Derek Lambert - I, Said the Spy

Anderson pushed open the door of the outhouse, stared at Suzy Okana and said: ‘How the hell did she get here?’

Suzy was sitting next to Foster; they were both bound hand and foot.

Prentice said: ‘I left the door open because I didn’t want anyone hammering on it and raising the whole village. And look what walked in,’ he added smiling at Suzy.

‘Double trouble,’ Anderson said. ‘What shall we do with you?’ he asked Suzy.

‘Let us both go,’ Suzy said. The fear had left her now that she was with Nicholas. ‘We can’t do you any harm. I don’t even know why you’re keeping us prisoners.’

‘Unfortunately Mr Foster here does.’

‘The bank account number I presume,’ Foster said.

‘What bank account number?’ Suzy asked.

‘Just a number,’ he told her. ‘It seems to mean a lot to these two gentlemen. And maybe to Hildegard Metz.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Anderson exclaimed.

‘Well I’ve been thinking,’ Foster said. ‘Maybe Anello isn’t involved.’

‘And what brings you to that conclusion?’

‘Just a little theorising. You see, I remember you making damn sure that Mrs Jerome was given a room up at that end of the corridor. So let’s assume that there’s a connection between you and Mrs Jerome.’

‘Go on,’ Anderson said.

‘I know that there’s a connection between Kingdon and Prentice.’

‘So?’

‘It’s only a hunch but to complete the pattern there should be a third connection. And the person most closely connected with Brossard is Fraulein Metz.’

‘Bright as a button,’ Prentice said.

Anderson knelt beside Prentice who was sitting on a pile of sacking. He carried a Pan-Am flight bag with him. He wore a dark blue raincoat and water dripped from it onto the floor.

He said: ‘Really, I’m not kidding, you two could wreck everything.’

‘What? Blackmail?’

‘Do you have strong suicidal tendencies, Mr Foster?’

‘I’ve got nothing to lose.’

Suzy said: ‘I don’t understand, Nicholas….’

Anderson said to Prentice: ‘Just in case there was any doubt, I compared the prints on the photostats with the prints on a drinking glass in Foster’s room. They don’t match up.’

‘So we haven’t got the gunman.’

‘I never thought we had. But now Foster’s been reported missing, Moitry and company reckon Foster’s the guy they’re looking for. A weird situation – I want the guy with the gun found so that he doesn’t louse things up for us but I don’t want Foster found because he’ll do likewise.’

‘One thing’s certain,’ Prentice said, moving the submachine-gun as water began to drip through the roof, ‘we’ll have to shift both of them out of here because it’s only a matter of time before someone else comes through that door. One of Moitry’s men, for instance.’

‘There’s only one place we can logically shift them to,’ Anderson said, ‘because we don’t have time to take them some place else. But this time it’s completely sealed off and I have the keys.’

‘The church?’

‘The bell tower.’

Foster noted that the bantering note had disappeared from both their voices. They spoke briskly and coldly as though each had cast off a disguise. Suzy shivered and Foster pressed his body close to hers.

There would be no difficulty, Anderson explained, in spiriting them inside the church: he was in charge of security and the armed guards at either end of the church would carry out his orders. All he had to do was to instruct the guard on the far side to take a break while he took over for half an hour.

Anderson left first.

Prentice gave it five minutes before cutting the rope binding their ankles with a pocket-knife. He waved the muzzle of the machine-gun at them. ‘Carry on down to the end of the lane where Anderson parked the Chev. Move!’

They walked swiftly through the wasteland on the other side of the outhouse. Prentice told Suzy to get in the back of the Chev. With the knife he slashed the rope round Foster’s wrists and said: ‘Get in, you’re driving.’ When Foster was behind the steering wheel, he climbed in the back aiming the gun at Suzy.

He said to Foster: ‘Drive round to the back of the church and don’t try and be clever because if you do Suzy will suffer.’

Raindrops spattered on the bonnet. Foster switched on the ignition and the wipers began to switch across the windscreen.

He drove along the muddy lane, emerging at the end of the main street.

‘Now turn right,’ Prentice told him.

‘Stop here,’ Prentice said. They were behind the Church beside a gap in the hedge. ‘Through there,’ Prentice said.

As they went through the hedge ahead of him, Prentice heard them whispering. He was crouching, pushing his way through the gap, when they made their move.

Suzy ran to the right, Foster to the left.

Prentice swore. They could only be a few yards away from him but they were hidden by gravestones.

He shouted: ‘I know you can hear me. You can’t both make it. If one makes a break then the other gets it. Got that?’

No reply.

Lightning barbed the sky to his left. A second later a crack of thunder. Rain streamed down the mossy gravestones and collected in puddles.

A movement to his left. He caught sight of Foster’s sodden black jacket and squeezed the trigger of the sub-machine-gun, aiming wide, at the same time moving towards the gravestones hiding Suzy Okana.

The bullets thudded into a leaning gravestone, chipping away an already-eroded date so that only the deceased’s birth-date remained.

Another flash of lightning and an almost simultaneous crack of thunder.

Prentice spotted a patch of blue in the dank grass at the foot of a gravestone. The dress Suzy Okana was wearing under her raincoat was blue. He made a crouching run for the gravestone – and picked up the blue wrapping from an ice-cream.

Another blurred movement to his left. Shit, he thought, they’re getting away with it.

He straightened up and looked round as Foster reached an elaborate marble tomb where three generations of one family had been interred.

Foster wormed his way round the tomb and rested beside a sad little inscription recording the death of Albert Jadot at the age of eight months. What about Suzy? The thing to do was to run towards the road, visible and therefore drawing Prentice’s fire, but shielded by the tomb with its towering, black-marble cross.

He rounded a corner of the tomb and stared into the barrel of Anderson’s .32 Cobra. ‘Man, I really underestimated you,’ Anderson said. ‘Now stand up.’

Prentice saw them standing beside the marble tomb and shouted to Suzy: ‘You can come out now, We’ve got Foster.’

She stood up, three gravestones away.

They continued on their way to the church, entering it through the rear entrance.

‘You really are a couple of smart-asses, aren’t you?’ Anderson said, closing the door.

Foster shrugged and put his arm round Suzy who had begun to shiver again.

Anderson led the way down the aisle, past the empty pews, with Prentice bringing up the rear. They went up the staircase leading to the belfry.

It was dry and dusty up there, and there was a chalk mark on the floor where the spent cartridge had been. The great bells hung motionless on the other side of the railing.

Anderson unzipped the flight bag and took out six sets of handcuffs. ‘Courtesy of the FBI,’ he said.

‘They’re going to die of pneumonia,’ Prentice said.

‘Go and see if you can find anything, George.’ Anderson waved the Cobra at Foster and Suzy.

Prentice returned with a couple of black robes and some thick old curtains that puffed dust when he threw them on the floor.