The Cry of the Halidon: A Novel Read online

  “About her husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “We did. Frankly, at first, we thought she was a Dunstone plant. We haven’t ruled it out.… Oh, you asked about Warfield’s mention of Halidon; what he meant. In my judgment, he knows no more than we do. And he’s trying just as hard to find out.”

  With the swiftness associated with a much younger man, Hammond lifted himself up from the booth, slid past McAuliff, and excused himself from the group. McAuliff found himself seated next to the middle-aged woman he presumed had come with Hammond. He had not listened to her name during the introductions, but as he looked at her now, he did not have to be told. The concern—the fear—was in her eyes; she tried to conceal it, but she could not. Her smile was hesitant, taut.

  “So you’re the young man …” Mrs. Hammond stopped and brought the glass to her lips.

  “Young and not so young,” said McAuliff, noting that the woman’s hand shook, as his had shaken an hour ago with Warfield. “It’s difficult to talk in here with all the blaring. And those godawful lights.”

  Mrs. Hammond seemed not to hear or be concerned with his words. The psychedelic oranges and yellows and sickening greens played a visual tattoo on her frightened features. It was strange, thought Alex, but he had not considered Hammond as a private man with personal possessions or a wife or even a private, personal life.

  And as he thought about these unconsidered realities, the woman suddenly gripped his forearm and leaned against him. Under the maddening sounds and through the wild, blinding lights, she whispered in McAuliff’s ear: “For God’s sake, go after him!”

  The undulating bodies formed a violently writhing wall. He lunged through, pushing, pulling, shoving, finally shouldering a path for himself amid the shouted obscenities. He tried looking around for the spaced-out intruder who had signaled Hammond by crashing into the table. He was nowhere to be found.

  Then, at the rear of the crowded, flashing dance floor, he could see the interrupted movements of several men pushing a single figure back into a narrow corridor. It was Hammond!

  He crashed through the writhing wall again, toward the back of the room. A tall black man objected to Alex’s assault.

  “Hey, mon! Stop it! You own The Owl, I think not!”

  “Get out of my way! Goddammit, take your hands off me!”

  “With pleasure, mon!” The black man removed his hands from McAuliff’s coat, pulled back a tight fist, and hammered it into Alex’s stomach. The force of the blow, along with the shock of its utter surprise, caused McAuliff to double up.

  He rose as fast as he could, the pain sharp, and lurched for the man. As he did so, the black man twisted his wrist somehow, and McAuliff fell into the surrounding, nearly oblivious, dancers. When he got to his feet, the attacker was gone.

  It was a curious and very painful moment.

  The smoke and its accompanying odors made him dizzy; then he understood. He was breathing deep breaths; he was out of breath. With less strength but no less intensity, he continued through the dancers to the narrow corridor.

  It was a passageway to the rest rooms, “Chicks” to the right, “Roosters” to the left. At the end of the narrow hallway was a door with a very large lock, an outsized padlock, that was meant, apparently, to remind patrons that the door was no egress; The Owl of Saint George expected tabs to be paid before departure.

  The lock had been pried open. Pried open and then reset in the round hasps, its curving steel arm a half inch from insertion.

  McAuliff ripped it off and opened the door.

  He walked out into a dark, very dark, alleyway filled with garbage cans and refuse. There was literally no light but the night sky, dulled by fog, and a minimum spill from the windows in the surrounding ghettolike apartment buildings. In front of him was a high brick wall; to the right the alley continued past other rear doorways, ending in a cul-de-sac formed by the sharply angled wall. To his left, there was a break between The Owl’s building and the brick; it was a passageway to the street. It was also lined with garbage cans, and the stench that had to accompany their presence.

  McAuliff started down the cement corridor, the light from the streetlamps illuminating the narrow confines. He was within twenty feet of the pavement when he saw it. Them: small pools of deep red fluid.

  He raced out into the street. The crowds were thinning out; Soho was approaching its own witching hour. Its business was inside now: the private clubs, the illegal all-night gambling houses, the profitable beds where sex was found in varying ways and prices. He looked up and down the sidewalk, trying to find a break in the patterns of human traffic: a resistance, an eruption.

  There was none.

  He stared down at the pavement; the rivulets of blood had been streaked and blotted by passing feet, the red drops stopping abruptly at the curb. Hammond had been taken away in an automobile.

  Without warning, McAuliff felt the impact of lunging hands against his back. He had turned sideways at the last instant, his eyes drawn by the flickering of a neon light, and that small motion kept him from being hurled into the street. Instead, his attacker—a huge black man—plunged over the curb, into the path of an onrushing Bentley, traveling at extraordinary speed. McAuliff felt a stinging pain on his face. Then man and vehicle collided; the anguished scream was the scream at the moment of death; the screeching wheels signified the incredible to McAuliff. The Bentley raced forward, crushing its victim, and sped off. It reached the corner and whipped violently to the left, its tires spinning above the curb, whirring as they touched stone again, propelling the car out of sight. Pedestrians screamed, men ran, whores disappeared into the doorways, pimps gripped their pockets, and McAuliff stood above the bloody, mangled corpse in the street and knew it was meant to be him.

  He ran down the Soho street; he did not know where, just away. Away from the gathering crowds on the pavement behind. There would be questions, witnesses … people placing him at the scene—involved, not placed, he reflected. He had no answers, and instinctively he knew he could not allow himself to be identified—not until he had some answers.

  The dead black man was the one who had confronted him in The Owl of Saint George, of that he was certain: the man who had stunned him with a savage blow to the stomach on the dance floor and twisted his wrist, throwing him into the surrounding gyrating bodies. The man who had stopped him from reaching Hammond in the narrow corridor that led past the “Chicks” and the “Roosters” into the dark alleyway beyond.

  Why had the black man stopped him? Why for Christ Almighty’s sake had he tried to kill him?

  Where was Hammond?

  He had to get to a telephone. He had to call Hammond’s number and speak to someone, anyone who could give him some answers.

  Suddenly, Alex was aware that people in the street were staring at him. Why? Of course. He was running—well, walking too rapidly. A man walking rapidly at this hour on a misty Soho street was conspicuous. He couldn’t be conspicuous; he slowed his walk, his aimless walk, and aimlessly crossed unfamiliar streets.

  Still they stared. He tried not to panic. What was it?

  And then he knew. He could feel the warm blood trickling down his cheek. He remembered now: the sting on his face as the huge black hands went crashing past him over the curb. A ring perhaps. A fingernail … what difference? He had been cut, and he was bleeding. He reached into his coat pocket for a handkerchief. The whole side of his jacket had been ripped.

  He had been too stunned to notice or feel the jacket ripping, or the blood.

  Christ! What a sight! A man in a torn jacket with blood on his face, running away from a dead black man in Soho.

  Dead? Deceased? Life spent?

  No. Murdered.

  But the method meant for him: a violent thrust into the street, timed to meet the heavy steel of an onrushing, racing Bentley.

  In the middle of the next block—what block?—there was a telephone booth. An English telephone booth, wider and darker than its American cou
sin. He quickened his pace as he withdrew coins from his pocket. He went inside; it was dark, too dark. Why was it so dark? He took out his metal cigarette lighter, gripping it as though it were a handle that, if released, would send him plunging into an abyss. He pressed the lever, breathed deeply, and dialed by the light of the flame.

  “We know what’s happened, Mr. McAuliff,” said the clipped, cool British voice. “Where precisely are you calling from?”

  “I don’t know. I ran … I crossed a number of streets.”

  “It’s urgent we know where you are. When you left The Owl, which way did you walk?”

  “I ran, goddammit! I ran. Someone tried to kill me!”

  “Which way did you run, Mr. McAuliff?”

  “To the right … four or five blocks. Then right again; then left, I think two blocks later.”

  “All right. Relax, now. You’re phoning from a call booth?”

  “Yes. No, damn it, I’m calling from a phone booth!… Yes. For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s happening! There aren’t any street signs; I’m in the middle of the block.”

  “Calm down, please.” The Englishman was maddening: imperviously condescending. “What are the structures outside the booth? Describe anything you like, anything that catches your eye.”

  McAuliff complained about the fog and described as best he could the darkened shops and building. “Christ, that’s the best I can do. I’m going to get out of here. I’ll grab a taxi somehow; and then I want to see one of you! Where do I go?”

  “You will not go anywhere, Mr. McAuliff!” The cold British tones were suddenly loud and harsh. “Stay right where you are. If there is a light in the booth, smash it. We know your position. We’ll pick you up in minutes.”

  Alex hung up the receiver. There was no light bulb in the booth, of course. The tribes of Soho had removed it. He tried to think. He hadn’t gotten any answers. Only orders. More commands.

  It was insane. The last half hour was madness. What was he doing? Why was he in a darkened telephone booth with a bloody face and a torn jacket, trembling and afraid to light a cigarette?

  Madness!

  There was a man outside the booth, jingling coins in his hand and pointedly shifting his weight from foot to foot in irritation. The command over the telephone had instructed Alex to wait inside, but to do so under the circumstances might cause the man on the pavement to object vocally, drawing attention. He could call someone else, he thought. But who? Alison? No … He had to think about Alison now, not talk with her.

  He was behaving like a terrified child! With terrifying justification, perhaps. He was actually afraid to move, to walk outside a telephone booth and let an impatient man jingling coins go in. No, he couldn’t behave like that. He could not freeze. He had learned that lesson years ago—centuries ago—in Vietnam. To freeze was to become a target. One had to be flexible within the perimeters of common sense. One had to, above all, use his natural antennae and stay intensely alert. Staying alert, retaining the ability and capacity to move swiftly, these were the important things.

  Jesus! He was correlating the murderous fury of Vietnam with a back street in Soho. He was actually drawing a parallel and forcing himself to adjust to it. Too goddamn much!

  He opened the door, blotted his cheek, and mumbled his apologies to the man jingling coins. He walked to a recessed doorway opposite the booth and waited.

  The man on Hammond’s telephone was true to his word. The wait wasn’t long, and the automobile recognizable as one of those Alex and the agent had used several times. It came down the street at a steady pace and stopped by the booth, its motor running.

  McAuliff left the darkness of the recessed doorway and walked rapidly to the car. The rear door was flung open for him, and he climbed in.

  And he froze again.

  The man in the backseat was black. The man in the backseat was supposed to be dead, a mangled corpse in the street in front of The Owl of Saint George!

  “Yes, Mr. McAuliff. It is I,” said the black man who was supposed to be dead. “I apologize for having struck you, but then, you were intruding. Are you all right?”

  “Oh my God!” Alex was rigid on the edge of the seat as the automobile lurched forward and sped off down the street. “I thought … I mean, I saw …”

  “We’re on our way to Hammond. You’ll understand better then. Sit back. You’ve had a very strenuous past hour. Quite unexpectedly, incidentally.”

  “I saw you killed!” McAuliff blurted out the words involuntarily.

  “You saw a black man killed, a large black man like myself. We do weary of the bromide that we all look alike. It’s both unflattering and untrue. By the way, my name is Tallon.”

  McAuliff stared at the man. “No, it’s not. Tallon is the name of a fish store near Victoria Park. In Kingston.”

  The black laughed softly. “Very good, Mr. McAuliff. I was testing you. Smoke?”

  Alex took the offered cigarette gratefully. “Tallon” held a match for him, and McAuliff inhaled deeply, trying to find a brief moment of sanity.

  He looked at his hands. He was both astonished and disturbed.

  He was cupping the glow of the cigarette as he had once done centuries ago as an infantry officer in the jungles of Vietnam.

  They drove for nearly twenty minutes, traveling swiftly through the London streets to the outskirts. McAuliff did not try to follow their route by looking out the window; he did not really care. He was consumed with the decision he had to make. In a profound way it was related to the sight of his hands—no longer trembling—cupping the cigarette. From the nonexistent wind? From betraying his position? From enemy snipers?

  No. He was not a soldier, had never been one really. He had performed because it was the only way to survive. He had no motive other than survival; no war was his or ever would be his. Certainly not Hammond’s.

  “Here we are, Mr. McAuliff,” said the black man who called himself Tallon. “Rather deserted place, isn’t it?”

  The car had entered a road by a field—a field, but not grass covered. It was a leveled expanse of ground, perhaps five acres, that looked as though it was being primed for construction. Beyond the field was a riverbank; Alex presumed it was the Thames, it had to be. In the distance were large square structures that looked like warehouses. Warehouses along a riverbank. He had no idea where they were.

  The driver made a sharp left turn, and the automobile bounced as it rolled over a primitive car path on the rough ground. Through the windshield, McAuliff saw in the glare of the headlamps two vehicles about a hundred yards away, both sedans. The one on the right had its inside lights on. Within seconds, the driver had pulled up parallel with the second car.

  McAuliff got out and followed “Tallon” to the lighted automobile. What he saw bewildered him, angered him, perhaps, and unquestionably reaffirmed his decision to remove himself from Hammond’s war.

  The British agent was sitting stiffly in the rear seat, his shirt and overcoat draped over his shoulders, an open expanse of flesh at his midsection revealing wide, white bandages. His eyes were squinting slightly, betraying the fact that the pain was not negligible. Alex knew the reason; he had seen the sight before—centuries ago—usually after a bayonet encounter.

  Hammond had been stabbed.

  “I had you brought here for two reasons, McAuliff. And I warrant you, it was a gamble,” said the agent as Alex stood by the open door. “Leave us alone, please,” he added to the black man.

  “Shouldn’t you be in a hospital?”

  “No, it’s not a severe penetration.”

  “You got cut, Hammond,” interrupted McAuliff. “That’s severe enough.”

  “You’re melodramatic; it’s unimportant. You’ll notice, I trust, that I am very much alive.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Luck, sir, had nothing whatsoever to do with it! That’s part of what I want you to understand.”

  “All right. You’re Captain Marvel, indestructible nemesis of th
e evil people.”

  “I am a fifty-year-old veteran of Her Majesty’s Service who was never very good at football … soccer, to you.” Hammond winced and leaned forward. “And it’s quite possible I would not be in these extremely tight bandages had you followed my instructions and not made a scene on the dance floor.”

  “What?”

  “But you provoke me into straying. First things first. The instant it was apparent that I was in danger, that danger was removed. At no time, at no moment, was my life in jeopardy.”

  “Because you say so? With a ten-inch bandage straddling your stomach? Don’t try to sell water in the Sahara.”

  “This wound was delivered in panic caused by you! I was in the process of making the most vital contact on our schedule, the contact we sought you out to make.”

  “Halidon?”

  “It’s what we believed. Unfortunately, there’s no way to verify. Come with me.” Hammond gripped the side strap, and with his right hand supporting himself on the front seat as he climbed painfully out of the car. Alex made a minor gesture of assistance, knowing that it would be refused. The agent led McAuliff to the forward automobile, awkwardly removing a flashlight from his draped overcoat as they approached. There were several men in shadows; they stepped away, obviously under orders.

  Inside the car were two lifeless figures: one sprawled over the wheel, the other slumped across the rear seat. Hammond shot the beam of light successively on both corpses. Each was male, black, in his mid-thirties, perhaps, and dressed in conservative, though not expensive, business suits. McAuliff was confused: there were no signs of violence, no shattered glass, no blood. The interior of the car was neat, clean, even peaceful. The two dead men might have been a pair of young executives taking a brief rest off the highway in the middle of a long business trip. Alex’s bewilderment ended with Hammond’s next word.

  “Cyanide.”

  “Why?”

  “Fanatics, obviously. It was preferable to revealing information … unwillingly, of course. They misread us. It began when you made such an obvious attempt to follow me out of The Owl of Saint George. That was their first panic; when they inflicted … this.” Hammond waved his hand just once at his midsection.