King Rat (31 page)

“Was I? Oh, sorry, what a fool.”

“You all right now? You got to keep your wits about you.”

“I’m all right now.”

Peter Marlowe slipped through the window after the King. And he was glad of the shaft of pain that soared up his arm as his feet hit the ground. You panicked, you fool, he told himself. You, Marlowe, you panicked like a child. Fool. So you have to lose your arm. You’re lucky it’s not a leg, then you’d really be crippled. What’s an arm? Nothing. You can get an artificial one. Sure. With a hook. Nothing wrong with a false arm. Nothing. Could be quite a good idea. Certainly.

“Tabe,” Shagata greeted them as he ducked under the flap of canvas which shielded the overhang.

“Tabe,” said the King and Peter Marlowe.

Shagata was very nervous. The more he had thought about this deal the less he liked it. Too much money, too much risk. And he sniffed the air like a dog pointing. “I smell danger,” he said.

“He says, ‘I can smell danger.’”

“Tell him not to worry, Peter. I know about the danger and it’s taken care of. But what about Cheng San?”

“I tell thee,” Shagata whispered hurriedly, “that the gods smile upon thee and me and our friend. He is a fox, that one, for the pestilential police let him out of their trap.” The sweat was running down his face and soaking him. “I have the money.”

The King’s stomach turned over. “Tell him we’d better dispense with the yak and get with it. I’ll be right back with the goods.”

The King found Timsen in the shadows.

“Ready?”

“Ready.” Timsen whistled a bird call in the dark. Almost at once it was answered. “Do it fast, mate. I can’t guarantee to hold you safe for long.”

“Okay.” The King waited and out of the darkness came a lean Aussie corporal.

“Hi, cobber. Name’s Townsend. Bill Townsend.”

“Come on.”

The King hurried back to the overhang while Timsen kept guard and his Aussies fanned out ready for the escape route.

Down by the corner of the jail, Grey was waiting impatiently. Dino had just whispered in his ear that Shagata had arrived, but Grey knew that the preliminaries would take a while. A while, and then he could move.

Smedly-Taylor’s phalanx was ready too, waiting for the transfer to take place. Once Grey was in motion, they too would move.

The King was under the flap with Townsend nervously beside him.

“Show him the diamond,” the King ordered.

Townsend opened his ragged shirt and pulled out a cord and on the end of the cord was the diamond ring. Townsend was trembling as he showed it to Shagata, who focused his portable lamp on the stone. Shagata examined it carefully, a bead of ice-light on the end of a piece of string. Then he took it and scratched the glass surface of the lamp. It screeched and left its mark.

Shagata nodded, sweating. “Very well.” He turned to Peter Marlowe. “Truly it is a diamond,” he said and took out calipers and carefully measured the extent of the stone. Again he nodded. “Truly it is four carats.”

The King jerked his head. “All right. Peter, you wait with Townsend.”

Peter Marlowe got up and beckoned to Townsend and together they went outside the flap and waited in the darkness. And around them they could feel eyes. Hundreds of eyes.

“Bloody hell,” Townsend winced, “wish I’d never got the stone. The strain’s killing me, my bloody oath.” His palsied fingers played with the string and the jewel, making sure for the millionth time that it was around his neck. “Thank God this’s the last night.”

The King watched with increasing excitement as Shagata opened his ammunition pouch and planked down three inches of notes, and opened his shirt and brought out a two-inch bundle, and from his side pockets more bundles until there were two piles of notes, each six inches high. Rapidly the King started counting the notes, and Shagata made a quick nervous bow and left. He pushed past the flap, and when he was once more on the path he felt safer. He adjusted his rule and began to walk the camp and almost knocked down Grey, who was coming up fast.

Grey cursed and hurried past, ignoring the torrent of abuse from Shagata. This time Shagata did not run after the bastard stinking POW as he should and beat some courtesy into him, for he was thankful to be away and anxious to get back to his post.

“Cops,” Max whispered urgently outside the flap.

The King scooped up the notes and tore out of the overhang, whispering to Townsend as he ran, “Get lost. Tell Timsen I’ve the money now and we’ll pay off tonight when the heat’s off.”

Townsend vanished.

“Come on, Peter.”

The King led the way under the hut as Grey rounded the corner.

“Stay where you are, you two!” Grey shouted.

“Yes, sir!” Max called grandly from the shadows and moved in the way, Tex beside him, covering the King and Peter Marlowe.

“Not you two.” Grey tried to push past.

“But you wanted us to stop —“ began Max easily, moving back in Grey’s way.

Grey shoved past furiously and darted under the hut in pursuit.

The King and Peter Marlowe had already jumped into the slit trench and were up the other side. Another group ran interference as Grey ran after them.

Grey spotted them tearing down the jail wall and blew his whistle, alerting the MP’s already stationed. The MP’s moved out into the open and guarded the area from jail wall to jail wall, and from jail wall to barbed fence.

“This way,” the King said as he jumped through the window of Timsen’s hut. No one in the hut paid any attention to them, but many saw the bulge in the King’s shirt.

They raced through the hut and out the door. Another group of Aussies appeared and covered their retreat just as Grey panted up to the window and caught a fleeting glimpse of them. He rushed around the hut. The Aussies had covered their exit.

Grey called out abruptly, “Which way did they go? Come on! Which way?”

A chorus of “Who?” “Who, sir?”

Grey pushed his way through them and hurried into the open.

“Everyone’s in position, sir,” an MP said, running up to him.

“Good. They can’t get far. And they won’t dare dump the money. We’ll start moving in on them. Tell the others.”

The King and Peter Marlowe ran towards the north end of the jail and stopped.

“Goddam it to hell!” the King said.

Where there should have been a phalanx of Aussies to run interference for them, now there were only MP’s. Five of them.

“What next?” Peter Marlowe said.

“We’ll have to backtrack. C’mon!”

Moving quickly, the King asked himself, What the hell’s gone wrong? Then suddenly he found it. Four men blocked their run. They had handkerchiefs over their faces and heavy sticks in their hands.

“Better hand over the money, mate, if you don’t want to get hurt.”

The King feinted, then charged, with Peter Marlowe at his side. The King plowed into one man and kicked another in the groin. Peter Marlowe blocked a blow, biting back a scream as it glanced off his arm, and tore the stick out of the man’s grasp. The other bushwhacker took to his heels and was swallowed by the darkness.

“Chrissake,” the King panted, “let’s get out of here.”

Again they were off. They could feel eyes following them and any moment they expected another attack. The King skidded to a stop.

“Look out! Grey!”

They turned back, and keeping to the side of a hut, ducked underneath it. They lay for a moment, their chests heaving. Feet ran past and they heard snatches of angry whispers —

“They went that way. Got t’ get ‘em before the stinking cops.”

“The whole goddam camp’s after us,” the King said.

“Let’s stick the money here,” Peter Marlowe said helplessly. “We can bury it.”

“Too risky. They’d find it in a minute. Goddammit, everything was going fine. Except that bastard Timsen let us down.” The King wiped the dirt and sweat off his face. “Ready?”

“Which way?”

The King did not answer. He just crawled silently from under the hut and ran with the shadows, Peter Marlowe following close behind. He headed sure-footed across the path and jumped into the deep storm ditch beside the wire. He squirmed his way down it until they were almost opposite the American hut and stopped and leaned against the wall of the ditch, his breath fluttering. Around them was a whispered uproar and over them was a whispered uproar.

“What’s up?”

“The King’s on the run with Marlowe — they’ve got thousands of dollars with them.”

“The hell they have! Quick, maybe we can catch them.”

“Come on!”

“We’ll get the money.”

And Grey was getting reports and so was Smedly-Taylor and so was Timsen and the reports were confusing and Timsen was cursing and hissing at his men to find them before Grey or Smedly-Taylor’s men found them.

“Get that money!”

Smedly-Taylor’s men were waiting, watching Timsen’s Aussies, and they were confused too. Which way did they go? Where to look?

And Grey was waiting. He knew that both escapes were blocked, north and south. It was only a question of time. And now the search was closing. Grey knew he had them, and when he caught them they would have the money. They wouldn’t dare to let go of it, not now. It was too much money. But Grey didn’t know about Smedly-Taylor’s men or Timsen’s Aussies.

“Look,” Peter Marlowe said as he carefully lifted his head and peered around into the darkness.

The King’s eyes narrowed, searching. Then he saw the MP’s fifty yards away. He spun around. There were many other ghosts, hurrying, looking, searching. “We’ve had it,” he said frantically.

Then the King looked out, over the wire. The jungle was dark. And there was a guard plodding along the other side of the wire. Okay, he told himself. The last plan. The shit-or-bust plan.

“Here,” he said urgently, and he took out all the money and stuffed it into Peter Marlowe’s pockets. “I’ll cover for you. Go through the wire. It’s our only chance.”

“Christ, I’ll never make it. The guard’ll spot me —“

“Go on, it’s our only chancel”

“I’ll never make it. Never.”

“When you get through, bury it and come back the same way. I’ll cover for you. Goddammit, you’ve got to go.”

“For God’s sake, I’ll get killed. He’s not fifty feet away,” Peter Marlowe said. “We’ll have to give up!”

He looked around, wildly seeking another escape route, and the sudden careless movement slammed his forgotten arm against the wall of the drain and he groaned, agonized.

“You save the money, Peter,” the King said desperately, “and I’ll save your arm.”

“You’ll what?”

“You heard me! Beat it!”

“But how can you—“

“Beat it,” the King interrupted harshly. “If you save the dough.”

Peter Marlowe stared for an instant into the eyes of the King, then he slipped out of the trench and ran for the wire and slid under it, every moment expecting a bullet in his head. At the second of his dash, the King jumped out of the trench and whirled towards the path. He tripped deliberately and slammed down into the dust with a shout of rage. The guard glanced abruptly through the wire and laughed loudly, and when he turned back to his post he saw only a shadow which might have been anything. Certainly not a man.

Peter Marlowe was hugging the earth and he crawled like a thing of the jungle into the dank vegetation and held his breath and froze. The guard came closer and closer and then his foot was an inch away from Peter Marlowe’s hand and then the other foot straddled it a pace away, and when the guard was five paces away, Peter Marlowe slithered deeper into the brush, into the darkness, five, ten, twenty, thirty, and when he was forty paces away and safe, his heart seemed to begin again and he had to stop, stop for breath, stop for his heart, stop for the hurt of his arm, the arm that was going to be his once more. If the King said — it was.

So he lay on the earth and prayed for breath and prayed for life and prayed for strength and prayed for the King.

The King breathed now that Peter Marlowe had made it to the jungle. He got up and began to brush himself down, and Grey with an MP, was beside him.

“Stand where you are.”

“Who, me?” The King pretended to peer into the darkness and recognize Grey. “Oh, it’s you. Good evening, Captain Grey.” He shoved the MP’s restraining arm away. “Take your hands off me!”

“You’re under arrest,” said Grey, sweating and dirt-covered from the chase.

“For what? Captain.”

“Search him, Sergeant.”

The King submitted calmly. Now that the money wasn’t on him there was nothing that Grey could do. Nothing.

“Nothing on him, sir,” the MP said.

“Search the ditch.” “Then, to the King: “Where’s Marlowe?”

“Who?” asked the King blandly.

“Marlowe!” Grey shouted. No money on this swine and no Marlowe!

“Probably taking a walk. Sir.” The King was polite, and his mind was centered only on Grey and the present danger, for he could sense that the danger was not completely past and that beside the jail wall were a group of malevolent ghosts, watching him for an instant before they disappeared.

“Where did you put the money?” Grey was saying.

“What money?”

“The money from the sale of the diamond.”

“What diamond? Sir!”

Grey knew he was beaten for the moment. He was beaten unless he could find Marlowe with the money on him. All right, you bastard, Grey thought, beside himself with rage, all right, I’ll let you go, but I’ll watch you and you’ll lead me to Marlowe.

“That’s all for the moment,” Grey said. “You’ve beaten us this time. But there’ll be another.”

The King walked back to his hut, chuckling to himself, You think I’m going to lead you to Peter, don’t you, Grey? But you’re so goddam smart you’re naive.

Inside the hut, he found Max and Tex. They too were sweating.

“What happened?” Max said.

“Nothing. Max, go find Timsen. Tell him to wait under the window. I’ll talk to him there. Tell him not to come into the hut. Grey’s still watching us.”

“Okay.”

The King put the coffee on. His mind was working now. How to make the exchange? Where to make it? What to do about Timsen? How to draw Grey off from Peter?