4
The navy ambulance nosed its way toward Gibraltar airport with the ponderous yet swift-moving dignity that only Daimler knows how to build. Inside it were Craig, the doctor, and the commander, who had changed into mufti, and Calvet. Calvet was on a stretcher, asleep, and comprehensively bandaged from thorax to head. Both his legs were in splints. The money Craig had taken was inside the bandages.
'I've given him a sedative,' said the doctor. 'He shouldn't give you any trouble.'
'Thanks,' said Craig.
'He's quite considerably bruised,' said the doctor. 'Particularly in the stomach and just below the nose. Forgive me, but what did you hit him with?'
'I just hit him,' said Craig.
The commander stared gloomily at the notices scrawled on painted walls: '260 Afios de Liber-tad,' and 'Gibraltar es Espanol,' one canceling out the other, over and over again. They stopped at a policeman's signal at the corner of Winston Churchill Avenue, and the commander looked at his watch.
'You mustn't miss your plane,' he said.
'I won't,' said Craig.
The policeman signaled them on.
'I suppose it has to wait for you?'
'No,' Craig said. 'But there's lots of time and lots of planes.'
'The admiral wants you off the Rock,' said the commander. 'It's my business to see that you go.'
'You mean he doesn't like me?'
'Of course he doesn't like you. I don't like you.'
'I find that incredible,' said Craig.
The doctor snorted.
'You're in a dirty business,' said the commander. 'I realize it has to be done, but you can't expect me to approve of it. Of course it's different for you—you seem to enjoy it.'
Craig thought of the way he had terrorized, used, and finally abandoned Allen; the blow that had struck the girl; the impact of his shoe into Calvet's belly. He said nothing.
'But the navy shouldn't be asked to help you. The whole enterprise is sheer piracy.'
'You talk a lot,' said Craig. 'The trouble is you never say anything much.'
The ambulance arrived then, nosed in past a flurry of taxi drivers and porters, and Craig got out to collect tickets for himself and David Lloyd, the battered victim of a motor accident now being flown back to his parents in Merioneth. He bought cigarettes, Scotch, and perfume at the duty-free shop, and went back to the ambulance. The doctor had gotten out and was escorting a mobile stretcher with Calvet in it up to the ticket barrier.
The commander said: 'You'd better leave now.'
'Can't I say good-bye to the admiral?' asked Craig.
'He doesn't know you exist. None of us do,' the commander said. 'It makes me very happy.'
Craig said: 'I'm a bit sad myself. Four hours in Gibraltar—and I only saw one monkey.'
'Go away,' said the commander. 'Just go away.'
'Okay,' said Craig, and dropped the perfume in the commander's lap. 'Think of me when you wear it, won't you?'
The perfume was called 'Our Secret.'
Craig walked after the doctor, and showed his tickets at the barrier. Passports and Customs had waved him through. He and Calvet were the first to arrive at the turboprop Viking, and Craig waited while the stretcher was eased into the first-class compartment and the doctor went in, checked, and came down again.
'I've had a look at him,' the doctor said. 'He won't move till you get to London.'
'Thanks,' said Craig.
'No really, I've enjoyed it,' said the doctor. 'It makes a change from picking broken glass out of drunken sailors.'
Craig gave him the bottle of Scotch and climbed aboard. A trickle of tourists followed, then the Viking revved up at last, taxied out, and roared over the airstrip and out to sea: Africa was on one side, Europe on the other. It was raining on two continents. The plane climbed, the warning lights went out, and Craig unfastened his seat belt. In three and a half hours he'd be in London, and Calvet would be someone else's problem. He smoked, yawned, drank Scotch and ginger ale, then fell asleep.
There was another Daimler waiting in London,
with another doctor, and a man whom Craig didn't
know. He handed Calvet and the evidence over,
and took a taxi to his flat in Regent's Park. He still
hadn't had time to have a bath, and his shoulder
hurt like hell. He went home to rest.
* * *
Four days later Loomis sent for him. Craig drove to see him in the latest one of the series of black Mark X Jaguars with the 4.2-liter engine he had used ever since he'd been established in Department K. It was a ridiculously large automobile for one man, expensive to drive and impossible to park, but it suited his cover—that of a retired manufacturer of machine tools—and it enabled him whenever necessary to convey four or five other large men to where they were needed, and to do it quickly—at a hundred and thirty miles an hour, if the need arose. He parked in a mews, and walked back to Queen Anne's Gate, the wary caretaker, and Loomis's vile-tempered coffee.
'You did all right,' Loomis said grudgingly. 'He's coming along nicely.'
'You've got him up at the nursing home?'
Loomis nodded.
'It's lovely up there just now,' he said. 'The daffodils are at their best. He didn't take to it at first, but he's doing fine now.'
'What did you use?'
'Oh, different things,' said Loomis. 'Bit of this, bit of that. There's nothing like variety, cock. Now he's mostly on pentathol. Seems to like it. His name's Oleg Dovzhenko. Born in the Ukraine, 1938—you were giving a few years away. The KGB spotted him at Moscow University—brilliant linguist, good gymnast—and they gave him the usual tests. All that Pavlovian stuff. He worked in France for a while, then he did a bit in South America, then he went to Marbella. We've got it all down.'
'Did he find much stuff about Gibraltar?'
'There's not a hell of a lot to find,' said Loomis. 'But he did his best. He was busier paying people to do things about Franco.'
'Any good?'
'Oh yes,' said Loomis. 'He'd found out quite a bit about how far they'll support America, and he'd done some research on the Fifth Fleet, too. He had a man on the spot when the Yanks lost their H-bomb, and he'd done quite a bit of work on airfields. He was looking to the future, as well. Very forward-looking feller. Spotting blokes he could work on when Franco goes.'
'What about the girl?' asked Craig.
'The young person you tied to the bed? She's a designer of expressionist jewelry. That means sequins in your belly button, sort of thing. She's clean. From what I hear she didn't even see you. You did all right.' Loomis looked surprised.
'And Allen?'
'Bloody fool,' said Loomis. 'He went back to Spain. Had some money hidden in Marbella, so he put on a false beard and pretended he was invisible. The Spanish police picked him up in an hour. I expect he told them all about you. Not that it matters. You don't exist. They'll do him for smuggling and shooting at their navy. Now then'—he dismissed Allen with a wave of a meaty paw, and glowered at Craig—'that stuff you brought us. The R/T's nice, but we got a better one already. The money's better. We're always short of money here. Twenty-five thousand quid in dollars. Pity!'
'What's wrong?' Craig asked.
'They're all forged.' He reached into his inside pocket with a fat man's economy of movement, then threw
