“Who, me?” I gave him a big, open-eyed surprised look.
“Cut it out.” The way he said it was like being hit across the face, and coming from him it hurt, hard and lasting.
“I’m going,” I said angrily.
“The only way you go out of here – unless you come clean – is in a box with brass handles.”
I wasn’t angry then. I was scared.
I said, “You mean that?” I didn’t recognize my voice.
“Unless you have something that will drop Sutcliffe’s blood pressure. Get it straight, Carver. It’s out of my hands, unless you come to heel – and damned fast.”
I swallowed what was left of the saliva in my mouth and protested, “You can’t just bloody well bump off unreliable servants. This is the twentieth century.”
He smiled then. “That’s just what makes it easy. Walk out and try it. You won’t get down the first flight of stairs, and there will never be a coroner’s inquest on you. So come clean, quickly.”
“You tell me how. Hell, you can’t mean this!” But I knew he did. It wasn’t his line in jokes. I’d been in far before, searching for the dishonest penny, but never as far as this. My intestines were coiling about like a nest of snakes. He meant it ... grey cravat, pearl pin, striped trousers, popping up here for a few minutes from some reception for an oil sheik. Pardon me, while I ring for someone to put the knife into you – and then back to the champagne diplomacy and the spread of democracy in underdeveloped countries – and the dirty finger sign to any crap about the liberty of the subject.
He said, “I mean every word of it. You’re nothing in this. Absolutely nothing. The thing we’re after is that lead case that was lifted from the Adriatic – and if we don’t get it within the next three weeks all hell is going to break loose. And I mean hell – blue, bloody murdering hell! So start talking – and make it the truth!”
I’d never heard him like this before. I swallowed hard, my throat like a rusty pipe, and I croaked, “But where do I begin?”
“Try Lancing.”
“What about him?”
“He went ashore when the Komira reached Venice to report to SKD. He never made it. He was found in the Grand Canal just below the Rialto bridge with a knife in his back.”
“Poor sod.”
“That isn’t the point. Lancing’s code name was WWK. He put it on the notes you got from him. Only it read WWK/2. Know what that means?”
“No.” I’d never thought about it and it was too late now.
“It meant that there were two enclosures in his message. We got one – the photograph of Lottie Bemans. If you want to stay on your feet and go on working for us – just hand over the other, you mercenary magpie.”
“But—”
“Carver, for Christ’s sake! I’m not fooling. I like you, you know that. That’s why I’m here instead of Sutcliffe. You’re worth more than most of the types we’ve got. But stop playing funny Bs with us. You aren’t going to get a chance to make one extra nickel out of this deal on the side. Hand it over – and go back to work for us and Malacod. Find that lead case. All arrangements as before.”
“Everything forgiven – but not forgotten.”
“Exactly. And you say nothing to Malacod about what you held back. What was it?”
I wanted to get out in the street again, walking, so I kissed the fast buck good-bye, and went all out for frankness.
“It was a colour slide,” I said. “Slightly over-exposed. Lancing thought it might be a clue to the place where the lead case is going.” I went on, describing it for him, and finished, “Wilkins has it. I’ll phone her and tell her to hand it over to whoever you send.” I sat down on the chair, feeling the back of my knees aching as though I’d been on parade at attention for two hours. And I hoped there was not worse to come.
Manston killed that hope at once. “What did Howard Johnson get from your room?”
“Nothing....”
He looked at me, right through me. The chill from his look refrigerated the room.
“Don’t play about with me.”
“All right....” I didn’t want to play with anyone. I just wanted my feet on hard pavement, pitter-pattering towards the nearest large brandy. “He got the notes I took from Wilkins about the slide.”
“Did he?” It sounded like two short sharp funeral knells going.
He walked to the window and looked out, and he said no more for a very long time. Then he came back and right up to me and he said in a frozen, gravelly kind of voice, “Get this straight – because it’s something I never thought I’d do for anyone in my life. You haven’t said what you’ve just said. Johnson got nothing. Nothing.”
“That’s it. Johnson got nothing.”
I was cold all over and felt the size of a worm-cast.
“Good.”
He moved towards the door, paused with his hand on it and said, “If you should run across me anywhere after this, you play the same rules as you did in the bar of the George Cinq.”
I staggered out to the street and tottered to the nearest zinc, and called for a triple cognac. It went down like iced flame and I had another and this time there was a feeble warmth to it, and all the time I was telling myself that the bastards really would have done it, they would have written me off with no regret from anyone except Manston.... Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Borgia touch has been wiped out in politics.
I had thought that I was going to Herr Malacod with Vérité. But I had a phone call from Stebelson saying he would pick me up at the hotel at a quarter to six. He took me to a block of offices
