Jack Higgins - A Fine Night for Dying

Chavasse looked at his watch and saw that it was almost noon. “They’ll be almost there by now, if the weather holds.”

“Saint Denise?” Mallory nodded. “Yes. I’m inclined to agree with you, and our friend from the People’s Republic will have returned with them if I’m any judge. For one thing, he’s going to need some kind of medical attention, and for another, he won’t want to hang around now that things have turned sour. Very practical people, the Chinese.”

“What about Rossiter?”

Mallory picked up a flimsy and examined it. “Now he really is an amazing character. I can’t get over him. Stoneyhurst, a double first at Cambridge, five years at the English College in Rome and then Korea. The Chinese had him for four years-four years behind the wire. That must have been hell.”

Remembering his own experiences in a similar position for only a week, Chavasse nodded. “You can say that again. But why did he throw up Holy Orders? What was the given reason?”

“Difficult to discover. The Church doesn’t exactly fall over itself to discuss this sort of thing. However, I’ve pulled a few strings and they’ve reluctantly given me the address of a priest who was in captivity with Rossiter. His parish is right here in London, which is convenient.”

Chavasse examined the card Mallory passed across. Father Henry da Souza. Portuguese, which would probably turn out to mean that his family had been living in England for at least five hundred years. “Was there ever the slightest suggestion that Rossiter had turned Red?”

Mallory shrugged. “Anything is possible in this worst of all possible worlds, dear boy. They certainly did a good job on him. Of course, a priest has something to hang on to; something to fight them with. Having said that, there’s no question that ministers held by the Chinese for a period and later released have sometimes needed psychiatric help on their return, that’s how complete the brainwashing process has been. They’ve done research into it at Harvard, I understand. Anyway, you go and see Father da Souza and see what you can get out of him.”

“What about Darcy Preston?”

“No problem there, as long as he behaves himself and keeps his mouth shut. We’ll put him on a plane for Jamaica tomorrow.”

“Is it all right if he stays at my place in the meantime?”

“I don’t see why not.” Mallory shook his head. “Saint Paul’s by day and Soho by night. What a strange, mixed-up life that boy must have had.”

Chavasse got to his feet. “He seems to have survived it well. I’ll be in touch later this afternoon.”

He was halfway to the door when the phone buzzed again. Mallory called him back with a gesture and picked up the receiver. He put it down again with a sigh. “The body of a middle-aged woman wearing a life jacket was pulled out of the sea off Weymouth by a fishing boat an hour ago. Paul, I’m sorry-damned sorry. Especially in view of what you told me.”

“So am I,” Chavasse said, and went out quietly, murder in his heart.

THE Church of the Immaculate Conception was not far from the East India Docks, an area that was anything but salubrious. Chavasse parked his car on the opposite side of the road and switched off the engine. He took a cigarette from his case and offered one to Darcy Preston.

“Graham Mallory would hang, draw and quarter me if he knew I’d brought you along. On the other hand, he did tell me to keep an eye on you, and I can’t very well be in two places at once.”

“You could try, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” Preston said, and he got out of the car.

The church backed onto the river, a small, rather grimy pseudo-Gothic building of a kind that had been built extensively during a certain period of the nineteenth century. They went in through a porched entrance to a place of candles and shadows, incense and quiet peace. It was empty except for the man who knelt by the altar rail in a priest’s cassock, white hair flaming like a halo in the candlelight.

Chavasse crossed himself and dipped a knee instinctively, although he had not practiced his religion for years, and they moved down the aisle. The priest got to his feet and was about to go toward the vestry, when he saw them and paused, smiling faintly.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?”

His eyes were those of a man who loved the whole world, a rare enough breed. A bad scar ran from the right eye into the hair, but otherwise he had a face as calm and untroubled as that of a two-year-old child.

“Father da Souza? My name is Chavasse. I believe you were expecting me? This is Mr. Preston, an associate.”

“Ah, yes.” Father da Souza nodded. “Something to do with Leonard Rossiter, wasn’t it?” He smiled. “Why don’t we go outside? It’s rather pleasant at the moment.”

At the rear of the church, a cemetery ran down to the Thames, spiked railings fringing a low wall. There was plenty of activity on the river and the priest had been right-it was pleasant in the pale sunshine.

He sat on a tombstone and accepted a cigarette from Chavasse. “This is nice-very nice. I often come out here to think, you know. Somehow it has the right atmosphere.” He bent his head to the match Preston held out to him and leaned back with a sigh of content. “Now then, what was it you wanted to know about Leonard?”

“Before we go any further, Father, I think I should make it clear that this is a serious business and highly confidential. In fact, a matter of national security.”

Da Souza didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest. “Go on.”

“Would you say it was possible that Leonard Rossiter had turned Communist?”

Father da Souza examined the end of his cigarette with a slight, abstracted frown and sighed. “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t think there was much doubt about it.”

“I see. Have you ever spoken of this to anyone before?”

“No one ever asked me.”

Chavasse nodded. “All right, Father, tell me all you can.”

“I was sent to work in Korea just after the Second World War. I was taken prisoner by North Korean forces a few days after the Korean War started.”

“And Rossiter?”

“Oh, I didn’t meet Leonard for quite some time-nine months later, when I was moved to a special camp in Manchuria. An indoctrination center run by the Chinese.”

“And you think Rossiter was brainwashed there?”

Father da Souza laughed gently. “Good heavens, it isn’t as easy as that, you know. They have an extraordinarily simple technique, and yet it works so very often. The original concept is Pavlovian. A question of inducing guilt or rather of magnifying the guilt that is in all of us. Shall I tell you the first thing my instructor asked me, gentlemen? Whether I had a servant at the mission to clean my room and make my bed. When I admitted that I had, he expressed surprise, produced a Bible and read me that passage in which Our Lord speaks of serving others. Yet here was I, allowing one of those I had come to help to serve me. Extraordinary how guilty that one small point made me feel.”

“But your faith, Father?” Preston said. “Wasn’t it of any help at all?”

The old priest smiled beautifully. “My son, my faith was triumphant; it overcame all odds in spite of everything that was attempted with me. I have never felt more certain of God than I did during those dark days.”

“And Rossiter?” Chavasse said. “What about Rossiter’s faith?”

The old priest looked genuinely troubled. “I am in a difficult position here, gentlemen. I was Leonard’s confessor at Nom Bek, and he mine. The secrets of the confessional are sacred. Let me say that he had problems long before he fell into Communist hands. From their point of view, he was fruit that was ripe for the picking.”