The Melting Man rc-4 Page 22

  Kermode called, 'Watch him, sir. He's making for the weeds. Ah, he's a cunning one.'

  The boat altered position and my face went under as O'Dowda tightened the line. I fought against it, jack-knifing my legs forward to bring my head up and then leaning back against the pressure of the line, taking the full power on my neck. O'Dowda held me like it for a few moments. I saw the arc of the rod bend more and I couldn't fight the power of the line and split bamboo rod. My face went under again and I had to kick forward fast to take off the full power of the line strain to get my mouth above water. I gulped in air, but before I'd had my fill, the boat moved away from me and the strain came in again. For five minutes O'Dowda played me, letting me have just enough air and respite to keep me going, but all the while I was getting weaker and more desperate, knowing that I was slowly being drowned. O'Dowda could have made a fast job of it, but he was taking his time. Now and again as I got my head up I saw them in the boat, and heard them laughing. I made a last, kicking thrust for shallow water, but I was stopped dead. Then the strain went off and I was allowed to breathe.

  O'Dowda shouted, 'Well, where is it?'

  He had me. There wasn't any question about it. Another five minutes of this and I wouldn't care what happened to me. But at that moment I was just conscious enough to care about the future. Quite frankly I didn't want to die, and I wasn't in any mood to make sacrifices for anybody. I wanted to stay alive. It's a powerful instinct and there's no arguing with it.

  I opened my mouth to shout, but Kermode gave a couple of strokes on the oars and O'Dowda put more strain on the line and my face was under again. For a moment or two I blanked out from intelligent thought, just sinking into blackness, and stupidly telling myself that it was enough to put a man off fishing for life…

  They must have seen I was all in and ready to talk, because the strain went off the line. I surfaced slowly and lay in the water on my back, facing the gold and silver morning sky, seeing a flight of starlings skeined right across it. I lay there gulping in the lovely air.

  The strain was right off the line now and I heard the boat coming towards me, the reel singing as O'Dowda took up the slack line.

  O'Dowda's voice called, 'Ready to talk?'

  I rolled over and faced them. The boat was about four yards away. I trod water feebly and nodded my head.

  O'Dowda said, 'Good. Where is it?'

  'I'll have to go and get it. I posted it to myself,' I said.

  'How long will that take?'

  'Not long. It's poste restante at—'

  Several things happened then to make me break off. There was the sound of a shot, O'Dowda ducked, raising the tip of the rod, and the strain came sharply back on to the line, choking the rest of my words silent.

  Feebly I kicked to take the strain off. There was another shot from somewhere to my left. I slewed my head round to see three figures standing on the far bank. One of them plunged into the water and headed for me. At the same time one of the others raised a hand and I heard another shot. O'Dowda and Kermode went down flat in the boat and the strain was off me completely.

  I made a few weak, token kicks towards whoever was coming out to me.

  A few seconds later a familiar voice said, 'Hold on, honey-chile, while I get the hook out of your mouth. Yum-yum, fish for supper.'

  It was, bless her black little heart, Panda Bubakar, heading for me at speed, a grin all over her face, her white teeth flashing, and, held between them, a knife.

  She came threshing up to me, grabbed the wire gimp, worked her hand up to the line and slashed it with the knife. Then she turned me over on my back, grabbed the slack of my shirt and began to tow me ashore, while the two on the bank cracked off an occasional shot to keep O'Dowda and Kermode low in the boat.

  When we reached the bank Panda pulled me out and helped me to my feet and went round behind to cut my hands free.

  'Brother,' she said, 'have you got a thing for water! Your old lady must have been a mermaid.'

  Standing higher up the bank were Najib and Jimbo Alakwe, both with guns in their hands. Najib, neat and tidy in a dark grey suit, beaming at me; and Jimbo in red jeans and a loose yellow sweat shirt with a man's head printed on it in black, a shaggy-headed, craggy-faced man with the word Beethoven under it. He beamed at me, too, but only briefly, turning away to give the row-boat another shot.

  My hands free, Panda gave me a wet smack on the bottom and said, 'Start running, handsome. Mamma show the way.'

  She moved off up the bank. I followed, stumbling along, clumsy from loss of circulation, but now with enough interest in life to give more than a dull data-recording glance at her long brown, heavy-breasted figure clad only in briefs and brassiere. At the top of the bank she stooped and jerked up a track suit and kept running.

  'Be with you soonest,' said Jimbo as we went by.

  'Sooner,' said Najib, and, nodding at me, added, 'Good morning, Mr Carver.'

  Panda took me through the trees, along a small path and finally out on to the open space behind the cottage. Parked short of the Rolls-Royce was their Thunderbird.

  At the car she jerked the rear door open and reached inside for a couple of rugs.

  'Come on, honey,' she said. 'Get that wet stuff off and wrap up in these. And, boy,' she warned, 'no tricks. No jerking any torch out of your pants and slugging me. Jeese, was that something disappointing to a girl for a man to produce.'

  She half turned from me and began to slip out of her pants and bra and then slid into her track suit. I stripped, too, and wrapped myself in the blankets and she bundled me into the car just as Najib and Jimbo appeared, running.

  As they went by the Rolls, Jimbo put a shot in each of the back tyres.

  Five seconds later we were streaking down the château drive towards the main road and my teeth were chattering in my head like an electric typewriter going at speed.

  Najib, next to Jimbo, who was driving, handed a flask back to Panda.

  With a wink, she said, 'Ladies first — which almost means me.' She took a good swig and then handed the flask over.

  I took a deep pull, and she said, 'Keep sucking, baby. We'll soon have you in a nice hot bath and Mamma will give you a friction rub afterwards. Whoof! Whoof!' She put her long arm around my shoulder and gave me a great she-bear hug.

  Driving, Jimbo said, 'That millionaire man sure has a thing about fishing. Only time I ever did it was with hand grenades in the river at home. Remember that, Najib?'

  If Najib did, he didn't consider it worth recording. He turned back to me and said, 'Did you tell them anything?'

  I said, 'Another two seconds and I would have done. I wouldn't have believed water could be so cold.'

  'Healthy, though,' said Panda. 'Early morning swim, wham, gets the old corpuscles stirring and ready for mischief.'

  She leaned forward and tucked the blankets round my legs. She found her cigarettes and lit one for me, sticking it into my mouth and giving me a fat, almost motherly kiss on the cheek.

  'Nice. Yum-yum,' she said, and to Najib added, 'Can I have him after you've finished?'

  Najib said, 'Panda, for God's sake, throttle down.'

  'She always like this?' I asked.

  'Even in her sleep,' said Jimbo and chuckled to himself.

  'I sure am,' said Panda unabashed. 'I've got over five hundred witnesses that'll testify.'

  And from there, right to Geneva and Jimbo's flat she kept it up, ignored by the two in front. Her talk didn't trouble me too much. I had a lot to think about. But I had to fight off her long arms and hands occasionally as she checked now and then to see that I was comfortable inside the blankets and nicely warming up.

  Nobody paid any attention to me as I went through the lobby to the lifts wrapped in blankets. Geneva is a cosmopolitan city. If a Zuly in war paint walked down the street everyone would know that he was just over to a conference hoping to get economic aid.

  Panda ran me a bath, suggested we should share it, yelped like a disappointed puppy whe
n I managed to lock her out, but was happier when I had to shout for a towel and there was no way of escaping the friction rub.

  They found me a suit of Najib's, navy blue, and a white shirt and other odds and ends, but the only spare shoes were a pair of ginger suedes.

  Back in the sitting room, I said, 'Why always these suede jobs?'

  'We get them wholesale from Panda,' said Jimbo. 'She has a small factory in Leichtenstein.'

  Panda, coming in with coffee, said, 'Well, a girl has to do something with her profits. It's for my old age. When I retire from the entertainment business, round about eighty, I guess.'

  She put the coffee tray down in front of me and the top half of her nearly fell out of the low-cut yellow dress into which she had changed.

  Najib said, 'You two get off. You know where. I want to talk to Mr Carver.'

  Panda winked at me, 'You want I give her your love, honey-chile? She's a peach. I'll hand you that — but she'll never have the touch I have with a towel.'

  'Out,' said Najib.

  Jimbo said, 'That O'Dowda might come along here.'

  'Let him,' said Najib. 'And he can bring his fishing rod, too — but it won't do him any good.'

  They went and I leaned back and sipped my coffee. I was feeling all right now, physically. Mentally, I was as scrambled up as ever over the problem of the parcel, except now I was beginning to feel bloody-minded, in fact, more bloody-minded than ever, towards O'Dowda. The man didn't care a damn for anyone but himself. Julia could go, I could go, everyone could go, just so long as he got his hands on what he wanted. With me, that just strengthened the desire I had to make sure that he never did get it. Just for once somebody was going to spit in his eye.

  'How did you know I was out there?' I asked Najib.

  'Jimbo saw them jump you from the flat window. The Facel Vega is still down there. But that's the past. You know what you're going to do, don't you?'

  He was a different man, serious, calm, no babu talk, and it was easy to see him in his real role, an army officer seconded to an Intelligence position in Gonwalla's service.

  I said, 'I never did believe in that old business of which would you save when the boat sinks, your wife or your mother?'

  Najib nodded. 'I thought putting Julia in danger would work with O'Dowda. He's made it clear that it doesn't. That's the kind of man he is. But you're not that kind. Julia is in danger. I'm serious about that. I don't care for the situation particularly, but I have my orders. You'll never see her again — nobody will — unless I get the parcel. Life, a life, in our country isn't very important. Never has been, so don't think that I shan't carry out the order if you refuse to hand over.'

  'I've got Interpol on my back, remember.'

  'I know. But you've got to take a chance on that. In fact, your Western philosophy or code demands it. You know that. Up to this moment you've been trying to find a way round it — sometimes there are ways — but not this time. So — there is nothing you can do. I'm sure that you agree with me.'

  I poured myself another cup of coffee and considered it. He was right, of course. In cold blood he was nothing but right. Up there at the lake, with the good air being choked out of me, I'd been ready to give up, to forget all codes, but down here, under no physical pressure, I was thinking straight, and feeling straight. He was dead right. I just had to get Julia out of trouble and then take my own chances with Interpol. I could go to ground for three or four months and they might decide to forgive me or forget me; they might. But I didn't think it likely. The only thing that would make them change their minds would be pressure, political or public.

  Although my mind was made up, I said, 'When you've got this parcel, what are the chances of Gonwalla putting pressure on whoever is using Interpol? Would he? Could he?'

  Najib considered this. 'When we have the parcel and it is destroyed, then our government is safe. We have friends as well as enemies among the world's governments. Many of them are members of Interpol. I should say there is a fifty-fifty chance. But to be fair — and you must have thought of this — the individual government which hopes to get this parcel through Interpol might take its own private, vindicative revenge for a failure.'

  They might. But that was all part of the chance I had to take.

  I said, 'All right. How do we do it? It'll take me about an hour to get the parcel.'

  'You go and get it. When it's in your hands, phone here. By the time you get back I'll have Julia waiting somewhere handy and we'll do the change-over in the open, in the street outside. Satisfy you?'

  I nodded, and then got up to make a note of the telephone number.

  I said, 'You'll be here waiting for me to call?'

  'Yes.'

  'Good.'

  As I went to the door, he said, 'We'll do what we can for you afterwards. I'm in no position to lecture, of course — but it's difficult to resist. You've only got yourself to blame for whatever the aftermath may be. You thought you could make something for yourself out of the parcel. Human greed. It's a constant problem.'

  So it might be, I thought, as I went out, but without it the world would be a very dull place. Personally, at that moment I was all in favour of dullness. At that moment I would have liked to have been away on the holiday I had promised myself, sitting dully somewhere wondering what to do and knowing that if I thought of something I would never have the energy to do it. That's what holidays were for, to smooth you down to a nice, flat dull surface which you could take back for the rest of the year's events to mark up again.

  * * *

  It was a beautiful morning. The road out around the lake to Evian was choked with cars — parts of it were under repair so there was single-line traffic and hold-ups at lights which did nothing to ease down my impatience. All I wanted now was to get the parcel and have Julia back.

  Away to the left, when I could see it, the lake was a great sheet of blue with the Juras somewhere beyond in the haze. Right-handed, somewhere out of sight, was Mont Blanc, and not far from that was the chalet where I had spent a night with Julia… Najib was right. Human greed. I promised myself that if I came out of this little lot with a whole skin I would really try to do something about it. I knew I wouldn't be able to cut it out altogether, but I would try to cut it down. For me that was a big promise. Money was such a comforting thing to have. The way things were I wasn't likely to get any fees or expenses from O'Dowda for this job. Wilkins would have something to say about that.

  Good old Wilkins. I wondered what she would have made of Panda. I spent the rest of the journey imagining them together. For all I knew they might hit it off.

  I parked the Facel Vega and went into the post office with my English driving licence, my international driving licence, and a banker's credit card, per favour of O'Dowda (all of which had been in my case in the car) in order to identify myself. Sometimes at poste restantes they asked you and sometimes they didn't. They worked on some system, probably their mood of the moment.

  The woman behind the guichet had a pink nose, pink lips, flurry blue-grey hair, and big moist eyes, doe-like, and reminded me of an Angora rabbit which I had once forgotten to feed for a week so that it died and my sister had leathered me with a slipper. Sensitive green fingers she had, my sister, even at the age of fourteen, but she also had the wrists of a squash player.

  I spread out my cartes d'identites like lettuce in front of the girl.

  She wrinkled her pink nose with pleasure. I said, 'Carver. Rex Carver. I think there's a parcel here for me.'

  She picked at the corner of the banker's card and said, 'Carvaire…?'

  I knew she would.

  'Oui, Carvaire.'

  She turned away to the rows of pigeon holes behind her, had a brief chat with a chum on her left, and then, starting on the lower row which ran backwards from Z, gave herself the trouble of a long ride up to C. There was a wad of stuff in it which she brought over to me.

  'Carvaire?' She started to sort through it.

  'That's right
.'

  She shuffled through the lot, and then shook her head at me.

  'There is nozzings, monsieur. Caballaire, there is.'

  'Carvaire,' I said. But my heart was right down in my ginger suede shoes already. Nothing she held in her hand looked the size of the parcel I had sent.

  'I'm sorry, monsieur. Perhaps he comes the next collection?'

  I shook my head and began to gather up the lettuce leaves. I was about to turn away — wondering what the hell had happened, the thought flashing through my mind that maybe Aristide had been at work (he could have made a check of every poste restante in the East of France by now and picked it up) — when the girl said with a sudden note of recognition in her voice, 'Ah, you are Mr Carvaire?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then it is explained. You are guest of Monsieur O'Dowda, no?' From the way she said it, it was clear that she knew Mr O'Dowda. Who wouldn't in this district? He owned half a mountain not six miles away.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was way ahead of her. But there was no stopping her. A guest from the château was something to relish and hold on to for a while.

  'But Mr O'Dowda himself telephones this morning to see for parcel of his guest, Mr Carvaire. I say, yes, is waiting, so he send his chauffeur with passport for parcel. It is not long ago. One hour, maybe. Maybe a little more. The chauffeur I know well. Is a little man, much joking and winking the eye…'

  I didn't wait for the full description of Kermode. I was on my way out.

  I sat in the car and lit a cigarette, smoking it as though I hated it, sucking the life out of it. Not Aristide but O'Dowda had done it. O'Dowda had had more to go on. He had my suit with my passport in it. I had told him that the parcel was poste restante. I had told him that it wasn't far away. He could have phoned every main post office around the lake in half an hour and his name would have waived aside all question of formalities. Monsieur O'Dowda's guest? Certainly. Mr O'Dowda's guests were always important… politicians, film stars, the famous… naturally one would send the chauffeur down with a passport for identification.