Jack Higgins (9 page)

“I've had a most interesting chat with Sergeant Simonsen, Mr. Martin. It would seem there is a chance for us after all.”

“That still depends on what we find when we get there,” I said as they seated themselves. “Even if a landing is possible on the lake itself, the weather has to be right. Earlier today for example, when Arnie Fassberg was there, there was such a heavy mist that he didn't get a close look at the lake at all.”

“Is that sort of thing usual?” Stratton asked.

I nodded. “It happens all the time, even in summer. Hail, rain, mist or perhaps a blizzard that seems to sweep in out of nowhere. An hour later the sky is so blue that you can't believe it's real. How's your skiing, by the way?”

“I was born and raised in the Austrian Tyrol,” Vogel said, “which means I was going to school on skis from the age of five. Mr. Stratton tells me his own experience has been confined to a couple of winter holidays in France, but I'm sure that should prove more than adequate.”

“I'm the odd man out I'm afraid,” Sarah Kelso said, “but Sergeant Simonsen seems to think that's no problem.”

“From what I've heard you're going to get the deluxe treatment,” Desforge assured her. “You'll arrive in style without a hair out of place. Now what about a drink?”

By now things had begun to get pretty noisy. People crowded on to the tiny dance floor, there were occasional
shrieks from the darker corners and now and then the sound of breaking glass echoed through the haze of tobacco smoke.

“This is hardly the London Hilton.” Desforge leaned across to Sarah Kelso. “Are you sure you wouldn't rather go some place else?”

“Oh, I should imagine I've got pretty good protection,” she told him. “To tell you the truth, I'm rather enjoying myself.”

A moment later the doors seemed to burst inwards and Da Gama arrived. He paused inside the door, half a dozen of his crew at his back, a giant of a man in a reefer coat, an old cloth cap pulled down over his dark and greasy hair. He had tiny pig's eyes above flat cheekbones and his skin was so dark that I always suspected he had coloured blood in him.

The juke box kept on playing, but for a moment there was a lull in the general conversation. Da Gama said something over his shoulder to one of his men and laughed harshly. For some reason that seemed to break the tension and people started talking again. He moved to the bar, taking the shortest route, cutting straight through the middle of the crowded dance floor and anyone in his way got out of it quick.

Desforge emptied his glass and filled it again. “So that's Da Gama? From the look of him I'd say he's probably got a brain the size of a pea.”

“It's his hands you've got to watch,” I said. “He could break an arm as easily as a rotten stick.”

Strangely enough it was Stratton who reacted most. His face had gone very white and there was a strange
glitter in his eyes and then I noticed that his hands were resting lightly on the edge of the table and that he still had his gloves on. They were an expensive-looking pair in soft black leather and somehow deadly. I suddenly knew beyond any doubt that my first estimate of the man had not been far wrong. Effeminate perhaps, but not soft, a mistake people often made about homosexuals. Perhaps it was Da Gama's exaggerated maleness that revolted him.

“He's quite a man, isn't he?” Sarah Kelso said.

“That depends on how you look at it, sweetie.” Stratton lit a Turkish cigarette carefully, still keeping his gloves on. “Personally, I'm surprised to find he can walk on his hind legs. I thought the human race was supposed to have developed a little over the past half a million years.”

He was certainly right about one thing—Da Gama was an animal; a soulless, mindless brute, savagely cruel and utterly sadistic. Once he got a man down he would stamp him into the ground with as little compunction as any normal individual would crush an ant.

There was a restless gleam in Desforge's eyes that didn't look too healthy and he poured himself another large whisky and laughed shortly. “You know what they say? The bigger they are the harder they fall.”

“That kind of talk can be dangerous, Jack,” I said. “Let me give you a few facts. Da Gama never starts a fight, he always leaves that to the other man. That way he keeps out of gaol. But he certainly finishes them. He crippled a sailor in Godthaab in June and half-killed a reindeer hunter in this very bar last month.”

“What do you want me to do?” he demanded. “Genuflect?”

He didn't get any further. The door opened and Arnie Fassberg came in, Ilana on his arm. She was wearing a rather nice fur coat which looked suspiciously like a real mink and she paused at the top of the stairs, her eyes searching the room till she found me. For a long moment she held my gaze, no expression on her face and then she slipped out of the fur coat and handed it to Arnie.

Underneath she was wearing that incredible dress of gold thread and tambour beading and it seemed to catch fire in the hazy light. The effect was all that she could have hoped and about the only thing in the room that didn't stop dead in its tracks was the juke box.

She finally moved, coming down the steps and crossing towards us and voices rose excitedly on every side mingling with laughter—the wrong kind of laughter. I held my breath and waited for the roof to fall in on us.

D
esforge lurched to his feet and opened his arms to her. “And behold, there was a woman of Babylon,” he declaimed.

During the hour or so that we'd already spent at the Fredericsmut he'd consumed about half the bottle of whisky he'd ordered from the bar. I think it was only then that I realised he must have been drinking for most of the day because it was the first time since I'd known him that he actually seemed the worse for liquor. His speech was slurred, his gestures slightly exaggerated and the hair falling untidily over his forehead combined with the iron-grey beard and magnificent physique stamped him as the sort of man to give a wide berth to even in a place like that.

Already people were looking our way and because of Desforge as much as Ilana. For a start just about everyone
knew him, which was hardly surprising after a hundred and eleven films, the majority of which had been dubbed into most world languages. Two-fisted Jack Desforge, hero of a thousand bar-room brawls who always came out on top—every man's fantasy figure and constantly having to prove himself like some old time Western gunfighter, to any drunk with inflated ideas or the sailor on a pass who came across him in a bar and fancied his chances.

He introduced Ilana to the others and Arnie brought her a chair. Their reactions were interesting. Vogel gazed at her in frank admiration, the oldest message in the world in his eyes. Stratton was also highly impressed, but in a different way, dazzled, I suspected, as much by the golden image as anything else. Sarah Kelso managed the fixed half smile that most women seem to pull out of nowhere when faced with something they know they're going to have difficulty in competing with. Her eyes did the sort of price job on the dress and accessories that wouldn't have disgraced a computer and reluctantly admitted the final total.

Desforge put an arm round her and squeezed. “Heh, Arnie,” he said. “I'm thinking of taking Ilana down to Sandvig tomorrow to do a little reindeer hunting. Can you fly us in?”

“I wish I could,” Arnie told him, “But I'm flying up to Søndre in the morning.”

Sarah Kelso was just about to light a cigarette and she paused and looked up at him sharply. He ignored her and smiled across at me.

“Olaf Simonsen tells me you're going to have a crack at Sule after all.”

“That's right.”

“I certainly hope that's an accurate met report he showed you. Rather you than me.” He touched Ilana on the shoulder. “Care to dance?”

She glanced briefly at me, then pushed back her chair, “I'd love to.”

“That's one hell of a good idea.” Desforge stood up, swaying a little and held out a hand to Sarah Kelso. “Let's you and me show them how it's done.”

Although he tried to conceal it, Vogel didn't look too pleased, but she went anyway. The juke box was playing something good and loud and the tiny floor was crowded. I watched them go, then glanced across at the Portuguese. Most of them were watching Ilana, stripping her with their eyes which was only to be expected, but the really noticeable thing about them was that they didn't seem to be talking much. Da Gama leaned back against the bar, hands in pockets, a cigarette hanging from his lips. His face was a stone mask, but his eyes followed Desforge constantly.

When I was thirteen I once found myself out on the wing in a school rugby match, very much a last minute substitution because no one else was available. My one moment of glory came when I brought down the captain of the school team a yard from the touchline, frustrating a win on the part of the other side.

He was a large, beefy individual of eighteen who gave me a thrashing in the shower rooms afterwards with the threat of worse to come if I ever got in his way again.
The important thing wasn't that the experience put me off team games for life, but that it gave me a hatred of violence and a loathing for men of Da Gama's stamp, which produced a violence in return that was infinitely more frightening in its implications.

And violence was here now in this room, crackling in the air like electricity, mingling with the smoke, the human sweat, the reek of spilled liquor soaking into my brain as I breathed in so that I felt light-headed and a strange, nervous spasm seemed to pass through me in a cold wave.

And when it came it was from the most unexpected quarter. Another number started on the juke box and Ralph Stratton got to his feet without a word, pushed his way through the crowd and tapped Arnie on the shoulder. Arnie didn't look too pleased and released Ilana reluctantly.

He returned to the table and I nodded towards Stratton and Ilana. “They dance well together.”

“About all he's good for I should say,” Arnie commented sourly.

Da Gama spoke to one of his men, a large, dirty-faced individual in a greasy leather jerkin. The man forced his way through the crowd and tapped Stratton on the shoulder. Stratton simply shook his head and kept on dancing. The Portuguese tried again and Stratton shrugged him off, impatiently this time.

In his Savile Row suit and RAF tie the rather effeminate looking Englishman would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that kind of place even if he hadn't been dancing with the most striking looking girl in the room,
and plenty of people were watching. What happened next came as a shock to most of them although I can't say it surprised me particularly.

The Portuguese pulled Stratton round and grabbed him by the lapels. It was difficult to see what happened exactly, but whatever it was, the effect was devastating. I presume Stratton must have kneed him in the groin because the Portuguese cried out sharply, his voice clear above the noise of the juke box. Stratton pushed him away and his right arm swept from behind his left shoulder, the edge of his hand slashing across the neck.

As the man went down, the crowd scattered and all hell broke loose. Stratton just had time to give Ilana a violent shove out of the way and then he had his hands full. The first of the Portuguese was almost on him. Stratton stepped back, raised his knee and flicked his foot forward. He caught the Portuguese about as low as you can go and he went down like a stone.

But the other four were by then too close for any more fancy work and swarmed all over him. Arnie was already on his way as Stratton went under, but Desforge beat him to it, roaring like an angry bull.

He grabbed one man by the neck and the seat of his pants and hurled him across the dance floor to crash headlong into a table which collapsed under his weight, scattering bottles and glasses among the crowd. As a woman screamed, Desforge turned his attention to one of the men who was still concentrating on Stratton, and his fist rose and fell like a club at the base of the unprotected neck.

Arnie arrived with a running jump that took him on to
the back of one of the others and they crashed to the floor and rolled over and over, tearing at each other's throats. That left one man who still stood over Stratton doing his best to kick his brains out, but as I watched, Stratton rolled out of the way, grabbed at the descending foot and brought him down.

Desforge moved in to help, but he never got there. Da Gama, who had stayed at the bar watching for the twenty or thirty seconds the whole affair had taken, now intervened. Moving with astonishing speed for such a big man, he burst through the crowd and took Desforge from the rear, clamping an arm across his windpipe like an iron bar.

Both Arnie and Stratton were still fully occupied and quite obviously no one else was going to intervene as Da Gama increased the pressure. Desforge's hands tore vainly at the arm that was choking the life out of him and his face turned purple.

I began to shake, my head swelling like a balloon and the roar of the crowd was as the sea pounding in on some distant shore. I was aware of Ilana screaming at me soundlessly, then turning and hurling herself at Da Gama like a wildcat. He flung her away with his right hand and increased his grip and suddenly the stone mask dissolved into one of the cruellest smiles I've ever seen.

I suppose I must have been trying to destroy every sadistic, mindless lout I'd known in my life when I lifted the chair and smashed it across his head and shoulders. For a moment he became many people. The captain of the school rugby team who'd thrashed me as a boy, the senior cadet who'd supervised the indoctrination of
recruits when I first joined the navy, and a certain commander in the Fleet Air Arm who'd pushed several young and inexperienced pilots not only to the limits of endurance, but over the edge. But most of all, he reminded me of one of the male nurses in the home where I'd undergone the cure, a walking animal who'd taken a sadistic pleasure in beating the mentally deficient into insensibility when their hysterical outbursts interfered with his card games on night duty.

The chair splintered on impact. I raised it high and brought it down again and it crumpled as the supports cracked. Da Gama cried out in pain and dropped Desforge to the floor. As he swung round, blood trickling down his face from a scalp wound, I threw what was left of the chair in his face and backed away.

He came in with a rush, hands reaching out to destroy and I dodged to one side and kicked a chair into his path so that he stumbled and fell heavily to the floor. There was a bottle of schnapps on the table at my side and I grabbed it by the neck, smashed it across the edge of the bar and had a knee on his chest before he could move.

The bottle made a fearsome weapon and I shoved the broken edge up under his chin, the jagged, splintered edge drawing blood from the taut flesh. One push and he was finished and he knew it and fear broke through like scum to the surface of a pool.

Whether I would have killed him or not is something I'll never be sure of because a shot echoed through the roaring of the crowd, shocking me back to reality. The silence was like the calm at sea after a storm as Olaf
Simonsen moved forward, an automatic pistol in his right hand.

“That's enough, Joe,” he said in English. “I'll take over now.”

I got to my feet and laid the bottle down very carefully on the bar. I still felt dazed and somehow outside of myself. I was aware of Da Gama lying there, of Desforge being helped to his feet by Arnie and Sarah Kelso. Stratton was still in one piece and stood at the edge of the dance floor calmly wiping blood from his cheek with a handkerchief.

Simonsen lined Da Gama and those of his men who could still stand up against the bar. Two others still sprawled unconscious on the floor and the one Desforge had thrown through the air like a sack of coals sat in a chair clutching what appeared to be a broken arm.

Simonsen came towards me, still holding his automatic and beyond him I was aware of Da Gama glaring at me as he wiped blood from his beard.

“Go home, Joe,” Simonsen said in English. “And take your friends with you. I'll have a word with you all later.”

I stood glaring at him stupidly and then Ilana appeared, her fur coat draped over her shoulders. She looked white and shaken, but her voice was very calm. “I think we'd better get out of here, Joe, while we still have the choice.”

She held out her hand and I held on tight and followed her as meekly as a lamb.

• • •

Afterwards, nothing made very much sense until I stepped into the shower and shocked myself back to reality under an ice-cold spray. I gave it two full minutes which was all I could stand, then got out and towelled myself dry. As I was dressing there was a knock at the door and Arnie came in. There was a nasty bruise on his right cheek where a fist had grazed him and I noticed that his knuckles were skinned, but he was grinning cheerfully.

“Quite a night, eh? How do you feel?”

“I'll survive. How's Desforge?”

“Ilana's with him now and I'm going home to change. I've got blood all over my shirt; not mine, I'm happy to say. I'll be back in half an hour. I'll meet you in the bar.”

After he'd gone, I finished dressing and went along the corridor to Desforge's room. I knocked on the door and it was opened by Ilana.

“How is he?” I asked.

“See for yourself.”

He was lying on his back covered by an eiderdown, snoring rhythmically, his mouth slightly open. “The whisky finally got to him,” she said. “When he wakes up he'll probably think it was all part of some crazy dream.”

“I feel like that right now,” I told her.

She looked up at me, her eyes serious and was obviously about to speak when there was a knock at the door. When she opened it Sarah Kelso was standing there.

“I was wondering how Mr. Desforge is?”

Ilana waved towards the bed. “If the fans could only see him now.”

Sarah Kelso moved across to the bed and looked down at him. “Is he often like this?”

“Only four or five times a week.”

Sarah Kelso placed a crocodile-leather wallet on the bedside locker. “I'll leave this here. I picked it up at the Fredericsmut. He must have dropped it during the fight.”

“Are you sure it's Jack's?”

She nodded. “I looked inside. Among other things there was a letter addressed to him.” She moved to the door and paused. “That was quite a show you put on back there, Mr. Martin. You're a man of surprises. I wonder what you'd have done if the sergeant hadn't arrived when he did.”