The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [109]
Sonja screamed.
Wolff and Smith both scrambled to their feet.
Smith was a small, thin man, ten years older than Wolff and in poor shape. He stepped backward, fear showing in his face. He bumped into a shelf, glanced sideways, saw a cut-glass fruit bowl on the shelf, picked it up and hurled it at Wolff.
It missed, fell into the kitchen sink, and shattered loudly.
The noise, Wolff thought: if he makes any more noise people will come to investigate. He moved toward Smith.
Smith, with his back to the wall, yelled: “Help!”
Wolff hit him once, on the point of the jaw, and he collapsed, sliding down the wall to sit, unconscious, on the floor.
Sonja came out and stared at him.
Wolff rubbed his knuckles. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done that,” he said.
“What?”
“Hit somebody on the chin and knocked him out. I thought only boxers could do that.”
“Never mind that, what are we going to do about him?”
“I don’t know.” Wolff considered the possibilities. To kill Smith would be dangerous, for the death of an officer—and the disappearance of his briefcase—would now cause a terrific rumpus throughout the city. There would be the problem of what to do with the body. And Smith would bring home no more secrets.
Smith groaned and stirred.
Wolff wondered whether it might be possible to let him go. After all, if Smith were to reveal what had been going on in the houseboat he would implicate himself. Not only would it ruin his career, he would probably be thrown in jail. He did not look like the kind of man to sacrifice himself for a higher cause.
Let him go free? No, the chance was too much to take. To know that there was a British officer in the city who possessed all of Wolff’s secrets... Impossible.
Smith had his eyes open. “You ... ” he said. “You’re Slaven burg ...” He looked at Sonja, then back at Wolff. “It was you who introduced ... in the Cha-Cha... this was all planned ...”
“Shut up,” Wolf said mildly. Kill him or let him go: what other options were there? Only one: to keep him here, bound and gagged, until Rommel reached Cairo.
“You’re damned spies,” Smith said. His face was white.
Sonja said nastily: “And you thought I was crazy for your miserable body.”
“Yes.” Smith was recovering. “I should have known better than to trust a wog bitch.”
Sonja stepped forward and kicked his face with her bare foot.
“Stop it!” Wolff said. “We’ve got to think what to do with him. Have we got any rope to tie him with?”
Sonja thought for a moment. “Up on deck, in that locker at the forward end.”
Wolff took from the kitchen drawer the heavy steel he used for sharpening the carving knife. He gave the steel to Sonja. “If he moves, hit him with that,” he said. He did not think Smith would move.
He was about to go up the ladder to the deck when he heard footsteps on the gangplank.
Sonja said: “Postman!”
Wolff knelt in front of Smith and drew his knife. “Open your mouth.”
Smith began to say something, and Wolff slid the knife between Smith’s teeth.
Wolff said: “Now, if you move or speak, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
Smith sat dead still, staring at Wolff with a horrified look.
Wolff realized that Sonja was stark naked. “Put something on, quickly!”
She pulled a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around her as she went to the foot of the ladder. The hatch was opening. Wolff knew that he and Smith could be seen from the hatch. Sonja let the sheet slide down a little as she reached up to take the letter from the postman’s outstretched hand.
“Good morning!” the postman said. His eyes were riveted on Sonja’s half-exposed breasts.
She went farther up the ladder toward him, so that he had to back away, and let the sheet slip even more. “Thank you,” she simpered. She reached for the hatch and pulled it shut.
Wolff breathed again.
The postman’s footsteps crossed the deck and descended the gangplank.
Wolff said to Sonja: “Give me that sheet.”
She unwrapped herself and stood naked again.
Wolff withdrew the knife from Smith’s mouth and used it to cut off a foot or two of the