The guard heaved up once and was dead.
Juan tore the guard’s watch from his wrist, ripped his pocket away to get at his wallet. Klaus pulled the bayonet free and stopped to wipe the blood off on the old man’s clothing before they left. One more robbery with murder. It wouldn’t be investigated. There were five or six like this every day in the city. These things happen.
Once it was free of the traffic the Mercedes picked up speed. Dr. Joachim Wielgus hummed a bit of lieder as he bit the end off his cigar. Yes, the doctor had said only one a day after dinner, but today was something special. One little extra cigar could not do much harm.
12
“It’s been just like a honeymoon,” Frances said, touching up her nails with nail polish, then blowing on them. “Two weeks at sea in this floating hotel. Long days in the sunshine, glorious nights in bed. A real honeymoon. Too bad we’re not married.”
“We can do it today in Honolulu,” Hank said. He was threading a new tape through the heads in the recorder. “Hawaii is part of the States. We can go to a Justice of the Peace, get the knot tied while we wait.”
“I don’t know. Sounds more like getting your hair done than getting married. I think it would be far better to wait until we get back to London. I’m compromised already, so a few more weeks won’t make any difference.”
“Your choice, my love. There!”
Hank was getting more adept at the spying job. The reels turned and the new tape ran through. He snapped shut the front of the set, put it into position on the settee and plugged in the lead to the microphone. When the earphone jack was inserted it switched off the loudspeaker and he could listen with the volume turned up. Nothing. Music playing dimly in the background, something being banged down on a table. No voices. He switched on the voice-operated switch and put the earphones back into the case.
“Are the natives restless this morning?” Frances asked.
“Nothing happening at all. Maybe they’re all out on the deck admiring the view.”
“We should be there, too. All I can see from our exclusive and expensive verandah are the roofs of warehouses.”
“Why don’t you go on deck then? I have some things to do here first.”
“I’ll wait for you. I might run into our neighbors who give me the shivers. It’s a good thing they cut us dead because that’s easy enough to do in return. I’m sure if I had to talk to one of them that I would say something terribly insulting.”
“That’s only because of what’s on these tapes.”
“I can understand little or nothing of what’s on those tapes. It’s just that they radiate a feeling of intense evil. Now don’t laugh. I’m sure I would feel that way even if I didn’t know who they were.”
Hank came over, carefully avoiding her widespread and drying finger nails, to plant a warm kiss on her forehead. “I imagine you would. And I’m not laughing. Nothing about those sons of bitches is humorous. Not that I can understand much of what is on the tapes, my schoolboy German isn’t up to it. There is a plan of some kind, they keep referring to that, and when they do it is always associated with the Herr Doktor. We can be pretty sure who that is, though they have never mentioned him by name in my hearing. Anyway, there are I don’t know how many hours of guttural kraut conversation on these tapes and I wish I could get rid of them.”
Hank was packing the reels of tape into a plastic carrier bag when there was a knock on the door. They moved together, in a familiar routine now. While Hank closed the bag of electronic equipment and put it into the closet with the tapes, Frances unplugged the microphone lead, stowed it out of sight, and pressed the play button on the portable. The soft, nasal rhythms of Dolly Parton warbled out.
“Just a minute,” she called in the direction of the door. “But I don’t really like country music” she whispered.
“Pretend you do. This ship has six radio channels, but country and western is the one thing they don’t program, OK?”
“All clear.”
He opened the door and Robert, the steward, was waiting there. “Post has just come aboard, sir. Letter for you.”
“Thanks.”
Hank took it inside and stared at the featureless white envelope, mailed just the day before in Honolulu.
“For goodness sake — open it! The message is inside, not on the outside, my love,” Frances said, leaning over his shoulder. He tore it open and they both read the brief message. There was a single sheet of hotel stationery from the Royal Hawaiian on Waikiki Beach. In the middle of the page, in small letters, was printed
“ROOM 1125.”
“Not what you would call long-winded,” Frances said.
“It’s all I wanted to know. The last I heard was that I would be contacted here and told where to take the tapes. Now what can I take them ashore in?”
“You can’t. Men don’t carry anything off the ship — other than cameras. It’s women who always do the world’s work and carry around back-spraining parcels. Let me find that nice hessian shoulderbag with the picture of Sydney Opera House on it. Put the sack of them in there.”
“Shut up,” he hinted. “Get your sunglasses and let’s go.”
They got their boarding cards at the head of the gangway. At the foot the wahinis were waiting to drape flower leis about their necks.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Frances said, smelling the fragrant blossoms.
”No. Let’s find a garbage can to dump these so we won’t look like tourists — easy marks for every hustler in town.”
“You’re being beastly. I’ll wear yours as well.”
There were cabs waiting to take the travellers and their bulging wallets to the waiting and hungry merchants. They took one of them to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. There were plenty of cars and other cabs about and Hank had no idea if they were being followed or not.
“Our neighbors on the ship are the suspicious type. They may be tailing us to see where we go,” he said.
“What can you do about it? Dart down alleys and such the way they do in the movies?”
“Not my style. We have to lose them — if they are there — without letting them know we even think we are being followed. Going to the hotel is innocent enough, we could be meeting friends there, anything. So here’s what we do. Get into the elevator and press one of the top floors, or any floor where no one else is getting out. Once we are sure we have shaken off our tail____”
“You sound so professional!”
“…. we separate. You keep the bag but I take the reels. Do some shopping, buy some things to put in the bag, and we’ll meet in the bar on the ground floor an hour later. How does that sound?”
“Is there a bar on the ground floor?”
“Is there a hotel in the world without a bar on the ground floor?”
“You’re right, of course. If there is more than one bar in the hotel, I’ll be waiting for you in the one nearest the front entrance.”
“I can see that you’re an old hand at this game. Here we are.”
They pushed through the lobby to the big bank of elevators at the rear. A fat woman in a floral print mu-mu was just getting into one of the elevators and they followed her in just as the doors closed. She pushed the button for the third floor and turned to them.
“Can ah help with your floor?”
“Very kind. Fourteen please.”
When the door closed behind her on the third they were alone.
“Should we press for the eleventh and get off there?” Frances asked.
“No. Someone might be watching the floor indicator. We’ll carry on as planned. You go on to the top.” He took out the plastic bag of tapes and gave her a quick kiss as the doors opened on the fourteenth floor. The hallway was empty. She smiled at him as the doors closed, but there was worry behind the smile.