Flight From Honour Read Free Page A

the table, politely keeping the muzzle pointed towards himself. “We’d be grateful for your opinion on this if you care to use it in the execution. You may already know it: the new English Webley .455-inch.”
    Bozan had stopped playing with the coins and was staring at the gun with glistening eyes. Then his pudgy little hands stabbed like biting snakes, seized the pistol and flickered over it like snakes’ tongues, finding the magazine catch, snapping the empty magazine out and in again, cocking the action, sighting it . . . in a moment he seemed to have a lifetime’s experience of it. The Treasurer stared with horrified fascination.
    The hooded man laid two handfuls of short, heavy cartridges on the table and watched them snatched up and slipped expertly into the magazine. He glanced at Silvio, ignoring the theory that you watched the eyes of the man with the gun. He was relieved to see that the other, more normal, eyes seemed quite calm.
    So he continued: “You note that it fires an exceptionally heavy bullet for an automatic pistol. This may or may not be to your taste. There might also – for us – be the advantage that, if the bullet is recovered and identified, the English Secret Service could get the blame. But that’s a small matter.”
    Silvio smiled and stood up. “We’ll think about it. Now put it away and come along, Bozan.”
    Bozan unbuttoned the bottom of his jacket and swiftly tucked the pistol out of sight. Silvio then made the mistake of reaching for the gold; Bozan’s hands slapped down on the pile and he made a whining sound like a disappointed dog. Silvio sighed. “All right. You can play with them later, but bring them along now.” His look challenged the other two to comment, but they said nothing. In fact, the Treasurer was holding his breath, and went on holding it until they heard the front door crash shut. Then he let out an enormous gasp.
    The man in the hood ripped it off and gulped for air, red-faced and streaming sweat. “Sweet Jesus forgive me for ever having eaten lobster.” He took a half-smoked cigar from a saucer and relit it, breathing the smoke as if it were all the scents of Paradise. “And where in God’s name did you find that hood? It smelled as if a dog had died in it. Also I must have swallowed a kilo of fluff.” He spat to prove it.
    The Treasurer was staring at his own hands on the table-top. “I’m still shaking. Just look. Where do you find people like that?”
    “It’s my job to find people like that. And their job depends on being found.” He stood up and began unbuttoning the cloak. “And what do you expect mercenary assassins to be like? – it isn’t a job you drift into because the baker doesn’t need an apprentice.”
    The Treasurer nodded gloomily. “That Bozan . . . is he the one who does the killing?”
    “I’d imagine so.”
    “I don’t want to imagine any more than I’ve seen.” Then, immediately contradicting himself: “Imagine having him after you . . .”
    “It’s all they exist for – but Jankovic will keep them in order. Without him, they’d be lost north of the Alps.” He had stripped off the cloak and the shabby old trousers that might have showed beneath it. He bundled them into an old travelling bag. “And don’t forget all the junk upstairs.”
    “Was all that business with the oath really necessary? And did you have to give them a gun? Seeing the way that Bozan . . .” He shivered.
    “Men like that want to know who they’re working for. They don’t care, they just like to know. So now they think they’re working for Colonel Apis and his regicides in Belgrade. And that’s all they can tell anybody if they get caught. Nothing to do with Austria or us, just the Serbs. Nobody looks for motives from them.”
    “Are they likely to get caught? And all that money going to waste?”
    The other paused in his dressing to give the Treasurer a twisted smile. “Now I hear the ring of true concern. No, of course