A Time to Kill (7 page)

‘If it suits you.’

‘Now why should we fence? Let us be allies as during the war. Yes, in this I am sure I may consider us allies.’

‘Better be careful you aren’t shot when you get home,’ I said.

‘Shot? Why? I should not be shot if I made a mistake. I should be sent to work for my country wherever work was hard and unpleasant. Mr Taine, I have been watching that criminal Losch for some weeks.’

‘Odd we never saw each other,’ I remarked.

I couldn’t get a single shot on the target. He just laughed.

‘But I am telling you the truth!’ he assured me. ‘And because we never did meet, I know that you and the commander have hardly watched at all. Please try to be frank with me as I am with you.’

He offered me another drink which I refused, and then adjusted the lamp. It was vile to remember that there was a Dorset summer day outside.

‘I am so sorry. I am afraid the light has been in your eyes,’ he said. ‘Mr Taine, I give you my word that I and my staff were sent to England to find those ticks and prevent them being used. My inquiries led me to suspect Losch, but I could not be sure – until the commander interrupted us last night. Please do not believe that we Russians have horns and hooves. We are men like you. We do not come out of police romances. We do not spread diseases.’

‘It would be so awkward if you were caught,’ I replied, remembering Roland’s chief objection to believing a word of Pink’s story.

‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘And there is another thing you must understand. The relations between our government and the new People’s Democracies are not at all what you think. We cannot compel obedience. We can only advise and apply a tactful pressure. These Germans and Poles and Czechs – we have no more power over them than your own parliament over the legislatures of crown colonies. Were you ever in civil affairs in Germany?’

‘No, thank God!’

‘It is a pity. You would have realized our difficulties. We cannot make communists of the Germans, Mr Taine. We can only make soldiers. And you will never make of them your so-called democrats. You will only make soldiers. They have no sense of politics, no sense of anything but to impose their hysterical will. This’ – he touched Pink’s vasculum which was strapped to his waist – ‘is their doing, not ours.’

‘What about the Colorado beetle story?’ I retorted. ‘Don’t tell me your propaganda people didn’t think that one up!’

‘I think it probable. What else could they do? Suppose I had not got on to the track of Losch in time, whom would you have blamed when you found out the cause of your dying cattle? For the sake of all who trust us to give them a world of freedom, we had to have a story ready. Colorado beetles!’ – he laughed with a note of pity – ‘an invention good enough for the masses as they are – but not, Mr Taine, for the masses as they will be.’

‘What are you going to do with Losch?’ I asked.

‘I had a short interview with him last night after I left you. He is a party member and will obey. He will go to Russia in my care.’

That seemed to me a grim and entirely fitting journey for Losch. Lord help me, I was inclined to think quite kindly of Ivanovitch! The extreme daring and efficiency with which he and his little band of agents operated in a foreign country compelled admiration.

‘You propose that I should go too?’ I asked.

‘Whenever you wish, Mr Taine, I shall be delighted to see that you are given a visa. But all I want now is your help. And I am sure I will get it. This matter, you see, is now cleared up. When I left Losch, the thorns were burning in his fireplace. This case of yours I have. And in a week or two there will be nothing in Tangier to worry either of us. This absurd, unauthorized weapon in what you call the cold war will be as if it had never existed.’

The commander?’

‘An ex-fascist, a paid jackal, a murderer and now a bandit,’ he answered with a contemptuous hatred that boded ill for Pink. ‘Would anyone in their senses believe him?’

‘But he has been believed,’ I said.

‘No, Mr Taine, he has not; if he had, Losch would be in the hands of the police, or every contact of his watched day and night. No, no, I can avoid all unpleasantness if you are silent. And why should you not be? I am sure you do not wish to make trouble between allies.’

I replied cautiously that no one wished to make unnecessary trouble, and that if his Embassy were to explain the true position as he had explained it to me, any action taken would certainly be discreet and unofficial. We all knew the capacity of Germans for running wild.

‘That is most friendly,’ he said. ‘I knew that I could count on you. But there are difficulties. My little party, with Losch, must leave the country. And then we must have time to handle Holberg ourselves. That means, I fear, that I must
ensure
your silence.’

‘I tell you straight that if I’m not seen again and soon, Pink’s story will be believed,’ I said.

‘Of course. That is obvious,’ Yegor Ivanovitch replied. ‘Besides, I have no right to detain you. It would not be ethical. No, but I am bound to insist that you keep silent for, say, a couple of weeks.’

‘That’s an impossible request. I won’t.’

‘I think you will. Excuse me a moment.’

He went out, holding the door open long enough for me to see that there were a couple of solid-looking toughs outside it, one of whom had been with him in the van. Ivanovitch must have been given his pick from the whole of his service, for every one of his men could pass as British in appearance and language.

That room was like a tomb. I could hear nothing whatever. The four whitewashed walls were round me, blank and unbroken by any object but a loudspeaker high up in a corner. I thought of knocking the lamp over, but there was nothing which would burn except the carpet and myself. I thought of hiding behind the door and laying out Yegor Ivanovitch when he returned. That didn’t lead to anything constructive either. I lit a pipe and sat down, and tried to imagine some way by which my silence could be ensured without killing or keeping me.

Ivanovitch returned after about a quarter of an hour. The two men outside entered the room with him.

‘You must now prepare yourself for a shock,’ he said. ‘But please remember that we Russians have most gentle and kindly hearts, and that you have nothing to be alarmed about. I want you to listen to that loudspeaker.’

He touched a switch beneath it. I couldn’t for a moment make out the sound I heard; then it was clearly a child sobbing. I looked at the three men, puzzled. The child was sobbing in a rhythm very like George’s; but still I could not understand.

Then Jerry’s voice came through, as firmly as if he were in the room. He was playing the bold man for all his seven years were worth, and imitating the very tone in which I would comfort either of them when they were upset for no good reason.

‘Don’t
cry
!’ he said. ‘If Daddy sent the car for us, Daddy must be here.’

I gathered my feet under me and smashed the nearest Russian. It did me a bit of good to see him spitting blood, but the savagery was utterly futile. Yegor Ivanovitch had his pistol trained on me. He did not even look at his hurt man. The discipline in that team was absolute.

‘If you make me kill you, they can never go back to their mother,’ he reminded me. ‘Sit down!’

I sat down.

‘They locked the door,’ George wept.

‘I don’t suppose they did
really
,’ Jerry answered. ‘Use your handkerchief!’

I was so proud of him. I would have sold my soul to the devil.

‘Enough?’ asked Ivanovitch.

‘Enough.’

‘I had better tell you what happened,’ he said, ‘so that you will know the explanations you must give. My assistants took your car and called for the children at the school, saying that you wanted them home for lunch. The mistress knew your car, of course. Why should she question it? A mad risk to take, yes – but I have had so little time for planning. Mr Taine, we are both very lucky. If you had not taken the road to Dorchester this morning, you would have been shot from the roadside between your house and the village. If I had not got your children, you would be shot now. But at last we can breathe. We have time. Time,’ he repeated with a gasp of thankfulness.

‘How much time do you need?’ I asked.

‘I told you. A week or two.’

‘And if I do not say a word …?’

‘If you and your wife do not say a word, if you can pretend that they have gone – oh, to their grandmother, for example – then they will be returned to you at the first possible opportunity. But do not be impatient. It may be difficult.’

‘Why difficult?’ I stormed.

‘Because, Mr Taine, your children and Losch and ourselves will all, I hope, be out of the country tonight. We shall leave by private means, and I shall restore your children by private means. If you inform the police, you might make it quite impossible for me to return them at all. I cannot, you see, simply put them on a Channel boat under the eyes of the world. I must be sure that no one but you is looking out for them or expecting them.’

I begged him to let me speak to the children, but he would not. He apologized for this cruelty – he frankly described it as cruelty – explaining that the children had seen in what direction and where they had been driven.

‘In fairness to them,’ he said, ‘I cannot allow you to have the least idea where you are. If you knew, the temptation to appeal to the police would be irresistible. And now we must hurry, if you are to get back in time to warn your wife. You will persuade her not to be foolish as best you can. Everything else I have arranged for you.’

My mind was in a blank prison of helplessness. How I could get my boys back, how I could face Cecily – those two questions were swirling through my head like a fever dream. I wasn’t thinking at all. I was simply exclaiming to myself.

Yet then, in that room, it wouldn’t have helped me if I could have thought with the clarity of a chess-player. There was nothing I could force Yegor Ivanovitch to do except to kill me. That, it is true, would have badly upset his plans. Cecily, finding herself in the evening without children or husband, would have instantly got in touch with Roland, and the next day the police would be in action all over the country. But would the police succeed in finding this hideout? And, if they did, would they find it in time? Ivanovitch talked of leaving that very night.

‘I shall take you back in the van as you came,’ he said. ‘I need hardly tell you that the registration number which you have seen is false. I shall then leave you with your car, not far from your own home. One of your tyres will be flat, and you will have to change the wheel. That will prevent you following us. And please do not have any fear for your brave boys. We are all fathers. And it is the first duty of a Russian citizen to care for the next generation.’

I submitted to the indignity of being trussed up again. Good Lord, they could have insulted me as they pleased – painted my nose blue or made me sign any confession they wished! I was in such a state that I would have welcomed it. To be humiliated was a sort of expiation for my folly. Never again will I despise those chaps who heap unnecessary dirt upon themselves at state trials.

All went as Ivanovitch had said it would. The drive was longer, and over a rougher road than that by which we had come. At last the van stopped. I was untied and pushed out. Simultaneously the man who had been driving my car to the rendezvous jumped in. The van roared away. My car was standing on the green verge of a country lane, pointing in the opposite direction to that in which the van had disappeared. It had a flat tyre, and the jack was already in position.

It was 3 p.m. I had less than half an hour to get home before Cecily set out to fetch the children from school. My captors had run it fine. If Cecily showed anxiety when she found the children gone, there was little we could do thereafter to hush up their disappearance.

I changed that wheel in record time, and drove straight up the lane to higher ground. In two minutes I was on the top of the downs, and saw below me a long village street which I recognized as Piddletrenthide. In ten more minutes I was at my door.

What happened between Cecily and myself is nobody’s business but ours, and neither of us want to recall it. Had she been, from the start, eager and willing that I should work for Roland, we might perhaps have broken down in tears together over our joint folly. As it was, I was overwhelmed by guilt. There was I, well, alive, unhurt, without the children.

The telephone had been mended. I tore it out of her hands when she insisted on calling the police. I drove it home to her that Yegor Ivanovitch could never take the risk of returning our boys if the police were on the lookout for them; any man seen with them, here or abroad, would be instantly arrested and his contacts and antecedents traced.

I tried to explain to her that, after all, Ivanovitch wouldn’t want to be bothered with them more than necessary; that when he had destroyed all the evidence of those cursed ticks in Tangier, he wouldn’t mind what story I told, and would have no need to hold any hostage for my good behaviour.

I came alive in my eagerness to persuade myself that what I said was true. It is odd that one can show more emotion in convincing oneself than another person. Up to then I had spoken with a dreary, artificial calmness, and called it self-control.

‘Why should he ever return them?’ she cried at me. ‘What about the Greek children?’

‘But what could I do?’ I implored her.

‘You came home without them.’

I moved away to pour myself a drink, to pick up the paper, to do I know not what in order to separate myself from my beloved. Meanwhile she prowled back and forth across the room, dead white, her eyes cold with torture and anger. When I said something – some worthless idiocy to try to restore an unrestorable normality – she shouted at me to leave her alone to think.

‘Losch – was he at this house?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t believe he was.’

‘Why wasn’t he? Oh, pull yourself together and
think
!’

That last word seemed to be forced from her by a superhuman effort of throat and tongue, as if it were a muscular compulsion upon both of us.