Closed Circle (43 page)

He was right. The Concentric Alliance did not wield enough influence in the United States to prevent the truth about it being told. And once told there, it would echo round the world. There was a way out for me after all. And Quincy McGowan was pointing me towards it.

"Together, we can pull this off, Guy. We'll have the power and wealth of the McGowan Steel Corporation at our backs. We'll have everything we need to bring these people to book. Are you willing to give it a try?"

"Of course I am." The decision was a simple one, because there was simply no alternative.

"The Babcock business may catch up with you in the States. You realize that?"

"It doesn't matter." It seemed indeed scarcely significant, a trivial appendage of a forgotten existence.

"Good. In that case, we must get you and the documents -across the Atlantic as soon as possible."

"How? I can't just '

"Oh, but you can. Listen. I'll go up to London first thing tomorrow morning and buy us a couple of tickets for the next sailing to New York. When the time comes, I'll tell Vita I have to visit some foundries in the north on business. Instead, I'll meet you in Southampton and we'll slip away with the documents. A week later, we can have them sitting on the desk of whichever newspaper editor we choose."

It sounded easy. And why should it not be? Faraday was looking for me, not following Quincy. I had only to lie low until sailing day, recover the bag from the bank and present myself in Southampton. Quincy would do the rest.

"So long as we're careful, nothing can go wrong. After I've bought the tickets, I'll drive out to the Anglo-American Club at Iver. Call me there tomorrow afternoon. Let's say three o'clock. I'll make sure I'm in the lounge, where they can easily page me. Then I'll be able to tell you when we're leaving. The day before we sail, I'll take the train to London, double-back to Southampton and stay overnight at the hotel near the docks."

The South Western?"

That's the one. Meet me there two hours before sailing. We'll go aboard at the last moment. Don't use the boat-train."

It was going to happen. Soon, very soon, I would be free. "Quincy, I '

"If you're going to thank me, Guy, don't bother. I'm doing this for Maudie."

"I know. But even so .. ."

"Save it till we're at sea, eh?" He plucked the hip-flask from my grasp and held it up to his lips. "Here's to the torpedo we're going to fire."

"So long as we're careful," Quincy had said, 'nothing can go wrong." And I was determined to ensure it did not. I drove back as far as Wimbledon that night, left the car on the Common, walked down to the station and took the Tube to South Kensington. The area boasted plenty of obscure hotels. I booked into one more obscure than most the Bute Court in Queen's Gate and vanished from sight. The following afternoon, promptly at three o'clock, I rang the Anglo-American Club from a call-box near the Albert Hall, praying Quincy would come to the telephone before my money ran out. My prayer was answered.

"I'll keep this short and sweet, Guy. We're booked aboard the Leviathan. She sails Tuesday at noon. Can you be in Southampton by ten o'clock that morning?"

"Yes."

"Good. Till then, keep your head down."

"Don't worry. I will."

I walked out across Hyde Park, feeling safe among the nannies wheeling their charges by the Serpentine. A Salvation Army band was playing hymn music with righteous gusto in Kensington Gardens. Weak sunlight was breaking through the clouds to gild the drifts of fallen leaves. Ducks were squabbling over breadcrumbs, dogs chasing sticks, children kicking footballs. The mundane clockwork of England was ticking serenely on. But not for much longer. For I was about to serve my complacent fellow-countrymen an unpalatable dish: the truth. After that, nothing would ever taste the same again.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

By Tuesday, I was grateful to have done with lying low. I left the Bute Court before dawn, my only luggage comprising the Gladstone bag I had collected from the bank the previous afternoon. I was relying on the stewards of the Leviathan to smarten me up once we were at sea. Until then, my fellow-travellers would have to take me as they found me.

I took a cab to Clapham Junction and boarded a stopping train to Southampton, burying myself behind a newspaper in a third-class compartment. A bleak grey morning made its lethargic appearance as the train wheezed and rattled through Surrey and Hampshire. We reached Winchester, where I did my best to ignore the name-board and its associations. What Max required of me was resolution, not regret. The train drew out and I left memory behind.

But not caution. The South Western Hotel adjoined Southampton Town station, where the train terminated. Suspicious of anything so simple, I got off at a workmen's halt a mile or so short of my destination and walked the rest of the way through a maze of back-streets, heading always towards the wailing of the gulls and the salty tar-laden smell of the docks.

There were several liners in. I could see their funnels between the cranes and gantries visible beyond the shipping offices and warehouses of Canute Road. One massive triple set, painted red, white and blue, already had steam up. It was the Leviathan, waiting to bear me and my secret away.

On the boat-train to London four months before, Millington the toping Jeremiah had told me the time-ball on the roof of the South Western Hotel operated at ten o'clock every morning. I sat in the park on the other side of the road, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the hour to be signalled. At five to ten by my watch, the ball was run up the mast. As soon as it dropped, I picked up the bag and walked smartly across to the hotel entrance.

The lobby was almost empty, stray murmurs echoing in its marble heights. The tumult of summer was long gone. Only the stubborn and the desperate were taking ship for the New World. I was directed to Quincy's suite on the first floor. "Ah yes," the concierge remarked. "Mr. McGowan said he was expecting a visitor. Do go straight up."

I found him lounging in a smoking-jacket amidst the debris of a large breakfast. He greeted me warmly, gesturing towards the same view of the Leviathan I had already savoured, framed now by one of the tall curving windows of his sitting-room. There she is, Guy. Ready and waiting. I sailed home on her at the end of the war, you know, from Liverpool. She was a dazzle-painted troopship then. Levi Nathan, the men called her. It'll be strange to go aboard thirteen years later on account of the same war and what your bagful of secrets says about it."

He pointed to the bag, which I had placed on a side-table. "Do you want to look at the contents?" I asked, pulling it open.

"No, no," he replied, stepping across to run his fingers over the bundle of books and papers. "There'll be time enough for that once we're under way. So long as it's all here and proves what you say it proves."

"It is. And it does."

That's good enough for me. In a '

There was a knock at the door and a call of "Room service'. Quincy grinned. "I ordered some champagne. Reckoned we should wish ourselves ban voyage."

"Splendid idea."

"Well, why not? We do have something to celebrate." He walked to the door and pulled it wide open, then said: "Come on in, gentlemen."

What happened next was so fast and unexpected that I had been seized and my right arm pinned behind my back before I could do more than blink. I heard the door close, saw Faraday and Vasaritch standing in front of me and felt the cold touch of a gun barrel against my temple. Then pain jagged through my shoulder as my arm was twisted towards breaking point. I cried out, only for a large hand to be clapped over my mouth.

"Be quiet!" hissed Vasaritch. "We want no noise. The gun has a silencer. And I will use this He raised his other hand for me to see, clenched but apparently empty. Then, at a twitch of his thumb, a four-inch blade sliced out of its stock. "If I have to." He said something in a Slavic tongue and the hold on my arm slackened. "You understand?" I nodded. "Good." He took his hand from my mouth and began frisking me, swiftly finding and removing the revolver. "What is stolen is taken back," he growled. Then, stepping away, he turned to Quincy and said: "The records?"

They're in the bag on the table."

"We should examine them here," said Faraday, glancing at me before he added: "In case anything's missing."

"Yes," replied Vasaritch. "We should. Milan Milan was apparently the name of the huge ox-limbed creature holding me. After a burst of instructions in what I took to be Serbo-Croat, he frog-marched me into the bedroom and pushed me down onto the chair by the dressing-table. Vasaritch relieved him of the gun while he took out lengths of rope clearly brought for the purpose, twisted my arms behind the back of the chair and tied them together round the base of the splat. Then he forced a cloth between my teeth and bound it there as a gag before fastening my ankles to the stave. The knots were tight and the rope thin enough to cut while strong enough to withstand any amount of struggling. I was hog-tied and helpless.

"No tricks this time, Horton," said Faraday from the doorway. "Your lucky streak is at an end."

"Enough," said Vasaritch. "The records are all that matters." There was the hint of a rebuke in his tone.

"Of course," said Faraday, smiling humbly. "Let's have a look at them." He retreated into the sitting-room and Vasaritch followed, muttering something to Milan as he left.

Milan waited a moment, then began checking the knots. He need not have bothered, for he had done his work well. My thigh muscles were beginning to ache and blood was trickling from one corner of my mouth, where the rope had cut into it. At length, he stood up, grunted in evident satisfaction and strode from the room.

For several minutes I was left alone. I could see none of them through the doorway, only hear the rustling of paper and turning of pages. If they meant to kill me, what were they waiting for? Goaded by fear, anger and self-reproach, I strained at the ropes, trying to wrench myself free. The chair gave a few creaks, but remained firm. The certainty that I was wasting my energy washed over me, but what else was I to do? I had walked into a trap. Surely there was some alternative to waiting till the trapper returned to finish me off.

But there was not. Unless it was to brood on how I had been deceived. Quincy must have been playing a devious game of double bluff from the moment he arrived in Venice. His shock and rage on hearing my story had merely been the devices of an accomplished actor. He had known it all before I breathed a word. Because he was one of them. And who, I asked myself, was not? Just a few vainglorious fools. Like me.

Then, just as I was thinking of him, Quincy ambled into the room, closing the door softly behind him. "Sorry about this, Guy," he said, stooping over me to dab at the blood on my chin with his handkerchief. "The man mountain doesn't know his own strength. But, then, who does? His own strength or his own weakness?" He looked me in the eye and must have been able to read there the accusations I would have flung at him had I been able to. "Well, maybe we do now, you and I."

He moved past me to the bed and flopped down onto it, fixing me with his gaze in the dressing-table mirror. "Faraday and Vasaritch are going to be quite a while sorting through those papers. So, I thought we'd have a talk. Well, I'll talk. You just listen." He took out a cigar, lit it and leaned back against the pillows. "Sorry I can't offer you one, but..." He shrugged. "In case you're wondering, my motives in this aren't completely mercenary, just substantially so. You see, my father left his entire fortune -including his controlling block of shares in the McGowan Steel Corporation to my brother Theo. Oh, Theo pays me well for what I do, which he'd tell you isn't much, but I'm dependent on him, that's the hell of it. Dependent on his generosity, his approval, his ... opinion. It comes hard at my age, let me tell you. Damned hard." He sighed and took a puff at his cigar. "So, when Faraday came to me a couple of months ago with a lucrative proposition, I jumped at it. You bet I did. He said he was acting on behalf of Fabian's aggrieved clients. They wanted their money back. He'd already put you on the same trail. But he'd decided to hedge his bets. He thought a member of the family a favourite uncle, to be precise might be able to wheedle the truth out of Diana where a skirt-chaser like you couldn't. I agreed to try for a fee sufficient to buy me freedom from brother Theo. Cash on delivery, you understand. And I've just delivered. As soon as Faraday's run his expert eye over those accounts, I'll be paid what's due to me."

My eyes widened, but he did not seem to notice. His share of Charnwood's money was all he could think of. He did not know as Faraday shortly would that the money no longer existed. I had not mentioned the point during our counsel of war on Box Hill because it had not seemed important. The Concentric Alliance's responsibility for the war had eclipsed all thought of what Charnwood had done with the proceeds. But not in Quincy's mind. In his mind, it was the only thing that mattered.

"When I got to Venice, I saw things weren't as simple as Faraday supposed. It was clear to me Vita and Diana knew you were spying on them. So, why were they letting you? Because they had nothing to hide? Or because they knew you were looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place? Well, it had to be the latter. They were hiding something, no question. But not what we thought.

"I'm not sure when the suspicion first formed in my mind. It grew slowly, as I watched and studied them and tried to figure out why Wingate should have followed Diana to Venice after murdering her father. Little niggles of doubt. Little irritating unanswered questions. And then the blinding realization. Fabian wasn't dead. It was him they were hiding, not his money. I called a meeting with Faraday aboard Vasaritch's yacht and put my theory to him. He agreed it fitted the facts. But he wanted hard evidence. He said he'd send a letter to the villa, addressed to Miss Charnwood without specifying which one containing nothing but a piece of paper on which he'd draw a pair of concentric circles. He said neither Vita nor Diana should recognize the symbol. If one or both did, it meant Fabian had told them secrets only a man expecting to die or hoping to be thought dead would part with. He wouldn't explain what the symbol meant. Said it was better for me not to know. And I reckon your experiences bear him out on that point, don't you?