Modesty Blaise Read online

  When she was six feet away he lifted his head. Even as shock widened his eyes she took one long pace and twisted to bring her leg swinging in an arc. The booted foot took him full in the groin. For an instant the unconscious body was rigid with paralysis, then it melted slowly to the ground. No need for the anesthetic nose plugs.

  She stepped over him and went through the doorway. Now the kongo was in her left hand, and in her right was the little MAB Brevete automatic, drawn from the soft leather holster belted beneath her sweater. The gun was no stopper, unless you were very accurate. Modesty Blaise was very accurate. And the advantage lay in the gun’s comparative quietness.

  Ahead of her was a long, broad corridor with steel-barred cell doors on either side. From it came the stench of unwashed humanity, the wailing of a man broken by fear, and the shrill, gasping cries of one in a nightmare.

  On her right, the heavy door of the guardroom stood half open. Within, a radio was blaring martial music interspersed by news bulletins gabbled at a high pitch of excitement.

  Modesty spent two seconds reviewing alternatives. She would have liked to push on, but had learned the hard way that nothing was more vital than to secure the line of retreat. There was a white bullet scar on her flank, just below the buttock, to remind her of the penalty for neglect.

  She slipped the kongo into its squeeze pouch in the ribbing at the bottom of her sweater. From the stretch pocket on the front of her right thigh she drew out a curious object consisting of a nose clip and a mouthpiece, with a small drum, one inch deep, connecting the two. A miniature gas mask.

  For a moment she hesitated over whether to use The Nailer. This meant taking off her sweater and bra, and going into the room stripped to the waist. She felt no reticence about the idea, for it was a highly practical one, first improvised on a life-and-death occasion with Willie Garvin in Agrigento five years ago, and she had proved it twice since. The technique was guaranteed to nail a roomful of men, holding them frozen for at least two or three vital seconds.

  She decided that it was unnecessary here. With the guards relaxed and unsuspecting, The Nailer was superfluous. Quickly she fixed the gas mask on, the clip gripping her nose, her lips holding the rubbery mouthpiece firmly against her gums.

  She pushed open the door and moved in, eyes sweeping the whole room on the instant of entry. Four soldiers sat round an upturned crate playing cards. The window beyond them was shuttered. Good. The men were grouped in a limited target. Better still. They sat frozen, eight eyes staring toward her, a hand rigid in the act of gathering scattered cards for the deal.

  The man facing her was burly and wore sergeant’s stripes on his grubby jacket. He was the first to recover, and as she kicked the door shut behind her she tabbed him as the danger man. A slow grin began to spread across the stubbly face as his eyes moved from the strangely obscured features to the thrust of her breasts and curves of her body.

  She moved the gun slightly, drawing his eyes so that he stared straight at the round black eye of the automatic, as steady as if held in a clamp. The grin faded and the eyes narrowed watchfully.

  From the other thigh pocket she drew out a black, domed metal cylinder. It was like a pepper pot. She moved forward and reached out to place it on the crate. For that moment her gun hand was no more than a foot from the shoulder of one of the men. She sensed the inward tensing of his muscles for sudden movement, but she kept the gun aimed unwaveringly at the middle of the sergeant’s face. A bead of sweat trickled down his brow, and he rapped out a savage whisper of command in Spanish. “Don’t move, you son of a pig!”

  The man hesitated. She put down the squat pepper pot and heard the faint click of the mechanism at its base as she stepped back two paces. A soft hissing came from the pepper pot, barely audible under the blaring radio.

  The sergeant stared, sniffed in renewed alarm, then looked at her with vicious eyes. His left hand still lay splayed on the crate, over some cards. His right began to creep slowly round his belt to the holstered revolver there.

  For an instant she altered her aim, and the gun yapped sharply. A bullet drilled into the crate between two of his spread fingers, throwing up a little crater of splinters. The olive face grew gray, and he sat like a statue, eyes fixed on the hissing cylinder like the eyes of a hypnotized rabbit.

  One man lurched sideways and crumpled to the floor. The sergeant and another fell only five seconds later. With an inward wave of laughter she saw that the fourth man was holding his breath. His face was growing darker and his eyes bulged in hopeless desperation.

  There came an explosive huff of exhaled air and the long sighing sob of helplessly indrawn breath. Still glaring stonily, the eyes closed and he keeled over.

  Modesty turned to the two things she had marked on the wall in that first photographic survey of the room, a bunch of large keys on a ring, hanging on a hook; and beneath them, on the same hook, a curious harness of black elasticized webbing, a chest harness. Attached to it were two slim black sheaths of hard leather, each bearing a flat, black-handled throwing knife.

  Later, when danger was past and she could unblock her mind to feeling again, this moment would bring a strange mixture of emotions. There was the warmth of happening upon a souvenir of times past. There was the sadness of seeing a symbol that marked a vain pipe dream, never to be realized. And there was the touch of something like fear in seeing this thing alone, separate from the man of whom it was a part.

  She took down the keys and the harness, moved quickly out of the room, and closed the door. Quietly she began to move down the broad corridor between the cells, taking the gas mask off as she went.

  Willie Garvin lay on the splintered boards of a narrow bunk, hands behind bis head, staring dully at a lizard on the cracked ceiling of the cell. A wedge of light from the passage threw the bars of the door in broad black shadows across the stone floor.

  He was a big man, an inch or two over six feet, thirty-four years old, with tousled fair hair and blue eyes set in a face made up of small flat planes. His hands were large, with square-tipped fingers, and his body was hard and well-muscled, particularly the powerful deltoids running from neck to shoulder.

  On the back of his right hand was a big scar, shaped like an uncompleted S. It had been made with a red-hot knife blade, wielded carefully by a man called Suleiman, and it was uncompleted because Modesty Blaise had come into that room beneath the warehouse and killed Suleiman by breaking his neck, using the man’s own considerable weight to do it

  Alone in the tiny cell, Willie Garvin lay with a gray lethargy blanketing his mind. It was like the old days, the grimy, pointless and hated days, which stretched back from a time seven years ago through the whole of his life; the days before Modesty Blaise, who had suddenly and magically turned his world upside down and made everything All Right.

  But now the light that had been turned on in his head throughout those seven years was no longer there. The old groping obscurity was back.

  Willie Garvín knew that he should be doing something. A crummy load of ragged-arsed solders had caught him and put him in jail and were going to shoot him soon. If this had been a couple of years back, and on a caper for the Princess, it would have been a dawdle. His mind would have been buzzing with ideas. Given two hours he could have figured six different capers for walking out of this stinking hole.

  But a couple of years back he would never have got himself into this anyway, not against such half-hard opposition.

  He felt sickened by himself, but there was nothing to be done now because the light had gone out and the wheels in his head had stopped turning. After seven years in which he had walked like a man ten feet tall, he was back in the void again, without anchor or purpose or hope. And soon he would be dead.

  Christ, she’ll be mad at me when she hears, Willie thought vaguely.

  Something clinked gently against the bars of the door. He turned his head and saw the black figure half-crouched in the wedge of light.

  There was no ins
tant of delay in recognition. Willie Garvin sat up unhurriedly, swung his feet to the ground, and walked quietly to the door. In that time, smoothly and quite un-dramatically, the light in his head was there again and the wheels were turning. The recent past fell away like a fading dream.

  She looked at him carefully, gave a little nod, then passed the knife harness through the bars and began methodically to try the six keys. Willie stripped off his grimy shirt, slipped the harness in place, with the hilts of the knives lying snugly in echelon against his left breast, and put on the shirt again, leaving it unbuttoned from the top to a few inches above the waist.

  A key turned and the door swung open. Across the flagged corridor a huddle of four gaunt prisoners in a small cell stared with dull, incurious eyes. Modesty put the keys down on the floor, a bare arm’s-reach from them, and saw hope spark in their faces. She nodded to Willie. A knife was in his hand now, held by the point between two fingers and thumb.

  They walked side by side along the middle of the corridor at an unhurried pace and turned at the T-junction along the shorter stretch, which led to the guardroom at the end.

  Modesty felt the comforting glow of familiarity expanding within her, and sensed the same in Willie. She was moving half-turned to watch the rear and left, so she could not look at him, but she knew that his eyes would be scanning front and right, calmly alert for the first hint of trouble. There was no point in telling him to use minimum force. He would know.

  They were ten yards from the open doorway when there came a startled exclamation from outside, and she knew the unconscious soldier there had been found. A man appeared in the doorway, hurriedly bringing his rifle round from the slung position. They moved on without change of pace under his shaken stare.

  The rifle came to bear, and they split to either side of the broad corridor, offering separate targets. The soldier swung his rifle uncertainly from one to the other as he fumbled with the bolt.

  Modesty lifted her automatic, and like a magnet it drew the rifle barrel toward her as the bolt snicked back.

  Willie’s move.

  He dived, somersaulting, and the rifle swung frantically back to cover him. But one foot hooked behind the soldier’s ankle, the other drove for his knee, and the man went down flat on his back as if drawn by a coiled spring attached to the back of his neck. As the breath exploded from his lungs Modesty’s boot swung with controlled force to the side of his head.

  Willie was on his feet, coming up with that flickering shoulder spring, the one move she had never been able to learn for all his patient teaching.

  They moved on, easing warily round the stone uprights of the doorway, and facing opposite ways.

  All clear. Modesty turned and nodded. Together they ran hard for the trees.

  As the thick layer of decaying vegetation sank underfoot there came an outbreak of shouting from the prison. Scattered shots began to sound from the road which formed the front of the perimeter. Some of the prisoners were out, and confusion was beginning.

  Modesty slowed to a steady pace. They ran on through vine-hung trees and small clearings. Dappled moonlight touched them as it filtered through the trees. Every fifty yards a scrap of white paper pinned to a tree trunk charted their route. After half a mile they emerged on to a narrow dirt road.

  The car, a black Chrysler, was parked behind a clump of shoulder-high grass. Willie held the door open for Modesty to take the wheel, then ran round to the passenger seat. With dipped headlights the car lifted from the bumpy verge and on to the road. Modesty held the speed at fifty in third until they reached the junction with the metaled road, then slipped into top and pressed the accelerator hard down.

  There was a long silence, broken only by the smooth purr of the engine and the drumming of tires. She was aware that Willie, beside her, was no longer at ease as he had been throughout the action. He sat very upright, tense and awkward. A quick glance at the mirror showed her the sheepish apprehension on his brown face.

  Hesitantly he felt in the glove-compartment, found cigarettes, and lit two of them, passing one to her. She took it and inhaled, keeping her eyes on the dark road.

  “Over the border in half an hour,” she said quietly. “No problem there. I spread a gold carpet on the way in.”

  “I’m sorry, Princess.” Willie Garvin shifted uneasily. “You didn’t ought to ‘ve come.”

  “No?” She snapped at glance at him. “They were all set to top you, Willie, you damn fool. And I wouldn’t even have known if Tarrant hadn’t told me.”

  “Tarrant?”

  “The same one.”

  “That was decent of ‘im.” He frowned. “But there’ll be a payoff?”

  She made no answer, letting him sweat. This was the first time in many years that she had needed to jolt Willie, but he had asked for it and he knew it.

  “How d’you get here, Princess?” he asked after a while.

  “I heard about you from Tarrant a week ago, booked a flight, and rang Santos in B.A. Asked him to set up a quick in-and-out job for me, the layout, the bribes, everything.”

  “You asked ‘im?” There was a touch of indignation in Willie’s voice.

  “I couldn’t tell him. Santos doesn’t work for me any longer. Remember?”

  “But he played ball, anyway?”

  “He knew I’d break his arms if he didn’t.” Her tone sharpened. “What the hell got into you, Willie? We quit, didn’t we? No more crime. We made our pile, split up the organization, and quit.”

  “I wasn’t going bent again, Princess”

  “Be quiet and listen, Willie love.” She felt the swift relief in him at her use of the old familiar term. “You’ve got a bankful of money and a nice little pub on the river. All you ever wanted. So why come out here and get tangled up as a mercenary in a banana-state revolution?”

  Willie sighed. “My manager runs the pub better’n I could,” he said with a touch of bitterness. “I was going off my rocker, Princess, honest. Up the wall. I ‘ad to ‘ave a break.”

  “Did you have to get caught? And my God, stay caught? Willie, it’s humiliating. You’ve gone solo for me often enough before.”

  “Yes, for you. It’s always been easy when you told me to go an’ do it.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I just couldn’t get me ‘eart into this lot, Princess. Being on me own, everything just seemed to shut down. I was scared it might … but I ‘ad to do something.” He inhaled broodingly on his cigarette. “It’s no good. Retirement don’t suit me some’ow. I dunno ‘ow you stick it,” he ended respectfully.

  Modesty swung the car off the main road and on to another track, following Santos’s careful instructions to the letter.

  “Neither do I,” she said in a neutral voice. “This is the first time I’ve come alive in a year.”

  Willie sat up straight and turned to stare at her.

  “Well, then,” he said softly. “Look, suppose we went back on the old caper, Princess? Start fresh and build up a new Network?”

  “It wouldn’t have any point now. We’ve got all we wanted. And without a point, we’d soon lose out.”

  He nodded bleakly. The light was full and clear in his head now, the wheels meshing smoothly, and he knew that her words were true.

  “Then what we going to do?” he asked helplessly. “I mean, just for a break now an’ then? You know how it is, Princess. The bits between capers are good, but only because they’re in between. Without capers it’s all just … just stale beer.”

  “Tarrant’s payoff,” she said slowly. “It’s a job he wants done. But I don’t know anything about it yet.”

  “Us working under Tarrant?” There was mingled hope and annoyance in Willie’s voice.

  “Not under. For him. On a particular job. And he didn’t pressure me, Willie. But I don’t know about ‘us.’ This latest effort of yours won’t have impressed him.”

  “Ah, look Princess! That’s different. You can tell Tarrant. I mean, I never laid an egg like this before, all the time I w
orked for you, did I?”

  “No. But that’s over now, Willie. I can’t bring you in just because I might need help. It means you taking orders from me again. And you’re a big boy now. I want you to be your own man.”

  “I don’t.” He spoke with flat desperation. “If you don’t take me back, I’m a goner.”

  “Oh, Willie … I don’t know.” She was troubled. “Look, we’ll see what Tarrant brings. But I hate taking you for granted, and I won’t have Tarrant do it, either. Just leave it with me and keep your nose clean. I don’t want you in any more trouble.”

  “Don’t worry, Princess. I’ve been a damn fool. I’m sorry.”

  “I won’t worry.” The lights of the small border post showed ahead, and she lifted her foot, turning to look full at him for a moment. Willie saw the rare smile that suddenly lit her face, the smile worth waiting a week for. “All I’m worrying about now is flight schedules, Willie. I’ve got a date at Covent Garden on Tuesday.”

  3

  Tchaikovsky’s music swelled and faded. The swans floated away. Siegfried moved in pursuit with his guests, leaving the drunken figure of Wolfgang alone on the stage.

  The curtain swept down on Act One of Swan Lake, and the devotees thundered their applause.

  When Modesty Blaise entered the big, richly decorated bar, it was already crowded. She wore an evening dress of palest apple-green, with an embroidered bodice and a floating panel. Long white gloves reached to her elbows. Her only jewelry was a massive amethyst pendant, superbly carved.

  Men shot keen, furtive glances at her and women stared more openly, but she was unaware of it. Her eyes were warm with enjoyment of the last hour.

  Her escort was a well-tanned man of about thirty, in a dinner jacket of midnight blue. His name was David Whitstone.

  “… so all being well,” he was saying, “Ronnie hopes to have the yacht ready at Cannes by the first week in June.”

  “And he’s invited you?”

  “Us.” His eyes dwelt on her with satisfaction, missing the quick flash of coldness in her expression. “You and me. Together. For two or three months, down through the Greek Islands.”