Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

The Rolls and the caravan pulled clear off the road and halted so that the rear of the caravan was less than six feet from the head of the jetty. The transfer of the prisoners from the caravan to the boat was performed smoothly, expeditiously and in such a fashion that it could have roused no suspicion in even the most inquisitive of bystanders: in point of fact the nearest person was a rod fisherman a hundred yards away and his entire attention was obviously concentrated on what was happening at the end of his line some feet below the surface of the canal. Ferenc and Searl, each with a barely concealed pistol, stood on the jetty near the top of a short gangway while Le Grand Duc and Czerda, similarly unostentatiously armed, stood on the poop of the boat while first the three scientists, then their womenfolk, then Bowman, Cecile and Lila filed aboard. Under the threat of the guns they took up position on the settees lining the side of the cabin.

Ferenc and Searl entered the cabin, Searl advancing to the helmsman’s position. For a moment Le Grand Duc and Masaine remained in the cockpit, checking that they were quite unobserved, then Le Grand Duc entered the cabin, pocketed his gun and rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

‘Excellent, excellent, excellent.’ He sounded positively cheerful. ‘Everything, as always, under control. Start the engines, Searl!’ He turned and poked his head through the cabin doorway. ‘Cast off, Masaine!’

Searl pressed buttons and the twin engines started up with a deep powerful throb of a sound, but a sound by no means loud enough to muffle a short sharp exclamation of pain: the sound emanated from Le Grand Duc, who was still looking aft through the doorway.

‘Your own gun in your own kidney,’ Bowman said. ‘No one to move or you die.’ He looked at Ferenc and Czerda and Searl and El Brocador. At least three of them, he knew, were armed. He said: ‘Tell Searl to stop the engines.’

Searl stopped the engines without having to have the message relayed through Le Grand Duc.

‘Tell Masaine to come here,’ Bowman said. ‘Tell him I’ve got a gun in your kidney.’ He looked round the cabin: no one had moved. ‘Tell him to come at once or I’ll pull the trigger.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘You’ll be all right,’ Bowman said soothingly. ‘Most people can get by on one kidney.’

He jabbed the gun again and Le Grand Duc gasped in pain. He said hoarsely: ‘Masaine! Come here at once. Put your gun away. Bowman has his gun on me.’

There was a few seconds’ silence, then Masaine appeared in the doorway. No profound thinker at the best of times, he was obviously uncertain as to what to do: the sight of Czerda, Ferenc, Searl and El Brocador busy doing nothing convinced him that nothing was, for the moment, the wise and prudent course of action. He moved into the cabin.

‘Now we come up against the delicate balance of power,’ Bowman said conversationally. He was still pale and haggard, he felt unutterably tired and stiff and sore all over: but he felt a prince compared to the condition he’d been in two hours previously. ‘A question of checks and balances. How much influence and authority can I exert on you standing here with this gun in my hand? How much of my will can I impose? So much – but only so much.’

He pulled Le Grand Duc back by the shoulder, stepped to one side and watched Le Grand Duc collapse heavily on a settee, a well-made settee which didn’t break. Le Grand Duc glared at Bowman, the aristocratic voltage in the blue eyes turned up to maximum power: Bowman remained unshrivelled.

‘It’s difficult to believe just looking at you,’ Bowman went on to Le Grand Duc, ‘but you’re almost certainly the most intelligent of your band of ruffians. Not, of course, that that would call for any great intelligence. I have a gun here and it is in my hand. There are four others here who also have guns and although they’re not in their hands at the present moment it wouldn’t take very long for the guns to get there. If it came to a fight, I think it extremely unlikely that I could get all four before one of you – more probably two – got me. I am not a Wild Bill Hickock. Moreover, there are eight innocent people here – nine, if you count me – and a gun-fight in this enclosed space would almost certainly result in some of them being hurt, even killed. I wouldn’t like that any more than I would like being shot myself.’

‘Get to the point,’ Le Grand Duc growled.

‘It’s obvious, surely. What demands can I make upon you that wouldn’t be too great to precipitate this gun-fight that I’m sure we all want to avoid? If I told you to hand over your guns, would you, quietly and tamely, with the knowledge that long prison sentences and probably indictments for murder awaited you all? I doubt it. If I said I’ll let you go but take the scientists and their women, would you go along with that? Again, I doubt it, for they would be living evidence of your crimes, with the result that if you set foot anywhere in Western Europe you’d finish in prison and if you set foot in Eastern Europe you’d be lucky to end up in a Siberian prison camp as the Communists aren’t too keen on people who kidnap their top scientists. In fact, there’d be no place left for you in any part of Europe. You’d just have to go on the Canton and sail all the way home with her and I don’t think you’d find life in China all it’s cracked up to be – by the Chinese, of course.

‘On the other hand, I doubt whether you’d be prepared to fight to the death to prevent the departure of the two young ladies and myself. They’re only ciphers, a couple of romantically minded and rather empty-headed young holidaymakers who thought it rather fun to get mixed up in these dark goings on.’ Bowman carefully avoided looking at the two girls. ‘I admit that it is possible for me to start trouble, but I don’t see I would get very far: It would be only my word against yours, there wouldn’t be a shred of evidence I could offer and there’s no way I can think of how you could be tied up with the murder in the cave. The only evidence lies in the scientists and their wives and they would be half-way to China before I could do anything. Well?’

‘I accept your reasoning,’ Le Grand Duc said heavily. ‘Try to make us give ourselves or the scientists up – or their wives – and you’d never leave this boat alive. You and those two young fools there are, as you say, another matter. You can arouse suspicion, but that’s all you can do: better that than have two or three of my men die uselessly.’

‘It might even be you,’ Bowman said.

‘The possibility had not escaped me.’

‘You’re my number one choice of hostage and safe conduct,’ Bowman said.

‘I rather thought I might be.’ Le Grand Duc rose with obvious reluctance to his feet.

‘I don’t like this,’ Czerda said. ‘What if–’

‘You want to be the first to die?’ Le Grand Duc asked wearily. ‘Leave the thinking to me, Czerda.’

Czerda, obviously ill at ease, said no more. At a gesture from Bowman the two girls left the cabin and climbed the gangway. Bowman, walking backwards with his gun a few inches from Le Grand Duc’s midriff, followed. At the top of the gangway Bowman said to the girls: ‘Get back and out of sight.’

He waited ten seconds then said to Le Grand Duc: ‘Turn round.’ Le Grand Duc turned. Bowman gave him a hefty shove that set him stumbling, almost falling, down the gangway. Bowman threw himself flat: there was always the off-chance of someone or ones down there changing their minds. But no shots were fired, there was no sound of footsteps on the gangway. Bowman raised a cautious head. The engines had started up again.

The powerboat was already twenty yards away and accelerating. Bowman rose quickly and, followed by Cecile and Lila, ran to the Rolls. Carita gazed at him in astonishment.