The sleek-haired barman poured two Scotch-on-the-rocks. They could still hear the crash of gunfire outside, but it seemed to be slackening now.
‘I heard you were down in the Bled,’ said Mallory, ‘anything doing?’
‘Nothing much.’ Neil was trying to decide how much he could safely confide in Mallory; for if he were to get out of this country alive he was going to need help. Tom Mallory was hardly a rock of responsibility, but he possessed a certain reckless courage that Neil badly needed at this moment.
‘It’s all right for you, old boy,’ Mallory was croaking over his whisky, ‘you don’t have to file till the weekend. I have to give the sods a story every evening at six. You heard, by the way, that Guérin’s been arrested?’
‘Yes, I heard,’ said Neil. ‘I was there.’
Mallory nodded. He was too old a hand to show surprise at anything anymore. He just said, ‘You’d better tell me about it.’ Neil gave him the brief outline, and Mallory listened with his huge hairy head down near the bar, breathing like a dog after a run. When Neil had finished he said glumly, ‘You’re in a fine bloody mess, aren’t you? Better have another drink.’
‘Officially, I’ve got till midnight to get out.’
‘I think you’d better get out before that,’ said Mallory.
Hudson came skidding in, his tight little face forked with tension. ‘I heard at least a hundred dead!’ he cried. ‘They shelled the university.’
‘Well done,’ said Mallory, ‘have a drink.’
Neil said, ‘I came in by boat. It should still be down at the dock.’
‘We’ll try that first, then the airport. But the last I heard, it was still closed when the fighting started.’
‘What is all this?’ said Hudson.
‘You’ll find out,’ said Mallory, ‘best story of the day.’
‘What do you think they’ll do?’ Neil asked.
‘Try and kill you. Both sides think you betrayed them. And these boys don’t let you off with just a warning.’
Neil took a long drink and Hudson whined, ‘Hell, Tom! What’s all this?’
‘You’re not drinking your drink, Hudson,’ Mallory growled. He turned back to Neil: ‘Did reception see you come in?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘About a quarter of an hour ago.’
Mallory nodded his great mane and said slowly, ‘They’re not likely to try anything before dark — at least not until the city quietens down. That gives us a bit of time. All the trains have stopped and the roads are closed. You might just manage to get out by boat. But your best bet is still the airport — if it opens in time.’
Winston St. Leger came in, groomed and urbane as though it were Boodle’s. ‘I heard they’ve just packed it in, surrendered,’ he said, placing his homburg on the bar and popping an olive into his mouth.
‘That official?’ snapped Hudson.
‘I gather so.’
‘Have a drink, Winston,’ said Mallory.
‘Thank you, pink gin.’
‘We’re having a little talk about our friend Ingleby,’ Mallory went on, ‘he’s in a spot of trouble.’
The drinks and the company made Neil feel better. He told his story again, in more detail this time, to Hudson and St. Leger. Hudson scribbled furious shorthand throughout, and at the end said knowingly, ‘Well, we warned you! Now you’re right in it.’
‘Drop dead,’ said Mallory, without venom. He turned to Stu Leger: ‘What do you think?’
‘It seems quite astonishing to me,’ said Winston, squeezing a blob of toothpaste on to an olive, ‘that the authorities refuse to give you any protection. Outrageous, in fact.’
‘You get yourself screwed up in this sort of situation, you can’t expect help from anybody,’ said Hudson. ‘You’re sure Ali La Joconde’s dead?’ he added. ‘Good! I gotta phone.’
‘Don’t mind him,’ said Mallory, tipping his stool recklessly on to one leg, ‘agency man — his ulcers start bursting on a story like this.’
‘Have you tried the Consulate?’ said St. Leger, sucking the nipple of his toothpaste tube.
‘To hell with the Consulate,’ said Mallory, ‘they can kill you as easily in there as in here. Only here it’s bigger and there are more of us.’
Neil remembered Pol’s suggestion: ‘The Consulate might be able to persuade the French Government to get me out.’
‘They might,’ said Mallory, ‘but not in the time you need. You’ve got to be out of here tonight — or at the latest, tomorrow morning.’
‘Still, it would be a matter of form to contact the Consulate,’ St. Leger persisted.
‘Matter of form!’ Neil mimicked — ‘a lot of good that’s going to do me when I’ve got a bullet in my head!’
‘Yes, you’ve a point there, I grant you.’
‘Have another drink,’ said Mallory.
‘I ought to be going.’ Neil was beginning to feel drunk. Hudson’s voice came trumpeting through, amid a burble of foreign tongues on telephones: ‘Yeah for Chrissake, O C O N — French for Giaconda, like Mona Lisa with a J…!’
Mallory held his empty glass up to the barman and screeched, ‘Nurse!’ His tilted stool suddenly crashed sideways, nearly rolling Winston St. Leger to the floor.
‘I saw that was going to happen,’ said Winston rather testily, and Neil said again, ‘I ought to go — I’ve got to pack.’
‘Stay and have another. Plenty of time.’
‘He ought to go,’ said Winston, ‘to be on the safe side.’
The safe side! thought Neil. Winston St. Leger, sir, you overestimate the power of understatement.
A number of reporters were coming down from the roof. The fighting had stopped altogether now. Neil rode up in the lift and began to walk down the corridor. He met no one and the only sound was the whirring of the air-conditioners. He remembered the last time he had been in his room. They
