The Hidden Target Read online

  Madge saw him. Like the idiot she was, she came running to greet him right there in the open street. “I’m worried about Tony,” she began. “Have you seen him?”

  “Let’s get inside.” He pulled her into the cover of the entrance almost as far as the foot of the veranda stairs but out of sight from the courtyard. A murmur of distant voices told him that the men still sat there.

  The Indian girl followed them, saying, “She is gone, she is gone. The Englishman went looking. Gopal, too. And Gopal’s friend who drives the car.” Her words, spilling out in her excitement, were scarcely understandable.

  Kiley stared at her. “What the hell is she talking about? Nina?” Nina gone? Gone? He mastered his rage.

  Madge, almost as incoherent, tried to explain. It was Tony’s absence that worried her. Two, almost three hours since he went searching for Nina. Yes, Nina had left. That’s the way she wanted it, so let her go. But Tony—

  “Yes. You need Tony,” Kiley interrupted harshly. Tony and some more hashish to meet the evening ahead. He looked at Madge with contempt: gaunt face, vacant eyes, drooping lips; she had become a caricature of herself. In anger, he turned on the little Indian, who was still babbling away about a ’phone call and the American in her pretty dress and a taxi ride. “Shut up and listen! Is Gopal’s cousin here—the man with the scar on his cheek? Bring him to me. At once!”

  Storm signals, Theo had said. Kiley was sensing them now, and taking their warning. “Madge, you’ll all have to leave. This place will be raided for drugs. You’ve got to get out, all of you. Get the others together. Tell them to pack. Gopal’s cousin will take you to a plane. It leaves tonight. For Bali.”

  “Bali?” Her sudden smile of delight faded. “But what about Tony?”

  “He will join you at the airport. He’s making the arrangements now. And if he is delayed—don’t worry. Gopal’s cousin will travel all the way to Bali with you, keep you safe. Tony will join you there. Now hurry—don’t waste a moment! Get the others down here in ten minutes—five, if you can manage it.”

  Madge started towards the staircase. “How long did Tony search for Nina? Really, she caused so much trouble. But he shouldn’t have worried. No need.”

  Something is behind these words, Kiley thought. Carefully, he said, “Tony had travel arrangements to make. He has more on his mind than Nina.”

  “Just as well. She met her friends. I saw them. They drove past here.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, just before you came back. Shahna and I had gone walking to the market. I was—I was restless after Nina left. Trust Nina to travel in style—a Mercedes!” She giggled nervously. “And with Robert Renwick. Did she ever tell you about him?”

  “Often.” He even smiled. “Now, get the others. Quick! Make them understand you could all be arrested.”

  “I haven’t any drugs.” But she was climbing the staircase.

  Gopal’s cousin was interested in the job that Kiley offered him, still more interested in the fee for his services—half paid now, the rest in Bali. Certainly he could find the runway where the cargo planes loaded. Certainly he could arrange for transport among the returning Muslims. Certainly he would see everyone safe—as far as Bali. His sharp brown eyes glistened at the prospect. They were a little dashed when Kiley handed over the money, for fares and food and his fee’s second instalment, to the tall Dane, who came downstairs with his French wife and her guitar, followed by the Dutchman and the Italian and the American girl.

  “What about transportation to the airfield?” Sven Dissen wanted to know, stowing the wad of notes inside Marie-Louise’s handbag, which he’d carry under his arm.

  “The cars that brought us here this morning,” Kiley answered. Yes, he had been right to make Dissen the treasurer.

  “There’s only one left,” Gopal’s cousin said. “The Englishman took the other along with—”

  “Then get the one that is left,” Kiley said sharply. “It’s parked in the courtyard next door.”

  “There will be a payment necessary.”

  “Yes, yes,” Kiley said, and handed out more money. “Now get to it!”

  There was a short wait. To Kiley it seemed interminable. No one around him had much to say: they were all a little dazed, but no objections were voiced. There was the usual lament from Henryk Tromp about his stolen camera—and now he was going to Bali, where he’d need it more than ever. “I’ll lend you my Kodak,” Madge told him. “Just don’t talk about your camera any more. Or the film that disappeared with it.” She looked around her, said, “This place is really crummy. I’ll be glad to leave.” She led the way to the street, where the Fiat had drawn up at the kerb. Then she noticed Kiley wasn’t following. She turned and waved, “See you in Bali, too?”

  He nodded.

  They settled into the Fiat with squeals and laughs at the tight pack, everything forgotten except the excitement of the journey ahead. The car moved off. Twenty minutes to six, he saw by his watch. Time to start leaving.

  Ignoring the men sitting in the courtyard, he ran up the stairs to the room he was to have shared with Shawfield. Both their duffel bags were padlocked. He opened his own, extracted the cyanide pistol and some extra pellets. The knife he strapped above his ankle. His .32 was anchored in his belt. His movements were brisk, precise. Soon he was ready.

  In haste, he checked the rooms to make sure those clowns hadn’t left any identifications behind. Strange how quickly they had moved at the threat of a narcotics raid, although they pretended they never took drugs, never began squirrelling them away as soon as they were safely across a frontier. Hooked on hashish—and heroin, too: Lambrese and Tromp had graduated to that along with the gold chains around their necks. Well, they could sell those for food when the money ran out in Bali. And after that? If they had any will power left, and that was improbable, they might find a way to leave. Perhaps Sven Dissen could manage that, unless he was kept paralysed by his Marie-Louise. As for Madge—he could see nothing for her. But no one had forced hashish or morphine sulphate tablets down their throats. It had been their own free choice, and their stupidity.

  In Nina’s room he halted. Her canvas bag lay on the window seat: two shirts unfolded and abandoned. The blue one matched her eyes, he remembered, and then choked off that treacherous thought. A movement from the entrance to the room caught his ear: the little Indian girl was there, looking at the shirts and the open bag.

  “Take them,” he told her. “But don’t let the police see them.”

  She shook her head. She ran forward, swept up the bag and shirts in her thin arms, hurried to the door. “Wait!” he called, stopping her at the threshold. She looked at him fearfully, brown eyes pleading, while she clutched her new possessions more tightly to her chest. “Take this, too.” He tossed over Shawfield’s bag, watched her drag it away with her other arm still full of Nina’s clothes. Like a little pack rat, he thought. “Remember,” he called to her, “tell the police nothing. Nothing! Or you’ll get arrested for stealing.”

  Out of fright, she almost dropped her load, but gripped it again, and vanished from sight. The last of Antony Shawfield... The last of James Kiley, too, as soon as a brazier or a kitchen oven could be found on the ground floor, and a passport could be destroyed.

  He gave a final glance at the window seat where the blue striped shirt had lain, his lips tight, his jaw clenched. Suddenly, he felt a surge of relief: he didn’t have to face Nina, deciding— even as he smiled and talked—how she would die. She’d stay alive. And Theo couldn’t blame him.

  And that reminded him: he must find the nearest telephone, call Theo, tell him what had happened. The news about Renwick would send him flying out of Bombay. That should be easy for Theo: he was already preparing to leave.

  He hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulder, stepped out on to the veranda. And where do I go? he wondered. To New York? Hide there, inactive, waiting for Theo’s orders while someone else takes over my Washington assignment? But damned if I know
why Theo cancelled me because of Greta and a onetime green camper and a column on Erik. There was no identification of Erik with Kiley or of Marco with Shawfield. So why was I ordered to drop out after all the work I’ve put into the mission? To hell with New York: I’m not a puppet, jerking at the end of a string.

  He heard a movement from the room just ahead of him, its door flung wide open for air. He halted, waited until the footsteps had ceased, made sure that no one would emerge. Marco, he was thinking, Marco wouldn’t be in New York, either. Once he gets back here—what the hell has detained him?—and finds we have all cleared out, he will get the message. He will head for Germany and our friends there. That’s where our connections are. Ours. Not Theo’s.

  The movements in the room ceased. Carefully, he slipped past the door. Yes, he decided, we’ll reactivate Direct Action. We’ll move; in our way, not in Theo’s. We’ll scare him witless, him and his Leninist friends. We’ll show them what revolution really means. And if his plan in Washington succeeds—all the better for us. Devastating, he had said. America to be paralysed, unable to act—even temporarily? For that, Theo, thank you.

  Kiley reached the end of the veranda. Suddenly, the courtyard erupted in noise: protests, shrill cries, authoritative voices. He halted, took one look over the balustrade, drew back. Police. Three in uniform, two in plain clothes.

  Beside him was the last room on the veranda, its door gaping wide. He threw his duffel bag across its threshold and started down the narrow staircase. His .32 was in his right hand, held close to his thigh, unnoticeable. His left hand concealed the bogus fountain pen. As yet he hadn’t been seen from the courtyard. Walk normally, he told himself; don’t hurry, don’t rush, don’t look as if you were escaping. Keep cool, Erik. This isn’t the first time you have strolled out of a tight spot.

  He reached the last flight of stairs. One man had been posted at the foot of the steps and was watching the courtyard scene with amusement. “They’ve all left, they’ve all left,” the little Indian girl was screaming, “all left in a car.” Forever the centre of attention, Kiley thought. She thrived on drama, that girl; and on a gift of clothes.

  He continued down the stairs. The guard turned his head to look up at him. Kiley smiled easily, said, “What’s happening out there? A family fight or something?”

  The policeman studied him. “Stay there, please!”

  “Of course,” Kiley said pleasantly. He took three more casual steps and halted only a few feet away from the upturned face. He took a long deep breath and held it. He raised his left arm.

  “What’s that in your—” The man’s question was never completed. Kiley pressed the release on the cyanide pistol, aiming it directly at the opened mouth. The man groped for support, began sliding to the ground.

  Kiley stepped around the crumpled body, kept on walking, released his breath. The man would be dead before Kiley reached the street. But even policemen could have heart attacks, he thought as he slipped the pen into one pocket of his jacket, the .32 into the other. He kept firm hold of it, straightened his tie with his free hand, and ignored three cars drawn up in a phalanx before the entrance to the house.

  Automatically, he turned to his left—away from the city’s centre and towards the docks—and mingled with the crowd.

  “Stop!” came the yell behind him.

  He walked calmly on, people around him on every side. Then as another “Stop!” was yelled, his pace increased. He was ready to break into a run, but he reached a side street, jammed with people and stalls and happy disorder. Well into this excellent cover, he slipped off his jacket, removed his tie as he stopped at a cart where morsels of food were being cooked. He chose two of the small brown objects, highly spiced, and enjoyed them while he sat on a narrow sidewalk beside a group of men and listened to the fading sounds of alarm from the main street.

  He sat there amid dirt and debris taking stock of his resources. Money, yes. Three passports: two Canadian, one of them now unnecessary; one American, now dangerous. Three weapons.

  At last, he felt he could risk walking slowly out of the market with his tie out of sight and the jacket tucked under his arm. The approach of early night was a help, too. So was the closing of the stalls: under a load of curling green vegetables, he slipped the French-Canadian passport. It would lead the police nowhere. The Kiley passport, however, would have to be destroyed, not abandoned. As soon as he reached the docks he would tear up its inside pages, drop the whole thing into the filthy waters. A sad ending for James Kiley.

  And a new beginning for Louis Krimmon, graduate student travelling abroad, Toronto-born and raised, now in need of a berth on a freighter, any honest job to help him work his passage home. No luggage? Stolen. Everything lost except what he carried. Innocent Canadian deceived... Yes, that was the angle.

  He had gone barely fifty yards along the street seething with people when he reached the lights of a money exchange still open for business. He saw a telephone just inside its wide door. Call Theo? Warn him of Renwick? Hell no; Theo was saving his own hide, right this minute. More important now was the group of seamen at the exchange entrance. Foreigners, all of them. This was his chance: choose an American, if possible— someone who’d be free with advice, if not help. His eyes were so busy searching out a likely soft mark that he didn’t notice a slight small figure tugging at a man’s sleeve.

  Shahna said to Roy’s man, Lavji, “That’s him.”

  Lavji signed to the two men who had been waiting behind him for almost an hour. All three reached Kiley, took firm hold. They disarmed him there and then: a .32 in his jacket pocket, a knife strapped above his ankle, a thick fountain pen and pellets. Their car was waiting, drove off before a curious crowd could start gathering.

  As Roy had said when he had learned of the escape, of the death of a policeman, “He will telephone a warning. As soon as it grows dark, he will come out of his hiding place—it can’t be far from that house—he disappeared too quickly. So where is the nearest public telephone? Where?”

  And Shahna had obliged.

  26

  “Seven o’clock and all’s well,” Claudel said.

  “So far,” Renwick added to that. Nina was safely asleep nowhere near the Malabar; his friends Mahoney and Benson, the Australians whose room was opposite Renwick’s, were taking turns at guard duty.

  Roy, relaxing at his desk in the office behind the gift shop, was entitled to some self-congratulation: the report from Lavji had just come through; Kiley had been taken, too surprised to offer much resistance. “Two down,” he told Renwick.

  “And the biggest one to go.”

  “Well, he’s still in his suite. When Lavji and the others return, we’ll pay 12A a little visit. Meanwhile...” Roy shrugged and smiled. He had installed a floor waiter to keep watch and a chamber-maid who had even entered the suite ten minutes ago with a batch of fresh towels. True, she hadn’t got beyond the central living-room, been dismissed by the red-haired valet; but she had glimpsed suitcases packed, ready and waiting.

  “And when Theo leaves,” Renwick said, “he won’t be Dr. Frederick Weber with white hair, white moustache, and slow movements.” That was all the information on Weber that the hotel desk could provide; that, and the fact that he had been a normal guest—sometimes visiting the bar, sometimes eating in the grill, and sometimes taxiing out for dinner. His announced visitors had been business-men—antique dealers—which was to be expected.

  “We know his height, his approximate weight,” Roy said. “That won’t be altered.”

  Probably not, thought Renwick: this climate made added girth unpleasant; heavy padding around Theo’s waist would have him sweating like a pig. “I think I’ll take a walk around the elevators,” he said.

  “Again?” Roy was amused, slightly annoyed, too. “I have men posted there: one on each elevator along with its operator. Anyone descending from the twelfth floor whom the operators haven’t seen before will be detained. We’ll hear about it as soon as it happens. Time
enough then to have our confrontation. The elevators are only a minute away—less—from the accountants’ room next door to us. And don’t worry about the self-service elevators. They are out of commission.”

  Renwick stayed where he was, even if unwillingly: Roy was in charge; he had co-operated fully and well. That’s the hell of it, Renwick was thinking: you take assistance, and you’re in a subsidiary role. No matter that all Roy’s information about Theo had come from Claudel or himself: Roy was in control at this moment and, with two successes already claimed, he was in no mood to have his excellent arrangements questioned.

  Claudel said tactfully, “Extraordinary news we received from London, Bob.” Gilman had given it when Renwick had contacted him about Marco’s arrest and Nina’s safety. “Have any idea who blew up that San Carlos ammunition dump? He did more than that: he has the FBI swarming all over the place.”

  And died, too. It could only have been Sal. He knew the way to enter that compound, silence the dogs, approach the armoury. “I didn’t arrange it—wish I had,” said Renwick.

  “He was working alone?”

  “Must have been.”

  “Someone with a grudge?”

  “Or his own sense of justice.”

  “That can be dangerous.”

  “It was—for him.” But Sal would have thought the price well worth it.

  “How important was Rancho San—?”

  Roy’s telephone rang. It was a message from the hotel desk. “Did you announce him? He was expected? I see. What’s his description?” The call ended and Roy could turn to Renwick and Claudel. “A visitor for Dr. Frederick Weber. Introduced himself as Schmidt, an antique dealer. Said he had an appointment for quarter past seven. The desk cleared that with Weber’s suite. Schmidt is now on his way up to 12A.”