Nobody paid any attention to me as I went through the lobby to the lifts wrapped in blankets. Geneva is a cosmopolitan city. If a Zuly in war paint walked down the street everyone would know that he was just over to a conference hoping to get economic aid.
Panda ran me a bath, suggested we should share it, yelped like a disappointed puppy when I managed to lock her out, but was happier when I had to shout for a towel and there was no way of escaping the friction rub.
They found me a suit of Najib's, navy blue, and a white shirt and other odds and ends, but the only spare shoes were a pair of ginger suedes.
Back in the sitting room, I said, 'Why always these suede jobs?'
'We get them wholesale from Panda,' said Jimbo. 'She has a small factory in Leichtenstein.'
Panda, coming in with coffee, said, 'Well, a girl has to do something with her profits. It's for my old age. When I retire from the entertainment business, round about eighty, I guess.'
She put the coffee tray down in front of me and the top half of her nearly fell out of the low-cut yellow dress into which she had changed.
Najib said, 'You two get off. You know where. I want to talk to Mr Carver.'
Panda winked at me, 'You want I give her your love, honey-chile? She's a peach. I'll hand you that — but she'll never have the touch I have with a towel.'
'Out,' said Najib.
Jimbo said, 'That O'Dowda might come along here.'
'Let him,' said Najib. 'And he can bring his fishing rod, too — but it won't do him any good.'
They went and I leaned back and sipped my coffee. I was feeling all right now, physically. Mentally, I was as scrambled up as ever over the problem of the parcel, except now I was beginning to feel bloody-minded, in fact, more bloody-minded than ever, towards O'Dowda. The man didn't care a damn for anyone but himself. Julia could go, I could go, everyone could go, just so long as he got his hands on what he wanted. With me, that just strengthened the desire I had to make sure that he never did get it. Just for once somebody was going to spit in his eye.
'How did you know I was out there?' I asked Najib.
'Jimbo saw them jump you from the flat window. The Facel Vega is still down there. But that's the past. You know what you're going to do, don't you?'
He was a different man, serious, calm, no babu talk, and it was easy to see him in his real role, an army officer seconded to an Intelligence position in Gonwalla's service.
I said, 'I never did believe in that old business of which would you save when the boat sinks, your wife or your mother?'
Najib nodded. 'I thought putting Julia in danger would work with O'Dowda. He's made it clear that it doesn't. That's the kind of man he is. But you're not that kind. Julia is in danger. I'm serious about that. I don't care for the situation particularly, but I have my orders. You'll never see her again — nobody will — unless I get the parcel. Life, a life, in our country isn't very important. Never has been, so don't think that I shan't carry out the order if you refuse to hand over.'
'I've got Interpol on my back, remember.'
'I know. But you've got to take a chance on that. In fact, your Western philosophy or code demands it. You know that. Up to this moment you've been trying to find a way round it — sometimes there are ways — but not this time. So — there is nothing you can do. I'm sure that you agree with me.'
I poured myself another cup of coffee and considered it. He was right, of course. In cold blood he was nothing but right. Up there at the lake, with the good air being choked out of me, I'd been ready to give up, to forget all codes, but down here, under no physical pressure, I was thinking straight, and feeling straight. He was dead right. I just had to get Julia out of trouble and then take my own chances with Interpol. I could go to ground for three or four months and they might decide to forgive me or forget me; they might. But I didn't think it likely. The only thing that would make them change their minds would be pressure, political or public.
Although my mind was made up, I said, 'When you've got this parcel, what are the chances of Gonwalla putting pressure on whoever is using Interpol? Would he? Could he?'
Najib considered this. 'When we have the parcel and it is destroyed, then our government is safe. We have friends as well as enemies among the world's governments. Many of them are members of Interpol. I should say there is a fifty-fifty chance. But to be fair — and you must have thought of this — the individual government which hopes to get this parcel through Interpol might take its own private, vindicative revenge for a failure.'
They might. But that was all part of the chance I had to take.
I said, 'All right. How do we do it? It'll take me about an hour to get the parcel.'
'You go and get it. When it's in your hands, phone here. By the time you get back I'll have Julia waiting somewhere handy and we'll do the change-over in the open, in the street outside. Satisfy you?'
I nodded, and then got up to make a note of the telephone number.
I said, 'You'll be here waiting for me to call?'
'Yes.'
'Good.'
As I went to the door, he said, 'We'll do what we can for you afterwards. I'm in no position to lecture, of course — but it's difficult to resist. You've only got yourself to blame for whatever the aftermath may be. You thought you could make something for yourself out of the parcel. Human greed. It's a constant problem.'
So it might be, I thought, as I went out, but without it the world would be a very dull place. Personally, at that moment I was all in favour of dullness. At that moment I would have liked to have been away on the holiday I had promised myself, sitting dully somewhere wondering what to do and knowing that if I thought of something I would never have the energy to do it. That's what holidays were for, to smooth you down to a nice, flat dull surface which you could take back for the rest of the year's events to mark up again.
It was a beautiful morning. The road out around the lake to Evian was choked with cars — parts of it were under repair so there was single-line traffic and hold-ups at lights which did nothing to ease down my impatience. All I wanted now was to get the parcel and have Julia back.
Away to the left, when I could see it, the lake was a great sheet of blue with the Juras somewhere beyond in the haze. Right-handed, somewhere out of sight, was Mont Blanc, and not far from that was the chalet where I had spent a night with Julia… Najib was right. Human greed. I promised myself that if I came out of this little lot with a whole skin I would really try to do something about it. I knew I wouldn't be able to cut it out altogether, but I would try to cut it down. For me that was a big promise. Money was such a comforting thing to have. The way things were I wasn't likely to get any fees or expenses from O'Dowda for this job. Wilkins would have something to say about that.
Good old Wilkins. I wondered what she would have made of Panda. I spent the rest of the journey imagining them together. For all I knew they might hit it off.
I parked the Facel Vega and went into the post office with my English driving licence, my international driving licence, and a banker's credit card, per favour of O'Dowda (all of which had been in my case in the car) in order to identify myself. Sometimes at poste restantes they asked you and sometimes they didn't. They worked on some system, probably their mood of the moment.
The woman behind the guichet had a pink nose, pink lips, flurry blue-grey hair, and big moist eyes, doe-like, and reminded me of an Angora rabbit which I had once forgotten to feed for a week so that it died and my sister had leathered me with a slipper. Sensitive green fingers she had, my sister, even at the age of fourteen, but she also had the wrists of a squash player.
I spread out my cartes d'identites like lettuce in front of the girl.