There are always prowl cars cruising that district, especially at night, and the first white Sierra with the word POLITIE along the side in blue was there in four minutes. It disgorged two uniformed officers, closely followed by two more from a second car twenty seconds afterward.
Still, it is surprising how much damage two good fighters can do to a bar in four minutes. Quinn knew he could outpace the pug, who was slowed by drink and cigarettes, and outpunch him. But he let the man land a couple of blows in the ribs, just for encouragement, then put a hard left hook under his heart to slow him a mite. When it looked as if the pug might call it a day, Quinn closed with him to help him a bit.
In a double bear hug the two men flattened most of the bar furniture, rolling through the sawdust in a melee of chair legs, tabletops, glasses, and bottles.
When the police arrived, the two brawlers were arrested on the spot. The police HQ for that area is Zone West P/1 and the nearest precinct house is in the Blindenstraat. The two squad cars deposited them there separately two minutes later and delivered them into the care of Duty Sergeant Van Maes. The barman totted up his damage and made a statement from behind his bar. No need to detain the man—he had a business to run. The officers divided his damage estimate by two and made him sign it.
Fighting prisoners are always separated at Blindenstraat. Sergeant Van Maes slung the pug, whom he knew well from previous encounters, into the bare and stained wachtkamer behind his desk; Quinn was made to sit on a hard bench in the reception area while his passport was examined.
“American, eh?” said Van Maes. “You should not get involved in fights, Mr. Quinn. This Kuyper we know; he is always in trouble. This time he does down. He hit you first, no?”
Quinn shook his head.
“Actually, I slugged him.”
Van Maes studied the barman’s statement.
“Hmm. Ja, the barman says you were both to blame. Pity. I must hold you both now. In the morning you go to the Magistraat. Because of the damage to the bar.”
The Magistraat would mean paperwork. When at 5:00 A.M. a very smart American lady in a severe business suit came into the precinct house with a roll of money to pay for the damage to the Montana, Sergeant Van Maes was relieved.
“You pay for the half this American caused, ja?” he asked.
“Pay the lot,” said Quinn from his bench.
“You pay Kuyper’s share, too, Mr. Quinn? He is a thug, in and out of here since he was a boy. A long record, always small things.”
“Pay for him too,” said Quinn to Sam. She did so. “Since there’s now nothing owing, do you want to press charges, Sergeant?”
“Not really. You can leave.”
“Can he come too?” Quinn gestured to the wachtkamer and the snoring form of Kuyper, which could be seen through the door.
“You want him?”
“Sure, we’re buddies.”
The sergeant raised an eyebrow, shook Kuyper awake, told him the stranger had paid his damages for him, and just as well or Kuyper would see a week inside jail, again. As it was, he could go. When Sergeant Van Maes looked up, the lady had gone. The American draped an arm around Kuyper and together they staggered down the steps of the precinct house. Much to the sergeant’s relief.
In London the two quiet men met during the lunch hour in a discreet restaurant whose waiters left them alone once their food had arrived. The men knew each other by sight, or more properly by photograph. Each knew what the other did for a living. A curious inquirer, had he had the impudence to ask, might have learned that the Englishman was a civil servant in the Foreign Office and the other the Assistant Cultural Attaché at the Soviet embassy.
He would never have learned, no matter how many records he checked, that the Foreign Office official was Deputy Head of Soviet Section at Century House, headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service; nor that the man who purported to arrange visits of the Georgian State Choir was the Deputy Rezident of the KGB within the mission. Both men knew they were there with the approval of their respective governments, that the meeting had been at the request of the Russians, and that the Chief of the SIS had reflected deeply before permitting it. The British had a fair idea what the Russian request would be.
As the remains of the lamb cutlets were cleared away and the waiter headed off for their coffee, the Russian asked his question.
“I’m afraid it is, Vitali Ivanovich,” replied the Englishman gravely. He spoke for several minutes, summarizing the findings of the Barnard forensic report. The Russian looked shaken.
“This is impossible,” said the Russian at last. “My government’s denials are wholly truthful.”
The British intelligence man was silent. He might have said that if you tell enough lies, when you finally tell the truth it is hard to keep an audience. But he did not. From his breast pocket he withdrew a photograph. The Russian studied it.
It was blown up many times from its original paper-clip size. In the photograph it was four inches long. A mini-det from Baikonur.
“This was found in the body?”
The Englishman nodded.
“Embedded in a fragment of bone, driven into the spleen.”
“I am not technically qualified,” said the Russian. “May I keep this?”
“That’s why I brought it,” said the SIS man.
For answer the Russian sighed and produced a sheet of paper of his own. The Englishman glanced at it and raised an eyebrow. It was an address in London. The Russian shrugged.
“A small gesture,” he said. “Something that came to our notice.”
The men settled up and parted company. Four hours later the Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist squad jointly raided a semidetached house in Mill Hill, arresting all four members of an I.R. A. Active Service Unit and taking possession of enough bomb-making equipment to have created a dozen major attacks in the capital.
* * *
Quinn proposed to Kuyper that they find a bar still open and have a drink to celebrate their release. This time there was no objection. Kuyper bore no grudge for the fight in the bar; in fact he had been bored and the scrap had lifted his spirits. Having his fine paid for him was an added bonus. Moreover, his hangover needed the solace of a further beer or two, and if the tall man was paying ...
Kuyper’s French was slow but passable. He seemed to understand more of the language than he could speak. Quinn introduced himself as Jacques Degueldre, a French national of Belgian parentage, departed these many years to work on ships in the French Merchant Navy.
By the second beer Kuyper noticed the tattoo on the back of Quinn’s hand, and proudly offered his own for comparison.
“Those were the days, eh?” Quinn grinned. Kuyper cackled at the memory.
“Broke a few heads in those days,” he recalled with satisfaction. “Where did you join?”
“Congo, 1962,” said Quinn.
Kuyper’s brow furrowed as he tried to work out how one could join the Spider organization in the Congo. Quinn leaned forward conspiràtorially.
“Fought there from ’62 to ’67,” he said. “With Schramme and Wauthier. They were all Belgians in those days down there. Mostly Flemings. Best fighters in the world.”
That pleased Kuyper. He nodded somberly at the truth of it all.
“Taught those black bastards a lesson, I can tell you.”
Kuyper liked that even more.
“I nearly went,” he said regretfully. He had evidently missed a major opportunity to kill a lot of Africans. “Only I was in jail.”
Quinn poured another beer, their seventh.
“My best mate down there came from here,” said Quinn. “There were four with the Spider tattoo. But he was the best. One night we all went into town, found a tattooist, and they initiated me, seeing as I’d already passed the tests, like. You might remember him from here. Big Paul.”
Kuyper let the name sink in slowly, thought for a while, furrowed his brow, and shook his head. “Paul who?”
“Damned if I can remember. We were both twenty then. Long time ago. We just called him Big Paul. Huge chap, over six feet six. Wide as a truck. Must have weighed two hundred fifty pounds. Damn ... what was his last name ...?”
Kuyper’s brow lightened.
“I remember him,” he said. “Yeah, useful puncher. He had to get out, you know. One step ahead of the fuzz. That’s why he went to Africa. The bastards wanted him on a rape charge. Hold on ... Marchais. That was it, Paul Marchais.”
“Of course,” said Quinn. “Good old Paul.”
Steve Pyle, General Manager of the SAIB in Riyadh, got the letter from Andy Laing ten days after it was posted. He read it in the privacy of his office and when he put it down his hand was shaking. This whole thing was becoming a nightmare.
He knew the new records in the bank computer would stand up to electronic check—the colonel’s work at erasing one set and substituting another had been at near-genius level—but ... Supposing anything happened to the Minister, Prince Abdul? Suppose the Ministry did their April audit and the Prince declined to admit he had sanctioned the fund-raising? And he, Steve Pyle, had only the colonel’s word ...
He tried to reach Colonel Easterhouse by phone, but the man was away, unknown to Pyle, up in the mountainous North near Ha’il making plans with a Shi’ah Imam who believed that the hand of Allah was upon him and the shoes of the Prophet on his feet. It would be three days before Pyle could reach the colonel.
Quinn plied Kuyper with beer until mid-afternoon. He had to be careful. Too little and the man’s tongue would not be loosed enough to overcome his natural wariness and surliness; too much and he would simply pass out. He was that sort of drinker.
“I lost sight of him in ’67,” said Quinn, of their missing and mutual buddy Paul Marchais. “I got out when it all turned nasty for us mercs. I bet he never got out. Probably ended up dead in some rain ditch.”
Kuyper chortled, looked around, and tapped the side of his nose in the gesture of the foolish who think they know something special.
“He came back,” he said with glee. “He got out. Came back here.”
“To Belgium?”
“Yup—1968, must have been. I’d just got out of the nick. Saw him myself.”
Twenty-three years, thought Quinn. He could be anywhere. “Wouldn’t mind having a beer with Big Paul, for old times’ sake,” he mused.
Kuyper shook his head. “No chance,” he said drunkenly. “He’s disappeared. Had to, didn’t he, with the police thing and all that. Last I heard, he was working on a fun fair somewhere in the South.”
Five minutes later he was asleep. Quinn returned to the hotel, somewhat unsteadily. He, too, felt the need to sleep.
“Time to earn your keep,” he told Sam. “Go to the tourist information office and ask about fun fairs, theme parks, whatever. In the South of the country.”
It was 6:00 P.M. He slept for twelve hours.
“There are two,” Sam told him as they had breakfast in their room. “There’s Bellewaerde. That’s outside the town of Ieper in the extreme West, up near the coast and the French border. Or there’s Walibi outside Wavre. That’s south of Brussels. I’ve got the brochures.”
“I don’t suppose the brochures announce they might have an ex-Congo mercenary working there,” said Quinn. “That cretin said ‘South.’ We’ll try Walibi first. Plot a route and let’s check out.”
Just before ten he hoisted their luggage into the car. Once they picked up the motorway system it was another fast run, due south past Mechelen, around Brussels on the orbital ring road, and south again on the E.40 to Wavre. After that the theme park was signposted.
It was closed, of course. All fun fairs look sad in the grim chill of winter, with the dodgem cars huddled in canvas shrouds, the pavilions cold and empty, the gray rain tumbling off the girders of the roller coaster, and the wind running wet brown leaves into Ali Baba’s cave. Because of the rain, even maintenance work was suspended. There was no one in the administration office either. They repaired to a café farther down the road.
“What now?” asked Sam.
“Mr. Van Eyck, at his home,” said Quinn and asked for the local telephone directory.
The jovial face of the theme park’s director, Bertie Van Eyck, beamed out of the title page of the brochure, above his written welcome to all visitors. Being a Flemish name, and Wavre being deep in French-speaking country, there were only three Van Eycks listed. One was listed as Albert. Bertie. An address out of town. They lunched and drove out there, Quinn asking for directions several times.
It was a pleasant detached house on a long country road called the Chemin des Charrons. Mrs. Van Eyck answered the door and called for her husband, who soon appeared in cardigan and carpet slippers. From behind him came the sound of a sports program on the television.
Though Flemish-born, Bertie Van Eyck was in the tourist business and so was bilingual in French and Flemish. His English was also perfect. He summed up his visitors as Americans at a glance and said, “Yes, I am Van Eyck. Can I help you?”
“I sure hope you can, sir. Yes, I surely do,” said Quinn. He had dropped into his pose of folksy American innocence, which had fooled the receptionist at Blackwood’s Hotel. “Me and my lady wife here, we’re over in Belgium trying to look up relatives from the old country. See, my grandpa on my mother’s side, he came from Belgium, so I have cousins in these parts and I thought maybe if I could find one or two, that would be real nice to tell the family back Stateside. ...”
There was a roar from the television. Van Eyck looked visibly worried. The Belgian league leaders Tournai were playing French champions Sainte Étienne, a real needle match not to be missed by a football buff.
“I fear I am not related to any Americans,” he began.
“No, sir, you do not understand. I’ve been told up in Antwerp my mother’s nephew could be working in these parts, in a fun fair. Paul Marchais?”
Van Eyck’s brow furrowed and he shook his head.
“I know all my staff. We have no one of that name.”
“Great big guy. Big Paul, they call him. Six feet six, wide as this, tattoo on his left hand ...”
“Ja, ja, but he is not Marchais. Paul Lefort, you mean.”
“Well now, maybe I do mean that,” said Quinn. “I seem to recall his ma, my mom’s sister, did marry twice, so probably his name was changed. Would you by any chance know where he lives?”
“Wait, please,”
Bertie Van Eyck was back in two minutes with a slip of paper. Then he fled back to his football match. Tournai had scored and he had missed it.
“I have never,” said Sam as they drove back into Wavre town, “heard such an appalling caricature of an American meathead on a visit to Europe.”
Quinn grinned.
“Worked, didn’t it?”
They found the boardinghouse of Madame Garnier behind the railway station. It was already getting dark. She was a desiccated little widow who began by telling Quinn that she had no rooms vacant, but relented when he told her he sought none, but simply a chance to talk to his old friend Paul Lefort. His French was so fluent she took him for a Frenchman.
“But he is out, monsieur. He has gone to work.”
“At the Walibi?” asked Quinn.
“But of course. The Big Wheel. He overhauls the engine for the winter months.”
Quinn made a Gallic gesture of frustration.
“Always I miss my friend,” he complained. “Early last month I came by the fair, and he was on vacation.”
“Ah, not vacation, monsieur. His poor mother died. A long illness. He nursed her to the end. In Antwerp.”
So that was what he had told them. For the second half of September and all of October he had been away from his dwelling and his workplace. I bet he was, thought Quinn, but he beamed and thanked Madame Gamier, and they drove back the four kilometers to the fun fair.
It was as abandoned as it had been six hours earlier, but now in the darkness
it seemed like a ghost town. Quinn scaled the outer fence and helped Sam over after him. Against the deep velvet of the night sky he could see the inky girders of the Ferris wheel, the highest structure in the park.
They walked past the dismantled carrousel, whose antique wooden horses would now be in storage, the shuttered hot-dog stand. The Ferris wheel towered above them in the night.
“Stay here,” murmured Quinn. Leaving Sam in the shadows, he walked forward to the base of the machine.
“Lefort,” he called softly. There was no reply.
The double seats, hanging on their steel bars, were canvas-shrouded to protect the interiors. There was no one in or under the bottommost seats. Perhaps the man was crouching in the shadows waiting for them. Quinn glanced behind him.
To one side of the structure was the machine house, a big green steel shed housing the electric motor, and on top of it the control cabin in yellow. The doors of both opened to the touch. There was not a sound from the generator. Quinn touched it lightly. The machine contained a residual warmth.
He climbed to the control booth, flicked on a pilot light above the console, studied the levers, and depressed a switch. Beneath him the engine purred into life. He engaged the gears and moved the forward lever to “slow.” Ahead of him the giant wheel began to turn through the darkness. He found a floodlight control, touched it, and the area around the base of the wheel was bathed in white light.
Quinn descended and stood by the boarding ramp as the bucket seats swung silently by him. Sam joined him.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“There was a spare canvas seat-cover in the engine house,” he said. To their right, the booth that had once been at the zenith of the wheel began to appear. The man in it was not enjoying the ride.
He lay on his back across the double seat, his huge frame filling most of the space destined for two passengers. The hand with the tattoo lay limply across his belly, his head lolled back against the seat, sightless eyes staring up at the girders and the sky. He passed slowly in front of them, a few feet away. His mouth was half open, the nicotine-stained teeth glinting wetly in the floodlight. In the center of his forehead was a drilled round hole, its edges darkened by scorch marks. He passed and began his climb back into the night sky.