"Look, cock," he began, "we can't afford to offend Naxos now d'you see."
It wasn't quite Loomis, but it was near enough, particularly as the telephone he would use would have a bad fine. Tomorrow he would make two calls, and perhaps have Phihppa Naxos as a result. Now it was time to deal with a traitor.
He dressed himself in black sweater and pants, stuck a Russian automatic in his pocket, and drove to a street near the mews behind Swyven's house. His shoes were rubber-soled, and made no noise. Schiebel moved like a shadow to the mews itself, and waited for the tiny sound he needed. He was lucky. The man on duty struck a match, and Schiebel heard his sigh as he inhaled smoke, then began to walk slowly up and down. Twenty paces. Turn. Back. Twenty paces. Schiebel grinned. This one had been too long in the army. Schiebel waited until he moved down again, then sped to the doorway the watcher had used. He made no sound at all. When he came back—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty—Schiebel waited till he turned, then struck with the barrel of his pistol along the side of the man's head, jumped from the shadows to catch him as he fell, and dragged him into the doorway. Then he broke into the house next door to Swyven's.
The whole operation took seven minutes. Break in, go up to the attic—past the master bedroom, the nursery, the empty guest room, the maid's room where the au pair girl dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees in unattainable Sicily, up to the deserted attics, a litter of toys, books, discarded furniture, the squeak of a rusty window hinge, and Schiebel was on the roof, moving velvet-pawed across the leaded guttering to the attic window in Swyven's house. He used a diamond with four neat strokes, waited for the glass to fall—a tiny brittle whisper of noise— then put his hand into the hole he had made, opened the window and lowered himself into the house. In the comfortable darkness he checked his pistol by touch, screwed on the silencer, then moved into the house, past the attics full of unacceptable souvenirs, the maid's room where Ara-paro dreamed of warmth and sunshine and lemon trees in unattainable Burgos. The stairs were carpeted and the noise he made was less than a sigh; he went down to the drawing room and the sound of voices. Swyven's voice, then an older female voice, and then another older voice, a man's. Schiebel heard words in his mind he thought he had forgotten. "Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me," said the voice in his mind, "but showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." The voice spoke in German.
Schiebel grinned in the darkness. The voice had got it wrong. He was going to visit the sins of the child on the father—and mother. Two parents had chosen to spend an evening with their son, and there was nothing wrong with that, except that it meant their death. He couldn't wait for another chance, and there must be no survivors to send for the police until his work was accomplished. Schiebel listened, concentrating on the clipped, half-swallowed noises that English bourgeois made. They were quarreling. If you had Mark Swyven for a son, Schiebel thought, what eke could you do but quarrel?
Mark Swyven was saying: "But you say yourself I haven't done anything illegal—and that chap Craig admits it. If I choose not to go back to Venice, they couldn't make me."
"Don't be a fool," said his father.
Lady Swyven said: "Mark's right, you know, dear. He hasn't committed a crime."
"He's a traitor," said Lord Swyven. "There aren't many worse crimes, surely? He's betrayed bis own country."
"I don't believe in countries," said Swyven. T believe in mankind."
"And you've done your best to put fifty millions of them in a damned difficult position."
"Fifty million "haves.' I wanted to do something for the "have-nots.' It's about time somebody did. And anyway it's not your business. It's mine."
"And theirs."
"The point is there's nothing Britain can do about it."
"Mark," said his father. "Use your brains. Just this once. You've got them. Use them. They want you out, and you must go out. If you insist on staying here—good God, man, can't you see? Look what they did just to fetch you back here—damn near sent your mother to prison. If they did that to her, do you suppose they won't do it to youF'
Schiebel went into the room then. It was interesting stuff, and Swyven's concern with the masses was correct enough, even touching, but he hadn't got all night. Lady Swyven and Mark were facing him. Their reactions were obvious at once. Lady Swyven, bewildered yet indignant, Mark abject with terror. The father, because he was deaf and had his back to the door, took a little longer to understand. When at last he did turn, and saw the gun, he was neither bewildered nor terrified. He saw danger, and at
once began to look for a means to resolve it. This was a man Schiebel could understand.
"Your father's right, Mark," he said. 'They won't let you stay."
Swyven stared, petrified by the pistol and its bulging, extended barrel. Swyven's father moved deliberately in front of a small drinks table and said: "You have no business here. Our discussion is quite private. If you have come here to rob, get on with it, but don't pry into family affairs."
Schiebel shot him between the eyes, and the force of the bullet slammed him backward, scattering gin, sherry, glasses, siphons, jugs. It was as he had expected. As he fell, Swyven's father gripped a bottle of whiskey in his fist. Facing danger, he at once looked for a weapon.
Young Swyven's reaction was very odd to SchiebeL who knew every detail of his life. He ran at Schiebel.
"You swine," he screamed. "That's my father."
Schiebel shot him in the chest, and the running stopped at once, then Swyven very slowly crumpled to the floor. Lady Swyven made no move at all. She sat bolt upright in her chair, and looked into the barrel of the pistol, and said nothing, did nothing, because her world was over. Mark, she thought. Oh, my darling Mark. And then, almost too late: Poor Jack. Then Schiebel killed her. He went over to each in turn, felt his pulse, then unscrewed the silencer, put it in his pocket. He went out by the back door. On the way he passed the watcher, breathing now in great snoring gasps. The watcher was well out of things. Schiebel walked to his car. As always, when he had done something right and proper, he felt marvelous.
* Chapter 21 %
When Grierson and Craig got back, Loomis was away, and Flip was with Sir Matthew. They ate a meal, and Selina ate with them: the fight had made her hungry again. As they ate, she told them what had happened to her: the kidnapping, the trip to England, the escape, and then the fight.
"That was splendid," she said. "The hand, the fist, the elbow, and then you jump. My brothers will want to learn this—"
"Karate," said Craig. 'It's a Japanese technique."
"You learn from your enemies?"
Tf they have anything worth learning. The way you escaped, for instance—by using the house next door."
Sehna grinned.
Grierson said: "I don't understand why he brought you to England. Wouldn't you have been safer in Zaarb?"
The girl put down her fork, and looked at him.
"Schiebel hates me," she said. "He hated the other girl too—the one you persuaded to betray him. You know what he did to her?"
Grierson nodded. "He was going to do it to me. I was being kept for his pleasure—when it is all over." She turned to Craig. "One of us must kill him," she said. "He means what he says about the cobalt, Craig. Hurting, destruction: they're all he knows. He'll use them until he's killed."