Duncan Kyle - Terror's Cradle

CHAPTER ONE

I like working for the rough ones. Human nature being perverse, that's true of most of us. Give us a considerate, liberal boss and after the first start of surprise, we gradually take ever greater liberties and finally begin to call him an amiable weakling as we linger over idle lunchtime drinks. But show us a real brute, an untrustworthy, ruthless, slavedriver who hounds men to heart attacks and mental collapse, and there's something in us that makes us prance excitedly to every tune he plays. Even his vicious quirks are somehow transmuted into almost affectionate jokes.

I work for one such, I'm usually glad to say. His name is Alex Scown and he's a bastard of the premier cru. Every-body's agreed on that, but when they talk about him, it's an inadequate description. There's always something else to add. They say, he's a bastard, but . . . but talented, but shrewd, but brilliant. But watch your back. Brooding about Scown, I half-listened to the interrogation of the witness, aware that there would now be no revelations. The big Senate committee room was handsome, woodwork and lawyers were polished, witnesses and atmosphere were sweaty, but the earlier tension had gone. The sharks had escaped the net and were swimming gracefully away to offshore sanctuaries, grinning shark grins and, thinking about their next sharky bites.

`Did you,' an amplified voice with a strong Southern accent demanded with truculence but no hope, 'transfer those bonds yourself, in a suitcase, from Boston, Massachusetts to Mexico City?'

I watched idly as the witness thought about it. He thought for perhaps thirty seconds, then leaned away from the microphone and listened to the whispering lawyer beside him. He'd say what they had all said; he'd have to, and the Constitution of the United States had once been amended to ensure that he could say it. He cleared his throat and uttered the standard words. 'I stand on the Fifth Amendment.'

I nodded to myself and made a note. The trumpets had sounded, the great confrontation had taken place, the inquiry had had the promised vigour but nobody was incriminating anybody. In particular, nobody was incriminating a neat and elegant English gentleman who was in this smelly financial dunghill up to his aromatic armpits. He could retain his places in the City and Parliament and sue anybody who even dared to hint that his standards were less than knightly. Nor was he the only one. Discreet sighs of relief were audible from just outside territorial waters on both sides of the Atlantic. I'd phoned London the night before to tell Scown all was virtually over. He'd been disappointed. He'd hoped for blood, thought he actually sniffed it, had planned gleefully to help place the elegant English gentleman in a specimen jar labelled 'crooked politician'

and display it for ten million readers to examine, thereby laying one more banana skin on the Government's already perilous path. But now Scown's intended victim was clear and clean. The air around him would smell once more of sweet violets, or more likely Brut. I'

d told Scown it was a waste of time for me now to hang on in Washington, and that the Congressional inquiry wore a hopeless look. Did Scown want me back in London?

He'd said, 'Hang on another day or so, John. See what happens.'

Well, nothing had happened. I closed my notebook, nodded to my fellow observers and began to thread my way through the yawners at the back of the committee room, already thinking about afternoon flights from Dulles International and the two weeks' holiday that kept on vanishing. Scown didn't believe in holidays. If Scown didn't take holidays, and he didn't, why should anybody else take them? He'd already done me twice, first with the Moscow trip, then with this sortie to Washington. I grinned to myself. If they'd both been glittering Scown-type triumphs, I'd never have

seen water or sand again, except from thirty-thousand feet. But Scown in defeat has never placed a reassuring arm around the dejected soldier; he looks pbintedly in another direction until the next little victory comes along. In London tomorrow I would say, 'I'm off for a few days,' and he'd say, 'Thats a bloody good idea. Try Ireland. Full of donkeys. You'll feel at home.'

I'd already checked out of my hotel, so I collected my bag and briefcase from the correspondents' room and took a cab to the Washington Press Club. Before the flight there was time for lunch and before lunch for a couple of valedictory Martinis. I cabled London with the glad news of my impending return, then went to visit Harry. He's the barman, and Harry's loving care and legerdemain arouse the same appetite for the Martini as the Martini itself is supposed to awaken for food. I watched him fondly and sipped his product with proper appreciation; also with a kind of sadness because the fine American Martini is like the fine Italian olive: it's never quite the same anywhere else and this would be the last for a while.

The club's an amiable and welcoming place and I've been around long enough to know people in most Press Clubs, so lunch was pleasant, gossipy and rather long and would have been still longer if flight time hadn't been ticking threateningly nearer. So finally I detached myself and left for Dulles Airport with that sorry-to-be-leaving-yet-glad-to-begoing-home feeling I always seem to get. Alsa says it's charming sentimentality when it'

s not maudlin insobriety, but then Alsa is a clear-eyed lady for whom one drink is refreshing, pleasurable — and enough. At Dulles International voices of velvet-filled the place with my name. Would John Sellers, passenger for London, please report at the double to the British Airways desk where, though they didn't actually say so over the Tannoy, bad news awaited. One just knows these things. I shouldn't have cabled London, that's what I shouldn't have done. The girl smiled as she handed me the cable: FLY VEGAS RHODES EXCLUSIVE

BOUGHT STOP REGISTERED

DIME PALACE SCOWN.

I sighed, told the girl I would not, after all, be a passenger to London and humped my bag over to the news stand in search of the key to Scown's cryptogram. They sold me the early afternoon edition and it was all on page one, brightly displayed. Superstars sell newspapers. The story said that one Susannah Rhodes, film actress, was in a state of some embarrassment and the state of Nevada., A corpse had been discovered in her hotel bathroom. The message was perfectly clear. Scown, bless his border-reiving ancestors, knew I hated doing showbusiness stories. I could almost hear the underlying pleasure in his subdued snarl as he dictated the cable. No story, Sellers? I'll send you on a bloody story. Also there was the implicit heavy sarcasm of the words EXCLUSIVE BOUGHT. In Scownese they meant: even you can't foul this up.

So not many hours later I was standing a few thousand miles away at the bar of the Flamingo, Las Vegas, waiting for the film company PR man, with my sweat drying too quickly in the air conditioning. Washington had been crackling cold; Las Vegas was going through one of its occasional winter heat waves, with temperatures around ninety. I'd been waiting an hour, but at least I was reasonably sure he'd be along. Strings must certainly have been pulled. Scown sat on the board of a TV company which had diversified into films and was the principal backer of the Rhodes vehicle, so I had my little edge on the army of assembled press and television boys who'd been there hours before me. From the bar I could see most of the gaming room, with its careful lighting, low enough to flatter the women and strong enough to let the staff keep its wary eyes on everything and everybody. Sweet Muzak was playing: heavily orchestrated and optimistic strings to keep the mind off the losings, yet loud enough to overlay the endless cranking of handles and whirring mechanical money swallowers.