been picking on you. Messing up your bikes, knocking you about. That's not right," he says. "You ought to do something about it."
"You want us to duff up some wogs?" asks Lonesome.
"Good God no," says the sleepy one. "We want you to organize a protest, present some petitions—that sort of thing."
"Where to?" I ask. "The Zaarb Embassy?"
"Something like that," the sleepy one says. "Their trading offices anyway. We've got four petitions all ready for you as a matter of fact," he says. "But there ought to be more of you. I always think the more the merrier with petitions, don't you? You'll need some people to watch the back entrance too. It would be too bad if the people you wanted to speak to got away."
"How many you want?" Harry asks.
"All you can get'" says the hard one. "Fifty at least. I want you to take your bikes and leave them in the way."
"Way of what?" Harry asks. He's a very careful leader, Harry.
"Anybody, anything that tries to leave," says the hard
one.
"All damage will be liberally paid for," says the sleepy one, and I can see old Candlish doesn't like that "liberally," but he says nothing, just sits there, and I realize again how bad these two must be.
Then the hard one gets down to details, and we believe everything he says, even when he tells us the police won't bother us, because this one knows what he's doing. And he draws a map for us, and tells us how to divide our forces, and where to congregate, then he says: "The Zaarb lot won't be too keen to let you in. Remember that. If you want to present those petitions, you'll have to get them inside the best way you can." This we understand, and are happy about in the extreme. Breaking doors and windows in a good cause appeals to simple, unspoiled natures like ours. Then the sleepy one pulls open his briefcase and hands Harry the petitions, which are typewritten, and have a lot of room for signatures. And he explains why we must handle them with care. Then he says: "Everyone who signs and turns up will be paid a fiver. You, of course, will receive much more." And this is music, too. Harry looks at the petitions, then looks at the sleepy one.
"Who are you, mister?" he asks.
"Didn't I tell you?" the sleepy one says. "We're your fairy godmothers."
0*0
They had brought Selina to the house in Queen Anne's Gate, where she told Craig and Grierson all she knew of AZ Enterprises, its staff, its layout, over and over, remembering every detail of the curve on the stairs, the position of the fortified room, the way out to the back of the house. When she had done, the two men went down to the armory in the basement, where each man sought out and tested a pair of Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums, firing them until each was as familiar to them as the hand that held them. Craig insisted, too, that they use metal-piercing ammunition. Grierson had protested at having to master a new gun, but Craig had insisted.
"What we're going to do is street fighting," he said. "That means stopping everything with the first shot. And that means a Magnum. A feller once killed a bear with one of these." They were satisfied at last, and Craig went to search among what is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of small arms in Great Britain. He came back with two weapons that made Grierson raise his eyebrows. One was an Armalite .22 long rifle, a semiautomatic with a fiber glass stock recessed to hold the barrel and magazine.
"Lease-lend," he said. "It won't knock any elephants over, but it'll stop anybody you hit in the right place." He looked at the other one. "This is lease-lend, too," he said. "Riot gun." He handed over what looked like a twenty-gauge pump-action shotgun with a sawn-off barrel. "Twenty gauge is illegal for a riot gun," he said. "Whoever made this doesn't seem to have heard the news." He looked at the magazine. "Seven-shot," he said. "If you get close enough you could knock over an elephant with this one."
"How close is close?" asked Grierson.
"Six feet," said Craig. Grierson winced.
"I'd better get in some practice," he said.
Craig left the armory and went back upstairs, remembering the last man he had seen with a gun like that.
He'd been an American Ranger, a tall, easy man from Montana, and they had made one raid together, on the company headquarters of an S.S. panzer group. Their orders had been to bring back a prisoner, and they had brought back one, and only one. The Ranger had hated Germans; his mother and father were Polish Jews. To the end of his life Craig was to remember the effect of that gun. He went back to where Sehna was waiting. If he failed, her country would take a terrible mauling. The People's Republic of Zaarb had a lot of old scores to settle with the Haram.
"You will go there today?" she said. Craig nodded. "Maybe I should go with you. I know the way."
"No," Craig said. "We can't risk you twice."
"You risk yourself many times."
"I'm expendable," said Craig. "Ask Loomis."
"The fat man gives you the hardest work because he honors you most," Selina said.
"He honors nobody and nothing," Craig said. "He uses me because I can do what he wants. No other reason."
Because I can kill, he thought. He sought me out, sobered me up, showed me a girl to worry about—and all because someone has to die, and I'm the one who can kill him.
Jaunty in fresh tweeds and bang on cue, Loomis waddled massively in. Under his arm was a great roll of blueprints. He looked at Selina, looked at the door, then raised his eyebrows inquiringly. She walked out slowly, head up, with a superb and arrogant sexuality.
"Don't you know any ugly girls?" Loomis asked.
"I haven't time," said Craig.
"Been doing me homework," Loomis said. "Found these plans. Fifty years old, but they should give us some idea. Fifty years ago the Zaarb Embassy was a gendeman's town house. Ah, well. That's progress for you." He opened out the blue linen paper, and it crackled dryly. As they pored over it, Grierson came in, the guns under his arm.
"Christ," said Loomis, "what you going to do—depopulate China?"
"We can get in easily enough," Craig said. "We'd like to get out as well."
"So long as you bring Mrs. Naxos with you, you can have a squadron of tanks," Loomis said.
"No," Craig said. "People might talk. All we need now is a fire engine."
« « «
The crowd outside the Zaarb Embassy had an average age of nineteen, a standard uniform of black leather and a high-rating skill in the handling of motorbikes. From the topmost window of the office building across the road, Grierson looked down on them, riding round and round the block in an unending stream, like Indians round a covered wagon. Up the main road round the corner, across the mews, back to the side street and along the main road again. It was impossible to get a vehicle in or out of any building in that block—and there wasn't a policeman in sight. Grierson thought of how they had got into the office. He'd worn a dapper pinstripe suit and carried a briefcase, and Craig had shuffled behind him, all dungarees and an enormous tool bag. Grierson had been very sorry, but a suspected gas leak was a very dangerous affair, and in their own interests he must insist that all the staff go home. A tall, bony, harassed sort of man had locked up the safe and been far more worried about what Mr. Benson would say when he got back from Birmingham than about the threat of coal-gas poisoning. And the typists had made an occasion of it, and gone out to tea before they caught their buses home. One of them had been pretty. Very pretty. They had giggled when the Thames Gas Board van had arrived with a tool chest, and two sweating workmen had humped it in. Grierson had nearly forgotten his role then, and lit a cigarette.
They'd waited until the typists had gone, the pnetty one, the very pretty one, last, and looking so hopefully at Grierson, then they'd opened the chest and tool bag, taken out the walkie-talkie, the firemen's helmets and uniforms, and the weapons they'd brought. Grierson assembled the Armalite, while opposite him Craig sat absorbed, patiently checking his Smith and Wessons, aware of nothing now but the task he had to do, and the tools he must use to do it.