“Even underwear,” he said. “I’ll get it myself.”
She thought he was more discomfited than she was.
“Don’t be afraid, about the men I mean,” he said. “You won’t be troubled.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
“I wanted you to know.”
“This isn’t what I expected,” she said.
“Nor me,” admitted the man.
5
The Scheherazade was arranged like a gaudy ornament on the skyline, lit brilliantly overall; there was even some form of underwater illumination so that the hull was visible along its entire length. Because of the lighting, Deaken had seen the tender cream away from the side of the vessel while he was still linked by radio telephone from the harbour master’s office to Adnan Azziz. Away from the yacht, it merged into the blackness of the intervening sea. Deaken became conscious of the telephone bank and hurried to it; the number he had been given earlier that day in Geneva was the second box from the left. He looked hard at it, then lifted the receiver. Nothing appeared wrong with it. He turned back towards the most obvious quay steps. Almost at once, the tender emerged from the darkness; there appeared to be a crew of three and a man in civilian clothes. As Deaken looked the man stood up and moved to the side of the vessel that was being brought against the harbour edge. Grey-haired, thin almost to the point of gauntness, official-looking, thought Deaken. He waved unthinkingly, self-consciously stopping the gesture half completed. There was no response from the tender. Two crewmen fended off, making no attempt to secure. The helmsman kept the boat expertly in place by reverse and forward thrusts of the engine.
“Deaken?” said the man in the suit.
“Yes.”
“Grearson. Mr Azziz’s attorney.”
Deaken stepped awkwardly into the boat. At once it moved away, putting him further off balance. Deaken held a side rail and offered his hand. Grearson looked as if it were holding something offensive.
In silence they travelled towards the Scheherazade. They were so close it seemed to dominate the skyline now. Deaken thought it looked more like a liner than a yacht. There was a stepped walkway, wider than stairs in normal houses, let down from the side, with a flat landing stage at the bottom, three feet above the lifting sea. The tender coasted perfectly alongside. Deaken followed the other lawyer out as awkwardly as he had boarded; as he climbed he saw the davit hawsers dangling ahead, ready to lift the tender. The winch had whined into operation by the time he gained the deck. Deaken looked around expectantly but, apart from the crew waiting to ease the tender into its cradle, it was deserted.
“This way,” said Grearson.
Deaken followed obediently, aware of a clumsiness in the other man’s walk: it was not a limp, more the cautious stiffness of someone nervous of pain. As soon as Deaken went inside the yacht, he was aware of the smell. Cigars, clearly, and perhaps perfume or incense. Combined, it was an odour of richness, luxurious richness. The inner companionways were deeply carpeted and the panelling a dark, heavy mahogany. Where there was metalwork, it gleamed from constant polishing. The companionway led to a landing that crossed the width of the ship and from it, in a double-sided descent of steps, ran a stairway that reminded Deaken of the circle approach in a cinema or theatre. It was, indeed, an approach culminating not in walkways along a lower deck but in a large set of double-fronted doors, highly polished and dark wood again. Grearson, who was still in front, knocked and entered immediately, leaving the door open for Deaken to follow.
The young lawyer stopped just inside the door. Only the roundness of the portholes showed they were aboard a ship. Deaken guessed a hundred people could have gathered in the stateroom here for a reception without the slightest impression of overcrowding. Padded seating, in white leather, around the bulkheads was broken intermittently by tables from which flowers spilled in profusion. There were larger easy chairs and couches, again in masculine leather, arranged around the room, and two small writing bureaux with a third, lower table upon which were grouped four telephones. There was no colour differentiation; they were all white. To Deaken’s immediate left there was a bar area, with a steward in attendance, a glitter of glass and chrome and four high-legged chairs. The carpeting throughout the entire area was white and long-tufted.
The man who stood waiting in the middle of the room dominated it, not because of his height and barrel body but from the way he held himself. When he was young, Deaken had attended government and diplomatic functions with his father and seen the same demeanour: it was always from politicians or leaders who were long established, who considered themselves unchallengeable.
The man was as severely dressed as the American lawyer, in a dark grey, single-breasted suit in some material that shone slightly, but not from overwear. It was probably silk. Like everything, it went with the perfume of wealth.
“I am Adnan Azziz,” he said. The English was entirely without accent.
“Richard Deaken.”
“Yes.” The voice was expressionless, neither hostile nor friendly.
“There’s a mistake,” said Deaken desperately. “A misunderstanding
…”
“We’ve obeyed your instructions,” cut in Azziz. “Tell me what you want.”
“They are not my instructions,” exclaimed Deaken.
“I want my son back, unharmed,” said Azziz.
Deaken was overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy. He was aware of his concertinaed, bagged suit and a collar that his tie didn’t fit properly, the tie that Karen had tried to adjust for him that morning, the last time she had touched him and of his fly-away hair and of the stickiness of his skin, where he had sweated in fear of Underberg and then because he had travelled too far too fast on overheated aircraft and was confronting people he didn’t want to meet. God, he thought; oh dear God!
“They’ve taken my wife,” he said simply.
Neither man facing him made any response.
“Didn’t you hear what 1 said!” demanded Deaken. “They’ve kidnapped my wife. This morning. To make me do this… come here…”
Azziz looked sideways to Grearson.
“I said we knew about you,” repeated the American lawyer. He reached to one of the small tables and picked up what appeared to be a telex printout. “You were considered a radical at Rand University,” he said. “After qualifying in international law you were actively involved with subversive movements…” He looked up. “Became famous through it,” he said.
Deaken closed his eyes against the catalogue. It was like a criminal record, a list of previous convictions to be presented at every opportunity.
“No more,” he said wearily. “I’m married now. Trying to establish a private practice…”
“… in Geneva,” picked up Grearson, still consulting the paper and wanting to show Azziz how efficiently he had assembled the information from just the qualification initials after Deaken’s name on the photograph. “Operating there for a year.”
“Listen,” said Deaken. “Please just listen.” Haltingly at first, anxious for some reaction from the blank, closed faces in front of him, Deaken recounted what had happened in Geneva, setting it out chronologically, as he would have done in court.
“A shipment to Africa?” queried Azziz.
“That’s what he said.”
The Arab looked to his lawyer again. Grearson shook his head.
“Surely you know about it?” insisted Deaken. “It’s for $50,000,000, for God’s sake!”
“Which is a comparatively small amount,” said Azziz.
“It could be a subsidiary sale,” said Grearson, talking to the Arab. “There would never have been an End-User certificate if it is going to Africa.”
