O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 11 - night of Morningstar, page 1
THE NIGHT OF MORNINGSTAR
Peter O’Donnell
Chapter One
GARCIA was adjusting his tie when he heard the expected peep of the Mercedes horn. He put on the jacket of his pale grey suit, set the alarms, locked his flat, and went down into the street that ran north to Boulevard Mohammed-Cinq. Willie Garvin leaned across, opened the passenger door of the grey 450SL, and said, “Morning, Rafael.”
“Thanks, Willie.” Garcia climbed in and leaned back with a gentle sigh. “Am I getting old, do you think?”
Willie looked at him. “How old d’you feel?”
“I am not sure. But in the apartment next to mine lives a beautiful girl and a wealthy young lawyer.”
“I know. We vetted them, and they’re legitimate. So?”
“I saw them going in last night. You know. Laughing, eager for each other, he with his arm about her. But I was not envious of him. I did not even speculate as to what they would soon be doing together.”
Willie wagged his head.
“… What that is, ‘oo can tell?
But I believe it was no more
Than thou and I ‘ave done before
With Bridget and with Nell. “
Garcia frowned. “I don’t remember them. Nell, you say?”
“It’s the last lines of a poem, Rafa, you dope.” Willie switched on the engine.
“Ah.” Garcia thought about it. “Yes, I see now.”
“And don’t worry about failing to speculate on the couple next door. It just means you’re not becoming a dirty old man.”
“At my age, the idea has its attraction.”
Willie smiled. The car moved off, shortly turning left to join the traffic moving west towards the centre of Tangier. After a few moments Garcia said, “When did Mam’selle tell you she was planning to wind up The Network?”
“About a month ago.” There was a hint of apology in Willie Garvin’s voice.
Garcia made a small dismissive gesture with a well kept hand. “It’s all right, I don’t mind.”
“I just thought … well, you’ve been with ‘er longer than anyone.”
“Yes, by God, that is something. But I am glad she did not tell me till yesterday. With the Amsterdam negotiations to complete, I would not have wanted such a distraction on my mind, and she knew that. Look, Willie. Anything she does, any time, is good with me. That is how it has always been.”
“Sure.” Willie halted for traffic lights and glanced with affection at the man beside him, a man with a square brown face, thick greying hair, and a body now putting on a little fat.
Garcia said, “Ten years ago, what am I? I am number three in a smalltime mob here. Now I am top man with you in The Network and I have enough money to last me three lifetimes.” He was silent for a moment, remembering. “Do you know how it was in those beginning days?”
Willie eased the car forward, crawling in the heavy morning traffic. “She doesn’t talk much about the past, but I’ve picked up bits ‘ere and there. I know she came out of the desert when she was about seventeen, as near as she can guess, and she got a job working in a casino run by the Louche gang.”
Garcia nodded. “It was a time of gang war. They shot Louche and his number two. It was finish for us all, we thought, if we did not scatter and disappear. But then this young girl, with black hair and eyes as old as the eyes of God, she spoke words of fire, whipping us with them, calling us spineless sheep.” He chuckled suddenly. “She was not yet fully grown then, and quite skinny. La Roche got mad and tried to slap her down, but she was quick as a snake. Dropped him with a kick in the balls.”
Willie grinned. They were in Place de France now and traffic was picking up speed, but he kept a leisurely pace. They would be in plenty of time for the meeting she had called that morning in the big office suite above the Banque Populaire de Malaurak. He said, “That must’ve been before she was combat trained, but she’s got natural speed.”
“It was well before,” Garcia agreed. “She did not go to Cambodia to train under Saragam until almost two years later.” He chuckled again. “That was just before she bought a certain Englishman out of jail in an adjoining country, and put him to the test before taking him into The Network.”
“I know that bit,” said Willie.
“Of course. Well, like I was telling you, she picked up the pieces of the Louche mob, and she put some courage into us. When the hit-men came to clean up, we were ready with the tricks she had devised.” Garcia rolled his eyes upward. “My God, when I think of all her tricks over the years. So there are five men, and when they come to the casino they find only a young girl, very frightened. She tells them we are holed up in one of the rooms above, and we are bad people, and she hates us, so she tells them they can come to the room by two ways, a staircase at the front and a smaller one at the back, which is true.”
Garcia nodded solemnly. “It is perfectly true, and she takes two of the men to show them the back way, but when they are on the stairs she turns and pam! pam! They finish at the bottom, one with a broken arm, and she has both their guns. She tells Krolli to watch them while she runs back to the front to warn the three men there to be careful that nobody fires down at them through a skylight in the landing passage. This means they must crouch together in a very short piece of passage while their two friends at the back are checking the roof, so they believe.”
Garcia began to shake with silent laughter. When he could continue he said, “But we have worked five hours to her orders, cutting away the floorboards and the joists and the ceiling below, then replacing the boards in one piece, like the trap of a gallows. You get it, Willie?”
“Resting on a ledge at one end, and a vertical prop the other end?”
“So. ” Garcia beamed. “I knocked the prop away myself with a sledgehammer, and down they came with five of us waiting for them in the passage below.” He leaned back with a little sigh. “That was the beginning. Then for half a year was fought the war of the four gangs. It was not easy, Willie. Somehow, after that first day, I knew she would win, but it was not easy. Some of the men quit. Two were killed. But at the end there was only one gang, and from this came The Network. In two years we controlled eight areas covering the whole Mediterranean shore. Then she established links in the Americas and the Far East, and always, from the beginning, I was her number two.”
“You earned it.” Willie slowed for the turn at the end of Rue de Belgique. “You backed ‘er when it looked like suicide. You and Krolli and Nedic. She’s told me that.”
Garcia lifted his shoulders slightly. “I could see the …” He groped for a word. “The force. I could see the force in her, Willie. Strange to say, it is something we did not speak about among ourselves, but I think the others saw what I saw.”
“I can imagine.” Willie’s voice was soft. “When I got back from Hong Kong after running that test mission she sent me on, I was scared stiff she might not accept me for The Network.” He glanced at his friend. “And scared you might speak against me.”
Garcia shook his head. “I could see you were troubled about what I would say, but she always picked her own people.”
“I didn’t know that then. Anyway, you’re a decent old sod, Rafa, so thanks. The way she moved me up the ladder, you could easily ‘ave turned nasty with me.”
“Willie, Willie my friend, I am fifty-seven years old. When she found you and gave you your chance I was already fifty-one. Too old for the job, and afraid that soon I would fail her in some important operation. From the beginning I thought you might be the one I was hoping for, and after six months I knew it. I knew that you would become her right arm in a way that I could never be, and I was glad as hell, Willie. You know something? I had already spoken to Mam’selle about retirement, but when she put you to run in tandem with me I was glad to stay on. It was good to have a younger man take over as ramrod in the field operations. Just what she needed. Just what Ineeded, by God.”
“Well … it worked out all right.” Willie scratched his cheek speculatively. “It’s going to feel weird when we all split up.”
“She tells me it will take three months,” said Garcia. “There is much to be made tidy. Area heads will be permitted to take over their own areas if they wish.” He grimaced and shook his head. “Without her they will lose The Network style, and things will quickly go wrong. Better to retire.”
“That’s what you’ll do?”
“Of course. I will go home to Uruguay, to San Tremino where I was born. I left there without a peso and I will go back with a million dollars. Not bad, Willie.”
“Crime pays all right.”
“You also will retire?”
Willie nodded. “The criminal classes aren’t what they used to be. Villains ‘aven’t got the same discrimination these days. They’ve turned vicious. Time I left the profession.”
“What you say is right. I am thankful Mam’selle has decided to make an end of it. This last year we have spent more time dealing with such people than in our own operations.”
“We usually come out with a profit when we break up a vice mob.”
‘True. But that is not our job. Inspector Hassan has mentioned to me that he does not approve of a private police force.”
Willie laughed. “We’re not within a mile of that. And even if he doesn’t like the principle, he’s more than ‘appy with the results .”
Garcia looked at his watch. After a moment he said, “Before she spoke to me yesterday about the close-down I was going to ask your opinion of The Graduate now he has completed his three months of training, but it hardly matters now.”
“It might. The Princess aims to run one or two cleaning-up operations.”
Garcia smiled to himself. Willie Garvin alone had the sanction to address Modesty Blaise as Princess. It was unthinkable for anyone else to do so, but Willie was very special indeed, more than a trusted lieutenant, more than a friend or courtier; certainly not a lover, yet closer to that unfathomable young woman who ruled The Network than most husbands to their wives. A strange relationship, almost impossible to comprehend, yet one which Garcia found peculiarly pleasing.
He said, “So what is your opinion of The Graduate?”
Willie turned into the car park at the rear of the bank, ran the car into his reserved space, and switched off. Garcia was speaking of Hugh Oberon, who had been recommended for recruitment by the head of the Riviera area. Oberon was of good family, Anglo Irish, and had graduated from Oxford with a degree in Modern Languages. His dossier stated that he claimed to have acquired a large contempt for academics during his years at University. A long sabbatical when he came down, during which he travelled widely, persuaded him that crime was the only business likely to provide him with sufficient material reward plus the excitement for which he had developed a craving. Theft was his main field of endeavour. He had worked both solo and with a gang, and had once put together a small organisation of his own. This had failed in its second operation, and Hugh Oberon had been lucky to serve only a year in a French gaol. After his release he had worked freelance for whoever could use him until being picked out as a possible recruit for The Network and sent to Tangier.
Willie said, “He’s the best man we’ve ever ‘ad, according to the test results. That rare thing, the brilliant all-rounder. I took ‘im through the combat tests meself, and I was a bit relieved to come out of it with me ‘ead facing the right way.”
“I think like you that he is something special,” Garcia agreed. “He could perhaps be another Willie Garvin.”
Willie sighed. “Maybe that’s why I can’t stand ‘im.”
Garcia shook his head. “No. I spoke wrongly just now. He could have been another Garvin, but it is too late. He has gone the wrong way.” Garcia lifted a hand and wobbled it with spread fingers in a balancing movement. “It is too late. Where you had confidence, he has conceit. Where you had judgment, he has arrogance. Where you had respect for Mam’selle, he has envy. I think he is one of the new kind of criminal you spoke of just now, Willie. He is eager to use the gun and the knife, the bomb too, perhaps. He is vicious, that one, behind the smiling eyes and the warm manner.”
“He won’t fit our style, then.”
“Not at all. The quiet operation, the long-runners that make no news, they are not for his kind.”
“From what the Princess said, we’ll just be cleaning up from now on. The Graduate might be useful for that, I suppose.”
“Even cleaning up must be done in our own style, Willie.”
“I’m not arguing. It’s your pigeon, my old mate. You’ll be telling Mam’selle what you think?”
“I have already done so. She wishes to have another look at him before deciding whether to send him away now or let him work out his time in a job where he can cause no harm. That is why he has been told to come to the meeting this morning.”
“Right.” Willie looked at his watch. “Time we went up.” They got out of the car and moved towards the private door of the bank, a well guarded door. Willie Garvin felt his heart lift a little. For some six years now he had seen Modesty Blaise almost every day, sometimes briefly, sometimes for long spells; and occasionally, during an operation, for days and nights on end. Yet whenever he was about to see her again there was always that quick lift of happy anticipation.
It would be different once The Network had been wound up, he reflected with a touch of unease. It would be very different. He hoped to God he’d be able to cope.
*
The air-conditioned office was large, and lay on the top floor of the block which rose above the Banque Populaire de Malaurak. The tall window occupying one wall looked north over the town to the sea beyond. On the other walls hung a Cocteau, two Chagalls and a Matisse landscape.
Seven men were seated around the room in comfortable modern armchairs. Six sat at ease. The youngest, a man with an athlete’s build, dark curly hair and green eyes, sat forward in his chair, a little tense, or perhaps eager, or perhaps impatient. This was Hugh Oberon, also known as The Graduate.
A large desk stood across one corner of the office. It carried three telephones, a small panel of press-buttons, a gold pen in a rack, and two manila folders. A dark-haired girl in her middle twenties sat behind the desk, occasionally turning a page in the open folder before her, and speaking unhurriedly in a quiet, mellow voice. She wore a white blouse with short sleeves, and a wine red skirt. Her only jewellery was an antique amethyst pendant, not very large, which hung at her throat.
Oberon studied her with profound interest. He had seen her briefly when he had been brought to her for interview a few weeks ago. Now, his induction and basic training completed, he had been summoned to this meeting of the legendary Modesty Blaise and her lieutenants. Oberon was intrigued but in no way awed, for he found it difficult to accept that these quiet, relaxed men and this quiet, impassive girl could have controlled an organisation like The Network for so long.
Perhaps they had been hard men once, but they had gone soft now. There was no fire in their bellies. They were yesterday’s men. Even Garvin was past thirty, placid, devoid of the good raw lust for dominance that you had to have if you were going to make it big. Oberon was quite certain he would have won that combat session two days ago if Garvin had not managed a lucky counter to the shotei strike. As for the rest…
Oberon looked casually round the room. There was Garcia, well over fifty by the look of him and running to fat. He was responsible for general administration and for disposal of precious metals and precious stones. Beside him sat Krolli, the swarthy Greek leader of the task force whose main job was to protect the organisation from rivals. Lensk, thickset of body and with sleepy brown eyes, ran the section concerned with international intelligence and industrial espionage.
The man nearest to The Graduate sat with feet barely touching the floor. This was Wee Jock Miller, product of a Glasgow slum, so Oberon had gathered. Miller was just five feet tall and looked almost as broad. His face bore a long thin scar, as if from a razor, and one eye was false. He was in charge of all transport used by the organisation, whether road, sea, or air. The man on his right was Braun, the ash blond German responsible for all Network communications, technical equipment, and small arms. Both he and Miller were knocking forty, Oberon decided. They were all too old, too tired. This was a young man’s world.
The girl herself, about his own age he judged, was something of an enigma. She must have been a real hell-cat once, if half the stories told of her were true, but he could see no hint of it in her now. She had become spongy like the others, he concluded. Little wonder she was talking about winding up The Network.
Modesty Blaise turned over a typed sheet and looked at the next. “Now regarding pay-offs,” she said. “Area chiefs will be responsible for their own people, whether they remain operating or close down. I shall be responsible for all staff here in Tangier and in the North African ports from Casablanca to Tripoli. You can tell your respective staffs that the minimum pay-off will be two thousand dollars and the maximum fifteen thousand, depending on length and quality of service. I’m the sole judge of quality.”
Hugh Oberon flicked a glance at the other men. No reaction, no protests, just polite interest. She was continuing, “As regards yourselves, I’ve made it policy to award bonuses twice a year, but there will be a substantial final bonus, and also I shall be putting Jock Miller on the list of pensioners since he lost an eye in service.”
The chunky Scot scowled and made a grunting sound of acknowledgment. Modesty Blaise said, “There are ample funds for all this. Over the past two years I’ve been laundering our revenue, and almost all assets held by our various companies are now legitimate. This bank and this office building were never anything but legitimate, and negotiations for the sale of them have almost been completed.” She turned the last page, then glanced to her left. “Have I forgotten anything, Willie?”
