The Secret People
John Wyndham
PART 1
CHAPTER I
On an afternoon in September 1964, the ears of the inhabitants of Algiers were unpleasantly assaulted by an uproar from the skies. The sound was different from the familiar drumming boom of the regular mail and passenger service, and it was equally unlike the staccato throbbing of the desert police patrols; it was, in fact, an entirely new brand of aerial noise, more offensive than either. The strollers in the streets stopped to look up, the loiterers in cafes moved from under their striped awnings, even the hagglers in the markets momentarily suspended business to stare surprisedly overhead.
The cause of the sensation came streaking across the blue Mediterranean—a small silver aeroplane, hurling itself out of the northern sky. It amazed the watchers that so small a craft could make so fierce a noise, but the sight of it astonished them no less, for it roared through the heavens, trailing behind it a wake of flame fully six times its own length. It was diving as it crossed the city, coming down to earth like a silver comet with a scarlet tail. A moment later it had passed out of sight. The crackling roar of its engines grew less and presently ceased. Algiers, with a few caustic censuals of the noise-loving pilot, turned back to its business and its drinks, and forgot the silver plane's existence.
Mark Sunnet taxied the plane to a stop and emerged from his cabin to greet the astonished aerodrome authorities. He was polite to them, but not expansive. He had grown weary of the sensation which inevitably attended his arrivals and departures, and frequent explanations to interested authorities of the superiority of his machine over the ordinary propeller-driven craft had become tedious. Accordingly, he pleaded tiredness. He had flown, he told them, non-stop from Paris, and proposed spending only one night in Algiers before pushing on to the south. Could anyone, he added, recommend him to a comfortable hotel? A member of the aerodrome staff suggested that the Hotel de Londres could provide hot baths, comfortable beds, and excellent food. He thanked the man, gave instructions for the care of his plane, and, leaving it still surrounded by a crowd of inquisitive pilots and ground staff, made his way to the Customs Office. Emerging a few minutes later with his papers stamped and in order, he hailed a taxi.
'I want to go to the Hotel de Londres,' he said.
The driver expressed surprise in a theatrical manner.
'The Hotel de Londres, monsieur?' he inquired doubtfully.
'Certainly,' said Mark. 'What's wrong with that?'
'Alors, monsieur. It is a good hotel, no doubt, but not of the best. It is bourgeois. Monsieur has not the bourgeois air, that is evident. He should honour the Hotel de l'Etoile, there is not a doubt of it. It is a house of the most magnificent, it is modern, it is-'.
'All right. Let's have a look at it.' Mark cut the eulogy short by climbing into the cab.
Fate is not above using inconsiderable details for her obscure purpose. Thus, the whole of Mark's future was destined to depend on the trifling fact that an Algerian taxi-driver was brother to the head waiter in a hotel.
Five days later found him, still a guest of the Hotel de l'Etoile, lounging at ease upon its broad balcony. He lay with his head turned at an angle which enabled him to watch the occupant of the next chair. The busy harbour of Algiers, lively and brilliant in the sunshine, backed by the deep blue of the Mediterranean was a panorama which could wait: for the present, Margaret claimed all his attention. He half hoped that she would not wake to disturb his placid comfort.
It was a long time since he had been allowed to indulge in the luxury of complete laziness. Of the last six years, business had occupied almost every waking hour. He had devoted himself doggedly to the uninspiring task of propping up a tottering shoe business which only the timely death of an unprogressive uncle had saved from complete disaster. The firm of Sunnet had been established over a century and had retained in the trade a reputation for turning out good, reliable stuff. And that, the uncle, an inveterate recliner upon laurels, had considered to be good enough.
The prospects of salvaging the hopelessly old-fashioned firm had been slender when Mark inherited. Almost without exception his advisers had been for selling to cut his losses, but Mark had developed a streak of obstinacy which surprised himself. He had found himself looking at the rocky business of Sunnet's not merely as a means of livelihood, but as a challenge, and he went to work as much in a spirit of bravado as from hope of gain.
He had not been brilliant, but he had shown an obstinate determination to overcome prejudice against the firm. Gradually the trade became aware that Sunnet's was no longer a back number; their shoes were once more being demanded and worn by the million, and Mark emerged from the cocoon of work which he had spun about him to find himself not only vindicated, but a man of means. And this was the time to slack off. He had no intention of devoting his life to shoes, nor to the making of money from shoes. He had done what he had set out to do, and with the concern forging ahead, he felt the need of personal freedom. He had called his managers together and told them that he intended to go away for a while.
'Finding new markets, sir?' Ae chief buyer inquired hopefully.
'God forbid. I'm going to have a holiday—a real holiday. And I'm not leaving an address. It'll be up to you fellows to manage things between you while I'm away.'
His first step had been to buy a machine lately imported from America. The makers, unromantic men of little imagination, had been able to find no better name for their product than 'Strato-Plane'. Mark, after one flight in it to those regions far above the clouds, renamed it the Sun Bird; and the Sun Bird it remained.
The first three weeks of his new leisure he occupied in trans-European flitting. Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Warsaw, Berlin, Vienna, Paris again; hither and thither with all the delight of a child in a new toy until he tired of fast movement for its own sake and began to contemplate a less hurried, though more extensive, trip. The Sun Bird's flying range was immense and the world lay open to him. There was little sense in restricting himself to Europe where one large city was, after all, not very unlike another, when he had the time and the means to range as far as he wished. Moreover, he found himself growing a trifle tired of his own exclusive society. Accordingly, he had bethought him of a friend now farming in Cape Province, and the Sun Bird was turned to the south.
But now his intended trip had been cut short before it had well begun. His proposed stop of one night in Algiers had already been multiplied by five, and looked like extending still more. And the reason for his change of plan was reposing in the chair beside him.
Her head lay back on its deep red curls against a cushion, and her slender, sun-browned hands rested, fingers interlocked, in her lap. Her face, too, had acquired a tinge of golden brown and the African sun had raised upon it the faintest scatter of shadows—scarcely dark enough to be called freckles. Mark approved critically. Many of the red-haired girls he had known, he reflected, had had an unsatisfactory, a kind of unfinished look about the eyes, but there was no trace of that in Margaret's face. The hazel eyes themselves were hidden now behind lids trimmed with perfectly genuine dark lashes. Her mouth, not too large, but certainly without any petulant smallness, was curved in a slight smile. The smile increased as he watched. The lids lifted.
'Well, do you approve of it?'
Mark laughed. 'I thought you were asleep.'
'Most women know when they are being inspected.'
'Then you can never really sleep in public.'