Thickly he asked, “What’s the game, Josephson? I thought you said the girl at any rate was all right… that wasn’t so long ago. Yet you set that animal on her as well as me.”
Josephson showed the gold teeth. “Bugs,” he said simply. “Ah knew you’d be on de watch for bugs, or you wouldn’ have bothered carryin’ de anti device. But Ah also knew you wouldn’t find de bug, and you didn’.”
“Apparently not.” Shaw felt his head carefully. “Where was it?”
“Where it’d pick up a guy talkin’ to a girl he was in bed with. In de mattress.”
Shaw put his hands to his head again. It was throbbing like a tolling bell. “One up to you,” he said bitterly. He’d had to talk to Flame and wherever in the room he’d done so, he had to take a chance. This one hadn’t come up, that was all. “So what now?”
Josephson said, “Far’s Ah’m concerned both of you are expendable and you’re goin’ to be expended. Ah’m handin’ you over to dese two guys,” he went on, indicating the strangers, “who contacted me a while back with some very interestin’ information dat reached dem from Britain. Seems you ain’t all you say you are.” He nodded at the Puerto Ricans. “Okay,” he said, “he’s all yours, every bit of him.”
“Would you mind explaining?” Shaw asked.
One of the strangers stepped forward, holding a Beretta automatic aimed at Shaw’s navel. He said, “A man back in London was being closely watched by some friends of ours for certain reasons. The man’s name was Siggings. He was seen in a car, a Mercedes… after which he wisely died beneath a bus. There is no proof, but we believe he chose to die that way rather than the way we would have chosen for him. But he did not die before you had been spotted, Commander Esmonde Shaw. After which, we had word a Britisher had been seen around in Harlem too many times to be taken lightly. Once you entered the Sex Kitten you were finished, and Mr Josephson co-operated all he could after picking you up. As for the girl… she is now being released from her contract with the Sex Kitten in the interest of higher matters.” The Beretta jerked. “On your feet, Commander. Move!”
Shaw moved.
Though he took his time over getting up he moved fast once he was on his feet and he moved for the Beretta, but he stopped in his tracks when he heard Flame’s cry of pain and saw the thin line of blood where a knife had lightly parted a line of flesh by the side of her breast. He said softly, “You bastards. You’ll pay for that.”
The man with the gun grinned. “In what currency?” he asked.
Shaw disregarded that. Breathing hard he said, “Well, you’ve got us. What do you mean to do with us?”
The man’s eyes glinted as he glanced across at the Negro. There was sheer pleasure in Josephson’s face and even the sullen Black girl had brightened perceptibly. The man with the gun said gently, “Commander, correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand you wanted to investigate something called the Dead Line, on behalf of British Intelligence. You wanted to see it in action. Well, now you’re going to… all the way to Peking — you and the girl both.”
Chapter Ten
They were given time to get their clothes on and then were pushed ahead of the two tough numbers, with guns sticking hard into their backs. They were pushed into the elevator, and out into the foyer at the bottom. There was no one around except a couple of drunks weaving their way towards the elevator and a janitor asleep in a small glass cage.
In the street they were ordered into the back of a sumptuous Cadillac limousine which had the blinds drawn well over to blank off the back and side windows. Shaw was pushed in first and he almost sat in the lap of a Negro who was already stationed in the corner. This man, too, had a gun; Shaw felt the hard circle boring into his side. When Flame was in one of the toughs climbed in beside her and the other got in the front with the driver. The Negro said, “Right, let’s go.”
The driver started up and his companion turned round and slid the glass panel shut and pulled the blind down behind the driver. The Cadillac pulled into the roadway and went ahead, then took a corner fast. In the back Shaw and Flame couldn’t see where they were heading, but they seemed to be on the road a long time, going fast all the way. Then at last they took a slow left turn, apparently up a slight slope, turned right at the top, and stopped.
The gunmen in the back sat tight until the door was opened from the outside by the man who had been in front. “Out,” this man said to Flame. “Don’t try anything, just get out.”
They got out, the guns still probing flesh, painfully exacerbating the claw-wounds in Shaw’s back. They were made to hop up on to a platform raised a couple of feet above the ground. The car was driven ahead, presumably to wherever its garage was. Shaw studied his surroundings, fixing the layout in his mind. They were in a smallish yard, shut off from the road by a high brick wall. In the grey light of what was now the dawn that wall looked dirty, blackened with city grime. The yard was dirty too, had a semi-derelict appearance, with heaps of junk lying about and covered with soot and other air deposits. There was straw around, and broken pieces of packing-cases. The two sides where the raised platform ran consisted of an L-shaped building that looked like a warehouse. Over big double doors there was a name in faded white paint: hound-tucson pier and underneath, in smaller letters, Hound-Tucson Company Inc. of New York. There was a pervasive smell of fuel oil and tarred rope and away beyond the warehouse Shaw could see the jib of a crane. Beneath the oil and the tar he smelt the river, whether it would be the Hudson or the East he didn’t know. Could be the Harlem River, though the Harlem’s wharves handled only very minor local operations… in any case, it was now fairly obvious to Shaw that his imagination, back in London’s King George V dock, hadn’t been so far off the beam.
The Negro who had been in the back of the Cadillac outside Josephson’s block said, “I’ll take dem over now.” Shaw didn’t like his voice; it was cold and flat and dangerous.
“Yes, Mr Spice,” one of the Puerto Ricans said.
Spice pushed his gun hard into Shaw, who obeyed the pressure, making for a door at the far end of the platform — a loading bay for trucks, that platform looked like. As they reached the door, Spice ordered Shaw to bang on it. There was a shuffling sound from inside and Shaw heard the lock operate. The door swung open and showed a squat man like a toad, a White with black teeth. There was a strong smell of rye whisky on the air as the man exhaled.
Spice said viciously, “You always at de bottle, White bum. Too dam’ drunk to hear de Cadillac.”
The White bum, and to Shaw the term seemed about right, gave a hiccup. Spice’s pointed shoe shot forward and took him right in the crutch, hard. He went down groaning and vomiting. Spice snapped, “Move on in, limey.”
Behind them the other man came in astern of Flame, then kicked the door shut. The second Puerto Rican had disappeared, gone with the Cadillac perhaps. Spice looked down at the man on the floor. “Get up,” he said flatly. “Lock de door.” The man pulled himself together and got to his feet, looking with terrified but placatory eyes at the Negro. He did as he was told and Spice said, “Now — off.” The White obeyed this order too, and very gladly.
The Negro said, as flat as before, “You two, over by de wall.”
Shaw and Flame walked forward.
They were in an office with a desk, a couple of steel filing cabinets, and a telephone. There was a window with steel shutters fastened across it and another door opposite the desk. Spice directed them to a section of wall between this door and the filing cabinets. When they got there he said, “Turn aroun’ and keep your backs flat against de wall.”