The Python Project

I enjoy, is music played by the oldest siren in the world. He didn’t know it, of course, but standing there looking down at him, I’d just been presented with a lead which, the moment I could check it, might prove that Bill Dawson was really the number one, gold-plated nigger in this wood-pile. Little things tip a man’s destiny. And this one was a half-folded newspaper that lay neatly to one side of his desk. Later, I learned that it was the Sunday Ghibli, a weekly English-language newspaper published in Tripoli. All I was concerned with was the headline. There were going to be times soon when I could have wished I had never seen it.

‘So long as I keep out of your hair, that’s all right?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And I can stay here as long as I like?’

‘I don’t imagine, Mr Carver—from the information I have about you—that you will want to stay at your own expense once Mrs Stankowski terminates your assignment.’

I didn’t answer.

He said, ‘The police car will drive you to your hotel. As a matter of fact it is very close to the British Embassy should you want to go and see them.’

He stood up and I was surprised to see how short he was.

I said, ‘Why was I picked up on the road in from the airport? All of this could have waited until tomorrow.’

He shook his head. ‘It seemed to me a good thing to have it over and done with. And again I thought it might embarrass you to have a police car call for you at your hotel.’

It was weak and he knew that I knew it. A police car was going to take me back to the hotel anyway. And when the police of any country start to worry about embarrassing people like me, then it was a safe bet that the real worry in their minds was much deeper and directed elsewhere.

*

The Del Mehari Hotel was on the sea front to the east of the town. It was a low Moorish-style building mostly on one floor, with all the rooms set around a central hall and a couple of inner courtyards.

I took a short stroll before breakfast towards the town. Palm trees lined the long esplanade. The wide curve of the harbour was a crinkly, breeze-freshened blue. Smug-fronted Mercedes and chromium-grinning American cars made pleasant tyre noises over the tarmac. A couple of blanket-wrapped Arabs slept in a sea-front embrasure, and groups of black-dressed Arab women shuffled along in the breeze, returning from their early morning charing jobs in the government offices. The Mediterranean sky was studded with little tufts of cotton-wool cloud. Way ahead of me was the Harbour Castle and the huddle of the old Arab town. But at this end all the signals were set to GO, hell-bent into the last half of the twentieth century on the crest of the Libyan oil boom. Office and apartment blocks were reaching up to dwarf the mosques and muezzin towers, and the faithful were called to pray to Allah these days over a Tannoy system. It was about as exotic as Brighton and you could find the same things in the shops and bars but at rather higher prices. A flight of jets from the Wheelus Air Base whined through the air leaving curving vapour trails behind them. It was the same old world, distance annihilated, all services piped in, ready at the flick of a finger, and not a single real problem that had plagued the world since homo sapiens first planted his ugly feet on it an inch nearer being solved. Only hope can sustain a dismal record like that. Or stupidity.

I went back and had eggs and bacon and fresh rolls and coffee, and got the waiter to bring me a cable form. To Mrs Stankowski I sent the message:

Presume you have official information death brother. Cable instructions.

Knowing the efficiency of the British Post Office service, I was ready to bet that they would deliver it as a greetings telegram with a border of fluffy rabbits, song birds and nosegays.

During my second cup of coffee Wilkins and Olaf appeared. I’d met Olaf before, but he always came as a shock to me. He seemed to have put on another two inches everywhere. His pale-blue eyes sparkled with health so that I knew the tummy trouble was gone, his pale, fair hair was ruffled from the wind, and one of his great hands grabbed mine and pumped away as though he were clearing the bilges to keep the ship from sinking. He sat down and the chair just held under his weight, and he had to sit sideways because his knees would not go under the table comfortably.

‘Mr Carver—you mess up our holiday. Not the first time, eh?’ He grinned and the huge brown face went into a landslide of happy wrinkles.

‘How’s the stomach?’

‘Fine. It was temporary. Some mussels we have at an Italian restaurant. Shellfish in the Mediterranean is always suspect. I should know but I never learn. You think Hilda looks well?’

Hilda, though God knows I could never think of her as anything but Wilkins, looked well, but embarrassed at the attention directed to her. She smiled at Olaf, then frowned at me, put up a hand and touched her rust-coloured hair, and said, ‘What happened with the police?’

‘Freeman is dead,’ I said. ‘They showed me his body. Fished out of the drink. So far as I am concerned it is the end of the matter. At least, almost.’

‘We can go back to Cairo?’ Olaf lit an Egyptian cigarette and began to fumigate the dining room.

‘When a couple of small points are cleared up. Would you have any contacts with the harbour or shipping people here?’

Olaf nodded. ‘Yes. Any port on the Med or the Red Sea, I know someone.’

‘Good—there’s a certain Leon Pelegrina who owns a steam yacht called La Sunata. I’d quite like to know what the movements of that boat have