why that is? Because he once saw them having a bit of nooky, and wet the pants of his sailor suit as a result, and got spanked on his bare behind by his nurse as a result of that. Put him right off women. Only mommy will do for Swyven. And the odd sailor. Very odd sailor. He hasn't liked people from that day, d'you see? Only causes. Abstractions. Dialectical Materialism. Greatest Good of the Greatest Number. Inevitability of History. He felt safe among words like that. Like an armadillo in a desert.' He puffed hard on the cheroot, and the room stank of beetroot. 'Now he wants to see his mommy. I said he could talk to her on the phone. I want another couple of days with him before he sees anybody else.' He wheezed reminiscently. 'You frightened the hell out of him in your dungarees. Damned if I know why. You just looked dirty to me.'
When the S.S.
go near anywhere risky. He put the pen down, covered his face with his hands, and breathed deeply. In ten minutes he was calm again. He began to plan.
Now he had two jobs to do. First, Swyven must die. It was too late to prevent him talking, but he had to preserve justice. Swyven couldn't help himself, but neither could Schiebel. His course was perfectly clear. Second, there was the question of Naxos. His vote was still necessary to take oil away from an imperialist power. More important, if he could move quickly enough the Zaarbist army might be able to make a dash for the Haram and get the cobalt out before any other power could stop them; but to do that British troops would have to be withdrawn from Zaarb, and that couldn't happen until Naxos voted them out. He'd have to deal with Naxos, and for that he'd need a free hand. He had no doubt at all that Craig and the others would expect his arrival; his only chance was to send them looking for him in the wrong direction, and for that he would need Selina. He sent for the only two good men in the embassy, one of whom had been trained in China, the other in Russia. They were both in awe of him, and each hated and mistrusted the other. Schiebel found that very useful.
Between them they evolved a plan which delighted Schiebel. It was fast and violent, yet it had an elegance about it that pleased him. It was at once witty and ideologically correct. It exposed the vices of capitalist society, which would be of value to the propaganda people, it destroyed traitors, and it improved the strength of the People's Republic of Zaarb, and therefore of the People's Republic of China. With any luck, it might get rid of Craig as well.
* Chapter
Selina also thought about Craig. She had wronged him, and he had behaved perfectly, the way her brothers tried to behave, with an effortless chivalry that was instinctive, and therefore the more to be respected. She must repay him for that, and the only way to do it was to return to her father, warn him of the danger of men like Dyton-Blease, and the horror of the cobalt which Schiebel had explained to her with such loving care. At first she had refused to believe that any substance would cause such bestial damage, but he had shown her books and photographs, and now she believed, and was afraid.
She must warn her father, get away from Schiebel, from England, but that would take very careful planning. Schiebel had imprisoned her in a suite of rooms that was almost a gigantic safe, with a steel door and a steel grille over its windows. The door had a Chubb lock, and the man who brought her food was always armed. She knew nothing of the rest of the house, not even where it was, but that didn't bother her. All her life she had been trained to action, and the idea that most problems diminished in size from the moment you did something about them. What worried her was Schiebel. She had to wait until he was out of the way. She was not, she told herself, afraid of him, but his skill and efficiency had been too much for her in Zaarb. It must not happen again. She spent long hours by the window grille, watching the courtyard at the back of the house. When her chance came it was just before dinner. Schiebel came out and crossed the yard, opened the door of a car, then turned to look up at her window. She shrank back, and Schiebel got in and drove away.
Selina began to move quickly. She changed into a black sweater, black jeans, and rubber-soled shoes. For what she had to do skirts would be in the way. She remembered that these were the clothes she had worn when she first met Craig, remembered the harshness of his voice speaking Arabic, and grinned to herself. He would see that she was a proper woman—one who could take care of herself. She opened her jewelry box, took out the great necklace of gold coins, and unscrewed the catch. Dollars, sovereigns, guineas, louis d'or spilled into her hands and she crammed them into her pockets, then examined the chain they had hung on. It was of very fine links of steel, and at one end of it three gold coins were riveted into place. Selina wrapped a handkerchief round her hand, then twisted an
end of chain over the handkerchief and swung the chain in the air. The weight of the gold coins made it sing viciously as it spun. Selina sat in an armchair facing the table where she would eat, and waited, staring at a picture of a carousel on the wall—splendid horses, fat and laughing children.
When she heard the key in the lock she sat back listlessly, the hand holding the chain hidden in the depths of a cushion. A stocky, Negroid Arab came in, a pistol in his fist.
'You eat now,' he said, and put the pistol in his
pocket.
I'm not hungry,' said Selina.
'You'll eat. It's time,' the Arab said, and went to the door to pull a trolley in, then shut and lock the door before he took the trolley to the table, lifted a covered dish. Selina waited until he set the dish down. There must be no noise.
His back still turned toward her, the stocky Arab began to straighten up. The last sounds he heard were the whirr of the chain before it curled round his neck, and the slap of the gold coins into the palm of her free hand. Selina's foot slammed into his back, she hauled hard on the chain, and the stocky Arab's yell was muted to a gasp. The girl's leg straightened slowly, there was a sharp crack of sound, and the Arab was dead.
Selina unwound the chain, slipped it into her pocket, then put on a hip-length coat, took the stocky Arab's pistol from the trolley, then turned him over. She grimaced once when she saw his face, then she thought of her father, her brothers, and her face set like stone as she searched him, took away his keys, his money, the knife he carried in his trouser pocket. It was a knife of a kind she had never seen before, an enormous clasp knife with a single blade. She touched a button at its base, and the blade flicked out, leaf-pointed, one edge ground razor sharp. She looked at the weapon in her hand, tested its balance. The guard was poor, but the blade was excellent. She looked at the words etched into the blade, 'Made in Germany.' That made her think of Schiebel, but this time she smiled. The knife was a good omen.
She opened the door and looked out on to a deserted corridor that led to a wide, curving staircase. A tall, welldressed Arab was walking up it slowly. He was Schiebel's expert on nuclear physics, and he had helped Schiebel to explain to her what the cobalt could do. Even the thought of it seemed to horrify him, for he was a mild and gentle man, but now Selina had no pity for his gentleness; it might be useful to her. She crouched behind the banisters and waited as the Arab moved along the corridor to the door of the room she had just left, then rapped softly on the steel panel. Slowly, carefully, she moved toward him. As he raised his fist to knock again her hand went to her pocket.
'Here,' she said.
The Arab spun round and she threw the keys at him. Automatically his hands reached out for them, and as they did so he found himself looking into the barrel of a .380 Browning Standard automatic, a weapon with a 3.5- inch barrel and a weight of twenty ounces, a weapon far too big and heavy for a woman, but this woman didn't seem to be aware of the fact. The tall Arab looked at her, and had no doubt that she knew how to use it. No doubt at all.
'Open the door,' said Selina. 'Go inside.'
