Alistair MacLEAN: The Dark Crusader

There was a mirror behind his desk, small, flyblown and covered with dust like everything else in that room, and he wasn’t exaggerating any that I could see. Left arm in a black linen sling, right hand holding the heavy stick that helped me along, bloodshot eyes and pale sunken cheeks with the great livid weal that ran from temple to chin, if I could get into the market quick I could make a fortune hiring myself out to haunt houses.

‘I look worse than I really am, sir. I’m just tired, that’s all.’ God only knew how tired I was, I hadn’t slept a couple of hours in the two days it had taken me to fly home from Suva.

‘Have you had anything to eat, Bentall?’ I wondered dryly when this room had last seen such a display of solicitude, not since old Raine had taken over the chair behind that desk, I’d bet.

‘No, sir. I came straight here after I’d phoned from the airport. I’m not hungry.’

‘I see.’ He crossed over to the window and stood there for a few moments, shoulders bent, thin fingers laced behind his back, gazing down at the blurred reflection of the lights on the wet glistening street below. Then he sighed, drew the curtains across the stained and dusty windows, went and sat down, hands lightly clasped on the desk before him. He said, without any preamble: ‘So Marie Hopeman is dead.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s dead.’

‘It’s always the best who go,’ he murmured. ‘Always the best. Why couldn’t an old useless man like myself have gone instead? But it’s never that way, is it? If it had been my own daughter I couldn’t–’ He broke off and stared down at his hands. ‘We’ll never see a Marie Hopeman again.’

‘No, sir. We won’t see a Marie Hopeman again.’

‘How did she die, Bentall?’

‘I killed her, sir. I had to.’

‘You killed her.’ He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘I had your cable from the Neckar, I’ve had a rough outline from the Admiralty about what happened on Vardu Island. I know you have done a magnificent job, but I know nothing. Please tell me everything that happened.’

I told him everything that had happened. It was a long story, but he heard me out without question or interruption. When I was finished he screwed the heels of his palms into his eyes, then pushed both hands slowly up and back across the high lined forehead, the sparse grey hair.

‘Fantastic,’ he murmured. ‘I have heard some strange tales in this office, but–’ He broke off, reached for his pipe and penknife and started his excavations again. ‘A great job, a great job – but what a price. All the speeches, all the thanks in the world can never repay you for what you’ve done, my boy. And no medals in a job like ours, though I have already arranged that you shall have a very special – um – reward for what you have done, and have it very soon.’ A little tic at the corner of his mouth, I was supposed to guess from that that he was smiling. ‘You will, I think, find it positively – ah – staggering.’

I said nothing, and he continued: ‘I have, of course, a hundred and one questions to ask you and you no doubt one or two pointed questions for a small deception I was forced to practise. But this can all wait for the morning.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Good heavens, it’s half past ten. I’ve kept you too long, far too long, you look almost dead.’

‘It’s all right.’ I said.

‘It’s not all right.’ He laid down pipe and knife and gave me the up and under look with those iceberg eyes of his. ‘I have more than a vague idea of what you have suffered, not only physically, what you’ve been through. After all this, Bentall – do you still wish to continue in the service?’

‘More than ever, sir.’ I tried to smile, but it wasn’t worth the pain it cost, so I gave it up. ‘Remember what you said about that chair of yours before I left – I’d still like to sit in it some day.’

‘And I’m determined you shall,’ he said quietly.

‘So am I, sir.’ I put my right hand into the sling to ease my arm. ‘But that’s not the only determination we share.’

‘No?’ A millimetric lift of the grey eyebrows.

‘No. We’re both of us determined on something else. We’re both of us determined that the other will never leave this room alive.’ I took my hand from the sling and showed him my gun. ‘That Luger under your seat. Leave it where it is.’

He stared at me, his mouth slowly tightening.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Bentall?’

‘No, I just found them again, four days ago.’ I rose awkwardly to my feet and hobbled round to his side of the desk. My eye and my gun never left him. ‘Get out of that chair.’

‘You’re overstrained,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve been through too much–’ I struck him across the face with the barrel of my gun.

‘Get out of that chair.’

He wiped some blood from his cheek and rose slowly to his feet.

‘Lay the chair on its side.’ He did as he was told. The Luger was there all right, held by a spring clip. ‘Lift it out with the forefinger and thumb of the left hand. By the point of the barrel. And lay it on the desk.’

Once more he did as he was directed.

‘Get back to the window and turn round.’

‘What in the name of God is–?’

I took a step towards him, gun swinging. He moved quickly backwards, four steps till he felt the curtains behind him, and turned round. I glanced down at the Luger. Heavy silencer, safety catch off, loading indicator registering full. I pocketed my own gun, picked up the Luger and told him to turn round. I hefted the Luger in my hand.

‘The staggering reward I was to get very soon, eh?’ I asked. ‘A slug in the middle of the guts from a 7.65 Luger would make anyone stagger. Only I wasn’t quite as unsuspecting as the last poor devil you murdered when he was sitting in that chair, was I?’

He exhaled his breath in a long silent sigh, and shook his head, very slowly. ‘I suppose you know what you’re talking about, Bentall?’

‘Unfortunately for you, I do. Sit down.’ I waited till he had straightened the chair and seated himself, then leaned against a corner of the desk. ‘How long have you been playing this double game, Raine?’

‘Whatever on earth are you talking about?’ he demanded wearily.

‘I suppose you know I’m going to kill you,’ I said. ‘With this nice silenced Luger. Nobody will hear a thing. The building is deserted. No one saw me come in: and no one will see me go out. They’ll find you in the morning, Raine. Dead. Suicide, they’ll say. Your responsibilities were too heavy.’

Raine licked his lips. He wasn’t saying I was mad any more.

‘I suppose you’ve been engaged in treason all your life, Raine. God knows how you got off with it for so long, I suppose you must be brilliant or they’d have caught on to you years ago. Do you want to tell me about it, Raine?’

The green eyes blazed into mine. I had never before seen such concentrated malignity in a human face. He said nothing.

‘Very well.’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell it as a little short story, a bed-time story before you go to sleep. Listen well, Raine, for it’s the last story you’ll ever hear before the last sleep you’ll ever have.

‘Twenty-five years you spent in the Far East, Raine, the last ten as chief of counter-espionage. Running with the hare and chasing with the hounds all the time, I suppose. God alone knows how much tragedy and suffering you caused out there, how many people died because of you. Then two years ago you came home.

‘But before you came you were approached by one of the powers for whom you were working while you were supposed to be our counter-espionage chief. They told you they had heard rumours that English scientists were making preliminary investigations into solid fuel as a power source for missiles and rockets. They asked you to find out what you could. You agreed. I don’t pretend to know what they promised you, power, money, heaven only knows.