in the back three times.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘He was trying to rape a fourteen-year-old girl at the time.’
‘You went to your superiors and asked permission to get the girl out and they refused.’
Strange that I could feel the same impotent rage so many years later.
‘So you went anyway, entered Czechoslovakia illegally and with the help of an underground organization broke the girl out of jail and got her safely home after a rather public gun fight on the Austria–Czech border.’
‘You seem to know it all.’
‘But I do. Everything. A General Court Martial, all highly secret, but just as nasty. They stripped you bare and dumped you in disgrace, well and truly on your ass, if you’ll excuse such an uncouth expression.’
And now I was worried because he really had got too close for comfort and I waited for the axe to fall.
‘Which left you in one hell of a fix because you had responsibilities. The year your father was killed, your mother died in childbirth leaving a little girl, your sister, Hannah. Twenty years your junior. A grave responsibility. Your maternal grandmother raised her in London. You provided for both of them. More than essential in view of the fact that your sister is totally blind, but then, her musical gifts make up for that to some extent. She studies piano at the Royal College of Music, I understand.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘It’s been fun, really it has, only let’s get to the point.’
‘You tried writing thrillers, which brought you only a modest return, and then you were approached in London by an ex-British Intelligence officer who knew something of your background. There was a man in prison in Birmingham, one of a number who had robbed a train of several million pounds, most of which had never been recovered. With only a thirty-year sentence to look forward to, he was happy to pay fifty thousand pounds into a Swiss bank account to anyone who could get him out and you couldn’t resist the challenge, could you, Major Grant?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me that,’ I said. ‘Under the circumstances it’s almost obscene.’
‘After that, you never looked back. A reasonably constant demand for the services of someone with your very special talents. When you retired last year you had over four hundred thousand pounds in your Geneva account. Would you like the number, by the way?’
There was a longish pause as if he actually expected an answer. I glanced at Langley who smiled beautifully. ‘You’re really quite a card, aren’t you, old stick?’
‘So there you were,’ Stavrou said, ‘with all the money in the world, or so it seemed, so that when someone approached you three months ago and offered you one hundred thousand dollars to get a young American named Stephen Wyatt out of a penal colony in Libya where he was recently sentenced to life imprisonment, you refused.’
There was a long pause and then the whole thing suddenly clicked into place. ‘You?’ I said.
‘Stephen Wyatt is my stepson, Major Grant,’ he told me softly. ‘My dead wife’s son. A stupid, misguided boy who dropped out of Yale after war service with the Paratroops in Vietnam, came out to the Mediterranean and got mixed up with some counter revolutionary organization in Libya aimed at overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi.’
‘And they gave him life?’ I said.
‘Exactly. I want him out.’
My anger was like a fuse slow-burning. I said, ‘Are you telling me this whole thing was a set-up from the beginning? The guy in the marsh at Cape de Gata with his Lee Enfield, for instance?’
‘Now he did get a little over enthusiastic,’ Stavrou said. ‘All he was supposed to do was rattle you. Leave you a little worried, but he went too far.’
‘And bit off more than he could chew.’
‘An impressive performance, major, I must say. He was actually supposed to be resting, isn’t that the term theatricals use? A young man who’d had a considerable success as a sniper in Ulster with the Provisional IRA.’
‘And everything since? The Hole, for example?’
‘You’re surely familiar with brainwashing techniques, particularly as practiced by the Chinese? Pavlovian in concept. First of all it is necessary to bring about the complete alienation of the individual, destroy his confidence in any kind of order or pattern to his life. Degrade him if at all possible.’
Langley said, with a grin, ‘We certainly did a good job of that, old stick, credit where credit’s due.’
I gave him some old-fashioned Anglo Saxon, tried to reach him and tripped over my chains. Stavrou said, ‘I wished to show you that I hold you in the hollow of my hand, my friend. That was the sole purpose of the exercise. There is nowhere you can run. Nowhere you can be certain of safety. No single person you can trust.’
‘You go to hell,’ I said.
He smiled patiently. ‘I’ll prove it to you. The final and ultimate truth.’ He reached for a small handbell and rang it.
A moment later, Simone Delmas came through a gate in the wall and stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, her face calm, untroubled. She wore a silk mini dress in olive green open at the throat.
‘Is she not lovely, Major Grant?’
She leaned down to kiss him, he slipped a hand under the edge of the skirt, stroking her thigh, and opened the file.
‘August 10th, Subject returned from Almeria with Miss Delmas at ten-thirty. They made love on the terrace. Four-thirty, subject returned from swimming with Miss Delmas. They made love on the terrace. Do you want me to go on? We do have some rather excellent film also.’ He smiled up at Simone, his hand steadily stroking the thigh. ‘She does enjoy this kind of thing so.’
By then, of course, nothing was even halfway funny anymore. I said, ‘You’re wasting your time. I won’t play.’
‘Oh, but I think you will.’ He levered himself to his feet. ‘If you’ll be kind enough to follow me, I’ll show you why.’
It was going to be good, it had to be and I shuffled after him, giving Simone a wide berth, and they all followed. We passed through the garden to the far end. Someone somewhere was playing the piano, a piece I recognized for once, April from a little suite by Tchaikowsky called The Seasons. My throat went dry and I think I was already ahead of him as we paused by the barred window in the end wall.
‘Your sister, Major Grant,’ he said calmly, ‘who you imagine to be in London at this very moment pursuing her studies. Take a look inside.’
And she was there, of course, as I had known she must be, sitting at a grand piano in the centre of what was obviously the library.
She was a small, quiet girl with a generous mouth, high cheekbones, black hair parted in the centre and tied back tightly. Only a slightly vacant look in the dark eyes hinted at her condition.
I didn’t see her very often, mainly because I had a vague superstitious feeling that in some way she might be tainted by what I had become. By the life I led,
