"Wrath of the Lion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Higgins Jack)

CHAPTER FOUR

Professor yoshiyama was little more than five feet in height and wore a judo jacket and trousers many times washed, a black belt around his waist. The face was the man’s most outstanding feature, the skin the colour of parchment and almost transparent. There was nothing weak there. Only strength and intelligence and a kind of gentleness. It could have been that of a saint or scholar. It was, in fact, the face of a great master who had practised his art for more than fifty years.

His voice was dry and rather pedantic, the vowels clipped slightly, but the dozen men sitting cross-legged on the floor were giving him all their attention. High in the balcony of the gymnasium, Mallory leaned on the rail and watched.

“The literal meaning of the two Japanese characters which make up the word karate is empty hands,” Yoshiyama said. “This refers to the fact that karate developed as a system of self-defence relying solely on unarmed techniques. The system was first developed centuries ago on the island of Okinawa during a time when the inhabitants were forbidden to carry arms on pain of death.”

There was a strangely old-fashioned flavour to everything he said, as if he were repeating a lesson painfully learned. He turned to a large wall chart which carried an outline of a human figure with all vital points, and their respective striking areas, clearly marked.

“The system consists of techniques of blocking or deflecting an attack and of counter-attacking by punching, striking or kicking.” He turned, his face bland, expressionless. “But there is more to karate that well-practised tricks and physical force.” He tapped his head. “There is also the mental application. You will be taught how to focus all your strength and energy on a single target at any given time. Let me show you what I mean.”

He nodded briefly and his two assistants picked up three lengths of planking. They were perhaps two feet long, each plank an inch thick. The two men took up their positions in front of Yoshiyama, holding the three planks between them and slightly above waist-level. In a single incredibly fluid motion the old man’s left foot stamped forward and his right fist moved up from the waist, knuckles extended. There was a report like a gunshot and the planks split from end to end.

A quick murmur rose from the class and Yoshiyama turned, quite unperturbed. “It is also possible to snap a brick in half with the edge of the hand.” He permitted himself one brief smile. “But this requires practice. Major Adams, please.”

A small, wiry, middle-aged man with greying hair and a black patch over his right eye stood up at the back of the class and came forward. Like Yoshiyama, he wore a black belt, but where his left arm should have been a metal limb dangled.

“You will observe that Major Adams is rather a small man," Yoshiyama said. “He is also no longer in the prime of life. If we add to this the fact that he has only one arm one would not under normal circumstances give him much hope of surviving any kind of physical assault. As it happens, however, his circumstances are far from normal.”

He nodded to one of his assistants and moved out of the way. The assistant, a young, powerfully built Japanese with dark hair, ran to the far side of the gymnasium. He selected a knife from a table which contained an assortment of weapons, turned and ran forward, a blood-curdling cry surging from his throat.

He swerved to one side, came to a dead stop, then moved in quickly, the knife slashing at the Major’s face. Adams moved with incredible speed, warding off the attacking arm with an extended knife-hand block. At the same moment he fell diagonally forward to one side and delivered a roundhouse kick to the groin. In what was virtually the same motion he kicked at his opponent’s knee-joint with the same foot. The Japanese somersaulted, ending flat on his back, and the foot thudded across his windpipe.

For a moment they lay there and then both men scrambled to their feet grinning widely. “In other circumstances, and had the blows been delivered with full force, my assistant would now be dead,” Yoshiyama said simply.

Adams picked up a towel, started to wipe sweat from his face and caught sight of Mallory in the gallery. He nodded briefly, said something to Yoshiyama and moved across to the door. Mallory met him in the corridor outside.

“What are you trying to do, go out in a blaze of glory?”

Adams grinned. “Every so often I get so sick of the sight of that damned desk that I could blow my top. Yoshiyama provides a most efficient safety-valve.” He ran a hand over his right hip and winced slightly. “That last fall hurt like hell. I must be getting old.”

As they mounted the stairs at the end of the corridor, Mallory thought about Adams. One of the best agents the department had ever had; all the guts in the world and a mind like a steel trap until the night he’d got too close for someone’s comfort and they’d tied a Mills bomb to the handle of his hotel bedroom in Cairo.

And now he was a desk man, running 63, the intelligence section that was the pulse-beat of the whole organisation. Some people would have said he was lucky, but not Adams.

He opened a door and walked through a small, neat office. A middle-aged, desiccated-looking spinster with neat grey hair and rimless spectacles sat behind the typewriter. She glanced up, an expression of disapproval on her face, and Adams grinned.

“Don’t say it, Milly. Just tell them I’m ready.”

He led the way into his own office. Like Sir Charles’s, it commanded a fine view of the river, the desk standing by the window. He opened a cupboard, took out a heavy bathrobe and pulled it on.

“Sorry about the delay. I thought Sir Charles would keep you for an hour at least.”

“More like fifteen minutes,” Mallory said. “He always goes straight to the heart of things with the sticky ones.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Adams said. “Interesting more than anything else. Whole thing could be just a storm in a teacup. Let’s go into the projection room.”

He opened the far door and they descended a few steps into a small hall. There were several rows of comfortable seats and a large screen. The place was quite deserted. They sat down and Mallory offered Adams a cigarette.

“Any gaps in this one?”

Adams exhaled with a sigh of pleasure and shook his head. 1 don’t think so. Nothing important, anyway. Has the old man told you much?”

“He’s outlined the job, told me who the principals are. No more than that.”

“Let’s get started, then.” Adams turned and glanced up at the projection box where a dim light showed. “Ready when you are.”

A section of film started to run a few moments later. It showed a submarine entering port slowly, her crew lining the deck.

“To start with5that’s what all the fuss is about,” Adams said. “L'Alouette. Taken at Oran a couple of years ago.”

“She looks rather small. There can’t be more than a dozen men on deck.”

“Originally a German U-boat. Type XXIII. Just over a hundred feet long. Does about twelve kilometres submerged. Crew of sixteen.”

“What about armament?”

“Two twenty-one-inch torpedoes in the bow and she doesn’t carry spares.”

"Doesn’t leave much room for mistakes.”

Adams nodded. “They never really amounted to anything. This one was built at Deutsches Werft in 1945 and sunk with all hands in the Baltic. She was raised in '46, refitted and handed over to the French.”

The film ended and a slide appeared. It showed a young French naval officer, eyes serious beneath the uniform cap, the rather boyish face schooled to gravity.

“Henri Fenelon, full lieutenant. He’s her commander. Age twenty-six, unmarried. Born in Nantes. Father still lives there. Runs a small wine-exporting business.”

Mallory studied the face for a moment or two. “Looks weak to me. Ever been in action?”

Adams shook his head. “Why do you ask?”

Mallory shrugged. “He looks as if he could crack easily. What’s his political background?”

“That’s the surprising thing. We can’t find any evidence of an O.A.S. connection at all.”

“Probably did it for adventure,” Mallory said. “He only needed half a dozen men in the crew to agree with him. They could have coerced the rest.”

“Sounds feasible,” Adarns said. “Let’s move on.”

Various slides followed. There was an Admiralty chart of lie de Roc, with the harbour, the hotel and General Grant’s house all clearly marked. St. Pierre was little more than a rock lifting a hundred or so feet out of the sea and crowned by the Victorian Gothic Castle.

Mallory shook his head. “God knows how they ever managed to build the damned thing out there.”

“Eighteen-sixty-one,” Adams said. “A self-made industrialist called Bryant. Bit of a megalomaniac. Saw himself as king of the castle and so on. Cost him better than a hundred thousand to build the place and that was real money in those days.”

“I can’t see a jetty. Is it on the other side?”

“There’s a cave at the base of the cliffs. If you look carefully you can see the entrance. The jetty’s inside.”

The castle faded and another picture took its place. It was that of a distinguished-looking man with silvering hair}eyes calm in a sensitive, aquiline face.

“De Beaumont?” Mallory said.

Adams nodded. “Philippe, Comte de Beaumont. One of the oldest of the great French families. He’s even a rather distant blood relation of you-know-who, which makes the whole thing even more complicated.”

“I know quite a lot about his military history,” Mallory said. “After all, he’s something of a hero to paratroopers the world over. He came over here during the war and joined de Gaulle, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. Received just about every decoration possible. Afterwards he went to Indo-China as a colonel of colonial paratroops. The Viets picked him up at the surrender of Dien-Bien-Phu in 1954. After his release he returned to France and was posted to Algeria. He was always at loggerheads with the top brass. Once had an argument with the old man himself at an official reception over what constitutes war in the modern sense.”

“That should have been enough to get him put out to grass on its own.”

Adams shrugged. “They needed him, I suppose. After all, he was the most outstanding paratroop colonel in Algeria at that time. Handled all the dirtier jobs the top brass didn’t want to soil its fingers with.”

“So he helped bring de Gaulle back to power?”

“That’s right. A prime mover in the Algerie Frangaise movement. The General, of course, kicked him right in the teeth by granting independence to Algeria after all.”

“And de Beaumont cleared out?”

“After Chalk’s rather abortive little coup last year. Whether or not he was actually mixed up in that little lot we can’t be certain. The point is that he left France and bought this place on St. Pierre from Hamish Grant. Caused quite a stir in the French papers at the time.”

“And he’s kept his nose clean since then?”

“As a whistle.” Adams grinned. “Even the French can’t turn anything up on him. He runs a boat, by the way. Forty-foot twin-screw motor-yacht named Fleur de Lys. The very latest thing for deep-sea cruising with depth-sounder, automatic pilot and 100 h.p. DAF diesels. A bit of a recluse, but he’s been seen in St. Helier occasionally. What do you think?”

“I’d say he has the kind of inbred arrogance that can only come from a thousand years of always being right, or at least thinking you were,” Mallory said. “Men like him can never sit still. They usually have to be plotting at one thing or another. Comes from that natural assumption that anything conflicting with their own views must be wrong.”

“Interesting,” Adams said. “He has more the look of a seventeenth-century puritan to me. One of the thin-lipped intolerant variety. A damned good colonel in the New Model Army.”

“Jesus and no quarter?” Mallory shook his head. “He’s no bigot. Simply a rather arrogant aristocrat with a limited field of vision and an absolute conviction of the Tightness of his own actions. When he decides on a plan of attack he follows it through to the bitter end. That’s what made him such an outstanding officer. For men like him the rot sets in only if they step outside themselves and see just how much the whole damned thing is costing.”

“An interesting analysis, considering you’ve only seen his photo.”

“I know about him as a soldier,” Mallory said. “At Dien-Bien-Phu they offered to fly him out. He was too valuable to lose. He refused. In his last message he said they’d been wrong from headquarters staff down to himself. That the whole Dien-Bien-Phu strategy had been a terrible mistake. He said that if his men had to stay and pay the price the least he could do was stay and pay it with them.”

“Which probably accounted for his popularity with the troops,” Adams said.

“Men like him are never loved by anyone/ Mallory said. “Even themselves.”

De Beaumont’s picture was replaced by another. The face which stared down at them was strong and brutal, the eyes cold, hair close-cropped.

“Paul Jacaud,” Adams said. “Aged forty. Parents unknown. He was raised by the madame of a waterfront brothel in Marseilles. Three years in the Resistance, joined the paratroops after the war. He was sergeant-major in de Beaumont’s regiment. Medaille Militaire plus a court-martial for murder that failed for lack of evidence.”

“And still with his old boss?”

“That’s right. You can make what you like out of that. Let’s have a look at the angels now.”

A picture of Hamish Grant flashed on the screen, a famous one taken in the Ardennes in the winter of “44. Montgomery stood beside him, grinning as they examined a map. He was every inch Iron Grant, great shoulders bulging under a sheepskin coat.

“Quite a man,” Mallory said.

“And he hasn’t changed much. Of course, his sight isn’t too good, but he’s still going strong. Written a couple of pretty good campaign histories of the last war.”

“What about the family?”

“He’s a widower. Son was killed in Korea. At the moment his household consists of his daughter Fiona, daughter-in-law Anne and an ex-Gurkha naik called Jagbir who was with him during the war. This is the daughter.”

Fiona Grant had long blonde hair and a heart-shaped face that was utterly appealing. “Rather a handful, that one,” Adams said. “She was raised in the south of France, which didn’t help. They tried Roedean, but that was a complete fiasco. She was finally settled in a Paris finishing school, which apparently suited her. She’s at home at the moment.”

“I like her,” Mallory said. “She’s got a good mouth.”

“Then see what you think of this one. Anne Grant, the old man’s daughter-in-law.”

It was the same photograph that Sir Charles had shown him and Mallory stared up at it, his throat for some unaccountable reason going dry. It was as if they had met before and yet he knew that to be impossible. The almond-shaped eyes seemed to come to life, holding his gaze, and he shook his head slightly.

“She’s over here now to finalise the purchase of a new boat.”

“Sir Charles told me that much. What about this man Sondergard she’s hired through the pool?”

“We’ll ship him out somewhere. There’s no difficulty there. I’ve already got a little scheme in mind to bring you and Anne Grant together.”

They next saw the picture of a Frenchwoman called Juliette Vincente who was working at the hotel on lie de Roc. Nothing was known against her and she seemed quite harmless, as did Owen Morgan, her employer. When the Welshman’s face faded away, Mallory straightened in his seat, thinking they had finished. To his surprise another face appeared.

He turned to Adams in surprise. “But this is Raoul Guyon, the man I’m going to work with. I’ve already seen his picture. What’s the idea?”

Adams shrugged. Tm not sure, but I’m not really happy about the way the French are handling this business. I’ve got a hunch that old spider Legrande and the Deuxieme aren’t telling us all they could. Under the circumstances it might prove useful to know everything there is to know about Raoul Guyon. He’s rather unusual.”

Mallory looked again at the photo Sir Charles had shown him. The slim, wiry figure in the camouflage uniform, the sun-blackened face, the calm, expressionless eyes.

“Tell me about him.”

“Raoul Guyon, aged twenty-nine. Went straight to Indo-China from St. Cyr in 1952. He’s the only known survivor of his particular cadet class for that year, which is enough to set any man apart for a start.”

“He wasn’t at Dien-Bien-Phu?”

Adams shook his head. “No, but he was at plenty of other hot spots. He was up to his ears in it in Algeria. There was some talk of a girl. Moorish, I think. She was murdered by the F.L.N. and it had a big effect on him. He was badly wounded a day or two later.”

There followed a picture of Guyon half raised on a stretcher, his chest heavily bandaged, blood soaking through. The face was sunken, beyond pain, the eyes stared into an abyss of loneliness.

“There’s a lad who’s been through the fire,” Mallory said.

“And then some. Commander of the Legion of Honour, Croix de la Valeur Militaire and half a dozen mentions in dispatches. On top of that, he paints like an angel.”

“A man to be reckoned with.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

For the next twenty minutes they continued to sit there, discussing questions of time and place, some important technical data and various other items, all of which were relevant to the success of the operation. When they finally returned to the office Adams sat behind his desk and nodded at a large and well-filled in-tray.

“Look at that lot,” he said with an expression of disgust. “God in heaven, but I’d trade places with you, Neil.”

Mallory grinned. “I wonder? Is there anything else?”

Adams shook his head. “Call in at the technical branch. They’ve got a rather neat line in transmitters for you. They’ll give you a call-sign, suitable code and so on. Come back in half an hour. I’ll have some identity papers and things ready, plus a rough outline of my little scheme to bring you and Mrs. Grant together.”

“Now that I look forward to,” Mallory said.

And the strange thing was that he really did. As he went along the corridor and descended the stairs to the technical branch the memory of her haunted him. Those strange eyes searching, looking for something.

He sighed heavily. Taking it all in all, it looked as if this whole affair could become really complicated.