"Don't they hit back?" Craig asked.
"Not usually. He's very good at fighting."
"So's Craig," Naxos wheezed. "He was in the Special Boat Service. They taught him pretty good."
'That was a long time ago," said Craig. "It's funny the things you remember."
"Like riding a bike," said Naxos. 'That's a hell of a Sunday punch, John. Dirty too."
"If I fight clean I always lose," said Craig.
Tavel groaned, and Naxos's smile disappeared; his features rearranged themselves into a frown.
"I told him last time—no more fights with my friends. Guests yes, friends no." Then the frown disappeared. "Ah, what the hell. He lost, didn't he?"
Craig rubbed his aching stomach, glad of the hard ridge of muscle that had taken the blow.
"Maybe he couldn't tell the difference," said Craig.
I wonder if I made it convincing, he thought. No judo, no karate, just the rough stuff they teach you on a Commando course. The count knew it all too. But he drinks too much. He's brittle. And what was the object of the exercise anyway? To see if I would fight? To see how much I knew? To put me out of action?
Naxos picked up the telephone and called the doctor, then turned to Craig.
"I really am sorry about it, John," he said. "I honestly thought he was cured."
Philippa sat in the chair, her hand running along the coarse silk of the cushion, picked at a loose piece of thread. "He hit you too," said Philippa. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," said Craig. He looked down at Swyven who had knelt beside Tavel, and was bathing his forehead with a napkin dipped in an ice bucket.
"I'm fine. So long as people don't get the idea it was my fault for not letting him beat me unconscious."
Swyven said: "He's a friend of mine. I worry about
him."
"You do right," said Craig, and turned to Pia. "Did you put him up to this?"
"Of course not," said Pia. "He isn't a friend of mine." Swyven winced.
"He's just a dirty Peeping Tim."
"Tom," said Craig. "Peeping Tomf
"Tim, Tom, I'm glad you hit him," said Pia. Then the doctor came in, and glanced quickly at Philippa before he bent over the prostrate Tavel.
« Chapter 9 *
When Craig got to his cabin he went at once to the suitcase. Someone had found the false bottom, all right. He took out the gun, and examined it cautiously, inch by inch. The screw that held the firing pin had been removed. He looked at the magazines. They were empty. Only the knife was intact. Tavel would have done better if he'd held the shells in his hand. Tavel had a broken knuckle and a bruise on his neck and a vicious headache, and he'd earned them all, but as an operator he didn't begin to make sense. Nor did Swyven. He was a physical coward. And Swyven had been afraid before the fight. He'd known it was coming. And somebody had worked out the excuse for setting up the fight: Tavel's known eagerness and talent for fisticuffs. Somebody also had a reason for setting it up, and that was obvious. Craig had to be out of the way before the yacht reached Venice. He wondered who the man was behind these clowns. His technique was brilliant—offer Tavel and Swyven on a plate—and Pia too perhaps? Make them keep Craig busy, while he, the unknown, got on with the dirty work. His only fault was that he'd overdone it slightly. He was too thorough.
He thought about the thread Philippa had picked from the cushion—black cotton thread from a red silk cushion. The chair Tavel had sat in. Naxos's chair. The thread Craig had put over the lock on his door. It looked as if he was better at searching rooms than beating ex-sailors unconscious. And Naxos had just stood by and laughed. Naxos had thought it was funny. And maybe it was. Craig would have liked to laugh too, but laughter hurt his stomach.
He woke next morning, and found he was famous. The people Naxos had asked along didn't dislike Tavel. They didn't like Craig either, but Craig had won, and that made him interesting. He discovered something else, too. The ship was moving south through the Cyclades, before swinging a great arc past the Peloponnesus, and northwest to the Adriatic at a steady fifteen knots. Two hundred miles at an unwavering fifteen knots. They would be in Venice in three days.
After breakfast Craig went to the swimming pool on the foredeck. Naxos, he learned, was cloistered with his secretaries; Philippa was still asleep. There was time for a swim. At the other end of the pool Pia lay on a mattress, her body dark, even in the sunlight, and glistening with oil. She waved to Craig, and he went into the water in a flat, smashing dive, then swam toward her, using an ugly, powerful crawl, whose only virtue was utility. It was fast. He'd learned to swim like that in the cold North Sea. He heaved himself up from the water beside Pia, and a steward came up and handed him a towel.
'VVould you like a drink, sir?" asked the steward.
"He'll have some of mine," said Pia. "Bring a glass."
The steward brought a tumbler, and Pia reached for a jug, poured out two glasses of a shining, golden fluid.
"Orange juice?" asked Craig.
"In a way," Pia said.
"What does that mean?"
"It is diluted with champagne," said Pia.
"Don't you ever give up?" Craig asked.
"Kicks," she said. "I've got to live for kicks. After all I am a starlet."
She sipped her golden firewater and Craig lay down beside her. As he did so his foot slipped on the wet tiles by the pool, kicking his glass into it.
"Sorry," he said, "111 get another one."
"Don't bother," Pia said at once. "We'll share mine."
She wasn't that good an actress. All that had gone into the pool was orange juice and champagne. She sipped again, and held the glass to Craig's hps.
"Nice?" she asked.
I'll learn to live with it," said Craig.
She was sitting up beside him, her weight supported on her arms, that were thrust out behind her. The pose brought her torso into superb relief, emphasizing its rich curves, the firm, heavy roundness of flesh that the scarlet bikini did an irreducible minimum to conceal. Her eyes held his, then she breathed in, hard.
"I like your dress," said Craig.
She breathed out in a burst of laughter, then leaned over him, the weight of her breasts just touching his chest, her lips soft on his mouth. Craig's arms came round her, held her for a moment, then let her go.
"Who will I have to fight this time?" he asked.
T am sorry about last night. Honestly," said Pia. "Next time, I promise you, he won't be anywhere near." The waiter came back.
"Suntan oil, sir?" he asked, and handed a bottle to
Craig.
"Thanks," said Craig, and lay down again. "I will rub your back," said Pia.
He felt the cool smoothness of the oil on his back, then rolled over to feel it on his shoulders, his chest, Pia's fingers moved slowly, dehghtfully across his body, then paused at the rawness of the scar he'd received from Bauer.
"Were you in an accident?" she asked.
"Skin diving," Craig said. "I cut myself on a clam
shell."
Tt must have been very sharp." "Like a knife," said Craig. 'Tell me about your pictures."
They had been religious epics mostly, and Pia the
Aad virgm from the right just before the hons came on. 5red had two tests for English companies, one for Hollywood. They'd come to nothing.
"That is how it goes," she said. "But it will change. There is time. I'm just twenty-six. With luck I've got ten years."
"And then?"
"I'll sleep," she said. "Sleep and sleep. Without pills and all by myself." She paused. "Perhaps you—sometimes if I wake up—" her nails nipped the muscles of his thigh; he stared into the richness of her breasts. She was stupid, sweet, and probably dangerous, but she held tremendous sexual promise. Craig all but groaned aloud when Philippa came up and lay down beside them.