“It was fucking brill!” he screamed, now in English. “Fucking brill! Sometimes—sometimes, I amaze even myself!” He breathed hard and laughed. As we approached a junction, he looked in the mirror and did a sudden stop. He took the gun from my trembling hands and used it as a hammer to smash out what was left of the windscreen. When we set off again, it was at a more sedate pace. A few pedestrians in a shopping street looked at the unusual sight of a petrol car—a petrol car that must by now appear to have survived a head on collision. We drove past a policeman. Through the bonnet mirror on my side, I watched him stop his slow patrol of the street and take out his notebook. I supposed he was taking our number, and that this would, in due course, be passed to one of the mobile patrols.
“Where do we go now?” I asked.
“We still need petrol,” came the triumphant reply. “We can take this where the trunk road starts. After that, there is a small hotel outside Hungerford where you may choose to help me consider our next move.
“But goodness gracious me,” he laughed in his Indian voice. “Did you not see the look on their faces as we drove straight past them? Unless he has more subtle management skills than you have indicated, Mr Michael Foot will surely need to make a wholesale purchase of sulphuric acid!”
“Do you think you killed that man when you shot him?” I asked. Pakeshi shrugged.
“Probably not,” he said. He brushed some cubes of laminated glass from the top of the dashboard and put his gun away. “When I have time to aim, I generally try for headshots. On this occasion, I might have got the creature’s left arm.” He giggled and plucked a bristle from his upper lip.
I fumbled for my cigarettes and began to wonder about the next move Pakeshi had mentioned.
“It all sounds so perfectly beastly,” Vicky Richardson said again. She took the cigarette holder from her mouth and blew smoke up at the ceiling. Major Stanhope grunted something noncommittal and stabbed a giant forefinger at a line on the lunch menu.
“The man isn’t Indian, you say?” he barked at Pakeshi.
“He was in charge for many years in the officer’s mess at Tombola,” came the helpful and surprisingly polite reply. “I think you’ll find his cuisine exactly as you would wish.” Stanhope gave a wolfish grin and looked up and down the list of probably vile foreign dishes. Once I’d got past Gwen’s obscene greeting, we’d waited no more than half an hour in the bridal suite of the King’s Garter outside Hungerford before Vicky and Stanhope had arrived together. Though I’d heard nothing as I sat in my bath, they must have come down from London by helicopter. Now, we were seated in one of the private dining rooms, and I’d finished the best report I could make of all the horrors I’d experienced since Thursday morning.
Thursday morning! It was now Saturday afternoon. It seemed as if a gulf of months or even years lay between me as I sat here and me as I’d watched the morning news in my flat and waited for O’Brien to turn up for those boxes. I’d given my side of the story. I’d made some effort to try to find out what Vicky was doing with Stanhope—and, of course, what she’d been about when her voice was beamed to the wireless in Macmillan’s car. For all the answers I’d got, I might have addressed my questions to the ugly, many-armed statue of the Indian goddess that leered at me from the corner of the dining room.
Stanhope pushed the menu aside and took up one of the cracked pages of the Churchill Memorandum. Even Pakeshi had been alarmed at the look Stanhope gave him on its production. Certainly, I’d expected at least a pat on the head for having kept it out of Macmillan’s hands. Instead, Stanhope’s face was like thunder as he pushed the two halves of the sheet together and peered at the faded ink.
“The man didn’t even see this?” he muttered. I shook my head. Pakeshi looked as if he was about to start another argument. But Stanhope ignored him. He sighed and put our whole fragment of the Memorandum beneath the menu.
There was a polite knock on the door, and all tension vanished from the room as we made our orders. As the waiter withdrew, Stanhope rammed a plug of cannabis tobacco into his pipe and put a match to the bowl. He took a thoughtful puff, and then, as if it had been a cigarette, sucked hard and held the smoke in his lungs. As he breathed out, he smiled for the first time since we’d met. He fastened his pipe to the claw which was serving today in place of his dark glove, and stared at me.
“You’ve been looking hard at the Goddess Shambleeta,” he said—“she of the hundred wombs.” He paused and uttered something rhythmical in one of the Indian languages. Pakeshi giggled nervously. “I see you’re of the modern opinion,” Stanhope growled at him. “For all your political activities, you’re one of Macaulay’s children.” He laughed unpleasantly, and bent his head down to get at the stem of his pipe. “Well, there are still many out East who believe that, for those of a certain age, the regular embrace of her statue is necessary to the care and maintenance of the lingam.” He recited more of his Indian poem and twisted round to look at the wanton ugliness of the statue’s face. For the first time, I noticed the hideous red gashes that covered its lower belly and thighs. I swallowed and looked away.
“But we foiled the plot,” I said, trying not to sound like a schoolboy accused of some unstated offence. “Macmillan doesn’t have the whole Memorandum. All you have to do is hurry down to Birch Grove and arrest him and Foot, and the plot is over. If you really hurry, you might even catch all the friends he’s invited for this evening.” Stanhope turned back from his inspection of the Goddess Shambleeta. The look of faint veneration vanished from his face, and he glowered at me.
“On the contrary, dear boy,” he said, “you’ve complicated everything. By now, we were rather expecting that our pair of villains would be activating their entire network in readiness for their Monday coup. Instead of that, they could well be burning every sheet of paper in the house preparatory for an escape to Moscow.” He took another lungful of smoke. For all it was mellowing him, the additive in his tobacco might have been coca leaf.
“But, Vicky,” I cried in soft despair, “why did you tell me to get away if you wanted Macmillan to succeed?” She took the holder from her lips and smiled coldly at me. Beside me, Pakeshi looked silently down at the tablecloth.
“Darling Anthony,” she said in an almost pitying voice, “when we picked up the boy’s call to Nathaniel Branden, we guessed you were alone in the car. I told you to get out and run because we didn’t want poor silly Aaron to be with you when you were caught again. I really don’t know what possessed the boy to try rescuing you. But you must understand that I was trying to save his life, not yours.” She had the nerve to dab at an eye as she expatiated on Krellburger’s youthful charms, and how I’d surely not been able to keep my eyes or hands off the boy. “I did so want you to get yourself away from gorgeous young Aaron. He could then have got himself down to Catford to take further instructions from Nathaniel. But it all ended so—so very badly!” She broke off for a sob into a handkerchief that Stanhope had pulled out in readiness.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
I finished my glass of red and reached for the bottle. My hand shook uncontrollably as I refilled my glass.
“Don’t be a fool, man!” Stanhope snarled at my snivelled protest. “We weren’t expecting you to die in their hands. The idea was for you to hand over the rest of that bloody Memorandum. Bearing in mind the trouble I’d made for them, they’d then be bringing all their plans forward—which is exactly what you say I have achieved. They’d get you on side to authenticate the entire document, and everyone else would start to break cover. The purpose of getting the police on your back—not to mention the frighteners I put on you in the street last Wednesday—was to get you out of sorts with us, and make you cooperate all the more willingly. You weren’t expected to blunder about like Richard Hannay on benzedrine. Nor would you have without that slimy troublemaker you have living next door to you—Dr Srindomar bleeding Pakeshi, MD (failed)!” He glared across the table at Pakeshi, who tried without much success for a self-deprecatory smile.