Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

‘Do the clothes tell you anything?’ Mike whispered.

‘Nothing.’ The man wore a heavy dark cloak, a turban and a swathe of cloth across the lower half of his face. ‘He looks like any other hill bandit. Probably smells the same, too.’

Mike watched the rest of the convoy disappear round the bend. He lowered his scope. ‘I know we’re only here to watch and digest – but what do you say? Do we go for this?’

‘I’d say it fell in our laps.’

They crept up the hill side by side and moved apart as they neared the road. Lenny waited for a signal from Mike, who was crouched two metres behind the horse. When the signal came, Lenny stood up, right on the edge of the road.

‘A fine evening for a spot of smuggling!’ he said.

The horseman leapt back at the sound. Mike grabbed him by the back of his cloak and swung him face down on the ground.

‘Don’t go being gentle, now,’ Lenny warned. ‘There’s no point with these characters.’

‘As if I would.’

Mike punched the man behind the ear and stood up. The man groaned but didn’t move. Lenny had opened one of the panniers and was pulling out the contents. Mike opened the other one and did the same. When they were finished they had piled up twenty-four two-kilo plastic sacks of powder.

‘We better move back down the hill,’ Lenny said. ‘Somebody will be back to look for this guy.’

Mike tied up the horseman, who was still unconscious, while Lenny led the horse up the slope on the far side of the road. At the top of the slope there was a narrow wind-blasted ridge with gnarled remnants of trees sticking up. Lenny tied the horse to one of them and went back to help Mike push the sacks down the hillside.

In less than five minutes they had transferred the sacks and the horseman to the shelter of the cluster of trees. The man was conscious now, sitting against a tree with his hands tied behind his back. In the shielded torchlight he looked profoundly menacing, although so far he hadn’t even struggled. He sat staring at the pile of sacks as Lenny split one open and tasted the powder.

‘Heroin.’

‘Good quality?’

‘Incredibly bad,’ Lenny said. ‘It’s already been cut with something, chalk maybe, and there’s husks and dirt in it.’

‘So this guy doesn’t work for the upmarket peddlers.’

The man moved suddenly, lashing out his foot as Mike eased past him.

‘Steady, my friend.’ Mike held up his pistol and waggled it. The man spat.

‘Like I said a while ago,’ Lenny murmured. ‘No point being subtle. If you want to impress him with the gun, smack him on the nose with it.’

Mike stared at the hillock of sacks. ‘We should start getting this down to the wagon.’ Their jeep was parked in bushes half a kilometre away. ‘We can drop it off at police HQ in Srinagar, together with old grouchy here.’

Lenny stood and held out his arms. Mike began piling on the sacks. ‘Six is just fine,’ Lenny said, grunting. ‘Hernia’s a treat I’d like to save for old age.’

Mike bent to pick up the sixth sack and heard the man make a gulping sound. Mike turned and the man was still staring, looking into the torchlight.

‘What the hell …’

The stare was different. Glazed.

‘God almighty.’ Lenny put down the sacks and knelt beside the man. ‘He’s dead.’ He felt for a carotid pulse. ‘Stone dead.’

‘How?’

Lenny was running his fingers along the man’s neck. He forced open the mouth and shone the torch inside. ‘He swallowed his tongue.’

Mike looked, saw the thick, mauve blob at the back of the man’s throat. ‘I always thought that was a myth.’

Lenny put down the torch. ‘He must have done it a minute ago, when we were distracted. It’s a thuggee technique. Death before dishonour.’

They stared at the motionless face, the eyes half closed now, drowsy looking.

‘Every day I learn something new,’ Mike said. ‘I only wish, now and then, it would be something nice.’

‘Malcolm, I picked up an amazing book in Barnes and Noble’s annexe a couple of months ago,’ Harry Lewis said. ‘I should have brought it to let you see. It’s called Scotland Yard, Bastion of Justice , and there’s a picture of you and me in it.’

Philpott stared at him. ‘Really? How long ago was it taken?’

‘The book was published in 1970, so it was a while ago. But there we are, all young and keen, coming out of a house in Shepherd’s Bush where some people had got themselves murdered.’

‘You must bring it and let me see. I half hate looking at old pictures of myself, but the other half’s fascination, I – ah, here’s the waiter.’

They were in Il Mulino in Greenwich Village, a restaurant Philpott favoured for lunch because, quite apart from the excellent food they served, the place had a stylishly spartan air – exposed brick, bentwood chairs – that made him feel he wasn’t being too self-indulgent.

‘Maybe I should have resisted the lagniappe,’ Lewis said. ‘Fried courgettes are delicious, but they also make me feel I’m halfway through my lunch already.’

He settled on a scaloppina alla valdostana and Philpott ordered osso bucco. The waiter poured the Chianti and they toasted each other in silence.

Aeons ago, it seemed to Philpott, they had been detectives together at Scotland Yard. They had both followed a rapid-promotion path but Harry Lewis was the one the reporters always latched on to for scene-of-crime statements, because Harry was the one they wanted pictures of; he had been strikingly handsome, a moviegoer’s idea of a detective, and he had a good presentational style, firm but always affable, even under the worst kinds of pressure. Philpott, on the other hand, had always been consulted by criminologists, politicians and the more serious, less well-known journalists.

Lewis was still a fine-looking man, Philpott supposed, and his special skills in crime detection and public relations had served him well: for eight years now he had been an Investigative Director with the World Health Organization.

‘Before our food comes, Harry, I want you to tell me the worst.’

‘You mean the scuttlebutt from Policy Control?’

‘That’s what I mean, yes. Don’t make me have to say it.’

‘When there’s a back-stabbing afoot,’ Lewis said, ‘they have a tendency to talk behind hands and with averted heads. Working from that criterion, I’d say they’re determined you should face the music.’

‘I guessed that anyway.’

‘Well, if you want specifics, there’s been a memo from the Director of Policy Control, Tom Lubbock, and the Secretary, Desmond Crane–’

‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee …’

‘Quite. The memo was sent to the Director General. It says that in view of procedural irregularities and a general lack of harmony with other elements within the UN organization, the administration of UNACO should be subjected to a policy scrutiny, with a view to tightening rules and guidelines.’

‘Well again, Harry, I guessed–’

‘Let me finish, Malcolm. They add that if it takes a change of Director to ensure the implementation of more satisfactory working methods, then no one should baulk at taking steps to appoint a replacement.’

Philpott stared at his wine glass for a moment. He looked up at Lewis. ‘So they don’t just want to put me on a leash. They want to get rid of me.’

‘That appears to be the thinking. They’re currently planting the notion among heads of departments that whatever is suggested to improve UNACO’s, um …’

‘Obedience?’

‘… whatever is suggested, however liberal, you will reject it out of hand. In the words of Secretary Crane, you are a man with scant respect for discipline and even less for authority.’