He shrugged. “Tomorrow then, no problem.” He thought for a while, and then said: “What did you do to it? I suppose I should have looked at the plugs. A pencil line down them?”
“Something like that.”
He was smiling gently. “Are you aware that we’re not alone?” He raised his eyes to a point above and behind me, and I looked round, moving quite slowly.
The other man was there, Van Reck, Histermann had called him, sitting high up in the cavern roof on a protrusion of granite, with his comic little bow at the ready. Among the stark shadows cast by the bright light, he might almost have been high in a tree in the dark jungle, and I was impressed with his choice of position; up there, no one was going to get at him without a gun, and Loveless was about to find out if I had one or not, and if so, to take it away from me. I thought it might be interesting to see how he was going to do that; he was looking at me very warily, as though he knew now that he’d underestimated the danger that first time, and was not about to make any mistakes now.
He said: “Throw your gun down, on the ground, right there, very slowly and carefully.” His finger was crooked around the trigger of his gun, and I hoped he hadn’t haired it up too much.
I said: “I don’t carry one, matter of principle.”
He grunted: “No? Lie down on the floor, on your back, with your hands crossed behind your back.”
I shrugged. “You can take my word for it, but if you insist...”
I folded my arms in the small of my back and lay down, and he came over with the gun held in one hand, finger on the trigger, and the barrel under my chin. It was a Lames over-under with a single selective trigger and a point-to-point patterned walnut stock. He quickly patted me all over the sides and front, and said:
“Now, this is the danger point, isn’t it? Roll over, slowly and carefully, to your right.”
Again, I did precisely as I was told, and he patted the rest of my body till he was satisfied there was no weapon there. It was good for my ego to see how warily he moved, on the balls of his feet, ready to spring back instantly out of harm’s way if I should make that initial move that meant I was going for him, though from that position on the floor it would have been a slow business.
He stepped back, satisfied, and I sensed that he was relaxing a bit, as though a truth that he wasn’t very sure of had just been demonstrated. He looked at me with a very puzzled expression, and said:
“For a microbiologist, you’re a very reckless man. I wonder why?”
Microbiologist? I’d told that lie only to Histermann. They’d already been in touch then; he was probably here too; the man at the top, no doubt, with the other end of the S-phone, standing guard while the getaway boat was being readied.
I said gently: “Where’s the toxin, Loveless?”
He looked at me hard and long, and said: “Just sit there and do nothing, just sit quite still. You’re a big, big man, and you’ve more sense than I gave you credit for, though not as much as you think, so don’t kid yourself you can take us. Two of us in here and another outside, and each one of us could have you dead as mutton at the flick of a finger. So just—sit—quite—still.”
Three of us...I thought: and now abideth faith hope and charity, these three...But there wasn’t much charity showing.
As I sat on the ground with my legs crossed under me, he moved well away and leaned against the deck rail of the whaler, letting himself sway gently with it, his shotgun still very ready. He was puzzled, and he showed it.
There was an intelligence, a lively and yet somber intelligence that showed itself very clearly in those dark, brooding eyes, and something else too...He was a rough and uncouth man, and yet—there was something almost admirable about him, and I still couldn’t place exactly what it was. I thought perhaps it might be just that air of competence that seemed to exude from him, the way you can almost see the halo over a saintly woman’s head.
He was wasting time now, conscious that he had plenty on his hands and devoting it to finding out just what it was that brought me so carelessly into his lair; he had to know. There were a lot of thoughts going through his mind; jostling each other, seeking clarity and not finding it. I waited for him to ask the crucial question. Instead, he said at last:
“I’ve a feeling you’re an intelligent man, am I right?”
I shrugged. “Events are soon going to show that, one way or another, aren’t they?”
He laughed, a sad little laugh of repressed amusement, and then was very preoccupied again. He thought for a while and said: “And we’ve got time on our hands, haven’t we? Time to find out just who you are and what you’re up to.”
I said: “It should be obvious to you, Loveless. If you want to think about it for a bit.”
It wasn’t at all obvious, but he didn’t want to say so. He said: “So talk to me, I’ve a sudden craving for conversation, can you believe that?” He jerked his head towards Van Reck, and said: “Dummy up there can’t talk, but I suppose you know that already?”
“No. How should I know it?”
“I just thought perhaps you might.”
The pattern was emerging; he wanted to know a great deal more about me; good.
I said: “Dumb?”
He nodded. “Oh, only recently. He made the mistake of getting caught by the wrong people. Fellow called Asimulu or something, one of the non-people, a Captain in the Federal Army.”
“Nigeria?”
He shrugged. “Nigeria, Mali, Angola, what does it matter?”
I said: “When you’re fighting the way you fellows fight, you’re always going to get caught by the wrong people. There’s no other kind.”
“Aye, you’ve a point there.” He rubbed the barrel of his shotgun moodily along the side of his nose, with his finger still on the trigger. He said: “They caught him and tried to make him tell them where our hideout was, and he wouldn’t, so they gave him an excuse not to talk anymore. Anymore, ever. They cut his tongue out. But he got away before they could do him any real damage. He never did talk much sense anyway, just a damn good soldier, a good man with any weapon you care to name.”
“That’s a comic little bow he carries. Homemade?”
“Homemade? Yes, I suppose that’s one way of putting it. Custom-crafted, he used to call it, before he lost his tongue. He’s pretty damn fast with it. But you know that, don’t you?”
I remembered that back in the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards were wrecking the Aztec Civilization, Hernando Cortes had refused to use firearms, the old muskets of the day, because his archers were so much faster. They could fire ten well-aimed arrows in ten seconds, whereas it took ninety to load a musket and fire a single shot.
I said mildly: “Guns are a lot faster than they used to be.” It seemed important to keep him talking, to let him have the conversation he craved. It’s the easiest way to get to know a man, to talk, and talk, and keep on talking.
He grunted again. He said: “Aye, they’re faster. And noisier. And you can put three, four, half a dozen bullets into a man, and if he’s tough enough he’ll still be coming at you. But put a hunting shaft through his guts and he’s down for the count and he won’t get up again, ever.”
“And Histermann?”
