The Ends of the Earth (9 page)

‘I don’t think we can stay, Sam. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who’ve helped us.’

‘Schools would want you to leave, that’s for certain. Me too, probably.’

‘We could hire a lawyer in Shanghai and send him here to press for their early release.’

‘And wait in Shanghai to see what happens?’

‘I don’t know what else to suggest. We’re lucky to have the chance of going. If it hadn’t been for Monteith’s perverse brand of gallantry …’

Sam groaned. ‘I’m trying to think what Max would do.’

‘He wouldn’t give up.’

‘No. But sometimes you have to.’

Silence fell between them again. The rain continued to fall.

‘This is one of those times,’ said Malory, her voice catching.

At Sugamo prison, Morahan slept fitfully but gratefully on a thin quilt in a twelve-man cell, wrapped in a threadbare red
yukata
. The heat that was such a trial for the other occupants of the cell was actually soothing for him, easing the pain from the bruises and weals on his back and buttocks. He did not want to move. He did not even want to think.

Ward and Djabsu lay alongside him, Djabsu sporting a few cuts and bruises of his own after quelling attempts by some of their Japanese cell-mates to intimidate the newcomers. No one had told them anything they actually understood about why they had been transferred here from Kempeitai HQ. But clearly external pressure of some kind had told in their favour.

‘We’re not on our own, boys,’ Morahan had mumbled before falling asleep, and he had not been referring to the moody and malodorous prisoners they had been thrust in with.

The thought greeted Morahan when he stirred and saw, through the gloom, the huddled sleeping shapes around him. He inhaled slowly, to avoid any jabs of pain. Then he exhaled, equally slowly.

He was alive, breathing in and breathing out. It was not much to rejoice in. But he allowed himself a grim little smile. Everything had gone wrong. But all was not lost.

WITH THE DECISION
to flee Japan taken, Malory and Sam spent the next day waiting in enforced idleness at Professor Nishikawa’s house until it was time to depart. The Professor himself left early to attend to commitments at the university. Malory managed communication with the two servants in her rudimentary Japanese. Sam, whose head no longer ached and whose wound was healing well, felt physically better than he had the day before, but could not shake off the sense that he had failed first Max and now Schools as well. Malory assured him that was not the case. In reality, they had little choice in the matter. But that was no consolation.

Nishikawa returned in the late afternoon. He and Yamanaka had conferred during a lunchtime rendezvous. A car would collect Malory and Sam at seven o’clock and drive them to Yokohama, where they were expected aboard the
Star of Batavia
, due to sail on the evening tide.

‘Payment has been made,’ Nishikawa reported. ‘There will be no difficulty.’

‘I’m not sure we thanked Yamanaka-san enough last night,’ said Malory. ‘Will you tell him how very grateful we are?’

‘I will. You are sad also, I see. You feel you will be leaving your friends in trouble.’

‘We
are
leaving them in trouble,’ said Sam.

‘It is true.’ Nishikawa smiled philosophically. ‘But truth is neither good nor bad. It simply is. I spent an hour in the university library this morning. It holds a large collection of newspapers. I read the reports printed concerning the death of Claude Farngold in October of Meiji twenty-two – 1889, as you would date it. A fire in his warehouse, as you know. But there was mystery about why he did not escape. No one knew he was there until his body was found in his office. It was badly burned, of course, probably too badly for signs of violence to be seen. If there were any.’

‘You don’t believe it was an accident, do you?’ said Malory.

The philosophical smile broadened. ‘Beware convenient accidents. None of the articles mentioned Claude Farngold was Count Tomura’s father-in-law. Tomura was indebted to Farngold for allowing him to marry his daughter. Tomura does not like to be indebted to anyone.
Gen’in sei moto.
Farngold dead. Debt dissolved.’

‘And Farngold’s son as well as his daughter is dead now.’

‘They are. Count Tomura is a dangerous man. Not just to you and your friends. To my country. He and people who think like him are determined to lead us on a path to war.’

‘War against who, Professor?’ Sam asked. ‘Germany’s been beaten.’

‘And after our delegation’s good work in Paris, Japan now has Germany’s colonies in the western Pacific. There is a border out in the ocean, between the empires: Japan and America. It is a border Count Tomura and his friends plan we will cross one day. That is the next war. The war that will destroy us.’

‘If you’re right …’ Malory began.

‘Sad to say, I am.’

‘What can be done to stop them?’

‘By you and me, nothing. That is why I will lead the quiet life of a professor, thinking more than I speak or write. And why you will leave Japan tonight and never return.’

The afternoon faded into evening. The car arrived on schedule at seven o’clock. Nishikawa saw them off without a spoken farewell, merely moving his hand in a gesture of benediction as he stood in the portico of the house, watching as they were driven out through the gate.

The driver spoke no English and neither Malory nor Sam found anything to say during the journey south through Tokyo and on towards Yokohama.

The sky was a bruised grey, turning slowly blue-black as nightfall advanced. In the wide puddles left by earlier rain, distorted reflections of telegraph poles passed before Sam’s gaze like Japanese characters of unknown meaning: the squiggles and serifs of a language and a country he could not hope to understand.

This, he realized, was what failure felt like. This was what being outmatched amounted to. They could hide from Tomura and Lemmer. And they could escape them. But there was no hiding from the knowledge that Tomura and Lemmer had defeated them. And that knowledge would sail with them into the night.

Yokohama pier was a quieter, stiller place without a liner alongside. Of the merchant vessels moored there, only one had steam up. The name on its bow, visible in the lamplight, was a reassuring sight:
DE STER VAN BATAVIA
. It looked ready to sail, with loading complete and only one gangway still in use. A man in an officer’s cap and uniform stood by it, smoking a cigarette and glancing impatiently towards Malory and Sam as they hurried along the pier from where the car had delivered them.

‘We’re the two passengers you’re expecting,’ said Malory when they reached him. ‘Mr Yamanaka sent us.’

‘
Ja
,’ the officer responded, none too genially. ‘
Yamanaka. Ja, ja. Gaan, OK?
’ He motioned for them to step on to the gangway.

‘
Sam. Malory.
’

They stopped in their tracks. Then turned in the direction from which they had been hailed.

A figure moved in the deep shadow of the darkened vessel moored on the other side of the pier.

‘Who’s there?’ called Sam. He had felt an instant, instinctive recognition of the voice. But he had dismissed it as a hopeless flight of fancy. The impossible was always tempting him in dreams and fantasies. But dreams and fantasies had no place on Yokohama pier.

‘It’s me.’

The figure moved into the lamplight. Sam’s mouth fell open in disbelief and astonishment. Malory gasped and clutched at his wrist. It could not be. But it was.

The man standing before them was Max.

Villa Orseis, Marseilles, early morning, Tuesday 6th May, 1919

MAX FELT THE
barrel of the gun pressing into his temple and his index finger being folded round the trigger.

He had always feared dying in a flying accident, as too many RFC pilots had, rather than in combat. It would have been both stupid and futile, a waste of his life as well as a good aeroplane. What was about to happen to him was similar in its unfittingness – and in the shame he felt on account of it. He had failed. He had fallen short. He had made a fatal mistake.

It could not be helped. At least, as when things went disastrously wrong in the air, it would end quickly. There was that to be said for it at any rate.

‘We are ready, yes?’ Dombreux nodded in evident satisfaction with his handiwork, then drew back and grimaced as he began to squeeze Max’s finger against the trigger. ‘
Adieu
,’ he murmured.

A click sounded in Max’s ear. Then—

Nothing. No flash. No roar. No pain.

The gun had not fired. Dombreux grunted in annoyance and squeezed Max’s finger against the trigger again, the drug he had been injected with ensuring he was helpless to resist. Another click. Then—

Still nothing. ‘
Merde
,’ muttered Dombreux. He withdrew the gun and opened the chamber. ‘
Vide? Impossible. Qu’est-ce qui se passe?
’ Then he tossed the weapon aside. Max heard it clunk against the floor.

Dombreux glared suspiciously into Max’s eyes. The gun was empty. But that was none of Max’s doing. The realization of what that might mean dawned in Dombreux’s gaze. He rose and stepped out of view.

Max could hear the Frenchman’s footsteps as he hurried from the room. He had remembered the gun Max had left on the arm of one of the chairs in the music room. Max knew better than he did that it was loaded.

But before Dombreux had gone far enough to reach it, something happened. There was a strange, whipping noise. Dombreux cried out, then muttered several oaths. A door, or something like it, creaked.

‘
Mon Dieu
,’ Dombreux shouted. ‘
Qui êtes-vous?
’

Max could not imagine what had just occurred. But it was clear Dombreux had been waylaid in some way – by someone.

‘
Dégagez-moi.
Let me go.
Vous êtes
—’ Dombreux’s protests were cut short, his words descending into a stifled moan. Several more moans followed.

Max heard footsteps, lighter than Dombreux’s. A faint shadow moved at the edge of his vision. He heard something – a heavy object, he sensed – being placed softly on the table above him. Then the shadow moved away.

Time passed. Dombreux’s muffled, unintelligible protests grew fewer. The creaking slowed, then stopped. Silence followed, spreading through the house, broken only by the clock striking the half hour.

Max could do nothing but reflect on the folly of allowing Dombreux to lure him to the villa with the promise he would learn the truth about his father at last: the great secret concerning the Farngolds, supposedly contained in the letter Jack Farngold had sent to Sir Henry in Petrograd, where Dombreux had intercepted it; the letter Max had not had the chance to read before Dombreux drugged him.

Then, slowly, feeling began to seep back into Max. He became aware of the discomfort of his position, his left shoulder propped against the leg of the desk. A tingling began in his limbs. He looked up at the camera on the tripod, positioned there to record his death, and was able to form a smile. He was not dead.

Dombreux’s plan – Lemmer’s plan – had miscarried. How – at whose hands – he did not yet know. But he was alive. For the moment, nothing else mattered.

The tingling became a flood of sensation spreading through him. He rolled awkwardly away from the leg of the desk and lay, his face resting on a rug, as his limbs and his mind reconnected.

Within a few minutes he was able to rise, albeit unsteadily. He leaned on the desk for support and saw what had been placed there: his gun. He picked it up and opened the chamber. It was fully loaded.

Clutching the gun in his hand, he pushed himself fully upright and began to walk towards the door.

He saw Dombreux’s shadow in the music room before he saw Dombreux. The Frenchman was hanging upside down by one ankle, held by a rope stretching from a hook fitted in the double-height ceiling that supported a large wooden-armed chandelier. The other end of the rope was fastened to the bracket of a wall-lamp.

Dombreux’s hands were tied together behind his back and a rag was held in his mouth by a rope gag. His face was flushed a deep red. A comb and some coins had fallen from his pockets on to the floor below him. Seeing Max, his eyes widened. He mumbled some kind of appeal for mercy.

Max’s response was to raise the gun and aim it between Dombreux’s eyes. Execution was all he deserved, as he must have known. He shook his head desperately.

Slowly, Max lowered the gun. Who had done this? Max could guess, but Dombreux could tell him. ‘Make one wrong move and I’ll shoot you,’ he rasped, his voice hoarsened by the drug. ‘It’d be no hardship, believe me.’

Dombreux nodded. Max stepped behind him, untied the rope gag and pulled it away. Dombreux spat out the rag, coughing thickly. It took him several moments to find his voice. ‘Untie me, Max. Please.’

‘Why would I do that? You planned to kill me.’

‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Just untie me.’

‘No. Tell first. What happened?’

‘Your friend—Is he your friend?’

‘Describe him.’

‘Arab boy. Berber, maybe. Small. But strong. And quick. Who is he?’

‘Le Singe. Tomura’s people hung a friend of his upside down before they killed him. In Paris, last week.’

‘Soutine?’

‘You’re well informed, aren’t you? Now, what happened?’

‘He must have emptied my gun and set this trap for me. I didn’t see the rope. Suddenly, it was round my ankle and I was hoisted up.’

Le Singe had used the ceiling-hook to haul Dombreux up to the desired height. Then he had delivered Max’s gun and …

‘He left me here. I don’t know where he went. He may still be in the villa.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Le Singe could still be in the building, of course. But Max had the very clear sense he was not. He had done what he meant to do and gone. He had saved Max’s life for a second time and left him to decide Dombreux’s fate.

‘Let me go, Max.
Pour l’amour de Dieu
. I’ll tell you everything.’