‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘You were in the front line.’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but I want to pull out and go into a rest area for a month or two. If I can manage that I’ll get enough strength to go on till I’m ninety.’
His grey eyes were turning yellow, and the skin visible through his beard was like painted asbestos. ‘I know a nice quiet country place less than a hundred miles from London,’ I said. ‘Might do you a lot of good. It’s that railway station I mentioned.’ Tonio put our coffee down, then looked at us from the doorway to the kitchen. In case he could hear us, or the table was bugged, I wrote the address for Jack, and told him that somebody was there already, but mentioned no names. Then I scribbled a few words to William. I didn’t imagine they’d get on well together, but asked him to give Almanack Jack the waiting-room, where he could fend for himself. ‘I’ll be up myself in a few days,’ I said, ‘just to see that things are functioning. Do you need money to get there?’
‘I’d like a quid if you’ve got it.’ I gave him two, then said I had to run because I was going to work. When I paid the bill I didn’t leave anything at all for a tip, which was something else Tonio could tell Moggerhanger, if ever he felt like it. Seeing nothing by the plate he didn’t come forward to help with my coat, and so I buttoned up and went outside. A taxi stopped to let someone out. I jumped in.
It was a treacherous day, the sky high over the town, with small clouds in it, and a cold wind when I opened the slit in the taxi window, a very good day that sharpened the brain and woke you up before you wanted to be out of bed. But I was on my way, feeling optimistic and full of perception, captain of my own rotten rowing-boat.
Stanley hung my own coat on a hanger and put it into a cupboard where it would stay till I got back. ‘Cottapilly and Pindarry off?’ I asked casually, getting into the tailor-made over-mac.
‘Without a hitch.’
‘They’re good men,’ I said. ‘Very handy people.’
He looked overworked, stooped a little as he went in before me to the big hall. ‘The ticket to Geneva,’ he said, pushing a plastic wallet into my hand. ‘Return.’
‘I hope so,’ I laughed. ‘Never play that trick on me.’
He stopped, and turned. ‘Listen, I’m sick of your jokes.’
‘Don’t the others ever chaff you?’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘So don’t you.’
‘No wonder they got caught, then, if they haven’t got that much sense of humour.’
He was sweating. ‘Who were you thinking of?’
‘Ramage,’ I told him. ‘Who else?’
‘Who indeed?’
‘We’d better get in, or I’ll be too late.’
I felt as if I’d been cast among a nest of madmen, instead of a bunch of cool and persevering smugglers out to beat the British Government’s paid servants of Customs and Excise. To wonder what I would do with fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold when I finally sat cackling over it by the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain no longer seemed to concern me, for my only thought was to act in good faith, as if I were still set on carrying it to the specified place for Jack Leningrad Limited who were known throughout the city as a business firm of the highest integrity.
I walked across the hall towards the iron lung. ‘Good morning, Mr Leningrad.’
He was listening to a record of Chaliapin singing one of his Russian songs, but he turned it down so that it almost faded away. ‘It’s afternoon,’ he said, ‘It’s past two o’clock.’ I must have been out of focus, for he swivelled his mirrors and periscopes, then smiled and asked if I was ready.
‘You know me,’ I said. ‘I hope I get a gold watch at the end of twenty years’ faithful service.’
I heard his dry laugh; ‘We’ll put it before the committee. In the meantime you’ll be a bit closer to it if you start loading up.’ Stacked on the purple cloth of a nearby table were fifty slender bars of the best gold, the fortune of my life that would set me up with a vast ranch in Brazil or the Argentine and make me king of all I surveyed. I held my coat open, and feeling Stanley slot the first bar’s definite weight and warmth in one of its pockets, it seemed as if during some past time my guts had been pulled slowly out of true by the worries of life, and that now, one by one, they were being stuffed neatly back again. The second bar went in. Stanley, like a skilled craftsman-packer, always started from the top so that no tell-tale wrinkles would be left in the coat when he had finished, and the whole weight was in. I regretted that Smog, Bridgitte and myself weren’t travelling together to South America by boat, for then Smog could while away the long hours by playing with these golden bars on the cabin floor, making his own squares and pyramids, triangles and palisades, his eyes glittering over it all. I was smiling at such a pleasant picture, which vanished when I noticed Leningrad looking at me, his fat face and beady eyes behind that battery of equipment surrounding his iron life-saving lung.
Stanley slotted in the third bar, when the telephone rang. As he picked it up, the man in the iron lung lifted his extension at the same time. ‘When?’ Stanley cried. ‘Oh, my God!’
I didn’t like the shocked tone of this, but thought I might as well go on with the loading while Stanley and Leningrad continued their business conversation at the phone. ‘Don’t touch it,’ a voice screamed at me.
The phones were down, and Stanley’s face was dusty with horror as if I were part of a bad dream he’d been having all through his life that had suddenly turned into reality. ‘What’s wrong then?’ I demanded, as superciliously as I could, looking from one to the other.
‘Cottapilly and Pindarry have been caught,’ Stanley said.
‘That’s their hard luck. What’s it got to do with me?’
‘I’ll kill you,’ Leningrad screamed.
‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘You told me they were off already.’
There were tears in Stanley’s eyes. He was crying with rage. ‘They were fetched from the plane when it was already taxiing to the runway.’
‘We’d better get on with the loading,’ I said. ‘If they’ve caught those two they won’t be looking for me. I’ll be as safe as houses.’ A gun was beamed on me, and I knew that Stanley had another ready under his coat. I had the terrible and empty feeling that I was going to have my light put out, and all I could do was go on talking, get in as many words as I could before blackness came, as if under those guns and at the end of it all words were the only thing left.
‘You informed on them,’ said that thin voice, cracking out of speakers all over the room.
‘What’s in it for me?’ I said. ‘They must have given themselves away, somehow or other, so keep your accusations to yourself.’
Stanley’s eyes were almost out of his head. ‘Who else then?’
‘You,’ I said, ‘That’s who else. Load me up and let me go, or I’ll tell Mr Leningrad all I know about you, or maybe we’d all better get ourselves out of here in case Cottapilly and Pindarry talk. And they will, those two, don’t you worry,’ I added, as if I was dead certain of it, traducing all and sundry so that I’d go blue in the face and stamp out my guilty look. ‘I’ve never seen such double-crossers. None of us are safe, so we’ve got to stick together and trust each other. That’s our only hope. If we don’t, we’re done for. It’s certainly a lousy world I’ve landed in when as soon as trouble comes it’s dog eat dog. Worse than a jungle. I’m the best man you ever had, and you’re throwing my faithful service away as if it was an old banana skin. Even if I do do this trip and get away with it, I’m finished with the likes of you lot. There’s not even honour among thieves any more. I’m disgusted to my marrow.’