Authors: Alistair MacLean
"I see what you mean. Can I sit up?"
He nodded and stepped back a couple of feet. I swung my leg over the bed and looked across to the other side of the room where Marie Hopeman, with a third man, also black, standing beside her, was sitting in a rattan chair by her bed. She was dressed in a blue and white sleeveless silk dress and because it was sleeveless I could see the four bright marks on the upper arm where someone had grabbed her, not too gently.
I was more or less dressed myself, all except for shoes, coat and tie, although we had arrived there several hours earlier after a long and bumpy road trip forced on us by a lack of accommodation at the airfield at the other end of the island. With the unexpected influx of stranded aircraft passengers into the Grand Pacific Hotel the question of separate rooms for Mr. and Mrs. John Bentall had not ever arisen, but the fact that we were almost completely dressed had nothing to do with modesty, false or otherwise: it had to do with survival. The unexpected influx was due to an unscheduled stopover at the Suva airfield: and what the unscheduled stopover was due to was something that exercised my mind very much indeed. Primarily, it was due to a medium-scale electrical fire that had broken out in our DC-7 immediately after the fuelling hoses had been disconnected, and although it had been extinguished inside a minute the plane captain had quite properly refused to continue until airline technicians had flown down from Hawaii to assess the extent of the damage: but what I would have dearly loved to know was what had caused the fire.
I am a great believer in coincidences, but belief stops short just this side of idiocy. Four scientists and their wives had already disappeared en route to Australia: the chances were even that the fifth couple, ourselves, would do likewise, and the fuelling halt at the Suva airfield in Fiji was the last chance to make us vanish. So we'd left our clothes on, locked the doors and taken watches: I'd taken the first, sitting quietly in the darkness until three o'clock in the morning, when I'd given Marie Hopeman a shake and lain down on my own bed. I'd gone to sleep almost immediately and she must have done exactly the same for when I now glanced surreptitiously at my watch I saw it was only twenty minutes past three. Either I hadn't shaken her hard enough or she still hadn't recovered from the effects of the previous sleepless night, a San Francisco-Hawaii hop so violent that even the stewards had been sick. Not that the reasons mattered now.
I pulled on my shoes and looked across at her. For the moment she no longer looked serene and remote and aloof, she just looked tired and pale and there were faint blue shadows under her eyes: she was a poor traveller and had suffered badly the previous night. She saw me looking at her and began to speak.
"-I'm afraid I-"
"Be quiet!" I said savagely.
She blinked as if she had been struck across the face, then tightened her lips and stared down at her stockinged feet. The man with the yachting cap laughed with the musical sound of water escaping down a wastepipe.
"Pay no attention, Mrs. Bentall. He doesn't mean a thing. The world's full of Bentalls, tough crusts and jelly inside, and when they're nervous and scared they've just got to lash out at someone. Makes them feel better. But, of course, they only lash out in a safe direction." He looked at me consideringly and without much admiration. "Isn't that so, Bentall?"
"What do you want?" I asked stiffly. "What is the meaning of this-of this intrusion? You're wasting your time. I have only a very few dollars in currency, about forty. There are traveller's cheques. Those are no good to you. My wife's jewellery-"
"Why are you both dressed?" he interrupted suddenly.
I frowned and stared at him. "I fail to see-"
Something pressed hard and cold and rough against the back of my neck, whoever had hacksawed off the barrels of that twelve-bore hadn't been too particular about filing down the outside edges.
"My wife and I are priority passengers," I said quickly. It is difficult to sound pompous and scared at the same time. "My business is of the greatest urgency. I-I have impressed that on the airport authorities. I understand that planes make overnight refuelling stops in Suva and have asked that I should be notified immediately of any vacancies on a westbound plane. The hotel staff has also been told, and we're on a minute's notice." It wasn't true, but the hotel day staff were off duty and there would be no quick way of checking. But I could see he believed me.
"That's very interesting," he murmured. "And very convenient. Mrs. Bentall, you can come and sit by your husband here and hold his hand-it doesn't look any too steady to me." He waited till she had crossed the room and sat down on the bed, a good two feet from me and staring straight ahead, then said: "Krishna?"
"Yes, captain?" This from the Indian who had been watching Marie.
"Go outside. Put a call through to the desk. Say you're speaking from the airport and that there's an urgent call for Mr. and Mrs. Bentall, that there's a K.L.M. plane with two vacant seats just stopped over for refuelling. They've to go at once. Got it?"
"Yes, captain." A gleam of white teeth and he started for the door.
"Not that way, fool!" The white man nodded to the French doors leading to the outside verandah. "Want everyone to see you? When you've put the call through pick up your friend's taxi, come to the main door, say you've been phoned for by the airport and come upstairs to help carry the bags down."
The Indian nodded, unlocked the French doors and disappeared. The man with the yachting cap dragged out a cheroot, puffed black smoke into the air and grinned at us. "Neat, eh?"
"Just what is it that you intend to do with us?" I asked tightly.
"Taking you for a little trip." He grinned, showing irregular and tobacco-stained teeth. "And there'll be no questions- everyone will think you have gone on to Sydney by plane. Ain't it sad? Now stand up, clasp your hands behind your head and turn round."
With three gun barrels pointing at me and the furthest not more than eighteen inches away, it seemed a good idea to do what he said. He waited till I had a bird's eye view of the two unlit railway tunnels, jabbed his gun into my back and went over me with an experienced hand that wouldn't have missed even a book of matches. Finally, the pressure of the gun in my spine eased and I heard him taking a step back.
"O.K., Bentall, sit. Bit surprising, maybe-tough-talking pansies like you often fancy themselves enough to pack a gun. Maybe it's in your grips. We'll check later." He transferred a speculative glance to Marie Hopeman. "How about you, lady?"
"Don't you dare touch me, you-you horrible man!" She'd jumped to her feet and was standing there erect as a guardsman, arms stretched stiffly at her sides, fists clenched, breathing quickly and deeply. She couldn't have been more than five feet four in her stockinged soles but outraged indignation made her seem inches taller. It was quite a performance. "What do you think I am? Of course I'm not carrying a gun on me."
Slowly, thoughtfully, but not insolently, his eyes followed every curve of the more than adequately filled silk sheath dress. Then he sighed.
"It would be a miracle if you were," he admitted, regretfully. "Maybe in your
grip.
But later-neither of you will be opening those bags till we get where we're going." He paused for a thoughtful moment. "But you do carry a handbag, don't you, lady?"
"Don't you touch my handbag with your dirty hands!" she said stormily.
"They're not dirty," he said mildly. He held one up for his own inspection. "At least, not really. The bag, Mrs. Bentall?"
"In the bedside cabinet," she said contemptuously.
He moved to the other side of the room, never quite taking his eye off us. I had an idea that he didn't have too much faith in the lad with the blunderbuss. He took the grey lizard handbag from the cabinet, slipped the catch and held the bag upside down over the bed. A shower of stuff fell out, money, comb, handkerchief, vanity case and all the usual camouflage kit and warpaint. But no gun. Quite definitely no gun.
"You don't really look the type," he said apologetically. "But that's how you live to be fifty, lady, by not even trusting your own mother and-" He broke off and hefted the empty bag in his hand. "Does seem a mite heavy, though, don't it?"
He peered inside, fumbled around with his hand, withdrew it and felt the outside of the bag, low down. There was a barely perceptible click and the false bottom fell open, swinging on its hinges. Something fell on the carpet with a thud. He bent and picked up a small flat snub-nosed automatic.
"One of those trick cigarette lighters," he said easily. "Or it might be for perfume or sand-blasting on the old face powder. Whatever will they think of next?"
"My husband is a scientist and a very important person in his own line," Marie Hopeman said stonily. "He has had two threats on his life. I-I have a police permit for that gun."
"And I'll give you a receipt for it so everything will be nice and legal," he said comfortably. The speculative eyes belied the tone. "All right, get ready to go out. Rabat"-this to the man with the sawn-off gun-"over the verandah and see that no one tries anything stupid between the main door and the taxi."
He'd everything smoothly organised. I couldn't have tried anything even if I'd wanted to and I didn't, not now: obviously he'd no intention of disposing of us on the spot and I wasn't going to find any answers by just running away.
When the knock came to the door he vanished behind the curtains covering the open French windows. The bell-boy came in and picked up three bags: he was followed by Krishna, who had in the meantime acquired a peaked cap: Krishna had a raincoat over his arm-he had every excuse, it was raining heavily outside-and I could guess he had more than his hand under it. He waited courteously until we had preceded him through the door, picked up the fourth bag and followed: at the end of the long corridor I saw the man in the yachting cap come out from our room and stroll along after us, far enough away so as not to seem one of the party but near enough to move in quick if I got any funny ideas. I couldn't help thinking that he'd done this sort of thing before.
The night-clerk, a thin dark man with the world-weary expression of night clerks the world over, had our bill ready. As I was paying, the man with the yachting cap, cheroot sticking up at a jaunty angle, sauntered up to the desk and nodded affably to the clerk.
"Good morning, Captain Fleck," the clerk said respectfully. "You found your friend?"
"I did indeed." The cold hard expression had gone from Captain Fleck's face to be replaced with one that was positively jovial. "And he tells me the man I really want to see is out at the airport. Call me a taxi, will you?"
"Certainly, sir." Fleck appeared to be a man of some consequence in those parts. He hesitated. "Is it urgent, Captain Heck?"
"All my business is urgent," Fleck boomed. "Of course, of course." The clerk seemed nervous, anxious to ingratiate himself with Fleck. "It just so happens that Mr. and Mrs. Bentall here are going out there, too, and they have a taxi-"
"Delighted to meet you, Mr.-ah-Bentall," Fleck said heartily. With his right hand he crushed mine in a bluff honest sailorman's grip while with his left he brought the complete ruin of the. shapeless jacket he was wearing another long stage nearer by thrusting his concealed gun so far forward against the off-white material that I thought he was going to sunder the pocket from its moorings. "Fleck's my name. I must get out to the airport at once and if you would be so kind-share the costs of course-I'd be more than grateful..."
No doubt about it, he was the complete professional, we were wafted out of that hotel and into the waiting taxi with all the smooth and suave dexterity of a head-waiter ushering you to the worst table in an overcrowded restaurant: and had I had any doubts left about Fleck's experienced competence they would have been removed the moment I sat down in the back seat between him and Rabat and felt something like a giant and none too gentle pincers closing round my waist. To my left, Rabat's twelve-bore: to my right, Fleck's automatic, both digging in just above the hip-bones, the one position where it was impossible to knock them aside. I sat still and quiet and hoped that the combination of ancient taxi springs and bumpy road didn't jerk either of the forefingers curved round those triggers.
Marie Hopeman sat in front, beside Krishna, very erect, very still, very aloof. I wondered if there was anything left of the careless amusement, the quiet self-confidence she had shown in Colonel Raine's office two days ago. It was impossible to say. We'd flown together, side by side, for 10,000 miles, and I still didn't even begin to know her. She had seen to that.
I knew nothing at all about the town of Suva, but even if I had I doubt whether I would have known where we were being taken. With two people sitting in front of me, one on either side, and what little I could see of the side-screens blurred and obscured by heavy rain, the chances of seeing anything were remote. I caught a glimpse of a dark silent cinema, a bank, a canal with scattered faint lights reflecting from its opaque surface and, after turning down some narrow unlighted streets and bumping over railway tracks, a long row of small railway wagons with C.S.R. stamped on their sides. All of those, especially the freight train, clashed with my preconceptions of what a south Pacific island should look like, but I had no time to wonder about it. The taxi pulled up with a sudden jerk that seemed to drive the twelve-bore about halfway through me, and Captain Fleck jumped out, ordering me to follow.
I climbed down and stood there rubbing my aching sides while I looked around me. It was as dark as a tomb, the rain was still sluicing down and at first I could see nothing except the vague suggestion of one or two angular structures that looked like gantry cranes. But I didn't need my eyes to tell me where I was, my nose was all that was required. I could smell smoke and diesel and rust, the tang of tar and hempen ropes and wet cordage, and pervading everything the harsh flat smell of the sea.