“This way,” said Grearson.
Deaken followed obediently, aware of a clumsiness in the other man’s walk: it was not a limp, more the cautious stiffness of someone nervous of pain. As soon as Deaken went inside the yacht, he was aware of the smell. Cigars, clearly, and perhaps perfume or incense. Combined, it was an odour of richness, luxurious richness. The inner companionways were deeply carpeted and the panelling a dark, heavy mahogany. Where there was metalwork, it gleamed from constant polishing. The companionway led to a landing that crossed the width of the ship and from it, in a double-sided descent of steps, ran a stairway that reminded Deaken of the circle approach in a cinema or theatre. It was, indeed, an approach culminating not in walkways along a lower deck but in a large set of double-fronted doors, highly polished and dark wood again. Grearson, who was still in front, knocked and entered immediately, leaving the door open for Deaken to follow.
The young lawyer stopped just inside the door. Only the roundness of the portholes showed they were aboard a ship. Deaken guessed a hundred people could have gathered in the stateroom here for a reception without the slightest impression of overcrowding. Padded seating, in white leather, around the bulkheads was broken intermittently by tables from which flowers spilled in profusion. There were larger easy chairs and couches, again in masculine leather, arranged around the room, and two small writing bureaux with a third, lower table upon which were grouped four telephones. There was no colour differentiation; they were all white. To Deaken’s immediate left there was a bar area, with a steward in attendance, a glitter of glass and chrome and four high-legged chairs. The carpeting throughout the entire area was white and long-tufted.
The man who stood waiting in the middle of the room dominated it, not because of his height and barrel body but from the way he held himself. When he was young, Deaken had attended government and diplomatic functions with his father and seen the same demeanour: it was always from politicians or leaders who were long established, who considered themselves unchallengeable.
The man was as severely dressed as the American lawyer, in a dark grey, single-breasted suit in some material that shone slightly, but not from overwear. It was probably silk. Like everything, it went with the perfume of wealth.
“I am Adnan Azziz,” he said. The English was entirely without accent.
“Richard Deaken.”
“Yes.” The voice was expressionless, neither hostile nor friendly.
“There’s a mistake,” said Deaken desperately. “A misunderstanding
…”
“We’ve obeyed your instructions,” cut in Azziz. “Tell me what you want.”
“They are not my instructions,” exclaimed Deaken.
“I want my son back, unharmed,” said Azziz.
Deaken was overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy. He was aware of his concertinaed, bagged suit and a collar that his tie didn’t fit properly, the tie that Karen had tried to adjust for him that morning, the last time she had touched him and of his fly-away hair and of the stickiness of his skin, where he had sweated in fear of Underberg and then because he had travelled too far too fast on overheated aircraft and was confronting people he didn’t want to meet. God, he thought; oh dear God!
“They’ve taken my wife,” he said simply.
Neither man facing him made any response.
“Didn’t you hear what 1 said!” demanded Deaken. “They’ve kidnapped my wife. This morning. To make me do this… come here…”
Azziz looked sideways to Grearson.
“I said we knew about you,” repeated the American lawyer. He reached to one of the small tables and picked up what appeared to be a telex printout. “You were considered a radical at Rand University,” he said. “After qualifying in international law you were actively involved with subversive movements…” He looked up. “Became famous through it,” he said.
Deaken closed his eyes against the catalogue. It was like a criminal record, a list of previous convictions to be presented at every opportunity.
“No more,” he said wearily. “I’m married now. Trying to establish a private practice…”
“… in Geneva,” picked up Grearson, still consulting the paper and wanting to show Azziz how efficiently he had assembled the information from just the qualification initials after Deaken’s name on the photograph. “Operating there for a year.”
“Listen,” said Deaken. “Please just listen.” Haltingly at first, anxious for some reaction from the blank, closed faces in front of him, Deaken recounted what had happened in Geneva, setting it out chronologically, as he would have done in court.
“A shipment to Africa?” queried Azziz.
“That’s what he said.”
The Arab looked to his lawyer again. Grearson shook his head.
“Surely you know about it?” insisted Deaken. “It’s for $50,000,000, for God’s sake!”
“Which is a comparatively small amount,” said Azziz.
“It could be a subsidiary sale,” said Grearson, talking to the Arab. “There would never have been an End-User certificate if it is going to Africa.”
Deaken frowned between the two men.
“Check it, tonight if you can” ordered Azziz.
As Grearson moved to the telephone bank Azziz said to Deaken, “What’s your wife like?”
“What?”
“Describe her.”
Inexplicably Deaken felt embarrassed. “Blonde,” he said. “She wears it short. Brown eyes. Doesn’t use a lot of makeup-doesn’t have to. Quite short, about five foot five. Slim, too.”
From the table from which the lawyer had taken the telex sheet, the Arab handed Deaken a photograph. Deaken’s eyes flooded when he saw her and he blinked. She was holding herself stiffly upright, legs tightly together, shoulders squared. There was a school photograph of Karen like that, back in the apartment. Except that there she was smiling.
“You knew,” said Deaken, looking up to Azziz.
“Putting her in the picture doesn’t mean she’s a victim… it could have been done to support your story.”
“Does she look like an accomplice?” said Deaken. “Look at it! Does she?”
Azziz took the photograph back. “No,” he admitted after a pause.
“I want her back safely,” said Deaken. “Just like you want your son back.”
Azziz smiled, for the first time. “If all it means is stopping a small arms shipment, it’ll be easy.”
At 2 A.M. the Bellicose cleared the Strait of Gibraltar. Edmunson was the officer of the watch. He ordered the freighter’s course twenty degrees to port and entered the reading in the rough log. He was conscious of the ship heaving in the more exposed North Atlantic, but knew from the forecast that the swell was moderate. If the weather held, it was going to be an easy, uneventful voyage.
A thousand miles away, from the yacht in Monte Carlo harbour, Grearson put down the telephone from his fifth call.
“France,” he announced to the waiting men.
6
They had only bothered with sandwiches and coffee, served and then immediately removed by hovering stewards. In the beginning Azziz and Grearson had talked across him but now they included him in the conversation and listened to his opinions.
“Marseilles is convenient,” said the Arab.
“Paris thinks the ship has left already; we shan’t know until the port office opens in the morning,” said Grearson.