Circus

‘I don’t know, sir. If a person were lying quietly, I really don’t think so.’ He hesitated. ‘But, well, under certain circumstances they might.’ The admiral waited patiently and Malthius went on: ‘If they were provoked. Or – ’

‘Yes?’

‘If they smelled blood.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Of course he’s sure.’ The admiral, who was quite unaware of Wrinfield’s intense loyalty to his men, was surprised at the asperity in his voice. ‘What do you think, sir? We feed them on horse meat or beef and those are raw and smell of blood. The tigers can’t wait to get at the meat and tear it to pieces with teeth and claws. Have you ever seen tigers at feeding-time?’

The admiral had a mental vision of how Fawcett must have died and shuddered involuntarily. ‘No, and I don’t think I’ll ever want to either.’ He turned back to Malthius. ‘So he could have been alive, conscious or not – blood doesn’t flow when you’re dead – stabbed and thrown into the cage?’

‘That is possible, sir. But you won’t find a trace of a stab wound now.’

‘I realize that. You found the door locked on the outside. Is it possible to do that from the inside?’

‘No. You can bolt it from the inside. It wasn’t bolted.’

‘Isn’t that a rather curious arrangement?’

Malthius smiled for the first time, albeit faintly. ‘Not for a tiger trainer, sir. When I go into the cage I turn the key on the outside and leave it in position. Once I get inside I bolt the door – can’t risk having the door swing open or being pulled open by one of the tigers and letting them loose among the crowd.’ He smiled a second time, again without mirth. ‘It could come in useful for me, too. If things get unpleasant for me, I just slide the bolt, get away from there and turn the key on the outside.’

‘Thank you. Would you ask that friend of yours – ’

‘Heinrich Neubauer, sir. The lion trainer.’

‘I’d like to see him.’ Malthius walked dejectedly away and the admiral said: ‘He seems very unhappy to me.’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’ Again the unexpected asperity in Wrinfield’s voice. ‘He not only feels personally responsible but his tigers have for the first time acquired a taste for human flesh. Malthius is human flesh, too, you know.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

The admiral asked Neubauer a few desultory and inconsequential questions then asked for Bruno. When he arrived the admiral said: ‘You’re the only one I really wanted to talk to. The other two were only a cover – we’re being watched both by circus people and the police. Some of the police, by the way, think I’m a very senior police officer, others that I’m from the FBI, although why they should imagine that I can’t imagine. A dreadful thing, Bruno, a quite dreadful thing. Well, it looks as if poor Fawcett was correct, we’re being pushed to the limit to find out how really desperate we are to go to Crau. Well, I’ve been pushed far enough. Who knows who’s going to be next? I have no right, no one has any right, to ask you to be involved in this ghastly business any more. There’s a limit to patriotism – being patriotic did Pilgrim and Fawcett a great deal of good, didn’t it? You are now released from any obligations, real or imagined, that you may have had.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Wrinfield’s tone had remained unchanged. Whatever touched Wrinfield’s beloved circus touched his rawest nerve: this had become a personal matter. ‘Two good men have died. You want them to have died in vain? I’m going to Europe.’

The admiral blinked and turned to Bruno. ‘And you?’

Bruno looked at him in a silence that verged on the contemptuous.

‘Well.’ The admiral was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Off again, on again. If you’re prepared to accept the risks, I’m prepared to accept your sacrifices. Utterly selfish, I know, but we desperately want those papers. I won’t try to thank you, I honestly wouldn’t know how to, but the least I can do is to arrange protection. I’ll assign five of my best men to you – as a Press corps, shall we say? – then once you are aboard the boat – ’

Bruno spoke in a very quiet voice. ‘If you assign any of your men to us, then nobody’s going anywhere, and that includes me. And from what I’m told, although I don’t understand it yet, if I don’t go then there’s no point in anyone else going anyway. The exception, of course, is Dr Harper, a dead man vouched for him and you can’t get any better recommendation than that. As for the rest of your men – who do you think killed Pilgrim and Fawcett? Without their protection, we might have a chance.’ Bruno turned abruptly and walked away. The admiral looked after him, with a slightly pained expression on his face, at a momentarily but highly unusual loss for words, but was saved the necessity of making comment by the arrival of a police sergeant carrying a small black box. That the uniform was not the property of the man inside it Wrinfield was quite certain. When it came to local colour Charles – it was the only way Wrinfield could think of him – was not a man who missed much.

The admiral said: ‘The recording –’ and when the sergeant nodded: ‘May we use your office, please, Mr Wrinfield?’

‘Of course.’ Wrinfield looked around him. ‘Not here. In the train. Too many people.’

The office door closed behind them, the sergeant took the recorder from its casing and Wrinfield said: ‘What do you expect to hear?’

‘You.’ Wrinfield looked his astonishment. ‘Or a very close approximation of your voice. Or Bruno’s. Yours were the only two voices in the circus that Fawcett knew: he wouldn’t have come for anyone else.’

They heard the recording through. At the end Wrinfield said calmly: ‘That’s meant to be me. Shall we hear it again?’

They heard it through a second time then Wrinfield said positively: ‘That’s not my voice. You know it isn’t.’

‘My dear Wrinfield, I never dreamed it would be. I know it isn’t. Now I know it isn’t. But I had to hear it a second time to make sure. When a man speaks in that hurried and distressed fashion, his voice takes on abnormal overtones. A piece of silk stretched across the mouthpiece is a great help. I don’t blame poor Fawcett for being fooled, especially when he had only the one thing on his mind at the time. But it’s a damned good imitation all the same.’ The admiral paused, ruminated, then looked at Wrinfield consideringly. ‘To the best of my knowledge and belief, and to yours, you don’t know and never have talked to any of my men. Right?’ Wrinfield nodded. ‘So I put it to you that this call was made by someone who knew your voice intimately and had studied it.’

‘That’s preposterous. If you’re suggesting – ’

‘Precisely what I am suggesting, I’m afraid. Look, man, if our organization can be infiltrated don’t you think your damned circus can be too? After all, you’ve got twenty-five nationalities working for you: I’ve got only one.’

‘You’re the CIA. Everyone would want to infiltrate the CIA. Who’d want to infiltrate a harmless circus?’

‘Nobody. But in the eyes of the ungodly you’re not a harmless circus, you’re an affiliate of the CIA and therefore ripe for infiltration. Don’t let blind loyalty blind your intelligence. Let’s hear that recording again. Only this time don’t listen for your own voice, listen for someone else’s. I should imagine you know the voice of every man in your employment. And to narrow the field, remember that most of your men speak with fairly heavy foreign accents. This is an Anglo-Saxon voice, probably American, although I can’t be sure.’

They played the recording through four more times and at the end Wrinfield shook his head. ‘It’s no good. The distortion is far too heavy.’

‘Thank you, officer, you may leave.’ The sergeant snapped the case shut and left. Briefly the admiral paced up and down the full length of the office – three steps in either direction – then shook his head in the reluctant acceptance of the inevitable. ‘What a charming thought. A link up between my lot and yours.’

‘You’re terribly certain.’

‘I’m terribly certain of one thing and that’s this. There isn’t one man in my lot who wouldn’t give up his pension rather than open the door of a tiger’s cage.’

Wrinfield nodded with an equally reluctant acceptance. ‘I suppose it’s my turn to say that I should have thought of that.’

‘That’s unimportant. Point is, what are we going to do? You’re under hostile surveillance, my career’s on that.’ He paused in momentary gloom. ‘Whatever my career’s going to be worth when all this is over.’

‘I thought we’d settled all that.’ The now accustomed touch of asperity was back in Wrinfield’s voice. ‘You heard what I said back in the circus. You heard what Bruno said. We go.’ The admiral regarded him thoughtfully. ‘A marked change of attitude since last night. Or, more properly, a marked hardening in attitude.’

‘I don’t think you quite understand, sir.’ Wrinfield was being patient. ‘This is my life, my whole life. Touch me, touch my circus. Or vice versa. We have one major card in the hole.’

‘I’ve missed it.’

‘Bruno’s still in the clear.’

‘I hadn’t missed it and it’s because I want him to stay that way that I’d like you to take this girl of ours into your employ. Her name is Maria Hopkins and although I don’t know her all that well Dr Harper assures me she is a very bright operative and that her loyalty is beyond question. She’s to fall in love with Bruno and he with her. Nothing more natural.’ The admiral put on his sad smile. ‘If I were twenty years younger I’d say there was nothing easier. She’s really rather beautiful. That way she can liaise with Bruno, yourself, Dr Harper – and, up to the time of your departure, with myself – without raising any eyebrows. As an equestrienne, perhaps? That was Fawcett’s idea.’

‘No perhaps. She may think she’s good, she may actually be good, but there’s no place for amateurs in the circus. Besides, there’s not a man or woman on my performing staff who wouldn’t spot immediately that she’s not a trained circus equestrienne: you couldn’t devise a surer way of calling attention to her.’

‘Suggestions?’

‘Yes. Fawcett mentioned this possibility in this dreadful bordello place he took us to and I’ve given the matter some thought. Didn’t require much, really. My secretary is getting married in a few weeks to a very strange fellow who doesn’t like circuses: so she’s leaving. This is common knowledge. Let Maria be my new secretary. Every reason for her to be in constant contact with me, and through me your doctor and Bruno without any questions being asked.’

‘Couldn’t be better. Now, I’d like you to put a large box advert in the papers tomorrow for a doctor to accompany the circus to Europe. I know this isn’t the way one normally recruits a medical man but we’ve no time to wait to use the more professional channels. This must be made clear in the advert. Besides it will make it perfectly clear that you are seeking a doctor with no one in mind and that your choice will essentially be a random one. You may have quite a few replies – it would make a nice holiday for someone who has just, say, finished his internship – but you will, of course, choose Dr Harper.

‘He hasn’t practised medicine for years, although I dare say he’d find an aspirin if you twisted his arm. That’s irrelevant. What matters is that he is an outstanding intelligence agent.’

‘So, I was led to believe, was Pilgrim. And Fawcett.’