The Persian Price (31 page)

‘I told you, I'm not going without you,' Eileen said fiercely. ‘I've opened the gates. Come on, let me get you into the car and we'll run for it!' She was pulling at his arm. He shook her off.

‘Resnais is out there,' he said. ‘We'd be shot to pieces the moment we came through the doorway. For Christ's sake, Eileen – you go in the car! I'll give you covering fire!'

She shook her head.

‘We're going together,' she said. ‘I'm not leaving you behind, so you can just forget it. Think of a way for us both to get out.'

‘There isn't one,' Peters said wearily. ‘I'm as weak as hell. If I black out and Resnais rushes us, we're finished.'

Eileen looked at him.

‘Show me how to fire that gun,' she whispered. ‘Tell me what to do and I'll do it!'

‘You wouldn't be quick enough,' Peters said. ‘He'd blast you before you got to pull the trigger. He's a pro – I'd never get him like I did Madeleine.' He closed his eyes for a moment and panicked as the slide into unconsciousness began. His head felt heavy, his limbs numb. He fought against it with all his last reserves. ‘I'm going to pass out,' he mumbled to her; he saw the terror on her face, but he couldn't even hold onto the Browning; it slipped out of his hand onto the ground.

‘Grenade,' he said. ‘If he comes in firing, stay down. Pull out the pin and count … count three … then throw it. On the floor … take it, darling …'

He slumped to the side, collapsed against the body of the white Rolls Royce. Eileen bent over him. He was breathing hard, his face grey and filmed with sweat. There was no sound in the garage but the harsh laboured breathing of someone who was deeply unconscious. Eileen moved the Browning to one side; the grenade lay on the ground. It was oval-shaped, corrugated; it looked evil, with the little pin on a ring sticking out of the side. You pulled out the pin, counted three and threw … The blast was what killed in a confined space. She remembered war films, with the inevitable pill box or fox hole exploding under a grenade attack. She picked it up and held it. It was cold and heavy. Her hands were shaking. If the Frenchman crept up on them, she had to remember the sequence and throw it at him. If she dropped it or miscounted … She looked at Peters lying against the sumptuous car and she was glad that she hadn't done what he wanted and run through the open gates. She was all the protection he had; the idea made her calm. She settled down to wait for the slightest sound that would warn of Resnais's approach.

Resnais swung himself up to the low balcony on the first floor. He had climbed by means of a drain pipe and a storeroom window, shuttered from the inside but with a substantial sill. He shouldered the window and it opened easily inwards. He didn't waste time. He hurried down the stairs and as he passed the study where Ahmed's body was lying he heard the transmitter. He waited for a moment and then decided that he had better take the message. Peters wouldn't know he wasn't lying in wait for them in the gardens. He wasn't likely to make a run for it at that moment, so soon after killing Madeleine. He picked up the earphones and took down the message. It was brief. ‘Confirm previous message. Operation cancelled due to Homsi's arrest. Request confirmation of hostage execution. Repeat. Confirmation necessary and call sign for dispersal.'

Homsi arrested. Resnais let them send the message a second time, while he registered the shock of the information and the fact that Damascus was repeating a message already received. Received by Peters … Eileen Field was to be exceuted and the team was to disperse. It was all for nothing. Madeleine's death, his attempt on Peters, the highly organized exercise in top-level terrorism. He didn't answer the message. He left it clattering through a third time. Let Damascus think the villa was empty. The radio should have been destroyed if instructions had been properly carried out. But the hero he had personally reported killed in a car accident had come back from the dead and was holed up in the garage with the hostage. Resnais didn't know what final explanation would be offered but he wouldn't be the one to make it. Not until he had time to get a story sorted out in Paris. He couldn't do that unless Peters and Eileen Field were both dead.

He ran on to the kitchen, opened up the armoury and stuffed two grenades into each of his trouser pockets. Then moving at a light run and making no noise, he sped down the covered passageway which Peters had taken to the garage. As he approached the door, he crept like a stalking cat. He took one grenade out of his pocket, held it in his right hand, and with his left he very gently depressed the handle of the door.

As it opened, he was standing at the back of the garage. He took a single step forward, well hidden by the angle of the door. He knew that Peters and Eileen Field were still there; he had an animal's sense for the presence of an enemy. Two grenades should do it, one after the other. He took the second out of his pocket and very slowly and carefully opened the door wide enough to lean forward and throw.

The patrol cars made their first raids on the houses occupied by Algerians and Arabs soon after dawn that morning. Searches revealed nothing suspicious. Several suspected sympathizers with the Palestinians were taken to Nice police headquarters and questioned.

A special squad, carrying a senior officer in the local gendarmerie and an Interpol liaison officer, accompanied by three armed gendarmes arrived at the villa belonging to the millionaire Arab just after eight in the morning. The Algerian was a well known member of the smart set in the resort. He was on excellent terms with the
maire
and the police; he owned a large yacht which was at that time on a cruise round the Greek islands; and apart from rumours of his political affiliations he had done nothing to justify a raid on his house in his absence. Such nicety hadn't been evident in the case of the poor Algerian workers who had been dragged out of their beds and beaten up in the police station. It was unwise to upset the wealthy and the police were reluctant to take any chance of doing so. At eight fifteen the
capitaine
of gendarmes, who later met Logan at the airport, was the first to jump out of the car as it came to a halt in front of the villa. His men sprang out after him. They drew their revolvers.

Tact was not needed. The scene in the garage on the left of the entrance was enough to tell them that they had come to the right place. The stink of death and explosions hung over the air. The
capitaine
was standing in a thin trickle of blood that was making patterns on the gravel. He went to the garage, looked inside and shouted to the Interpol official. He in turn shouted back.

The search was over. Within a few minutes, after a radio call from the car to headquarters, the villa was cordoned off and a team of police experts were going through the rooms and the grounds. The
capitaine
undertook the unpleasant duty of meeting Logan Field and bringing him to the scene. He was a hard man, inured to violence, but the inside of the garage had upset him.

He wondered what effect it would have upon the chairman of Imperial Oil.

11

It seemed to Eileen that she had been crouching beside Peters for hours. The sun was up and there was a cheerful bird that twittered in the trees. It was a horrible contrast to the body of Madeleine which lay in full view, her arms at her sides. She looked as if she had been laid out after death. Blood had gathered in a pool on the ground. There was little shadow immediately in front of the garage; the oleander bushes and the pines were further back; there it was dense and impossible to see if anyone were hidden. Eileen placed her hand on Peter's forehead. It was cold and clammy. His colour was a frightening grey. Somewhere out in the garden Resnais must be waiting, preparing to rush them. Madeleine had been killed by a fluke, thrown off guard by the sight of Eileen running in the open. Now Resnais was alone but, as Peters said, he was the more deadly of the two. She listened, her nerves taut beyond endurance. The bird no longer sang and the silence in the garden was horrible, unreal. Suddenly something snapped; the sound was like a pistol shot to her over-stretched imagination. She grabbed the grenade and half rose, ready to pull the pin and throw it in the direction from which the noise had come. But there was no movement, no shape behind the shadows.

What she had heard was the shutter being forced open on the first floor window. She held the grenade ready but had no idea where to throw it. Resnais must know there was something wrong inside the garage. They would have tried to escape in the car otherwise. If he rushed them from the front, the tremendous firepower from the Browning would cut her down before she could throw anything. But he wouldn't be expecting to face her; he might think one of them was hurt but he couldn't be certain it was Peters. And Peters had the same weapon. It would be crazy for Resnais to attack direct. And then she remembered the door back into the house, the door through which she and Peters had got into the garage. That was where the Frenchman would come. She gave a cry of terror and tried to shake Peters, but it was useless. He was slumped across the Rolls. She almost panicked then; for a moment she felt paralysed with terror, as if her body were frozen into immobility while at any moment that door might burst open. She ran to it, scrabbling desperately for a bolt, a key. There was no way of locking it from inside the garage. Naturally it would be fastened from inside the house. She crouched by it, listening, and heard nothing. No footsteps, no creak of boards, nothing. But she knew that this was the way he would come.

She made her way back to the white Rolls. Peters hadn't moved. Eileen bent over him; tears fell on his face. Then she picked up the grenade. She sat on her heels and watched the door.

When it began to open she thought at first it was an optical illusion. It seemed there was a crack between it and the wall. For a second she closed her eyes tightly and as they opened the crack was wider. She gave a gasp of terror and raised herself from behind the shelter of the Rolls Royce. There was no possible doubt. The door was opening, very slowly and without making a sound. She pulled out the pin on the grenade and counted. ‘One, two, three.' Then she threw it with all her strength at the gap which was widening. She had a glimpse of something like a hand coming round the edge of it, just before she threw herself on top of Peters. The force of the explosion blasted her into unconsciousness, as the grenade in Resnais's hand blew up a second after the one she had thrown. The wood of the door shattered into splinters as lethal as bullets, a rain of steel fragments bombarded the inside of the garage. Human remains spattered the walls and ceiling. Acrid fumes filled the area and hung over the wreck of the Rolls Royce, which had been in a direct line to the explosion. Its body was holed and pockmarked with splinters, its rear doors buckled. Eileen and Peters lay under a coverlet of broken glass from the windows; her arm was flung across him as if she were trying to shield him. It was Peters who recovered first. He came back to consciousness, confused and shocked. He could hear nothing and his ears throbbed painfully from the force of the blast. He raised himself slowly and the broken glass slithered off him. He began brushing it frantically away from Eileen's body. He cut himself and at first he thought the blood was only his own. He lifted her, staggering and dizzy under the slight weight, and dragged her outside. The stench and fumes were choking in the garage; there was a loathsome charnel-house smell.

‘Eileen! Eileen! For Christ's sake …'

He thought he was shouting but all sound was muffled. Her dress was soaked with blood. A long jagged splinter of wood had holed her in the side like a spear. She was just breathing.

Peters lifted her over his shoulder. He swayed on his feet and then began to walk down to the gate. It didn't occur to him to go back into the house. He had to get help for her and all he could remember was the car in the driveway. It hurt too much to think beyond the total necessity of saving her life. He knew as soon as he saw the nature of the injury that unless she was attended to quickly she would die. He had to reach that car and drive to the hospital. His ears were buzzing and blocked. His blinding headache was in rhythm with every jarring step along the road. When he saw the blue sports car he broke into a stumbling run. He lifted her into the passenger seat and bent over her, feeling the pulse in her slack wrist. Her eyes opened and she gave a groan of pain. She was losing a lot of blood. His shirt and hands were crimson with it.

‘You'll be all right,' he mumbled. ‘I'm taking you to hospital. You'll be all right. Oh Christ, don't fade out … hold on …'

She was unconscious again, but for a moment she had known him. He got in beside her and started the car. His concentration was too erratic to risk driving fast. All he could hope was to stay conscious and reach the hospital. It took him half an hour, much less than the previous night's journey when he was hopelessly confused, and then he pulled into the entrance to the hospital. He went to the enquiry desk and saw the girl behind it open her mouth in horror at the sight of him.

‘There's been an accident,' Peters said. ‘There's a woman outside in a blue sports car. Her name is Mrs Field. Get someone quickly. No … I'm all right … that's her blood.'

In the confusion while two orderlies came running with a stretcher and a crowd of spectators surrounded the car, Eileen was lifted out and taken inside. The receptionist thought she was dead and turned to look for the man who had reported the accident. But he had disappeared.

They had covered the body with a rubber sheet. The policeman pulled it back and the
capitaine
stepped aside for Logan. Logan looked down at the face of Madeleine Labouchère. He turned to the
capitaine.

‘That's not my wife,' he said. He walked a few paces back to James Kelly, who was waiting, sick and stricken, with Janet beside him.