We got back into position, and I started again. The edge went up slowly, more and more, till it cleared the lip and a rush of cold air came suddenly through it. I pushed harder, raising my hands and adding the effort of my biceps. Astrid was already fumbling with the stone, trying to get it into the gap. She said excitedly: “A little more, an inch or two...”

I straightened up fully, and now there was a four inch space between the edge of the cover and the lip of the opening. I said: “Now! Make sure it’s steady.” She held the stone in position while I gently bent my legs and lowered the slab once more. It stayed firmly wedged on the stone she had put there, leaving a gap wide enough for a thin arm to reach through. I took hold of her by the backs of her thighs and hoisted her up higher, and said: “Now, reach through there and feel around for the rope, it’s there somewhere.”

She reached out and groped about, and said disconsolately: “It’s probably on the other side, if it’s there at all.”

I said: “No, it’s not on the other side, why do you think I opened up this edge and not the opposite one? The winch is well off-center, on that side, and that rope’s got to be within easy reach. That’s what I wanted a stick for, but we don’t have one, so quit cribbing about it and reach for it.” I could feel her straining, catching her breath, and I said: “My arm’s longer but it won’t go through that gap very far, so if you can’t find it I’ll have to find a bigger stone and we’ll start over.”

She said suddenly: “I’ve got it!” She reached out far, half her slim shoulder disappearing through the opening. She said impatiently: “Dammit, missed.”

I was wondering if there was still someone out there, watching with a kind of interested amusement, ready to kick the stone out of the way and crush her arm with the heavy slab; I wished I’d been able to find a bigger wedge that would have allowed me to do the groping myself. But it was dark up there; the lights had been switched off, and that meant they’d probably gone.

She said triumphantly: “Got it!” and in a moment she dragged the free end of the winch rope down through the opening.

I said: “All right, climb down again and leave me some room.”

She slipped lithely down me, clutching at my waist as she landed among the lobsters, and said: “I’ll never eat another one as long as I live.”

Grabbing the end of the swinging rope, I said: “Personally, I’d like to take a few of them home for us, what do you say?”

I felt her shudder. I heaved on the rope and heard the wheels of the pulley creaking as they turned. The huge slab swung ponderously out of the way. And in less than thirty seconds we were up on the concrete floor again, standing there dripping wet and cold in the darkness, listening to the silence and feeling the sea breeze on our soaking bodies.

I left the cover where it was, and in silence we crept to the door and found it locked. There was a padlock, I remembered, on the outside. So I put my shoulder to it and smashed it open, making a mental note to come back one day and pay the owner for the damage. We went up the concrete steps together into the cold, moonlit air of the night.

For a moment we huddled together in the darkness, sheltered under an overhang of rock. Silhouetted against the bright glare of the lamp I could see the Jensen, sitting there forlornly as though waiting for me. I whispered: “There’s just a chance someone may be watching. We’d better leave it there.” She nodded. I said: “A run along the beach to dry off, it’ll do us both good.”

We clambered down the steep track to the beach, and I took her hand and we ran together in the sand close under the cliff, running at an easy, loping pace, Astrid taking off her shoes and running barefoot. The murmur of the sea was friendly, a peaceful sound, and the white surf caught the steel glint of the moon. And, fifteen minutes later, dry and refreshed but wrinkled and dirty, we were on the outskirts of Cascais.

There’s a telephone at the base of the fishermen’s wharf there, put there for the exclusive use of the lobstermen who call the trucks as soon as they bring their boats in, and it’s far enough from the town itself to be deserted during the night; or mostly so. We disturbed a young couple making love in the sand, and apologized for nearly tripping over them, and I went to the telephone and asked the operator to give me the Santa Maria hospital, I got through to Fenrek in no time at all.

I said: “I need a car, Fenrek, at the fishing wharf in Cascais, unobtrusively.”

His voice was plaintive at the other end. “I was just in the middle of a beautiful sleep, Cain. What the hell are you doing in Cascais at this time of the night?”

I said: “Trying hard not to be seen. Unobtrusive, all right?”

“Unobtrusive it shall be.”

“And somewhere to clean up and hide cut for a couple of hours. Don’t you have a house tucked away here somewhere?”

“Yes, I do, and you’re not supposed to know that.”

“Up on the road towards Sintra, I believe. Can I borrow it?”

I heard him sigh. “All right, I’ll get hold of Pereira—I suppose you know about him too?”

“Your banker friend? Well, of course I do. Not only that, I’ve met him, though he probably doesn’t remember?”

“Not remember you?”

I told him precisely where to send the car, what the driver had to do, and rang off. We sat down on the lonely sands together, and waited. It was cool and pleasant there in the moonlight, and Astrid leaned in close to me and put an arm round my waist. I held her tight for a while, feeling the softness of her body and saying nothing.

The car came along in twenty minutes, an old and disreputable looking Citröen. It stopped at the head of the wharf, and the driver got out, opened the back door, pulled out a heavy wicker basket of fish scraps, lugged it to the end of the wharf, and tipped it into the sea—a fisherman emptying the refuse into the water like any other fisherman. He’d left the rear door of the car open, and he stood there for a moment lighting a cigarette, then flicked the burning match in a high arc into the water.

I said to Astrid: “That’s us, come on.”

Bent low, we ran up to the car and climbed quickly into the back and lay down on the blankets that someone had thoughtfully laid out on the floor; no back seat here, an old sedan converted, with all the trimmings taken out, a fisherman’s car with room made to haul away his catch.

We waited. In a few moments the driver came back, slammed the rear door nonchalantly, climbed in the front, and drove off. When we were clear of the street lighting, he slowed down, pulled into the curb, turned round, and grinned down at us; it was Fenrek’s man Pereira, the banker. Only now he was dressed as a fisherman, with a high-necked blue sweater and a cap on the back of his head.

He said: “We’ve met, Mr. Cain, but I don’t suppose you remember? At the Contessa Salina’s party...Pereira.”

“Of course, and it’s nice to see you again. I hope you don’t mind all this...masquerade?”

He spread his hands wide, delighted. “But I love it! I sometimes wish the Colonel would make more use of me. A little excitement once in a while. And my wife gets a tremendous kick out of my nocturnal exploits.”

“Well, how very convenient. This is the Colonel’s niece, Miss Astrid Tillot. Senhor Jose Pereira.”

He inclined his head gravely, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask. “May I? Would you care for some Antigua?”

I took it gratefully and handed it to Astrid. She took a long swig, and as I helped myself liberally, Pereira handed us a wrapped bundle and said: “And I thought, this time of night, you’d be hungry. My wife made up some sandwiches for you, rather hurriedly, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, splendid, I’m starving.”

I broke open the packet and handed one of the sandwiches to Astrid. The bread was still warm from the oven, the butter thickly-spread and salted. And the lobster filling was plentifully doused with mayonnaise and garlic. I said: “Can you manage to eat someone when you’ve already met his family?”

She began to eat hungrily, wolfing it down. She said: “Delicious.”

CHAPTER 5

There was no question of going back to my hotel, and Astrid couldn’t go to hers. I usually do what I think is right for the moment, and it seemed to me then that it would be right to disappear for a while, if only for a few hours. There is a kind of psychosis we all suffer from, even the best of us, which suggests that when someone has just tried to murder you, you should lie low and well out of sight until you’ve got your breath back.

A hunted animal does the same thing; it gets under cover at the sound of the first shot, whether or not the hunts liable to continue. And so, we ran to ground, unseen, unheard, and unsuspected.

We lay uncomfortably on the floor of the car, just for the sake of that security, my legs cramped up in the confined space and my arms always getting in the way of Astrid’s slim body. I said to her: “For what it’s worth, we’ll keep out of sight till I can see a little further than I can see at the moment. I want a few answers to a few questions before I show myself on the streets. Let them think were dead, and they’ll make no more attempts on us, will they?”

She said: “Who are they, Cabot? I mean...why, for God’s sake?”

I said: “One of them, the one who spoke, is called Loveless. A Major Loveless.”

“Oh? What army?”

“His own. He is a mercenary from Africa, and out there he’s got an army of fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred guerrillas. English, French, German, American, Cuban, Spanish—a bunch of riff-raff from all over the world with only one thing in common. They are a dying breed, the professional warriors with only one kind of competence, a dangerous one.”

“And he killed the General? But why?”

“Yes, that’s a nasty business. I’ll take a guess at why. The General’s ex-servant from Angola saw Loveless down in the Baixa somewhere and recognized him. It’s a fair assumption that Loveless saw at once that he’d been spotted, realized that his presence here would be reported to the General, and decided there and then that the General was a potential enemy. Anybody who knows just who and what Loveless is can be put into that category, because, if the reason I’ve got for his presence here is the right one, and I’m damn sure it is, then anybody who knows him is liable to put a spoke in his wheel. And to a man like Loveless, like any of them, that means only one thing; it means wipe out the lability at once, fast. It means kill him off before he can put two and two together and come up with the round dozen that it all adds up to.”

“What kind of man...?”