‘The bastards. And they say England’s a free country!’ He looked at Pol. ‘What’s the job?’
Pol shifted his buttocks and belched. ‘You are very direct, my friend. I hope — particularly after the unfortunate incident this morning — that you are taking me seriously?’
‘Entirely seriously,’ Packer replied, without irony; and repeated, ‘What’s the job?’
‘Your old profession. Simply, to kill a man.’
Packer nodded. ‘For half a million pounds?’ He paused. ‘The last I heard, the going rate in London was between two and three thousand. You must be getting into a pretty high-class league.’
Pol gave him a beady stare. ‘I am certainly not hiring some cheap hoodlum with the brain of a dinosaur and the morals of a rattlesnake.’
‘I’m flattered,’ said Packer; ‘but why me? The British army turns out dozens of us every year. Some even have clean records. They usually get jobs in public relations or industry — poor bastards. What makes me so special?’
‘Your present occupation, mon cher. Your occupation of building model windmills and selling them extremely well to rich Americans. I have been shown an article in a New York magazine, containing photographs of your work. There was also a most interesting interview with yourself.’
‘What the hell have model windmills got to do with killing a man for half a million pounds?’ Packer growled.
‘One detail which you revealed in the article struck me as particularly interesting. Although your models — certainly from the photographs in the magazine — are obviously most complex and detailed, you claim to build them without any plan or diagram. You start with a basic idea in your head and construct from there, building on each stage ad hoc. When a problem arises, you simply improvise. You also claim that you have never encountered a problem which has defeated you, and that you have never had to abandon a model before it was finished. It would also appear that these models are of a very high order.’
‘They each take between six months and a year to build,’ said Packer, ‘and sell at an average of 12,000 dollars. It’s a living — but it’s about a hundredth of what you’re offering me now. Why?’
Pol gazed out at the estuary where the tide was now full and the fishing boats were bobbing upright in the dusk. Lights winked at them from Saint Valery. It was nearly six o’clock. Packer wondered how long it would be before Sarah had finished painting her face and applying her fixtures and fittings; but Pol seemed in no hurry to come to the point.
‘You construct a framework, then add the mechanism to fit the framework,’ he was murmuring, half to himself, ‘wheels that move other wheels — pulleys — ropes — ladders — trapdoors. Everything to fit exactly. Every detail made to measure, and to work. And all without a master plan.’
‘You think a man can be killed like that?’ Packer sneered. ‘What we English call a “one-off job”. A psychopath with a cheap rifle on the fifth floor of a school book depository — or a teenage student with a one-shot pistol standing in a crowded street in Sarajevo.’
Pol patted his belly. ‘Not precisely. But already you have the principle. It is true that most successful assassinations in history have been what you might call “accidents”, and that the really organized attempts — against Peter the Great, Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Hitler, de Gaulle — all failed. They failed because their planning was too careful, too grandiose, too well organized.’ He gave a mischievous chuckle. ‘I intend to construct a plan which is both organized and random.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ said Packer. ‘Why me? Not because I killed a few men in Malaya and can stick some pieces of balsa wood together and flog them to a few dumb Texans as mobile art. That’s not good enough, Monsieur Pol.’
‘No,’ said Pol, ‘it isn’t. Your great virtue, Capitaine Packer, is that you are a misfit — a flawed character — a failure.’ He paused; Packer had gone rather pale and his long upper lip was sucked in against his teeth. He said nothing.
Pol went on: ‘The man in question not only lives in the constant expectation of an assassination attempt, but several such attempts have already been made. Also, besides being one of the most closely guarded men in the world, he has an excellent Intelligence Service. We must assume at once that he will quickly get wind of any new plan. And the first thing he will do is to order his Security chiefs to draw up a full list of international suspects.
‘A superficial list would not be difficult to compile. He would certainly receive the active assistance of almost every friendly Intelligence organization outside the Communist bloc. The first candidates would be his own nationals — refugees and self-exiles who oppose his regime. These would not, for obvious reasons, stand much chance on their own. But he will also be looking out for foreign mercenaries and “guns for hire”. Here again, the most likely candidates will be those with clean records — in civilian life, at least. The professionals from Algeria, the Congo, the Yemen and Biafra, and perhaps a few disenchanted American veterans from Vietnam.’
‘That would make one hell of a long list,’ said Packer.
‘Perhaps. But as I said, the gentleman in question has a very large Security force, consisting of many times more men than would ever join such a list.’ He leaned forward with a creak of silk and pressed his thumbs together. ‘But even supposing that one of these professionals escaped his surveillance, there would still be one flaw. The same flaw that blemishes all elaborate assassination attempts. The
