Peter Straub - Magic Terror

Hubert came up to him and placed two fingers on his arm in a delicate gesture of reconciliation. Even before he inclined his head to whisper his confidence, N knew what he was going to say. ‘Your question about that marquetry table troubled me more and more this evening. After all, my reputation is at stake every time I put a piece on display. I examined it with great care, and I think you may have been right. There is a definite possibility that I was misled. I’ll have to look into the matter further, but I thank you for bringing it to my attention.’ The two fingers tapped N’s arm.

He straightened his posture and in a conversational tone said, ‘So you had dinner at my favorite auberge? Agreeable, isn’t it?’ Hubert took one brisk stride over the narrow road, then another, pleased to have concluded one bit of business and eager to get on to the next.

A step behind him, N drew the pistol from the case and shoved the barrel into the base of Hubert’s skull. The dapper little fraud knew what was happening – he tried to dodge sideways. N rammed the muzzle into his pad of hair and pulled the trigger. With the sudden flash and a sound no louder than a cough came a sharp scent of gunpowder and burning flesh. Hubert jolted forward and flopped to the ground. N heard Martine screaming at him even before she got out of the Mercedes.

He pushed the gun into the satchel, clamped the satchel beneath his elbow, bent down to grasp Hubert’s ankles, and began dragging him to the edge of the road. Martine stood up on the far side of the Mercedes, still screaming. When her voice sailed into outraged hysteria, he glanced up from his task and saw a nice little automatic, a sibling to the one in his bedside drawer at home, pointed at his chest. Martine was panting, but she held the gun steady, both arms extended across the top of the Mercedes. He stopped moving and looked at her with an unruffled calm curiosity. ‘Put that thing down,’ he said. He dragged M. Hubert’s body another six inches backward.

‘Stop!’ she screeched.

He stopped and looked back up at her. ‘Yes?’

Martine stood up, keeping her arms extended. ‘Don’t do anything, just listen.’ She took a moment to work out what she would say. ‘We work for the same people. You don’t know who I am, but you are using the name Cash. You weren’t supposed to show up until the deal was set, so what’s going on?’ Her voice was steadier than he would have expected.

Hubert’s ankles in his hands, N said, ‘First of all, I do know who you are, Martine. And it should be obvious that what’s going on is a sudden revision of our plans for the evening. Our people found out your friend was planning to cheat his customers. Don’t you think we ought to get him off the road before the customers turn up?’

She glanced downhill without moving the pistol. ‘They didn’t tell me about any change.’

‘Maybe they couldn’t. I’m sorry I startled you.’ N walked backward until he reached the edge of the road. He dropped Hubert’s feet and moved forward to grab the collar of his jacket and pull the rest of his body onto the narrow verge. He set the satchel beside his feet.

She lowered the gun. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘Our contact. What’s he called now? Our divisional region controller. He said you’d be handling all the paperwork. Interesting guy. He’s an Indian, did you know that? Lives in Fontainebleau. His daughter has a rabbit named Custer.’ N bent at the knees and planted his hands on either side of Hubert’s waist. When he pulled up, the body folded in half and released a gassy moan.

‘He’s still alive,’ Martine said.

‘No, he isn’t.’ N looked over the edge of the narrow strip of grass and down into the same abyss he had seen from the edge of the parking lot. The road followed the top of the gorge as it rose to the plateau.

‘It didn’t look to me like he was planning to cheat anybody.’ She had not left the side of the Mercedes. ‘He was going to make a lot of money. So were we.’

‘Cheating is how this weasel made money.’ N hauled the folded corpse an inch nearer the edge, and Hubert’s bowels emptied with a string of wet popping sounds and a strong smell of excrement. N swung his body over the edge and let go. Hubert instantly disappeared. Five or six seconds later came a soft sound of impact and a rattle of scree, and then nothing until an almost inaudible thud.

‘He even cheated his customers,’ N said. ‘Half the stuff in that shop is no good.’ He brushed off his hands and looked down at his clothes for stains before tucking the satchel back under his left arm.

‘I wish someone had told me this was going to happen.’ She put the pistol in her handbag and came slowly around the trunk of the Mercedes. ‘I could always call for confirmation, couldn’t I?’

‘You’d better,’ N said. In English, he added, ‘If you know what’s good for you.’

She nodded and licked her lips. Her hair gleamed in the light from the Mercedes. The skimpy black thing was a shift, and her black sheer nylons ended in low-heeled pumps. She had dressed for the Arabs, not the auberge. She flattened a hand on the top of her head and gave him a straight look. ‘All right, Monsieur Cash, what do I do now?’

‘About what you were supposed to do before. I’ll drive up to the restaurant, and you go back to town for your car. The mule who’s driving it down from Paris takes this one to Russia. Call in as soon as you get to your – what is it? – your LUD.’

‘What about …?’ She waved in the direction of the auberge.

‘I’ll express our profound regrets and assure our friends that their needs will soon be answered.’

‘They said fieldwork was full of surprises.’ Martine smiled at him uncertainly before walking back to the Mercedes.

Through the side window N saw a flat black briefcase on the back seat. He got behind the wheel, put his satchel on his lap, and examined the controls. Depressing a button in the door made the driver’s seat glide back to give him more room. ‘I almost hate to turn this beautiful car over to some Russian mobster.’ He fiddled with the button, tilting the seat forward and lowering it. ‘What do we call our armament-deprived friends, anyway? Tonto calls them ragheads, but even ragheads have names.’

‘Monsieur Temple and Monsieur Law. Daniel didn’t know their real names. Shouldn’t we be going?’

Finally, N located the emergency brake and eased it in. He depressed the brake pedal and moved the automatic shift from park to its lowest gear. ‘Get me the briefcase from the back seat. Doing it now will save time.’ The Mercedes swam forward as he released the brake pedal. Martine glanced at him, then shifted around to put one knee on her seat. She bent sideways and stretched toward the briefcase. N dipped into the satchel, raised the tip of the silencer to the wall of her chest, and fired. He heard the bullet splat against something like bone and then realized that it had passed through her body and struck a metal armature within the leather upholstery. Martine slumped into the gap between the seats. Before him, a long leg jerked out, struck the dash, and cracked the heel off a black pump. The cartridge came pinging off the windshield and ricocheted straight to his ribs.

He shoved the pistol back home and tapped the accelerator. Martine slipped deeper into the well between the seats. N thrust open his door and cranked the wheel to the left. Her hip slid onto the handle of the gearshift. He touched the accelerator again. The Mercedes grumbled and hopped forward. Alarmingly near the edge, he jumped off the seat and turned into the spin his body took when his feet met the ground.

He was close enough to the sleek, recessed handle on the back door to caress it. Inch by inch, the car stuttered toward the side of the road. Martine uttered an indecipherable dream-word. The Mercedes lurched to the precipice, nosed over, tilted forward and down, advanced, hesitated, stopped. The roof light illuminated Martine’s half-conscious struggle to pull herself back into her seat. The Mercedes trembled forward, dipped its nose, and with exquisite reluctance slid off the earth into the huge darkness. Somersaulting in midair, it cast wheels of yellow light, which extinguished when it smashed into whatever was down there.