O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 02 - Sabre-Tooth, page 27
When the phone rang he lifted it to his ear and said with a foreign inflexion: ‘Switchboard.’
‘Give me Karz,’ Maya’s voice puffed. ‘I have orders to call him.’
‘Okay.’ Willie flicked the mouthpiece of the phone twice with his finger-nail, gave the generator handle a half turn, waited two seconds and said: ‘Karz.’ The heavy, toneless voice was easy to imitate.
Maya’s nervousness came over the line as she spoke. ‘I have been to the child, commandante.’
‘She is secure?’
‘Yes, commandante’ Maya had been about to add, ‘of course’, but stopped herself in time. ‘She was asleep. Quite secure.’
‘That is all.’ Willie put down the phone. Switching on a masked torch he unclamped the toothed terminal-clips from the section of twin cable stapled along the wall above the bench. An inch of the cable had been stripped of insulation and cut through to disconnect it from the exchange in the H.Q. section offices. Only his own phone had been connected direct to Maya’s. He twisted the ends of the cut cable together to restore the line to the exchange, and moved to a heavy door in the wall, picking up his small pack which now bulged again.
This was one of several doors in the palace which were kept permanently locked to seal off the seraglio from all access except through Maya’s office. He had dealt with the lock earlier that evening. He closed the door after him, moved along a short passage, and turned down one of the main corridors of the seraglio.
Modesty was waiting for him in her room.
‘It worked, Willie.’ Her dark eyes were alight with relief. ‘A room up on the third floor.’
‘Ah … now we’re rolling.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Quarter past one now. What time do we go and get ‘er?’
‘Soon after two, I think. By that time most of the customers here have settled down to sleep for a while. Did you pick up what you wanted from the stores?’
‘Sure.’ He patted the small pack under his arm, moved to the divan bed, and sat down beside her. ‘Maya said on the phone that Lucille was asleep.’
Modesty thought for a while, frowning, then said slowly: ‘We don’t know how she’ll react when we rouse her.’
‘Eh? She ought to be ‘appy as a lush in a brewery, once she knows it’s us an’ that we’ve come to take ‘er out.’ Willie’s tone was faintly surprised and indignant.
‘For heaven’s sake, Willieshe’s not us. She’s only twelve and she’s been scared out of her wits. She could easily go into screaming hysterics.’
Willie rubbed his chin. ‘I s’pose so,’ he said gloomily. Turning, he picked up the small flat box he had taken from his pack earlier. Inside lay a hypodermic syringe and four ampoules.
‘I nicked it from the sick-bay this evening,’ he said. ‘That was when I thought we were still on the original caper, with you going out on your tod. There’s a three-grain phenobarbitone solution in each ampoule.’
‘What was the idea?’
‘I reckon it’d be a good thing if you gave me a shot after you’d chilled me. Then when they found me in the morning I’d still be really out, so they’d figure you’d only been gone maybe an hour instead of three or four. No reason for them to wonder if I was doped and not just concussed.’
Modesty nodded. ‘We might have a better use for it now. Keep it handy, Willie.’ She picked up her belt, drew the Colt from its holster and checked it carefully. ‘How did you get hold of this? And all my other gearthe clothes and the kongo?’
‘That radio bloke ‘ung on to the Colt after the punch-up we staged in the transmitter room. I bought it off ‘im later for two green cards.’
‘And the other stuff?’
‘I just went to your section ‘ut after you’d knocked off The Twins and took it.’
‘Brunig and the others didn’t argue?’
‘Let’s say they didn’t try to stop me.’ Willie smiled grimly. ‘I probably looked a bit liverish.’
TWENTY
WILLIE GARVIN eased back the two bolts and opened the door of the room on the third floor. A low-wattage lamp hung in the centre of the room. There was a bunk along one wall.
Modesty closed the door behind her. Together they moved towards the sleeping child.
‘Lucille …’ Modesty spoke in a whisper, gently pinching the lobe of Lucille’s ear. ‘It’s usModesty and Willie. We’re here, darling. Everything’s all right now.’
The eyes opened and stared blankly. The hair was a matted tangle spread about the thin, taut face.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart.’ Modesty slipped an arm under the narrow shoulders and lifted Lucille upright. ‘Look, Willie’s here too.’
“Allo, love.’ Willie leaned forward. ‘Right ol’ pickle you’ve been in, eh? Still, we’ll soon be ‘ome now.’
Lucille was shaking and in her eyes there was hatred and terror. She gabbled in French, her voice a choking whisper.
‘They took me away! You told them to take me away they said so! They put needles in my arm to make me sleep!’ Her voice was rising. ‘That fat woman comesshe’s horrible! And I hear things, men and women, I hear them come and go and I know one day they’ll come to kill me’
A small fist lashed out at Modesty’s face. She caught the wrist, imprisoning the arms against her body, and clapped a hand over the child’s mouth as Lucille drew breath to scream.
‘Willie. Be quick.’
He thrust the needle into the ampoule and carefully drew the solution into the syringe. Lucille was struggling wildly.
‘Let’s ‘ave one arm, Princess.’ It felt like a stick in his hand. He saw Modesty’s mask-like face and knew that the sickness in her eyes was reflected in his own. His fingers felt for the tiny muscle, and the needle slid home.
To Lucille it must have seemed that the two adults were monsters, crushing and suffocating and hurting her. Willie withdrew the hypodermic, still keeping his hold on the skinny arm. After perhaps twenty seconds, which seemed to endure for days, the frantic struggling grew weaker and at last the small body went slack.
‘Oh, Christ,’ Willie said softly, and wiped the back of his hand across a dripping brow. ‘Poor little bint.’
Modesty stood up, the limp child wrapped in a blanket in her arms. ‘You go first, Willie.’
He drew a knife, holding it by the tip, and went on ahead of her with the masked torch in his free hand, using it sparingly. They met nobody on their way down through the seraglio.
Two minutes later they passed through the door into the technical stores. Willie slipped the knife back into its sheath and led the way between racks and benches of equipment to the outer door. He bent to unlock it with a metal probe. ‘You okay, Princess? Want me to carry ‘er?’
‘She doesn’t weigh a lot. Better for you to have your hands free.’
He nodded. His knives were silent. She could not use her gun without raising the alarm.
Outside the night was of black velvet, with high cloud obscuring moon and stars. They moved away from the palace, hugging the valley wall for two hundred yards before starting the half-mile crossing to where the river ran in its cutting on the other side. Modesty closed her mind to the growing weight of her burden and kept her eyes on the shadowy figure of Willie Garvin moving ahead.
It was warm and close. Even the dust beneath her bare feet felt warm to the toughened skin of her soles.
The danger of their being seen was small. Somewhere a man unable to sleep might be outside taking the air, but there were no lights showing and vision was limited to little more than twenty paces.
At last there came a time when Willie turned, took Lucille from her arms, and laid the limp, blanketed form down against a low rock.
‘All right, Princess,’ he whispered. ‘You take a breather while I go and get your stuff.’
He returned three or four minutes later with a large pack over one shoulder. Modesty was lying flat on her back, breathing deeply. She stood up, unbuckled her belt, and stripped off the red dress. He waited while she put on the black shirt and trousers, the socks and the combat boots. The kongo went into a squeeze-pocket by her thigh, the lipstick tear-gas gun into her shirt pocket. She buckled the holstered Colt about her waist.
With every move she made, Willie Garvin could feel the black spectress of the past few days retreating from his mind. She stood facing him in the darkness and he felt a light touch as she punched him gently on the shoulder.
‘All right, Willie love. Now let’s go and push a few walls over, like you said. I’m me again.’
‘So am I.’ She saw the glint of his teeth in the darkness as he spoke.
When she picked up Lucille for the long trudge to the head of the valley he stopped her. ‘We can make it easy for ourselves, Princess. This way.’ He moved towards the river bank, which dropped sharply for a few feet to a narrow strip of gravel. Easing himself over the edge, he crouched by a shapeless bundle which lay just clear of the water.
She could not see what he was doing, but after a few seconds there came a soft hissing sound. The bundle expanded and took shape. It was a self-inflating rubber dinghy of the kind carried by aircraft.
‘It’d just been repaired in the stores,’ he whispered as Modesty handed Lucille down to him. ‘I figured it might be the best way past the guard-‘ouseand a lot quicker for coming back if we’d played it the way we were going to.’
She wondered again at the meticulous way he had managed to keep polishing and perfecting their general plan through all the torment of the past few days.
The river current was sluggish throughout its whole length after the first short rush of the rapids from the lake. Willie slipped a paddle through a loop of rope at the stern of the dinghy and began to skull deftly, twisting the paddle from side to side in a smooth figure-of-eight movement.
The laden dinghy began to move slowly up-stream. Some time later, as they passed the guard-house set near the point where the river curved in sharply round the bottleneck, there came the sound of scooters starting up. That would be Gamarra and Zechi going on shift. They would drive up the two mile length of the airfield, and the off-coming guards would use the scooters to return.
The dinghy moved on along the deep-cut channel and round the wide curve where the river bordered the valley. After five minutes they heard the growing then fading sound of the scooters as the two guards who had completed their three-hour shift returned to the guard-house.
The high clouds had thickened and it was darker than ever when they came at last to the point where the rapids made themselves felt. Willie turned the dinghy into the bank and steadied Modesty as she climbed out with the unconscious child.
Somewhere along the face of the ridge which extended westward across the valley the two prowler guards would be patrolling on a cross-beat from the Dove aircraft on the far side to the ammunition store in the middle of the ridge. Gamarra and Zechi.
Willie said softly: ‘One of us better stay with Lucille.’
It was unnecessary. She would not wake for two or three hours. But Modesty nodded. ‘Yes. I’ll stay, Willie. You do this bit.’
‘Thanks, Princess.’
She saw him fumble in his pocket and carefully plug something into his right earthe blind-man’s radar device. Next moment he had vanished soundlessly into the darkness. She sat with the small limp body cradled in her arms, her back resting against the steep rise of the bank, glad for Willie that at last he could release the compressed coil-springs of action that he had held in check for so long.
Out in the valley Gamarra leaned against the rocky ridge near the thick wooden doors of the ammunition store. The natural opening into the great cave had been squared off with reinforced concrete to make a frame for the double doors. An automatic rifle was slung over Gamarra’s shoulder. At his belt hung a masked flashlamp. He lifted it and shone it briefly on his watch.
Three forty-five. He had two cans of beer hidden near the Dove. Zechi didn’t know about them. Gamarra decided he would have the first in half-an-hour and the second an hour later. Then there would be only forty-five minutes to go before the shift ended.
He moved on slowly past the big doors. This business of guards was a waste of time, he thought. It made sense to have a guard on the liquor store in the palace, but who would want to get to the ammunition or the Dove? Still, Karz had laid down the orders and that was the end of it.
On reflection, he thought idly, it was just possible that one or two of the men had flying experience, and if some fool wanted to desert then his only way out would be by the Dove. Even that would be a very slim hope.
Gamarra had come in with a draft of twenty or more in one of the big Lockheed Hercules aircraft, but he had heard men talking who had been brought in by the Dove. They had not enjoyed it. Apparently it was like flying through a big maze, well below the mountain tops.
His thoughts fluttered to another subject and a grin twisted his lips. He wondered how Garvin was getting on with that half-dead Blaise girl….
The oscillator in Willie Garvin’s ear began to bleep faintly. The sound grew louder. He moved a dozen paces to his left and lay flat on the ground, straining his eyes into the darkness. The bleeps told him that the man was coming towards him now, but obliquely, and would pass a little to his left.
His eyes picked up the tall, burly figure.
Gamarra.
Eight paces away, seven, six … in another moment he would be passing on and increasing the range. Willie came to one knee and his arm swung hard.
The beautifully balanced knife made the faintest hiss as it flashed through the air. He launched himself after it. Gamarra took one staggering pace with the knife buried almost to its hilt in the side of his neck. Powerful hands caught him as he fell, lowering him quietly to the ground. Vision fading, Gamarra stared uncomprehendingly into the face above him.
Garvin… ?
An icy, whispering voice: ‘You should ‘ve stayed away from Modesty Blaise, amigo.’
Gamarra died with the beginnings of fear and a blurred question forming in his mind.
Willie jerked the knife free, wiped it clean on the dead man’s shirt, and moved on westward through the darkness.
Zechi was feeling sullen anger as he prowled through the scattering of small boulders along the ground at the foot of the ridge. He was sure that bastard Gamarra had got some beer hidden away somewhere and didn’t intend to share it.
Zechi peered down among the rocks, wishing he could use his masked flashlamp more often. But that would only make Gamarra suspicious. A last look round the base of the big boulder standing ahead, and then he would move on. Already he had spent too much time at this end of the beat.
He rounded the boulder and lifted his flashlamp. Something hit his right shoulder a savage blow, and the whole arm went limp. His cry was cut off by a hand like a grapnel hooking round his throat from behind. Zechi’s good hand came up to tear at it, and an arm flashed beneath his armpit. Another grapnel clamped behind his neck.
He was held with his sound arm imprisoned in the half-nelson. The hand at his throat moved slightly, the heel of it pressing in, the fingers hooking up over his jaw-bone, straining his head round. Even as he tensed to kick backwards a knee drove with numbing force into the back of bis thigh, forestalling the move.
‘Garvin,’ an arctic voice whispered in bis ear. ‘Tell Gamarra I sent you. He’ll tell you why.’
Willie Garvin’s hands jerked hard. There came a sound like the snapping of a damp twig.
He slid down the river bank beside her. It was thirty minutes since he had left.
‘Finished, Willie?’
‘All settled.’ He took Lucille from her arms. ‘I spent ten minutes in the Dove ‘aving a good look over the controls.’
‘What about fuel?’
‘Tanks full. Bring my small pack will you please, Princess?’
Ten minutes later Modesty passed Lucille up to Willie as he crouched in the doorway of the Dove, and climbed in after him, closing the door and switching on the masked flashlamp.
The four facing seats were designed so that each pair could quickly be converted into a couch. Modesty set up the port-side couch and Willie laid the sleeping child on it, securing her with two safety-belts.
Modesty said: ‘She’d better have another shot of dope in about half-an-hour. I’ll come back and see to it.’
‘Okay.’ He took the box containing the hypodermic from his pack and laid it on the floor.
They climbed down from the Dove, closed the door and moved along the face of the ridge towards the doors of the ammunition store. There was no lock, just one big drop-bar.
Inside hung a wide asbestos fire-curtain. Willie closed the doors and switched on the lights. The cave spread out widely from the mouth and bit a full fifteen paces into the hundred-and-twenty foot thickness of the ridge. The roof was solid rock, thirty feet of it. Together they surveyed the great mass of carefully stacked crates of anti-tank mines, 81 mm. mortar bombs, plastic explosive, 105 mm. shells, and the piled boxes of small-arms ammunition, grenades and rockets.
‘Good ol’ Tarrant,’ Willie said softly.
She looked at him, a little surprised. ‘Why?’
‘I wanted a refresher on the latest stuff. Tarrant wangled me a special course with the R.A.O.C Ammunition Organisation.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘It was while you were over in Bermuda. Those blokes know the score all right.’
‘Good old Tarrant then.’ Her swollen lips parted in a little smile. ‘Just say if I can help, Willie. This caper seems to be all yours from now on.’
‘About time. You’ve ‘ad your share, Princess. Jesus, I was scared when you were up against The Twins.’
All the time as they spoke his gaze had been ranging thoughtfully round the ammunition store. Now he stripped off his shirt and said: ‘Right. We’ll shift some of this stuff to get the best out of it.’
The anti-tank mines were packed five to a crate, each crate weighing some eighty pounds. Willie broke open two of them and put the ten mines carefully to one side. ‘About forty or fifty tons ‘ere altogether,’ he said. ‘We’ll get all the H.E. stuff we can manage stacked round that big pile of anti-tank mine crates at the back of the cave.’
