The Khufra Run. Jack Higgins

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ habit knelt in front of the Reredos, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer.

      I took a deep breath, fought hard to contain the impulse to kick out at something and made for the door.

      A soft, familiar voice called, ‘Mr Nelson.’

      I turned slowly, too astounded to speak.

      The central panel of the Jesus Reredos portraying the Virgin and Child is a masterpiece by any standard and beautiful in the extreme. But it is an austere beauty. Something quite untouchable by anything human with the quiet serenity of one who knows that God is Love beyond any possibility of doubt and lives life accordingly.

      Standing in front of it in that simple, black habit, Claire Bouvier might well have been mistaken for the artist’s model had it not been for the fact that the Reredos had been painted in the early years of the sixteenth century.

      It could only be for real - had to be - I didn’t doubt that for a minute, for in some strange way it fitted. At least it explained the cropped hair and I sat down rather heavily in the nearest pew.

      ‘I am sorry, Mr Nelson,’ she said. ‘This must be something of a shock for you.’

      ‘You can say that again. Why didn’t you tell me last night?’

      ‘The cirumstances were unusual to say the least as I think you will agree.’

      She sat down rather primly in the chair next to me, hands folded in her lap, those work-roughened hands which had so puzzled me. Then she looked up at the Reredos.

      ‘I didn’t realise it was so beautiful. Everything is so moving - so perfectly part of a whole. Particularly the scenes from the life of the Virgin on the predella.’

      ‘To hell with the …’ She turned sharply and I took a deep breath and continued. ‘Look, what do I call you for a start?’

      ‘I am still Claire Bouvier, Mr Nelson. Sister Claire, if you prefer it, of the Little Sisters of Pity. I’m on leave from our convent near Grenoble.’

      ‘On leave?’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a little irregular?’

      ‘There are special circumstances. I’ve been in East Pakistan for the past couple of years or BanglaDesh as they now call it.’

      The whole thing seemed to move further into the realms of fantasy by the minute. I said, ‘All right, just tell me one thing. You were dressed like a nun last night when our friends grabbed you?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘And you said it wasn’t just an ordinary assault. You wouldn’t let me take you to the police, for instance, which I would have thought reasonably strange behaviour for someone of your persuasion.’

      She got up abruptly, moved towards the altar and stood there gripping the rail. I said quietly, ‘Our friend in the red shirt tried to run me down in a truck last night after I left you. When I got back to my cottage at Tijola, I found a note telling me to mind my own business.’

      She turned quickly, a frown on her face. ‘From whom?’

      ‘Redshirt and friends. It has to be. You’ll be interested to know they also towed my seaplane out into the middle of the channel and sank it in sixty feet of water, just to encourage me.’

      There was genuine horror on her face at that, but she turned away again, head bowed, gripping the rail so tightly that her knuckles whitened.

      I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her round roughly. ‘Look, that plane was all I had in the world and it’s not salvageable, so I’m finished, Sister. A ruined man because I played the Good Samaritan last night. At least I’m entitled to know why’

      She looked up at me calmly without struggling and nodded. ‘You are right, dear friend. I owe you that at least. Perhaps there is a quiet place you know of? Somewhere we could talk …’

      I took the road to Talamanca then followed a cart track that brought us after a couple of miles to an old ruined farmhouse in an olive grove above the sea. There wasn’t a soul around. She sat on a low stone wall which had once marked the boundary of the grove and I sprawled on the ground at her feet and smoked a cigarette.

      It was a marvellous day and quite suddenly, nothing seemed to matter very much. I narrowed my eyes, watching a hawk spiralling down out of the blue and she said, ‘Did you really mean what you said back there in the church? That you are ruined?’

      ‘As near as makes no difference.’

      She sighed, ‘I too, know what it is like to lose everything.’

      ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

      She looked down at me sharply, something very close to anger in her face for the first time, but she controlled it admirably.

      ‘Perhaps if I told you about it, Mr Nelson.’

      ‘Has it anything to do with this present affair?’

      ‘Everything.’ She plucked a green leaf from a caper shrub, shredding it between her fingers as she stared back into the past. ‘I was born in Algeria. In the back country. My father was French, my mother, Bedu.’

      ‘An interesting mixture,’ I said. ‘Where do you keep your knife?’

      She ignored me completely and carried straight on. ‘We had a large estate. Two vineyards. My father was a wealthy man. When de Gaulle declared Algeria independent in 1962 we decided to stay, but by 1965 things were very bad. All agricultural land owned by foreigners had been expropriated and most of the French population had gone. When my mother died, my father decided it was time we left also.’

      ‘How old were you then?’

      ‘Just fourteen. He decided to fly us out secretly, mainly because he considered it unlikely that the authorities would allow us to leave with anything worth having.’

      ‘There was another reason?’

      ‘I think you could say that.’ She smiled faintly. ‘There was a convent of the Little Sisters of Pity not far from our place at Tizi Benou. An old Moorish palace built like a fortress. I received my education there. During those difficult early years of independence, it acted as a refuge many times and churches over the entire region sent their more tangible assets there for safe keeping rather than see them looted.’

      The whole thing was beginning to sound more than interesting and I sat up and turned to face her. ‘These tangible assets - what exactly did they consist of?’

      ‘Oh, the usual things. Church plate, precious objects of various kinds. Most of this was rendered down into bullion at the convent, crudely, but effective enough.’

      ‘Why bullion?’ It was something of a superfluous question for I already knew the answer.

      ‘So that my father could fly it out.’

      ‘And how much did that little lot come to?’

      ‘Something over a million pounds sterling in gold and silver. A rough approximation only and then there was a considerable amount in precious СКАЧАТЬ