not come. Instead, her head nodded feebly.
'I want an answer,' said Schiebel.
'Yes,' said Flip. 'Tlease. Yes.'
'I see,' Schiebel said. 'Good. First you must sign a receipt.'
'Don't torture me,' she whispered.
Schiebel put the packet down, took a notebook and pen from his pocket.
'You are torturing yourself,' he said. 'All your sickness is in your mind, Mrs. Naxos. Master it and I can never hurt you again—in that way. Take these.' He put pen and paper in her hands. 'Now write.'
'I can't,' she said. 'My hand is shaking too much.'
'Master it,' said Schiebel. 'Control it. It is your hand. Make it obey you.'
But her hand would not obey.
'Give me the stuff first. It'll help me.'
'Afterward,' said Schiebel. 'You always get your medicine afterward. Don't you know that yet?'
And at last her hand began to obey, and she wrote what he dictated.
She wrote it all. Her handwriting was a mess, but she wrote it. Only she couldn't sign it. Whenever the pen touched the paper to write Fhp, her hand shook uncontrollably, and at last she could understand why. The knowledge was terrible to her, but she accepted it, crumpled the paper, threw it away.
Schiebel shrugged.
'Very well,' he said. 'Ill give you the medicine myself in a little while. You'll soon need more, once you've had the first dose.'
Then he began to hurt her.
» Chapter 23 *
Further extract from 'O Level Edward' 's autobiographical fragment.
Mr. Candlish sends word he wants to see us and we go—we always act respectful to Mr. Candlish—and anyway, all I miss is four hours' hard labor in the supermarket where I am gainfully employed at the time, unloading the bargains so the nits can get threepence off. And when I get there, Harry is present, and Jigger and Lonesome, and Mr. Candlish drinking rum out of a tin mug and looking pleased.
'I got two gentlemen coming to see you lot,' he says. 'They got a job for you and it pays good money—so no hp from you.'
We agree, and if we had forelocks we would tug them, because this old bastard scares the hell out of us, and then the gentlemen come in and there will be no hp from me, because one of the gentlemen sorted out three wogs with his hands and feet the night before, and the other one held a gun on us while he did it, and almost fell asleep. The hard one says: 'Those Arabs that attacked you last night—they had friends. Those friends have
been picking on you. Messing up your bikes, knocking you about. That's not right,' he says. 'You ought to do something about it.'
'You want us to duff up some wogs?' asks Lonesome.
'Good God no,' says the sleepy one. 'We want you to organize a protest, present some petitions—that sort of thing.'
'Where to?' I ask. 'The Zaarb Embassy?'
'Something like that,' the sleepy one says. 'Their trading offices anyway. We've got four petitions all ready for you as a matter of fact,' he says. 'But there ought to be more of you. I always think the more the merrier with petitions, don't you? You'll need some people to watch the back entrance too. It would be too bad if the people you wanted to speak to got away.'
'How many you want?' Harry asks.
'All you can get'' says the hard one. 'Fifty at least. I want you to take your bikes and leave them in the way.'
'Way of what?' Harry asks. He's a very careful leader, Harry.
'Anybody, anything that tries to leave,' says the hard
one.
'All damage will be liberally paid for,' says the sleepy one, and I can see old Candlish doesn't like that 'liberally,' but he says nothing, just sits there, and I realize again how bad these two must be.
Then the hard one gets down to details, and we believe everything he says, even when he tells us the police won't bother us, because this one knows what he's doing. And he draws a map for us, and tells us how to divide our forces, and where to congregate, then he says: 'The Zaarb lot won't be too keen to let you in. Remember that. If you want to present those petitions, you'll have to get them inside the best way you can.' This we understand, and are happy about in the extreme. Breaking doors and windows in a good cause appeals to simple, unspoiled natures like ours. Then the sleepy one pulls open his briefcase and hands Harry the petitions, which are typewritten, and have a lot of room for signatures. And he explains why we must handle them with care. Then he says: 'Everyone who signs and turns up will be paid a fiver. You, of course, will receive much more.' And this is music, too. Harry looks at the petitions, then looks at the sleepy one.
'Who are you, mister?' he asks.
'Didn't I tell you?' the sleepy one says. 'We're your fairy godmothers.'
0*0
They had brought Selina to the house in Queen Anne's Gate, where she told Craig and Grierson all she knew of AZ Enterprises, its staff, its layout, over and over, remembering every detail of the curve on the stairs, the position of the fortified room, the way out to the back of the house. When she had done, the two men went down to the armory in the basement, where each man sought out and tested a pair of Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums, firing them until each was as familiar to them as the hand that held them. Craig insisted, too, that they use metal- piercing ammunition. Grierson had protested at having to master a new gun, but Craig had insisted.
'What we're going to do is street fighting,' he said. 'That means stopping everything with the first shot. And that means a Magnum. A feller once killed a bear with one of these.' They were satisfied at last, and Craig went to search among what is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of small arms in Great Britain. He came back with two weapons that made Grierson raise his eyebrows. One was an Armalite .22 long rifle, a semiautomatic with a fiber glass stock recessed to hold the barrel and magazine.
'Lease-lend,' he said. 'It won't knock any elephants over, but it'll stop anybody you hit in the right place.' He looked at the other one. 'This is lease-lend, too,' he said. 'Riot gun.' He handed over what looked like a twenty- gauge pump-action shotgun with a sawn-off barrel. 'Twenty gauge is illegal for a riot gun,' he said. 'Whoever made this doesn't seem to have heard the news.' He looked at the magazine. 'Seven-shot,' he said. 'If you get close enough you could knock over an elephant with this one.'
'How close is close?' asked Grierson.
'Six feet,' said Craig. Grierson winced.
'I'd better get in some practice,' he said.
Craig left the armory and went back upstairs, remembering the last man he had seen with a gun like that.
He'd been an American Ranger, a tall, easy man from Montana, and they had made one raid together, on the company headquarters of an S.S. panzer group. Their orders had been to bring back a prisoner, and they had brought back one, and only one. The Ranger had hated Germans; his mother and father were Polish Jews. To the end of his life Craig was to remember the effect of that gun. He went back to where Sehna was waiting. If he failed, her country would take a terrible mauling. The People's Republic of Zaarb had a lot of old scores to settle with the Haram.
'You will go there today?' she said. Craig nodded. 'Maybe I should go with you. I know the way.'
'No,' Craig said. 'We can't risk you twice.'
'You risk yourself many times.'
'I'm expendable,' said Craig. 'Ask Loomis.'
'The fat man gives you the hardest work because he honors you most,' Selina said.
