Tender to Danger Read online

  Tender to Danger

  Eric Ambler

  Eric Ambler

  Tender to Danger

  Prologue

  Mr. Meriden was eccentric. Mr. Meriden was very rich. Mr. Meriden was very stubborn. He was also a very tiresome man. Untroubled either by a sense of humour or by too keen an awareness of reality, he pursued his eccentricities with a determination that had something quite obsessional about it. No obstacle deterred him; no obstacle, that is, which could be battered down by money. Opposition to his wishes merely confirmed his belief in the essential rightness of them. Those who worked for Mr. Meriden earned their pay.

  The Skipper of the motor yacht Moonlight thought of all this as he gazed across the green water of Zavrana’s little harbour. When he looked at the mountains that drew an ominous curtain round the town, he remembered his mild protest against the voyage. “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Meriden. Supposing there’s a war. Yugoslavia’s a long way from home.”

  War! Mr. Meriden had smiled omnipotently and laid it down that there would be no war, and here they were, idling along the Dalmatian coast through the sunny August of 1939.

  They had spent three weeks among the islands between Dubrovnik and Split, and had put back to Zavrana because of a rumour that a peasant had ploughed up a bust of Diocletian and was prepared to consider any reasonable offer. Mr. Meriden had been disappointed. Inquiries on the spot had discovered neither peasant nor emperor, and to console himself Mr. Meriden had bought a palace in the hills. He had not waited to ask himself what he wanted with a palace on the Dalmatian coast. There it had been, onion-domed turret and all, and really quite cheap when you considered. Mr. Meriden had promptly entered a new cloud-cuckoo land. He saw himself established in ducal state; but democratic, the little father of his retainers, wearing the native costume; and if there weren’t a native costume, he would design one.

  Now he was in love with this new fantasy, and Zavrana played into it admirably. Nothing could be more serene than the lovely islands that floated in the blue reaches of the Adriatic beyond. The broken reflections of lean masts and drying sails turned lazily in the green water of the port. The tinted roofs of pleasant, but not palatial, villas were visible on the wooded foothills amidst the oaks and chestnuts, the cypresses and cedars of Lebanon. There were orangeries and olive groves and the glittering, cycloramic backdrop of the Dinaric Alps to lend its enchantment to Zavrana itself, nestling (cosiness figured prominently in Mr. Meriden’s fantasy) snugly in the foreground. It was the ideal base, picturesque, secluded, blissfully quiet, and with Dubrovnik easily accessible by car. Its one small enterprise combined the functions of boatyard and undertaking establishment. The work was cheap and good, whether you wanted a coffin or a dinghy. Mr. Meriden had looked at a design for a coffin, but had decided that it could wait awhile, even though the quotation was very favourable. He had crossed to the other department and discussed some work to be done on the yacht. There had been storm damage to be repaired; also he had wanted alterations in the saloon. He had found he could save lots of dinars on the estimate those Dubrovnik sharks had given him. And then, a wonderful thing had happened. He had found another bargain.

  The Skipper lowered his eyes from the Bosnian uplands and focused his binoculars on a small yawl-rigged craft that had been drawn up on the shingle of the boatyard. A few days ago two youngsters had brought her in to Zavrana, completing a holiday voyage from Plymouth. The yawl, too, had suffered storm damage and was being repaired. The Skipper had cast approving eyes upon her, observing her nice rig and her admirable lines; but now, as he peered through his binoculars, he scowled at her. She had suddenly become an impediment, a responsibility heaped upon all his other responsibilities, and heaven knows, there were enough of them.

  For once, exasperation had blotted out the lessons of experience. He had had the temerity to protest vigorously.

  “But, Mr. Meriden, she’s thirty foot with a nine-foot beam! How do you suppose we’re going to handle her?”

  “We shan’t have to handle her.” Mr. Meriden had produced his omnipotent smile. “I’ll keep her here, mainly. She’ll be more than useful when I’m in residence up there.” He waved negligently towards the far-off onion dome that peeped above a line of trees, then focused on the yawl again. “She’s got an auxiliary. If necessary, she can follow us round. She’s just the thing we want to fetch and carry when we can’t tie up.”

  “Isn’t the launch good enough, Mr. Meriden?”

  “That last Greek statue we bought nearly sank the launch.”

  The Skipper had groaned. He had foreseen a manifest of bigger if not better pieces of marble. He had plunged on.

  “I wonder if you’re wise, sir. I hear she was leaking quite badly when she came in.”

  “They’re fixing her timbers. In a few days she’ll be as right as a trivet.”

  Useless to cast doubt on the seaworthiness of a trivet. The Skipper had seen that argument was futile. Mr. Meriden had gone on talking.

  “Anyway, I want to help those lads. They’re scared of all of this war talk. I’ve tried to tell them there’s nothing in it, but they won’t listen. They want to sell, fly home, and join up. She’s a lovely little craft, and a real bargain.”

  That had been the final word. The Skipper groaned again, blinked once, and let his binoculars swing from their strap. Very rarely had Mr. Meriden been able to resist or weigh the cost of a bargain. The Moonlight herself was an outstanding instance of this weakness. It had taken a small fortune to build and equip her, and she had been bought for a song only because her first millionaire owner had found it impossible to face the enormous expense of running her.

  The Skipper shrugged. When he next looked at the yawl on the shingle, a man in a green sweater was painting something on her square stern.

  Once more the binoculars were raised. The man in the green sweater stepped back, brush in hand, to survey his work, and the Skipper could clearly see the black lettering on the white stern.

  One

  A thin mist dimmed the lights of Brussels as the plane from Athens circled the airport and prepared to land. Dr. Andrew Maclaren, shifting in his seat, looked at his watch, then at the space outside. The plane was late. It did not matter, but he had been hoping to get to London that night; merely hoping, there was no compelling reason for him to be there.

  Yet London had been more and more in his mind during the weeks of indecision about his resignation. It had become a symbol of release, a goal, something to support him in the painful moment of casting off; a symbol, too, of his break with the past and his hopes for the future. He had put in quite enough time cleaning up the aftermath of Hitler’s war, hanging onto the tassels of the Iron Curtain, prescribing pills for and pumping serum into displaced persons. It was amazing to him now that he had stuck it so long. Berlin had been good practice. Vienna had been a bore. Then Greece; up in the mountains and down on the shores. Who was the displaced person?

  London was home.

  It might also be home for the girl who sat two seats ahead of him. He had learned at any rate that it was her destination and, curiously, he derived a lot of satisfaction from the fact, just as he had from merely watching her. They lived in the same city; they were, in a way, neighbours. It was true, she might dwell in Hendon while he must plant himself at Holland Park, but from here, flying in the mist over Belgium, London seemed a small place. Sometimes when she looked across the cabin or turned towards the window, he saw her profile. Otherwise all he could see was a glowing head of auburn hair supported by a pair of very nice shoulders. It was the profile that had attracted him. It was a profile that might attract any man. Her name was…

  “I am afraid, Herr Doktor, it will be very disagreeable over the sea. Once before I was flying
in a fog over the sea and I do not like it.”

  Mr. Kusitch leaned across to speak, fumbling with the straps of his seat. Dr. Maclaren nodded vaguely. He was annoyed with Mr. Kusitch for formulating the thought in his own mind.

  “Very little to worry about,” he mumbled. “With radar and beams and things, there’s nothing to it.”

  Mr. Kusitch failed to notice the irritability in the young man’s voice. His round, mournful face was as trusting as a dog’s.

  “You relieve me, Herr Doktor. It would be very inconvenient to spend the night in Brussels. Not that I am unfamiliar. Do you know Brussels?”

  There was something of the limpet and a good deal of the bore about Mr. Kusitch. He had introduced himself before the Acropolis had been out of sight, and all the way across Europe he had chatted. He, too, was booked for London, yet Dr. Maclaren had never once thought of him as a neighbour. Mr. Kusitch was, in every stitch of his clothes, a foreigner; a foreigner with a return ticket in his wallet. An amiable little man with a pathological need for company.

  The girl two seats ahead was regrettably without that need. She sat alone, an isolate. She was obviously so sure of herself, so self-contained, that it was difficult to imagine her responding to any approach from a stranger.

  Her name was Miss Meriden. He had heard the air hostess address her as Miss Meriden.

  “You do not know Brussels?” Mr. Kusitch was not to be ignored.

  “No. I’ve never been in the place.”

  It was a mistake. Andrew Maclaren realised it at once.-”Don’t be grieved, Herr Doktor. If the sad fate swallows us, I shall make it the pleasure to be your cicerone.”

  The wide mouth with the overhanging upper lip expanded in a smile, but the eyes were anxious, seeking reassurance from the Herr Doktor. The eyes were a cold grey, and there was something peculiar about them in addition to the slight cast in one of them. The strangeness, though, was only a momentary phenomenon, fugitive. You might even say furtive. Something looked out that should have been hidden. You decided that here were the eyes of a frank nature, pleading the honesty of their possessor. “See,” they said. “This little Kusitch is a good fellow. He puts everything on the counter. There is nothing up his sleeve.” Then it came: the flick of a shutter that hinted at some unnameable mystery.

  It was a common peculiarity these days. Andrew Maclaren had met it frequently among the outcasts and fugitives who had been his patients. Sometimes he had known it for the mark of a concentration camp, or of some other horror endured. Sometimes its origins had remained unknown. Then it had made him uneasy, and his mind had been filled with tales he had heard of secret collaborators, of fears and betrayals, of greed and desperation more terrible than ordinary suffering.

  Yet for this odd little man, Kusitch, you could surely accept one of the more innocent implications. He was a clerk, a messenger, a government servant. At most he would be the chief of some minor bureau in one of those countries beyond the Adriatic. The Slavonic suggestion in the name meant little. Mr. Kusitch could be a currant merchant from Smyrna, a tobacco salesman from Beirut, a shipping agent from Port Said. All Andrew knew was that he was a passenger from Athens to London.

  “You are very kind,” Andrew said, “but I don’t imagine we’ll see anything of Brussels. The plane will be waiting to take us on.”

  He was wrong. When they landed a few seconds later, the airport officials met them with the announcement that the fog was thick over southern England and all services to London had been suspended. Andrew damned the weather. Kusitch expressed himself in what was probably his native tongue. Andrew hurried across the tarmac, looking for the girl. He had lost sight of her in the process of disembarking. She had been one of the first out, and by the time he reached the top of the gangway she had disappeared. There was a turning and milling of passengers and friends who had come to greet them. Only a few of those passengers were booked to go on; for the rest, Brussels was the end of the journey. A second plane had just arrived and there was some congestion at the passport control.

  He squeezed ahead of a stout woman with a bulging suitcase.

  The girl might be in difficulties. The self-assurance so manifest on the plane might not be equal to this situation. There were circumstances in which it might be no joke to be stranded in an alien city. Dubious characters were only too ready to take advantage of the lone foreigner. Now, if ever, was the time for a neighbour to keep a neighbourly eye open.

  It is possible that Dr. Maclaren’s prolonged acquaintance with the terrors and confusions of a vast social upheaval had induced in him a certain naivete about the better-ordered centres. It is also possible that his capacity for self-deception had suddenly increased. The suspicion did, indeed, cross his mind that his anxiety about the girl might be related to his appreciation of her profile, but he promptly rejected it. It had been agreeable to examine that profile when he found the opportunity, agreeable to speculate on the character of its owner, to see nobility in the line of the brow, sensitivity and delicacy in the fine modelling of the nose, warmth and gentleness in the curve of the lips, firmness in that nice chin. It had been agreeable, too, to think of chances that might promote acquaintance, because he thought a man might find a good companion in such a girl; but he was not one to make a fool of himself over an attractive girl. Aesthetic appreciation was one thing, practical assistance to a distressed fellow countryman another.

  So his eye was really neighbourly when a group in front of him dissolved and he saw the girl arguing with a porter. And, just as he had feared, she was in difficulty. The porter was waving his hands and shaking his head, and it seemed that she was trying to make him understand something. Now was the time to walk up and take charge of the situation, to give the man in his stammering French the order that her English could not convey to him. Yet now was the time when shyness seized Andrew, and he could not budge.

  She frowned. She spoke with obvious insistence about something. The porter shrugged and waved his hands again. She seemed more disturbed, and looked round the long hall as if seeking something or someone. She needed aid. Her eyes rested upon Andrew or they looked through him, beyond him, not seeing him. For a moment he wasn’t sure. Then he was. He saw appeal in her look, and, once positive, he acted on impulse. She had seen him on the plane, and now, in distress, she knew she could turn to him.

  In the instant he was guiltless of opportunism. She was just another displaced person in need of assistance. He crossed the narrow space between them with assurance.

  “Can I be of any help?”

  Her blue eyes opened more widely in mild surprise. He was near enough to see that the profile was not an entirely adequate index of her loveliness. Or he had been too long away from her kind and saw more beauty than was there. At least one might not deny the eyes. They could be devastating.

  They were. The surprise in them seemed to change to apprehension and cold suspicion. They were plainly seeing him for the first time. They were made of blue ice.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said.

  He felt himself shrivelling. There was an eternity of horror in which he tried to think of something to say.

  “I was on the plane. I thought I might be able to help you.”

  “Thank you,” she answered. “I can manage.”

  She turned her back on him; then, crying a name, she ran towards the far door to greet effusively an elderly fur-wrapped woman who had just entered. It was a moment before he realised that Mr. Kusitch was at his side again.

  “Ah, Herr Doktor. I have found out the arrangements. They hope for resumptions to London in the morning. Seats are reserved for us on the plane at ten hours. Soon we go by autobus to the terminal building. The air people will help us with accomodations for sleeping the night.”

  Andrew watched the girl leave the building with the fur wrapped woman. He was almost trembling now with anger and humiliation. So that’s what came of trying to help people! For his part she could sleep the night on a concrete floor.

>   He looked at the little man at his side and felt a twinge of compunction. Kusitch was at least human and friendly. He was talking now, gesturing towards a counter on one side of the hall. There were formalities.

  Andrew recovered his humour suddenly. He laughed.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Mr. Kusitch beamed.

  “That’s right, Herr Doktor,” he applauded. “For a few hours we can afford to be philosophers.”

  It might be that the pale grey eyes could never express the amiability of the round face. There were other thoughts in the Kusitch mind, perhaps, but what could be more natural? He was worried about some business appointment, even if he did make a pretence of shrugging it off.

  He went on talking cheerfully to Andrew, but the grey eyes were quick in a flickering search, scanning the faces of those about him, the waiting passengers, the attendant friends, the air-line officials, the customs men.

  In the crowded autobus it was the same, and again at the terminal building, where people passed in and out of the doors. It went on, even while he was talking to the clerk at the desk, the alert eyes peering and shifting, until Maclaren thought he must have been mistaken about the little man. He was no longer a clerk or a currant merchant. He was more like a police agent in his practised scrutiny of people. The face was impassive, or it beamed. The scrutiny was suspicious, or it might be merely curious. Andrew did not know. He had himself looked round curiously once or twice, but the red-haired hoyden was not in the terminal building, nor had she travelled in the autobus. He decided that she must have gone off somewhere with the woman in the furs, probably to dine with the royal family. The royal family was welcome. Personally he never wanted to see her again.

  He felt a tug at his sleeve, and there was the faithful Mr. Kusitch, steering him towards a new counter. He detached his sleeve from the guiding grip and spoke a little impatiently. There were moments when he disliked Mr. Kusitch almost as much as he now disliked the girl, but in the case of Mr. Kusitch the feeling never had time to grow. The round, pliable face would beam again and assume the half-appealing, half-quizzical expression of the trusting dog. It was like that now.