THE PERFECT KILL (26 page)

The Gurkha stood up and took off his shirt. He folded it carefully and put it on a wicker table nearby. Then he took off his trousers, made sure that the creases were perfectly aligned and placed them next to the shirt. Then his shoes and socks and set them neatly under the table. He was naked, except for a pair of white boxer shorts. Michael stood up looking puzzled.

Rambahadur walked over to the rocks and lay down over them. One was under his chin, another under his solar plexus and a third under his crotch. It looked extremely uncomfortable. Creasy pointed to the chair and said, “Sit down, Michael, and watch him closely. If he moves one millimetre during the next two hours, you get the hundred pounds under that rock. You also get to hit him with the stick. If he doesn’t move, he gets the money and gets to hit you with the stick. Six times. And believe me, under those circumstances, he hits damn hard.”

The young man grinned, sat down and picked up the stick. He leaned forward and gazed intensely at the prone man in front of him. Creasy went into the kitchen, got a beer from the fridge and went back up to his study. First, he wrote a long letter to Senator James Grainger, and then another one to Corkscrew Two, and finally a third one to Blondie. He addressed three envelopes and put them all together into a larger one which he addressed to a poste restante number in Brussels, from where they would be forwarded. He had just sealed the envelope when he heard a thwack and a yelp from below. He lifted his head and waited.

When he heard the second thwack and the second yelp, he started to smile. By the time he heard the sixth thwack, he was grinning broadly. After the second yelp, there had been no more.

He looked at his watch. It had been two hours and a few minutes. By the time he got down the steps, Rambahadur was walking to his bedroom, carrying his clothes over one arm and his shoes in the other hand. Michael was standing by the pool, rubbing his backside. Creasy walked over and kicked the middle rock aside. The money was still there.

He looked at Michael who grinned ruefully and said, “He wouldn’t take it. He said to leave it under that rock for thirty days. Then if he’s satisfied, it will be mine, but I have to use some of it to take us all out for dinner to the best restaurant.”

Creasy lifted a foot and rolled the rock back over the money. Michael said, “I wouldn’t have believed it. He lay there like one of those rocks.”

“I know,” Creasy said. “Dunga Justo Basne.”

Michael looked up in surprise.

“You speak Gurkhali?”

Creasy shook his head. “No, but I know those three words. They were hammered into my backside about twenty years ago.”

He gestured over his shoulder to the house. “I was trained by Rambahadur in exactly the same way.”

“Is he really sixty?” Michael asked. “He doesn’t look it.”

“Yes, he is,” Creasy answered. “And I’ll tell you a story about him that I heard from an even older British Colonel, who used to command the 2nd/10th Gurkhas during the Malayan war. The Communist insurgents used to raid local farms and villages for food. There was a large, isolated chicken farm, up near the border of Thailand. The British received intelligence that a guerilla group was going to raid it. The position was such that it was impossible to mount an ambush. The guerillas already had the farmhouse under surveillance from nearby hills. The Colonel sent Rambahadur and one other Gurkha into the farm at night. They gave instructions to the Malayan farmer and his family and then they went into the largest chicken shed and set up a machine-gun at the end farthest from the door. Then they waited. After a while the chickens settled down and ignored them, but if they had moved, the chickens would have been disturbed and the guerillas would have heard the disturbance and been warned.”

“How long did they wait?” Michael asked.

“Three days and three nights. And during that time they didn’t move a millimetre. In fact, the chickens began to roost on their heads and their shoulders and on the machine-gun barrel. They were Dunga Justo Basne.”

“How did they shit and piss?”

“They didn’t shit at all. They had fasted two days before the operation and when they pissed, they did it down their trouser legs. And that was only the first day. After that they had nothing left to piss. During the heat of the day the temperature in that chicken shed was over a hundred and ten degrees. The guerillas came on the third night. They tied up the farmer and his family, then they went into the shed to catch the chickens. There were eight of them in the shed when Rambahadur opened up with the machine-gun. He got all eight and a Military Cross.”

Michael was thoughtful for a while, looking towards the house. Then he smiled.

“He must have got a few chickens too.”

“I guess he did,” Creasy answered. “I bet the officers’ mess were eating chicken for the next two months.”

It should have been like coming home, but it wasn’t. She dropped her suitcase by the door and surveyed the room. All the furniture and objects were familiar, collected over the years. She walked into the bedroom and looked at the bed and felt somehow glad that it had not been necessary to rent out the apartment while she was away. She should have felt gratitude to Creasy for that, but the only thing she felt about him was bitterness.

She picked up the phone on the bedside table, called Geraldine at her office and arranged to meet her for dinner that evening. Then she soaked in the bath for half an hour and washed her hair.

Geraldine came into the restaurant fifteen minutes late and sat down apologising.

“A bloody ship sank in the South Atlantic. We’re the main insurers and the whole thing landed on my desk ten minutes before I was due to leave the office. Didn’t even have time to go home and change. Sorry about the snotty business clothes.”

She was wearing a severe grey skirt and jacket and a pale green blouse.

“You look great,” Leonie said. “Very high-powered.”

Geraldine grinned and asked, “So, the series has finished?”

“It never got started,” Leonie answered and handed her a menu. “Let’s order first and I’ll tell you all about it. My God, I need to tell someone about it and you’re the only one.”

“But you got paid?” her friend asked anxiously.

“Yes, I got paid,” Leonie said with satisfaction. “And tomorrow, I send a big and final cheque to the building society. It will be one of the great moments of my life.”

Geraldine studied the menu.

“I’m starving,” she said.

An hour later, Leonie was in tears. She had sworn her friend to secrecy. Explained that she was, in a way, breaking a contract, although that contract had technically expired. She simply had to get it out of her head. Somehow bury it forever, then try to resume a normal life. Not that her life had ever really been normal.

So she poured out the whole story and when she came to the end, to the part where Michael had stood with her next to the taxi and said, “I will see you again,” and then turned away, she lowered her head and the tears started.

Geraldine leaned over, placed a hand over hers and muttered, “It sounds like something out of a film. What are you going to do?”

Leonie got herself under control, blew her nose and said angrily, “There’s nothing I can do. The divorce papers were prepared a month ago as stipulated in the contract. It will go through almost automatically. I don’t even have to go to court.”

“The man sounds like an animal.”

Leonie shook her head.

“No. He’s just a machine created by hate. On the outside, he can be pleasant and in some circumstances even fun. I danced with him once at a wedding, heard him tell jokes…very funny jokes. But two hours later he was just a machine again.”

Geraldine was intrigued. “Did you have any feelings for him at all?” she asked.

“No. I never really…” Leonie started to say and then stopped, looking down for a time in silence at her empty coffee cup. She lifted her head, beckoned a waiter and ordered two more coffees and two Cognacs. She didn’t say a word until they had arrived, even though she could tell that Geraldine was seething with impatience.

Finally she said, “I slept in his bed for several months, but he never touched me.”

“So?”

Leonie shrugged. “So I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s possible to be in such close proximity to a man without something happening. Something more than indifference.”

“Is he good-looking?”

Leonie smiled.

“No. He’s got a face that’s been lived in. If anything, it reflects a battered life.”

“And his body?”

“Also battered. It’s taken a lot of abuse but he’s very fit. As fit as a man twenty years younger.”

Knowing her friend, Geraldine started to probe.

“So, you felt only indifference?” she asked. “Nothing else at all? Be honest, Leonie.”

After another pause for thought, Leonie said, “I suppose, within the last two months when he was being kinder to me, I felt something. Maybe it was only a reaction to something.”

“Something like what?”

The older woman took a sip of her Cognac and said, “Something like affection.” She smiled without humour. “The sort of affection you might feel for a gorilla caged up in a zoo.”

“Is he caged up?”

“Definitely. At least his emotions are. Caged up by hatred.”

“Were you attracted to him physically?”

Leonie smiled again without humour.

“Yes. I won’t deny that. He has something about him. A sort of presence. An aura. Many women would be attracted to him physically. There’s a mystery about him and that can bring physical attraction. Also his hardness. He’s the hardest man I’ve ever known in my life.”

“And Michael?”

Leonie had obviously thought all that out.

“Michael is somehow different but somehow the same. He’s also hard and has his emotions caged in but I’ve been inside the cage, been with him when he was totally vulnerable. My feelings for Michael are maternal and I know that his feelings for me are similar. He never had a mother before I came along. There was never a woman in his life. That’s why I’m so bitter…Michael needs me.”

“But he said he would see you again.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Leonie took another sip of her Cognac, shrugged and said, “I don’t know exactly, but if he says he will see me again, he will. In some ways, Michael is as hard as Creasy.”

Michael lay still as stone for four hours. It was a Saturday afternoon, two weeks after the arrival of Rambahadur Rai. For four hours he had been lying up against a mound of rocks in the garden between the palm trees. He did not know where the Gurkha was.

In fact Rambahadur Rai had been sitting cross-legged on the flat roof of the lounge, overlooking the garden. But for the last hour, he had not been watching the young man. He had been gazing out over the sea, his mind far away. Finally he looked at his watch, rose to his feet and went down. Michael did not hear him approach. He just felt a finger on his shoulder and a voice saying, “The stone can move.”

That night Rambahadur cooked a mutton curry. He had brought some of his ingredients with him, and after the first mouthful Michael thought that his mouth had caught fire.

“Is it good?” the Gurkha asked him.

Michael drew air into his lungs, clamped his teeth together and nodded. Rambahadur smiled.

“I made it mild,” he said. “I know that some people don’t like it too hot. It takes a new British officer at least a year in a Gurkha battalion to eat curry the way we like it.” He grinned, showing yellow teeth. “It’s traditional among them. They are considered soft if they show it. Believe me they go through hell that first year.”

Michael took a gulp of cold lager and then another mouthful of curry. He glanced at Creasy. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, but he was munching away unconcerned.

Michael decided that Creasy was suffering. He then decided that if Creasy could suffer and not show it, he could too.

“Now do I get to fire the rifle?” he asked the Gurkha.

Rambahadur shook his head.

“Tomorrow and Monday, you learn how to hold it, how to carry it, how to look after it and maintain it. Have you ever had a lover, Michael?”

The surprise showed on Michael’s face. He glanced at Creasy, who was looking at him interestedly and the sweat on his forehead was now more than a sheen. It had begun to run down the sides of his face. He wiped it away with his napkin, still watching the younger man.

“Well, yes,” Michael muttered.

“How many?” the Gurkha asked.

Michael squirmed on his chair. “Well, not many,” he answered.

“How many?”

Michael looked down at the pot of curry in the middle of the table and was silent.

“Answer your teacher,” Creasy said gruffly.

Michael looked up at the Gurkha and said quietly, “Only two.”

Rambahadur did not smile. Instead, he nodded in satisfaction.

“Good. It means you will not be spoilt for the new lover you will meet tomorrow.”

“New lover!”

“Yes,” the Gurkha answered. “You will hold her, caress her, and treat her like a ranee…a queen. You will even sleep with her.”

Michael began to get the drift. He smiled and asked, “What is her name?”

“Her name is Heckler and Koch PSG1, the best sniper rifle I ever fired. She is not the newest. They have some fantastic weapons now, specially in America. But she is sturdy and reliable and has never let me down. And I tell you, Michael, she is more beautiful than the two lovers you have had and more beautiful than any you will ever have.”

“So when will I get to fire her?” Michael asked.

“When you have seduced her,” Rambahadur answered.

He reached forward and pushed the pot of curry towards him.

“Have some more, Michael. I think you like curry.”

Michael groaned inwardly and reached for his lager.

He did not seduce her. She seduced him. In the morning Rambahadur came out of his bedroom carrying a long, hand-tooled black leather case. He laid it on the table under the trellis, worked the combination locks and lifted the lid. It was strapped down, recessed into a bed of soft chamois leather. In other recesses were a day scope, a night scope, a wind gauge and four magazines.