Vulture Is a Patient Bird Read online

  He had run into Toni White on the Calais—Dover channel boat. Happily, she had been in the bar when he had embarked with two tough-looking French detectives who remained with him until the vessel was about to sail. When they had gone, and after Garry had waved cheerfully to them as they stood on the rain-swept quay to see the vessel leave the harbour — a wave they had stonily ignored — he had gone down to the first class bar for his first drink in three years.

  Toni had been sitting on a bar stool, her micro-mini skirt scarcely covering her crotch, sipping a Cinzano bitter on the rocks. He had ordered a double Vat 69 with a dash and then had saluted her. She seemed the kind of girl a man could salute if the man had a way with him, and Garry certainly had a way with him.

  Toni was twenty-two years of age, blonde, elfin-like with big blue eyes with dark, heavy eyelashes a cow would envy. Also, she was very, very chic.

  She regarded Garry thoughtfully and with penetration. She decided he was the most sexy-looking man she had ever seen, and she had a hot rush of blood through her body. She wanted to have him: to be laid by him as she had never been laid before in her short, sensual life.

  She smiled.

  Garry knew women. He knew all the signs, and realized that here was an invitation that needed little or no finesse.

  He had in his wallet the sum of two hundred and ninety pounds: what remained of the sale of his aircraft before the French police had caught up with him. He was full of confidence and raring to go.

  He finished his drink, then smiling, he said, “I would love to know you better. We have over an hour before we land. May I get a cabin?”

  She liked his direct approach. She wanted him. His suggestion made everything simple. She laughed, then nodded.

  It was easy to get a cabin, draw the curtains and lock themselves in. The steward had to rap a dozen times to remind them they had reached Dover and if they didn’t make haste, they would miss the boat train.

  While sitting by his side in an otherwise empty first classcompartment on their way to London, Toni had told him she was a successful model, had plenty of work, had a two room apartment in Chelsea and if he wanted a roof… “well, honey-love, why not move in?”

  Garry had been planning on a cheap room in some modest hotel off the Cromwell Road until he could take stock and find himself lucrative employment. He didn’t hesitate.

  He had been living now with Toni for some three weeks, spending his remaining capital but not finding any lucrative employment. Now, with no prospects, he was getting slightly anxious. Toni, however, thought it all a huge joke.

  “Why worry, you big gorgeous animal?” she had demanded the previous evening, jumping on to his lap and nibbling his ear. “I have all the money in the world! Let’s make hectic love!”

  Garry finished his half-cold coffee, grimaced and then went to the window to stare down at the slow-moving traffic and at the stream of men and women, sheltering under umbrellas, hurrying to work.

  He heard a sound at the front door: letters being dropped into the box.

  Toni received many letters each morning from gibbering young men who adored her, but Garry hoped there just might be a letter for him. He collected fifteen letters from the box, flicked through them quickly and found one for himself. The deckled edge, handmade paper of the envelope was impressive. He ripped it open and extracted a sheet of paper.

  The Royal Towers Hotel

  London. W. I.

  Would Mr. Garry Edwards please call at the above address on February 11th at 11.30 hrs. and ask for Mr. Armo Shalik. (Ref. Daily Telegraph. Box. S.1012).

  Well, yes, Garry thought, he would certainly call on Mr Armo Shalik. With a name like that and with such an address there had tobe a smell of money.

  He took the letter into the small bedroom.

  Toni was sleeping heavily. She lay on her stomach, her shortie nightdress nicked up, her long, lovely legs spread wide.

  Garry sat on the edge of the bed and admired her. She really was delightfully beautiful. He lifted his hand and smacked her sharply on her bare rump. She squirmed, closed her legs, blinked and looked over her shoulder at him. He smacked her again and she hurriedly spun around and sat up.

  “That’s assault!” she declared. “Where are my pants?”

  He found them for her at the end of the bed and offered them. She regarded him, smiling.

  “Do I need them?”

  “I shouldn’t have thought so,” Garry said with a grin. “I’ve had a letter. Could you turn your indecent mind to business for a moment?”

  She looked questioningly at him.

  “What’s cooking?”

  He told her about the advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, that he had answered it, and now he had a reply. He gave her the letter.

  “The Royal Towers! The newest and the best! What a lovely name! Armo Shalik! I smell bags and bags of gold and diamonds.” She tossed the letter into the air and threw her arms around Garry’s neck.

  Around 11.00 hours. Garry detached himself from Toni’s clutch, took a shower and then dressed in a blue blazer and dark-blue Daks. He surveyed himself in the mirror.

  “A little dark under the eyes,” he said, straightening his tie. But that is to be expected. Still, I think I look healthy, handsome andhandmade… what do you think, you beautiful doll?

  Completely naked, Toni was sitting in the armchair, sipping coffee. She regarded him affectionately.

  “You look absolutely gorgeous.”

  Garry picked her out of the armchair and fondled her. Having kissed her, he dumped her back in the chair and left the apartment.

  At exactly 11.30 hrs. he approached the hall porter of the Royal Towers Hotel and asked for Mr. Armo Shalik.

  The hall porter surveyed him with that blank expression all hall porters wear when they neither approve nor disapprove. He called a number, spoke quietly, then replaced the receiver.

  “Tenth floor, sir. Suite 27.”

  Garry was whisked up by the express lift to the tenth floor. He was conducted by the lift-man to the door of Suite 27. He was obviously too important and too fragile to knock on the door. The lift-man did this service, bowed and retired.

  The smell of money, as far as Garry was concerned, was now over-powering.

  He entered a small distinguished room where a girl sat behind a desk on which stood three telephones, an I.B.M. golf ball typewriter, an intercom and a tape-recorder.

  The girl puzzled Garry because although she had a nice figure, was dressed in a stylish black frock, was beautifully groomed, her hair immaculate, she was nothing to him but a sexless photograph of a woman long since dead. Her blank face, her immaculately plucked eyebrows, her pale lipstick merely emphasized her lack of charm: a robot that made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

  “Mr. Edwards?”

  Even her voice was metallic: a tape-recording badly reproduced.

  “That’s me,” Garry said, and because he never liked to be

  defeated by any woman, he gave her his charming smile.

  It had no effect. The girl touched a button, paused, then said, “Mr. Edwards is here, sir.”

  A green light flashed up on the intercom. Obviously, Mr. Shalik didn’t care to waste his breath. He preferred to press buttons than to talk.

  The girl got up, walked gracefully to a far door, opened it and stood aside.

  Impressed by all this, Garry again tried his smile which again bounced off her the way a golf ball bounces off a brick wall.

  He moved past her into a large sunny room, luxuriously furnished with period pieces and impressive looking paintings that could have been by the great masters but probably weren’t.

  At a vast desk sat a small, fat man, smoking a cigar, his chubby hands resting on the desk blotter. Garry judged him to be around forty-six years of age. He was dark-complexioned with close cut black hair, beady black eyes and a mouth that he used for food but not for smiles. Garry decided he was either an Armenian or an Egyptian. He had the stillness and the p
robing stare of power. As Garry walked slowly to the desk, the beady black eyes examined him. They were X-ray eyes, and by the time Garry had reached the desk, he had an uncomfortable feeling this fat little man knew him rather better than he knew himself.

  “Sit down, Mr. Edwards.” The accent was a little thick. A chubby hand waved to a chair.

  Garry sat down. He now regretted laying Toni an hour ago. He felt a little depleted and he had an idea that this fat little man wouldn’t have much time for depleted applicants for the job he was offering. Garry sat upright and tried to look intelligent.

  Shalik sucked in rich smelling smoke and allowed it to drift from his mouth like the smoke from a small, but active volcano. He picked up a sheet of paper which Garry recognized as his letter of application and he studied it for several moments, then he tore it upand dropped it into a hidden wastepaper basket.

  “You are a helicopter pilot, Mr. Edwards?” he asked, resting his hands on the blotter and regarding the ash of his cigar with more interest than he regarded Garry.

  “That’s correct. I saw your ad and I thought…”

  The chubby hand lifted, cutting Garry off.

  “This nonsense you have written about yourself… at least, it proves you have imagination.”

  Garry stiffened.

  “I don’t get that. What do you mean?”

  Shalik touched off his cigar ash into a gold bowl at his elbow.

  “I found your lies amusing,” he said. “I have had you investigated. You are Garry Edwards, aged twenty-nine, and you were born in Ohio, U.S.A. Your father ran a reasonably successful service station. When you were sufficiently educated, you worked with your father and you came to know about motor cars. You and your father didn’t get along. Probably faults on both sides, but that is of no interest to me. You had the opportunity to learn to fly: you took it. You have talent with machines. You got a job as an air chauffeur to a Texas oilman who paid you well. You saved your money. The job didn’t interest you. You met a wetback smuggler who persuaded you to smuggle Mexicans into the States. The pay was good, and when the operation was over, you decided to go into the smuggling business. You went to Tangiers, bought your own aircraft and flew consignments of various contrabands into France. You prospered as smugglers do for a time. However, you became greedy as smugglers do and you made a mistake. You were arrested. Your co-pilot managed to get your plane in the air while you were struggling with the police. He sold your plane and banked the money for you to have when you came out of the French prison after serving a three year sentence. You were deported from France and you are here.” Shalik stubbed out his cigar and looked at Garry. “Would you say my information is correct?”

  Garry laughed.

  “Dead on the nail.” He got to his feet. “Well, it was a try. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  Shalik waved him back to his chair.

  “Sit down. I think you are the man I am looking for. You can satisfy me that you have a pilot’s licence and that you can handle a helicopter?”

  “Of course,” Garry returned and lugged out a plastic folder which he had brought along and laid it on the desk. Then he sat down again.

  Shalik examined the papers which the folder contained. He took his time, then he returned the folder.

  “Satisfactory.” He took another cigar from his desk drawer, regarded it carefully, then cut the end with a gold cutter. “Mr. Edwards, am I right in thinking you would be prepared to handle a job that is not entirely honest so long as the money is right?”

  Garry smiled.

  “I’d like that qualified. What do you mean… not entirely honest?”

  “Difficult, unethical work that does not involve the police in any way, but pays handsomely.”

  “Can you make it clearer than that?”

  “I am offering three thousand dollars a week for a Three-week assignment. At the end of the assignment you will be nine thousand dollars better off. There are certain risks, but I can promise you the police won’t come into it.”

  Garry sat upright. Nine thousand dollars!

  “What are the risks?”

  “Opposition.” Shalik regarded his cigar with indifferent, beady eyes. “But life is made up of opposition, isn’t it, Mr. Edwards?”

  “Just what do I have to do to earn this money?”

  “That will be explained to you tonight. You will not be alone. The risks and responsibilities will be shared. What I want to know now is if you are willing to do three weeks work for nine thousand dollars.”

  Garry didn’t hesitate.

  “Yes… I am.”

  Shalik nodded.

  “Good. Then you will come here at 21.00 hrs. tonight when I will introduce you to the other members of the team and I will explain the operation.” The chubby hand made a slight signal of dismissal.

  Garry got to his feet.

  “Please don’t talk about this assignment to anyone. Mr. Edwards,” Shalik went on. “You must regard it as top secret.”

  “Sure… I’ll say nothing.”

  Garry left the room.

  The girl at the desk got up and opened the door for him. He didn’t bother to smile at her. His mind was too preoccupied. Nine thousand dollars! Wow!

  The girl watched him enter the lift and then she returned to her desk. She sat for some moments, listening. Then hearing nothing from the inner room, she softly opened a drawer in her desk and turned off a small tape-recorder whose spools were conveying tape through the recording head.

  Precisely at 21.00 hrs. Garry was shown into Shalik’s office by the dark-haired girl who he knew now by the name-plate on her desk to be Natalie Norman.

  There were two men sitting uneasily in chairs, smoking andwaiting. They both looked closely at Garry as he took a chair. In his turn, he looked closely at them.

  The man on his left was short and heavily built. He reminded Garry a little of Rod Steiger, the Oscar-winning movie star. His close cut woolly hair was white, his washed out grey eyes shifty. His thin lips and square chin hinted at viciousness.

  The other man was some ten years younger: around Garry’s age. He was of middle height, thin, his hair bleached almost white by the sun and his skin burnt to a dark mahogany. He wore a straggly moustache and long sideboards. Garry liked the look of him immediately, but disliked the look of the other man.

  As he settled himself in the chair, a door at the far end of the room opened and Shalik entered.

  “So you have all arrived,” he said, coming to his desk. He sat down and went through the ritual of lighting a cigar while he looked at each man in turn with intent, probing eyes. “Let me introduce you to each other.” He pointed his cigar at Garry. “This is Mr. Garry Edwards. He is a helicopter pilot and a car expert. He has spent three years in a French prison on smuggling charges.” The other two men looked sharply at Garry who stared back at them. The cigar then pointed to the younger man. “This is Mr. Kennedy Jones who has flown from Johannesburg to attend this meeting,” Shalik went on. “Mr. Jones is a safari expert. There is nothing he can’t tell you about wild animals, South Africa in general and the fitting out of an expedition into the African bush. I might add Mr. Jones has had the misfortune to spend a few years in a Pretoria jail.” Jones stared up at the ceiling, a grin hovering around his humorous mouth. There was a pause, then Shalik went on, “Finally, this is Mr. Lew Fennel who is an expert safe breaker… I believe that is the term. He is regarded by the police and the underworld as the top man in his so-called profession. He too has served a number of years in prison.” Shalik paused and looked at the three men. “So, gentlemen, you have something in common.”

  None of them said anything: they waited.

  Shalik opened a drawer in his desk and took out a folder.

  “The introductions concluded, let us get down to business.” He opened the folder and took from it a large glossy photograph. This he handed to Fennel who stared with puzzled eyes at the medieval diamond ring shown in the photograph. He shrugged and
passed the photograph to Garry who in turn passed it to Jones.

  “You are looking at a ring,” Shalik said, “designed by Caesar Borgia.” He looked at the three men. “I take it you all know of Caesar Borgia?”

  “He’s the guy who poisoned people, wasn’t he?” Fennel said.

  “I think that is a fair description. Yes, among many other things, he poisoned or caused to be poisoned a number of people. This ring you see in the photograph was designed by Borgia and made by an unknown goldsmith in 1501. To look at the ring, it would be hard to believe that it is a lethal weapon, but that is what it is… a very lethal weapon. It works in this way. There is a tiny reservoir under the cluster of diamonds and this reservoir was filled with a deadly poison. In the cluster of diamonds is a microscopic hollow needle of exceptional sharpness. When Borgia wished to get rid of an enemy, he had only to turn the ring so the diamonds and needle were worn inside and he had only to clasp the hand of his enemy to inflict a small scratch. The enemy would be dead in a few hours.

  “The ring was lost for four centuries. It turned up in the effects of a Florentine banker who died with his wife and family in a car crash a couple of years ago. His effects were sold. Fortunately, an expert recognized the ring and bought it for a song. It was offered to me.” Shalik paused to tap ash off his cigar. “Among my various activities, I buy objets d’art and sell them to wealthy collectors. I knew of a client who specialized in Borgia treasures. I sold him the ring. Six months later, the ring was stolen. It has taken me a long time to find out where it is. It was stolen by agents working for another collector who has acquired, through these agents, probably the finest collection of art treasures in the world. This operation, Gentlemen, which I am asking you to handle, is for you three to recover the ring.”

  There was a long pause, then Fennel, sitting forward, said, “You mean we steal it?”

  Shalik looked at Fennel with distaste.

  “Putting it crudely, you could say that,” he said. “I have already pointed out there is no question of police interference. This collector has stolen the ring from my client. You take it from him. He is in no position to complain to the police.”