1966 - You Have Yourself a Deal (6 page)

“No, sir.”

“They say she has Chinese marks tattooed on her arse. Is that right?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“How’s the General?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“Soldier, let me tell you something: you’re lucky to be a Pfc.”

Smernoff was beginning to enjoy himself. “You don’t have to worry about goddam Generals. What room did you say the old bull was in?”

Jackson flinched. He considered General Robert Wainright was a fine soldier. This disrespect shocked him.

“Room 147, sir.”

“Okay, carry on, soldier,” and Smernoff began to walk, heavy-footed, erect and very much the Colonel down the corridor. Then he stopped short, turned and cursed.

“You . . . soldier!”

Jackson stiffened to attention.

“Sir!”

“Go down to my Jeep. I have left my goddam briefcase!”

Automatically, Jackson turned and started for the elevator, then stopped.

“Excuse me, sir. I am on guard.” The agony in his voice nearly made Smernoff laugh.

“You’re relieved! I’m here, aren’t I? Get my briefcase!”

“Yes, sir.”

Jackson pressed the call button and when the elevator doors swished open, he entered the cage and descended to the lobby.

Parked in the drive, was a military Jeep. Jackson ran over to it.

Two Pfcs were standing, talking together. They turned as Jackson came up.

“The Colonel’s briefcase,” Jackson snapped.

“Oh, yeah,” one of the soldiers said. Then things happened so fast Jackson later had only a vague idea just what did happen.

The nearest soldier hit him on the side of his jaw, his fist incased in a brass knuckle-duster. His companion snatched the automatic rifle out of Jackson’s hand as he fell. The other soldier dragged the unconscious man into the Jeep, handed his companion a bulky briefcase, threw a tarpaulin over Jackson and drove rapidly away.

Kordak, the remaining soldier, ran back to the hospital. At the entrance, he slowed, nodded to the reception clerk who stared with boredom at him, then entered the elevator and was whisked to the fourth floor.

Smernoff was pacing up and down.

“Well?”

Kordak, a slim, dark, weasel-faced man who had worked with Smernoff for some time, nodded and grinned.

“No trouble at all.”

He gave Smernoff the briefcase, then shouldering the automatic rifle, he began to patrol the corridor.

Smernoff went into a nearby lavatory. He took from the briefcase a doctor’s white coat which he put on over his uniform. He hid his peaked cap in a laundry basket. Then he took from the briefcase a stethoscope which he hung around his neck and a small flat box which contained a hypodermic and a phial of colourless fluid. His movements were swift, and in a few seconds the American Colonel had changed into a businesslike looking Ward Doctor.

He walked out into the corridor.

Kordak was coming towards him.

“Get a wheel stretcher!” Smernoff snapped. “There must be one on this landing,” and he walked quickly down the corridor until he came to a door numbered 140.

He opened the door and walked into a dimly lit room where a woman lay in a hospital bed. Her honey-coloured hair made a frame to her white, beautiful face. Large dark-blue eyes looked sleepily at him as he came up to the bed.

“Good evening,” Smernoff said. “It is only your injection. You must get plenty of sleep.”

The woman said nothing. Her eyes watched Smernoff’s swift expert movements. He had practised again and again with the hypodermic and he handled it with confidence.

As he took her cool wrist between his hot, sweating fingers, the woman shivered.

“It is all right,” he said soothingly and stabbed the needle into the suntanned flesh.

* * *

Like a black fly, Jo-Jo gripped the drainpipe between his knees and inched himself upwards. His claw—like, dirty fingers reached for the ledge above him, gripped and he pulled himself up, shifting his weight from his right foot to his left knee, gripping the pipe higher up and then pulling himself onto the ledge. He paused to take breath. He had now reached the third floor. Below, he could just make out Sadu walking uneasily up and down by his car. He pressed himself against the rain-soaked wall. Immediately below him, a black and white Citroen ambulance had swung into the drive and pulled up. A giant of a man with silver-coloured hair and wearing a white overall slid out of the driving seat.

Jo-Jo wasn’t interested. He looked up at the next ledge ten feet above his head. Then he began to climb again. He had one bad moment. The pipe was wet and slippery. His fingers and knees gripping the pipe suddenly failed to hold his weight. For a brief, heart-stopping moment, he hovered between life and death. He slid three feet and his body swayed outwards, then he recovered his balance and grinned viciously. Jo-Jo wasn’t intimidated by death. That was a hazard he was ready to accept in return for money.

Far below, Sadu watched his progress, saw him nearly fell and drew in a quick hissing breath. He watched the dark figure hoist itself to the fourth floor ledge, pause and then start for the fifth floor.

Rain fell on Sadu’s heated face. He was aware of the thumping of his heart. Another group of nurses, busily chattering and laughing, came out of the hospital gates and moved past him. Sadu, afraid of being noticed, got back into his car and lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. He was glad to have an excuse not to watch Jo-Jo’s climb as Jo-Jo began to edge along the ledge, peering into the lighted windows while he searched for Erica Olsen.

Jo-Jo wasn’t to know that the nurse he had murdered had lied to him and there were no women patients on the fifth floor and no room numbered 112.

He was still creeping along the ledge, cursing to himself when a sleek, black Mercedes pulled up by the hospital’s entrance.

* * *

Girland got out and slammed the door shut. Out of the corner of his eye he saw in the shadows a waiting Citroen ambulance. It meant nothing to him. Hospitals and ambulances went together.

He ran up the steps and entered the lobby.

“Monsieur?” the reception clerk asked, regarding Girland unfavourably. Visitors at this hour were never welcomed.

“Dr. Forrester, please,” Girland said briskly.

“Dr. Forrester is not here. He’s gone home.”

“I’ve come to take my wife home,” Girland said. “Room 140. You know about her?”

The reception clerk, a balding little man with liver smudges under his eyes, brightened slightly. Who in the hospital hadn’t heard about the woman with the tattoo marks?

“The woman who has lost her memory?”

“That’s right,” Girland said. “Let’s have some action. I’m taking her home. Who is in charge of her case?”

The clerk opened a file index, regarded it, then said, “I have a note here . . . are you Monsieur Girland?”

“That’s correct.”

“Oh, y e s . . . Nurse Roche.” He picked up a telephone receiver and spoke into it. “She’ll be right down.”

Girland resisted the temptation to light a cigarette. He was suddenly aware that he was hungry. All this had been pretty rushed. After leaving Dorey, he had gone to the car pool and listened to the instructions about the car’s various gadgets, then had driven to his apartment and collected his shaving kit and a few other things he thought he would need, then had driven to the hospital. There had been no time for a meal. Now he was faced with a 900-kilometre drive with a woman who had lost her memory and could be tricky. It was going to be quite a night, he thought, shaking his head.

A young nurse came from the elevator. She was under twenty years of age. Her bright little face and her pert eyes interested Girland.

“You have come for your wife, Mr. Girland?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Dr. Forrester said you were coming. Have you a car?”

“Yes. How is she? Fit to travel?”

“Oh, yes. Dr. Forrester is quite satisfied. Yes, she will be fit to travel.”

“Okay, then let’s go.”

As they walked together to the elevator the nurse whose name was Ginny Roche, said, “We are all terribly curious, Mr. Girland. Was it your idea that your wife should be tattooed?”

Girland regarded her, his face serious.

“Oh, no. It’s an old family custom. You should see her mother.”

The girl’s eyes widened.

“How awful.”

“My wife is pretty proud of her tattoo,” Girland said as they got into the elevator. “I have to watch her. She’s always trying to show it to people . . . gets a little embarrassing.”

Ginny looked at him and then laughed.

“Oh, I see . . . you’re kidding.”

Girland smiled at her.

“That’s it.”

“I expect you are glad you have found her. It must be dreadful to lose one’s memory.”

“It would suit me,” Girland said. “I have so much on my conscience.”

The elevator doors swished open and Ginny led Girland across the corridor to Room 140.

She opened the door and Girland, suddenly aware of unexpected tension, walked into the room. He came to an abrupt standstill when he saw a short, thickset man, wearing a white coat bending over the woman in the bed.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Girland said.

The man turned slowly and stared at Girland. His small black eyes shifted from Girland to Ginny who was looking at him, a dismayed expression on her face.

Smernoff quickly recovered his nerve.

“What is it, nurse? Who is this gentleman?”

“I’m sorry, doctor.” Ginny was puzzled. She hadn’t been working in the hospital for very long, but she thought she knew all the doctors by sight. She had never seen this man before, but her awe of authority made her cautious.

“She’s my wife,” Girland said, pointing to the woman in the bed. “Dr. Forrester said it was okay for me to take her home.”

Smernoff moved into the shadows. He dropped the empty hypodermic into his pocket. He regarded Girland. He immediately decided this tall, wiry man must be one of Dorey’s agents. This could mean trouble, and there was something about this man that stirred his memory. He felt certain he had seen him before.

“Well, that is all right,” he said. “She has had an injection and she won’t wake now until tomorrow morning. Come back then, and she will be quite fit to travel.”

When you enter a hospital, a doctor becomes some kind of god. The white coat, the stethoscope and the know-all manner makes an impression on most people, and Girland was no exception.

“Excuse me, doctor, but I was told I could move her tonight.”

“Well, you can’t,” Smernoff snapped. “Didn’t you hear what I said? She has had an injection. She will be ready to leave tomorrow, but not before.”

Girland lifted his shoulders in resignation and began to move to the door when he suddenly noticed this man was wearing khaki trousers below his white coat and his highly polished shoes were of a military cut. His eyes shifted to the hard, flat face. He had a sudden memory of a man with a rifle, shooting at him in a wasteless desert in Senegal.

“Okay, doctor, then I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” he said mildly, but his brain was working swiftly. He must be mistaken, he was telling himself. The Russian who had tried to kill him in Senegal was dead. He was sure of that.

He opened the door and was confronted by Kordak, pushing a wheel-stretcher before him. Kordak’s automatic rifle lay on the stretcher. With a lightning movement, Kordak snatched up the rifle and levelled it at Girland.

“Don’t move!”

Ginny caught her breath in a gasp. Cursing, Smernoff reached her and clapped his hand over her mouth.

“Scream and I’ll break your neck!” he snarled.

Girland moved cautiously back, his hands held shoulder high as Kordak came into the room.

There was a brief dramatic pause, then Smernoff released Ginny.

“Make a sound and you’ll be sorry,” he said, stripping off his white coat. He jerked out his Service revolver from its polished holster. “Get this woman onto the stretcher! You and you!” His gun swung from Girland to Ginny. “Hurry!”

Girland pulled the stretcher into the room and pushed it close to the bed. As he did so, he removed the radio pill from under his thumbnail.

Ginny white faced, but quite steady, walked around the bed and stripped off the blanket and sheet. The sleeping woman was wearing a hospital nightgown. Girland was too occupied with the situation to admire her beauty. He took her under the armpits, began to lift her, purposely stumbled and half fell on her. In that brief moment as he recovered his balance, he forced the radio pill into the woman’s mouth. As he straightened he hoped she would swallow it.

“Watch what you are doing!” Smernoff snarled. “Hurry!”

With Ginny helping, Girland slid the woman’s sleeping body onto the stretcher. As they did so, their eyes met. Girland gave her a reassuring wink, but it didn’t seem to reassure her.

At this moment, Jo-Jo who had found an unlatched window and had explored all the rooms on the fifth landing, now discovered the nurse he had murdered had lied to him. Cursing, gun in hand, he ran down the stairs to the fourth floor.

Chapter Three

W
hen Girland had left Dorey’s office, Dorey flicked down a switch on his intercom and said, “I’m ready now for Kerman.”

As he released the switch he leaned back in his chair and picked up another of the excellent sandwiches by his side. He ate it slowly, thinking this kind of situation was what he would like to be happening twenty-four hours of the day. The dull routine, the endless files, the official letters bored him, but when he had a free hand, money to spend, good agents and a problem that required shrewd planning, life really came alive.

A tap sounded on the door.

“Come on in,” he said and wiped his thin lips on his handkerchief.

Jack Kerman came in.

Dorey regarded this slightly built man as his most reliable outside agent. There was nothing spectacular about Kerman. Aged thirty-three, with alert humorous eyes and a crew cut, he made a respectable living running a garage in the Passy district. His partner, a fat cheerful man whose name was Jacques Cordey, had an idea that Kerman was an Agent for the C.I.A., but neither men ever discussed that possibility, and when Kerman went off periodically, Cordey carried on with the work of the garage and asked no questions. It was a convenient arrangement.