The Dark Crusader. Alistair MacLean

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 veranda 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. Damn nuisance having to go all the way out there at this time of night. But I must. Get me a car, will you?‘

      ‘Certainly, sir.’ Fleck appeared to be a man of some consequence in these parts. He hesitated.’ Is it urgent, Captain Fleck?’

      ‘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 mother 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 himself and Rabat and felt something like a giant and none too gentle pincer closing round my waist. To my left, Rabat’s twelve-bore: to my right, Fleck’s automatic, both digging in just above the hipbones, 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 these, 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 the 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.

      What with the lack of sleep and the bewildering turn of events my mind wasn’t working any too well that night, but it did seem pretty obvious that Captain Fleck hadn’t brought us down to the Suva docks to set us aboard a K.L.M. plane for Australia. I made to speak, but he cut me off at once, flicked a pencil torch at two cases that Krishna had carefully placed in a deep puddle of dirty and oily water, picked up the other two cases himself and told me softly to do the same and follow him. There was nothing soft about the confirmatory jab in the ribs from Rabat’s twelve-bore. I was getting tired of Rabat and his ideas as to what constituted gentle prods. Fleck probably fed him on a straight diet of American gangster magazines.

      Fleck had either better night eyes than I had or he had a complete mental picture of the whereabouts of every rope, hawser, bollard and loose cobble on that dockside, but we didn’t have far to go and I hadn’t tripped and fallen more than four or five times when he slowed down, turned to his right and began to descend a flight of stone stairs. He took his time about it and risked using his flash and I didn’t blame him: the steps were green-scummed and greasy and there was no hand-rail at all on the seaward side. The temptation