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An eternity seemed to go by. If they were in there, the girl and this man named Miller, how was it possible that he could hear nothing? Then the answer occurred to him. If your business was the creation of films of the kind that Fan had said, one thing that you would certainly need would be excellent sound-proofing. The girl might be screaming out her last agony at this very moment. Smith wouldn't be able to hear it. He felt something very close to despair. He had delivered a beautiful young girl into the hands of a pitiless inhuman monster. How was he going to live with this for the rest of his life?
He listened very hard, still hoping to pick up some sound from the people inside the compound. All he could hear, apart from his own breathing, was the occasional almost imperceptible lapping of the water in the adjacent canal, stirred-up by the gentle breeze on its surface, and the far-distant drone of car engines as they passed on the main road.
Suddenly, Smith heard the sound of a two-stroke engine starting-up inside the compound. It was obviously Chelim's taxi getting ready to leave.
"It's them!" said Smith excitedly, stepping out of the taxi, "I've got to talk to her!"
"No! Not here!" Fan entreated with a desperate urgency, "Too dangerous, Mr. Smith!" But Smith was determined. As Chelim's vehicle emerged from the gates, he raised his hand and flagged it down. The girl looked completely terrified.
Smith walked slowly and purposefully up to her. "We meet again," he said quietly. "I think I may have got something that belongs to you."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said so quietly that he could barely make out the words.
"No? In that case you won't mind my friend here calling your father and letting him know where you are. He must be worried."
This seemed to have the desired effect. "No... no, please don't do that. Look, I don't know who you are, but what you gave away didn't belong to you. It didn't belong to me either. The person who owns it is in there," she motioned back towards the compound, "and if he finds us talking here we could both pay for it with our lives. I'll talk to you, but not here. We've got to go somewhere else."
"Fair enough." He climbed in to the taxi beside her. "Do you know any good late-night coffee-bars, Chelim?" he asked the driver.
"No problem, Sir." "Okay. What are we waiting for. You might like to follow along, Fan?"
"Please, Mr. Smith. Let us get away from here. Quickly." He started up his own engine.
O
As the two motor-rickshaws traveled in convoy along the side of one of the city's smaller and muddier canals, Smith tried to make the best of his opportunity to speak to the girl. He had seen how difficult it was to get to her and he wasn't going to let the chance slip through his fingers again.
"You seem like a nice enough girl," he said by way of introduction, "certainly a very pretty one. I don't want to hurt you in any way. All I want is to clear my name. Is there some way you can do that for me? Because if there isn't, then I suppose there isn't really very much point in my talking to you."
It sounded a bit blunt and cruel, but it was the truth. She looked up at him but did not reply right away. "I don't know how I can help you," she said in a tone that to Smith suggested sincerity. "I'm in bad trouble myself. I've failed. Miller is very angry with me. That was more than a little your fault, you know. You didn't have to do what you did."
"I was completely innocent. I hadn't broken any laws. I still haven't. Why should I put my head on the block for somebody I'd never seen before in my life? Somebody who had tried to use me - who didn't care whether I got caught or not?"
She paused again. "Yes, it's true. I shouldn't have done that. It was wrong of me. I'm sorry. I was just so frightened when we got to the airport, I didn't feel I could go on with it. Haven't you ever been terrified like that? So desperate you would try anything?"
In truth, Smith couldn't remember a time when he had. "I .... suppose so." he said at last, "but just saying you're sorry doesn't make it all right, you know. I could go to jail for this. I could lose my career. It could destroy the whole of the rest of my life."
"I'm sorry," she said again, and seemed close to tears. Smith found that he couldn't be angry with her. Not when he was sitting so close, smelling her perfume, feeling the gentle pressure of her shoulder against his arm.
"Okay," he said meekly, "let's forget about it. But is there some way you can get me off the hook?"
"I'm not sure that there's any way I can help you now. What do you want me to do?"
He thought for a moment. "At first I thought your family might be able to do something. Because they're powerful people, aren't they? But now I can see that they're not in on this. They don't know anything about it, do they?"
"No, of course not. My family would be shocked - outraged - if they knew this was going on."
"Do you want to tell me about it - how you got involved?" Before she had time to answer this, the pitch of the engine changed and Smith felt himself being pushed back into the seat. The little rickshaw was accelerating with all the horsepower it could muster.
"Something happen behind us," he heard Chelim shout over the noise, "we followed."
Smith leaned out and looked back. As well as the modest central headlight of Fan's rickshaw, he saw the fierce glare of a powerful motorcycle's helium front lamp. The intensity of the light and the surrounding darkness blotted out any other details. As he watched, the powerful light seemed to draw level with the weaker one, then he heard a dull rattle of automatic gunfire and saw the little machine veer off to the left. There was a massive splash as it careered into the canal. It was too dark and the incident was over too quickly for Smith to register very many of the details. They were being tossed mercilessly from side to side now as Chelim tried to outmaneuver the motorcycle, which he knew he had no chance of out-pacing.
The girl suddenly grabbed Smith's waist for dear life and shouted into his ear "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry! Please! Please forgive me!"
When Smith next looked around he was staring into the eyes of a motorcycle pillion-rider who was pointing a very large, very black piece of steel precisely in his direction. That image, and the girl's pathetic plea for forgiveness, were the last perceptions of any kind that would enter Smith's consciousness.
AN END
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