Queen's Pawn Read online

  ‘I don’t know really. Well, yes, I suppose I mean real love for me. Not just wanting me as part of a picture you’ve got in your mind. You know, us, Alverton, you retiring, children, the good life.’

  ‘Well, of course, I want all that. But over and above that I want you. What’s got into you?’

  She laughed. ‘Two dry martinis, I should think.’

  He smiled. ‘Have another drink. That’ll take you clear out on the other side.’

  But driving back, the question kept coming to him—What is she trying to say? Always before she’d accepted, as he did, the fact of their love. She couldn’t be jealous of other women. She knew perfectly well that he had them occasionally. And she knew equally well that when they were married he wouldn’t have any other woman but her … wouldn’t want any other. Then the thought came to him, perhaps she isn’t trying to say anything to me, perhaps she’s waiting for me to say something. Perhaps something of all this Sarling business shows and she wants reassurance that I am what I’ve always been.

  In the headlights something moved across the country road.

  Mary said, ‘Fox?’

  ‘No. Otter. Travelling. Probably coming up from the Barle and over into the Exe.’

  He carried the lumping hindquarter movement of the animal in his mind. Down on the river at home when the snows came there was a bank which the otters turned into a slide. At the age of eight he had stood, screened by the snowmantled bulk of a holly tree, hand in his father’s and first seen the play, until finally, unable to hold back half shout half laugh as the old dog otter had gone down on his back, paws waving and tail thumping, the noise had ended the exhibition. Eight years old … in eight years’ time he wanted to stand there, a small hand in his.

  He went back to London, arriving late on a Wednesday evening. Although she was disappointed that he did not make love to her that night Belle showed him no sign of it. He came from one world into another. There had to be time for readjustment.

  On the Thursday he met Berners at the R.A. C. and they completed their detailed arrangements for dealing with Sarling the moment he gave them a chance after his return.

  After the meeting at the club, Raikes went back to Mount Street and briefed Belle with the details of their plan. From this moment they waited on Sarling’s return and his first visit to Meon Park.

  That night Raikes made love to Belle and as far as he was concerned it was no different from many another night. He needed her; they needed her, she had to be kept as their creature until they had no more use for her.

  He would have gone back to Devon for the weekend but Belle had a call from Sarling in Paris saying that he was probably returning on the Saturday and she could drive him down later that day to spend the weekend at Meon.

  The next morning at eight o’clock the telephone in the Mount Street flat rang. Belle answered it. It was Sarling from Paris. When Sarling had finished talking to her, she went into the bedroom where Raikes was half-dressed in shirt and trousers. He turned from brushing his hair, an untied tie hanging loose over his shirt and smiled at her. He stood there big and solid, the man she knew she loved, all question of doubt gone from her. He came to her, put up his hands and cradled her face, looking at her, and then, sliding the hands up and into her hair, tilted her face to his.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Sarling. He’s definitely coming back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow, about lunchtime. I’ve got to be at Park Street to meet him. Then I’m to drive him down to Meon. He’ll be there over the weekend.’

  He stood there close to her, yet entirely remote from her. Then, without a word, he went into the sitting room. She stayed in the bedroom, heard him dialling and knew that he was calling Berners. She heard the careful words, masquerading his true meaning yet clearly understood by the man at the other end. She moved into the room as he put the receiver down.

  She said, ‘ You’re really going through with it?’

  He turned, bulkily silhouetted against the window, his hands going up, taking the loose tie and beginning to knot it, and said without emotion or emphasis, ‘In two days’ time the bastard will be dead.’

  Goaded by his coldness, she said, ‘I could tell him.’

  In the same even voice, he said, ‘ Tell him then. Spoil it all. But I’ll find some other way. I am not living as his creature one day longer than I have to.’

  He came over to her, put his arm around her shoulder, holding her to him, and she knew that he was not beginning to cajole her, to win her round again. He knew he had her, knew that she would never tell Sarling. He kissed her and stepped away from her and said, ‘I know how you feel. It’s the hour before dawn. It’s always the coldest of the night. I prescribe hot coffee.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I suppose it was just … well, a bit of a shock. Him phoning like that and suddenly it all being right on top of us.’

  ‘Coffee—and stop worrying,’ he said briskly, touched her cheek and turned back into his bedroom. She went through to the kitchen to make coffee, all the doors open behind her and heard him whistling. She realized that for the first time since she had known him he was really happy Sarling’s call was the beginning of his release … he was thundering down the stairs, rushing out of school, out of prison, whistling like a bloody bird because the days ahead were full of freedom.

  Sarling arrived at London Airport just after midday. A car and chauffeur from the Overseas Mercantile Bank waited for him. Forty minutes later he walked into the Mount Street flat. Raikes was sitting in a chair by the window reading a newspaper.

  Sarling said, ‘ Belle is at Park Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t had lunch. Could I have a glass of milk?’

  For a moment Raikes was tempted to tell him to help himself. Then, seeing him as dead already, he decided that it would be polite, to offer him some last service, the first coin placed on the dead eyelid. He fetched milk from the kitchen.

  Sarling sat and drank. He said, ‘ I know you have commitments in Devon. I thought I’d come and have a talk and get things cleared up so that you could feel free for a while. Free to do what you want—and also to think about what I want.’

  ‘Your famous operation?’

  ‘Precisely.’ Sarling drained the glass and put it on a table, the milk film staining the inside of the tumbler in a grey wash. ‘ What happened about the gold?’

  ‘I’m getting a price and delivery details soon.’

  ‘Good. There’s one point I’d like to make clear. Half of the profit we make on this goes to yourself and Berners.’

  ‘You’re only really interested in the kicks. The big risk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Aren’t they going to fall flat? Berners and I have to plan and execute it. You’ll just be riding on our backs, waving a little flag.’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong. All I want from you is the execution. The plan is mine.’

  ‘It’s a comfortable division for you, isn’t it? If anything goes wrong—and don’t tell me you haven’t thought of this one—nothing will be traced to you. You will be so far back being an eminent international financier that nobody would be able to touch you even if they for one moment suspected that you should be touched. However … just give me my holiday task and I’ll go away and get on with it.’

  ‘Very well. We’re going to steal gold bullion.’

  ‘I’d gathered that.’

  ‘Not from a bank, not from any City gold dealer’s vaults or from any security van. We’re going to take it on the high seas from a ship. Does that appeal to you?’

  ‘No. But to some of my ancestors it might have. One of them was a captain with Drake. Which ship?’

  ‘From the newest and most beautiful in the world, the latest of a famous line.’

  Sarling opened the brief case on his lap and pulled out a large brochure. He handed it over to Raikes. It was a large quarto-sized brochure, thickish, the white cover of glossy paper. Red lettering at
the top ran—THE NEW CUNARDER QUEEN ELIZABETH 2.

  Raikes opened the brochure at random. Below him was a two-page spread showing three men, half length, in the uniform of the Cunard line; the Captain, the Chief Engineer and the Hotel Manager of the Queen Elizabeth 2 … white-topped caps, on their peaks scrambled egg and the crown-crested emblem of the Cunard Line, a lion holding up the world, white shirts, black ties, medal ribbons on their shoulders, eight brass buttons gleaming against the dark blue jackets, four gold rings on the captain’s sleeves, and the captain’s face, sea- and sun-tanned, bearded, weathered and character-creased and looking something like Sir Francis Drake, or maybe that was just the beard. His eye caught the blurbs of print against each man … Captain William Eldon Warwick. ‘What do I like about this job?’ And the printed answer, seeming almost an answer from Raikes’ own ego. ‘ Well, I suppose it’s one of the last ways of life where you are on your own and your own boss.’ Your own boss. Numbness thawed. Raikes looked at Sarling. Sarling said nothing.

  Still held by the magnitude of the other man’s fantasy, his fingers turned the publicity-packed pages … images flicking up at him. A blonde girl in a red dress sprawled across a bed in a de-luxe cabin … a bronzed, old-gold shot of a propeller, the six flanged blades in silhouette like the thrusting head of some heavily armoured prehistoric animal.

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Raikes.

  ‘On the contrary I am a practical man.’

  Another two-page spread, the new ship itself, an artist’s impression; Caribbean palm fronds, amethyst sea, and the long lovely length of the ship, dark hull sheering from the bows, the brilliant red waterline mark, dazzling white upper decks and superstructure, and life boats festooned along her boat deck like cocoons below the stark, wind-cheating line of the funnel.

  Raikes tossed the brochure back to Sarling. He was himself now, complete, his secret revolt already successful because by the next day Sarling would be dead, but even this knowledge was not enough to edge with the thinnest aura of pretence the genuineness of his protest. ‘It’s the maddest bloody thing I’ve ever heard!’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s a practical proposition.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sarling!’ He was angry now. ‘What is this? Captain Blood and the Crown Jewels, The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. The Great Mail Train Robbery? You’ve gone round the bend.’

  ‘We’re going to do it. My plan and your execution.’ He took the other papers from the brief case, clipped them inside the brochure and put the brochure on the side table. ‘There’s some stuff there you can read through. Some of it just normal press handouts and publicity matter. Some of it notes I’ve made from information which has come to me through my business life. None of it is secret. Anyone could have got it. Read it.’

  ‘Why should I? I can tell you now that you’d need an army. More men than you’ve got on your files. Forget it. Why not ask me to get the Crown Jewels? That, now, I might just manage for you.’

  Sarling shook his head. ‘ It can be done. At the moment, as you’ve probably read in the press, she’s not in service yet. She’s at Southampton and there’s been trouble over her turbines so that the Cunard people have had to cancel all her schedules. That means we can’t fix any dates at the moment—but what we’re going to do is to take the gold off her on her first regular westbound run across the North Atlantic to New York.’

  ‘Then you’d better, hire a battleship to hold her up. Sarling, be sensible. All right, maybe you had a bad childhood, maybe your face got mucked about— but this is overcompensating. Just keep it for your dreams.’

  ‘The gold comes out of her Specie Room on her maiden outward run. We don’t need a battleship or an army of men. It can be done by having just two people aboard, and done without violence and without fuss. She carries three thousand passengers and crew. Not more than a couple of dozen, most of them just curious, unsuspecting onlookers, will ever see it happen. You’ve got plenty of time. Go away and then come back and tell me how it is to be done. I know. It amuses me to speculate whether you can match my plan. Two people, no violence and the gold vanishes.’ He chuckled, his ugly face contorting, his glee childish in sound, hands rubbing together, dry-skinned, rasping, the happy master of ceremonies who had set the party an apparently impossible conundrum … three men on a river bank, one boat, how do they all get to the other side and yet leave the boat on the bank where they had found it?

  ‘Well, nothing about this amuses me. Nothing.’ In fact, there was an element of sacrilege about it. He was a Devon man, the sea and its ships were part of the heritage of every Devon man. Men of his family long before him had been with Raleigh, Hawkins and Drake, with Fisher and Beatty; his two brothers had been submariners, a ship their coffin, the sea their grave.

  The memory of a picture book of his childhood flashed back into his mind like the sudden, sun-brightened leap of a salmon, each detail etched vivid and clear for a second, a picture of a red-stacked, paddle-wheeled boat, the Britannia, the first Cunarder, which had bucketed across the North Atlantic for the first time in 1840 to Halifax, Nova Scotia, her passageways lit by candles and a cow on deck to provide fresh milk for the passengers. Turn the pages of memory and they were all there … the Mauretania, holding for 22 years the Atlantic record, and then the Queens, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth. … War could ravage them all, destroy them, but to steal from them would be an act of desecration like the taking of silver candlesticks and salvers from an altar.

  Raikes said angrily, ‘You’re not taking me with you on this.’

  Sarling stood up. ‘I am. You’ll get used to the idea. You’ll fall in love with it. I know you. You’ll come back to me in a month, and you’ll have a plan. It might, even be as good as my own. Walk round to Cunard House in Regent Street sometime. There’s a model of the ship in their window. I often go and look at it. A new ship, the best that was ever built. And we’re going to take the golden heart out of her on her first truly maiden run across the Atlantic.’

  He went to the door, paused, looked back, and waited for Raikes to speak. Raikes, back to him, moved to the sideboard. Two sparrows suddenly alighted in fight on the windowsill, their cries high and chattering. A car braked in the road outside, tyres screeching in agony at their brief and violent meld against the road, Raikes picked up the brandy bottle, tipped liquid amber, swirling, sun-pierced colour, into a glass. He turned and raised the glass to Sarling, smiled over it, skin creasing mouth and cheeks in a slow act of defiance. He tipped the glass and drank, emptying it in one gesture that could have been greeting or farewell.

  For a moment coldness struck through the euphoria of Sarling’s mood, then he turned and left the flat. But going down the stairs the warmth of his dream closed in on him. Raikes was his.

  Two minutes after Sarling had gone Raikes called the Park Street house. Belle answered.

  ‘He’s been here. Now he’s on his way round to you. Everything’s clear in your mind?’

  ‘Yes, darling … yes, yes.’

  She was nervous, but he knew that it had to be like that with her until things actually started.

  Because so much depended on her he gave generously. ‘Don’t worry, love. There’s nothing we can’t do between us. I’m leaving now and picking up Berners. We’ll be watching the place, we’ll know when you’ve arrived. When it’s dark and he’s in his study—the very first time—just show yourself at the window. Just stand there and turn your back to us. We’ll be watching. All right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  ‘Andy … Andy, just suppose—’

  ‘Suppose nothing. It will all go just as we’ve planned. Just relax and remember I’ll be thinking of you every minute. Bye, darling.…’

  He put the phone down. Andy. She’d started to call him that recently and something rusty and unoiled seemed to turn in him every time he heard it.

  He went to the safe and took out one of the canisters of Z/93, GF1. In the kitchen he pulled out
of a cupboard a small wicker picnic basket, opened it and checked the contents, a thirty-foot coil of climbing rope, a large bandana handkerchief, two six-foot lengths of soft manilla cord, two pairs of thin, black cotton gloves, and a pair of gauntleted leather gloves;

  Going about the flat, changing his clothes quickly, gathering his things, Raikes thought, Why did I waste my breath in protest against him? From artifice to keep him unsuspecting? We’re going to take the golden heart out of her. No, from real impulse. Gold bars piled on the floor of a specie room, deep below decks. Two people and no violence … and Berners waiting for him now in Wiltshire, already wearing a Sarling moustache and a Sarling topcoat, silk scarf and black Homburg hat … waiting to play his brief part as Sarling.

  The Cunarder brochure on the table caught his eye. He picked it up and ripped it in half, dropping the two sections into the wastepaper basket.

  Carrying the cane basket he went out, flagged a taxi and was driven to his lock-up garage and his car. Ten minutes later he was going westwards across London on his way to Wiltshire, avoiding the route which he knew Belle would be taking with Sarling. Even the coincidence of a quick overtaking on the road had to be insured against. Sarling had to go.

  He switched on the car radio and a man’s voice, precise, neat, technical, was saying, ‘… well, it cost somewhere around one hundred thousand pounds and is based on the Ferranti Argus 400 computer. Its principal functions will be to record data connected with the main engine and print the engine-room log, and then there’s an alarm scanning system for detecting undue temperatures and pressures in the machinery. All in all, there’s no question that the QE2’s computer is the most sophisticated on any merchant ship. Another interesting point is—’

  Raikes swore and turned the radio off.

  Chapter Eight

  He was leaning back in his chair, a small, puppet figure, made smaller by the wide spread of desk before him; polished red morocco leather, gold-tooled in a running design around the edges, the desk lamp throwing black shadows from the inkstand and the hand-carved alabaster paperweight. He had his eyes fixed on some point beyond her head as he dictated from his notes the details of a Paris conference.