Redfalcon, page 10
Back in my room I took time to think and consider our situation. It occurred to me that I had charged into this mission in my usual headlong manner and that Ravenstein had been at least one step ahead of me at every stage. From his interrogation of Professor Owen he must have learned of Karrie Adriatis’s departure for Gibraltar and immediately activated part of his network to attempt her abduction.
If we were to head him off in future I would need to clear my head and ponder what further ploys he might have up his sleeve. Feeling in my pocket for my pipe, my fingers touched upon Blenkiron’s well-worn deck of cards. As I pulled them out, I recalled his saying that he often used a game of patience as an aid to setting his thoughts in order. It occurred to me that was exactly what I needed at this point.
I sat down at the small table, shuffled the deck and laid out the initial four cards. One by one I built up the sequences, feeling a sense of quiet satisfaction as the patterns took shape before me.
Often a contest between two well-matched opponents has been described as resembling a game of chess, but in chess all the pieces are set out in the open for both sides to see. I fancied that my contest with Ravenstein was more like a card game, one in which you can only guess at what cards your opponent is holding from one hand to the next. You might, however, by studying his play, deduce what his next move was likely to be.
My reflections were proceeding along these lines when I managed to slip the knave of spades into place. Observing that all four knaves were now in play, I felt that I was on the brink of an insight that had set an alarm off in my head. Then I realised that what I was hearing was an actual alarm – the hotel’s fire bell.
I shot to my feet and scooped up the cards. Thrusting them back in my pocket, I hurried out into the corridor. The smell of smoke was in the air accompanied by cries of shock which echoed down the adjoining passageways and stairwells. Not wishing to be part of a panic, I walked briskly to the head of the main stairway and made a swift but disciplined descent.
Once on the ground floor, however, I was caught up in a rushing stream of guests and staff which carried me through the hallway and out of the front door. In the street outside the manager was directing everyone to form up in ranks so that he could check off names from his register to ensure no one was left inside. Despite his efforts, however, those fleeing the building were soon mixed up in a jostling mob with onlookers who had gathered to watch the flames and smoke belching out of the windows of the hotel’s east wing.
From the direction of the airstrip I could hear the clanging bell of an approaching fire engine. The manager and his senior staff now turned their attention to forcing the crowd to move back and clear the way for the firemen. As we retreated, almost tripping over each other, I pondered what might lie behind this development.
It was too much of a coincidence to be accidental, and I understood now what warning it was that the fourth knave had jogged in my mind. If two enemy agents had been dropped off by boat, might there not be others? Even as I tensed at the possibility, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye a figure moving purposefully towards me against the flow of the crowd. He was an evil-looking lout, and as I turned to face him I caught the glint of a knife in his hand.
16
THE CROSS OF LORRAINE
Realising I had spotted him, he rushed at me with the blade held high, ready to strike. Seizing his upraised arm, I forced it down and gave his wrist a savage twist. With a shrill howl of pain, he dropped the weapon and tried to wrench himself free.
Hooking my foot around his ankle, I threw my shoulder against his chest. The move toppled us to the ground with my full weight thumping down on top and knocking the breath out of him. As he lay there gasping, I hauled myself up, only to find that a second attacker had shoved the bystanders aside and loomed over me with his blade only a foot from my throat.
Before I could make a move to defend myself, a tall figure in uniform appeared behind my assailant. The newcomer caught the man’s elbows in powerful hands and spun him round. Grabbing the knife arm, he slammed it down violently across his upraised knee, snapping the bone. The assassin shrieked in pain and the knife clattered to the ground. My rescuer finished the job with a solid punch to the jaw that dropped its victim in an insensible heap directly on top of the first attacker.
As the shocked onlookers shrank back from the sudden eruption of violence, I got my first clear look at the man behind this welcome intervention. His uniform was that of the Free French forces, emblazoned with the distinctive insignia of the double-barred Cross of Lorraine. One look at his handsome, aquiline face brought a broad grin to my lips.
‘Turpin!’ I cried.
It was my old friend the Marquis de la Tour du Pin, whose unwieldy title Archie Roylance had long ago compressed into Turpin, the name by which he was commonly known to those closest to him.
‘Dick, mon vieux!’ he exclaimed, returning my grin. ‘You are, as ever, in the thick of the action, as they say.’
‘And you, Turpin, are developing a very welcome habit of turning up in the very nick of time.’
When one of the fallen men groaned and stirred, Turpin planted a heavy boot on him to keep him in place.
‘Chief Stark told me you were here and of your nighttime adventure,’ he explained. ‘I determined at once to find you and offer whatever assistance I may provide. Even as I spotted you in the crowd I saw these cochons preparing to strike.’
As though he had been summoned by the mention of his name, the crowd parted before Chief Petty Officer Sidney Stark. He strolled towards us and cast a disapproving eye over the two attackers lying at our feet.
‘A well-placed punch that, monsieur,’ he complimented Turpin. ‘A few years ago I saw the Bermondsey Kid knock out Thrasher Curtis in the first round in a very similar fashion.’
‘Perhaps, chief, you could clear up this mess for us,’ Turpin requested.
Chief Stark waved over two privates of the Lancashire Fusiliers who were among the crowd gawking at the scene. ‘Come along, lads. You can help me escort these two ruffians to some simply furnished but secure accommodation. Once they’ve been patched up, I expect they’ll have to answer some very pointed questions.’
As the two men were hauled to their feet and dragged off, the officer in charge of the fire-fighting party ordered the crowd to disperse. Between the hoses now being directed at the windows and the staff inside wielding fire extinguishers and buckets of sand, the blaze appeared to be subsiding.
‘We must talk,’ I told Turpin, ‘but first I have to make sure that no harm has come to Dr Adriatis.’
‘No worries on that score, sir.’
The assurance came from Dougal. As he approached, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating a wooden bench at the entrance to the hotel’s front garden. The Greek girl was seated there calmly absorbed in a book.
‘I thought you and Jaikie had gone off to organise our supplies,’ I admonished him.
‘Well, bearing in mind last night’s spot of bother,’ he explained, ‘we decided one of us should stay behind and keep an eye on the lady. You know, in case there was any more trouble.’
‘And you nobly volunteered.’
‘Aye,’ Dougal agreed abashedly. ‘After all, if anything should happen to her, we’d be stuck for sure.’
I surmised that his vigil was motivated by more than a concern for the success of our mission. Nevertheless, I was relieved to know that Karrie had a guardian angel on hand. I introduced Dougal to Turpin, then left him to his chosen duty while my French friend invited me to join him for a drink in one of Gibraltar’s colourful bars.
It rejoiced in the name of the Cloisters, a whitewashed building with the flag of Gibraltar flying outside along with the Union Jack. The décor inside consisted of an unusual mix of religious icons and old music-hall posters featuring the stars of bygone years.
Turpin selected a table by one of the small windows and fetched us a bottle of cognac and a couple of glasses. I lit my pipe and he smoked a strongly scented cigarette as we spoke against the background noise of various hushed conversations being carried on in Yanita, the native language of the Rock, a curious hybrid of Spanish and Arabic. Overhead a creaking fan laboured in vain to dispel the pall of cigarette smoke that filled the place.
‘This is a very troubling business,’ said Turpin. ‘First the kidnapping I was told of, then this fire.’
‘When the alarm went off,’ I told him, ‘I had only just hit upon the notion that the two men who tried to make off with Dr Adriatis might not be the only pair who were dropped ashore. There might be a second team waiting for their moment to strike.’
‘Bien sûr, mon ami. Without doubt they started the fire to flush everyone out of the building and in the confusion to do away with the very dangerous Richard Hannay.’
I took an appreciative sip of cognac then set my glass down to cast an eye over my old friend’s new uniform. ‘I knew you had joined de Gaulle’s Free French forces, but I never expected to run into you here.’
Turpin threw back his shoulders as though on parade. ‘Ah, I am on a special assignment. I am to make contact with certain officers among the Vichy in Morocco and Algeria, and do all that I can to persuade them to switch their allegiance to the Allies when the time comes.’
‘When the time comes?’ I was intrigued. ‘Do you mean there’s to be an invasion?’
He nodded with a wolfish gleam in his eye. ‘In a few months’ time the Americans will lead such an attack. If the French troops can be persuaded to offer no resistance but instead to join our cause, so much the better.’
The strategy was immediately clear to me. ‘I see. From Algeria they can link up with our army in Egypt.’
‘And from there launch an invasion of Italy.’ Turpin slammed a fist into his palm, as though striking a blow against the hated enemy.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to persuade your countrymen to cooperate?’
‘Pah!’ He curled a disdainful lip. ‘So many of them have been poisoned by the defeatism of Pétain. That cowardly surrender has enfeebled their souls like a disease.’
I had been in Paris hours before the German army moved in, and still felt a lingering sympathy for those who were forced to deal with the occupation.
‘It was a hard choice to make,’ I reflected. ‘The German advance seemed unstoppable.’
Turpin’s expression hardened. Leaning forward, he spoke in a low, forceful voice. ‘I will tell you why they surrendered, my friend. They thought that you’ – here he tapped me forcefully on the chest – ‘you and your people would not stand. They believed that within a matter of months you too would be living under the Nazi flag, making whatever accommodation you could beg of your new rulers.’ He gave a bitter snort. ‘How wrong they were!’
‘I suppose they imagined they were salvaging what they could of what was left of France,’ I suggested.
Turpin spat contemptuously. ‘What was left of France? Pah! What is France sans son coeur – without her heart? They sold themselves like – what is the English word? – trollops. Yes, trollops!’
Turpin had always been a man of strong feeling, but never before had his heightened passion been so entirely justified by such extreme circumstances. His wife Adela was the daughter of the noted American financier Julius Victor and both she and her children would have been stigmatised by the Nazis on the basis of their race. God only knew what fate would have awaited them had they fallen into German hands.
When she and Turpin were still only engaged, she had been stolen from him by the evil genius Dominic Medina to be used as a hostage, and since then her safety meant more to my friend than life itself. As the French defences gave way before the German advance like a mud dyke before a flood, he sent her and their children to New York, where they were now living under the protection of her father. Turpin remained behind to carry on the fight by whatever means possible.
‘Sometimes in the darkest hour, survival is all men can hope for,’ I suggested.
‘They may survive,’ Turpin retorted scornfully, ‘but they are not men.’ He took a calming breath and leaned back in his chair. ‘And you, Dick, you are engaged in some new and dangerous escapade, eh?’
‘All I can tell you right now is that I need passage to French Morocco for myself and my three companions, and it needs to be carried out in the utmost secrecy.’
Turpin grinned and gave me a hearty clap on the shoulder. ‘Why, my friend, I am the very man to arrange that for you. Leave it all to me.’
PART THREE
THE REFUGE
17
THE SHORES OF BARBARY
I could feel the deck of the Portuguese fishing boat bobbing gently beneath my feet as the tide carried us slowly in towards the sheltered cove we had been assured lay ahead. It was a black night with thick clouds smothering the stars, and it was only the beacon of a lighthouse to the east that guided us on our course. Off to the west, invisible in the darkness, lay our destination, the city of Casablanca.
The captain of our vessel, whom Turpin had introduced as Sandor, was a lean, dark-skinned seaman with a gold tooth and a red stocking cap. He had a ready laugh and moved about the tilting deck with the sure-footed elegance of a dancer. Now, however, he was subdued and motionless, as were we all. Our engine was off, as were our lights, rendering us silent and invisible while the sea carried us towards the shore.
It had taken Turpin only a couple of days to arrange this discreet transport to Casablanca. Meanwhile I had noted with some amusement that Dougal was developing a previously unsuspected interest in archaeology as he accompanied Karrie on visits to the Moorish castle built by al Rashan in the eleventh century and to the ancient caves where the bones of primitive humans had been discovered. Chief Stark treated Jaikie to a tour of the Rock’s more recent points of interest, most conspicuously its defensive fortifications and formidable artillery emplacements.
I devoted the waiting time to studying all the maps I could find of Morocco, running my finger repeatedly over the great mass of the Atlas Mountains. Somewhere among those peaks and crags lay the hidden tomb of Redfalcon, and within it a secret that might shift the balance of the war one way or the other. It was almost too fantastic to believe, but Ravenstein clearly believed it, and he did not strike me as any sort of fool.
Now I stared ahead into the darkness that shrouded the African shore, trusting that Turpin’s contacts had succeeded in making the necessary preparations for our arrival. When I turned back to my companions my eyes had adjusted to the gloom sufficiently for me to be able to make out their features.
‘You’ve been pretty tight-lipped about the trail we’re to follow to this knight’s tomb,’ I heard Jaikie remark to Karrie. We were all keeping our voices low, knowing how easily sound carried over water.
‘And about how you intend to contact Dr Lasalle,’ I added.
‘That is because if I were to tell you all I know, you would leave me abandoned like Ariadne on Naxos,’ Karrie retorted. ‘You would do so simply because I am a woman and you think me too soft to withstand the rigours of war.’
‘You fancy yourself as a bit of an Amazon then,’ Dougal joked.
‘As you come from a land whose men are famed for wearing skirts, you are ill placed to make jokes about Amazons,’ Karrie countered.
‘Kilts actually, but point taken,’ Dougal accepted wryly.
‘Believe me, Karrie, none of us think you’re soft,’ I assured her. ‘But you must understand that, so long as you keep all that information to yourself, your safety must be a priority for us. If anything should happen to you, we would be left blundering around without a clue to follow.’
‘I appreciate your concern,’ Karrie acknowledged, ‘and you may be sure that all will be revealed at the appropriate time.’
We were silenced by a sharp hiss from Sandor and in the dimness I saw him press a warning finger to his lips. At once we all fell silent and I heard in the distance the thrum of an engine. A few moments later a French coastal patrol vessel swung around a headland off to our right, heading directly between ourselves and the land.
As they moved eastward, their searchlight darted here and there across the shoreline, probing for any sign of smugglers or hostile incursion. I found myself holding my breath until they passed out of sight.
‘It is good luck for us that they look to shore rather than to sea,’ said Sandor, his grin flashing white among the shadows. Starting up the engine, he guided us safely into the shelter of a rocky cove before cutting the power again.
‘We must move quickly before their boat returns,’ he warned us. ‘I should hate to tangle in a fight with fellow sailors, whatever their politics. Worse still, we might be forced to pay them to turn a blind eye.’ He shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Since war broke out, their rates have been extortionate.’
I marvelled at his skill in timing our approach so that we evaded the coastal patrol while leaving a period of grace during which he could land his passengers and make his departure before the French vessel returned. We slid a small dinghy into the water and Sandor used it to ferry us two at a time over to the shingly beach.
Jaikie and I landed first and scrambled into the surrounding rocks. I was suddenly all too aware of how those shipwrecked knights must have felt, cast up on an alien shore with danger all around. My eyes searched the darkness and my ears strained to pick up any sounds of life nearby. All I heard was the quiet lapping of the waves and the chirping of some nocturnal insects, but I was still very aware that we were on hostile ground. I took some reassurance from the fact that Jaikie appeared confident that we were alone, as I knew from experience that his senses were almost preternaturally acute. Turning, he waved his arms to signal to the boat that it was safe to bring over Dougal and Karrie.
Once they had joined us, Sandor threw us a raffish salute before he and his fishing boat headed off across the night-shrouded waves.
