Traitor's Blood Read online

  ‘It’ll be in your account tomorrow.’ I glanced at William Banks’s Omega digital. ‘Three hours, is that right? You’ll have things to do. Do them quietly, OK? I’ll catch some sleep.’

  He looked at me in disbelief for a moment. How he looked after a moment I don’t know.

  Seated on the hard chair in front of the rough table which held the shaving mirror, I sank rapidly into a deep and precisely measured sleep.

  As I waited for my flight to be called at Simon Bolivar the following morning, I bought a copy of El Universal. My kidnapping got a big splash. The text of a FALN message was printed with only minor omissions, notably the obscene adjectives which always introduced the President and his government. There was some nice rhetoric.

  The world vomits to see how our beloved country harbours the criminal detritus of other nations. Only a government of criminals would extend the hand of friendship to other criminals. How much of Swift’s stolen millions has gone into the pockets of our corrupt officials? The FLN does not attack the people nor does it want money belonging to the people. All it wants for the safe release of this evil man is the chance to use his ill-gotten wealth for the true benefit of the people. Plus the following legitimate demands.

  The list of ‘legitimate demands’ was long and comprehensive. The editor of El Universal suggested wryly that it wasn’t very skilful bargaining to stress so emphatically the worthlessness of what you were selling. I smiled. It was going to give the British press a problem too. I mean, they couldn’t really express their customary jingoistic indignation when they didn’t give a damn, could they?

  Personally I didn’t mind what they said as long as it kept all interested parties happy that I wasn’t on the Isla de Margarita only because I was tied up in some stinking cellar in Caracas.

  My flight to New York was called. I boarded the plane without incident and it took off dead on time. I settled down to read the American newspapers provided with the in-flight literature. Below me Venezuela faded away. I’d spent the last ten years, a quarter of my life there, besides many happy weeks on vacation with Mama when I was a child. I didn’t reckon I’d see it again. I really meant to take one last nostalgic backward look.

  But somehow I forgot.

  New York took me unawares. Last time I’d been here, I was one step ahead of Hunnicut and not in a very impressionistic mood. Since then I’d spent most of my life seeing more trees than people. Now these buildings, these crowds, suddenly sensitized an area of my mind I’d forgotten existed, an area even Quintero and his stumbling introduction of the word ‘cancer’ hadn’t really reached—panic.

  It passed quickly. I paid off my cab on Fifth Avenue and walked across to Madison, an intuitive rather than a necessary precaution. I’d booked a room at the Biltmore from the airport. The lobby was packed with a party of Japs fighting for their room keys. I pushed through them with no more concern than if they’d been pampas grass, and when I had my meal alone in my room later, it wasn’t because I was frightened of being among people, but simply because I was exhausted.

  The next day I felt much better, indeed the best I’d felt in weeks. Quintero had told me that initially deterioration would be slow and there might even be times when the discomfort which had taken me to him in the first place might temporarily disappear. As I washed his tablets down with a cup of that bitter black goo the Americans like to claim is the best coffee in the world, I wondered about getting a second opinion. On Margarita it would have been impossible without inviting everyone to know my business and that was the last thing I’d wanted. Suddenly it struck me that in one respect a second opinion was pointless. Healthy or dying, I was committed now. I was on my way home.

  Yes, I’d get a second opinion all right. I’d be a fool not to. But in the only place an educated, well-heeled English gentleman would dream of looking for a second opinion: Harley Street.

  There was one more change of identity.

  My Viscount Bessacarr passport was locked away somewhere in the Venezuelan Ministry of Justice, but I hadn’t let them lay hands on that of my alterapersona, Alexander Evans. I’d had to update it a little, but there’d been plenty of time on Margarita to do a good job.

  I crossed the border into Canada as William Banks, shaved my moustache off in a motel room that same night, and arrived in Montreal as Alexander Evans.

  There I spent three days allegedly letting the dust settle and making sure that no one was taking any undue interest in me. I say ‘allegedly’ for on the third day I woke up knowing that I’d been merely procrastinating.

  Once out of Venezuela, I was as unsafe in one place as in any other, and in a Commonwealth country I might just as well have been in England.

  I bought my ticket to London.

  I travelled tourist on a cut-price night flight. There was no point in being ostentatious. We arrived at Heathrow at five-thirty in the morning. Unchallenged, I walked through the green-light channel. Then and only then as I emerged into the outer reception area of Heathrow did it really strike me that I was back.

  I stood still and took it all in. There were signs directing me towards an Underground link with central London. That was new since last time I was here, I thought.

  Outside through the plate glass I could see that the skies were heavy and grey. Or perhaps it was just morning mist, I thought generously. I wanted it to feel good to be back.

  Someone bumped into the back of me and I realized I was blocking the way. I began to move forward again and the person behind moved with me.

  But now there was a hand on my arm gripping it firmly but not yet painfully above the elbow. Jesus reckoned he knew when someone was touching him with intent and purpose. Me too. And I knew who it was even before he spoke.

  ‘Mr Evans? Or is it Señor Swift?’ said Hunnicut’s familiar voice. ‘No, let’s be properly formal now you’re back on English soil. Welcome home, my lord!’

  3

  … just the job …

  I hadn’t seen Hunnicut since we sweated out the Venezuelan government’s decision on extradition ten years before. They kept me under a sort of house-restraint in one of Caracas’s best hotels. Hunnicut was six floors below me and on the noisy front, while my suite overlooked the garden. They kept a much closer eye on him than they did on me. After all, I was a paying customer, while the chauvinist Hunnicut was a very undesirable alien.

  ‘Hello, Honey,’ I said, ‘Still Chief Superintendent, is it?’

  ‘Commander now,’ he said. ‘I could have retired last year, but I always had this feeling, if I waited long enough I’d see you again, Swifty.’

  ‘Well, congratulations,’ I said. ‘On your promotion and your premonition.’

  I stopped now and turned to face him. He released my arm but kept close. The years had been good to him. Or rather they’d stamped forty on his face at birth and now at fifty he was at last in credit. He was stuffed full of the prejudices and the conventional wisdom of the British working man. But he was dogged in pursuit and incorruptible in negotiation. He’d never even let me buy him a drink, and I mean in private as well as in public. I liked him for that.

  Now I looked at him standing warily before me, deep-set grey eyes watchful, heavy shoulders hunched, Gibraltarian jaw thrust invitingly forward. But anyone who took a swing at that would be a fool.

  I smiled, put down my suitcase and held out my right hand.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ I said. ‘It’s not right coming home with no one to meet you. It’s nice to see you, Honey.’

  Instinctively he took my hand. I pulled him towards me and swung the attaché case in my left hand hard between his legs. His eyes came further out of their deep caves than they’d been in half a century and his mouth rounded in a rather feminine pout. Pride, or shock, didn’t let any sound come out, but his leathery cheeks switched quickly from dark to light tan. He still tried to hold on to me, but I pulled free and then I was off; where, I didn’t know, but why, I knew full well. I wanted to see my daughter before I
died and I didn’t want it to be across a prison table with a gaggle of screws looking on.

  I should have known better. Hunnicut had slipped up by letting me get close enough to groin him, but there’d been no looseness about the rest of his reception plans. There were men on every exit. I met the first at the bottom of the stairway. More by luck than judgment my flailing hand took him across the nose and temporarily fended him off. The next stood innocently by till I was almost past him then he tripped me and jumped with both knees into my kidneys. A third ‘accidentally’ trod on my left hand and I let go of the attaché case. By this time the first had joined the party, signalling his arrival by burying his size eleven in my ribs and showering my lightweight mohair with blood from his nose.

  Once there’d have been a fascinated crowd around such a scene in ten seconds flat, but now disturbances at international airports so often mean bombs and bullets that the initial instinct is to flee, or at least fall flat, rather than gather. So my captors managed to get in several more telling blows before deciding that they were running the risk of offending the delicate public.

  I was dragged to a waiting car. Hunnicut climbed painfully into the front passenger seat.

  ‘Want a free swing, guv?’ offered one of the men sandwiching me in to the rear.

  Hunnicut looked sorely tempted but to his credit shook his head. Not that it did me much good. As the car drew away, the sycophant in the back gave me two pile drivers in the belly. At least I think it was two. I really only felt the first before sliding to the floor in a darkness as sudden and complete as nightfall in the Caribbean.

  At what stage it was decided that I’d be better off in a hospital ward than in a cell at West End Central, I don’t know. The thumps I got must have been par for the course in most resisted arrests, but I’d banged my head on the floor when I went down and I guess I was a bit concussed. Anyhow, I vaguely remember getting the full medical bit and I spent most of my first day back in Blighty asleep in a bright white hospital room. Of course my sleep was medicated and intermittent. I was brought out of it from time to time to be examined every which way and I had enough clarity of thought and vision to spot the bars on the window and the muscle on the door.

  Finally about six in the evening I woke up feeling if not like a new man at least recognizably like the old one and also very hungry.

  I shouted to the Herculean cop and demanded food. He didn’t look as if he understood me and when he came back with Hunnicut, I said, ‘How come someone as xenophobic as you has started hiring non-English-speaking cops?’

  He smiled wanly. He looked very down, I thought. It was not the way a man should look who had finally removed the one obstacle to his happy and honoured retirement.

  I said, ‘What’s the food like here, Honey? I’d appreciate a decent last meal before you take me to the dungeons.’

  He offered me a Woodbine. I shook my head and watched as he lit one himself. He used to rather fancy himself with smoke-rings, but it just came out in a steady jet today.

  ‘I’ll see you get something just now,’ he said.

  ‘Just for the book, Honey,’ I said, ‘how’d you know I was coming?’

  ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘It’s all computers now, Swifty. Soon as I heard you’d gone missing, I put out a scan for an Alexander Evans on all incoming transatlantic flights, just in case.’

  Simple indeed. I should have stuck with William Banks.

  ‘Cheer up, Honey,’ I said. ‘They’ll make you commissioner for this.’

  He tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the washbasin and turned the tap on it, his back towards me.

  ‘Swifty,’ he said over the gush of water, ‘I’ve been talking to the doctor.’

  Then I had it. I realized I’d saved myself a Harley Street fee. I’d got my second opinion on the National Health.

  He turned and looked at me so unhappily that I found myself putting on a comforting tone. Me comforting him already!

  ‘It’s OK, Honey,’ I said. ‘I know. That’s why I came.’

  He started to answer but the door opened at the same time as his mouth and what entered was far more distracting than what could possibly have emerged.

  The man was unremarkable though not undistinguished. About fifty, small but very erect, finely chiselled features, neat, greying military moustache and dressed in a traditionally cut charcoal grey suit which he wore like a uniform. Brigadier in mufti, I categorized.

  But the woman defied categorizing. She was younger, perhaps in her early thirties, but heavy, almost theatrical make-up made it difficult to be sure. Her not unattractively squashed-up features were topped with a spiky haircut far too red to be natural. And she was wearing two hundred pounds’ worth of indigo velvet jacket over a grubby yellow T-shirt and patched jeans. I’d missed out on punk but this had to be it.

  ‘Thank you, Commander,’ said the Brigadier dismissively.

  Hunnicut looked at him angrily.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he began.

  I didn’t care to hear that. If Honey didn’t like it, I guessed I wasn’t going to be ecstatic either. But his protest was cut short by the punk woman, who thrust back the door till it crashed against the wall and jerked her incredible head at the opening.

  Hunnicut’s shoulders hunched, not in aggression but defeat, and he left without looking at me.

  The punk slammed the door behind him and leaned against it, eyeing me dispassionately. The Brigadier drew up a chair to the bedside.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘You’re not meals-on-wheels, I suppose?’

  ‘Lord Bessacarr. Or, if you prefer it, Mr Swift,’ he began in a cold, clear, court-martial-verdict kind of voice. ‘You are suffering from a cancerous condition which is almost certainly terminal. You have come back to England presumably to see your daughter for the last time and no doubt to put your affairs in order. I am here to tell you that you have no hope of carrying out this plan.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘You mean if I just lie here and slowly die over the next few months, no one will let my lawyer in? Or any other legitimate visitors? You’re talking nonsense! You couldn’t do that, not even to a recaptured escapee and I’m not that, remember? There’s been no trial, no verdict. Hell, I haven’t even been formally arrested yet.’

  I pushed back the sheets and swung my legs out of bed. I felt a bit woozy but nothing that a bit of gentle exercise and a few deep breaths of fresh air wouldn’t throw off. Not that I expected to get beyond the door, but it would be interesting to see how the brigadier would react. He didn’t, but then he didn’t need to, not with me in a hospital nightgown like a parachute and no clothes anywhere in sight.

  So I washed my hands carefully instead and said, ‘Look, couldn’t we discuss this thing over a kilo of steak?’

  ‘Let me make the position clear,’ said the Brigadier. ‘As far as we’re concerned, you’re Mr Alexander Evans. You are being held for breaking the currency regulations. You will be remanded in custody pending further investigation. If you attempt to tell the court that you are really Lemuel Swift (who, incidentally, you resemble not at all and who is currently well known to be in the hands of FALN terrorists somewhere in Venezuela) you will be remanded in custody for psychiatric examination. These remands will continue till they are no longer necessary, which medical prognosis suggests will be not earlier than eight, not later than sixteen weeks. Once you are bedridden, of course, you cease to be of. interest to anyone and can tell the world whatever you like.’

  ‘One newspaper picture of me coming out of court after shouting to the press that I’m Lem Swift and I’ll be of interest to a lot of people.’

  ‘I doubt it. The chances of anyone taking such a picture are remote, and even if they did, I repeat, you don’t look much like the hirsute exile whose picture appeared in all the papers last week.’

  ‘My wife would recognize me,’ I said.

  ‘I dare say she would,’ said the Brigadier. And if she did, this would merely confirm what has alr
eady been suggested to her; to wit, that your kidnapping was a cover to get you back to England undetected where you purpose considerable harm to your enemies, including your former wife and daughter.’

  ‘You told her that?’ I said aghast. ‘She’d never believe that.’

  ‘On the contrary, she found it quite easy to believe. Your recent phone call seemed to her an evident symptom of your paranoiac state, brought on, she has now been told, by long isolation and various tropical diseases.’

  ‘And Angelica … ?’

  He nodded and said, ‘I fear so. She had to be put fully in the picture so that she wouldn’t inadvertently leave a trail a journalist, say, might follow.’

  A trail?’

  ‘Oh yes. Didn’t I say? They’ve left the country, ostensibly to avoid being pestered by the papers. But they believe you’re the real threat, Mr Swift. You’ll need my help both to find them and to persuade them otherwise.’

  I wanted to hit him. Instead I managed an unconcerned shrug and said, ‘OK, doc. Here’s the deal. You get me my clothes and buy me dinner, and we’ll talk this thing through. I mean, it may be all you want is my signature on a blankets-for-Oxfam list, OK?’

  ‘This creep’s lower than dog-dirt,’ said the woman, opening her orange-gash-vermilion mouth for the first time. Her voice was not unpleasant, husky and very Irish.

  ‘Hey, doc,’ I said. ‘You did that without moving your lips.’

  ‘Mr Swift,’ said the Brigadier. ‘You know I’m not a doctor just as I know that a man of your background does not speak naturally like a stray from some Yankee hard-nosed detective series. Can we remove at once both those sources of irritation?’

  ‘Brigadier,’ I said, ‘for my clothes and a meal I’ll be delighted to remove anything you care to suggest.’

  He started slightly as though my change of title had struck home, then he said, ‘Miss Reilly, would you mind?’

  ‘Miss?’ I chortled. ‘You mean she’s an unclaimed treasure?’