Vintage Stuff (16 page)

Five minutes later he was on the opposite bank. 'I've got everything ready to pull across,' he
whispered. There was no reply. Crouching down he stared up the rocky hillside and was wondering
where Glodstone had got to when something moved and a boulder rolled down to his left followed by
a cascade of small stones. Evidently Glodstone had gone ahead to recce, and as usual was making a
bad job of it. Presumably he'd be back in a minute or two and in the meantime the equipment had
to be brought across.

Setting his back against the slope and bracing his feet against a large rock, Peregrine
grasped the rope and began to haul. For a moment the oil drum seemed to resist his efforts and
them with a surge it was out into the mainstream and swirling away almost as fast as Glodstone.
Certainly it followed the same course, and Glodstone, who had just taken his sodden pipe out and
was sucking it morosely, was suddenly aware that a new and possibly more dangerous element than
the river itself had entered his limited domain. With a metallic thud the drum slammed into the
rock he was crouching on and it was only by throwing himself to one side that he avoided having
his legs crushed. Then as he glared at this latest threat, the thing moved away upstream leaving
him to ponder on its purpose. Clearly whatever it was that had attempted to kill him couldn't be
making headway against the current unless it was being pulled...Glodstone got the message but it
was too late to grab the drum. In any case the notion that Peregrine's idea of trying to rescue
him consisted of letting heavy metal objects batter the ledge he was on suggested that the lout
was insane. Standing well back against the cliff he waited for the next attempt. It never
came.

Having pulled the drum up the bank Peregrine hurriedly unloaded it, untied the rope and stowed
it on the rocks. Only then did he begin to wonder what to do next. If Glodstone had gone ahead he
would presumably come back or send a signal for Peregrine to join him. But as the minutes went by
and nothing happened a new and more ominous thought came to mind. Perhaps Glodstone had walked
into a trap. He'd said they wouldn't be watching this side of the Château because it was too well
protected but that was just the opposite of what Major Fetherington had taught. 'Remember this,'
he had said, 'the one place you don't expect the enemy to attack is the one they'll choose. The
secret of strategy is to do what your opponent least expects.' But Glodstone hadn't seen it that
way. On the other hand, why hadn't they waited to capture him too? Again Peregrine found an easy
answer: the swine had thought Glodstone was on his own and didn't know there were two of them.
Besides, his fieldcraft was hopeless and you could hear him coming a mile off. And he'd
definitely got across because there had been that tug on the rope.

With all the stealth of a dangerous predator Peregrine put the coil over his shoulder, stuffed
one revolver in his belt, cocked the other one and began the slow ascent of the hillside. Every
few yards he stopped and listened but apart from a goat that scurried off across the rocks he
heard and saw nothing suspicious. At the end of twenty minutes he had reached the top and was
standing in the dry moat under the walls of the Château itself. To his left was the cliff while
to his right was a corner tower. For a moment he hesitated. The notion of climbing in by way of
the cliff still appealed to him but it was too easy now. He was about to move round the tower
when he found what he wanted to make a genuinely dangerous entry. A metal strip ran down the wall
of the tower. A lightning conductor. Shoving his hands behind it, he pulled but the copper strip
held. Five minutes later he had reached the top of the tower and was on the roof. He crawled
forward and peered down into the courtyard. It was empty but a few windows on the first floor
were still alight and opposite him under the archway that led to the main gates a lamp shone down
on the cobbles. That put paid to his idea of letting himself down on the rope. He'd be seen too
easily.

He got up and moved across the roof towards the tower, and saw a square box-shaped trap
protruding from the lead. Kneeling down beside it, he eased the top up and peered down into the
darkness. It was obviously a means of access to the roof but what was below? Shoving it still
further over, he lay down and put his head through the opening. Silence. Nothing stirred below
and after listening carefully he took out his torch and flashed it briefly down. He was looking
into a corridor but, best of all, some metal rungs were set into the wall. Peregrine switched off
the flashlight, swung his legs over the edge and, hanging onto the top rung, eased the cover back
over the trap. Then he climbed down and moving with the utmost caution, crept along the passage
to a door at the end. Again he waited with every sense alert for danger but the place was silent.
He opened the door and by the light shining through a slit window found himself at the head of a
curved turret staircase.

Keeping close to the outer wall, he went down until he came to another door. Still silence. He
opened it a fraction and saw a long corridor at the end of which a light was shining on a
landing. Peregrine closed the door and went on down. If Glodstone was imprisoned anywhere it
would be in an underground cell. Perhaps the Countess would be there too. Anyway it was the first
place to look. Peregrine reached the ground floor and, ignoring the door into the courtyard,
followed the steps down below ground. Here everything was pitch-dark and after taking the
precaution of waiting and listening again, he switched on his torch. The base of the turret had
brought him to the junction of two tunnels. One led off to his right under the east wing while
the other disappeared into the distance below the main body of the Château. Peregrine chose the
latter and was halfway along it when through an open doorway on one side be heard the murmur of
voices. That they didn't come from the room itself was obvious. It was rather that people in the
room above could be heard down there. He flashed his torch briefly and saw that the place had
once been a kitchen.

An old black iron range stood in the chimney breast and in the middle of the room a large
wooden table stood covered with dust. Beyond it was a large stone sink and a window and a door
which led out into a sunken area. To one side of the sink, a chain hung down over the walled lip
of what seemed to be a well. A wooden lid covered it now. Peregrine crossed the room, lifted the
lid and shone the torch down and very faintly saw, far below, its reflected light. It might come
in handy for a hiding place in an emergency but in the meantime he was more interested in the
voices. The sound of them came, he realized, from what looked like a small lift-shaft set into
the wall at the far end of the kitchen. Peregrine switched off his torch and stuck his head
through the opening. Two men in the room above were engaged in heated argument.

'You're not reading me, Hans,' said an American, 'You're taking a non-power-oriented
standpoint. Now what I'm saying is that from the proven experimental evidence of the past there
is no alternative to Realpolitik or Machtpolitik if you like...'

'I don't like,' said a man with a foreign accent, 'and I should know. I was there at the
Battle of the Kursk. You think I liked that?'

'Sure, sure. I guess not. But what happened there was the breakdown of Machtpolitik
powerwise.'

'You can say that again,' said the German. 'You know how many Tigers we lost?'

'Jesus, I'm not talking logistically. You had a pre-War situation which was unbalanced.'

'We had a man who was unbalanced too. That's what you fail to take into account. The human
psyche. All you can see is the material, the non-personalistic and dehumanized product of an
economically dependent species. But never psychical impulses which transcend the material.'

'That is not true. I admit the interdependency of the individual and the socio-economic
environment but the basis remains the same, the person is the process.'

The German laughed. 'You know, when I hear you talk that way I am reminded of our Soviet
colleague. The individual is free by virtue of the very collectivity which makes him unfree. With
you the collective imposes a freedom on the individual which he does not want. In the Soviet case
there is the stasis of state capitalism and in the American the chaos of the free-market economy,
and in both the individual is tied with the halter of militaristic power monopolies over which he
has no control. And that you rationalize as Realpolitik?'

'And without it you wouldn't be sitting here, Heinie,' said the American savagely.

'Professor Botwyk,' said the German, 'I would remind you that we neither of us would be
sitting here if twenty million Russians hadn't died. I would ask you to remember that also. And
so, good night.'

He left the room and for a while Peregrine could hear the other man pacing the room above. He
had understood nothing of what they had been talking about except that it had had something to do
with the War. Presently, the American moved out of the room. Below him in the passage Peregrine
followed the sound of his footsteps. Halfway along the passage they turned away. Peregrine
stopped and flashed his torch briefly. Some steps led up to a door. Very cautiously he climbed
them and softly opened the door. A figure was standing on the terrace and had lit a cigar. As
Peregrine watched he walked away. Peregrine slipped after him. Here was the perfect opportunity
to learn what had happened to Glodstone. As the man stood staring contemplatively over the valley
puffing his cigar Peregrine struck. To be precise he sprang and locked one arm round his victim's
throat while with the other he twisted his arm behind his back. For a second the cigar glowed and
then grew dim.

'One word out of you and you'll die,' whispered Peregrine gratuitously. With rather more smoke
in his lungs than he was in the habit of inhaling and with what felt like a hangman's noose in
human form round his neck, the advocate of Machtpolitik was for once speechless. For a moment he
writhed but Peregrine's grip tightened.

'What have you done with him?' he demanded when the struggling stopped. The American's only
answer was a spasm of coughing. 'You can cut that out too,' continued Peregrine and promptly made
the injunction entirely unnecessary. 'You're going to tell me where you've put him.'

'Put who, for Chrissake?' gasped the professor when he was allowed to breathe again.

'You know.'

'I swear '

'I shouldn't if I were you.'

'But who are you talking about?'

'Glodstone,' whispered Peregrine. 'Mr Glodstone.'

'Mr Gladstone?' gurgled the professor whose ears were now buzzing from lack of oxygen. 'You
want me to tell you where Mr Gladstone is?'

Peregrine nodded.

'But he's been dead since '

He got no further. The confirmation that Glodstone had been murdered was all Peregrine needed.
With his arm clamped across Professor Botwyk's windpipe he shoved him against the balustrade. For
a moment the professor fought to break loose but it was no use. As he lost consciousness he was
vaguely aware that he was falling. It was preferable to being strangled.

Peregrine watched him drop without interest. Glodstone was dead. One of the swine had paid for
it but there was still the Countess to consider. With his mind filled with terrible clichés,
Peregrine turned back towards the Château.

For the next hour the occupants of the Château Carmagnac were subjected to some of the horrors
of Peregrine's literary education. The fact that they were a strange mixture, of British
holidaymakers who had answered advertisements in the Lady offering a quiet holiday au Château and
a small group of self-styled International Thinkers sponsored by intensely nationalistic
governments to attend a symposium on 'Detente or Destruction', added to the consequent
misunderstanding. The Countess's absence didn't help either.

'Haven't the foggiest, old chap,' said Mr Hodgson, a scrap-iron merchant from Huddersfield
whom Peregrine had caught in the corridor trying to find the lightswitch. 'You wouldn't happen to
know where the loo is, would you?'

Peregrine jabbed him in the paunch with his revolver. 'I'm not asking again. Where's the
Countess?'

'Look, old chap. If I knew I'd tell you. As I don't, I can't. All I'm interested in now is
having a slash.'

Peregrine gave him one and stepping over his body went in search of someone more informative.
He found Dimitri Abnekov.

'No capitalist. No roubles. No nothing,' he said taking hurriedly to broken English instead of
his normally fluent American in the hope that this would identify him more readily on the side of
whatever oppressed masses Peregrine's anti-social action might be said to express. In his pyjamas
he felt particularly vulnerable.

'I want the Countess,' said Peregrine.

'Countess? Countess? I know nothing. Countess aristocratic scum. Should be abolished like in
my country. Yes?'

'No,' said Peregrine. 'You're going to tell me where...'

Dr Abnekov wasn't. He broke into a spate of Russian and was rewarded by one of Major
Fetherington's Specials which left him unable to say anything. Peregrine switched out the light
and hurried from the room. Outside he encountered Signor Badiglioni, a Catholic Euro-Communist,
who knew enough about terrorism to have the good sense to hurl himself through the nearest door
and lock it behind him. That it happened to be the door to the room of Dr Hildegard Keister, a
Danish expert on surgical therapy for sexual offenders, and that she was cutting her toenails
with a pair of scissors and exposing a good deal of thigh in the process, rendered Signor
Badiglioni totally incoherent.

'You want me? Yes?' asked the doctor in Danish, advancing on him with a Scandinavian
broadmindedness Signor Badiglioni entirely misinterpreted. Babbling frantic apologies, he tried
to unlock the door but the good doctor was already upon him.