpaulin lift and his eyes widened, his memory flashing back to the war years and to lifeboats found in the Mediterranean. Both men looked as if
they’d had it but the bearded one at least was in motion; he was grinning broadly and waving an arm, although it was plain from the blood-stained cloth strapped around his other arm that he badly needed a doctor. The first mate gave a brief thought to the type of gunfighters they might be escaping, and hurried to report to the captain.

Mrs. Pollifax, gazing up at the ship from below, wondered why on earth the sailors along the rail were staring at her with horrified fascination. She had naïvely pictured them being welcomed back to civilization with delighted smiles and shouts of joy. Now it occurred to her that in the eyes of civilization she and Farrell and the Genie might just as well be returning from a trip to the moon: their experiences of the past fortnight were too exotic, too melodramatic for a prosaic world to digest. It was the three of them who must adapt now; it was they whom violence had made foreign, and for the first time she conceded how tattered and bizarre they must appear to these well-scrubbed sailors just finished with their tea.

“We’re curiosities,” she realized.

Then the spell broke; a sailor shouted, “
Inglese!
Welcome!” Cheering broke out along the deck rail, and Mrs. Pollifax had to look away to conceal the tears in her eyes.

“Well, Duchess,” said Farrell, smiling at her.

“Well, Farrell,” she said, smiling back at him, and lifted a petticoat to wipe her eyes.

“You look like hell, Duchess,” he said fondly, “but you’re safe.”

“Safe,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, tasting the word on her tongue as if it was a rare wine.

A rope ladder was flung over the side and an officer with a medical kit descended hand over hand to their boat. He went at once to the Genie and bent over him. Two sailors followed down the ladder and in broken English instructed Mrs. Pollifax in the rudiments of rope climbing. With their help she began the ascent, a dozen men shouting words of encouragement from the rail. She would have preferred waiting for Farrell but an officer in a starched, white uniform insisted upon escorting her at once to the captain.

“I must request identification,” said the captain, and then, unbending a little at sight of her face he added, “There must be people you would like to notify?”

Mrs. Pollifax thought of her son and daughter and reluctantly put them aside. “If you would be so kind as to contact
Mr. Carstairs at the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington,” she said.

The captain’s eyes flickered. “It’s that way, is it?” He looked at her with open curiosity. “Suppose you write the message. I ask only that it not be in code and that I see it before it is sent.”

Mrs. Pollifax sat down gratefully at his desk and tried to pull her thoughts together. After chewing on her pencil for a moment she wrote the following:

SIR
:
RESCUED FROM ADRIATIC SEA THIS AFTERNOON BY
 …

She looked up. “What ship is this, and where are you going?”

“The
Persephone
, due to land at Otranto in two hours, or at 1900 hours.”

Mrs. Pollifax began again:

SIR
:
RESCUED FORM ADRIATIC SEA THIS AFTERNOON BY
S
.
S
.
PERSEPHONE ARRIVING OTRANTO AT
1900
HOURS
,
FARRELL AND SECOND COMPANION IN NEED OF MEDICAL ATTENTION
,
HAVE NO PASSPORT OR MONEY AND MUST REQUEST SOME HELP OTHERWISE IT HAS BEEN A MOST INTERESTING TRIP
,
SINCERELY YOURS
,
EMILY POLLIFAX
.

The captain read it through and nodded. “It will be sent immediately,” he said. “I will also send word to Otranto that a doctor will be urgently needed. We do not have one aboard, unfortunately.” He looked at her and smiled faintly. “And you,” he added, “you would perhaps like to wash a little and comb the hair?”

Mrs. Pollifax’s eyes widened. “Wash a little,” she repeated. “Wash a little? Yes, that would be very nice,” she said politely, and suddenly began to laugh.

The boat had not yet docked when a harbor launch drew up beside the
Persephone
and requested permission for two passengers to come aboard. Both men wore business suits; one carried an attaché case up the rope ladder and the other a medical bag. They were escorted at once to the cabin where Mrs. Pollifax, Farrell and the Genie were resting, and without a word the doctor hurried to the berth where the Genie lay. The second man stood and looked appraisingly at Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax.
Completing his scrutiny he said, “Ben Halstead’s my name. I believe we have a mutual friend named Carstairs.”

Mrs. Pollifax brightened. “Yes indeed,” she said, rising from her chair. “I am Emily Pollifax and this is Mr. Farrell, who has a broken leg and a fresh bullet wound in his shoulder and an old one in his arm; and this man …” She glanced toward the Genie, whose eyes were open now but vacant as he gazed at the doctor. “We don’t know who he is but we brought him along anyway. He’s a very peculiar but resourceful Chinese man who speaks English, except that he preferred keeping it a secret for quite a long time.”

“Oh? That’s interesting.” Halstead moved to the berth and over the doctor’s shoulder looked down at the Genie. “He dropped no clues at all, you don’t know anything at all about him?”

“Actually I didn’t trust him at first,” put in Farrell. “Nor did he trust us, which is provocative. But he’s not a Red, and he rescued us from a very sticky situation.”

Mrs. Pollifax said slowly, “Yes, and when I asked him yesterday about next of kin, in case anything happened, he gave a little chuckle and said nobody would miss him, they would have held his funeral two years ago. He’d been dead a long time, he said.”

Halstead frowned. “There’s something damn familiar about the look of him. What’s his condition, Bill, can he be questioned?”

The doctor removed the stethoscope from his ears. “Not for a day or two, sorry. He needs immediate attention and the best of care, but he can be moved. Stretchers, an ambulance, then blood transfusions and straight to the operating room.”

“Will he survive?” asked Mrs. Pollifax anxiously.

“The vital thing is removing the bullet and that’ll be a bit tricky. After that I could answer with more certainty. Some signs of malnutrition, of course; considerable patchwork needed after removal of the bullet, but the odds are in his favor. Barring anything unforeseen—yes, he’ll survive.”

“I’m so glad,” Mrs. Pollifax said warmly.

The doctor, standing erect, only nodded. “From the sound of it we’re docking now.” He pulled the blanket from the top berth and tucked it around the Genie. “The ambulance is waiting at the pier, I’ll send them word to hurry along with a stretcher and then I’ll take a look at you, Mr.—Farrell, is it?”

Farrell said cheerfully, “That’s me, but no need to hurry. I
simply wouldn’t feel comfortable without a bullet in me somewhere.” He was watching Halstead, who kept staring at the Genie. “You recognize him, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Very astute of you,” said Halstead, not turning. “Except recognize isn’t precisely the word; it’s more a feeling of familiarity. If I could only—good grief!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “Dr. Lee Tsung Howell!”

“I beg your pardon?” faltered Mrs. Pollifax.

“Considerably thinner, of course, that’s what fooled me. Good heavens, and it was exactly two years ago that he disappeared—that ties in—and a memorial service really was held for him. Every bit of evidence pointed to his murder by the Red Chinese. There were even two reputable witnesses to testify he was killed and his body carried off by his assassins.”

Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell glanced in astonishment at the Genie. “
Who
is he?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“And
what
?” asked Farrell.

“Dr. Howell, the scientist. Brilliant man. Born in China; father English, mother Chinese. English citizen. Made the mistake of traveling to Hong Kong two years ago. That’s when they murdered—except they didn’t murder him, did they? Snatched him.”

Farrell said incredulously, “You mean he’s
the
Dr. Howell? The protein man?”

“Please,” said Mrs. Pollifax despairingly, “please can someone tell me what we’re talking about, and why on earth a protein man would be locked up in a cell in Albania for two years?”

“Food,” said Halstead. “Can you think of anything China needs more desperately for her underfed millions? She needs food more than communism, guns, armies, factories. If I tell you that at the time of his disappearance Dr. Howell was at work on a method for extracting protein from a common weed—a protein that would feed hundreds of people for only a few pennies—does that explain Red China’s interest in him?”

Farrell whistled.

“Except,” added Halstead, glancing at the Genie, “except they did a fantastic job of covering their tracks. We knew they tried to kidnap him but we believed he fought for his life and was killed.”

“Except there was no body,” pointed out Farrell.

“No, two witnesses instead, each highly placed and of impeccable reputation.”

“Not so impeccable now,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

“No indeed.”

“Do you think they tortured him?”

“Possibly at first, but he’d be no good to them dead. They probably settled for solitary confinement, or slow starvation.” He shook his head. “What a break for the world that you found him! The presses will be humming all night long.”

“Will they hum for us, too?” inquired Mrs. Pollifax.

Both men turned to look at her. “Good God, no,” said Farrell. “The Genie—that is, Dr. Howell—will have escaped by himself against impossible odds. As for Emily Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, who on earth is she?”

“But I feel like
such
a heroine,” confessed Mrs. Pollifax sadly.

“And so you are, Duchess, so you are. But you have never left Mexico City, remember? As for Albania, where is it? You haven’t even read about it in
Time
magazine, let alone visited it.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Pollifax.

Farrell grinned. “Cheer up, Duchess. Do you recall—and it pains me to do so—my suggesting that the Genie was mentally retarded?”

She smiled back. “Yes I do remember, and I believe I said there were flashes of intelligence now and then.”

Halstead laughed. “Just to be charitable I might add that he’s known as quite an eccentric. Would that help?” The stretcher was brought in by two orderlies and they were silent as the Genie was lifted very gently onto it. As he was carried out of the stateroom Mrs. Pollifax said suddenly, “Will I be able to send him get-well cards? I should like to very much if you’ll give me the name of the hospital here.”

Halstead said, “Actually you can learn the hospital’s name simply by reading your newspaper tomorrow morning in Washington, D.C.”

“Washington!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.

“My orders are to fly you at once, nonstop, to Washington.” Seeing their stunned faces he added, “Sorry. You can eat and sleep on the plane, you know, but Carstairs has to see for himself that you’re alive.” He gave them a crooked half-smile. “Apparently he can’t believe it. At any rate immediate questioning is in order. We leave as soon as Bill has taken a look
at that arm and pumped Farrell full of anti-infection and anti-pain shots.”

Mrs. Pollifax groaned. “But I’m still wearing the clothes of a goatherder’s wife and I still haven’t had a bath—only a facewash—and the lice are back and I think they’ve multiplied. Is there no rest at all for the weary?”

“Never. Not in this job, anyway.” He added with a grin, “You may never be in the newspapers, but it isn’t everybody who has a jet plane specially commandeered for them.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s seven o’clock now, European time. There’s a car and a plane waiting, you’ll be in the air within the hour and land in America shortly before midnight—losing a few hours on the ocean, of course. Looks like Walter Reed Hospital for you, old chap.”

Farrell nodded. “Afraid so, yes.”

“America,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax nostalgically. “I feel like singing the national anthem.”

“Better not,” suggested Farrell mildly, and visibly braced himself as the doctor joined them.

They sat in Carstairs’ office, each of them facing him across his broad desk. The lights had been turned low and there were cigarettes for Farrell and hot soup and coffee for them both. Farrell’s arm was in a sling and he had been given four injections and seven hours of drugged sleep on the plane, but still he looked white and frail. After one glance at him Carstairs said flatly, “I won’t keep you long. The important thing is to put the frame of this on tape before you forget; it will surprise you how unreal your adventures will seem to you once you reach a fairly normal state of recovery. At the moment it is only too fresh to you. We need that freshness. You’ve seen General Perdido—he’s important to us. You’ve been in Albania—you’ve experienced a country we know too little about.” His face softened. “And may I congratulate you both on rescuing Dr. Lee Tsung Howell?”