“And then some.”
Mallory listened to what he had to say, a strange abstracted look on his face. “I’ve spoken to NATO intelligence since you were last here.”
“About Montefiore.”
Mallory nodded. “It’s curiously disturbing, Paul. They haven’t got a thing on him. Now that worries me-that really does worry me. I wouldn’t mind knowing that he was the most dangerous double agent in the game as long as one had a hint, but this whole situation smells to high heaven. How do you see it?”
Chavasse stood up and paced backward and forward across the room. “Let’s take the two most important strands: Colonel Ho Tsen-a very dangerous Chinese agent-and Leonard Rossiter, who seems to have fallen for the party line during his captivity. That still leaves us with the most puzzling bit of all. Why should a multimillionaire financier like Enrico Montefiore help to further the cause of militant Chinese-style Communism? And there’s another point-the immigration racket. So amateurish.”
“All right, so Rossiter’s organization
“You could be right,” Chavasse admitted. “They certainly can’t afford to be too choosy. Any kind of a contact in the European market is better than nothing. I suspect that might be the way they looked at it, and they can be naive. People are always telling us that we don’t understand Asians. That may be true, but they certainly don’t understand us any better.”
Mallory sat there staring into space for perhaps thirty seconds, then he nodded. “Right, Paul, it’s all yours. Find them-all three of them: Ho Tsen, Rossiter and Montefiore. I’d like to know what it’s all about, but the most important thing is to bring them to a stop.”
“A dead stop?”
“Naturally. Seek and destroy. I can’t see any point in taking half measures. It’s completely your baby from now on. Use the usual communication system whenever possible to keep me informed. See Jean on your way out about money. Anything else?”
Chavasse nodded. “The man you’ve got keeping an eye on this bloke Gorman at Fixby-pull him off.”
“You’re going down there yourself?”
“It would seem as good a place as any to start.”
Mallory reached for the phone. “I’ll see to it now. Good luck.”
Jean Frazer glanced up as Chavasse emerged. “You look pleased with yourself.”
“I am.”
Chavasse helped himself to a cigarette from the box on her desk. The eyes were like black glass in the dark Celtic face. He looked like the devil himself, and for some reason, she shivered.
“What is it, Paul?”
“I’m not too sure,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I felt like this.”
“Like what?”
“Personally involved in something. Me, Paul Chavasse, not just the Bureau. I’m thinking of an old man on his back on a south coast beach this morning who only wanted to see his son, and a fussy little woman who died alone, utterly terrified. A silly, stupid little woman who never hurt anyone in her life.”
He sighed heavily and stubbed out his cigarette. “I want revenge, Jean. For the first time, I want to take care of someone permanently for personal reasons. It’s a new sensation. What worries me is how happy I feel about the prospect.”
HE parted from Darcy Preston with regret, for he had come to like the brilliant, sardonic Jamaican, and not only because of what they had been through together. As he packed one or two things, Darcy sat on the window seat and watched. He was wearing a pair of Chavasse’s slacks, a polo neck sweater and a sports jacket in Donegal tweed.
“Sure you’re okay for cash?” Chavasse asked, as he locked his suitcase.
Darcy nodded. “I still have a bank account here.”
Chavasse buttoned an old naval bridge coat that gave him a rather nautical air. “I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you again. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be on your way to sunny Jamaica.”
“Land of carefree calypso and shantytowns. Give me Birmingham any day.” Darcy grinned. “And what about you? Where do you start? At this place, Fixby?”
“Good a place as any.”
The Jamaican held out his hand. “This is it, then. Good luck, Paul, and next time you see Rossiter, give him one for me. Preferably with your boot.”
Chavasse had the door half-open when Darcy spoke again. “Just one thing. It’s been eating away at me, so I’ve got to ask. Why did they kill Harvey that way?”
“I can only guess. They were probably in danger of being boarded. In a manner of speaking, they were destroying the evidence.”
Darcy Preston actually laughed. “You know something, that’s really ironic. That’s exactly what the blackbirders did with their slaves in the old days when the Royal Navy was on their tail-put them over the side in chains.”
He laughed again, but this time there were tears in his eyes, and Chavasse closed the door and left him there, alone with his grief in the quiet room.
CHAPTER 10
Fixby was a village in decline, the sort of place that had enjoyed a mild prosperity when fishing was still an economic proposition, but not now. The young ones had left for the big city and most of the cottages had been taken over by town dwellers seeking a weekend refuge.
Chavasse had himself driven to Weymouth in a Bureau car and completed his journey on the local bus. It was four o’clock in the afternoon when it deposited him in Fixby, where he was the only passenger to alight.
The single street was deserted and the pub, in strict adherence with the English licensing laws, had its door firmly shut. He moved past it and continued toward the creek, one hand pushed in the pocket of his old bridge coat, a slim leather locked briefcase swinging from the other.
The boatyard wasn’t hard to find, a ghost of a place, a graveyard of hopes and ships, beached like dead whales, somber in the rain. There was an office of sorts, a decaying clapboard house behind. There didn’t seem to be anyone about and he moved toward the jetty.
A seagoing launch was moored there, a trim craft if ever he’d seen one. She was rigged for big-game fishing, with a couple of swivel chairs fitted to the stern deck and a steel hoist.
She was a beautiful ship, there was no doubt about that-a jewel in a jungle of weeds. He stood there looking at her for quite a while, then turned away.
A man was standing watching him from the shadow of an old barge. He was very tall and thin and dressed in an old reefer jacket, peaked cap and greasy overalls. His face was his most remarkable feature. It was the face of a Judas, one eye turned into the corner, the mouth like a knife slash, a face as repulsively fascinating as a medieval gargoyle.
“Admiring her, are you?” His voice was hardly more than a whisper, and as he approached, Chavasse noticed a jagged scar that stretched from his right ear to his windpipe.
“She’s quite a boat.”
“And then some. Steel hull, penta engine, radar, echo sounder. All that and thirty-five knots. You know boats?”
“A little. Are you Gorman?”
“That’s right. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to take a little trip if your boat is available.”
