Fear is the Key

"Big enough. Look, Kennedy, no questions. I'm asking you to help me. If you're not frightened for Mary's health, it's time you started to be. I don't think she knows a thing more about what goes on between Vyland and the general than you do, but I'm convinced she's in danger. Great danger. Of her life. I'm up against big boys playing for big stakes. To win those stakes they've already killed eight times. Eight times to my certain knowledge. If you get mixed up in this business I'd say the chances are more than even that you'll end up with a "bullet in your back. And I'm asking you to get mixed up in it. I've no right to, but I'm doing it. What's it to be?"

Some of the colour had gone out of his brown face, but not much. He didn't like what I'd just said, but if his hands were trembling I couldn't notice.

"You're a clever man, Talbot," he said slowly. "Maybe too clever, I don't know. But you're clever enough not to have told me aE this unless you were pretty certain I'd do it. Playing for big stakes, you said: I think I'd like to sit in."

I didn't waste any time in thanking him or congratulating him. Sticking your neck in a running noose isn't a matter for congratulation. Instead I said: "I want you to go with Mary. No matter where she goes I want you to go also. I'm almost certain that to-morrow morning — this coming morning, that is — well all be going out to the oil-rig. Mary will almost certainly go along too. She'll have no option. You will go with her."

He made to interrupt, but I held up my hand.

"I know, you've been taken off the job. Make some excuse to go up to the house to-morrow morning, early. See Mary. Tell her that Valentino is going to have a slight accident in the course of the morning and she-"

"What do you mean, he'll have an accident?"

"Don't worry," I said grimly. "He'll have his accident all right. He won't be able to look after himself, far less anybody else, for some time to come. Tell her that she is to insist on having you back. If she sticks out her neck and makes an issue of it she'll win. The general won't object, and I'm pretty sure Vyland won't either: it's only for a day, and after to-morrow the question of who looks after her won't worry him very much. Don't ask me how I know, because I don't. But I'm banking on it." I paused. "Anyway, Vyland will just think she's insisting on having you because he thinks she has, shall we say, a soft spot for you." He kept his wooden Indian expression in place, so I went on: "I don't know whether it's so and I don't care. I'm just telling you what I think Vyland thinks and why that should make him accept her suggestion — that, and the fact that he doesn't trust you and would rather have you out on the rig and under his eye anyway."

"Very well." I might have been suggesting that he come for a stroll. He was a cool customer, all right. "111 tell her and 111 play it the way you want." He thought a moment, then continued: "You tell me I'm sticking my neck out. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm doing it of my own free will. At the same time, I think that the fact that I'm doing it at all entitles me to a little more honesty on your part."

"Have I been dishonest?" I wasn't annoyed, I was just beginning to feel very tired indeed.

"Only in what you don't say. You tell me you want me so that I'll look after the general's daughter. Compared to what you're after, Talbot, Mary's safety doesn't matter a tuppenny damn to you. If it did you could have hidden her away when you had her the day before yesterday. But you didn't. You brought her back. You say she's in great danger. It was you, Talbot, who brought her back to this danger. O.K., so you want me to keep an eye on her. But you want me for something else, too."

I nodded. "I do. I'm going into this with my hands tied. Literally. I'm going into this as a prisoner. I must have someone I can trust. I'm trusting you."

"You can trust Jablonsky," he said quietly.

"Jablonsky's dead."

He stared at me without speaking. After a few moments he reached out for the bottle and splashed whisky into both our glasses. His mouth was a thin white line in the brown face.

"See that?" I pointed to my sodden shoes. "That's the earth from Jablonsky's grave. I filled it in just before I came here, not fifteen minutes ago. They got him through the head with a small bore automatic. They got him between the eyes. He was smiling, Kennedy. You don't smile when you see death coming to you. Jablonsky never saw it coming. He was murdered in his sleep."

I gave him a brief account of what had happened since I'd left the house, including the trip in the Tarpon Springs sponge boat out to the X 13, up to the moment I had come here. When I was finished he said: "Royale?"

"Royale."

"You'll never be able to prove it."

"I won't have to." I said it almost without realising what I was saying. "Royale may never stand trial. Jablonsky was my best friend."

He knew what I was saying, all right. He said softly: "I'd just as soon you never came after me, Talbot."