Alistair MacLean - Fear is the Key

"But this is blackmail!"

"Blackmail?" Jablonsky lifted an eyebrow. "You want to read up some law, girlie. In its strict legal sense, blackmail is hush-money — a tribute paid to buy immunity, money extorted by the threat of telling everyone what a heel the blackmailee is. Has General Ruthven anything to hide? I doubt it. Or you might just say that blackmail is demanding money with menaces. Where's the menace? I'm not menacing you. If your old man doesn't pay up I'll just walk away and leave you to Talbot here. Who can blame me? I'm scared of Talbot. He's a dangerous man. He's a killer."

"But — but then you would get nothing."

"I'd get it," Jablonsky said comfortably. I tried to imagine this character flustered or unsure of himself: it was impossible. "Only a threat. Your old man wouldn't dare gamble I wouldn't do it. Hell pay, all right."

"Kidnapping is a federal offence—" the girl began slowly.

"So it is," Jablonsky agreed cheerfully. "The hot chair or the gas chamber. That's for Talbot. He kidnapped you. All I'm doing is talking about leaving you. No kidnapping there." His voice hardened. "What hotel is your father "He's not at any hotel." Her voice was flat and toneless and she'd given up. "He's out on the X 13."

"Talk sense," Jablonsky said curtly.

"X 13 is one of his oil rigs. It's out in the gulf, twelve, maybe fifteen miles from here. I don't know."

"Out in the gulf. You mean one of those floating platforms for drilling for oil? I thought they were all up off the bayou country off Louisiana."

"They're all round now — off Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Dad's got one right down near Key West. And they don't float, they — oh, what does it matter? He's on X 13."

"No phone, huh?"

"Yes. A submarine cable. And a radio from the shore office."

"No radio. Too public. The phone — just ask the operator for the X 13, huh?"

She nodded without speaking, and Jablonsky crossed to the phone, asked the motel switchboard girl for the exchange, asked for the X 13 and stood there waiting, whistling in a peculiarly tuneless fashion until a sudden thought occurred to him.

"How does your father commute between the rig and shore?"

"Boat or helicopter. Usually helicopter."

"What hotel does he stay at when he's ashore?"

"Not a hotel. Just an ordinary family house. He's got a permanent lease on a place about two miles south of Marble Springs."

Jablonsky nodded and resumed his whistling. His eyes appeared to be gazing at a remote point in the ceiling, but when I moved a foot a couple of experimental inches those eyes were on me instantly. Mary Ruthven had seen both the movement of my foot and the immediate switch of Jablonksy's glance, and for a fleeting moment her eye caught mine. There was no sympathy in it, but I stretched my imagination a little and thought I detected a flicker of fellow-feeling. We were in the same boat and it was sinking fast.

The whistling stopped. I could hear an indistinguishable crackle of sound then Jablonsky said: "I want to speak to General Ruthven. Urgently. It's about — say that again? I see. I see."

He depressed the receiver and looked at Mary Ruthven.

"Your father left the X 13 at 4 p.m., and hasn't returned. They say he won't be back until they've found you. Blood, it would appear, is thicker than oil. Makes things all the easier for me." He got through to the new number he'd been given from the oil rig and asked for the general again. He got him almost at once and didn't waste a word.

"General Blair Ruthven… I've got news for you, General. Good news and bad. I've got your daughter here. That's the good news. The bad news is that it'll cost you fifty thousand bucks to get her back." Jablonsky broke off and listened, spinning the Mauser gently round his forefinger, smiling as always. "No, General, I am not John Talbot. But Talbot's with me right now. I've persuaded him that keeping father and daughter apart any longer is downright inhuman. You know Talbot, General, or you know of him. It took a lot of persuading. Fifty thousand bucks' worth of persuading."

The smile suddenly vanished from Jablonsky's face leaving it bleak and cold and hard. The real Jablonsky. His voice, when he spoke, was softer and deeper than ever and gently reproving as to an erring child.

"General, do you know what? I just heard a funny little click. The sort of funny little click you hear on a line when some smart-alec nosey picks up an extension and starts flapping his ears or when somebody cuts in a tape recorder. I don't want any eavesdroppers. No records of private conversations. Neither do you. Not it you ever want to see your daughter again… ah, that's better. And General, don't get any funny ideas about telling someone to get through to the cops on another line to ask them to trace this call. We'll be gone from wherever we are in exactly two minutes from now. What's your answer? Make it quickly, now."

Another brief pause, then Jablonsky laughed pleasantly.

"Threatening you, General? Blackmail, General? Kidnapping, General? Don't be so silly, General. There's no law that says that a man can't run away from a vicious killer, is there? Even if that vicious killer happens to have a kidnappee with him. I'll just walk out and leave them together. Tell me, are you bargaining for your daughter's life, General? Is she worth no more to you than less than one-fiftieth of one per cent of all you own? Is that all her value to a doting father? She's listening in to all this, General. I wonder what she must think of you, eh? Willing to sacrifice her life for an old shoe-button — for that's all fifty thousand bucks is to you… Sure, sure you can speak to her." He beckoned to the girl, who ran across the room and snatched the phone from his hand.

"Daddy? Daddy!… Yes, yes, it's me, of course it's me. Oh, Daddy, I never thought—"

"Right, that'll do." Jablonsky laid his big square brown hand across the mouthpiece and took the phone from her. "Satisfied, General Blair? The genuine article, huh?" There was a short silence, then Jablonsky smiled broadly. "Thank you, General Blair. I'm not worrying about any guarantee. The word of General Ruthven has always been guarantee enough." He listened a moment, and when he spoke again the sardonic glint in his eye as he looked at Mary Ruthven gave the lie to the sincerity in his voice. "Besides, you know quite well that if you welshed on that money and had a house full of cops, your daughter would never speak to you again… No need to worry about my not coming. There's every reason why I should. Fifty thousand, to be exact."

He hung up. "On your feet, Talbot. We have an appointment with high society."

"Yes." I sat where I was. "And then you turn me over to the law and collect your fifteen thousand?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I could give you twenty thousand reasons."

"Yeah?" He looked at me speculatively. "Got 'em on you?"

"Don't be stupid. Give me a week, or perhaps—"

"Bird-in-the-hand Jablonsky, pal, that's me. Get going. Looks like being a nice night's work."

He cut my bonds and we went out through the garage. Jablonsky had a hand on the girl's wrist and a gun about thirty inches from my back. I couldn't see it, but I didn't have to. I knew it was there.

Night had come. The wind was rising, from the northwest, and it carried with it the wild harsh smell of the sea and a cold slanting rain that spattered loudly against the rustling dripping fronds of the palms and bounced at an angle off the asphalt pavement at our feet. It was less than a hundred yards to where Jablonsky had left his Ford outside the central block of the motel, but that hundred yards made us good and wet. The parking-lot, in that rain, was deserted, but even so Jablonsky had backed his car into the darkest corner. He would. He opened both offside doors of the Ford, then went and stood by the rear door.