This Rough Magic (34 page)

‘… And at the moment the situation in Albania is that anything could happen, and it’s to certain interests – I’m sure you follow me? – to see that it does. The Balkan pot can always be made to boil, if you apply heat in the right place. You’ve got Yugoslavia, and Greece, and Bulgaria, all at daggers drawn, all sitting round on the Albanian frontier, prepared for trouble, but none of them daring to make it.’

‘Or wanting to,’ I said sharply. ‘Don’t give me that! The last thing Greece wants is any sort of frontier trouble that she can be blamed for … oh!’

‘Yes, I thought you might see it. Dead easy, isn’t it? A lovely set-up. Communist China sitting pretty in Albania, with a nice little base in Europe, the sort of foothold that Big Brother over there’d give his eye teeth to have. And if the present pro-Chinese Government fell, and the fall was attributed to Greece, there’d be a nice almighty Balkan blow-up, and the Chinese would be out and Russia in. And maybe into Greece as well. Get it now?’

‘Oh, God, yes. It’s an old dodge, Hitler tried it in the last war. Flood a country with forged currency and down goes the Government like a house of cards. How long has this been going on?’

‘Ferrying the currency? For some time now. This is the last load. D-Day is Good Friday; it’s to filter as from then, and believe you me, after that the bang comes in a matter of days.’ He laughed. ‘They’ll see the mushroom cloud right from Washington.’

‘And you? Where will you see it from?’

‘Oh, I’ll have a ringside seat, don’t worry – but it won’t be the Villa Rotha. “G. Manning, Esq.” will be vanishing almost immediately … You wouldn’t have got your trip out with me on Saturday after all, my dear. A pity, I thought so at the time. I enjoyed our day out; we’ve a lot in common.’

‘Do you have to be so insulting?’

It didn’t even register. He was staring into the darkness to the north. ‘The thing I really regret is that
I’ll never be able to use the photographs. Poor Spiro won’t even get that memorial. We’ll soon be reaching the place where I threw him in.’

There had been no change of tone. He was still holding me, his arm about as personal as a steel fetter; which was just as well; the touch of his body jammed against mine was making my skin crawl. The cracking of the sail as the boom moved overhead made me jump as if he had laid a whip to me.

‘Nervy, aren’t you?’ said Godfrey, and laughed.

‘Who’s paying you?’

‘Shall we just leave it that it isn’t Greece?’

‘I hardly supposed that it was. Who is it?’

‘What would you say if I told you I was being paid twice?’

‘I’d say it was a pity you couldn’t be shot twice.’

‘Sweet girl.’ The smooth voice mocked. ‘That’s the least of what the Greeks would do to me if they caught me!’

‘Where’s the currency made? I can’t believe anyone in Corfu …’

‘Oh, God, no. There’s a clever little chap who lives out near Ciampino … I’ve been getting my photographic supplies from him for a long time now. He used to work in the local branch of Leo’s Bank. It was through him I was brought in on this … and, of course, because I knew Leo.’

I must have gone white: I felt the blood leave my face, and the skin round my mouth was cold and rigid. ‘
Leo?
I will not believe that Leo even
begins to know
about this!’

He hesitated fractionally. I could almost feel the cruel impulse to lie; then he must have decided it would be more amusing after all to keep the credit. ‘No, no. Pure as the driven snow, our Leo. I only meant because I had an “in” with him to get the house, a perfect situation for this job, and of course with that boat-house, which is ideal. And then there’s my own cover, being next door to the Forlis themselves … If anything had gone wrong and inquiries had been made, where do you suppose the official eye would have gone first? Where but the Villa Forli, where the Director of the Bank lived? And by the time they got round to the Villa Rotha, it would be empty of evidence, and possibly – if things were really bad – of me.’

‘And when the “mushroom cloud” goes up? I take it that part of the plan is to have the currency traceable to Greece?’

‘Of course. Eventually, as far back as Corfu, but with luck, no further.’

‘I see. I suppose Spiro had found out?’

He lifted his shoulders. ‘I doubt it. But there was a chance he’d seen a sample I was carrying in my wallet.’

‘So you murdered him on the off-chance.’ I drew in my breath. ‘And you don’t even care, do you? It’s almost funny to think what fuss I made about the dolphin … you must have shot at him for sheer jolly fun, since you were leaving in a few days anyway.’ I peered at him in the darkness. ‘How do people
get
like you? You simply don’t care who or what you wreck, do you? You’re a traitor to your own country, and the one you’re a guest in, and not only that, you wreck God
knows how many people into the bargain. I don’t only mean Spiro, I mean Phyl and Leo and the children. You know what it will do to them.’

‘Don’t be sentimental. There’s no room for that sort of talk in a man’s world.’

‘Funny, isn’t it, how often that so-called “man’s world” works out as a sort of juvenile delinquents’ playground? Bombs and lies and cloak-and-dagger nonsense and uniforms and loud voices. All right, have it your own way, but remember I’m an actress, and I’m interested in how people work, even sawn-off morons like you. Just tell me
why?
’

I felt it at last, the movement of anger through his body. His arm had slackened.

‘Do you do it for the money?’ My voice nagged sharply at him. ‘But surely you’ve got money. And you’ve got a talent of a sort with a camera, so it can’t be frustration – unless that turn-of-the-century technique of yours can’t get you any sex that’s willing. And you can’t be committed politically, since you bragged you were working for two sides. Why, then? I’d love to know, just for the record, what makes a horror-comic like you tick over.’

‘You’ve got a poisonous tongue, haven’t you?’

‘It’s the company I keep. Well? Just a wrecker, is that it? You do it for kicks?’

I heard his breath go in, then he laughed, an ugly little sound. I suppose he could afford to. He must have found, back there in the cabin, that I had no weapon on me, and he knew I couldn’t escape him now. His hold was loose on me, but he could still have grabbed me if I had moved. I sat still.

‘Just exactly that,’ he said.

‘I thought as much. It measures up. Is that why you called your boat
Aleister
?’

‘What a well-read little girl it is, to be sure! Of course. His motto was the same as mine, “
Fais ce que veult
”.’

‘“Do what thou wilt”?’ I said. ‘Well, Rabelais had it first. I doubt if you’ll ever be anything but third-hand, Godfrey. Throwing people overboard hardly gets you into the master class.’

He made no reply. The lights of Kouloura were coming abeam of us. The wind backed in a sudden squall, leaping the black waves from the north. His hand moved on the tiller, and the
Aleister
bucked and rose to meet it. The stars swung behind the mast, tilted. The wind sang in the ropes. The deck heeled steeply as the starboard rail lifted against the rush of stars. The boom crashed over.

‘Is that what you’re going to do with me?’ I asked. ‘Throw me overboard?’

The
Aleister
came back head to wind, and steadied sweetly. Godfrey’s hand left the tiller.

‘By the time I do, by God,’ he said, ‘you’ll be glad to go.’

Then he was out of his seat, and swinging round on me, his hands reaching for my throat.

I flinched back as far as I could from the brutal hands, dragging the torch from my pocket as I went. My back came up hard against the port coaming. Then he was on me. The boat lurched; the boom thudded to starboard with the sail cracking like a whip; a glistening fan of water burst over the rail so that his foot slipped
and the wet hands slithered, missing their grip on my throat.

The
Aleister
was turning into the seas; the boom was coming back. His hands had found their hold, the thumbs digging in. I braced my back against the coaming, wrenched my left hand free and smashed a blow with the torch at his face.

It wasn’t much of a blow. He didn’t let go, but he jerked back from it instinctively, straightening his body, dragging me with him …

I kicked upwards with my right foot past his body, jammed the foot against the tiller with all my strength, and shoved it hard over.

The
Aleister
, already starting the swing, came round like a boomerang, heeling so steeply into the starboard tack that the rail went under.

And the boom slammed over with the force of a ramjet, straight at Godfrey’s head.

Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim
like a duck I’ll be sworn
.

II
. 2

If I had been able to take him completely by surprise, it would have ended the business then and there. But he had felt my foot go lashing past his body, and the sudden heeling of the
Aleister
gave him a split second’s warning of what must happen. His yachtsman’s instinct did the rest.

He ducked forward over me, one arm flying up to protect his head – but I was in his way, hitting at his face, struggling to thrust him back and up into the path of the boom as it came over with a whistle and a crash that could have felled a bull.

It struck him with appalling force, but a glancing blow, the upflung arm taking the force of the smash. He was flung sprawling right across me, a dead weight bearing me back helplessly against the seat.

I had no idea if he were still conscious, or even alive. The seat was wet and slippery; my hands scrabbled for a hold to drag myself free, but before I could do this the
Aleister
, caught now with the wind on her beam, swung
hard into the other tack. Godfrey’s body was flung back off mine. He went to the deck all anyhow, and I with him, helplessly tangled in the loose folds of the duffel coat. The two of us slithered together across the streaming boards, to fetch up hard against the starboard side of the cockpit.

The
Aleister
kicked her way upwards, shuddered, hung poised for the next perilous swing. I tore myself free of the tangling coat and managed somehow to claw my way to my feet, bent double to avoid the murderous boom, staggering and sprawling as the deck went up like a lift, and the boom came back again to port with a force that threatened to take the whole mast overside. I threw myself at the wildly swinging tiller, grabbed it somehow and clung there, fighting to steady the sloop and trying, through the bursting fans of spray, to see.

At first I thought he was dead. His body sprawled in a slack heap where it had been thrown back to the port side by the last violent tack. His head rolled, and I could see the blur of his face, not the pale oval that had been visible before, but half an oval … half his face must be black with blood. Then the
Aleister
shipped another wave, and the cold salt must have brought him sharply to his senses, for the head moved, lifting this time from the deck, and a hand went with terrifying precision to the edge of the cockpit seat, groping for a hold to pull his body up …

I thrust the tiller hard to starboard again and laid the sloop right over. His hand slipped, and he was thrown violently back across the deck. It was now or never. I let go the tiller and tore the smoke flare down from its
hook behind me. I could only pray that its rope was long enough to let me reach Godfrey where he lay against the side, his left hand now strongly grasping the seat, his right dragging at something in his pocket.

I lifted the metal flare and lurched forward.

Too late: the gun was in his hand. He was shouting something: words that were lost in the noise of wind and cracking spars and the hammering of the boom. But the message was unmistakable. I dropped the smoke flare, and leapt back for the stern seat.

The pale half-face turned with me. The gun’s eye lifted.

I yanked wildly at the lifebelt hanging there on its hooks. It came free suddenly, and I went staggering against the side with it clutched to me like a shield. As I gripped the coaming and hauled myself up, the engine controls were just beside my feet. I kicked the throttle full open, and jumped for the rail.

The
Aleister
surged forward with a roar. I saw Godfrey let go his hold, dash the blood from his eyes with his free hand, jerk the muzzle of the gun after me, and fire.

I heard no shot. I saw the tiny jet of smoke spurt and vanish in the wind. I put a hand to my stomach, doubled up and pitched headlong into the sea.

I was coughing, swallowing salt water, gasping with lungs that hurt vilely, fighting the black weight of the sea with a wild instinct that brought me at last to the surface. My eyes opened wide, stinging, on pitch blackness. My arms flailed the water; my legs kicked
like those of a hanging man; then I went out of control, lurching forward again and down, down …

The cold water closing over me for the second time struck me back to full consciousness. Godfrey. The shot which – fired at a dim target on a wildly bucking boat – had missed me completely. The lifebelt which had been torn from me as I fell, its rope pulled tight on the hooks by my own hasty action with the smoke flare. The
Aleister
, which I had sent swerving away fast at full throttle from the place where I went in, but whose master would have her under control again, searching for me to make sure …

I fought my panic down, as I had fought the sea. I surfaced easily enough, and this time the thick blackness was reassuring. I felt a shoe go, and even this little load lightened me. I trod water, retching and gasping, and tried to look about me.

Darkness. Nothing but darkness, and the noises of wind and sea. Then I heard the engine, I couldn’t judge how far from me, but in the pauses of the wind it seemed to be coming nearer. He would come back to look for me; of course he would. I hoped he would think I had been hit and couldn’t possibly survive, but he could hardly take the risk. He would stay here, beating the sea between me and the land, until he found me.