Cat Among the Pigeons
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Miss Bulstrode heaved a sigh of relief. Excellent Chaddy. So reliable! Not modern. Not brainy—apart from mathematics—but always a present help in time of trouble.
She turned with a sigh and a sense of guilt to Mrs Upjohn who had been talking happily for some time…
‘…though, of course,’ she was saying, ‘never real cloak and dagger stuff. Not dropping by parachute, or sabotage, or being a courier. I shouldn’t have been brave enough. It was mostly dull stuff. Office work. And plotting. Plotting things on a map, I mean—not the story telling kind of plotting. But of course it was exciting sometimes and it was often quite funny, as I just said—all the secret agents followed each other round and round Geneva, all knowing each other by sight, and often ending up in the same bar. I wasn’t married then, of course. It was all great fun.’
She stopped abruptly with an apologetic and friendly smile.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been talking so much. Taking up your time. When you’ve got such lots of people to see.’
She held out a hand, said goodbye and departed.
Miss Bulstrode stood frowning for a moment. Some instinct warned her that she had missed something that might be important.
She brushed the feeling aside. This was the opening day of summer term, and she had many more parents to see. Never had her school been more popular, more assured of success. Meadowbank was at its zenith.
There was nothing to tell her that within a few weeks Meadowbank would be plunged into a sea of trouble; that disorder, confusion and murder would reign there, that already certain events had been set in motion…
Chapter 1
Revolution in Ramat
About two months earlier than the first day of the summer term at Meadowbank, certain events had taken place which were to have unexpected repercussions in that celebrated girls’ school.
In the Palace of Ramat, two young men sat smoking and considering the immediate future. One young man was dark, with a smooth olive face and large melancholy eyes. He was Prince Ali Yusuf, Hereditary Sheikh of Ramat, which, though small, was one of the richest states in the Middle East. The other young man was sandy haired and freckled and more or less penniless, except for the handsome salary he drew as private pilot to His Highness Prince Ali Yusuf. In spite of this difference in status, they were on terms of perfect equality. They had been at the same public school and had been friends then and ever since.
‘They shot at us, Bob,’ said Prince Ali almost incredulously.
‘They shot at us all right,’ said Bob Rawlinson.
‘And they meant it. They meant to bring us down.’
‘The bastards meant it all right,’ said Bob grimly.
Ali considered for a moment.
‘It would hardly be worth while trying again?’
‘We mightn’t be so lucky this time. The truth is, Ali, we’ve left things too late. You should have got out two weeks ago. I told you so.’
‘One doesn’t like to run away,’ said the ruler of Ramat.
‘I see your point. But remember what Shakespeare or one of these poetical fellows said about those who run away living to fight another day.’
‘To think,’ said the young Prince with feeling, ‘of the money that has gone into making this a Welfare State. Hospitals, schools, a Health Service—’
Bob Rawlinson interrupted the catalogue.
‘Couldn’t the Embassy do something?’
Ali Yusuf flushed angrily.
‘Take refuge in your Embassy? That, never. The extremists would probably storm the place—they wouldn’t respect diplomatic immunity. Besides, if I did that, it really would be the end! Already the chief accusation against me is of being pro-Western.’ He sighed. ‘It is so difficult to understand.’ He sounded wistful, younger than his twenty-five years. ‘My grandfather was a cruel man, a real tyrant. He had hundreds of slaves and treated them ruthlessly. In his tribal wars, he killed his enemies unmercifully and executed them horribly. The mere whisper of his name made everyone turn pale. And yet—he is a legend still! Admired! Respected! The great Achmed Abdullah! And I? What have I done? Built hospitals and schools, welfare, housing…all the things people are said to want. Don’t they want them? Would they prefer a reign of terror like my grandfather’s?’
‘I expect so,’ said Bob Rawlinson. ‘Seems a bit unfair, but there it is.’
‘But why, Bob? Why?’
Bob Rawlinson sighed, wriggled and endeavoured to explain what he felt. He had to struggle with his own inarticulateness.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘He put up a show—I suppose that’s it really. He was—sort of—dramatic, if you know what I mean.’
He looked at his friend who was definitely not dramatic. A nice quiet decent chap, sincere and perplexed, that was what Ali was, and Bob liked him for it. He was neither picturesque nor violent, but whilst in England people who are picturesque and violent cause embarrassment and are not much liked, in the Middle East, Bob was fairly sure, it was different.
‘But democracy—’ began Ali.
‘Oh, democracy—’ Bob waved his pipe. ‘That’s a word that means different things everywhere. One thing’s certain. It never means what the Greeks originally meant by it. I bet you anything you like that if they boot you out of here, some spouting hot air merchant will take over, yelling his own praises, building himself up into God Almighty, and stringing up, or cutting off the heads of anyone who dares to disagree with him in any way. And, mark you, he’ll say it’s a Democratic Government—of the people and for the people. I expect the people will like it too. Exciting for them. Lots of bloodshed.’
‘But we are not savages! We are civilized nowadays.’
‘There are different kinds of civilization…’ said Bob vaguely. ‘Besides—I rather think we’ve all got a bit of savage in us—if we can think up a good excuse for letting it rip.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Ali sombrely.
‘The thing people don’t seem to want anywhere, nowadays,’ said Bob, ‘is anyone who’s got a bit of common sense. I’ve never been a brainy chap—well, you know that well enough, Ali—but I often think that that’s what the world really needs—just a bit of common sense.’ He laid aside his pipe and sat in his chair. ‘But never mind all that. The thing is how we’re going to get you out of here. Is there anybody in the Army you can really trust?’
Slowly, Prince Ali Yusuf shook his head.
‘A fortnight ago, I should have said “Yes.” But now, I do not know…cannot be sure—’
Bob nodded. ‘That’s the hell of it. As for this palace of yours, it gives me the creeps.’
Ali acquiesced without emotion.
‘Yes, there are spies everywhere in palaces…They hear everything—they—know everything.’
‘Even down in the hangars—’ Bob broke off. ‘Old Achmed’s all right. He’s got a kind of sixth sense. Found one of the mechanics trying to tamper with the plane—one of the men we’d have sworn was absolutely trustworthy. Look here, Ali, if we’re going to have a shot at getting you away, it will have to be soon.’
‘I know—I know. I think—I am quite certain now—that if I stay I shall be killed.’
He spoke without emotion, or any kind of panic: with a mild detached interest.
‘We’ll stand a good chance of being killed anyway,’ Bob warned him. ‘We’ll have to fly out north, you know. They can’t intercept us that way. But it means going over the mountains—and at this time of year—’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’ve got to understand. It’s damned risky.’
Ali Yusuf looked distressed.
‘If anything happened to you, Bob—’
‘Don’t worry about me, Ali. That’s not what I meant. I’m not important. And anyway, I’m the sort of chap that’s sure to get killed sooner or later. I’m always doing crazy things. No—it’s you—I don’t want to persuade you one way or the other. If a portion of the Army is loyal—’
‘I don’t like the idea of running away,’ said Ali simply. ‘But I do not in the least want to be a martyr, and be cut to pieces by a mob.’
He was silent for a moment or two.
‘Very well then,’ he said at last with a sigh. ‘We will make the attempt. When?’
Bob shrugged his shoulders.
‘Sooner the better. We’ve got to get you to the airstrip in some natural way…How about saying you’re going to inspect the new road construction out at Al Jasar? Sudden whim. Go this afternoon. Then, as your car passes the airstrip, stop there—I’ll have the bus all ready and tuned up. The idea will be to go up to inspect the road construction from the air, see? We take off and go! We can’t take any baggage, of course. It’s got to be all quite impromptu.’
‘There is nothing I wish to take with me—except one thing—’
He smiled, and suddenly the smile altered his face and made a different person of him. He was no longer the modern conscientious Westernized young man—the smile held all the racial guile and craft which had enabled a long line of his ancestors to survive.
‘You are my friend, Bob, you shall see.’
His hand went inside his shirt and fumbled. Then he held out a little chamois leather bag.
‘This?’ Bob frowned and looked puzzled.
Ali took it from him, untied the neck, and poured the contents on the table.
Bob held his breath for a moment and then expelled it in a soft whistle.
‘Good lord. Are they real?’
Ali looked amused.
‘Of course they are real. Most of them belonged to my father. He acquired new ones every year. I, too. They have come from many places, bought for our family by men we can trust—from London, from Calcutta, from South Africa. It is a tradition of our family. To have these in case of need.’ He added in a matter of fact voice: ‘They are worth, at today’s prices, about three quarters of a million.’
‘Three quarters of a million pounds.’ Bob let out a whistle, picked up the stones, let them run through his fingers. ‘It’s fantastic. Like a fairy tale. It does things to you.’
‘Yes.’ The dark young man nodded. Again that age-long weary look was on his face. ‘Men are not the same when it comes to jewels. There is always a trail of violence to follow such things. Deaths, bloodshed, murder. And women are the worst. For with women it will not only be the value. It is something to do with the jewels themselves. Beautiful jewels drive women mad. They want to own them. To wear them round their throats, on their bosoms. I would not trust any woman with these. But I shall trust you.’
‘Me?’ Bob stared.
‘Yes. I do not want these stones to fall into the hands of my enemies. I do not know when the rising against me will take place. It may be planned for today. I may not live to reach the airstrip this afternoon. Take the stones and do the best you can.’
‘But look here—I don’t understand. What am I to do with them?’
‘Arrange somehow to get them out of the country.’
Ali stared placidly at his perturbed friend.
‘You mean, you want me to carry them instead of you?’
‘You can put it that way. But I think, really, you will be able to think of some better plan to get them to Europe.’
‘But look here, Ali, I haven’t the first idea how to set about such a thing.’
Ali leaned back in his chair. He was smiling in a quietly amused manner.
‘You have common sense. And you are honest. And I remember, from the days when you were my fag, that you could always think up some ingenious idea…I will give you the name and address of a man who deals with such matters for me—that is—in case I should not survive. Do not look so worried, Bob. Do the best you can. That is all I ask. I shall not blame you if you fail. It is as Allah wills. For me, it is simple. I do not want those stones taken from my dead body. For the rest—’ he shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is as I have said. All will go as Allah wills.’
‘You’re nuts!’
‘No. I am a fatalist, that is all.’
‘But look here, Ali. You said just now I was honest. But three quarters of a million…Don’t you think that might sap any man’s honesty?’
Ali Yusuf looked at his friend with affection.
‘Strangely enough,’ he said, ‘I have no doubt on that score.’
Chapter 2
The Woman on the Balcony
As Bob Rawlinson walked along the echoing marble corridors of the Palace, he had never felt so unhappy in his life. The knowledge that he was carrying three quarters of a million pounds in his trousers pocket caused him acute misery. He felt as though every Palace official he encountered must know the fact. He felt even that the knowledge of his precious burden must show in his face. He would have been relieved to learn that his freckled countenance bore exactly its usual expression of cheerful good nature.
The sentries outside presented arms with a clash. Bob walked down the main crowded street of Ramat, his mind still dazed. Where was he going? What was he planning to do? He had no idea. And time was short.
The main street was like most main streets in the Middle East. It was a mixture of squalor and magnificence. Banks reared their vast newly built magnificence. Innumerable small shops presented a collection of cheap plastic goods. Babies’ bootees and cheap cigarette lighters were displayed in unlikely juxtaposition. There were sewing machines, and spare parts for cars. Pharmacies displayed flyblown proprietary medicines, and large notices of penicillin in every form and antibiotics galore. In very few of the shops was there anything that you could normally want to buy, except possibly the latest Swiss watches, hundreds of which were displayed crowded into a tiny window. The assortment was so great that even there one would have shrunk from purchase, dazzled by sheer mass.
Bob, still walking in a kind of stupor, jostled by figures in native or European dress, pulled himself together and asked himself again where the hell he was going?
He turned into a native café and ordered lemon tea. As he sipped it, he began, slowly, to come to. The atmosphere of the café was soothing. At a table opposite him an elderly Arab was peacefully clicking through a string of amber beads. Behind him two men played tric trac. It was a good place to sit and think.
And he’d got to think. Jewels worth three quarters of a million had been handed to him, and it was up to him to devise some plan of getting them out of the country. No time to lose either. At any minute the balloon might go up…
Ali was crazy, of course. Tossing three quarters of a million light-heartedly to a friend in that way. And then sitting back quietly himself and leaving everything to Allah. Bob had not got that recourse. Bob’s God expected his servants to decide on and perform their own actions to the best of the ability their God had given them.
What the hell was he going to do with those damned stones?
He thought of the Embassy. No, he couldn’t involve the Embassy. The Embassy would almost certainly refuse to be involved.
What he needed was some person, some perfectly ordinary person who was leaving the country in some perfectly ordinary way. A business man, or a tourist would be best. Someone with no political connections whose baggage would, at most, be subjected to a superficial search or more probably no search at all. There was, of course, the other end to be considered…Sensation at London Airport. Attempt to smuggle in jewels worth three quarters of a million. And so on and so on. One would have to risk that—
Somebody ordinary—a bona fide traveller. And suddenly Bob kicked himself for a fool. Joan, of course. His sister Joan Sutcliffe. Joan had been out here for two months with her daughter Jennifer who after a bad bout of pneumonia had been ordered sunshine and a dry climate. They were going back by ‘long sea’ in four or five days’ time.
Joan was the ideal person. What was it Ali had said about women and jewels? Bob smiled to himself. Good old Joan! She wouldn’t lose her head over jewels. Trust her to keep her feet on the earth. Yes—he could trust Joan.
Wait a minute, though…could he trust Joan? Her honesty, yes. But her discretion? Regretfully Bob shook his head. Joan would talk, would not be able to help talking. Even worse. She would hint. ‘I’m taking home something very important, I mustn’t say a word to anyone. It’s really rather exciting…’
Joan had never been able to keep a thing to herself though she was always very incensed if one told her so. Joan, then, mustn’t know what she was taking. It would be safer for her that way. He’d make the stones up into a parcel, an innocent-looking parcel. Tell her some story. A present for someone? A commission? He’d think of something…
Bob glanced at his watch and rose to his feet. Time was getting on.
He strode along the street oblivious of the midday heat. Everything seemed so normal. There was nothing to show on the surface. Only in the Palace was one conscious of the banked-down fires, of the spying, the whispers. The Army—it all depended on the Army. Who was loyal? Who was disloyal? A coup d’état would certainly be attempted. Would it succeed or fail?
Bob frowned as he turned into Ramat’s leading hotel. It was modestly called the Ritz Savoy and had a grand modernistic façade. It had opened with a flourish three years ago with a Swiss manager, a Viennese chef, and an Italian Maître d’hôtel. Everything had been wonderful. The Viennese chef had gone first, then the Swiss manager. Now the Italian head waiter had gone too. The food was still ambitious, but bad, the service abominable, and a good deal of the expensive plumbing had gone wrong.
The clerk behind the desk knew Bob well and beamed at him.
‘Good morning, Squadron Leader. You want your sister? She has gone on a picnic with the little girl—’
‘A picnic?’ Bob was taken aback—of all the silly times to go for a picnic.
‘With Mr and Mrs Hurst from the Oil Company,’ said the clerk informatively. Everyone always knew everything. ‘They have gone to the Kalat Diwa dam.’
Bob swore under his breath. Joan wouldn’t be home for hours.
‘I’ll go up to her room,’ he said and held out his hand for the key which the clerk gave him.
He unlocked the door and went in. The room, a large double-bedded one, was in its usual confusion. Joan Sutcliffe was not a tidy woman. Golf clubs lay across a chair, tennis racquets had been flung on the bed. Clothing lay about, the table was littered with rolls of film, postcards, paper-backed books and an assortment of native curios from the South, mostly made in Birmingham and Japan.
Bob looked round him, at the suitcases and the zip bags. He was faced with a problem. He wouldn’t be able to see Joan before flying Ali out. There wouldn’t be time to get to the dam and back. He could parcel up the stuff and leave it with a note—but almost immediately he shook his head. He knew quite well that he was nearly always followed. He’d probably been followed from the Palace to the café and from the café here. He hadn’t spotted anyone—but he knew that they were good at the job. There was nothing suspicious in his coming to the hotel to see his sister—but if he left a parcel and a note, the note would be read and the parcel opened.
Time…time…He’d no time…
Three quarters of a million in precious stones in his trousers pocket.
He looked round the room…
Then, with a grin, he fished out from his pocket the little tool kit he always carried. His niece Jennifer had some plasticine, he noted, that would help.
He worked quickly and skilfully. Once he looked up, suspicious, his eyes going to the open window. No, there was no balcony outside this room. It was just his nerves that made him feel that someone was watching him.
He finished his task and nodded in approval. Nobody would notice what he had done—he felt sure of that. Neither Joan nor anyone else. Certainly not Jennifer, a self-centred child, who never saw or noticed anything outside herself.
He swept up all evidences of his toil and put them into his pocket…Then he hesitated, looking round.
He drew Mrs Sutcliffe’s writing pad towards him and sat frowning—
He must leave a note for Joan—
But what could he say? It must be something that Joan would understand—but which would mean nothing to anyone who read the note.
And really that was impossible! In the kind of thriller that Bob liked reading to fill up his spare moments, you left a kind of cryptogram which was always successfully puzzled out by someone. But he couldn’t even begin to think of a cryptogram—and in any case Joan was the sort of common-sense person who would need the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed before she noticed anything at all—
Then his brow cleared. There was another way of doing it—divert attention away from Joan—leave an ordinary everyday note. Then leave a message with someone else to be given to Joan in England. He wrote rapidly—
Dear Joan—Dropped in to ask if you’d care to play a round of golf this evening but if you’ve been up at the dam, you’ll probably be dead to the world. What about tomorrow? Five o’clock at the Club.
Yours, Bob.
A casual sort of a message to leave for a sister that he might never see again—but in some ways the more casual the better. Joan mustn’t be involved in any funny business, mustn’t even know that there was any funny business. Joan could not dissimulate. Her protection would be the fact that she clearly knew nothing.
And the note would accomplish a dual purpose. It would seem that he, Bob, had no plan for departure himself.
He thought for a minute or two, then he crossed to the telephone and gave the number of the British Embassy. Presently he was connected with Edmundson, the third secretary, a friend of his.
‘John? Bob Rawlinson here. Can you meet me somewhere when you get off?…Make it a bit earlier than that?…You’ve got to, old boy. It’s important. Well, actually, it’s a girl…’ He gave an embarrassed cough. ‘She’s wonderful, quite wonderful. Out of this world. Only it’s a bit tricky.’
Edmundson’s voice, sounding slightly stuffed-shirt and disapproving, said, ‘Really, Bob, you and your girls. All right, 2 o’clock do you?’ and rang off. Bob heard the little echoing click as whoever had been listening in, replaced the receiver.
Good old Edmundson. Since all the telephones in Ramat had been tapped, Bob and John Edmundson had worked out a little code of their own. A wonderful girl who was ‘out of this world’ meant something urgent and important.
Edmundson would pick him up in his car outside the new Merchants Bank at 2 o’clock and he’d tell Edmundson of the hiding place. Tell him that Joan didn’t know about it but that, if anything happened to him, it was important. Going by the long sea route Joan and Jennifer wouldn’t be back in England for six weeks. By that time the revolution would almost certainly have happened and either been successful or have been put down. Ali Yusuf might be in Europe, or he and Bob might both be dead. He would tell Edmundson enough, but not too much.
Bob took a last look around the room. It looked exactly the same, peaceful, untidy, domestic. The only thing added was his harmless note to Joan. He propped it up on the table and went out. There was no one in the long corridor.
II
The woman in the room next to that occupied by Joan Sutcliffe stepped back from the balcony. There was a mirror in her hand.
She had gone out on the balcony originally to examine more closely a single hair that had had the audacity to spring up on her chin. She dealt with it with tweezers, then subjected her face to a minute scrutiny in the clear sunlight.
It was then, as she relaxed, that she saw something else. The angle at which she was holding her mirror was such that it reflected the mirror of the hanging wardrobe in the room next to hers and in that mirror she saw a man doing something very curious.