Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

‘I wouldn’t have been surprised.’

‘Not now. Not any more. You’re stuck with me now.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be stuck with anyone else.’ She looked at him almost in surprise. ‘You said that without smiling.’

‘I said it without smiling,’ he said.

They reached the Citroën, turned and looked back towards the square. The gypsies were milling around in a state of great activity. Ferenc, they could see, was going from one caravan to the next, speaking urgently to the owners, and as soon as he left them they began making preparations to hitch their towing units on to the caravans.

‘Pulling out?’ Cecile looked at Bowman in surprise. ‘Why? Because of a few firecrackers?’

‘Because of our friend who’s been in the Rhône. And because of me.’

‘You?’

‘They know now, since our friend returned from his bathe, that I’m on to them. They don’t know how much I know. They don’t know what I look like now but they know that I’ll be looking different. They do know that they can’t get me here in Arles because they can’t have any idea where I am or where I might be staying. They know that to get me they’ll have to isolate me and to do that they’ll have to draw me out into the open. Tonight they’ll camp in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Camargue. And there they’ll hope to get me. For they know now that wherever their caravans are, there I’ll be too.’

‘You are good at making speeches, aren’t you?’ There was no malice in the green eyes.

‘It’s just practice.’

‘And you haven’t exactly a low opinion of yourself, have you?’

‘No.’ He regarded her speculatively. ‘Do you think they have?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She touched the back of his hand in a gesture of contrition. ‘I talk that way when I’m scared.’

‘Me too. That’s most of the time. We’ll leave after you’ve picked your things up from the hotel and, in the best Pinkerton fashion, tail them from in front. Because if we follow them, they’ll string out watchers at regular intervals to check every car that follows. And there won’t be all that many cars moving south – tonight’s the big fiesta night in Arles and most people won’t be moving down to Saintes-Maries for another forty-eight hours.’

‘They would recognize us? In these rigouts? Surely they can’t–’

‘They can’t recognize us. They can’t possibly be on to us yet. Not this time. I’m positive. They don’t have to be. They’ll be looking for a car with a couple in it. They’ll be looking for a car with Arles number-plates, because it’ll have to be a rented car. They’ll be looking for a couple in disguise, because they’ll have to be in disguise, and in those parts that means only gypsy or gardien fiesta costumes. They’ll be looking for a couple with by now certain well-known characteristics such as that you are slender, have high cheekbones and green eyes, while I’m far from slender and have certain scars on my face that only a dye can conceal. How many cars with how many couples going south to Vaccarès this afternoon will match up with all those qualifications?’

‘One.’ She shivered. ‘You don’t miss much, do you?’

‘Neither will they. So we go ahead of them. If they don’t catch up with us we can always turn back to find out where they’ve stopped. They won’t suspect cars coming from the south. At least, I hope to God they don’t. But keep those dark glasses on all the time: those green eyes are a dead giveaway.’

Bowman drove back to the hotel and stopped about fifty yards from the patio, the nearest parking place he could get. He said to Cecile: ‘Get packed. Fifteen minutes. I’ll join you in the hotel inside ten.’

‘You, of course, have some little matter to attend to first?’

‘I have.’

‘Care to tell me what it is?’

‘No.’

‘That’s funny. I thought you trusted me now.’

‘Naturally. Any girl who is going to marry me–’

‘I don’t deserve that.’

‘You don’t. I trust you, Cecile. Implicitly.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded as if satisfied. ‘I can see you mean that. What you don’t trust is my ability not to talk under pressure.’

Bowman looked at her for several moments, then said: ‘Did I suggest, sometime during the middle watches of the night, that you weren’t – ah – quite as bright as you might be?’

‘You called me a fool several times, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You can get around to forgiving me?’

‘I’ll work on it.’ She smiled, got out of the car and walked away. Bowman waited till she had turned into the patio, left the car, walked back to the post office, picked up a telegram that was awaiting him in the Poste Restante, took it back to the car and opened it. The message was in English and uncoded. It read:

MEANING UNCLEAR STOP QUOTE IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT CONTENTS BE DELIVERED AIGUES-MORTES OR GRAU DU ROI BY MONDAY MAY 24 INTACT AND REPEAT INCOGNITO STOP IF ONLY ONE POSSIBLE DO NOT DELIVER CONTENTS STOP IF POSSIBLE RELATIVE EXPENDITURE IMMATERIAL STOP NO SIGNATURE.

Bowman re-read the message twice and nodded to himself. The meaning was far from unclear to him: nothing, he thought, was unclear any more. He produced matches and burnt the telegram, piece by piece, in the front ashtray, grinding the charred paper into tiny fragments. He glanced around frequently to see if anyone was taking an unusual interest in his unusual occupation but no one was. In his rear mirror he could see Le Grand Duc’s Rolls stopped at traffic lights some three hundred yards away. Even a Rolls, he reflected, had to stop at a red light: Le Grand Duc must find such annoying trifles a constant source of ducal irritation. He looked through the windscreen and could see the Chinese and his Eurasian lady leisurely sauntering towards the patio, approaching from the west.

Bowman wound down his window, tore his telegram envelope into tiny shreds and dropped them to the gutter: he hoped the citizens of Arles would forgive him his wanton litter-bugging. He left the car and passed into the hotel patio, meeting the Chinese couple on the way. They looked at Bowman impassively from behind their reflector glasses but Bowman did not as much as glance their way.

Le Grand Duc, stalled at the traffic lights, was, surprisingly enough, displaying no signs of irritation at all. He was absorbed in making notes in a book which, curiously, was not the one he habitually used when adding to his increasing store of gypsy folklore. Satisfied, apparently, with what he had written, he put the book away, lit a large Havana and pressed the button which controlled the dividing window. Carita looked at him enquiringly in the rear-view mirror.

‘I need hardly ask you, my dear,’ Le Grand Duc said, ‘if you have carried out my instructions.’

‘To the letter, Monsieur le Duc.’

‘And the reply?’

‘Ninety minutes, with luck. Without it, two and a half hours.’

‘Where?’

‘Replies in quadruplicate, Monsieur le Duc. Poste Restante, Arles, Saintes-Maries, Aigues-Mortes and Grau du Roi. That is satisfactory, I hope?’

‘Eminently.’ Le Grand Duc smiled in satisfaction. ‘There are times, my dear Carita, when I hardly know what I’d do without you.’ The window slid silently up, the Rolls whispered away on the green light and Le Grand Duc, cigar in hand, leaned back and surveyed the world with his customary patriarchal air. Abruptly, after a rather puzzled glance through the windscreen of the car, he bent forward all of two inches, an action which, in Le Grand Duc, indicated an extraordinarily high degree of interest. He pressed the dividing window button.

‘There’s a parking space behind that blue Citroën. Pull in there.’

The Rolls slowed to a stop and the Duke performed the almost unheard-of feat of opening the door and getting out all by himself. He strolled leisurely forward, halted and looked at the pieces of yellow telegram paper lying in the gutter, then at the Chinese who was slowly straightening with some of the pieces in his hand.