Spearfield's Daughter (22 page)

“Cut that out!” said Tom, but Gerd hit him on the side of the head with the barrel of his Schmeisser. Tom, dazed, fell face first into the back of the van. Gerd pushed him right in, jumped in and pulled a black cotton sack over Tom's head. Then he turned and dragged Cleo in after him.

“There's no sack for you,” he barked in English. “Pull your sweater up over your head. Do it!”

Cleo had hesitated, but at the tension in his voice she hastily slipped off her jacket and pulled her sweater up from the bottom, slipping her arms out and rolling it up over her shoulders so that it turned inside out and became an inverted hood. Gerd looked at her breasts in the flimsy lace brassiere, but women had never interested him sexually. Part, if only a small part, of his rejection of his parents' society was their convention of who should love and live with whom. He loved Kurt, but so far had managed to hide it, even
from
Kurt.

Kurt and Rosa took off their hoods, got into the front seat of the van and two minutes later they were back on the main road, heading north again. Then they headed west along a side road and a little later turned off on to a track that led up to a farmhouse hidden amongst some trees on the crest of a slight rise.

The farm belonged to Kurt's parents. They did not work the farm themselves but rented out the fields to a neighbouring farmer; the farmhouse was no more than a summer or weekend retreat from Kurt's father's crowded life as a Hamburg lawyer. His parents at present were in London; they were to be away a week, plenty of time in which to hold General Brisson here and collect the ransom money. But everything had gone wrong and Kurt had driven here almost automatically, as if he could not start thinking again until he was back in familiar surroundings. He had spent his boyhood vacations here when his life had been happy and uncomplicated, and the only anarchy he had subscribed to was that of a child's temper.

He ran the van into the barn beside the house; then Cleo and Tom, still unable to see where they were, were taken into the house, led up some steep stairs and pushed into a room. Then the sack was removed from Tom's head and Cleo was told to pull her sweater down.

Kurt, Gerd and Rosa were still hooded, all dressed alike in dark sweaters and jeans. Cleo had seen countless pictures of terrorists, bank robbers, kidnappers: there was a uniform now for criminals. Even the guns looked familiar: the Schmeisser and the Luger had become standard issue, at least for European terrorists.

“Do not attempt to escape, it will be useless.” Kurt stood under the single light in the bedroom and pointed with his Luger at the boarded-up window. “The shutters are also bolted on the outside. If you give no trouble, you will be all right.”

“Who are you?” said Rosa. They all spoke English, Cleo noted. Continental education was preparing its youth for all contingencies: the Common Market, international terrorism . . . “Are you tourists?”

Tom realized that the girl had recovered, though the men still seemed tense and nervous. She might be the leader of the gang before the day was out, if she was not already.

“No, we're not tourists—” But his tongue had got away from him. It would have been better to have claimed to be no more than tourists.

“
Who are you, then?”

Tom looked at Cleo and shrugged. “My name is Border, I'm with the
New York Courier.
Miss Spearfield is with the London
Daily Examiner
.”

Rosa ignored Tom then, looked at Cleo with interest. “Lord Cruze's newspaper?”

Cleo, still very conscious of the guns trained on them, was having difficulty in holding herself together. She had been afraid but never cowardly in Vietnam; this was different, the threat here was more personal than the random mine in a roadway. The odds were shorter; these guns could not miss if they were fired.

“Yes.” Her voice was as dry as a crow's.

Rosa lifted her hood above her mouth and spat. She was given to theatrical expressions, but this time she just looked comical. Cleo wanted to smile, but her mouth wouldn't work itself into the right shape.

“The capitalist pig, one of the worst!”

Oh Christ, thought Tom, here we go with the jargon. “Miss Spearfield only works for him, she doesn't necessarily believe in everything Lord Cruze does.”

“What about your paper, the—
Courier?
Is it a capitalist rag?”

“No,” said Tom, taking a risk, “it's a liberal, left-wing rag.”

“What are you doing here? Were you going to cover the NATO manoeuvres?”

“Yes. But so is Tass, I'm sure.”

“Tass! You're all the same, none of you ever tells the truth.” Some day there would be a newspaper telling the real truth, an anarchist daily with no editor, every journalist free to write what he believed in. She dreamed of what she would create, but shut the word
leadership
out of her mind. “You both must be important journalists, if your newspapers sent you all this way.”

Discretion overcame vanity: Cleo found her voice: “Not really. We're just staff hacks.”

Rosa looked at her. “Why would they send a woman to cover military manoeuvres? You must be more than just a staff writer.”

“No,” said Cleo; so much for making a name for herself. “That's all I am.”

“You're a liar.” Gerd spoke for the first time since they had entered the house. “What did you say your name was?”

Cleo
all at once felt the burden of her name again; but this time her father was far away, and would mean nothing to these people. “Cleo Spearfield.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Rosa said to Gerd.

“I was in England in April. She has her own column in the
Examiner.
And she is on television, the programme called
Scope
.” They were speaking German to each other now. “We should go downstairs and talk. This one could be worth some money. Not as much as General Brisson, but some.”

Kurt looked at Cleo and Tom, said in English, “Behave yourselves and you will not be harmed. Now, give us everything in your pockets. And your handbag, Miss Spearfield.”

Cleo's handbag and everything from Tom's pockets were put into the hood that had covered Tom's head. Kurt handed it to Rosa, who immediately passed it on to Gerd.

“We shall bring you some food in a little while,” said Kurt, and nodded at Rosa. “She will prepare it.”

“No,” said Rosa. “There will be no women's role. We shall all prepare the meal.”

“Don't let's argue in front of them!” Gerd snapped in German and led Kurt and Rosa out of the room.

The door was shut and locked from the outside. Tom, his legs suddenly going, sat down on the side of the double bed and looked up at Cleo. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head, sat down on the one chair in the room. “No. I feel I want to cry and be sick. They're crazy, all three of them. What were they trying to do?”

“I don't know. Either kill or kidnap Brisson or Thorpe. They mentioned Brisson's name when they were talking in German.”

She said nothing, but looked around the room. It was comfortable and tastefully furnished in heavy provincial furniture, but there were bare spots on the walls where pictures had been removed. There was nothing in the room to identify the owners except the furniture. She determined she would commit it all to memory, down to every detail. Then she looked back at Tom.

“We seem to get together only when we're in trouble.”

VII

Lord
Cruze got the ransom demand twenty-four hours after the story of the ambush had been front page news round the world. Generals Brisson and Thorpe, with generals' luck, had been unhurt; but both aides, a driver and a guard, had been killed. One of the terrorists had also been killed and since been identified as the daughter of a prominent Hamburg family. The kidnapping of Cleo and Tom had been secondary paragraphs in the main story, as if the sub-editors felt that reporters should not be news in themselves. They did not merit a headline till the ransom demand was received.

“Two million Deutsche Marks! £250,000 roughly.”

“That's just for Cleo,” said the finance manager of the
Examiner,
keeping his profit and loss columns separate. “They don't mention the American, Border. I don't think he should be debited against us.”

“They could be throwing him in free. Or perhaps they're going to ask the
Courier
for a separate ransom.” Jack Cruze had never felt less in control of a situation; or of himself. He felt sick and weak, exhausted by worry and a sleepless night. “Has anyone been in touch with Cleo's family in Australia?”

“I called her father as soon as the story came in,” said Massey-Folkes. “He said he'd get on a plane immediately.”

“Do we pay the ransom?” asked Dunlop, the finance manager. “The German police have asked us to hold off for twenty-four hours.”

“Of course we bloody well pay it!” Cruze wanted to tell the German police to mind their own business; Cleo was his responsibility, not theirs. “As soon as we get their instructions . . .”

“I think one of us should go over to Hamburg,” said Massey-Folkes. “I'll go, if you like.”

“All right, go over this afternoon. I'll come across as soon as Cleo's father arrives. I'll bring him with me. You'd better co-ordinate things with the German police. But tell them we'll pay the ransom. I don't care a bugger about whether the kidnappers are caught, all we want is Cleo back safe and unharmed.”

“And Tom Border, too,” said Massey-Folkes, hoping the boss was not going to go to pieces. He had never seen him like this before. But then he had not been around when Jack and his wife had broken up.

“Of course.” But Cruze had not given a thought to Tom Border, had done his best not to think about why he and Cleo should have been together. She had mentioned nothing about Border's being in
Hamburg
when she had said she was going there.

He had come into the
Examiner's
offices to discuss the ransom demand and to lay down the law as to how the story was to be handled. The kidnappers, if they were in a position to see copies of the
Examiner,
were not to be angered by what was said in either the news or editorial columns. When the conference was over he went downstairs and out into Fleet Street where Sid Cromwell drew up a moment later in the Rolls-Royce. Several photographers appeared, none of them from the
Examiner,
and for the first time in fifteen years Lord Cruze was photographed in his own domain. It was not as bad as being photographed with Cleo, but it still annoyed him.

He went back to the flat, where Mrs. Cromwell hovered over him like a nurse. There were countless phone calls, all intercepted by his secretary, Miss Viner, but it did not escape Jack Cruze that his closest true sympathizers were two women in his employ and Quentin Massey-Folkes; he had no family to lean on. He half expected, half hoped, for a call from Emma, but none came.

“I think you should eat something, m'Lord,” said Mrs. Cromwell. “A little onion soup.”

“French onion soup?” He tried the small joke as much for his own sake as in the hope of a smile from her.

“English onion soup.” There were limits.

“In that case I'll try some. Just a small bowl of it. Ask Jenny to come in here.”

Miss Viner was trim, homely in face and figure, smart in her dress and manner and had been with His Lordship for eighteen years. He knew she had an opinion on his women, but she never gave a hint of what it was.

“Jenny, if nothing happens overnight, I'll be at Heathrow in the morning to meet Senator Spearfield. Have the company plane ready to fly us straight to Hamburg. Book us two suites at the Four Seasons.” He could not pronounce German and he gave the Vier Jahreszeiten its English name. He wished he were fluent in languages; he was not going to enjoy dealing with the Germans, police or kidnappers, through an interpreter. “Better make it three. We'll hold one for Miss Spearfield when we get her back.”

“Should I stay here overnight? Just in case . . .”

It would be the first time she ever had; he was sure she had remembered that. “Have Mrs. Cromwell get the guestroom ready for you. And tell her you'll have dinner with me.”

She
folded her notebook shut, stood up and, it seemed to him, marched out of the room. The bloody Sergeant-Major, he had once called her. But she was what he wanted right now, someone to keep his own self-discipline in line. He felt like weeping, as if he had already lost Cleo forever. Abruptly he cursed her for leaving him to go to Germany, for exposing herself to danger. From now on he would protect her, never let her out of his sight.

Miss Viner came back into the room. “There is a Miss Dorothy St. Martin on the telephone. She says she is a friend of Miss Spearfield's.”

“St. Martin?”

“I think she is one of those women who ran that brothel in Curzon Street.” Miss Viner knew every story that had run in the
Examiner;
she was a walking morgue of facts.

He said nothing for a moment; the last thing he wanted was to hear voices from the past, except for Emma's. Then he nodded, got up and went to the phone. “Miss St. Martin? This is Lord Cruze.”

“Hello, Jack,” said the soft voice at the other end of the line. “Rosa and I have never called you before. But we were worried about Miss Spearfield.”

“That's kind of you. But I didn't know you knew her that well.”

“Well, perhaps not
well.
But once a fortnight, regularly, she's been to have tea with us. She treats us as her lucky charms, says we got her started in Fleet Street. She's a fine young woman, Jack.”

“Yes.” Cleo had never told him she was a friend of the St. Martin women. Christ, he thought, what secrets have they exchanged over the teacups?