The 92nd Tiger (22 page)

They were grabbed and hustled through an opening in the side of the archway. A flight of stone steps led into a passage which had a number of doors with small gratings in them. Hugo imagined that they must have been cellars for the storage of food and fuel. They were pushed into one of these. There was a semi-circular opening in the far wall, at head height. It was heavily barred, but the full moon, shining directly through it, gave enough light for them to see that, except for a stack of firewood in one corner, the room was empty.

One of the men who was holding Tammy pointed to the stack of wood and laughed. The other said what sounded like the Arabic word for ‘bed’. This seemed to put an idea into his head.

Still holding one of Tammy’s arms twisted behind her back, he put up his free hand, caught her dress at the neck band, and ripped it open.

Hugo shook off the men who were holding him and jumped forward. He caught one of them a swinging blow in the stomach and grabbed hold of the other by the hair. The next moment they were all three rolling on the floor.

It was only the fact that it was dark and that there were too many of them and that they got in each other’s way that saved Hugo from getting badly hurt in the next few minutes. A random kick landed on the side of his head. He was dimly conscious that something was happening. There was a burst of rifle fire up above. Orders were being screamed out. The door of their cell banged shut and he heard the lock click home. Running footsteps, then silence.

Tammy was crouched beside him, wiping the blood from his face with a piece of her torn dress.

Hugo rolled over, got his knees under him, and levered himself slowly to his feet. The bright yellow moon, which had been circling round him, steadied in its orbit.

Tammy said, ‘Can you walk?’

‘I think so,’ said Hugo.

His legs took him across to the wood pile, and he sat down on it. Tammy sat beside him. Outside, the firing had stopped and everything was quiet.

‘It was Tammy who spoke first. She said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Hugo stared at her. The mist was clearing gradually. He could see straight, and was beginning to hear things.

He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips and licked off the blood. Most of it came from a tooth which had been knocked out. He put up a hand to feel the back of his head. There was a lump there, the size of a tennis ball, and more blood matting his hair. That seemed to be the main damage.

He said, ‘It’s not you who should be sorry. It’s me. I’ve been a bloody imbecile. A cretin. A one-man goon-show.’

‘All the same. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. You were doing what you thought was right.’

‘Oh, I meant well,’ said Hugo. ‘What an epitaph.’ His anger was effectively clearing his head. ‘I suppose you realise that there’s just one thing we’ve got to do. We’ve got to get out of this bloody place. And bloody quick. I don’t know what’s happening up top, and I don’t know who’s in charge, but sooner or later they’re going to start thinking about what to do with us. And before that happens I’d like to be gone.’

‘Me too,’ said Tammy.

She had knotted up the front of her dress, and sat perched on the edge of the wood pile, looking like a good little girl waiting to be told what to do next. She said, ‘I suppose, if we moved all these logs, we shouldn’t find a trap door underneath leading to a forgotten tunnel.’

‘Only in television,’ said Hugo, and began to laugh.

Tammy looked at him anxiously.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I was just remembering the last episode I did. The situation was very similar. But of course the Tiger and his girlfriend got out. It was dead simple.’

‘How?’

Hugo explained how. Tammy said, ‘If you think I’m going to take off all my clothes and lie on the floor waiting for those men to come back, you can think again.’

‘It wouldn’t be very practical,’ agreed Hugo. He got up and went across to the door. ‘And we’re not going to burrow our way out like the Count of Monte Cristo, either. It’s the door or the window. I say, come and look at this.’

‘What?’

‘The lock’s on the inside.’

‘Is that something we ought to get excited about?’

They peered down at the lock. It was a massive iron box, fastened to the equally massive wooden door by a screw at each of the four corners.

Hugo was looking at it thoughtfully. Then he said, ‘That’s it. Of course. It’s on the inside because this is a cellar, not a prison cell. It was designed to keep people out, not to keep them in.’

‘Right now, it’s doing both pretty well.’

‘On the contrary. All we’d need would be a fairly large screwdriver. Remove those four screws, and the whole lock comes off. Then we open the door and walk out.’

‘Unless it’s bolted on the outside too.’

‘Did you hear them bolting it when they went out?’

‘No. I don’t think so. All I heard was the noise of the door being locked. It made quite a lot of noise.’

‘It’s a heavy lock,’ said Hugo.

‘And I don’t suppose you carry a large screwdriver around with you?’

Hugo was feeling in his pockets. From one he took out a packet with three cigarettes in it, and his cigarette lighter. From the other a handkerchief, a small silver pencil and a pair of dark glasses. Tammy contributed a purse from the side pocket of her dress. From it she produced a stub of lipstick, a very small nail file and three or four coins.

‘As an escape kit,’ said Hugo, ‘it’s inadequate. That nail file might be useful.’

‘It’s pretty fragile. I don’t think you’d turn those screws with it.’

Hugo inserted the thick end of the nail file into the slot in one of the screws and applied pressure. The only thing that twisted was the nail file.

After a minute of this he abandoned the door and moved across to the window.

It was a semi-circular opening, set high up in the outer wall. The top was arched and the base was a slope of brickwork running up at a sharp angle. It was guarded by two grilles of iron bars.

The inner grille was formed of uprights only, embedded in the brickwork at top and bottom. The outer one was more elaborate. It was formed of two horizontal strips of metal which held the uprights rigid, and these were, in turn, sunk into the side walls at both their ends.

Hugo said, ‘It’s helpful, up to a point, because the really tough grille is the outside one. If we could shift two of these inner bars it would give us space enough to squeeze through. At least, I think it would.’

‘What’s the point of squeezing through one lot of bars if there’s another much worse lot beyond?’

‘The point is that once we’ve got one of these bars out, we’ve got a tool we could use to loosen the others.’

He felt along the bricks which formed the inner edge of the slope, scratching with his finger nail at the mortar between them. Most of it was iron hard, but he thought he could detect a slight crumbling between the bricks at the left hand end. He said, ‘We’ll try your nail file on this one.’

It was a painfully slow job, made no easier by difficulty in concentrating. Subconsciously he was listening, all the time, for the clatter of footsteps down the passage, the rattle at the door, the irruption of more violence and hatred and death.

The walls of the old Palace were so thick that they could hear very little of what was going on above. Occasionally they heard a voice shouting, and once a scream, high-pitched and thin, like the cry of a sea bird, cut off abruptly,

‘How’s it going,’ said Tammy. ‘Can I do a bit?’

‘What you could be doing,’ said Hugo, ‘is searching through that pile of logs to see if you can find a piece with some sort of joint to it. Even a large splinter would be better than nothing. This file of yours is splendid for scratching and picking, but if I tried to use it as a lever I’d snap it for sure.’

‘Some of these logs are pretty jagged. I might be able to tear off a few bits.’

‘What with?’

‘My teeth,’ said Tammy. ‘I’ve got good teeth.’

It took him half an hour to shift the first brick. By the time it came away, the tips of his fingers were torn and his wrist was aching, but he felt a sense of achievement. It was cooled by a sight of what lay behind.

The bar he was attacking was the one at the extreme left hand side of the opening, and therefore the shortest. Its bottom end was embedded behind the second row of bricks and, as Hugo saw when he examined it closely with the help of his cigarette lighter, by a malevolent freak of the builder it had been placed behind the join in two bricks. Moreover, unlike the outer row, these had been laid end-on and offered a much reduced point of attack.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Tammy.

Hugo tried to explain, but found that he had some difficulty in forming the words.

‘A header,’ he said. ‘That’s what bricklayers call it. Because it’s head on.’

His tongue seemed suddenly to be thick, almost filling his mouth.

‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Tammy.

‘More difficult to shift.’

‘We got the first one out. We’ll shift the next two, never fear. You can take time out. I’m going to spell you.’

Hugo surrendered the nail file, and sat down on the floor with his back to the log pile. His neck had started to ache and there was a dull pain in the back of his head. To ease it, he cupped his chin in one hand. His head felt so heavy that it was an effort to hold it up.

A shaking on his shoulder brought him round. He had slipped over sideways and was lying on the floor. He got on to his knees and then back on to his feet and said, ‘For God’s sake. How long have I been out. What time is it?’

‘You’ve been asleep for an hour,’ said Tammy. ‘I thought it was time to wake you up. I’ve got another brick out.’

She held it out for inspection, but it wasn’t the brick he was staring at. He said, ‘What have you done to your hands?’

They’re all right,’ said Tammy. ‘Look at my nice brick.’

They’re not all right. You’ve torn them to ribbons. Why the hell didn’t you wake me up? Give me that file at once.’

When he tried to take it he found it was stuck to the palm of her hand with blood. He said, ‘You let me snore on the floor for an hour whilst you did that.’

‘It seems to have done you some good. When you sat down you sounded like your battery was going flat or something.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Hugo. In fact, he felt a lot better. And the next brick was a lot easier. As it was completely free on one side he was able to concentrate on the firm edge. He developed a technique for whittling a small hole in the mortar and driving in a splinter of wood, using the heel of his shoe as a hammer. After twenty minutes, he felt the brick shift.

‘It’s coming,’ he said.

Tammy was standing behind him as he eased it out. When he clicked on his lighter they stood for a moment staring. Tammy said, ‘Oh,’ and then. ‘That’s not so good.’ It was a reflex gasp of disappointment.

What they could now see was that the bottom end of the bar had been beaten out into a flat, spade-like section. A hole had been bored through the centre, and a bolt inserted. They could see the head of the bolt. The shank ran into the brickwork.

‘For God’s sake,’ said Tammy, ‘what are we going to do about that?’ There were tears not very far away.

‘What we’re not going to do,’ said Hugo, ‘is lose heart. I don’t believe that bolt can be very firm. It’s only driven into the mortar. It was obviously put there to stop sideways movement of the bottom of the bars. I think it wouldn’t be too difficult to pull it out.’

As he said this he was taking off his belt. It was a good leather belt, with a steel buckle. He fastened one end round the bar, using the buckle, took the other end in both hands, braced his feet against the wall, exerted his fine dorsal muscles, and pulled.

‘It’s coming,’ he said. ‘I can feel it shifting. Lend a hand, and we’ll have the bastard out.’

Tammy grabbed him round the waist from behind, and heaved. Hugo heaved. The bar came loose at both ends with a sudden jerk.

‘I hope it didn’t hurt you,’ said Hugo.

‘Not at all,’ said Tammy politely. ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting off my stomach.’

They picked up their trophy. It was about thirty inches long and was, as they saw when they examined the top end, hollow. A tube rather than a bar.

Tammy said, ‘Lovely. And the flattened end will just do for getting under those bricks.’ And when Hugo said nothing, ‘Only we ought to get a move on. We’ve got to shift three more bricks before we can even start on that outer grille. And that looks pretty tough to me.’

Hugo still said nothing. He was staring at the iron tube. He looked at the long bolt running through the flattened end. Then he turned it round and examined the hollow at the top.

He said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to get those other bricks out in time. But I believe I might be able to open the door.’

‘Break it down, you mean?’

‘No. Open it.’ He was prodding at the end of the tube with the nail file. ‘Do you see? It’s hollow all the way down. What would you say the diameter of the hole was?’

‘Do you mean, how wide is it?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘About an inch. Maybe a little less.’

‘That would be my guess.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We fill it with brick dust.’

Tammy stared at him.

‘Come on, come on,’ said Hugo. ‘Brick dust or mortar. There’s plenty of it on the floor. Scoop it up. I’ll be making a funnel. We’ll use this cigarette packet. It should do.’

Tammy said, ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing.’

‘It all depends – that’s right. If I hold the funnel you dribble the stuff in. It won’t take very much. Kind of them to flatten the other end. Saves us having to cork it up.’

‘You were saying,’ said Tammy, ‘that it all depended.
What
does it depend on? I mean, I trust you implicitly. But I’d just like to know. Girlish curiosity, I guess.’

‘It depends,’ said Hugo, ‘on what sort of money you’ve got in that purse of yours.’

‘Money?’

That’s right. I remember my partner. Colonel Rex, once saying to me, ‘If you’ve got the right sort of money, you can buy your way out of anything.’