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He spoke softly and angrily. ‘The trouble with you people from hospitals,’ he said, ‘you think you’re the only normal people left alive.’
Maria could think of no answer. She drove forward. From behind her the voice of the Englishman said, ‘I’m sorry to be causing you all this trouble.’ He said it in English hoping that the tone of his voice would convey his meaning.
‘It’s all right,’ said Maria.
‘You speak English!’ said the man. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Is your leg hurting you?’ She tried to make it as professional and clinical as she knew how.
‘It’s nothing. I did it running down the road to find a telephone. It’s hilarious really: those four dead and me unscratched except for a strained knee running down the road.’
‘Your car?’
‘That’s done for. Cheap car, Ford Anglia. Crankcase sticking through the rear axle the last I saw of it. Done for. It wasn’t the lorry driver’s fault. Poor sod. It wasn’t my fault either, except that I was going too fast. I always drive too fast, everyone tells me that. But I couldn’t have avoided this lot. He was right in the centre of the road. You do that in a heavy truck on these high camber roads. I don’t blame him. I hope he doesn’t blame me too much either.’
Maria didn’t answer; she hoped he’d go to sleep so she could think about this new situation.
‘Can you close the window?’ he asked. She rolled it up a little, but kept it a trifle open. The tension of her claustrophobia returned and she knocked the window handle with her elbow, hoping to open it a little more without the boy’s noticing.
‘You were a bit sharp with the policeman,’ said the boy. Maria grunted an affirmative.
‘Why?’ asked the boy. ‘Don’t you like policemen?’
‘I married one.’
‘Go on,’ said the boy. He thought about it. ‘I never got married. I lived with a girl for a couple of years …’ He stopped.
‘What happened?’ said Maria. She didn’t care. Her worries were all upon the road ahead. How many road blocks were out tonight? How thoroughly would they examine papers and cargoes?
‘She chucked me,’ said the boy.
‘Chucked?’
‘Rejected me. What about you?’
‘I suppose mine chucked me,’ said Maria.
‘And you became an ambulance driver,’ said the boy with the terrible simplicity of youth.
‘Yes,’ said Maria and laughed aloud.
‘You all right?’ asked the boy anxiously.
‘I’m all right,’ said Maria. ‘But the nearest hospital that’s any good is across the border in Belgium. You lie back and groan and behave like an emergency when we get to the frontier. Understand?’
Maria deliberately drove eastward, cutting around the Forêt de St Michel through Watigny and Signy-le-Petit. She’d cross the border at Riezes.
‘Suppose they are all closed down at the frontier?’ asked the boy.
‘Leave it with me,’ said Maria. She cut back through a narrow lane, offering thanks that it hadn’t begun to rain. In this part of the world the mud could be impassable after half an hour’s rain.
‘You certainly know your way around,’ said the boy. ‘Do you live near here?’
‘My mother still does.’
‘Not your father?’
‘Yes, he does too,’ said Maria. She laughed.
‘Are you all right?’ the boy asked again.
‘You’re the casualty,’ said Maria. ‘Lie down and sleep.’
‘I’m sorry to be a bother,’ said the boy.
Pardon me for breathing, thought Maria; the English were always apologizing.
38
Already the brief butterfly summer of the big hotels is almost gone. Some of the shutters are locked and the waiters are scanning the ads for winter resort jobs. The road snakes past the golf club and military hospital. Huge white dunes, shining in the moonlight like alabaster temples, lean against the grey Wehrmacht gun emplacements. Between the points of sand and the cubes of concrete nightjars swoop open-mouthed upon the moths and insects. The red glow of Ostend is nearer now and yellow trams rattle alongside the motor road and over the bridge by the Royal Yacht Club where white yachts – sails neatly rolled and tied – sleep bobbing on the grey water like seagulls.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought they would be earlier than this.’
‘A policeman gets used to standing around,’ Loiseau answered. He moved back across the cobbles and scrubby grass, stepping carefully over the rusty railway lines and around the shapeless debris and abandoned cables. When I was sure he was out of sight I walked back along the quai. Below me the sea made soft noises like a bathful of serpents, and the joints of four ancient fishing boats creaked. I walked over to Kuang. ‘He’s late,’ I said. Kuang said nothing. Behind him, farther along the quai, a freighter was being loaded by a huge travelling crane. Light spilled across the waterfront from the spotlights on the cranes. Could their man have caught sight of Loiseau and been frightened away? It was fifteen minutes later than rendezvous. The standard control procedure was to wait only four minutes, then come back twenty-four hours later; but I hung on. Control procedures were invented by diligent men in clean shirts and warm offices. I stayed. Kuang seemed to notice the passage of time – or more accurately perhaps he revelled in it. He stood patiently. He hadn’t stamped his feet, breathed into his hands or smoked a cigarette. When I neared him he didn’t raise a quizzical eyebrow, remark about the cold or even look at his watch. He stared across the water, glanced at me to be sure I was not about to speak again, and then resumed his pose.
‘We’ll give him ten more minutes,’ I said. Kuang looked at me. I walked back down the quayside.
The yellow headlight turned off the main road a trifle too fast and there was a crunch as the edge of an offside wing touched one of the oil drums piled outside the Fina station. The lights kept coming, main beams. Kuang was illuminated as bright as a snowman and there was only a couple of foot of space between him and the wire fence around the sand heap. Kuang leapt across the path of the car. His coat flapped across the headlight, momentarily eclipsing its beam. There was a scream as the brakes slammed on and the engine stalled. Suddenly it was quiet. The sea splashed greedily against the jetty. Kuang was sucking his thumb as I got down from the oil drum. It was an ambulance that had so nearly run us down.
Out of the ambulance stepped Maria.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
‘I’m Major Chan,’ said Maria.
‘You are?’ Kuang said. He obviously didn’t believe her.
‘You’re Major Chan, case officer for Kuang here?’ I said.
‘For the purposes that we are all interested in, I am,’ she said.
‘What sort of answer is that?’ I asked.
‘Whatever sort of answer it is,’ said Maria, ‘it’s going to have to do.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘He’s all yours.’
‘I won’t go with her,’ said Kuang. ‘She tried to run me down. You saw her.’
‘I know her well enough to know that she could have tried a lot harder,’ I said.
‘You didn’t show that sort of confidence a couple of minutes ago,’ said Maria. ‘Scrambling out of the way when you thought I was going to run you down.’
‘What’s confidence?’ I said. ‘Smiling as you fall off a cliff to prove that you’ve jumped?’
‘That’s what it is,’ said Maria and she leaned forward and gave me a tiny kiss, but I refused to be placated. ‘Where’s your contact?’
‘This is it,’ said Maria, playing for time. I grabbed her arm and clutched it tight. ‘Don’t play for time,’ I told her. ‘You said you’re the case officer. So take Kuang and start to run him.’ She looked at me blankly. I shook her.
‘They should be here,’ she said. ‘A boat.’ She pointed along the jetty. We stared into the darkness. A small boat moved into the pool of light cast by the loading freighter. It turned towards us.
‘They will want to load the boxes from the ambulance.’
‘Hold it,’ I told her. ‘Take your payment first.’
‘How did you know?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You bring Datt’s dossiers as far as this, using your ingenuity, your knowledge of police methods and routes, and if the worst comes to the worst you use your influence with your ex-husband. For what? In return Datt will give you your own dossier and film, etc. Am I right?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Then let them worry about loading.’ The motor boat was closer now. It was a high-speed launch; four men in pea-jackets stood in the stern. They stared towards us but didn’t wave or call. As the boat got to the stone steps, one man jumped ashore. He took the rope and made it fast to a jetty ring. ‘The boxes,’ I called to them. ‘Your papers are here.’
‘Load first,’ said the sailor who had jumped ashore.
‘Give me the boxes,’ I said. The sailors looked at me and at Kuang. One of the men in the boat made a motion with his hand and the others took two tin boxes, adorned with red seals, from the bottom of the boat and passed them to the first man, who carried them up the steps to us.
‘Help me with the boxes,’ said Maria to the Chinese sailor.
I still had hold of her arm. ‘Get back into the ambulance and lock the doors from inside,’ I said.
‘You said I should start …’
I pushed her roughly towards the driver’s door.
I didn’t take my eyes off Maria but on the periphery of my vision to the right I could see a man edging along the side of the ambulance towards me. He kept one hand flat against the side of the vehicle, dabbing at the large scarlet cross as if testing to see if the paint was wet. I let him come to within arm’s length and still without swivelling my head I flicked out my hands so that my fingertips lashed his face, causing him to blink and pull back. I leaned a few inches towards him while sweeping my hand back the way it had come, slapping him not very hard across the side of the cheek.
‘Give over,’ he shouted in English. ‘What the hell are you on?’
‘Get back in the ambulance,’ Maria called to him. ‘He’s harmless,’ she said. ‘A motor accident on the road. That’s how I got through the blocks so easily.’
‘You said Ostend hospital,’ said the boy.
‘Stay out of this, sonny,’ I said. ‘You are in danger even if you keep your mouth shut. Open it and you’re dead.’
‘I’m the case officer,’ she insisted.
‘You are what?’ I said. I smiled one of my reassuring smiles, but I see now that to Maria it must have seemed like mockery. ‘You are a child, Maria, you’ve no idea of what this is all about. Get into the ambulance,’ I told her. ‘Your ex-husband is waiting down the jetty. If you have this cart-load of documents with you when he arrests you things might go easier for you.’
‘Did you hear him?’ Maria said to the sailor and Kuang. ‘Take the documents, and take me with you – he’s betrayed us all to the police.’ Her voice was quiet but the note of hysteria was only one modulation away.
The sailor remained impassive and Kuang didn’t even look towards her.
‘Did you hear him?’ she said desperately. No one spoke. A rowboat was moving out around the far side of the Yacht Club. The flutter of dripping blades skidding upon the surface and the gasp of oars biting into the water was a lonely rhythm, like a woman’s sobs, each followed by the sharp intake of breath.
I said, ‘You don’t know what it’s all about. This man’s job is to bring Kuang back to their ship. He’s also instructed to take me. As well as that he’ll try to take the documents. But he doesn’t change plans because you shout news about Loiseau waiting to arrest you. In fact, that’s a good reason for leaving right away because their big command is to stay out of trouble. This business doesn’t work like that.’
I signalled Kuang to go down to the motor boat and the sailor steadied him on the slimy metal ladder. I punched Maria lightly on the arm. ‘I’ll knock you unconscious, Maria, if that’s the way you insist I do it.’ I smiled but I meant it.
‘I can’t face Loiseau. Not with that case I can’t face him.’ She opened the driver’s door and got into the seat. She would rather face Datt than Loiseau. She shivered. The boy said, ‘I feel I’m making a lot of trouble for you. I’m sorry.’
‘Just don’t say you’re sorry once again,’ I heard Maria say.
‘Get in,’ I called to the sailor. ‘The police will be here any moment. There’s no time to load boxes.’ He was at the foot of the ladder and I had my heavy shoes on. He shrugged and stepped into the boat. I untied the rope and someone started the motor. There was a bright flurry of water and the boat moved quickly, zigzagging through the water as the helmsman got the feel of the rudder.
At the end of the bridge there was a flashlight moving. I wondered if the whistles were going. I couldn’t hear anything above the sound of the outboard motor. The flashlight was reflected suddenly in the driver’s door of the ambulance. The boat lurched violently as we left the harbour and entered the open sea. I looked at the Chinese sailor at the helm. He didn’t seem frightened, but then how would he look if he did? I looked back. The figures on the quay were tiny and indistinct. I looked at my watch: it was 2.10 A.M. The Incredible Count Szell had just killed another canary, they cost only three francs, four at the most.
39
Three miles out from Ostend the water was still and a layer of mist hugged it; a bleak bottomless cauldron of broth cooling in the cold morning air. Out of the mist appeared M. Datt’s ship. It was a scruffy vessel of about 10,000 tons, an old cargo boat, its rear derrick broken. One of the bridge wings had been mangled in some long-forgotten mishap and the grey hull, scabby and peeling, had long brown rusty stains dribbling from the hawse pipes down the anchor fleets. It had been at anchor a long time out here in the Straits of Dover. The most unusual feature of the ship was a mainmast about three times taller than usual and the words ‘Radio Janine’ newly painted in ten-foot-high white letters along the hull.
The engines were silent, the ship still, but the current sucked around the draught figures on the stem and the anchor chain groaned as the ship tugged like a bored child upon its mother’s hand. There was no movement on deck, but I saw a flash of glass from the wheelhouse as we came close. Bolted to the hull-side there was an ugly metal accommodation ladder, rather like a fire-escape. At water level the steps ended in a wide platform complete with stanchion and guest warp to which we made fast. M. Datt waved us aboard.
As we went up the metal stairs Datt called to us, ‘Where are they?’ No one answered, no one even looked up at him. ‘Where are the packets of documents – my work? Where is it?’
‘There’s just me,’ I said.
‘I told you …’ Datt shouted to one of the sailors.
‘It was not possible,’ Kuang told him. ‘The police were right behind us. We were lucky to get away.’
‘The dossiers were the important thing,’ said Datt. ‘Didn’t you even wait for the girl?’ No one spoke. ‘Well didn’t you?’
‘The police almost certainly got her,’ Kuang said. ‘It was a close thing.’
‘And my documents?’ said Datt.
‘These things happen,’ said Kuang, showing little or no concern.
‘Poor Maria,’ said Datt. ‘My daughter.’
‘You care only about your dossiers,’ said Kuang calmly. ‘You do not care for the girl.’
‘I care for you all,’ said Datt. ‘I care even for the Englishman here. I care for you all.’
‘You are a fool,’ said Kuang.
‘I will report this when we are in Peking.’
