Irritably Duchêne said, ‘Enough of this. You will do as you are told, Monsieur Carver, because if you do not then someone very dear and near to you will be killed.’
‘You must mean me.’
‘No.’
‘Then you’re living in a dream. All my life I’ve avoided having anyone near and dear to me. They’re always coming for loans or something.’
Duchêne rolled his cigar to the other corner of his mouth. Paulet picked up a sandwich which had fallen on the floor when he had hit me. Outside the window Mimo began to whistle gently ‘Winchester Cathedral’ as he watched the Arab porter, who had got his feet free of his bonds, come shuffling urgently up the drive, the rest of the cords round his body making him look like a walking mummy. Mimo fired a shot into the sand a yard to his side. The Arab sat down and stayed sat as Mimo went down to him, still whistling. You couldn’t help liking Mimo, you couldn’t help liking Paulet—but it was easy to dislike Duchêne.
Fishing in his jacket pocket, he pulled out a letter and handed it to me.
‘Read this,’ he said.
I did. It was from Wilkins:
Dear Mr Carver,
Olaf and I were stopped on the road to Leptis Magna. I am not allowed to tell you more. I do not know what has happened to Olaf—but I am being treated with every consideration.
Shocked as I am by this turn of events—the result entirely of your egotistical stupidity—I beg of you at least from now on to act as the bearer of this letter would wish.
I am told that if you do not I shall suffer some mishap.
Return to London and do as these people say. This is not a time for any of your obstinate heroics. Please be wise.
Distressed though I am about my personal predicament, I am much more concerned about Olafs.
Tell him, if he is free, not to worry too much about me, or to blame himself for being hoodwinked by his false countryman into making the trip to Leptis Magna.
Calmly though I write, I am naturally very angry at what has happened. When I am free I shall have to consider very seriously whether I shall return to my present work.
Bluntly, do as these people request, since I am assured by them that it will not involve you in anything criminal.
Unless you do this, they have made it very, very clear that the consequences will be serious for me.
Both of us have had our disagreements in the past—and usually in your pig-headed fashion you have ignored my advice. Why is it that you have always to make a mess, not only of your own life, but of other people’s? None of this would have happened if you had gone straight back to London from Libya.
No rash action on your part can help me now. Frankly my life is in your hands. For once please, please, do exactly as you are told.
Yours,
Hilda Wilkins
I read it twice. It was Wilkins’s handwriting without doubt. It wasn’t Wilkins’s style, quite. Any communication she made to me, verbal or written, was usually briefer and quick to the point. But this time—since she was in a dangerous position and worried about her beloved Olaf—she had let herself go.
I said to Duchêne, ‘If she comes to any harm, and I get the chance, I’ll gut you!’
‘No harm is going to come to her—so long as you act sensibly. She herself tells you to do that too.’
‘You give me your word?’
‘I do.’
Paulet said, ‘The moment you have completed your mission, she will be set free.’
‘This was your idea?’
Paulet nodded. ‘Central Bureau were opposed to it until we pointed out its advantages.’
‘We have got to have a go-between,’ said Duchêne, ‘to carry out negotiations for us. Someone who knows the other side and is trusted by them, and someone we know and can trust because he understands the consequences of keeping faith with us.’
‘You’ve bought Freeman and Pelegrina out?’
He nodded. ‘For a substantial sum. After all, they did the preliminary work, clumsily but effectively.’
‘And what’s happening to them?’
‘That is not your affair. What good is money to them unless they have security as well? We have made an honest bargain with them. We do the same with you.’
‘And Bill Dawson?’
‘He is in this house. We have seen him and he is in good health.’
‘I don’t care so much about his health—though I’ll hand the good news on to his father. What I want to know is what kind of deal you’re thinking of making for his return? Not just a cash transaction, surely?’
‘Clearly not, Mr Carver. Equally clearly, your curiosity will have to wait until you meet Saraband Two. Only one point remains to be stressed. So far the British authorities have kept this whole matter a secret. The press and the public have no idea he has been kidnapped. For our purposes it must remain that way. If you say or do anything which will bring this affair into the open—then you know what will happen to Miss Wilkins and to yourself.’
He didn’t have to stress that to me. It was obvious. And there were two or three kinds of deals he could make over Bill Dawson. What I wanted to know—but wasn’t going to ask him because I didn’t want him to realize the point had occurred to me—was how, if the affair had been kept quiet so far, he had come to know about it and had decided to take advantage of it, staying in the background until the last moment and using me hard all the time. There was something very fishy there.
‘Where’s Olaf?’
‘We held him for a while after we took Miss Wilkins, then we released him on the coast road some miles from Tripoli.’
‘What, to go back to the police and make a stink about it all?’
‘He won’t get far with Captain Asab. The Libyan authorities
