Face to the Sun (4 page)

When they saw me waiting for them at the barrier, Carlota was at once suspicious. She looked anxiously round for the presence of police. She was afraid of course that I might be plotting to keep
the Sun and the two hundred thousand as well. When I had got them into a quiet corner clear of the crowd I explained why I had changed the rendezvous.

‘Now we can’t make the exchange and check that it’s correct here or in the presence of a taxi-driver,’ I said. ‘I propose that we stop at any unpretentious hotel
and that I take a room there. You will be just friends who will come up to say goodbye and then be off. I leave it to you to choose a taxi from the rank and choose the hotel. When you have left the
hotel with the contents of this briefcase, don’t direct the taxi to Claridge’s. Get him to drop you somewhere, say, in Bond Street and walk from there.’

They approved, but Carlota said she didn’t know any hotel on the way to the centre of London. I replied that it didn’t matter where it was on the way so long as it was not an airport
hotel. She then suggested a Richmond hotel where she and her husband had once stayed a night.

When we arrived, I booked a room for myself and said that the two ladies would be off in half an hour. Meanwhile could I have a bottle of champagne sent up to my room for a farewell drink. As
they were both eminently rich and respectable there was no objection.

As soon as the waiter had come and gone I unlocked the briefcase and drew out from one compartment the Presidenta’s black crocodile bag and from the other her jewellery cases. She gave a
yelp of delight as the Punchao flashed from its bed of velvet. The tiara in the case alongside looked almost vulgar, but I could imagine the former Juana Romero sweeping into a state banquet with
her dark hair crowned by such a splendour of emeralds and diamonds. She was a stupid woman and it was then hard for me to understand the influence which she apparently had over her husband; it was
that of a trained actress. She was a whole school of drama in herself. As a lean and ruthless military man, General Heredia must often have needed her advice on how to play warmth and
generosity.

She handed over the cash with a regretful smile. There was so much of it that the leather of the briefcase bulged and the steel braces bent. I explained that one of the reasons why I had to keep
it was to carry the cash; the other was that I had to possess some kind of overnight baggage. I added that they should carry the sun and tiara in their handbags or anywhere on their persons where
they would be safer than in the black bag which could so easily be snatched or picked up by, well, somebody like me.

‘Are you content that you have it all?’

They were, and I drew the ear-ring from my pocket.

‘You forget this, Doña Juana,’ I said. ‘I am delighted to be able to return it.’

‘My daughter told me that you looked to her like a man of honour,’ she said. ‘She is seldom wrong.’

She held out a hand, palm downwards, to be kissed. Beautifully done. End of Act III. The house in tears.

I had to come downstairs to see them off although it meant leaving my stuffed briefcase all alone in the bedroom.

‘And you must come and see your new godson as soon as you return,’ Carlota said to me as the taxi drew up. A most intelligent remark. Obviously I was a godfather who had rushed over
for the ceremony and stayed the night.

I returned to my room to find the briefcase as I had left it. It was a damned nuisance. I couldn’t deposit it in the hotel safe since it supposedly held my pyjamas and toilet articles. I
couldn’t walk about with it indefinitely. I was a rich man stuck in the eye of a needle. I stuffed a few hundred into an inside pocket and went to bed looking forward to breakfast and an hour
or two of peace.

In the morning I set out to leave the briefcase with the bank where I had first deposited it and then to return to Gower Street, the only home I had, to re-enter the world as a free man. As a
vague precaution I decided not to take a taxi – a little too late, but one cannot think of everything – and walked to Richmond station. In Richmond Green a black car passed me and
stopped close to the empty pavement some fifty yards ahead. A man got out as if to call at a house, leaving the car door open behind him. When I came abreast of him, he grabbed me with a speed
which must have resulted from long training, hurled me into the car which was already moving and stuck a needle into my backside while I was still on hands and knees. I assumed he was after the
briefcase and felt a fleeting sympathy for Dona Juana before I became unconscious.

When I woke up I found myself in a small white­washed room lying on a trestle bed with a couple of blankets under me. The room seemed to be an attic for there was no window, only a skylight.
The briefcase was on the floor beside me with the lock cut away. I stretched out a shaky hand to it, and fingers felt that my wad appeared to be intact. Then for what had I been hijacked, and how
had I been traced in spite of all my precautions?

The door opened and a young man whose build and clean-cut profile suggested Spanish birth and breeding, asked me how I was feeling.

‘Fairly lousy, thank you,’ I replied.

‘I am sorry to have had to deal with you so drastically, but we had to be sure that you didn’t have a chance to yell for help. Now what is your name?’

‘Whatever I choose to tell you.’

‘A professional, ha?’ His English was excellent. ‘Then from whom did you get your orders?’

‘What orders?’

‘To get hold of the model Punchao del Dia.’

‘Nobody. It – well, came into my possession.’

I told him of my surprise when I found it in the black crocodile bag and that I did not know at the time who was its owner or what was its importance.

‘Where is it now?’

‘I do not know,’ I replied, for I was not going to give away the Presidenta.

‘I believe I should have knocked the first of your teeth out at that point,’ he said, ‘but as you will have seen I am not a Malpelo policeman. What do you know of my
country?’

‘No more than what your president’s wife and daughter told me.’

‘And what was that?’

‘That the Moment of Daybreak – the Punchao del Dia as you call it – was of great value to General Heredia.’

‘I see. We were wondering why she did not mention the loss to the police. But why did she go to Zurich?’

My heroics in keeping silent over Doña Juana had evidently been quite pointless, so I gave him the truth.

‘Because I would not take a cheque.’

‘She couldn’t draw enough cash in London?’

‘Apparently not. May I ask how you know so much?’

‘You may. It will be a useful lesson for you in future, if you have one. Remember that the wife of General Heredia is a person of importance and cannot just jump on a plane like anyone
else. There was a Special Branch man on duty at the VIP lounge. He recognised La Presidenta from the newspaper photograph and was curious why she should have gone to Zurich and back in a single
day. It may be that he thought the robbery was faked and she was planning to get the insurance.’

He went on to tell me that when she and her daughter returned to Heathrow and were met by a man who looked like a high-class crook from the City, the Special Branch chap took the number of their
taxi and when it parked again at the airport he asked the driver where he had dropped them. Enquiries at the hotel made it easy to identify the two ladies. The door had then been discreetly watched
until I left that morning. They assumed the Punchao del Dia was in that briefcase of mine, but it was now obvious that it had been delivered against payment.

‘And who are “we”?’ I asked.

‘Do you speak Spanish?’

‘I do.’

‘Then you will find out from a rather more serious interrogator.’

He went out and before the door had closed behind him, I heard a silvery voice remark impatiently:

‘Well, what’s the bastard got to say?’

I was hurt by the contempt in that beautiful voice. It was a shock after the gentleness of my interrogation, apart from the casual reference to my doubtful future. What the devil had I walked
into?

And how the devil was I going to walk out of it? My polite interrogator had locked the door and there was not a stick of furniture in the room beyond the light trestle bed on which I lay. It was
obviously too short to reach the sloping window in the roof, but I decided to experiment. I tipped it up against the wall and scrambled up the frame. Standing on the head of it, which
couldn’t be done for more than a few seconds because either it collapsed or I did, I found that my outstretched arm was still some eighteen inches short of the window and even if I could
somehow bridge the gap I had only my fist to break the glass. Wrapping it in the sleeve of my coat wouldn’t help much. I should emerge on to a sloping roof as a highly suspicious character
with one arm dripping blood. That was no way to appear in public.

Two more silent hours of morning passed and then a much smaller and less distinguished member of the unknown ‘we’ unlocked the door and relocked it. If they were both fair specimens
of General Heredia’s opposition, it was drawn from both peasant and landowner. I would have liked to share a jug with this tough in Andean shade but he looked at me with such hatred that a
jug was the last thing we were likely to share. He carried a long knife which could persuade me to co-operate more slowly than a revolver.

‘I have a few questions for you,’ he began in Spanish.

‘With much pleasure.’

‘Where is the Punchao?’

‘The wife of your president has it. You know that.’

‘You will get it back from her.’

‘My lad, one cannot enter Claridge’s like that and swipe jewellery.’

‘What is the number of her room?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Get up from that bed when you speak to me!’

So far he was merely softening me up ready for fiercer questions, holding that wicked knife an inch from my navel. I could have grabbed his wrist but it was a gamble who would win and I valued
my navel though it had not been much use in later life. I knew his type when puzzled as well as angry; he had no clear picture of Claridge’s or me, and assumed I would be as terrified as any
little urban sneak-thief helpless in the power of a bloodthirsty
guerrillero
. I considered the solid top of his round head. There might be a chance to use it if I inflated his manly pride
still more.

I began to weep and pray, begging him for mercy; a wretched coward in full accordance with what he expected of an overdressed crook deservedly afraid for his life. With my arms around his knees
– if knees can sneer – I gripped the ground with my toes and drove my bowed head forward and up with every muscle of my body behind it. When he doubled up in agony I wrenched his arm
backwards and dislocated something – his shoulder probably. The knife, threatening his already battered testicles, persuaded him to lie on the bed.

I could now escape, for I took his key, but I had no idea how many passages and doors and people, with or without silvery voices, I should find on lower floors. It seemed wiser to carry out my
first plan unless inspection showed that there was no practicable way off the roof. I cut strips of blanket with that admirably sharpened knife and tied his chest to the trestle bed so that his
head and shoulders stuck out about eighteen inches beyond. A second strip fastened his ankles to the cross bar. A third closed my briefcase and tied it round my waist. Once he offered some
resistance, but a further stretching of the dislocated arm convinced him that it was not worthwhile.

I tipped the trestle bed against the wall below the window, its legs folded and my interrogator firmly lashed to the frame. What he thought I was going to do to him I cannot say, carve my
initials on his stomach perhaps. Any attempt to speak or yell was instantly suppressed by slight attention to the arm. His head and shoulders were well clear of the bed. The only question now was
whether I had the strength to lift both bed and body together. I had – just – for the second it took to punch his head through the glass. I could then use him as a ladder. I regret the
brutality, but it was an unavoidable component of the moral principles which I was compelled to accept.

Descent from the roof turned out to be easier than I had dared hope. The room where I had been confined was a sort of little penthouse. I had only to slide down a few feet of tiles to land on
the flat roof of the main building. The door through which my two visitors had come, opened on to it so that all these manoeuvres had been unnecessary; once I had the key I could have walked out
and a fire escape would have taken me down to the ground. I think that was probably the way I had been brought up from the car, so keeping my arrival – and of others in the past? –
completely secret. That was also the reason for the folding bed which had puzzled me; it could be carried up without arousing curiosity.

Walking home, I wondered at the futility of my own character. Why was I so made that I had to foresee non­existent dangers so far ahead? If I were a staff officer I should produce plans of
incredible ingenuity to exploit a weakness of the enemy when he could be defeated by a plain frontal attack. Who was my enemy anyway? Presumably the Retadores, as the democrats in opposition to
Heredia called themselves, though the methods employed seemed to be more typical of a Father of the Country. Whichever it was, how large was their cell in London and what were the police doing
about it? At any rate it was certain that the police knew nothing about the Punchao or its importance or my identity.

I let myself into my room. It had been a long walk, carrying my coat which was streaked with blood and had to be abandoned. Fortunately, my old coat, the only giver of warmth in my days of
misery, had come back from the cleaners. Blood on my face, if noticed, could be put down to a shaving cut. The briefcase could be washed. There would then be nothing to arouse the curiosity of
public or police.

The kidnappers did not know my name or address; I knew their address but had no other clue to their identity. I wrote down a list of interested parties.