‘I see,’ said Mr Hikohoki. He sighed and handed the letter back to Sandro. ‘How melodramatic. Have you shown this to the police?’
‘Yes. They have posted a charming man in uniform outside our house. They were anxious to know who might have sent this note but I told them I was entirely ignorant.’
‘I don’t know what to do. There is no evidence that my erstwhile colleague is anything to do with this at all.’
‘Where was he when the elephant went mad? Could you find that out?’
‘Yes. Perhaps. I see your point. I can tell you so much without betraying any confidence. I am worried and upset. I am accustomed to know my duty but now I don’t know any more.’
‘He was not here.’
‘Where was he?’
‘That I don’t know. Obviously I couldn’t ask him direct. He was away on that night. But he may not have been anywhere near Baragoi and he may not have sent that note.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Go. Leave this country. Go home. Hide. If he leaves here, leaves Kenya for Europe, I’ll cable to warn you. I promise. It’s the best I can do.’
‘And live for the rest of your life with your chin on your shoulder?’ said Jenny. ‘Is that what Hikohoki suggests?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll get a stiff neck. But of course there are worse things to get. Why are you packing?’
‘I am going just now to Geneva to find out who is Wing.’
‘Good idea. Shall we come?’
‘No.’
Jenny turned to Colly and shrugged. ‘The fat Wop is in one of his Garibaldi moods. All crisp decision. I feel rebellious.’
‘It’s too hot, darling. Let’s go fishing and let the guy play shamus on his own.’
‘P’raps Wing will torpedo the boat.
‘No,’ said Baron Hannibal de Vain.
He dropped the letter on his desk and faced Sandro across the desk. He was wearing a smooth grey silk turtle-neck. His pale hair was brushed close to his head and the bones of his face jutted under tight tanned skin.
Sandro said: ‘There is, I admit, no proof that this letter or any of the things that have been done are in any way connected with your—archivist.’
‘No. None.’
‘But you must yourself admit the probability.’
‘The possibility. In logic, yes. You should not have been told about the poor fellow. Hikohoki was wrong to mention it to your friend. But having done so, he was right to tell you no more.’
‘I understand his need for anonymity when he was compiling the records. I do not understand it now.’
‘What he has, what he knows, makes him a very dangerous man to some people. His life would be in danger.’
‘Oh, Baron, che fantasia.’
‘I have read the material. All of it. I know the cynical cruelty of which some of these people are capable, for power or money or simple amusement. Although this man became unhinged and intemperate, I am not going to expose him to them.’
‘But his name will be safe with me. I shall not expose him to them.’
‘You are one of them,’ said Hannibal de Vain bleakly.
The juicy blonde receptionist was on duty when Sandro crossed the foyer of the SIPHEN Headquarters. When she saw him she began a smile but then switched off the smile and examined her fingertips. Sandro sighed and went out through the heavy swing-door into the street.
Geneva is often mild in winter, but the afternoon was very cold. A bitter wind blew off the lake. The sky was milky and the air felt like snow.
Sandro walked with speed and power, against the wind, towards the apartment of a friend. His brain was busy as he walked. Although he loved the equatorial highlands of Kenya, and the crushing heat and menace and mystery of the desert, and the picturesque indolence of the coast, he welcomed the bitter tonic of this hard Swiss weather. He felt very healthy in both extremes of climate, because he was very healthy. This searing cold accelerated (he thought) the working of his brain.
The identity of the vengeful and vanished archivist could be discovered in three ways. From a person in SIPHEN who knew. From some piece of documentation (invoice or letter or memo) in the SIPHEN offices. Or from an examination of the movements and background of all the people, there in Kenya, who might be Wing.
The last method was possible. With all the facilities of a modern police force it might take weeks. Hundreds of alibis to be checked. Travel over years to be examined. It was in some respects the best and surest way. It was the official way. But it would take too long. A period of weeks was too long. If they isolated themselves they might be safe but they would find out nothing. To find things out they must mix with people. They could keep their chins on their shoulders but the attack might come from any direction and by any method. Jenny and Colly were not yet personally threatened and in Sandro’s absence might never be; they would look and listen. The name they needed was not likely to fall into their laps, but Sandro had seen Jenny’s intuition do remarkable sums. There was a faint possibility that they would find something out in Kilifi, but it would not be sensible to rely on this.
A person, then? The senior officials of SIPHEN would tell him nothing. Besides de Vain and Hikohoki there might be a dozen who knew. It would be simple to find out who the dozen were. Sandro’s aunt might be one of the dozen. Neither she or the others would say. High-mindedness, devotion to causes, produced an oversimplification in the soul. Black and white. Sandro was black. Wing, though discredited, was on the side of the angels.
The man had lived back there, in that elegant modern building. Lived for weeks in an austere grey room high over the wind-whipped Geneva street. People must have brought him meals and made his bed, swept and dusted, bought him toothpaste, sharpened his pencils. Confidential secretaries. Girls who could be trusted because they worked for a cause rather than a salary.
The girl at the reception-desk at SIPHEN. The juicy blonde who had smiled an excited and involuntary smile when she saw him.
Sandro stopped dead in the icy street under the threatening milk-white sky. He saw, as through a film-projector hummed behind his eyes, the blonde girl carrying a tray of vegetarian food into the archivist’s office.
He saw another picture. The girl on her back, moist and moaning. Her thighs shifting indolently. Her nipples tumescent under his fingers. Her eyes misty and remote and her hair tangled.
Sandro’s life was important to him. He did not care to be murdered by a fanatic. But there were lengths to which he would not go to save himself. He would not be, to that point, a cad. He used in his mind the English word ‘cad’. He would not be cosi cad. To use another person so cruelly would make him, as no clean kill in the African bush could make him, a fit victim for Wing.
In any case she might not know. Or, knowing, tell.
Sandro walked on and considered the other possibility.
‘Darling, how cold you must be,’ said Natalie Frey.
‘Yes,’ said Sandro. He sank into the sofa in the salon of the beautiful apartment.
‘What have you got in that funny parcel?’
‘Some things I have just this moment bought.’
‘Presents for me?’
‘No, tesoro.’
‘Pig. Selfish type of a degraded miser. I have ordered a dinner you will like.’
‘I would like any dinner you ordered.’
‘This one has a special quality. Coquillages and steak. Do you know why I have ordered coquilles with a sauce of langoustines and then a Charollais steak?’
‘Yes.’ Sandro smiled. His face was darker than ever from the Kenya sun, very dark against the pale silk of the sofa. His eyes were as blue as delphiniums.
They dined three hours later, the two of them. The cook and the maid had left. The wine-red dining-room was warm. Natalie wore a caftan of clinging silk. It seemed that she had nothing on underneath it. She was dark, with dark eyes, slim, twenty-eight, French-Swiss, with a husband away in the Argentine.
After dinner Sandro drank six tiny cups of strong black coffee. Then he said that he must go out.
‘Out?’ screamed Natalie. She flung herself at him and bit his nose and ears.
He pushed her away gently. She beat at him with small beringed fists. He laughed and tried to defend himself.
‘Business.’
‘Liar!’
‘A bientôt.’
‘If you leave me now you will not come back.’
‘Please.’
‘No. The door will be locked. All the doors and windows. You can go to a hotel or jump in the lake or what you like, but you cannot come here.’
Sandro smiled and kissed her. She clung to him. He prised her arms from his neck and went softly out.
She shrugged and blew out the candles in the wine-red salle-a-manger.
Natalie would not have liked, as a gift, the things which he had bought on his way to her apartment from SIPHEN. They were not his regular equipment (which was at Montebianco, in a locked drawer in his study) but they would do. Chisel, wrench, tyre-lever, glass-cutter, suction-cup, drill.
There was no merchandise on the premises of SIPHEN, no money to speak of, no furs (God knew), no diamonds. Typewriters, photocopiers, perhaps cameras, slide-projectors, tape-recorders. The loot of a daytime sneak-thief, not a professional midnight burglar. So there was no reason to expect massive defences or a sophisticated alarm-system.
SIPHEN had secrets. But they were not financially interesting to an outsider – not formulae for false rubies or nerve-gas or antibiotics, not maps of treasure or a blackmailer’s packet of incriminating letters. What Sandro wanted would be in a locked file, not a safe. The only problem he could foresee was that of recognising what he wanted when he saw it.
It was impossible for Sandro to be inconspicuous, but, at least in dark streets, he could be different. He adjusted his stride to a shuffling trot. He let his spine and his shoulders sag, so that instead of being powerful he was fat. He was a fat clerk shuffling home.
SIPHEN’s elegant glass rectangle was not quite dark. The big foyer at street level, all glass, was suffused with a gentle purplish light. Anyone standing outside, at doors or windows, would be silhouetted against the light. The floors above were darker but not quite dark. There were bright lights high in the building.
Primly shuffling, the fat unimportant clerk in the dark overcoat went round to the back. There must be some kind of goods entrance, a way in for men delivering food and stationery, for cleaners and plumbers. There was. A heavy double door at the foot of a ramp, of some grey metal in a concrete frame. The door would admit a car or a small truck. It would not admit Sandro. There was no catch or keyhole. The metal slabs of the door fitted together with Swiss precision. The crack between them accepted only the sharp tip of his chisel. They probably slid but they might be hinged. They would be fastened inside with a bar and bolts. They could be opened with explosives or oxyacetylene; they were absurdly strong. The basement had no other doors and no windows, no other visible access to the street.
Sandro frowned. The basement was doubtless underground car-parking and warehouse. Inflammable gasoline, inflammable bales of paper: of SIPHEN bulletins and newsletters waiting to be mailed to the zealots of the world. In a modern building of this quality there must be a fire-escape from the cellar. The elevator is jammed, the stairs are clogged in smoke, a burning van blocks the double doors. There must be a way out. There must be a way in.
Sandro went delicately up the ramp. He shuffled round the building. There was nobody about. The wind howled off the lake at the building and at the drab dark skirts of Sandro’s coat. It was terribly cold. Sandro wore heavy gloves and a thick scarf but his hands and face and neck were cold. The wind stung his cheeks and brought tears to his brilliant eyes. He welcomed it. It was noisy and it emptied the streets of the city.
Inside the glass walls of the foyer, in the purple glow of indirect lighting, someone was moving about. A woman. The blonde. Leaving? Leaving by the door?
Sandro froze and watched her. She had no coat. She fiddled, in the gloom among papers on the desk in the foyer. If she was leaving, could he get in when she unlocked the door to go through it?
He stood and watched. She was a long time fiddling among the papers. The wind tore at him. It was very cold standing still. He was between street-lights but it was not very dark.
The girl picked up some papers and went to the elevator. Still working. Would she leave later? How much later? How long could he stand here watching without becoming too numb for fast and silent action?
The door of the elevator slid open. Its light was bright inside. The girl stepped into the grey steel box. The overhead light gleamed brilliantly on her pale hair. The door slid shut and the foyer was again diffused with a mauve glow.
How many people were working or living upstairs? Was a conference going on? Were they all sitting in the room with the locked file which held the name of the man who wanted to kill Sandro? Would they all spend the night there? How many offices had camp-beds in the corner?
These were important questions. The only way to answer them was to go and see.
Sandro found the cellar fire-escape. There was no way of opening it from the outside except with gelignite or an oxyacetylene torch.
He found the fire-escape to the roof. It rose into the blackness. The wind was trying to tear it from the wall.
There was no hurry.
Sandro retreated from the base of the fire-escape. He went to the dark ramp which led to the double doors of the cellar. He transferred tools from the pockets of his overcoat to his trouser pockets. He took off his overcoat and laid it snugly up the side of the ramp. It was in darkness and it would not blow away. It would be seen in the headlights of any car that came or went. But it was anonymous, with no labels, ready-made in Frankfurt. Sandro did not care if it was found.
To move the tools and take off the coat Sandro had to take off his gloves. His hands did not at once feel cold, but it was important that they should not get numb. It was important not to fall off the fire-escape.
He was dressed now in dark trousers and a dark sweater. His woollen scarf was tucked inside the front of the sweater, making a strange bulge like a hunchback in reverse: a hunchfront. He had been hot, eating Natalie’s dinner in her warm apartment. Now he was cold. He no longer looked anything like a demure home-going clerk.
He went back to the fire-escape. It rose close to a narrow stone strip between the huge windows of the foyer. If anyone was in the foyer when he climbed it, it was not certain that he would be seen but it was likely.
He went up fast until the purple glow of the foyer was below him.
The fire-escape was a narrow, sturdy steel ladder, painted black, new like the building, bolted at intervals into the stonework. Sandro hoped he could trust himself as much as he trusted ladder and bolts. His thick gloves were awkward on the rungs of the ladder. They slipped on the shiny steel. Sandro wanted to take them off, but he knew that the steel of the rungs was below freezing and his bare hands would not be reliable for long.
The wind tried to tear him from the flank of the building, but Sandro was not worried about the wind.
He climbed fast, to get warm. He went up the smooth vertical glass side of the building like a big monkey.
Cars went by in the main street in front of the SIPHEN building. Few used the side-street where the fire-escape was.
Sandro felt cheerful as he went up the wind-tormented steel ladder. He enjoyed burglary in a good cause. Much of life, even of his life, was boring. Nairobi had been boring; so had Kilifi. The months of hiding in Lausanne had been necessary but very boring. This was amusing. It would have been more amusing still with Colly or Jenny or both, but this was a one-man job. It was his job because it was to him that Wing addressed his impertinent threats.
At each floor the ladder passed between big windows. The windows were all double-glazed. Their steel frames were secured inside by bright steel bolts, clearly visible. Each window hinged on the side away from the fire-escape. The steel frames and bolts were burglar proof.
At each floor Sandro peeped into the windows by the ladder. There were several floors of open-plan offices, large and grey-white and functional. SIPHEN posters, colour photography, and alarmist slogans, were the only decorations on the walls. There was throughout a faint glow of indirect light. There was nobody about but it would be madness to break in here.
Sandro climbed on and at last reached a floor of separate offices. Executive suite. He peeped left and right into grey rooms like de Vain’s room. There were no lights in these offices but light came from the corridor, through doors and walls of frosted glass. The offices were empty. One was tidy, one untidy. The Directorate of SIPHEN. Perhaps home in bed.
A silhouette passed along the corridor, etched on the frosted glass. It was the blonde girl or some other girl. It was nevertheless better to enter here than risk the great open offices below.
Steel bolts, visible and gleaming, secured the steel window-frames into the steel and granite of their surrounds.
Sandro crooked his right elbow round the side of the ladder. The wind gusted at him with fury. He pulled off his left glove with his teeth. He groped in his left trouser pocket and pulled out the rubber suction-cup. He pushed it firmly against the outer pane of the right-hand window. It flattened from the breast of a plump woman to the breast of a thin one. Fourteen pounds of pressure per square inch would keep it immovably there until he released the vacuum under the stiff pink rubber.
In another pocket he found the glass-cutter. A tiny wheel set with industrial diamonds, in the tip of a tool with a serrated grip. The very best. A Swiss precision tool. It had a great deal of thick glass to get through while Sandro’s hands were still capable of holding it.
His left arm was now crooked round the ladder and his left hand was gloved. With his right he began to cut the glass. At the bottom. On the near side. He had to cut a section out of the window. He needed both hands to give a straight-edge as he cut at the top and on the far side. The diamond made a high tiny shriek on the heavy glass of the window. The wind which tugged and sucked at Sandro whirled away the harsh mouse-noise of the diamond into the howling streets of the city.
The pane Sandro was cutting from the big window was suddenly free. He lifted it inwards with the suction-cup. He leant it against the inner pane. He took a bodkin out of a leather sheath and slid the point under the pink lip of the suction-cup. Air whispered in to dissipate the vacuum. The cup swelled. Sandro picked it off the glass. He slid the pane along between the sheets of glass of the double window.
His position, leaning from the ladder, was awkward and cramping. Glass and ladder were icy. He was cold. He put his right hand, ungloved and clenched, inside his sweater. He waited for his fingers to gain warmth from his chest.
He began on the inner pane.
The noise of the diamond would be louder inside. Probably the wind would drown it.
The inner pane took less time but it seemed to take more. Sandro was uncomfortable on the ladder and very cold. He wanted a mouthful of brandy from a flask but he had not brought a flask. He grinned for a moment, reflecting that Jenny would not think of starting on such an expedition without her flask.
The inner pane was loose. He drew it towards him with the suction-cup. The wind tried to whip it away from him and throw it into the street. He took off the suction-cup and slid the pane between the windows beside the other.
The wind would whistle and moan through this open section of window. Perhaps no one would hear or, hearing, remark a new moaning of the wind.
Sandro reached into the gap he had made. He glanced down. The street was far below, icy, empty, piebald with the light of the street-lamps. The wind boomed and screamed along it.
Sandro’s head and shoulders followed his arms through the gap. The gap was only just large enough. His shoulders, hunched, diagonal in the square gap, squeezed dangerously against the cut edges of the glass. He slid delicately through and worked his hips over the sill. His groping fingers found a swivel chair. It swivelled, giving him no help. At last he was in, silently, moving like a powerful monkey.
He was in the office with the untidy desk. Whose? Might its drawers or its spilling trays reveal the identity of Wing? Probably not, but it was absurd not to look.
Sandro walked softly to the door. His composition soles squeaked faintly on the uncarpeted floor. He listened at the door. Nothing. No more shadows passed. But the lights were bright in the corridor. There were still people about.
He went back to the desk and rifled through papers. All of them related to the SIPHEN Bulletin. Vol. IX No. 3 had been printed and was being bound. No. 4 was in galley-proof. Sandro glanced at yards of galley-proof. This was public material, unhelpful. There were notes for No. 5, and a few bundles of typewritten contributions. The peril of a Patagonian moth. No fault of man. Oil-slicks in the Atlantic, and the need for an international agreement with teeth. Przewalski’s horse again successfully bred in captivity.
This was the desk of the Editor of the Bulletin.
Sandro stole back to the door. He listened. Silence. He turned the handle gently. It moved without sound. He opened, slowly, an inch. Silence. He peeped along the passage. Bright light, grey paint, framed photographs. He knew this passage. De Vain’s office was at the end to Sandro’s left. The elevator was a little to the right. The way between could hardly be more of a thoroughfare.
Sandro looked and listened. The wind-battered at the gap in the window as though desperate to enter but too fat. Anyone in the corridor must hear it. This was no place to be with the door open. Sandro opened it farther. He poked his head out and looked right. No one. He slid out and shut the door softly behind him He froze, listening. He thought he heard voices: but perhaps it was the muffled mumbling and whistling of the wind.
He knew that the office next to the left was empty. He opened its door and slid in. He closed the door behind him. The modern steel latch clicked softly shut. He went to the desk. Everything was clearly visible in the light from the corridor. This was the tidy room. There was nothing on the desk except pens and blotter. He tried a drawer. It held comb, Kleenex, cotton-wool balls in a polythene bag, some bottles of pills. Other drawers held correspondence. ‘Chere Madame.’ This was a woman’s room. With a shock Sandro realised that it was the office used by his aunt.
Undoubtedly she would know the name of the archivist. But she was in Malaya. This was why the office was so tidy. She would know the name but nothing in these tidy drawers was likely to reveal it.
Nothing did. Nothing even hinted at the special dossier or the kind of information it contained.
Sandro searched more offices. All were in use. All were now empty. A drawer in one was locked but easy to open. It contained a cash-box, which contained a few hundred francs in cash. Sandro left drawer and cash-box open and pocketed the cash. He could return it anonymously; meanwhile this provided a thin but possible explanation for the hole in the window.
The office with the cash-box had files of invoices and receipts, bank-statements, lists of investments, clips holding stacks of vouchers of expenses, travelling expenses, maintenance, bills, a few salaries.
Sandro sighed. This room would have given exactly what he wanted, except that the accounting was computerised. Payments were made to numbers. No doubt they formed a pattern. After a prolonged study, the archivist’s computer-number could be identified. Which would not help.
Voices approached in the corridor. Two men talking. De Vain and another. Speaking French.
‘Les papiers sont là-dessous, Directeur, dans le grand bureau.’
‘Oui. Descendons.’
They stopped outside the accountant’s door. Two silhouettes only.
‘L’index que je viens de revoir est ici,’ said the man who was not de Vain.
By the time the door opened Sandro was behind it. He would not be visible, through the frosted glass, from the bright corridor. The accountant came in. He did not turn on the light. He took a paper off the desk. He turned and left. He did not see Sandro. He did not see the open drawer or the open cash-box. He shut the door. The voices receded. They were discussing the accounts. Sandro thought he heard the thunk of the elevator doors. Then there was nothing to hear except the battering of the wind beyond the heavy double glass of the window.
De Vain was going down to an office on a lower floor. Perhaps not for long but perhaps for long enough.
Sandro slipped into the corridor. He hurried to de Vain’s door. There might be people still in the room. Other officials. The unendingly diligent girls of SIPHEN. He listened. Nothing. He opened the door a crack. The room had no lights but it was lit from the corridor.
Sandro went in and shut the door, wondering if his luck would hold.
The filing cabinets stood, as he knew, in a rank against one wall. One was open. The files in it were arranged under the names of countries. In each there were copies of the texts of legislation relating to conservation. There were dates, and notes about the extent to which the laws were considered satisfactory, and recent notes about their enforcement. No names were given.
The next cabinet and the next were no more helpful. They were unlocked. Mammals and birds in one, reptiles, fish, insects in the other. Statistics, reports, press-cuttings.
The fourth cabinet was locked. A simple lock. Sandro opened it. It was immediately clear that this was the secret material, the dynamite. Again the filing under countries. Sandro stood and listened. Nothing. He pulled out ‘Italie’. He put his thumb on the ‘G’ tab in the bulky folder.
The typescript was easy to read in the light from the corridor.
Ganzarello, Conte Alessandro di.
A rich playboy with a lifelong record of bloodsports. At various times three records in Rowland Ward (see Appendix E.) Estimated to have killed 300 head of African game, including black and both races of white rhinoceros, bongo, giant kudu.
Three hundred, thought Sandro, was an exaggeration.
Has also hunted a wide variety of game in North and South America, Middle and Far East, and Arctic.
A dangerous proselytiser, responsible for many recruits to ‘sport’.
On it went. Apart from some numerical overstatement it was true as far as it went. It was strange to read a portrait of oneself from so special a point of view. It was as though a description of a man could be furnished by an account of all the meals he had eaten, or the miles he had driven in different cars, or an analysis of his faeces.
Another sheet was clipped to the stapled pages of his dossier. It was dated three weeks before. It said:
Invited personally by the Director to contribute to our campaign in Italy. (Birds, netting. Birds, indiscriminate shooting. See 314 Appendix G.) Refused outright on grounds that he was committed to yet another safari in E. Africa.
NOTE SPECIALLY that Director’s invitation offered, expressly, a chance of atonement for the listed crimes herewith, and this chance was expressly rejected.
Sandro sighed and put the sheets about himself back into the folder. He was putting the folder back into the cabinet when he glanced at its front. ‘Italie’. This was written in bold letters with a felt-pen. In the bottom corner something had been typed on a small label:
SECRÈTE
Aucun item ne doit étre ni utilisé ni communiqué sans permission de . . .
There followed the signature, in ball-point:
Antoine I’Abbaye.
Not ALA. But A. l’A.
Voices approached. There was a hand on the doorknob. A second later the room was flooded with light.