“I am waiting for Cairo to call,” he said. “We’ll soon know if the abduction story is true.”
She bit her lip with impatience and restrained herself on the edge of an outburst.
“If it’s true you will?”
Lawton nodded. But he still sat in a pose of maddening inattention, considering; it was as if some aspect of the affair still troubled him. Grete leaned forward and continued urgently:
“You see there is a grave danger that the Haganah will take the law into its own hands and murder him; that is what worries me. They are not concerned with abstractions like international justice. If they are satisfied that he is the man, do you think they would bother to hand him over to the Commission and risk him getting free again? Don’t you see the urgency of it?”
Lawton nodded again, obstinately.
“I want to cover myself against a mistake,” he said, and once again she was on the edge of giving vent to her feelings by an outburst when mercifully the phone rang. She heard the links snap home from exchange to exchange, and then the hoarse bronchial voice of Bruce Davis crackle in the receiver. Lawton said quietly:
“Cairo, I have you; did you get my Immediate?”
The voice at the other end replied:
“Yes, it’s apparently true; they are keeping it dark for fear the press gets hold of it and turns it into a political triumph for the Palestine Jews. Hiding Nazis will reflect ill on them; and then another reason is that no one is really quite sure he was abducted. He might have done a bunk on his own, nicht wahr? But he’s gone, my boy, and all posts have been warned to keep a lantern in the window for our wandering boy tonight, to coin a quotation.”
Lawton sighed shortly and said, “Thank you, Bruce.”
“You see?” she said, her face breaking into a smile of triumph. He nodded. His face had gone very thoughtful all at once. He lowered the desk lamp until its greenish arc swung low over the map which he was unfolding with his other hand.
“Show me where,” he said, and she stepped to his side, to trace with a nervous finger a maze of streets leading to the short and squalid cul-de-sac, along one wall of which ran the verminous and deserted cells of the now abandoned Turkish prison. He marked this point with a pencil and added the street number. His pipe had gone out.
“I’ll get a warrant out this morning and take in a search party at dusk,” he said.
“Not before?” she said with dismay.
But he did not answer her. He was already dialling the number of the prison department to ask for a squad of police and a search warrant. She was consumed with a burning impatience. The slow methodical British way of going about things drove her mad.
“Hugh,” she said, “suppose they move him.”
He re-lit his pipe and shrugged his shoulders negligently.
“That would be our bad luck,” he said, and, once more ignoring her, picked up his telephone.
She heard his quiet voice saying:
“A squad under a lance corporal should be enough for this operation. I want both ends of the street cordoned from six to six thirty this afternoon.” Then he put down the receiver and stood up. He crossed from behind his desk and took her hands to squeeze them briefly.
“I know what this means to you,” he said.
“I’ll come with you,” she said eagerly, but he shook his head.
“There might be some shooting. One never knows. Besides, it’s strictly forbidden to take you on operations of any kind. You’ll wait here and I’ll bring him back to this office under escort.”
This solution did not please her, and she had difficulty concealing her irritation; but, after reflecting for a moment, it struck her that perhaps it was the wisest decision — particularly as she did not want David or the Haganah to feel that she had betrayed their secrets. She stood for a long minute considering. Lawton watched her sympathetically, and made an awkward attempt to cheer her up.
“The only man I knew who took women on active service was Carstairs. In the field his tent was always crowded with veiled ladies.”
But she did not smile. Instead she sighed and said:
“Very well, if that’s how it must be… but I don’t know how I’m going to live through the day until this evening…
The operation, which had been inappropriately christened “Marigold” by Lawton’s G.S.O.2., whose interest in botany far outweighed any other, took place as planned with a precision which, to the professional mind, is almost elegance. Punctually at six thirty, two squads of troopers sealed off the cul-de-sac by the Turkish prison, while at the same moment Lawton and a senior police officer stepped out of their cars and walked with slow unhurried but purposeful tread towards the closed door of number 27.
The street was deserted and silent, and their arrival seemed to cause no kind of interest. Beyond the cul-de-sac the traffic roared past on the Jaffa Road. Dusk was falling, and the first faint blossoms of street lamps were beginning to shine.
Duff, the policeman, was a huge insensitive lump of manhood, with a rosy face and a walrus moustache. His portentous air irritated Lawton.
“I think,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll call the picket and break the door down.”
Lawton gave him an impatient glance and said:
“It may not be necessary. Let’s try knocking first. We don’t want to wake up the whole street.”
Suiting the action to the word, he advanced to the door and tapped it twice in peremptory fashion with the muzzle of his squat Luger. There was a long moment of silence. Nothing happened. They waited, feeling rather foolish. Duff gave a windy sigh and looked at his companion with an air of impatient concern. Lawton was about to concede the policeman’s right to call his squad and smash up the door when all of a sudden they heard the noise of footsteps within. They had already noted with care the existence of a Judas in the heavy oak door. This now flicked open, and a startled dark eye confronted them. Lawton barked:
“Open up! Police!”
And, to illustrate the matter, thrust his pistol into the aperture until the muzzle rested an inch from the cold forehead of the man inside.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” said the voice.
“Then open,” cried the policeman in a sort of snarl.
There was the squeak of bolts and the rattle of keys and the great door swung open on a deserted area of darkness, at the further end of which there could be dimly discerned a dilapidated stone staircase and a cobwebbed window. Somewhere in the darkness about them they heard the diminishing echo of footsteps scrambling upwards and a voice which shouted:
“Police!”
They leaped forward, their pistols cocked, and covered the great hall in a series of strides. The staircase, however, offered many advantages to a hypothetical defence, and they adopted the customary technique of mounting it, their backs pressed to the wall facing inwards, and taking eight stairs at a time before pausing.
The first floor was deserted and in darkness. The policeman seemed disposed to search it thoroughly before continuing to the second floor — and indeed this would have been a very normal precaution under ordinary conditions. But Lawton knew what he was looking for and knew where to find it. He pressed on.
The diagram which Grete had drawn on his green blotting pad was still fresh in his mind and, in spite of the almost total darkness, he felt confident and at ease. Experience, too, had something to do with it, for he knew that nothing is more futile than a desultory exchange of shots in darkness, and that no revolver can be counted upon beyond the range of eight feet.
So far, however, no opposition seemed in sight, and it was when they reached the second floor that he saw a bar of light shining into the open corridor from a half-opened door. His heart sank, for this was the door of the cell in which the captive had been imprisoned.