‘What have you done to him?’
Tufik’s eyes widened. ‘What have I done, Effendi? But I am the one who has made all this possible.’
‘I’ve just decided I don’t like your prices.’
The Browning swept up, Tufik cried out in fear and cowered in the corner. I shook my head and said weakly, ‘Leave him alone, Sean, he could have been worse. Just get me out of here.’
There was a momentary hesitation and then the Browning disappeared inside the robe. Tufik slid down on to his knees and started to cry weakly.
I might have known who the other two would be. Piet Jaeger, the South African, one of the few survivors of our old company in the Katanga campaign, and Legrande, the ex O.A.S. man Burke had recruited in Stanleyville when we had re-formed. Jaegar was driv-ing Husseini’s Land-Rover and Legrande helped Burke lift me into the back seat. Nobody said very much and there was obviously some kind of time-table in opera-tion.
Fuad was still quiet as the grave when we drove out along the so-called coast road, passing the column of prisoners marching in from their day’s work on the way.
‘You haven’t got long,’ I whispered.
Burke nodded. ‘We’re dead on time. Don’t worry.’
A mile further on, Jaeger swung off the road and took us through sand dunes to the edge of a broad flat beach. As he switched off the motor another sound filled the air and a plane came in off the sea no more than two or three hundred feet above the surface of the water. Legrande produced a Verey pistol and fired a flare and the plane turned sharply and dropped in for a perfect landing.
It was a Cessna, I recognised that much as it taxied towards us, but there was no time to stand around. They hustled me forward as the cabin door swung open and pushed me inside. The others followed and as Legrande fastened the door the Cessna was already turning into the wind, her engine note deepening.
Burke held a flask to my mouth and I choked as brandy burned its way into my stomach. When the coughing had subsided, I smiled weakly. ‘Where to now, colonel?’
‘First stop Crete,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there in an hour. Good thing, too. You could do with a bath.’
I took the flask from him and swallowed again and leaned back in my seat as a warm and wonderful glow spread throughout my body. Life began again, that was all I could think of. As the Cessna lifted into the air and turned out to sea, the sun died behind the horizon and night fell.
TWO
I first met Sean Burke in Lourenco Marques in Por-tuguese Mozambique in the early part of 1962 in a waterfront cafe called the ‘Lights of Lisbon’. I was playing piano at the time, one of the more useful by-products of an expensive education, but wholly for money.
For reasons which aren’t important at the moment, I was an aimless drifter at the grand old age of nineteen, working my way from Cairo to the Cape in easy stages. I was in Lourenco Marques because I’d only had enough money to take me that far on boarding the coastal steamer at Mombasa which didn’t worry me particularly. I was young and fit, running so hard from the past that my only concern was to discover what lay beyond each day’s horizon.
In any case, I liked Lourenco Marques. It had a kind of baroque charm and, in those days at least, a com-plete absence of the kind of racial tensions I’d noticed elsewhere in Africa.
The man who ran the ‘Lights of Lisbon’ was named Coimbra, a thin, cadaverous Portuguese with one in-terest in life-money. He had a hand in most things as far as I could judge and didn’t have a scruple in the world. Whatever you wanted, Coimbra could get it for you at a price. We boasted the finest selection of girls on the coast.
I noticed Burke the moment he came in, although his enormous physique would have made him stand out anywhere. I think that was the thing which struck one most about him-the air of sheer physical competence and controlled power that made men move out of his way, even in a place like that.