The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
“We do not ask you to work for nothing, you see. Your silence will be assured—for if you decided to tell your incredible tale, who would believe it? But why should you? You will have come out of the affair most profitably.”
Aye, profitably for you, thinks I, with a bullet in the back of my head or a knife between my ribs. It was as clear as day that at the end of the affair I’d be a heap safer dead than alive, from their point of view. I looked from Bismarck to the cheerfully smiling Rudi, who had perched himself on the table edge; to Kraftstein, frowning at me from his massive height; to de Gautet, with his snake’s eyes—I even glanced round at Bersonin, glowering in silence by the door. By gum, I’ve seen some pretty sets of villains in my time, but I believe that if I were ever asked to recruit a band of cut-throats for some nefarious enterprise, Bismarck’s beauties would head my list.
“I see what is in your mind,” says Bismarck. He rose, taking out his cigar case, and presented me with a weed, which he lit for me from a candle. “You do not trust me. You believe that afterwards I should have you destroyed, nicht wahr? That I would break my promise.”
“Oh, well,” says I, “the thought hadn’t occurred, but now that you mention it …”
“My dear Mr Flashman,” says he, “credit me with some intelligence. I have only to put myself in your shoes—as I’m sure you have just been putting yourself in mine. I should be highly suspicious, if I were you. I should require to be convinced that all was—above board, is it not?”
I said nothing, and he took a turn round the table.
“Ask yourself,” says he, “what I have to gain by playing you false. Security? Hardly so, since you will be in no case, living, to do harm to us. As I’ve said, no one would believe your story, which indeed would incriminate you if you were foolish enough to tell it. What else? Killing you would present … problems. You are not a child, and disposing of you might well cause some unforeseen complication in my plans.”
“We’re honest with you, you see,” says Rudi, and Kraftstein nodded vigorously. De Gautet tried to smile reassuringly, like a contrite wolf.
“And ten thousand pounds, you may believe me, is neither here nor there,” went on Bismarck. “It is a cheap price to pay for laying the foundation of the new Germany—and that is what is at stake here. You may think we are daydreaming, that we are foolish visionaries—you may even think us villains. I do not care. It does not matter. It is a great thing that we are going to do, and you are only a tiny pawn in it—but, like all tiny pawns, vital. I need you, and I am willing to pay for what I need.” He drew himself up, virile, commanding, and full of mastery. “You seek guarantees of my good faith. I have tried to show you that it is in my interest, and Germany’s, to keep faith. To this I add my word as a junker, a soldier, and a gentleman: I swear on my honour that what I have promised I shall fulfil, and that when you have concluded your part in this scheme you shall have safe-conduct out of Germany, with your reward, and that no harm shall come to you.”
He swung about on his heel and went back to his chair; the others sat dead still. And then, after just the right interval had elapsed, he added:
“If you wish, I can swear it on the Bible. For my own part, I believe that a man who will tell a lie will swear one also. I do neither. But I am at your disposal.”
It was very prettily said. For a moment he almost had me believing him. But I’d moved in just as seedy company as friend Bismarck, and was up to all the dodges.
“I don’t care about Bible oaths,” says I. “And, anyway, I’m not sure that I like your little plot. I’m no pauper, you know—” which was a damned lie, but there—“and I’m not sweatin’ to earn your ten thousand. It’s dishonest, it’s deceitful, and it’s downright dangerous. If there was a slip, it would cost me my head—”
“And ours, remember,” says de Gautet. “You would be in a position to betray us, if you were taken.”
“Thanks very much,” says I. “That would be a great consolation. But, d’you know, I don’t think I care for the whole thing. I’m all for a quiet life, and—”
“Even in a Bavarian prison,” says young Rudi sweetly, “serving ten years as a ravisher?”
“That cock won’t fight,” says I. “Even suppose you took me back to Munich now, how would you explain my absence between the supposed crime and my arrest? It might not be so easy.”
That made them think, and then Bismarck chimed in.
“This is to waste time. Whatever pressures were used on you initially, the point is that you are here, now, and I need hardly tell you what will happen if you refuse my offer. We are very lonely here. None saw you come; none would ever see you go. Am I plain? You have no choice, in fact, but to do as I require, and collect the fee which, I promise, will be paid.”
So there we were; the good old naked threat. They could slit my throat as neat as ninepence if they chose, and none the wiser. I was in a most hellish fix, and my innards were churning horribly. But there was no way out—and they might be honest at the end of the day. By God, I could use ten thou. But I couldn’t believe they would come up to scratch (I wouldn’t have, in Bismarck’s place, once I’d got what I wanted). I didn’t even dare think of the risks of their hare-brained impersonation scheme, but on the other hand I couldn’t contemplate the alternative if I refused. On the one side, a lunatic adventure fraught with frightful danger, and possibly a handsome reward; on the other side—death, no doubt at the bare hands of Herr Kraftstein.
“Tell you what, Bismarck,” says I. “Make it fifteen thousand.”
He stared at me coldly. “That is too much. The reward is ten thousand, and cannot be increased.”
I tried to look glum, but this had cheered me up. If he was intending to play me false in the end, he wouldn’t have hesitated to raise the stakes; the fact that he didn’t suggested he might be going to level after all.
“You’re no pauper, you know,” chuckled Rudi, damn him.
I sat like a man undecided, and then I cried:
“I’ll do it, then.”
“Good man!” cries Rudi, and clapped me on the back. “I swear you’re one after my own heart!”
De Gautet shook my hand, and announced that they were damned lucky to have such a resolute, resourceful, cool hand in the business with them; Kraftstein brought me another glass of brandy and pledged me; even Bersonin deserted his post at the door and joined in the toast. Bismarck, however, said no more than “Very good. We will begin our further preparations tomorrow,” and then took himself off, leaving me with the four jacks in the pack. They were all affability now; we were comrades in fortune, and jolly good fellows, and they did their best to get me gloriously fuddled. I didn’t resist; I was shaking with the strain and in need of all the fortifying liquor I could get. But through all their noisy bonhomie and back-slapping one thought kept pounding in my brain; oh, Jesus, in the soup again; how in God’s name shall I get out this time?
You can guess how much sleep I had that first night at Schönhausen. Well liquored as I was when Bersonin and Kraftstein helped me to bed and pulled my boots off, my mind was all too clear; I lay there, fully clothed, listening to the wind whining round the turrets, and watching the candle shadows flickering on the high ceiling, and my heart was pumping as though I had run a race. The room was dank as a tomb, but the sweat fairly ran off me. How the devil had it all happened? And what the devil was I to do? I actually wept as I damned the folly that had ever made me come to Germany. I could have been safe at home, pleasuring myself groggy with Elspeth and sponging off her skinflint father, facing nothing worse than the prospect of bear-leading her family in Society, and here I was imprisoned in a lonely castle with five dangerous lunatics bent on dragooning me into a hare-brained adventure that was certain to put my head in a noose. And if I resisted, or tried to escape, they would wipe me out of existence as readily as they would swat a fly.
However, as usual, once I had cursed and blubbered