Caravan to Vaccares (25 page)

His horse, Bowman realized, had run its heart out and was near the end. Sweat-stained, foamflecked and breathing heavily, it was as exhausted as Bowman himself. Two hundred yards ahead lay that invitingly green stretch of turf and the incongruous thought occurred to Bowman of how pleasant it would be to lie there, shaded, on a peaceful summer's day. He wondered why he didn't give up, the end of his pursuit was as certain as death itself: he would have given up, only he did not know how to set about it.

He looked back again. The five horsemen behind had now adopted a deep crescent shape, the outriders not much more than ten yards behind him. He looked ahead again, saw the greensward not more than twenty yards away, then the thought occurred that Czerda was now within accurate shooting range and Bowman was certain that when the five men returned to the caravans he would not be returning with them. Again he looked backwards and was astonished to see all five men reining in their horses and reining them in strongly at that. He knew something was wrong, terribly wrong, but before he could even start to think about it his own horse stopped abruptly and in an unbelievably short distance, forelegs splayed and sliding on its haunches, at the very edge of the patch of greensward. The horse stopped but Bowman did not. Still looking over his shoulder, he had been taken totally unprepared. He left the saddle, sailed helplessly over the horse's head and landed on the stretch of green grass.

He should have been knocked out, at the worst broken his neck, at the best landed heavily and bruised badly, but none of those things happened because it was at once apparent that the greensward was not what it appeared to be. He did not fall heavily or bounce or roll: instead he landed with a soggy squelching splash on a soft, cushioning and impact-absorbing material. Into this he slowly started to sink.

The five horsemen walked their horses forward, stopped, leaned on their pommels and gazed impassively downwards. Bowman had assumed a vertical position now, although leaning slightly forward. Already, he was hip-deep in the deadly quicksand with the safety of firm land no more than four feet away. Desperately he flailed his arms in an endeavour to reach it but made no progress whatsoever. The watchers remained motionless on their horses: the impassiveness of their faces was frightening in its suggestion of total implacability.

Bowman sank to the waist. He tried a gentle swimming motion for he realized that frantic struggling was only having the opposite effect to what was intended. It slowed up the sinking but did not stop it: the sucking effect of the quicksand was terrifying in its remorselessness.

He looked at the five men. The total impassivity had disappeared. Czerda was smiling the pleased smile he reserved for occasions like this, Searl was slowly, obscenely licking his lips. All eyes were fixed on Bowman's face, but if he had any thoughts of shouting for help or begging for mercy no sign of it showed in his expressionless face. Nor were there any thoughts of it in his mind. Fear he had known on the battlements of Les Baux and in the bullring at Mas de Lavignolle, but here, now, there was no fear. On the other occasions there had been a chance, however slender, of survival, dependent upon his own resourcefulness, his coordination of hand and eye: but here all his hardly won knowledge and experience and skill, his exceptional reflexes and physical attributes were useless: from a quicksand there can be no escape. It was the end, it was inevitable and he accepted it.

El Brocador looked at Bowman. The quicksand was now almost up to his armpits, only shoulders, arms and head were now in view. El Brocador studied the impassive face, nodded to himself, turned and looked at Czerda and Searl in turn, distaste and contempt in his face. He unhooked a rope from his pommel.

‘One does not do this to a man like this,' he said. ‘I am ashamed for us all.' With a skilful flick of his wrist he sent the rope snaking out: it landed precisely midway between Bowman's outstretched hands.

Even the most ardent publicist of the attractions of Saintes-Maries – if any such exists – would find it difficult to rhapsodize over the beauties of the main street of the town which runs from east to west along a sea-front totally invisible behind a high rock wall. It is, like the rest of the town, singularly devoid of scenic, artistic or architectural merit, although on that particular afternoon its drabness was perhaps slightly relieved by the crowds of outlandishly dressed tourists, gypsies,
gardiens
and the inevitable fairground booths, shooting galleries, fortune tellers' stands and souvenir shops that had been haphazardly set up for their benefit and edification.

It was not, one would have thought, a spectacle that would have brought a great deal of gratification to Le Grand Duc's aristocratic soul, yet, as he sat in the sidewalk café outside the Miramar Hotel, surveying the scene before him, the expression on his face was mellow to the point of benevolence. Even more oddly in the light of his notoriously undemocratic principles, Carita, his chauffeuse, was seated beside him. Le Grand Duc picked up a litre carafe of red wine, poured a large amount in a large glass he had before him, a thimbleful into a small glass she had before her and smiled benevolently again, not at the passing scene but at a telegram form that he held in his hand. It was clear Le Grand Duc's exceptional good humour was not because of Saintes-Maries and its inhabitants, but in spite of them. The source of his satisfaction lay in the paper he held in his hand.

‘Excellent, my dear Carita, excellent. Exactly what we wished to know. By Jove, they have moved fast.' He contemplated the paper again and sighed. ‘It's gratifying, most gratifying, when one's guesses turn out to be one hundred per cent accurate.'

‘Yours always are, Monsieur le Due'

‘Eh? What was that? Yes, yes, of course. Help yourself to some more wine.' Le Grand Duc had temporarily lost interest in both the telegram and Carita, and was gazing thoughtfully at a large black Mercedes that had just pulled up a few feet away. The Chinese couple whom Le Grand Duc had last seen on the hotel patio in Aries emerged and made for the hotel entrance. They passed by within a few feet of Le Grand Duc's table. The man nodded, his wife smiled faintly and Le Grand Duc, not to be outdone, bowed gravely. He watched them as they went inside, then turned to Carita.

‘Czerda should be here soon with Bowman. I have decided that this is an inadvisable place for a rendezvous. Too public, too public by far. There's a big lay-by about one mile north of the town. Have Czerda stop there and wait for me while you come back here for me.'

She smiled and rose to leave but Le Grand Duc raised a hand.

‘One last thing before you go. I have a very urgent phone call to make and I wish it made in complete privacy. Tell the manager I wish to see him. At once.'

Le Hobenaut, Tangevec and Daymel were still in their bunks, still manacled to the caravan wall. Bowman, his pierrot suit now removed and his
gardien
clothes saturated and still dripping, lay on the floor with his hands bound behind his back. Cecile and Lila were seated on a bench under the watchful eyes of Ferenc and Masaine. Czerda, El Brocador and Searl were seated at a table: they weren't talking and they looked very unhappy. Their expression of unhappiness deepened as they listened to the measured tread of footsteps mounting the steps of the caravan. Le Grand Duc made his customary impressive entry. He surveyed the three seated men coldly.

‘We have to move quickly.' His voice was brusque, authoritative and as cold as his face. ‘I have received cabled information that the police are becoming suspicious and may well by this time be certain of us – thanks to you, Czerda, and that bungling fool Searl there. Are you mad, Czerda?'

‘I do not understand, sir.'

‘That's precisely it. You understand nothing. You were going to kill Bowman before he'd told us how he broke our ring, who his contacts are, where my eighty thousand francs are. Worst of all, you cretins, you were going to kill him publicly. Can't you see the enormous publicity that would have received? Secrecy, stealth, those are my watch-words.'

‘We know where the eighty thousand francs are, sir.' Czerda tried to salvage something from the wreck.

‘Do we?
Do
we? I suspect you have been fooled again, Czerda. But that can wait. Do you know what will happen to you if the French police get you?' Silence. ‘Do you know the rigorous penalties French courts impose on kidnappers?' Still silence. ‘Not one of you here can hope to escape with less than ten years in prison. And if they can trace Alexandre's murder to you. . .'

Le Grand Duc looked at El Brocador and the four gypsies in turn. From the expression on their faces it was quite clear that they knew what would happen if the murder could be traced to them.

‘Very well, then. From this moment on your futures and your lives depend entirely on doing exactly what I order – it is not beyond my powers to rescue you from the consequences of your own folly. Exactly. Is that understood?'

All five men nodded. No one said anything.

‘Very well. Unchain those men. Untie Bowman. If the police find them like that – well, it's all over. We use guns and knives to guard them from now on. Bring all their womenfolk in here – I want all our eggs in one basket. Go over our proposed plans, Searl. Go over them briefly and clearly so that even the most incompetent nincompoop, and that includes you, can understand what we have in mind. Bring me some beer, someone.'

Searl cleared his throat self-consciously and looked distinctly unhappy. The arrogance, the quietly cold competence with which he'd confronted Czerda in the confessional booth that morning had vanished as if it had never existed.

‘Rendezvous any time between last night and Monday night. Fast motor-boat waiting – '

Le Grand Duc sighed in despair and held up a hand.

‘Briefly and
clearly,
Searl. Clearly. Rendezvous where, you fool? With whom?'

‘Sorry, sir.' The Adam's apple in the thin scraggy neck bobbed up and down as Searl swallowed nervously. ‘Off Palavas in the Gulf of Aigues-Mortes. Freighter
Canton.'

‘Bound for?'

‘Canton.'

‘Precisely.'

‘Recognition signals – '

‘Never mind that. The motor-boat?'

‘At Aigues-Mortes on the Canal du Rhone a Sete. I was going to have it moved down to Le Grau du Roi tomorrow – I didn't think – I – '

‘You never have done,' Le Grand Duc said wearily. ‘Why aren't those damned women here? And those manacles still fixed? Hurry.' For the first time he relaxed and smiled slightly. ‘I'll wager our friend Bowman still doesn't know who our three other friends are. Eh, Searl?'

‘I can tell him?' Searl asked eagerly. The propspect of climbing out of the hot seat and transferring the spotlight elsewhere was clearly an attractive one.

‘Suit yourself.' Le Grand Duc drank deeply of his beer. ‘Can it matter now?'

‘Of course not.' Searl smiled widely. ‘Let me introduce Count le Hobenaut, Henri Tangevec and Serge Daymel. The three leading rocket fuel experts on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Chinese wanted them badly, they have been so far unable to develop a vehicle to carry their nuclear warheads. Those men could do it. But there wasn't a single land border between China and Russia that could be used, not a single neutral country that was friendly to both the great powers and wouldn't have looked too closely at irregular happenings. So Czerda brought them out. To the West. No one would ever dream that such men would defect to the West – the West has its own fuel experts. And, at the frontiers, no one ever asks questions of gypsies. Of course, if the three men had clever ideas, their wives would have been killed. If the women got clever ideas, the men would have been killed.'

‘Or so the women were told,' Le Grand Duc said contemptuously. ‘The last thing that we wanted was that any harm should come to those men. But women – they'll believe anything.' He permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction. ‘The simplicity – if I may say so myself, the staggering simplicity of true genius. Ah, the women. Aigues-Mortes, and with speed. Tell your other caravans, Czerda, that you will rendezvous with them in the morning in Saintes-Maries. Come, Lila, my dear.'

‘With you?' She stared at him in revulsion. ‘You must be mad. Go with
you?'

‘Appearances must be maintained, now more than ever. What suspicion is going to attach to a man with so beautiful a young lady by his side? Besides, it's very hot and I require someone to hold my parasol.'