Macao (KM031), page 1
part #31 of Killmaster Series
Macao (1968)
(The 31st book in the Killmaster series)
Version 0.9
Dedicated to The Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
Chapter 1
LONDON SWELTERED. It was the last week of July and for days now the thermometer had been pushing near to eighty. In Britain that is hot and it was only natural that the consumption of beer, mild and bitter, and nut brown ale should increase in direct ratio to the degrees Fahrenheit
It was almost closing time in The Golden Unicorn, a shabby pub on the Portobello Road. There was no air conditioning and the dirty little public room was filled with the stench of beer and tobacco, cheap perfume and human sweat. Any moment now the landlord, a grossly fat man, would tap on the bar and sing out those words so dreaded by drunkards and the lonely.
“Time, gentlemen, please! Empty your glasses.”
In a back booth, well out of earshot of the other customers, six men were in whispered conference. Five of the men were Cockneys, obviously so by speech, dress and manner. The sixth man, who was doing all the talking, was a little harder to place. His clothes were conservative and well cut, his shirt clean—but with frayed cuffs—and he wore the tie of a good regiment. His speech was that of an educated man and, outwardly, he bore a marked resemblance to what the British call a “gentleman.” His name was Theodore Blacker —Ted or Teddy to his friends, of which he had very few—and he had once been a Captain in the Queen’s Ulster Rifles. Until cashiered for stealing regimental funds and cheating at cards.
Ted Blacker finished speaking and glanced around at the five Cockneys. “You all understand what’s wanted of you? Any questions? If so ask them now—there’ll be no time later.”
One of the men, a small fellow with a nose like a knife, held up his empty glass. “Ar—I got a bleeding question, Teddy lad. ‘Ow about anover bleeding round before that fat sod calls time?”
Blacker kept the distaste out of his voice and expression as he crooked a finger at the hovering barmaid. He needed these types for the next few hours. Needed them badly, a matter of life and death—his life—and there was no gainsaying the old saw that when you associated with pigs a little dirt was bound to rub off on you. Ted Blacker sighed inwardly, smiled outwardly, paid for the drinks and lit a cigar against the odor of unwashed flesh. It was only for a few hours—at most a day or two—and then the deal would be set and he would be a rich man. He would have to leave England, of course, but that did not matter. There was a big, wide, beautiful world out there. He had always wanted to see South America.
Alfie Doolittle, leader of the Cockneys by reason of size and intelligence, wiped beer foam from his mouth and stared over the table at Ted Blacker. His eyes, small and cunning in his big steak-colored face, were fixed on Blacker.
He said: ” ‘Strewth now, Teddy. There’s not to be killing? Maybe bashing if it’s required, like, but no killing. That’s the plain deal of it, and it’s plain I wants to make it. You ain’t buying no killing for a fiver apiece!”
Ted Blacker made a gesture of annoyance. He glanced at an expensive gold wristwatch. “I’ve explained all that,” he said petulantly. “If there’s trouble at all—which I doubt—it won’t run to much. Certainly no killing. If any of my, er, clients get out of line all you men have to do is to subdue them. As gently as possible. I thought I had made that perfectly clear, Alfie. I don’t want any violence if it can possibly be avoided. All you men have to do is to see that nothing happens to me—and that nothing is taken from me. Particularly the latter. I shall be showing some very valuable merchandise later on tonight. There are certain parties who would like to have that merchandise without paying for it. Now, is it all understood at last?”
Dealing with the lower classes, Blacker thought, can be so extremely trying! They weren’t even intelligent enough to make good common criminals. He glanced at his watch again and stood up. “I’ll leave now. I’ll expect you at two-thirty, on the dot. My clients are coming at three. Make sure you arrive separately and don’t attract any attention. You all know about the constable on the beat and his schedule, so there should be no difficulty there. Now, Alfie, the address once more?”
“Fourteen Half Crescent Mews. Off Moorgate Road. A loft building and you’re on the fourth floor. There’s a bleeding blower in the lobby and we gives you three longs and a short when we gets there.”
“Right. I’ll see you then. Cheers.”
When he had gone the little Cockney with the knife nose snickered, “Thinks ‘e’s a proper gent, don’t ‘e? Not ‘alf he don’t”
Another man said, “Seems gentleman enough ter me. Anyway his fivers are good.”
Alfie banged down his empty mug. He gave them all a shrewd glance and chuckled. “Yer wouldn’t know a real gentleman, none of yer, if ‘e was to come up and bite yer. Me, naow, I knows a gent when I sees ‘im. That one ain’t Ow, ‘e dresses and he talks like one, but I’m telling yer he ain’t!”
The fat landlord pounded on the bar with a tapping mallet. “Time, gentlemen, please!”
Ted Blacker, late Captain in HM Ulster Rifles, left the taxi in Cheapside and walked around to Moorgate Road. Half Crescent Mews was about halfway down toward Old Street Number fourteen was at the very dead end of the mews, a four-story building of faded red brick. It was of early Victorian vintage and, when all the other homes and apartments had been stables, had been a prosperous carriage repair shop. There were times when Ted Blacker, who was not an unimaginative man, fancied he could still smell the mingled odors of horse flesh, leather, paint, varnish and wood hovering over the mews.
As he entered the narrow cobbled lane he took off his coat and loosened the regimental tie. Despite the late hour the air was still warm and humid, sticky.
Blacker had no right to wear the tie, nor anything pertaining to his regiment. Disgraced officers do not have such privileges. This bothered him not at all. The tie, like his clothes, his speech and his manners, were all assumed things now. Part of his pose, necessary to the role he must play in a world he hated, a world that had used him very badly. A world that had raised him to officer and gentleman, had allowed him a peek at Paradise, only to kick him back into the gutter. The real reason for the kick—and this Ted Blacker believed with all his heart and soul—the real reason was not that he had been caught cheating at cards, nor that his accounts had been a little short. No. The real reason for the kick was that his father had been a butcher and his mother, before marriage, had been a lady’s maid. That, and that alone, was the reason he had been kicked out of the service without a penny and without a name. He had been only a temporary gentleman. When they had needed him—fine! When they no longer needed him—out! Back to the gutter to scrabble for a living.
He came to Number fourteen, unlocked a gray painted front door and began the long climb to the top floor. The stairs were narrow, steep and time worn; the air was humid and stifling. Blacker was sweating heavily by the time he reached the last landing. He paused to catch his breath, telling himself that he was badly out of condition. He must do something about it. Perhaps, when he got to South America with all the money, he would be able to get back into shape. Take off the little paunch, build up his wind again. He had always been keen on physical fitness. He was only forty-two now, much too young to allow himself to go to seed.
Money! Pounds, shillings, pence. Dollars. American, Hong Kong, Mex or Straits. What matter? It was all money. Beautiful, lovely money. It bought things. If you had it you were alive. Without it you were dead.
Ted Blacker, having caught his breath, fished in his pocket for a key. Opposite the stairhead was a single large wooden door. It was painted black. On it, in scarlet and gold, was a large dragon breathing flame. The decal, Blacker thought as he opened the door, had been just the proper exotic touch, the very first hint of the forbidden bounty, the joys and illegal pleasures, that lay behind the black door. His carefully selected clientele was mostly young—the go-go gang, the now people. Only two things did Blacker require for entrance to his Dragon Club: discretion and money. Plenty of both.
He stepped through the black door and closed it behind him. The darkness was filled with the reassuring, and expensive, hum of air conditioners. They had cost him a pretty packet, but it had been necessary. And worth it in the end. The people who came to his Dragon Club did not care to stew in their own sweat as they went about their various, and at times complicated, amours. The private cubicles had been a problem for a time, but that had been eventually solved. At more cost. Blacker winced as he sought for a light button. He had less than fifty pounds at the moment, with half of that owed to the Cockney bully boys. July, August too, were definitely slow months in London.
What matter? Discreet lighting leaked slowly into the long, wide, high-ceilinged room. What matter? Who cared? He, Blacker, wasn’t going to be around much longer. Not bloody likely. Not with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds coming to him.
Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Seven hundred thousand American dollars. That was his asking price for twenty minutes of film. He would get his price, too. He was sure of it.
Blacker went to a small bar in one corner and mixed himself a mild Scotch and soda. He was not a heavy drinker and he never touched the drugs he sold: marijuana, cocaine, heroin, various pep pills and, in the last year, LSD. It was very big now, was LSD, with his more select clientele.
Blacker opened a small fridge to get ice for his drink. He had come to like it in the Yank fashion. Yes, there was money in drugs all right. Yet not so much in h
Blacker sipped his drink, grimaced and was honest with himself. He knew his trouble, knew why he was always strapped. H and R. His smile was sickly. Horses and roulette. And he the unluckiest bastard that ever drew breath. Right now, this very moment, he owed over five hundred quid at Raft’s. He had been ducking the place lately and, before too long now, the enforcers would come looking.
I mustn’t think of that, Blacker told himself. I won’t be here when they come looking. I’ll be in South America, safe and sound and with all that money. I’ll change my name and my way of life. I’ll start all over again with a clean slate. I swear it.
He glanced at the gold wristwatch. A few minutes after one. Plenty of time. His Cockney bodyguards would arrive at two-thirty and he would post them. Two in front, two in back, big Alfie here with him. Nobody, but nobody, to leave unless he, Ted Blacker, gave the word. Blacker smiled. He would have to be alive to give that word, wouldn’t he?
Blacker drank slowly and let his eyes rove over the big room. In a way he hated to leave all this. It was his baby. He had built it from nothing. He did not like thinking about the risks he had taken to get the necessary capital: a smash and grab job at a jewelers; a load of furs stolen from a loft on the East Side; even a spot or two of blackmail. Blacker could smile grimly at that memory—both had been hoity-toity bastards he had known in the Army. Served them right. He’d bloody well gotten his own back there! But it had been dangerous, all of it. Terribly, fearfully dangerous. Blacker was not, and he admitted it, a very brave man. One more reason why he was willing to cut and run as soon as he got the money from the film. It was just too bloody much for a weak-nerved man, worrying about Scotland Yard, the Narcotics Branch, and now even Interpol. To hell with it. Sell the film to the highest bidder and run like hell. To hell with England and the world and screw everybody but himself. Those were the sentiments, precise and truthful, of Theodore Blacker, late of HM Ulster Rifles. Screw her, too, come to think of it. And, most especially, damn and rot Colonel Alistair Ponsonby who, with a chill look and a few carefully chosen words, had crushed Blacker forever.
The Colonel had said: “You are so contemptible, Blacker, that I can feel nothing but pity for you. You appear unable to steal, or even to cheat at cards, like a gentleman.”
The words came back now, in spite of all Blacker’s efforts to hedge them off, and his narrow face twisted in hate and agony. He flung his drink across the room with an oath. The Colonel was dead now, out of his reach, but the world wasn’t. They weren’t. There were a lot of them left in the world.
She was one of them. The Princess. Princess Morgan da Gama. His thin lips twisted in a sneer. So it had worked out okay after all. She, the Princess, could pay for all. Filthy, dirty, hot pants little bitch that she was. He knew about her. Never mind the fine hoity-toity manners, the cool disdain, the snobbery and the royal bitchery, the cold green eyes that looked at you without really seeing you, without really acknowledging your existence.
He, Ted Blacker, knew all about the Princess. Soon now, when he sold the film, a hell of a lot of other people would know. The thought gave him a fierce pleasure. As he mixed another drink he glanced at a large sofa halfway down the long room. He smirked. The things he had seen the Princess do on that sofa—the things he had done to her, that she had done to him. God! He would have liked to see a picture of that on every front page of every newspaper in the world.
He took a deep long drink and closed his eyes, imagining the lead in a story on the social pages: The lovely Princess Morgan da Gama, bluest of Portuguese blue bloods, whored into town today. Interviewed by this reporter at the Aldgate, where she has the Royal Suite, the Princess stated that she could hardly wait to get to the Dragon Club and indulge in a few sexual acrobatics of the more esoteric type. The haughty Princess, when questioned more closely, averred that it was all a matter of semantics in the long run, but insisted that even in today’s democratic world such things were only for the wealthy and well bom. The old fashioned way, said the Princess, is still quite good enough for the peasants… .
Ted Blacker heard laughter in the room. Nasty laughter, rather like the sound of starving insane rats scrabbling behind the wainscoating. With shock he realized that the laughter was his own. He dismissed the fantasy at once. Maybe he was getting a bit around the bend on this hate bit. Must watch it. Hate was fun enough, but in itself it did not pay off.
Blacker had not intended to run the film again until the three men, his clients, arrived. He had seen it a hundred times. But now he took his glass, went to the big sofa and pressed one of the small pearl buttons set so cleverly and unobtrusively into an arm rest.
There was a faint mechanical hum as a small white screen descended from the ceiling at the far end of the room. Blacker pressed another button and from behind him a projector, concealed in the wall, shot a brilliant shaft of white light at the screen. He sipped his drink, lit a long cigarette, crossed his ankles on a leather ottoman and relaxed. This, but for the showing to the prospective clients, would be the last time he would ever view the film. He was offering the negative also, and he did not intend to cheat. He wanted to enjoy his money.
The first figure to appear on the screen was his own. He had been testing the concealed camera for proper angles. Blacker studied his image with a rather reluctant approval. He was getting a belly. And he had been careless with his comb and brush—his bald spot was much too evident. The thought occurred to him that now, with his new wealth, he would be able to afford a hair transplant.
He watched himself sit on the sofa, light a cigarette, fuss with his trouser creases, frown and smile in the direction of the camera. Ham! Blacker smiled. He remembered his thoughts at that particular moment—he had been worrying about the Princess hearing the hum of the hidden camera. He had decided not to worry. By the time he switched on the camera he would have her well off on her LSD trip. She wouldn’t hear the camera, or much of anything else.
Blacker consulted the gold wristwach again. Quarter of two now. Still plenty of time. The film ran only a minute or so over half an hour.
The flickering image of Blacker, on the screen, suddenly twisted his head toward the door. That had been the Princess knocking. He watched himself reach for the button and flick off the camera.
The screen went glaring white again. Now Blacker, in the flesh, punched the button again. The screen went black. He went to the bar and made himself another drink, got a fresh supply of cigarettes from a jade box. He went back to the sofa and pressed the button once more, reactivating the projector. He knew exactly what he would see now. Half an hour had passed since he had admitted her. Blacker recalled every detail with perfect clarity.
The Princess da Gama had expected that others would be present At first she had not wanted to stay with him alone, but Blacker had laid on his charm an inch thick, given her a cigarette and a drink, and persuaded her to stay a few minutes. It was all the time he needed, for her drink had been loaded with LSD.
Blacker had known at the time that the Princess had remained with him only out of sheer ennui. He knew that he bored her, as the world bored her, and that she considered him less than the dirt beneath her feet. It was one of the reasons he had chosen her for blackmail. Hate for all her kind. There was, also, the pure joy of knowing her carnally, of making her do nasty things, of dragging her down to his own level. And she had money. And very high connections in Portugal. One of her uncles, he could not recall the man’s name, held a high Cabinet post. Yes—the Princess da Gama was going to be a good investment.
Just how good—or bad—Blacker had not dreamed at the time. All that had come later.
Now he watched the film unreel with a smug expression on his not unhandsome face. One of his brother officers had once said that Blacker looked like a “very handsome tout.”
He had not switched on the concealed camera until half an hour after the Princess, unknowingly, had taken her first dose of LSD. He had watched her manner change, gradually, as she slipped quietly into a semi-trance. She did not demur when he led her to the big sofa. Blacker waited yet another ten minutes before he turned on the camera. In that interval the Princess had begun to talk about herself with devastating candor. Under the influence of the drug she regarded Blacker as an old and dear friend. He smiled now as he recalled some of the language she used—words one did not normally associate with a Princess of the blood.
