‘Don’t worry. You’re doing the right thing. As soon as I have any positive information I’ll let the right people know about it.’
If I told them too soon I knew what might happen. Somebody might try to put a stopper on it. The P.M. might not want to take any risks with his son. But if I wanted Wilkins back I had to take risks. By shouting for Manston now there was too much chance of some high-level decision blocking any further action.
I began to move to the door.
Gloriana said, ‘Don’t forget the cheque.’
‘What cheque?’
‘For that mercenary snake-charmer of yours. Don’t you want an excuse to go and see her again before you take off tomorrow?’
‘Well . . . I suppose it will help fill in time. I’ll give it to her this evening.’
She grinned at me, raised a hand to touch her red-gold hair, and said, ‘Just try and keep things on a purely business level, otherwise you’ll spoil our beautiful friendship.’
She moved to the bureau to write the cheque. As she wrote she said, ‘If you get any news about my brother, let me know. I’ll be at Cannes. Not at the Carlton—but the Reserve Miramar. Jan and I always stayed there.’
*
In my business one should always listen carefully to what people say. Very carefully. I didn’t know it then, but I was going to make this mistake twice. Listen, don’t interrupt, and then do a lot of careful thinking. After all, I wasn’t selling soap or potatoes—I was selling expertise. Now, hours later, seeing this same woman sitting opposite me, I had the tardy conviction that maybe I would have done better with soap and potatoes. She had her hands cocked up on her crossed legs, and the right hand held a gun—a gas gun; no noise, deadly effective within two yards and we were less than that apart. ‘Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?’ And, to continue with the borrowing, it was no consolation to think that while ‘every dog has his day, and mine has been a fine one’, I was content for it all to end then and there. And all for the want of a little thoughtful listening.
But first there had been Olaf at the airport. I didn’t tell him about Wilkins’s letter. There would have been no holding him. We got bookings on a direct jet flight to Ibiza for early the next morning. Normally one had to go to Palma, Majorca, and make a change to a local flight to the island, but now the airfield on Ibiza had been lengthened and strengthened to take jets. That suited me; every hour saved could be important. Olaf stormed a bit about the mystery, but I told him that I would put him in the picture on the plane. Until then he was to go to our hotel and keep sober for the next day’s trip.
Just tell me there is some hope for us to get Hilda—then I’m content.’
‘There is some hope. All you have to do is to stay in your room and don’t drink more than half a bottle of rum.’
I had dinner with him, and left him about half past nine and went along to Letta’s flat, deep in thought, but all along the wrong lines. I had decided that I would put a call through to Manston from the airport the next morning just before we took off. I wasn’t going to run the risk of any of his Paris men blocking me from getting on that Caravelle.
I fixed myself a whisky and sat in a chair near the window and planned what I would do. It was simple. The moment I had established where V.V. was—and I was sure that Wilkins and Bill Dawson would be there—then I would call up the cavalry. I was really quite happy and pleased with myself, and full of admiration for Wilkins’s cleverness. What the hell would I do without her if she ever got round to marrying Olaf?
And now here, sitting in a chair a few feet from me, was Gloriana Stankowski smiling, self-composed and dedicated to the business in hand . . . her right hand.
I’d left the apartment door unlocked and she had walked in and taken a seat opposite me. She was wearing a smart black tailor-made, with black velvet trimmings on cuffs and neck and a white silk blouse with an antique silver brooch of some Indian god with about six arms—Siva, probably, representing the destructive principle in life. She was always very studied in her dress. And she’d fooled me completely.
I said, ‘I presume whatever that thing in your hand holds, you mean business with it?’
‘Unfortunately, yes, but—’
‘Please,’ I interrupted, ‘don’t say you hope I won’t take it personally.’
‘I don’t care how you take it. I’m only thinking of myself. I was given a promise that I wouldn’t have to take part in active operations of this kind. The promise has been broken twice since Jan died. Now, because of Wilkins’s letter and the fact that you are still alive when you should be dead, they say—’
‘Saraband Two or Duchêne?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not really. I’m beginning to see light.’
J. was Jan, of course.
She shifted her hand a little, and said, ‘I don’t even know what chemical it contains. But it’s effective. I’ve used it before. I had to do a course after I married Jan.’
She must have known damn well what was in the pistol. You don’t take courses without being told. It was probably potassium cyanide. Maybe she just didn’t want to confuse me with science. Maybe she just didn’t want to think too much about what she was going to do.
I said, ‘Was Jan very fond of your brother Martin?’
‘Yes—oddly enough. Although Martin never knew the truth behind it, they had this thing to kidnap Dawson fixed up over two years ago. There was no Pelegrina in the picture then. Jan saw
