A Cure for Cancer, Page 4

  “No.”

  “Oho,” Una said knowingly.

  He slid the flat of his hand over her thighs and hips, up her torso and over her right breast, stroking the nipple until it was hard; he put his cigarette out in the ashtray by the bed, took hers from her fingers and put that out too. Her excellent teeth delicately nipped his tongue as they kissed.

  It was a shame they hadn’t put the light out. Bishop Beesley, peering through his spy-hole in the room above, frowned. He had recognised Cornelius.

  2. DANGER! HITCH-HIKERS WHO POSE AS JOURNALISTS!

  Leaving the hotel the next morning, Cornelius was stopped by a shout from the corner of the street. Turning, he saw a fat figure in the gaiters and frock-coat of a clergyman. The man was waving a small attaché case and waddling just as fast as he could.

  “A moment, sir! A moment of your time!” The words were panted in a tone reminiscent of sewage warbling under ground.

  Cornelius paused by the Phantom VI. “Ha,” he said. “A moment, eh?” He wondered if this were an organisation contact nobody had warned him about.

  The clergyman reached him, breathing heavily, leaned against the car and hastily pulled a paper bag from his pocket, taking something that looked like a chocolate cream from it and cramming it into his mouth. It seemed to help him recover.

  “Birmingham,” he said.

  “Indeed,” Cornelius replied.

  “Beesley—from Birmingham. We met there the Easter before last.”

  “I never go to Birmingham if I can help it,” said Jerry fastidiously. “I haven’t been there in four years.”

  “Mr Aserinsky.” Bishop Beesley spoke with prim accusation. “Mr Aserinsky! Come now. Birmingham. The Easter before last.”

  “Before last, before last.” Jerry pursed his lips. “Before last…”

  “Aha!” Beesley grinned and patted his forehead with one finger. “Aha! Memory playing tricks.”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Can’t remember where one was at any particular moment—can one? Eh? Or, might I say, who one was, hm? Ha, ha!”

  Cornelius put himself on his guard, ready to drag his vibragun from its holster in a split second. But Beesley was leaning forward with a knowing smile. “Trust me, Mr Aserinsky. We have much in common, you and I.”

  “Are you from the organisation…” Cornelius said, “at all?”

  “No. Unfortunate. But I understand the aims. And I endorse them, Mr Aserinsky.”

  “I’m leaving now.” Jerry put hand to handle.

  “I was going to ask you a favour.”

  A yellow, single-decker tram went past on the other side of the street. Cornelius watched it from the corner of his eye.

  “What was that?”

  “I believe you are on your way to Germany. You’ll be passing through Aachen?”

  “That’s for me to say.” Jerry relaxed a little as the tram turned a corner.

  “Could you perhaps, give me a lift? I am only a poor journalist and the rail fares are so dear, as you appreciate, I’m sure.”

  “Journalist?”

  “Churchman? Unfortunately that profession is a dead one these days. Progress, Mr Aserinsky, has scant sympathy for the redundant… I mean,” the bishop reached into his coat pocket and took out a bar of chocolate which he put into his mouth, “I mean—one must survive. There was little else I was trained for. Consolation was my trade. I still pursue it as best I can.”

  Jerry watched a thin trickle of chocolate leave Bishop Beesley’s mouth. It looked rather like blood.

  “I don’t trust you,” he said.

  “Forgive a trace of self-pity.” The bishop spread his hands and shrugged in despair. “But my appearance is doubtless disturbing to you. Can I help that? My clothes—they are all I have. My poor, coarse body: glands. My method of approach: urgent necessity, if I am to earn the pittance that will support me for another week or two. And there is the plague to consider. Rats have been seen. You, Mr Aserinsky, are well dressed, handsome, rich too…”

  “Too rich.” Jerry opened the door and threw his grip into the back of the car. He slid into the driving seat, closed the door of the car and started the engine.

  Soon he was driving from Brussels, on the Aachen road.

  Not too far behind him, his face set in an expression of moral outrage, came Bishop Beesley, stiff-backed at the wheel of a silver Cadillac, his jaw moving rhythmically and, from time to time, his hand moving to meet it. Beside him on the seat was a large paper bag containing almost a pound of walnut fudge.

  Bishop Beesley turned to walnut fudge in moments of crisis.

  ANALYSIS

  La liberté ne sera recouvrés,

  L’occupera noir, fier, vilain, inique,

  Quand la matière du pont sera ouvrée,

  D’Hister, Venise fasche la republique. (5.29)

  In his book Prophecies on World Events by Nostradamus (Liveright Publications Inc., 1961) Stephen Robb tells us that Hister is an old name for the Danube. But the passage of the centuries, he says, has brought it up to date. He believes that it was an obvious word for the prophet to use, for it meant the Danube and also served as an anagram of Hitler. Mr Robb says that in the sixteenth century anagrams were as popular as crossword puzzles are today. Hister, therefore, with one letter change gives us Hitler. Mr Robb says that the change of one letter was permissible in anagram writing (see Dictionnaire de Trevoux). What other word, asks Mr Robb, can serve better than Hister to specify both the name, and the place of origin of “the bold, black, base-born, iniquitous man” who was to “occupy liberty”?

  1. BLONDE MISTRESS OF NIBELBURG’S TOWER OF TERROR!

  Jerry passed through Aachen listening to Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony on his headphones. He frowned self-critically as the seventh movement began. His Ondes Martenot playing was dreadful. He hardly noticed the F111A nosedive into a nearby field until the sight of the flames made him stop the car and watch as the US Marines arrived in three Shawnee whirlybirds and, automatic weapons at the ready, ringed the wreck. One of the advisors jerked his thumb at Jerry to continue down the road. He waved, wound back to the beginning of the movement and was once again on his way to Nibelburg with a couple of hours to go and by this time aware of the Cadillac on his tail. The bishop was apparently making no attempt to hide the fact that he was pursuing Jerry.

  Cornelius waited until the marines were out of sight and then decided to give Bishop Beesley the slip.

  At the touch of a button the Phantom VI sprouted stubby wings and tail section, the turbo jet engine whirled into life and the car took off at great speed from the almost deserted autobahn. It circled the baffled bishop once and then climbed rapidly into the calm, cloudless sky of the autumn afternoon.

  A little later Jerry dropped altitude as he made out the impressive steeples of Cologne Cathedral. He checked his map and then began to descend towards the road that would take him to Nibelburg. To the west he thought he could just see the tall, stone tower where Dr Karen von Krupp lived, worked and schemed for the destruction of the organisation and all it stood for.

  The car touched down on the highway; its wings and tail section were retracted and it whipped along the concrete road until Jerry saw the sign saying he was about to enter Nibelburg.

  Nibelburg was a few two- or three-storeyed houses and shops of grey and red brick, a little railway station, a larger police station with a great many motorbikes parked outside it, and a church which had recently been converted into a dance hall.

  Over the tops of the elms and poplars lining the fields beyond Nibelburg, Cornelius made out the tower he had seen from the air. He decelerated, began to whistle the ‘Chant d’amour’ from the recently finished symphony, and consulted his guide. The tower was reached by an unmade road about half a mile out of Nibelburg.

  He stopped just before he came to the road, and he concentrated his attention on his mouth until he had a passable ache in one of his left molars. Feeling unhappy, he restarted
the engine and turned into the side road, ignoring the Black Rat sign and bumping along for a quarter of a mile until he stopped outside the seventy-foot tower with its Gothic doorway, windows and battlements high above. The stone, which seemed to date from the earliest Gothic period, was extremely clean, with hardly a trace of a stain of any kind. It was pitted with age, and worn, especially around the lower parts of the wall, but nonetheless it was as well-scrubbed and looked-after as a carefully kept tooth. Cornelius wondered if he climbed to the battlements he would find they had been filled with amalgam or even gold.

  He parked the car neatly at the side of the tower. Only one other car was there, a Volkswagen sports, which, he gathered, belonged to the doctor.

  He walked up the gravel path and raised the heavy iron door-knocker, letting it fall with a thump that fled away into the tower’s interior.

  * * *

  The door was opened almost instantly by a beautiful blonde girl of about sixteen. She had blue eyes of a largeness that was accentuated by her use of mascara. There was a smile on her wide, full mouth; her hair was long and straight, covering the back and shoulders of a short-skirted dress of rich white brocade that was probably a Biba copy. She wore matching brocade tights and Granny shoes. Her arms were almost entirely bare and her skin was as sweet and soft as the silk of Jerry’s suit, the colour of the first warm streaks of a spring sunrise.

  “Ja?” she said, a depraved look appearing momentarily in her eyes.

  “Do you speak English,” said Jerry lazily, “Southern English?”

  “Ja, of course.” She looked him over slowly and with a certain amount of awakening surprise, as if she had not at first been struck by his black skin and his turban. What had been her first impression? Jerry wondered.

  Cornelius put his hand to his cheek. “I was going through Nibelburg,” he told the girl, “when I was overcome with toothache. I enquired at the police station and they told me that I would find a dentist here.”

  “And more,” said the girl mysteriously, standing aside to let him enter and gesturing vaguely with the dildo in her left hand.

  When he stood in the polished oak hall, she closed the door with a crash and popped the dildo into the umbrella stand, folding her hands under her breasts and looking down at the floor.

  “You wish to see Doktor von Krupp?” she said at length.

  “I believe that is the name I was given.”

  The girl raised her perfect eyebrows. “But your first name?”

  “It’s Michael,” he said. “I call myself Mike.”

  “This way.” She began to walk along the hall, paused at the stone, oak-banister stairway until he had caught up with her, and then began to ascend.

  On the fourth landing, the girl stopped and knocked gently at the only door. A voice came from the other side. Jerry couldn’t hear the words. The girl turned the handle and they wandered in together, into a high-ceilinged surgery with a large window of rich, stained glass—a pastoral scene from the sixteenth century. The glass was exquisite and Jerry stared at it for several seconds before he saw the luxurious dentist’s chair, the chrome-finished instrument stand, the dentist, at a desk in one corner, looking through a stack of index cards.

  “Herr Michael von Krupp,” said the girl gently. “A toothache.”

  “Aserinsky,” said Jerry.

  Doktor von Krupp smiled condescendingly and spoke in German: “You must leave, liebchen.” The girl glanced through narrowed eyes at Jerry and then went out.

  Dr Karen von Krupp was about thirty in a stiff, black-and-white paisley overall, black net stockings and purple charley boots. Her hair was a deep, dark red, very thick and wavy, worn at shoulder length. Her face was strong, with pronounced cheekbones, intelligent and attractive. Her lipstick almost matched her shoes and her eyebrows were pencilled thin to match her hair. She spread back her overall to put her hands on her hips and revealed a dress of layered chiffon that was predominantly bottle-green, its hem six inches above the knees of her long, well-shaped legs. Her taste, thought Jerry, was dreadful, but splendid.

  “It is Herr Michael Aserinsky?” the woman asked, smiling once.

  “It is.” He admired her figure. “A toothache.”

  “Ja, ja.” She turned and began to pack the index cards into a box on the desk. Jerry took off his coat.

  “Will you go and sit in the chair, please.”

  “Well.” Jerry wondered why he was here.

  “And remove your—hat,” she said firmly, then laughed.

  “No,” he said.

  “But you must.” She looked over her shoulder, staring hard, smiling again. “Otherwise, you see, I cannot get a proper grip on you.”

  “My political convictions…”

  “You have some?”

  “Forbid me, doctor, from removing my turban in the presence of a woman. I hadn’t realised…”

  “Ah,” she closed the lid of the box, “So,” began buttoning up her overall. “Still, Herr Aserinsky, you must decide whether you would feel in health in this world or suffer a moment or two somewhere else.”

  Jerry’s hand began to move towards his vibragun, but he stopped it with great self-control. “Perhaps you could first look at the tooth and tell me what you think needs work. Then we can decide.”

  “But you could be making me waste my time.” She shrugged. “Very well, into the chair, sir.”

  He clambered warily into the chair and rested his head back so that he was looking at the upper part of the stained-glass window and a section of the drilling rig.

  “You like my window?” She picked up a barbed tool from the tray of instruments. “Open wide, please,” and she began to poke and scrape at his teeth. “What do you think about cocaine?”

  He blinked.

  When she stepped back she was smiling. “Black teeth. Like black marble. Curious.”

  “You noticed?” He tried to rise. “The pain’s gone now. Psychosomatic, I suppose.”

  “You’re an expert at that, aren’t you?”

  “Um,” he said.

  “Why have you got black teeth, then? Painted with white enamel by the look of it…”

  “Bored with them…”

  “I think not. Re-born, perhaps.”

  Jerry’s hand fled into his jacket and grasped the butt of the vibragun. “Dancing was never more disgusting than when done by Kelly, eh?”

  “I’m with you there.”

  He felt sick. He poised himself to jump from the chair, noticing how beautiful she was. He fell in love with her.

  “Why did you come here?” She replaced the hooked instrument on the tray and looked down into his eyes. She did something to the chair and he was tilted back even further. His fingers fell limply from the gun butt. Her face came closer, the lips opening to show large, even teeth (two of them gold) and a huge, curling tongue.

  He dropped his hand away from the gun altogether. It went out, instead, to grasp her thigh, feeling the ridge of a suspender belt beneath the thin material of dress and overall.

  She kissed him coarsely.

  “Oh,” he said. He still felt sick. He was breathing heavily.

  “Ah,” he said as she drew back. “Who cares?”

  An unpleasant whine from outside. The blonde girl came in. “Rockets,” she said.

  There was a crash from below.

  “No warheads,” said Jerry, getting up, drawing his gun and putting his arm around Karen von Krupp’s shoulders. “Pack a bag, doctor.” He pulled on his coat.

  “That’s real panda, isn’t it?” she asked, fingering it. “Where did it come from—Moscow or London?”

  Another rocket whined in and grazed the roof.

  “Ouch,” she said. “Perhaps my husband…”

  “Pack a bag. We’ll go to Paris.”

  “Wait a moment, then.”

  2. PRESIDENTS IN PARADE SCANDAL!

  “Time flies,” said Jerry.

  “And who, these days, knows his name?” smiled Karen von Krupp tend
erly as the crystal city became distinct ahead.

  Left fingertips on her knee, right on the wheel, Jerry cruised at ninety towards Paris. “There is something,” he said, “concerning Russia. But what about America?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, darling.” She drew on her long cigarette holder one last puff and threw the whole contraption from the window. “Well, that’s over.”

  “Something’s going on,” he said.

  “Always. And was it not you, anyway, who engineered the Moscow thing?”

  “Possibly,” said Jerry, frowning desperately, glancing behind him at the blonde girl who, pouting disinterestedly, lounged in the back seats. “You’d better change into an ankle-length skirt. You know what they’re like in the Three Republics about that sort of thing.” He touched a stud and the glass partition slid down, allowing her to crawl into the back of the car. The blonde girl moved over and looked out of the window.

  While she changed he looked at his map for the best route into Paris.

  In the rearview mirror he noticed that Bishop Beesley had caught up with him again for there was the silver Cadillac spinning along behind them, a fat, pasty figure at the wheel. Jerry blacked out the back windows.

  “That’s clever,” she said, struggling into a long, bottle-green skirt. He wondered if all her skirts were bottle-green and all her shoes purple. It indicated an interest in Ouspensky, at very least.

  In Paris they were just in time to watch the presidents ride by, their white horses wading, sometimes swimming, through the watery streets, sending up a fine, bright spray in the pale sunshine.

  Along the Champs-Elysées the procession made its way, some of it on foot, some in barges, some in carriages, some on horseback.

  As best they could the presidents waved to the few soaked spectators (survivors of the plague) who shivered on both sides of the wide street, knee-deep in water. The presidents led the Three Republics of France, Spain and Portugal (there had been four before the Israeli annexation of Greece) who had resisted offers from the US wanting to send in some advisors.