Jack Higgins - A Fine Night for Dying

“What kind of problems?”

“If I may use Marxian terminology, each man has his thesis and his antithesis. For a priest, his thesis is everything he believes in, everything he and his vocation stand for. His antithesis, on the other hand, is his darker side-the side that is present in all of us. Fears and hates, violence, aggression, the desires of the flesh. Leonard Rossiter was racked by guilt long before the instructors at Nom Bek got to work on him.”

“But why did he give up Holy Orders?”

“The official explanation was that he had experienced a crisis of faith-that he could no longer continue. This happened three or four years after his return.”

“But you think he’d fallen for the party line?”

Father da Souza nodded. “I think it seemed to offer him what he was searching for-a strong faith-a faith that would support him.”

“You say seemed to offer him, Father?” Darcy Preston said.

Father da Souza smiled gently. “One thing I can tell you with certainty. Leonard Rossiter is a soul in torment. He is like the man in Thompson’s poem, pursued endlessly by the Hound of God, fleeing from the one certain hope of salvation, hell-bent on destruction because of his own self-loathing.”

Chavasse nodded slowly. “That’s all, Father. I think you’ve made your point.”

“I hope I’ve been of help. A pleasure, gentlemen.”

He shook hands and they left him there on the cracked tomb, finishing his cigarette.

“Quite a man,” Darcy Preston said, as they got into the car.

“And then some.”

Mallory listened to what he had to say, a strange abstracted look on his face. “I’ve spoken to NATO intelligence since you were last here.”

“About Montefiore.”

Mallory nodded. “It’s curiously disturbing, Paul. They haven’t got a thing on him. Now that worries me-that really does worry me. I wouldn’t mind knowing that he was the most dangerous double agent in the game as long as one had a hint, but this whole situation smells to high heaven. How do you see it?”

Chavasse stood up and paced backward and forward across the room. “Let’s take the two most important strands: Colonel Ho Tsen-a very dangerous Chinese agent-and Leonard Rossiter, who seems to have fallen for the party line during his captivity. That still leaves us with the most puzzling bit of all. Why should a multimillionaire financier like Enrico Montefiore help to further the cause of militant Chinese-style Communism? And there’s another point-the immigration racket. So amateurish.”

“All right, so Rossiter’s organization is amateurish as you say, but the Chinese don’t have a great deal of choice when it comes to friends and allies. They’ve only got one toehold in Europe, remember-Albania. It’s always possible that they just haven’t realized how second-rate Rossiter’s organization is.”

“You could be right,” Chavasse admitted. “They certainly can’t afford to be too choosy. Any kind of a contact in the European market is better than nothing. I suspect that might be the way they looked at it, and they can be naive. People are always telling us that we don’t understand Asians. That may be true, but they certainly don’t understand us any better.”

Mallory sat there staring into space for perhaps thirty seconds, then he nodded. “Right, Paul, it’s all yours. Find them-all three of them: Ho Tsen, Rossiter and Montefiore. I’d like to know what it’s all about, but the most important thing is to bring them to a stop.”

“A dead stop?”

“Naturally. Seek and destroy. I can’t see any point in taking half measures. It’s completely your baby from now on. Use the usual communication system whenever possible to keep me informed. See Jean on your way out about money. Anything else?”

Chavasse nodded. “The man you’ve got keeping an eye on this bloke Gorman at Fixby-pull him off.”

“You’re going down there yourself?”

“It would seem as good a place as any to start.”

Mallory reached for the phone. “I’ll see to it now. Good luck.”

Jean Frazer glanced up as Chavasse emerged. “You look pleased with yourself.”

“I am.”

Chavasse helped himself to a cigarette from the box on her desk. The eyes were like black glass in the dark Celtic face. He looked like the devil himself, and for some reason, she shivered.

“What is it, Paul?”

“I’m not too sure,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I felt like this.”

“Like what?”

“Personally involved in something. Me, Paul Chavasse, not just the Bureau. I’m thinking of an old man on his back on a south coast beach this morning who only wanted to see his son, and a fussy little woman who died alone, utterly terrified. A silly, stupid little woman who never hurt anyone in her life.”

He sighed heavily and stubbed out his cigarette. “I want revenge, Jean. For the first time, I want to take care of someone permanently for personal reasons. It’s a new sensation. What worries me is how happy I feel about the prospect.”

HE parted from Darcy Preston with regret, for he had come to like the brilliant, sardonic Jamaican, and not only because of what they had been through together. As he packed one or two things, Darcy sat on the window seat and watched. He was wearing a pair of Chavasse’s slacks, a polo neck sweater and a sports jacket in Donegal tweed.

“Sure you’re okay for cash?” Chavasse asked, as he locked his suitcase.

Darcy nodded. “I still have a bank account here.”

Chavasse buttoned an old naval bridge coat that gave him a rather nautical air. “I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you again. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be on your way to sunny Jamaica.”

“Land of carefree calypso and shantytowns. Give me Birmingham any day.” Darcy grinned. “And what about you? Where do you start? At this place, Fixby?”

“Good a place as any.”

The Jamaican held out his hand. “This is it, then. Good luck, Paul, and next time you see Rossiter, give him one for me. Preferably with your boot.”

Chavasse had the door half-open when Darcy spoke again. “Just one thing. It’s been eating away at me, so I’ve got to ask. Why did they kill Harvey that way?”

“I can only guess. They were probably in danger of being boarded. In a manner of speaking, they were destroying the evidence.”

Darcy Preston actually laughed. “You know something, that’s really ironic. That’s exactly what the blackbirders did with their slaves in the old days when the Royal Navy was on their tail-put them over the side in chains.”

He laughed again, but this time there were tears in his eyes, and Chavasse closed the door and left him there, alone with his grief in the quiet room.

Fixby was a village in decline, the sort of place that had enjoyed a mild prosperity when fishing was still an economic proposition, but not now. The young ones had left for the big city and most of the cottages had been taken over by town dwellers seeking a weekend refuge.

Chavasse had himself driven to Weymouth in a Bureau car and completed his journey on the local bus. It was four o’clock in the afternoon when it deposited him in Fixby, where he was the only passenger to alight.

The single street was deserted and the pub, in strict adherence with the English licensing laws, had its door firmly shut. He moved past it and continued toward the creek, one hand pushed in the pocket of his old bridge coat, a slim leather locked briefcase swinging from the other.

The boatyard wasn’t hard to find, a ghost of a place, a graveyard of hopes and ships, beached like dead whales, somber in the rain. There was an office of sorts, a decaying clapboard house behind. There didn’t seem to be anyone about and he moved toward the jetty.