Jack Higgins: Midnight Never Comes

'So he joined the Bureau?'

'Not right away. At first he wasn't interested. He went back to his university post the following term. It was during the Christmas vacation that he came to see if my offer was still open.'

'Did he say why he'd changed his mind?'

'He didn't need to.' Mallory took a Turkish cigarette from an ivory box and inserted it carefully into a jade holder, his one affectation. 'Paul Chavasse has everything a good agent needs. Flair, ingenuity, a superb intelligence plus common sense-and those two don't always go together. Added to these he has the willingness to kill, something most human beings hesitate over, even in a difficult situation.'

'So he decided he wanted a more active life?'

'Something like that. I think the Czechoslovakian affair had made him discover things about himself that he never knew before. That he liked taking a calculated risk and pitting his wits against the opposition. Teaching French and German in a red-brick university must have seemed pretty tame after that.'

'And this was what-ten years ago?'

Mallory nodded. 'I'll tell you one thing, Hammond. I'll be lucky to replace him.'

There was a discreet knock on the door and Jean Frazer came in with a large buff envelope which she placed on the desk. 'The medical reports on Paul Chavasse, Mr. Mallory. The Medical Room says they'll be sending him up in about fifteen minutes.'

Mallory looked down at the envelope and sighed. 'All right, I'll see him as soon as he arrives.' She turned to the door and he added softly: 'And, Miss Frazer. I don't want us to be disturbed-not on any account. Is that understood?'

She went out and Hammond got to his feet. 'Anything more I can do, sir?'

Mallory shook his head. 'This is my baby, Hammond. I'll see you in the morning.'

The door closed and a small trapped wind whistled softly around the room and died in a corner. Mallory looked down at the envelope, remembering many things and pulled himself up hard. That sort of sentimentality never did anyone any good. He put on his spectacles, took out the medical reports and started working through them.

Chavasse lay on his back on the operating table and stared up at his image multiplied again and again in the reflectors on the low ceiling. The bruise was already beginning to show beneath his breastbone, dark with blood, but he could feel no pain.

The very flesh on his body seemed to have shrunk, emphasising the ugly puckered scar of the old gunshot wound in his left shoulder, and the great angry weal of the knife scar that had gutted him like a herring from just above his hip to a point an inch or two below his left nipple.

Ten years. Ten hard, bloody years and this was all he had to show for it. He pushed himself up and as he swung his legs to the floor, the door opened and Dr. Lovatt came in, pipe clamped firmly between his teeth. He ran one hand through the untidy shock of white hair that fell across his forehead and grinned.

'How do you feel, Paul?'

'Terrible. My mouth's like a sandpit.'

Lovatt nodded. 'I gave you a quarter grain of morphine to kill the pain.'

'That's a little old fashioned, isn't it?'

'Still nothing like it as far as I'm concerned,' Lovatt said. 'I'm not going to change my ways just because some drug company sends me a flashy prospectus.'

He leaned forward to examine the knife scar, tracing its course gently with the end of a finger and Chavasse said calmly, 'What do you think?'

'Time, Paul. That's all it needs.'

Chavasse laughed harshly. 'Why pretend? It's taken the sap out of me and you know it. Have you finished the tests?'

'We have. You can get dressed.'

'And what's the verdict?'

'Mallory's got the reports now. He'll see you as soon as you're ready.'

'It's like that, is it?'

'A long rest, that's all you need, but he'll have all that in hand I'm sure.' He moved quickly to the door before Chavasse could reply. 'I'll probably see you again before you go.'

Chavasse dressed slowly, a slight frown on his face. The tests hadn't gone too well, he was certain of that, especially the ones which had followed the fiasco with Jorgensen, but what would the Chief do, that was the point? Put him out to pasture for two or three months perhaps and then give him a job on the inside? It would be nice to be in from the field for a while, or would it?

He was too tired to think straight and the morphia was really beginning to take effect so that he even found difficulty in knotting his tie properly. The Walther automatic was lying on the table together with his wallet and loose change. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, frowning, then slipped it into its special pocket inside his jacket and left. When he went out into the corridor, the building seemed unnaturally quiet and he glanced at his watch. Half-ten. They'd all be away now except for the Duty Officer and the night-shift men in the radio room.

But he was wrong for when he opened the door to Mallory's outer office, Jean Frazer was sitting at her desk. She removed her spectacles, got to her feet and came to meet him, concern on her face.

'How are you, Paul?'

He held her hands briefly. 'Never felt better, Jean. Is he in?'

She nodded and tightened her grip as he started to pull away. 'I thought you might like to come back to my place afterwards. You look as if you could use a decent meal. We could talk things over. It might help.'

For a moment, his face was illuminated by a smile of great natural charm so that he might almost have been a completely different person. He touched her cheek gently and there was real affection in his voice when he spoke.

'Don't waste your time trying to put the pieces together again, Jean. They just won't fit any longer.'

Something seemed to go out of her and her shoulders sagged. Chavasse turned away, tapped once on Mallory's door, opened it and went in.

Mallory sat at his desk, the medical reports before him, cigarette smoke drifting up through the light of the shaded lamp. He glanced up, his face sombre and nodded briefly.

'You don't look too good, Paul. Better sit down.' He got to his feet. 'How about a drink? Whisky suit you?'

'Not according to my doctor,' Chavasse said. 'Or haven't you read those reports yet.'

Mallory hesitated, leaning on the desk with both hands. 'Yes, I've read them.'

'Then could we kindly get this over with. It's been a hard day.'

Mallory took a deep breath and nodded slowly. 'All right, Paul, if that's the way you want it.'

He sat down and opened the file in front of him. When he spoke again, his voice was brisk and formal. 'I'm afraid your fitness tests have proved negative.'

'All of them?' Chavasse said. 'I certainly don't do things by halves, do I?'

'You never did,' Mallory observed dryly. 'Frankly, you would seem to be in a pretty low state of health generally. Understandable, I suppose, in view of what you went through in Albania and then the knife wound didn't help. Dr. Lovatt tells me it's had to be opened up and drained on three separate occasions.

'Something like that. He seems to think a nice long rest in the sun is indicated. What can you offer?'

Mallory removed his spectacles and leaned back in his chair. 'The fact is that I've nothing to offer you at all, not any more. You see, the psychiatrist's report didn't make any better reading than this little lot. It seems your nerves are shot to pieces. He even thinks you need treatment.'

'At ten guineas a time he would,' Chavasse said. 'You must be joking. He couldn't psychoanalyse his way out of a wet paper bag.'

Mallory straightened in his chair and slammed a hand hard down on the desk. 'For God's sake, Paul, face facts. What about your practical earlier this evening? You went in after Jorgensen like an amateur. In the field, you'd have been dead, don't you understand that?'