1966 - You Have Yourself a Deal (15 page)

Too early yet to get up. He closed his eyes and let his mind recall the exciting moments of the night. You never knew with women, he thought. Who would have imagined there was so much passion locked up in that immature little body?

An hour later, still dozing, Girland heard a tap on the door and he called to come in.

Diallo entered with coffee and orange juice on a tray.

“What time would you like breakfast, sir?” he asked as he set down the tray.

Girland looked guiltily around the room to make sure Ginny had left no trace of her visit. He could see none.

“Another hour, I think,” he said, stretching. “What have we got?”

“Eggs, sir, anyway you like them. The ham looks very good. If you fancy a blue trout, I can recommend it.”

Girland sighed with ecstasy.

“I’ll take the trout. Does Mr. Dorey always live in this style?”

“What style, sir?” Diallo looked genuinely puzzled.

“That means he does,” Girland said and shook his head in wonderment. “All right, Diallo. I’ll be down in an hour.”

An hour and thirty minutes later, breakfast finished, Girland was about to settle on the terrace with the
New York Herald
Tribune
when Sergeant O’Leary came briskly up the steps. He had under his arm a fair sized parcel which was heavily sealed.

“This came for you,” he said, putting the parcel on the table. “Will you sign for it?” As Girland signed the receipt, O’Leary went on, “Six more men have arrived. There’s a man and a dog on the upper Corniche.”

“Fine,” Girland said. “Have some coffee?”

“I’m on duty,” O’Leary said curtly and left the terrace.

Girland grimaced. He realised he had annoyed O’Leary by insisting on having a man on the Corniche. He shrugged. Well, that was too bad. He couldn’t afford to take chances, and besides, it had been an order from Dorey.

He got to his feet and opened the parcel which contained a bulky file on Feng Hoh Kung. He carried it into the living room and locked it away in a drawer of the big desk standing in the alcove. Then he went up the stairs and knocked on Erica’s bedroom door.

Ginny came to the door. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform and she looked impersonally at him. She didn’t even smile when he gave her a broad wink.

“How’s the patient?” he asked, seeing she was determined to be impersonal.

“She’s up and well,” Ginny said. “She is asking to go out on the terrace. Please come in.”

Girland moved past her into the big, pleasant room. Erica was sitting in a lounging chair by the open window that had a direct view of the sea. She was wearing a blue wrap which Girland guessed Ginny had bought for her, and as he came over to her, she turned her head and looked at him. She smiled and held out her hand.

“Hello, Mark,” she said.

He kissed her fingers, aware that Ginny had left the room.

Then he sat down in a chair nearby.

“How are you feeling this morning, Erica?”

“Wonderful. I want a swim. Will you take me?”

“Hey! Hey!” he said in mock alarm. “Not yet! Although I can’t wait for you to get back to normal, you mustn’t rush things. You must keep out of the sun.”

She gazed at him and Girland thought how beautiful she looked.

“But I love the sun. It will do me good.”

“You want to get your memory back, don’t you? The doctor says on no account should you be in too strong a light. I know it is going to be a bore for you, but you must not even go out of doors for a few days. If you do, your memory will suffer.” He wondered if she would accept this lie.

“I see.” She grimaced. “Oh, well, I suppose . . .” She again looked at him. “This is the strangest thing. I can’t believe you are my husband. You really are my husband?”

“I can show you our marriage certificate if you want to be convinced,” Girland said lightly and laughed. “Yes, darling, I really am your husband.”

“And yet I remember nothing about you.” She put her fingers lightly on the back of his hand. “You seem very nice . . . just the kind of husband I would choose. How long have we been married?”

“Three years,” Girland said glibly.

“Have we any children?”

“No.”

“Why is that, Mark?”

He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly uneasy.

“We’ve been moving around . . . we haven’t had much chance to settle down.”

“What is your business?”

“I work for I.B.M. . . . the computer people. Right now I am doing a deal here and I hired this villa while I’m fixing things.”

“Where is here?” She seemed to be listening in an abstract kind of way, but Girland had a feeling she was growing tense.

“Eze . . . near Nice in France,” he told her.

“Are you a very important person, Mark?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I’m pretty successful. No more than that.”

“Then why are there soldiers patrolling the garden with guns?”

Girland’s brain worked quickly.

“I have a deal set up with the French Government,” he said smoothly. “The Minister of Finance is coming here in a day or so. Someone threw a bomb at him last month. He is a little nervous. We called out the Army to give him confidence. It’s all rather silly, but the deal is important. You don’t have to worry about them.”

He was watching her carefully. She seemed to relax a little.

“I see.” She turned to look at him. The dark, violet-blue eyes searched his face. “I am glad you are my husband, Mark. You don’t know what it means to lose the past the way I have lost it and then to find myself in this lovely room with someone like you.”

Girland shifted.

“I understand. You’ll recover your memory soon. You see . . .”

“Did we ever quarrel?”

“Why, no. What should we quarrel about?”

“Married people do, don’t they?”

He decided to shift the conversation, which was becoming embarrassing to him, to safe ground.

“Don’t you remember one little thing of your past, Erica?” he asked. “Don’t you even remember the trip we did a couple of months ago to Pekin?”

She stiffened and her hands turned into fists.

“Pekin?”

“Yes.”

She sat for a long moment, staring out of the window.

“I didn’t like Pekin,” she said in a cold, flat voice.

“Why do you say that?”

She made a movement of distaste.

“I don’t know. It’s something I feel What happened to me in Pekin?”

“Why, nothing. I was there on business,” Girland lied. “You did a lot of sightseeing while I was busy. Don’t you remember?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It is something unpleasant to me.”

“But I thought you enjoyed it. Don’t you remember those grapes?” Girland leaned forward. “The black ones . . .”

She turned swiftly, her eyes suddenly bright and animated.

“There was one . . . a beautiful thing. There was a golden dragon . . . there was . . .” Then her eyes went dull again and putting her hands to her head, she exclaimed, “Oh, why can’t I remember! The grape is so important!”

“Why is it important?”

“I don’t know, but I feel it is important. I had it with me . . . I . . .” She broke off, looking distressed.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Girland said soothingly. “Give it time.” He got to his feet. “I’ll see you again in a little while. I have a lot of work to do right now. Just relax and don’t worry. Do you want something to read?”

“No. I want to think. I feel the more I think, the quicker I will remember.”

“All right, but don’t overtax yourself. I’ll tell Nurse Roche to come up. She’ll keep you company.”

“Not now . . . later, perhaps.” She smiled at him and held out her hand. When he took it, she pulled him closer and offered him her lips. They kissed, then she leaned back. “All right, Mark, go and do your work. Come and see me again soon.”

A trifle shaken, Girland left the room and walked down the stairs to the living room. Ginny was glancing through the newspaper. She looked up at him inquiringly.

“Ginny, dear, there is one thing bothering me and we’ll have to attend to it,” Girland said. “Erica must have some clothes. Will you go to Nice right away and buy her whatever she should have? Better take Diallo with you. He has the money. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” Ginny said.

When she had gone up to change, Girland went over to the desk, took out Kung’s file and carrying it out onto the terrace, settled down to examine it.

* * *

Around midday, the traffic up to the Grande Corniche began to thicken. A stream of rubberneck buses, packed with tourists, came crawling up the steep hill and along the curving road, stopping every now and then to allow photographic enthusiasts to snap their cameras out of the open windows.

Pfc Dave Fairfax sat in his Jeep which was parked in a lay-by and watched the traffic with a jaundiced eye. His receiving set played soft, swing music. The Alsatian police dog slept at the back of the Jeep.

Fairfax was not only bored, but irritated. Hadn’t his Sergeant told him that sitting up on this goddam road was so much waste of time? How much more pleasant it would have been to be in the garden of the Villa where the other boys were. Some of them had organised a crap game, and Fairfax fancied himself as an expert. If he had been down there instead of up on this sun blistered road, he could have cleaned up, and he needed the money. There was that French chick he had run into on Villefranche harbour the other night. She was aching for it, but he knew instinctively what she would cost. The trouble was he had competition with the goddam Navy. Those guys certainly had it good. Once they got off that lump of iron anchored in the harbour, the chicks were all over them.

Three rubberneck buses moved slowly past him. An owl-faced man with thick horn-rimmed spectacles leaned out of the window and took a photograph of the Jeep. Fairfax made a face at him.

He lifted one finger and stabbed the air with it. The owl-faced man grinned, and the bus moved on.

Fairfax shifted in his seat. It was hot. He thought longingly of the shady garden. It did him some good to watch the number of cars crawling behind the buses. The expressions of exasperation on the drivers’ faces as they realised it wasn’t possible to get by the line of buses amused Fairfax. At least he wasn’t the only one to be suffering.

Convinced he was wasting his time, assured by O’Leary that there was no way for anyone to get down to the Villa from the Corniche, Fairfax was far from being alert. Every now and then, he dozed. After all, he argued, if the dog could sleep, why shouldn’t he?

He failed to notice, among the crawling traffic, a black 404.

Had he been alert, he might have become curious at the sight of a pretty Vietnamese girl at the wheel. By her side was a slimly built man who looked half-Chinese. In the rear of the car was a young beatnik who lolled against the back of the seat, his small black eyes restless and glittering.

“On your left,” Pearl said softly.

Sadu had already seen the Jeep. He stiffened and put his hand up to his face. Jo-Jo also looked at the Jeep. He saw an American soldier, his feet up on the dashboard, his jaw moving rhythmically as he chewed gum, his eyes half-closed.

“Do you think they have found the path?” Sadu asked as Pearl brought the car to a stop in the traffic block.

“They may have. You’ll have to go with him, Sadu,” Pearl returned.

Sadu grimaced.

“You have my gun,” Jo-Jo said. “I’ll bring the rifle.” Leaning forward, he dropped the silenced .38 into Sadu’s lap.

Sadu hurriedly shoved the gun down the waistband of his trousers. He hated all this, but it was something he couldn’t shirk.

“I’ll stop at the next bend,” Pearl said. “You will have to walk back. Don’t forget the camera.”

The traffic moved a little fester. Around the bend and out of sight of the soldier, Pearl began to slow down.

“Be quick,” she said. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Sweating in the heat, Sadu grabbed the 16 mm movie camera he had brought with him, then slid back the catch on the door.

Pearl put out her hand and signalled that she was stopping, then braked to a standstill. The long line of traffic behind her came to a slow, cursing halt.

Sadu and Jo-Jo slid out of the car and reached the narrow sidewalk as the driver behind the 404 blasted his horn. Pearl sent the car forward again.

The gun pressed painfully against his stomach as Sadu began to walk back. Jo-Jo, carrying the violin case and a rucksack containing food and wine, walked with him.

The path, overgrown and hidden from the road, was some hundred metres from the parked Jeep.

Sadu and Jo-Jo walked slowly towards the gap in the wall which led down to the path. They both felt like flies on a wall.

There were no other pedestrians, and they were also aware that people in the crawling cars were looking at them. Sadu felt certain the violin case was attracting attention.

Jo-Jo said under his breath, “He’s spotted us. Take some pictures.”

Fairfax had just deposited his wad of gum on the undershelf of the Jeep’s dashboard. He saw the two men, and for a brief moment, his mind became alert, then when one of them lifted a movie camera and began to take distant shots of the village below, he sneered to himself and began to peel the wrapping off another piece of gum.

Tourist! he thought. All the goddam equipment money can buy and I bet he takes lousy pictures!

A rubberneck bus was approaching.

“We go down the path when the bus is between him and us,” Sadu said.

They waited. Sadu still pretended to take photographs.

Jo-Jo said, “Now . . .”

Under the eyes of thirty tourists, but out of view of the Jeep, they quickly slid down the steep slope, through the undergrowth, moving dangerously quickly until they reached the path itself.

Sadu pulled the gun from his waistband and began to move forward. Jo-Jo waited for a few seconds before he followed him.

When they were in sight of the Villa’s roof and when Sadu had satisfied himself there was no guard to worry them, he stopped.

“It’s all right,” he said. “They haven’t found it. I’ll get back. You must find your own way back to the hotel. Stay here until the job’s done.”