The magician was calling something out from the stage. Ugly produced what looked like a folding comb and pressed a button on the side. It was a flick-knife. About twenty centimetres of steel sprang out of his fist, slanting towards me. Scarface began to move closer. Ten seats and he would be on to me. I had a wall behind me and people in front. I had nowhere to go.
Mr Marvano had finished what he was saying. There was a long pause. Ugly was closing in from his side, too. The flick-knife flashed momentarily in one of the lights trained on the stage. I looked back the other way. Scarface carried no weapon but his fingers, long and skeletal, stretched out towards my throat.
“And now, please, I require a volunteer from the audience.” Mr Marvano had tried it in Dutch and found no takers so now he tried English. Only three seats separated me from Scarface on one side and Ugly on the other.
My hand shot up. “I volunteer!” I shouted.
Every eye in the theatre turned to look at me. A spotlight swivelled round and everything went white as it hit me in the eyes. Scarface and Ugly froze where they were, just outside the beam. Somehow Ugly had managed to spirit away the knife. Ignoring them, I clambered over a seat, almost landing in the owner’s lap. But a moment later I was away, moving towards the stage while the audience urged me on with another round of applause. For the time being, anyway, I was safe.
Mr Marvano had wheeled a big, multicoloured box onto the stage. It was about the size of a washing-machine with a round hole in the top and about a dozen slots around the sides. I didn’t much like the look of it but it was too late to back out now. Mr Marvano grabbed my hand and beamed at me through teeth that looked even older than him.
“And what’s your name?” he asked, again in English.
“Nick.”
“Nick. Thank you. And now, Nick, I am telling you the trick.”
He wheeled the box towards me and opened it. It was empty inside. But now I saw that if I knelt down inside it and if he closed it, I would be neatly trapped with my head protruding from the round hole at the top. I didn’t much care for the idea. For a moment I thought of making a break for it and trying to find a way out of the theatre. But I had lost sight of Scarface and Ugly. And while they were around I was safer here, on the stage, in the light.
“I am calling this the Mexican dagger box,” Mr Marvano said. He repeated the words in Dutch. “Now I am asking you please to step inside.” I hesitated, then stepped in. The audience watched in silence but I could barely see them behind the glare of the spotlights.
I knelt down. Mr Marvano closed the box shut and pressed four studs, locking it. I tried to move. But the box must have been smaller than I had thought. I was completely trapped, with the wooden sides pressing against my back, my shoulders and my arms. From the outside it must have looked like I was taking a Turkish bath. I wasn’t too happy about being on the inside. What was it he had said about Mexican daggers…?
“The box is locked — here, here and here,” the magician explained. “And now I will get the Mexican daggers.” He waved a finger at me. “Don’t go away!”
There was no chance of that. Painfully, I swivelled my head round and watched him as he ambled off the stage. The audience laughed and I realized I probably looked even more stupid than I felt. There was a rack of silver knives hanging in the wings, but no sign of any technicians or stage hands. Mr Marvano reached out to take the knives.
But then Ugly appeared, suddenly looming up behind him. He lashed out with a fist, catching Mr Marvano on the side of the jaw. The magician crumpled. Ugly half-caught him but then let him fall, at the same time dragging off his tailcoat. It was a neat trick, but I was the only person who had seen it. A moment later, Scarface stepped out from behind the curtain. Quickly, he put on Mr Marvano’s jacket. Then, pushing the rack of Mexican daggers, he walked onto the stage. The audience stirred, puzzled. I smashed an elbow against the side of the box. My old wound from the wheatfield flared up again. The box didn’t even creak.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Scarface said. He spoke in English, perhaps for my benefit. “I’m afraid Mr Marvano has been taken ill. So he asked me to finish the trick.”
He snatched up one of the daggers. It was even more lethal than Ugly’s switchblade, about twenty-five centimetres longer with a wide, curving blade. The handle was decorated with some sort of fake Aztec design. Maybe the dagger was fake, too. But from where I was sitting, it certainly looked real.
Slowly he advanced towards me. I had never felt more helpless. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was watch. And Scarface was enjoying every second of it.
He smiled at me, a smile that was full of hatred.
“Wait a minute…” I began.
“The first knife, ladies and gentlemen,” Scarface said.
He slammed it in. I shut my eyes and winced. Was I dead? Was I even wounded? I opened my eyes. Scarface looked as surprised as I did. The knife had certainly gone in the box one side. It had come out the other. But it didn’t seem to have gone through me.
The audience was surprised, too. They seemed to have woken up now. Perhaps they could tell that this new magician had a quality that the last one had lacked. Complete insanity, for example. They broke into louder, more enthusiastic applause.
Scarface picked up two more knives. Snarling, he plunged them into the box. Both of them passed right through without even scratching me. The audience clapped again.
Snarling and muttering to himself in Dutch, Scarface picked up the rest of the knives. There were twelve in all. One after the other he stabbed them into the box, each time waiting for me to cry out and then exit into a better world. But none came close. I was untouchable.
By now I was doing a good impersonation of a pin-cushion. The audience was delighted. There were no more knives left and, for that matter, no slots in which to stick them. But Scarface hadn’t finished. His hand went into his pocket and when it came out he was holding Ugly’s switchblade. He pressed the button and the blade shot out.
The audience fell silent. He bent down over me. I could see the veins throbbing under his skin and one of his eyes had developed a twitch. “There are no more holes, Diamond,” he hissed. “This one is for you.”
“Thirteenth time lucky?” I asked.
He snarled. “You were a fool to meddle in our affairs.”
“I was only doing it for the medals, Scarface,” I said.
“Goodbye…”
He took careful aim. This time he wasn’t going to bother with the box. His eyes were on my throat, right underneath my chin. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted the switchblade in his hand.
The audience waited. In the wings, Ugly leered at me over the unconscious body of Mr Marvano. The switchblade stopped, high above me.
I shut my eyes and waited. There was nothing else I could do.
THE WRONG MAN
The whole scene was frozen in the glare of the spotlights: Scarface, the knife, the waiting audience. Then everything happened at once.
The knife flashed down. There was a gunshot. Scarface screamed and reeled back, clutching his hand. The knife hit the stage and stuck there, quivering, in the wood. Ugly twisted round, trying to see what was happening. Scarface bent over his cradled hand and groaned. Blood seeped out between his fingers and dripped onto his legs.
“Good shot, Ted.”
“Thanks, Ed.”
“Lower the curtain, Red.”
The men from M16 had sprung out of nowhere. Now they swarmed over the stage while the audience — evidently in a good mood — gave them a cheerful round of applause. Ugly had put up a token resistance. One of the agents had given him a token punch on the nose and now he was out cold. Two more of them dragged Mr Marvano off while Ed and Ted grabbed hold of Scarface himself. His hand was bleeding very badly now. Ted’s bullet had smashed right through it, and I can’t say I was sorry.