Mrs. Pollifax on Safari Page 11

  "Who are you?" asked Mrs. Pollifax as the lantern shone on Simon's face.

  "It's of no importance," he told her.

  "But you're not Zambians?"

  He laughed. "No, not Zambians." Unrolling a sleeping bag he tossed it to Amy Lovecraft. "You—over there. Sit quietly, I wish to question this lady."

  Amy Lovecraft carried the sleeping bag to the corner and sat down, her back against the wall, her bound wrists held out in front of her. She had been silent for a long time, and she remained silent, her eyes watching Simon intently. Perhaps she was weighing the possibilities of using feminine wiles on him, thought Mrs. Pollifax, but this was pure conjecture: at least she was subdued and not hysterical.

  Simon carried one of the two boxes to the center of the hut and gestured to her to sit down. She ignored this, saying stiffly, "My wrists hurt. You tied Mrs. Lovecraft's wrists in front of her and 1 don't see why mine can't be tied that way too."

  Simon shot a quick glance at Amy Lovecraft and shrugged. He called, "Reuben?"

  "Yes, Simon."

  "Come in and guard this woman while I change the ropes on her wrists."

  So much for that, thought Mrs. Pollifax, thinking wistfully of a back strangle, a front choke or a forearm slash; nevertheless, she was grateful to have her arms no longer pinned tightly behind her, and the relief to her shoulder muscles was exquisite.

  "Now," said Simon. He produced the other wooden box and sat down opposite her, so close that their knees touched.

  "Yes, now," said Mrs. Pollifax dryly. "What is it you want of us? What kind of ransom are you asking, and why?"

  He brushed this aside indifferently. "The ransom requirements have already been delivered to the television station in Lusaka, madam. They became known at the precise moment we removed you from Kafwala camp. Now all you need do is co-operate. We wish information from you, it is a matter of photographs."

  "Photographs," echoed Mrs. Pollifax, suddenly alarmed.

  He did not notice her reaction, which was merciful, because a second later he was sliding four glossy six-by-ten-inch photographs from a crisp manila envelope, and Mrs. Pollifax could see at once that they were not hers.

  "These," he said, and placing his gun on the floor he handed her the pictures. "You will tell me which of these men is familiar to you."

  "Familiar?" she said blankly. "But you must know I can't help you, I arrived in Zambia only Monday. It's ridiculous to think I could identify—"

  "You will look at the photographs," he said flatly. "They are large and quite clear. We wish your impressions."

  As she picked them up he leaned closer, his eyes on her face, and she thought, Be careful, something is important here. Because of this, instead of rifling through them quickly she kept them one on top of the other and approached them warily. The first was a color photograph of a long-faced man with a sweeping handlebar mustache and curly gray hair. Nothing there. The second was of another mustached man, very swashbuckling, with a bold look. She eyed him politely and then turned to the third picture, which was of—of John Sebastian Farrell, she realized in astonishment—Farrell!—and with a desperate concentration she forced herself to look into his face without expression before she wrenched her gaze to the last photo, a black-and-white picture of a plumpish hard-faced man.

  She said, "They all have mustaches. I'm supposed to know one of them?"

  "You do know one of them," he said, anger creeping into his cool voice. "You advertised for him in the Times of Zambia."

  She allowed her surprise to show; it was genuine but not for the reason he supposed. "I advertised for a man named John Sebastian Farrell," she told him. "Is that why you abducted me? You've just told us it was for ransom."

  He shrugged. "The ransom scarcely matters. You know this Farrell, you can identify him for us, and that is what matters. The ransom is only—what do you call it, the red herring?"

  This was rather staggering news. She gasped, "You amaze me," and then, accusingly, "Why was it necessary to kidnap two of us, then? Why Mrs. Lovecraft as well?"

  "Two are always better than one," he said with a faint smile. "She will be hostage to you."

  Over his shoulder Mrs. Pollifax glanced at Mrs. Love-craft to see how she was taking this news of her expendability, but she appeared to have withdrawn into a world of her own, her brows knit together, her eyes blank. In the dim light of the lantern she looked bloodless, her face the same shade as her pale hair. "I didn't realize Farrell was such an important person," she said, turning back to Simon. "Why?"

  "That is our business. Which of these four is he?" He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "You understand we know one of these men is Mr. Farrell, we know this, so you will now tell us which he is."

  "But none of them is Mr. Farrell," she lied.

  He hit her hard across the face with the back of his hand, brutally, without emotion. "I don't think you understood the question."

  She looked at him, blood running from her cut lip into her mouth, her anger matching his as their eyes met. She said steadily, "And you are not a very nice person."

  "You see that? Good. Now look again at these pictures."

  "No," she said, turning away, "because those men are strangers to me."

  "Look at them," he shouted, and held the first one in front of her eyes, one hand encircling her neck and forcing her to look. "This one?"

  "No," she gasped.

  He held out the second. "This?"

  She shook her head.

  "This one, then?"

  "I told you—none of them," she cried, her fury outweighing her terror.

  He hit her again, this time so savagely that she fell off the box to the floor. Behind him Mrs. Pollifax heard Amy Lovecraft begin to cough, and impatiently Simon leaned over and pulled her to her feet.

  "Listen to me," he said in a hard voice. "To me you are so much carrion. We do not leave this place until the sun rises tomorrow morning and there will be more of this, much more. I will drag this information from you the hard way or the easy way, but you will give me what 1 want. Think about this, it is your choice."

  He stalked out.

  There was a long silence, and then in the corner of the hut Mrs. Lovecraft stirred and sighed, her trance ended. She lifted her head and looked at Mrs. Pollifax and she said, "You were absolutely super, you know. I hope I wouldn't have told them what they want, either."

  Licking the blood from her broken lip, Mrs. Pollifax said angrily, "It's ridiculous, I really believed we'd been kidnapped for money."

  "Yes, but what will you do when this Simon comes back?" she asked, looking at her curiously. "How long do you think you'll be able to trick him?"

  Mrs. Pollifax had been wondering why Simon chose such a strange moment to break off his interrogation when a few more blows might have broken her; it was odd, she thought, his giving her this time to convalesce. Now she reluctantly turned her attention to Amy Love-craft. "Trick him?" she said. If Amy believed that she could identify Farrell then this was a notion that had better be dispelled at once. Mrs. Lovecraft was speaking in a low voice but one of the walls was of canvas, and Simon—yes, Simon had definitely chosen a very curious moment to leave. "Trick him, Mrs. Lovecraft?"

  "Oh call me Amy," she said impatiently. "Of course you were tricking him, it's what I would have done too, but you can't keep it up forever. The man is frightening. What are we to do?"

  "There's nothing we can do," she said, and sat down and faced her. "None of those men was Mr. Farrell."

  "Simon seemed certain of it."

  "That's his problem."

  "But you must see that we're in this terrible mess together," cried Amy. "It's so unfair. You have something to bargain with, but I—" She lifted her bound hands helplessly, her voice trembling. "I've nothing. I have to depend entirely on you because of this mysterious man they called Farrell. Who is he anyway? And how do you happen to know a man who lives in Zambia?"

  "If he does live here," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax, and hoping
that Simon was listening behind the tarpaulin she said in a clear voice, "Actually he's a man who lived next door to us years ago in New Brunswick, New Jersey. That's in the United States," she added parenthetically "

  A very delightful young man except of course he can't be young now, for it must be twenty or twenty-five years since I've seen him. I'll tell you how nice a person he is," she confided. "He helped my son build a soapbox car when he was twelve years old. He was devoted to Roger."

  She saw that Mrs. Lovecraft—Amy—was regarding her with astonishment and she began to expand on this further, developing a touching story of boyhood escapades, of families moving and losing touch, and then, "It was Mr. McGillicuddy," she said, beginning to enjoy herself. "I ran into him on the street in New Brunswick several weeks ago. He'd known the Farrells very well, and he was amazed to learn I was going to Zambia on safari. He said John Sebastian was living here; he knew because they still exchange Christmas cards, and for the past few years he'd sent his in care of Barclay's Bank."

  Amy's mouth, which had dropped open, closed with a snap. "And because of this you advertised for him in a newspaper? How could you be such a fool? How could you do such a thing? Just see what it's led to!"

  "Well, I certainly didn't expect it to lead to this," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax reasonably. "But what Simon doesn't understand," she added, "is how very difficult it is to identify a man one hasn't seen for years. Perhaps I'd recognize him if he walked into this hut, but from a photograph, after twenty-some years?" She hesitated and then added warmly, "He used to call me the Duchess, you know—quite teasingly, of course—but he was that sort of child, very affectionate with adults, and so aware. Such a nice boy," she concluded, and her nostalgic smile was genuine enough: she was hearing Farrell roar with laughter at her story.

  Amy appeared unmoved. She said, "I don't know why you can't trust me. I think you're telling me a lot of nonsense. You were very brave with that terrible man Simon but you're not talking to Simon now. I think you're playing games with me."

  Mrs. Pollifax began to wish that Amy were a little more perceptive so that she would understand the situation. She said, "My lip is bleeding and my jaw hurts and I don't feel very much like games, I can assure you."

  "But you must know one of those men," said Amy, "and I mind very much your not being frank with me. My God, it's my life too, you know. We ought to talk— make plans—because once you identify this man they'll let us go free, they'll return us to the safari, we'll be out of this nightmare."

  Mrs. Pollifax doubted this very much but she thought that to say this would imply a working knowledge of evil that had best be concealed for the moment; it seemed far more sensible to maintain the façade of a woman who had never met with anything more violent than a snub from her garden club president over the identification of a knotweed. She felt it rather naïve of Amy to believe that Simon would return them to the safari if she identified Farrell. He had said the ransom was only a red herring; how would he explain this if she and Amy were returned to camp? It was more likely that he would simply abandon them in the bush and let them fend for themselves, and even this, she thought, was the happiest alternative; she could think of others far worse. She had not, for herself, detected any signs of altruism in the man. She said crossly, "That's all very well but I can't tell them what 1 don't know."

  She stood up and began to walk restlessly around the hut, Amy's eyes following her, and then she moved to the corner and pushed aside the tarpaulin with her bound hands and looked outside.

  The first thing she discovered in the moment before the guard saw her was that Simon was riot, after all, glued to the canvas listening to their conversation. She could see this clearly because two lanterns hung suspended from the branch of a tree, creating a circle of light in which Simon and Mainza were siphoning gasoline from a drum into the tank of the Land Rover. Above the lanterns a tarpaulin had been clumsily rigged to conceal the light from above, suggesting that it was search planes that worried them.

  But it literally staggered Mrs. Pollifax to realize that Simon had not been eavesdropping on them. When the guard turned and lifted his rifle threateningly she dropped the edge of the tarpaulin and returned to her orange crate, but she remained shaken by this discovery. Why hadn't Simon been listening? He struck her as a very clever young man, and she simply couldn't conceive of his missing such an opportunity. He'd left behind him two frightened women, alone together for the first moment since they'd been snatched from Kafwala camp. He'd made his demands and then he'd hit her and then he'd walked out, leaving behind him the perfect climate for confessional. He must have known that something would have to be said about Farrell, but he'd not even troubled to listen. He was either very sure that he had all the time in the world to extract information from her, or he was not so clever as she'd thought him, or—

  "I'm going to get some sleep," she said abruptly. "Simon said we'd be here until dawn, didn't he?"

  "Sleep!" cried Mrs. Lovecraft.

  "Yes, sleep. I'm really very tired, and not as young as you are," she pointed out, tugging at a sleeping bag. She pressed it flat with her bound hands, sat down and inserted herself into it. "If you wouldn't mind extinguishing that lantern—"

  "I would mind," snapped Mrs. Lovecraft.

  Mrs. Pollifax only nodded and turned her face to the wall away from the light. She stretched one leg and then the other; the ground was very hard and her bones sharp, but she had no intention of sleeping. Outside she could hear one or two murmurs from the men, and somewhere very far away the haunting cry of an animal. She attempted a gentle snore, moved and then settled down to the business of pretending sleep, surprised at how difficult it was.

  What she wanted to think about in particular—and think hard—was the sobering fact that she had not, after all, been selected for this abduction at random. This needed growing used to, it changed every premise and, above all, her prospects. The kidnapping had been arranged exclusively for her, and because it was due entirely to her advertisement in the Times of Zambia on Tuesday morning it must also have been arranged very hastily. But this in turn led her thoughts to Farrell, and to the most pressing question of all: who was Farrell now, and what had he become that he was the object of a policeman's inquiry and the motivation behind this insane abduction?

  She tried bringing back into her mind the photograph of him she'd just been shown, but all she could remember of it was her response, the shock like a whiplash that had hit her. It had not been the clearest of pictures, she recalled, but she'd recognized him at once, for what was recognition, after all? Certainly it was not the shape of a nose or mouth or jaw but a matter of essence and of memory that stemmed from an organ far different from the eye. It was instant and it was inexplicable. And now, whatever he was up to, she was going to have to protect him for as long as she could, while she waited for deliverance or an opportunity to escape. It was not a pleasant thought.

  She had been feigning sleep for perhaps fifteen minutes when she heard the sound she'd been waiting for. Amy Lovecraft rose from her sleeping bag, blew out the lantern and stood quietly in the middle of the hut, listening, and then she moved noiselessly to Mrs. Pollifax's side and leaned over her. Hearing no change in her breathing, Mrs. Lovecraft tiptoed across the hut, lifted the tarpaulin and walked outside.

  There was no outcry.

  "She's asleep," Mrs. Lovecraft told the guard in a low voice, and then, "Where's Simon?"

  Mrs. Pollifax pushed back her sleeping bag and sat up.

  "She's asleep," she heard Amy repeat.

  "She's talked? She's told you everything?"

  It was Simon speaking, but in so low a voice that Mrs. Pollifax left her sleeping bag and crept across the earth floor to place her ear against the tarpaulin.

  ". . . some improbable story I don't believe for a minute. How long do we have before we kill her?"

  "Until Sikota comes. We meet him at nightfall across the Lusaka-Mumbwa road at an old burial ground. I have compass instr
uctions. That gives us twenty hours and we'll need them if they begin a search. But she could be useful, Tsa, like tethering the goat to capture the lion."

  Mrs. Lovecraft said impatiently, "We can't linger, you know that. By Saturday I've got to be far away, and so must you. We can't take her with us, she has to be disposed of inside of twenty hours whether she talks or not. I thought by now—"

  "This was your idea, Tsa."

  "Don't be impertinent," she snapped. "If you do your work well she'll talk, I promise you. She's a fool, but she could be a clever fool. Hit her harder, Simon, and then I suggest . . ."

  Their voices receded as they walked away and Mrs. Pollifax crept back to her sleeping bag and sat in it shivering. If you do your work well she'll talk, I promise you . . . the words hung still in the air. It was not pleasant to realize that her wildest guess had turned into fact: there had been no need for Simon to eavesdrop because Amy Lovecraft had never been a hostage at all, she was only pretending to be one in the hope that Mrs. Pollifax might confide to her what she refused to tell Simon.

  She ought to have realized the complicity earlier, she thought, considering this, and perhaps a part of her had, for she had minded very much—with an astonishing anger —that Mrs. Lovecraft's wrists had been bound together in front of her, giving her so much more comfortable a ride. There had been a curious lack of alarm in her attitude too, and surely her exchange of words with the driver on the road had proven a lengthy one, considering the size of her query. There was Mrs. Lovecraft's persistence in not believing her about the photographs . . . her performance had been convincing but her skepticism had continued for perhaps a shade too long in a situation where they both were victims. More than this, though, there had been a growing awareness in her that Simon had known just whom to abduct at Kafwala camp, which implied that someone on the safari had been involved.

  She remembered now the palms rustling at Chunga camp after her interview with Lieutenant Bwanausi, and Mrs. Lovecraft in the office as she passed. There was the radio message that Julian had mentioned her sending too. Not your typical tourist, thought Mrs. Pollifax angrily, a woman who traveled on safari and then casually called in cutthroats from Lusaka for an abduction. Her talents as an actress had been superb too; in retrospect there seemed a downright innocence about Amy's lusting after every man in the party.