He passed the paper across to Mallory. Mallory looked at it, checked, recovered, all in one instant. There was no diagram on it. There were only two large, printed words: ‘Keep talking.’
‘I see,’ Mallory said thoughtfully. ‘Very good indeed, Andrea. This has distinct possibilities.’ He reversed the paper, held it up before him so that they could all see the words. Andrea had already risen to his feet, was padding cat-footed towards the door. ‘Ingenious, isn’t it, Corporal Miller,’ he went on conversationally. ‘Might solve quite a lot of our difficulties.’
‘Yeah.’ The expression on Miller’s face hadn’t altered a fraction, the eyes were still half-closed against the smoke drifting up from the cigarette dangling between his lips. ‘Reckon that might solve the problem, Andrea – and get me up in one piece, too.’ He laughed easily, concentrated on screwing a curiously-shaped cylinder on the barrel of an automatic that had magically appeared in his left hand. ‘But I don’t quite get that funny line and the dot at –’
It was all over in two seconds – literally. With a deceptive ease and nonchalance Andrea opened the door with one hand, reached out with the other, plucked a wildly-struggling figure through the gap, set him on the ground again and closed the door, all in one concerted movement. It had been as soundless as it had been swift. For a second the eavesdropper, a hatchet-faced, swarthy Levantine in badly-fitting white shirt and blue trousers, stood there in shocked immobility, blinking rapidly in the unaccustomed light. Then his hand dived in under his shirt.
‘Look out!’ Miller’s voice was sharp, the automatic lining up as Mallory’s hand closed over his.
‘Watch!’ Mallory said softly.
The men at the table caught only a flicker of blued steel as the knife arm jerked convulsively back and plunged down with vicious speed. And then, incredibly, hand and knife were stopped dead in mid-air, the gleaming point only two inches from Andrea’s chest. There was a sudden scream of agony, the ominous cracking of wrist bones as the giant Greek tightened his grip, and then Andrea had the blade between finger and thumb, had removed the knife with the tender, reproving care of a parent saving a well-loved but irresponsible child from himself. Then the knife was reversed, the point was at the Levantine’s throat and Andrea was smiling down pleasantly into the dark and terror-stricken eyes.
Miller let out a long breath, half-sigh, half-whistle.
‘Well, now,’ he murmured, ‘I guess mebbe Andrea has done that sort of thing before?’
‘I guess maybe he has,’ Mallory mimicked. ‘Let’s have a closer look at exhibit A, Andrea.’
Andrea brought his prisoner close up to the table, well within the circle of light. He stood there sullenly before them, a thin, ferret-faced man, black eyes dulled in pain and fear, left hand cradling his crushed wrist.
‘How long do you reckon this fellow’s been outside, Andrea?’ Mallory asked.
Andrea ran a massive hand through his thick, dark, curling hair, heavily streaked with grey above the temples.
‘I cannot be sure, Captain. I imagined I heard a noise – a kind of shuffle – about ten minutes ago, but I thought my ears were playing tricks. Then I heard the same sound a minute ago. So I am afraid –’
‘Ten minutes, eh?’ Mallory nodded thoughtfully, then looked at the prisoner. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked sharply. ‘What are you doing here?’
There was no reply. There were only the sullen eyes, the sullen silence – a silence that gave way to a sudden yelp of pain as Andrea cuffed the side of his head.
‘The Captain is asking you a question,’ Andrea said reproachfully. He cuffed him again, harder this time. ‘Answer the Captain.’
The stranger broke into rapid, excitable speech, gesticulating wildly with both hands. The words were quite unintelligible. Andrea sighed, shut off the torrent by the simple expedient of almost encircling the scrawny throat with his left hand.
Mallory looked questioningly at Andrea. The giant shook his head.
‘Kurdistan or Armenian, Captain, I think. But I don’t understand it.’
‘I certainly don’t,’ Mallory admitted. ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked suddenly.
Black, hate-filled eyes glared back at him in silence. Andrea cuffed him again.
‘Do you speak English?’ Mallory repeated relentlessly.
‘Eenglish? Eenglish?’ Shoulders and upturned palms lifted in the age-old gesture of incomprehension. ‘Ka Eenglish!’
‘He says he don’t speak English,’ Miller drawled.
‘Maybe he doesn’t and maybe he does,’ Mallory said evenly. ‘All we know is that he has been listening and that we can’t take any chances. There are far too many lives at stake.’ His voice suddenly hardened, the eyes were grim and pitiless. ‘Andrea!’
‘Captain?’
‘You have the knife. Make it clean and quick. Between the shoulder blades!’
Stevens cried out in horror, sent his chair crashing back as he leapt to his feet.
‘Good God, sir, you can’t –’
He broke off and stared in amazement at the sight of the prisoner catapulting himself bodily across the room to crash into a distant corner, one arm up-curved in rigid defence, stark, unreasoning panic lined in every feature of his face. Slowly Stevens looked away, saw the triumphant grin on Andrea’s face, the dawning comprehension in Brown’s and Miller’s. Suddenly he felt a complete fool. Characteristically, Miller was the first to speak.
‘Waal, waal, whaddya know! Mebbe he does speaka da Eenglish after all.’
‘Maybe he does,’ Mallory admitted. ‘A man doesn’t spend ten minutes with his ear glued to a keyhole if he doesn’t understand a word that’s being said … Give Matthews a call, will you, Brown?’
The sentry appeared in the doorway a few seconds later.
‘Get Captain Briggs here, will you, Matthews?’ he asked. ‘At once please.’
The soldier hesitated.
‘Captain Briggs has gone to bed, sir. He left strict orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed.’
‘My heart bleeds for Captain Briggs and his broken slumbers,’ Mallory said acidly. ‘He’s had more sleep in a day than I’ve had in the past week.’ He glanced at his watch and the heavy brows came down in a straight line over the tired, brown eyes. ‘We’ve no time to waste. Get him here at once. Understand? At once!’
Matthews saluted and hurried away. Miller cleared his throat and clucked his tongue sadly.
‘These hotels are all the same. The goin’s-on – you’d never believe your eyes. Remember once I was at a convention in Cincinnati –’
Mallory shook his head wearily.
‘You have a fixation about hotels, Corporal. This is a military establishment and these are army officers’ billets.’
Miller made to speak but changed his mind. The American was a shrewd judge of people. There were those who could be ribbed and those who could not be ribbed. An almost hopeless mission, Miller was quietly aware, and as vital as it was, in his opinion, suicidal, but he was beginning to understand why they’d picked this tough, sunburnt New Zealander to lead it.
They sat in silence for the next five minutes, then looked up as the door opened. Captain Briggs was hatless and wore a white silk muffler round