But Pakeshi was asleep. Mouth open, eyes shut, he sat opposite me, pressed into the corner formed by the window and the wall of our compartment. I looked at him awhile. Every so often, he’d mutter something under his breath. More often, he’d let out a gentle snore. I looked at the leather briefcase he’d snatched up in our escape from his flat. The Churchill Memorandum was in there. I felt the sudden need to see it again. There might be something else in it that I’d overlooked in my only and hasty reading of it the night before—something that would better explain why I was being hunted by our own people, and by some other person or persons unknown. It might also be worth seeing what else Pakeshi had brought along with us. He’d risked a good twenty seconds on getting that case—twenty seconds while I was waiting on the fire escape and two armed men were trying to smash in his front door.
It was just between his feet. With the swaying of the railway train, one of his legs knocked against it every so often. Otherwise, it was untouched. I watched and waited and got the rhythm of the swaying. I reached forward and pulled the case towards me. It was surprisingly heavy, and I had to grab it with both hands to stop it from scraping on the carpet. I took it onto my lap. Holding my left thumb over the latch, I pushed gently down on the opening button. I’d already seen it wasn’t locked, and the latch came away with a soft click. With a stab of excitement, I pulled the case open and looked in.
I looked up at the ceiling and squeezed my eyes shut and then open again. I looked back down into the case. It must have been after midnight, and the compartment lights had been dimmed. But you can’t mistake banknotes when you see them. The Memorandum was right at the top of the case, just where Pakeshi had dropped it in the Marks & Spencer restaurant. From what I could see, the rest of the case was stuffed with money—bundles and bundles of white Bank of England notes—fives, tens, fifties, hundreds—all thick bundles, neatly held in paper bands of the Midland Bank. How much was in there I just couldn’t say. It might have been £50,000, or £100,000. The thing about money above the usual amounts is that, unless you work as a bank clerk, you can’t estimate sums from their physical mass.
I heard a sound opposite. I looked up into the barrel of Pakeshi’s gun.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I dumped the still open case on the seat beside me and sighed wearily. This was only my Third look into the barrel of a gun. But it was my third in only two days, and I was learning fast.
“Come now, Srindomar,” I said, “you surely wouldn’t kill me after such devotion to keeping me alive.” I reached into the case and pulled out a bundle of fifties. “I’d never have thought the medical profession could be so profitable.” I laughed softly and dropped the bundle back into the case.
“What a man cares to do with his money in this country is his business alone,” Pakeshi said. He put his uncocked revolver back into his overcoat pocket and reached across for the case. “If no one in the bank presumed to ask questions of me yesterday afternoon, can you give me any reason why you should ask any now?”
“Oh, I can think of many reasons, my dearest Srindomar,” I said with what I hoped was a bitter smile. “In the first place, the clerks who counted it for you weren’t on the run with you for murders they hadn’t committed, or that hadn’t taken place. They also weren’t being chased by God knows who. Now, would you care to enlighten me on your own part in this pantomime? Any chance that you’re one of Stanhope’s old Indian friends?” Now it was Pakeshi’s turn to laugh—not the high giggle of the East, but a parody of the English guffaw.
“Oh, Anthony, Anthony,” he mocked. “Always the historian! Always ready to make patterns and impose them on the most disparate events. Such a blessing all the Gods in Heaven heaped on suffering humanity when they never inclined you to study medicine!” Now, he sniggered in his usual way, and plucked twice at a bristle on his upper lip. Silent, I stared back at him. He snapped his case shut and put it back under his feet.
“Very well,” he went on, “if you must know all, I will tell you something. The money is my business, not any of yours. When I saw the accursed Mr Churchill’s document last night, my third and final decision was to remove myself from London. At the best of times, your Inspector O’Brien’s colleagues would have been hard on me. I had no wish to involve myself in further complications. When those men arrived at your flat, I was there wholly to beg the loan of your fine suitcases. I saved you because there was no other way to get myself out of your flat alive. When they followed us, I naturally ran with you. As we finished our belated breakfast in Marks & Spencer, I decided it would be in my interest to represent myself to Inspector O’Brien as your saviour, and therefore the saviour of England. When I opened the newspaper, and had recovered from my own shock at what it contained, I dropped that plan and decided on the plan we are now executing.” He paused and stretched his arms. He fell back into his dozing position and smiled at me.
“And your current plan—what might that be?” I asked, breaking the silence that had followed. Pakeshi smiled again.
“There is no benefit in handing you to your own authorities,” he said. “But, while I accept it may not have been they who tried to kill you for it, the Germans might be persuaded to pay good money for Mr Churchill’s memorandum.” He grinned into my tight, suddenly angry face. “The plan, since Marks & Spencer, has been to get you to Hull. From there, we can take a ferry to Rotterdam. Holland, you may be aware, has no passport control for visitors from the United Kingdom, which solves the difficulty of our having left Bayswater unequipped for overseas travel. From there, I expect an easy time in the German Embassy. It will be easy, that is, for me. For Her Majesty’s Government, it will entail the greatest embarrassments. Published to the Americans, it will be some measure of German revenge for the Zimmermann Telegram that got America into the Great War on the British side.” He giggled and let his right foot kick against the briefcase. “An aroused America will be staunchly anti-British. It will also, as you pointed out last night, be reliably anti-Russian. On either count, the Germans will not be displeased.”
“I won’t allow this!” I said fiercely. I got up and stood over Pakeshi. He shrank deeper back into his corner and went through the motions of looking frightened. “What you’re proposing is treason—treason against the Queen-Empress, treason against this country, treason against the Empire. I’ll not let you get away with it.” I bent down to get at the briefcase. If it was the last thing I did, that Churchill Memorandum was going, one torn up page at a time, out of the window.
Without seeming to move any other part of his body, though, Pakeshi’s right leg shot up and smashed with overpowering force into my chest. I found myself back in my seat, my head ringing from where it had knocked against the wall above the back of the seat.
“Please, my esteemed and most learned neighbour—please, my dearest Anthony—do not test my patience. If I saved your life this morning, it was, as I have said, in my own interest. If I broke my medical oath before dinner this evening, it was because I like you. I do not think you will be of much use to me in my negotiations with the Germans. The document you have most kindly allowed me to retain is all that I really need. Be grateful for my charity—and do not test my patience.” He got up and now he stood over me. It was now my turn to huddle back in my seat. The railway train rumbled again on its tracks, and Pakeshi had to steady himself by holding onto the luggage rack. But he continued standing over me, and looked pityingly down.