Night Over Water - Ken Follett [159]
No, there was no telling what she would do. Jewelry, by contrast, was completely reliable.
It would have been simpler if he had had to make a straight choice. If the devil came to him and said: “You can have Margaret or steal the jewels, but not both,” he would choose Margaret. But the reality was more complicated. He might leave the jewels and still lose Margaret. Or he might get both.
All his life he had been a chancer.
He decided to try for both.
He got up.
He stepped into his slippers and pulled on his bathrobe then looked around. The curtains were still drawn over Margaret’s bunk and her mother’s. The other three bunks were vacant: Percy’s, Lord Oxenford’s and Mr. Membury’s. The lounge next door was empty but for a cleaning woman in a head scarf who had presumably come aboard from Botwood and was sleepily emptying the ashtrays. The outside door was open, and cold sea air blew around Harry’s bare ankles. In number 3 compartment, Clive Membury was talking to Baron Gabon. Harry wondered what they were talking about: waistcoats, perhaps? Farther back, the stewards were converting bunks back into divan seats. There was a seedy morning-after air about the whole plane.
Harry went forward and climbed the stairs. As usual, he had no plan of action, no prepared excuses, not the faintest idea what he would do if he should be caught. He found that thinking ahead, and figuring out how things might go wrong, got him too anxious. Even winging it, like this, he found himself suddenly breathless from tension. Calm down, he said to himself; you’ve done this a hundred times. If it goes wrong you’ll make something up, the way you always do.
He reached the flight deck and looked around. He was in luck. There was no one there. He breathed easier. What a break!
Glancing forward, he saw a low hatch open under the windshield between the two pilots’ seats. He looked through the hatch into a big empty space in the bows of the aircraft. A door in the fuselage was open and one of the younger crew members was doing something with a rope. Not so good. Harry pulled his head back in before he was spotted.
He passed quickly along the flight cabin and through the door in the back wall. Now he was between the two cargo holds, underneath the loading hatch that also incorporated the navigator’s dome. He picked the left-hand hold, went in and closed the door behind him. He was out of sight now, and he guessed the crew would have no reason to look into the hold.
He examined his surroundings. It was like being in a high-class luggage store. Expensive leather cases were stacked all around and roped to the sides. Harry had to find the Oxenfords’ baggage quickly. He went to work.
It was not easy. Some cases were stacked with their name tags underneath, some were covered by other cases that were hard to dislodge. There was no heating in the hold and he was cold in his bathrobe. His hands shook and his fingers hurt as he untied the ropes that prevented the cases shifting in flight. He worked systematically, so that he would not miss any or check pieces twice. He retied the ropes as best he could. The names were international: Ridgeway, D’Annunzio, Lo, Hartmann, Bazarov—but no Oxenfords. After twenty minutes he had checked every piece, he was shivering, and he had established that the bags he was looking for must be in the other hold. He cursed under his breath.
He tied the last rope and looked around carefully: he had left no evidence of his visit.
Now he would have to go through the same procedure in the other hold. He opened the door and stepped out, and a startled voice cried: “Shit! Who are you?” It was the officer Harry had seen in the bow compartment, a cheerful, freckled young man in a short-sleeved shirt.
Harry was equally shocked but he covered it up quickly. He smiled, closed the door behind