O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 02 - Sabre-Tooth, page 25
Nothing of this showed in Karz’s face, but his head nodded slowly.
‘It is a sound recommendation, Garvin.’ He turned and spoke to Liebmann. ‘Special precautions must be taken. Blaise is dangerous. You will make the necessary arrangements.’
EIGHTEEN
‘SHE’LL liven up all right by the time I’ve finished with ‘er,’ said Willie Garvin.
He dealt the cards with a deftness born of long practice and picked up his hand. The day’s work was over and he was in one of the E-section huts with his men.
‘I do not think so, amigo,’ said Gamarra. He was a big Bolivian with sunken eyes and a thin mouth. Half of his left ear was missing, bitten off during a brawl in a South American waterfront bar. He turned to a fair-haired man with a petulant face who lay stretched on one of the bunks near the table in the middle of the hut. ‘She is no good, Zechi. Right?’
‘She is like asleep,’ the Pole grunted sullenly. ‘Like you not got a woman to work on, just some big dummy.’
Three days had gone by since the fight in the arena. On the second night, when Modesty was declared available by Liebmann, Gamarra had booked her on his green card after a draw among the other applicants. On the third night, Zechi had been to her.
She was not available on the white cards. This was by Karz’s decision. The fascination and excitement of the whole affair had done a lot for morale in the miniature army by combating the tedium of routine training. Karz wanted to prolong that situation for as long as possible.
One of the card-players, a Scot, pushed six gambling counters into the middle of the table. There was no money in the camp. These counters were an official issue and each would be worth one dollar when the great pay-day came.
‘You want to watch it,’ the Scot said. ‘She might wake up an’ ruin ye, or tak’ an eye oot o’ your haid. Christ, she made a mess o’ them Twins, didn’t she?’
‘Her arms are strapped behind her,’ the Bolivian said, grinning. ‘If she tries to do something you can give her a bad time. There is no rule against doing damage to that one.’
Willie Garvin swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and stretched his lips in a grin. For the hundredth time he fiercely smashed the image forming in his mind, the image of his hands about Gamarra’s throat, about Zechi’s throat, crushing and twisting. There were other images he had fought to blot out during the long hours of the past two nights, when he had lain awake in his cubicle, knowing that Gamarra was with her … that Zechi was with her.
Every hour he grew more afraid that the besieged barriers of his mind were on the verge of crumbling, and that he would go berserk.
‘I said gi’e me two,’ said the Scot for the second time.
‘Sorry.’ Willie dealt the cards and put the two discards at the bottom of the pack.
‘Garvin thinks about what he do with her tonight, he hopes,’ Zechi said with something of a sneer.
‘I’ll liven ‘er up all right,’ Willie repeated. He was finding it more and more difficult to think of anything to say. ‘It’s one of ‘er tricks,’ he went on after a moment. ‘She goes into a sort of trance. She can put ‘erself right out for a bit. But I know ‘er tricks.’
‘You didn’t know that one wi’ the chunk o’ bloody lead in her sleeve,’ said the Scot. He looked at his cards with disgust and threw them in.
‘I knew it.’ Willie’s voice was cold. ‘I didn’t know she’d fixed ‘er uniform tunic that way, though. Crafty cow.’
The hand was played and the kitty of thirty-odd counters was scooped in by a silent Australian.
‘Like a dummy,’ Zechi muttered angrily. He was an evil-tempered man. ‘You lift her up, she fall back. You twist her over, she lie like dead thing with no bones. You give her fist on mouth, she don’t blink eye.’ He looked resentfully at a freshly-scarred knuckle, then went on telling his experience for the third time in obscene detail.
‘Ah, you’re just an amateur, Zechi,’ Willie Garvin broke in, and got to his feet, pushing the cards to the Scot. He knew that if he did not get away from these men now, at once, he would crack. ‘Count me out. I got to go and see Delgado about tomorrow’s exercise.’
Gamarra laughed. ‘Make the most of tonight’s exercise, amigo. Even if she is like asleep, she has all the things a woman needs. They did not show when she wore uniform, but I tell you she is much woman, that one. Her body is something to see, by God’ He was starting an itemised description as Willie went out through the black-out curtain and the door beyond.
The sun was down and dusk lay over the valley. Willie stood dragging air into his lungs. His heart was pounding as if he had just run a ten-mile race, and waves of nausea swept him.
He waited for the pounding and the nausea to pass, narrowing his thoughts to focus only on what lay ahead. It was true that he had to see Delgado, but there were other things to be done first. He estimated that they would take half-an-hour. Say fifteen minutes in the office with Delgado, then an hour in the commanders’ mess, because that was the natural thing to do. By then it would be ten o’clock … half-an-hour after the time when the men with the green cards could go to the seraglio.
Willie Garvin had a special card, a commander’s priority, booking Modesty Blaise for the night. It was valid under the system for every sixth night, and he was weak with relief that this night had been no longer delayed. Another twenty-four hours and he would have broken.
His teeth showed in a snarling grimace of contempt for himself. He would have broken? God Almighty, what about her?
The seraglio consisted of some thirty rooms on three floors in a section of the palace which had been sealed off from the rest.
Maya, the plump middle-aged Eurasian woman who was the brothel’s Madame, looked up from the wooden table which served her as a desk, and made a little tick in a well-thumbed register.
‘You are Willie Garvin?’ Her smile showed yellowing teeth.
‘That’s right.’
‘We not have you come to us before.’
‘No. This is special.’ He grinned at her wolfishly.
‘Ah, yes. The Blaise girl. Come now, I take you to her.’ She waddled out and along a short passage. ‘You are the last to arrive tonight,’ she said. ‘You come late.’
‘I ‘ad some things to do. Don’t believe in rushing this sort of job, anyway.’
Maya giggled, her fat body shaking. She turned right and padded on towards a heavy door at the end of the corridor. The hinges squeaked faintly as she opened it. Beyond was a small square lobby with a single door leading off it.
‘Is nice room,’ Maya said, fumbling a key from a pocket in her skirt. ‘And she is ready for you. We put strap on her one hour ago.’ She looked at Willie warningly. ‘Is only one rule with Blaise girl. Not allowed to take off strap.’ Her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. ‘Is … Unsound, you understand?’
‘I’ve read the orders, Ma,’ Willie said impatiently.
‘Okay. Toilet and ablution back along passage on left if you want. We ring bell at six-thirty. All men out by seven o’clock.’ She unlocked the door and pushed it partly open, standing back for Willie to enter.
He looked at her. ‘All right, Ma. I’m a big boy. I can manage on my own now.’
She giggled again, slopped away on sandalled feet into the passage, and closed the lobby door behind her. The hinges squeaked faintly again.
Willie Garvin drew a long, shaky breath and walked into the room, pushing the door shut behind him.
It was a fair-sized room with no windows. The ancient mud-brick walls had been hung with cheap, gaudy material. A four-foot divan bed stood against one wall. There was a worn easy chair and a small wooden table. On the table a large enamel jug of water stood in a metal bowl. The light came from a single electric lamp projecting from the wall on a swan-necked bracket and bearing a pink lamp-shade.
Modesty Blaise lay on her side on the divan bed. Her arms were secured by a thick strap buckled just above each elbow and stretching for only six inches across her back, so that though her hands were free their movement was so restricted that she was virtually defenceless.
She wore a thin sleeveless dress in red nylon, fastened by three buttons at each shoulder so that it could be removed despite the strap holding her arms. The dress was her only garment. She looked clean, as if she had recently been taken to the showers. Her hair was loose and tied back with a piece of bright green ribbon.
One side of her face was yellow with the fading bruise made by the chain mail glove during her fight with The Twins. Her lips were parted a little. One side of her mouth was badly swollen by a recent blow, and a diagonal piece of one front tooth was missing.
Willie remembered the gash on Zechi’s knuckle, but it brought no reaction within him. His mind was numb now, the nerves dead. He could think only of what must be done next, for she was shaking her head at him and pursing her swollen lips in warning.
Willie nodded, taking the cue and moving into his role like a programmed robot.
‘All right,’ he said harshly. ‘Wake up, you bitch.’
He tossed his small-pack of toilet kit on to the table and moved across the room. Very gently he helped her to sit upright with her feet on the floor, and at the same time he uttered a string of sneers, threats and obscenities.
She nodded approval, her eyes warm and reassuring, then knelt by the end of the divan and pointed awkwardly with her head.
Wille slapped one hand hard across his other forearm and said viciously: ‘That’s a starter. You act dead on me, doll, and we’ll see what ‘olding your face down in a bowl of water ‘ll do.’
He knelt, lifting the divan a little and peering beneath it, knowing what to look for. In one corner of the wooden framework was clamped a small metal cylinder about the size of a cotton-reel.
A bug.
In his own small bedroom a hundred yards away, Delgado sat with the earpiece of the receiver held to one ear. His blue-green eyes were intrigued. The sounds from the room in the seraglio came through thinly but clearly.
It had been his own idea to check on Garvin in this way. A small doubt had nagged in his mind ever since the affair in the transmitter room, when Modesty had been caught attempting to send out a message. He had arranged for her to be moved out of her bedroom for an hour earlier in the day, so that he could fix the bug in position.
Now he heard her voice in the earpiece … low, defiant, and filled with hatred. ‘You guttersnipe, Garvin. You back-stabbing rat. I dragged you out of the sewers and made you! And you’ve cut my throat for the sake of that brat Lucille’
‘Shut your mouth.’ Garvin’s voice, ugly with rage, accompanied by another heavy, slapping blow.
An instant of silence, then a gasping grunt from Garvin.
A curse, a medley of sounds, a crash and a scrambling struggleabruptly the receiver went dead.
Delgado put the earpiece down, his eyebrows raised. At least Garvin had managed to rouse her. But she had fought back somehow, even though she had only her teeth and her bare feet to fight with.
Or had she? If she had managed to break that strap in some way, and taken Garvin by surprise …
Delgado got to his feet. He had better go and check.
Willie surveyed the partly overturned divan. A tangle of sheets hung over it. The bug was hidden from his view now. It was shattered by the kick he had just given it.
He turned to Modesty, a query in his eyes.
‘That’s the only one,’ she said softly. ‘I spent the whole evening checking. Delgado fixed it this afternoon, I think. It’s bound to be him.’
‘He’ll probably be along ‘ere soon, then.’
‘Yes. Fix me up, Willie. But mark me first. A slap.’
There was sweat on his forehead and his eyes looked past her.
‘Willie.’ Her voice was hard and demanding. He looked at her quickly and swung his open hand at the unbruised side of her face. Her head jerked with the impact, then she smiled at him.
‘Fine, Willie love. Now go ahead.’
He gripped one shoulder of her dress and ripped it away, half baring her body diagonally from shoulder to waist. Picking her up, he lifted her over the upturned divan and lowered her to the floor against the wall. He tipped the divan a little farther over on top of her, then moved to stand by the door, listening.
It came a minute later, the faint squeak from the hinges of the lobby door. Willie moved quickly to the easy chair and sat down on the arm of it, bent over a little, one hand to his groin.
The door opened. Delgado stood there with Maya behind him, her face startled and uneasy.
Willie looked up with a glare, still hunched as if in pain. ‘What the bloody hell do you want, busting in ‘ere?’
‘Maya thought she heard a fight.’ Delgado looked round the room and smiled blandly. ‘It looks as if she was right. Where’s our Miss Blaise?’
‘There.’ Willie jerked his head towards the divan and got painfully to his feet. ‘She got clever, so I thumped ‘er. She stayed clever and landed me one with ‘er foot. Then I got mad.’
‘I trust her footwork was only a near miss?’ Delgado said, grinning. Willie ignored him, moved to the divan and turned it on to its feet, pulling it away from the wall. Modesty lay awkwardly on the floor, half on her back, her arms still strapped behind her.
Delgado said : ‘Good evening.’
She did not look at him. Her eyes were fixed dully on Willie Garvin, and she seemed dazed. Willie moved round, picked her up roughly, threw her on to the divan and pushed it back against the wall.
Delgado looked at her with an interest untinged by any shred of compassion. She lay limply on the divan, her hair a tangle, dress ripped, the red imprint of an open hand blotching one side of her face.
‘You know, Willie,’ Delgado said mildly, ‘I don’t think she’ll last very long at this rate. There’s a special rule for her, of course, but I don’t think Karz would be pleased if she got used up too quickly.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill the bitch,’ Willie said bleakly. ‘But if she keeps acting up I’ll keep belting ‘er. You got any objections?’
‘None in the world.’ Delgado gave a little shrug. ‘We all have our own way of doing things.’
‘Right. So get out an’ leave me to do this my way. You come busting in again and by God I’ll belt you too, Delgado.’ There was no mistaking the reality of the threat.
Delgado smiled at him thoughtfully. ‘I fancy we’ll tangle in the long run, Willie. But not for a while yet. That might be Unsound.’ He looked at Modesty again. She rolled slowly, painfully on to her side and closed her eyes. Her mouth hung slack with exhaustion. Delgado shook his head with regret. ‘You certainly chose the hard way, darling,’ he said. ‘Have fun.’
Turning, he went across the lobby and through the door to the passage, Maya waddling at his heels. There came the slight squeak of the hinges as the door closed after them.
NINETEEN
WILLIE GARVIN shut the door of Modesty’s room. Methodically he cleared the small table and stood it on end at an angle, with one edge jammed under the handle of the door.
He drew one of the knives from the harness under his tunic. Modesty was sitting up on the edge of the bed now. She turned a little so that he could cut through the strap holding her arms, then turned again to face him while he unfastened the stiff buckles above each of her elbows. His hands seemed strangely clumsy and it took him a long time. At last it was done. Willie put the knife back in its sheath and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, his big hands resting on his knees.
She drew up the torn shoulder-strap of her dress at back and front, and knotted it roughly. Willie was staring down at the floor. He did not speak.
Easing her shoulders, she gave a little sigh of relief. The bad time was over now. She could open her mind to what lay ahead and give free rein to her thoughts, because what lay ahead was good.
Willie would be feeling the same.
She leaned her head sideways against his shoulder, smiling a little, and said: ‘Hallo, Willie love. Tell me in fine silver prose what everybody’s saying along the boulevards these days.’
It was as if he had not heard her. She was suddenly aware that the muscles where her cheek rested against his arm felt like rolls of steel. Startled, she sat up and put a hand on his forearm. It was rigid. Even his face was like wood under her hand. Every muscle of his body was locked in unyielding contraction.
She stood up in front of him, her hands on the iron shoulders and whispered: ‘Willie?’ There was no response. The blue eyes were fixed on something a million miles away. He did not resist when she prised his hands from his knees, but she had to use force. She leaned against him, pushing him sideways on to the divan, then lifted his feet so that he lay on his back.
She could see something struggling deep in his eyes now. He was trying to help her, trying to fight the great frozen hand that gripped him.
‘Don’t fight, Willie love,’ she said softly. ‘Just rest for a little while.’
Kneeling down beside the divan, she took one of his taut hands and held the back of it against her cheek. She put her other arm across the shallow-breathing barrel of his chest and gripped his shoulder, feeling the sheathed knives under her forearm. His head was turned so that he faced her, staring through her. Gently she began to rub his hand against her cheek.
In the past few seconds a window had opened in her mind and she saw with horrified clarity the shocking burden she had laid upon him since that moment in the truck by the lake when she had set out her plans and forbidden all argument.
For her, the crude bodily violation and pain of the past two nights had been a loathsome ordeal; but she could take the memories of all her senses and drop them into some deep cavern of her mind, where in a little while they would dissolve and strike no chord ever again.
