Traitor's Blood

by Reginald Hill

  The rock hit the cliff and loosened a shower of small flakes which accompanied it in a mini-avalanche. I heard a cry of alarm, a babble of Russian voices, then a long descending scream of terror which competed with the wind’s sobs for a few seconds.

  There was a sound like a ripe melon bursting as it rolled off a table on to the kitchen floor, and the wind had won.

  ‘Lem! Lem!’

  I could hear Pa’s piercingly alarmed cry from the lift. Maliciously I waited a moment before giving the rope a jerk and resuming my descent.

  When I reached the platform, I jerked twice in signal of success and rushed to where I could see a crumpled figure lying half on the rocks, half in the sea. There was no element of humanitarianism in my haste. I had two hopes; one, that it would be Krylov; two, that there would be a weapon lying close.

  I was disappointed in both. It was the stout out-of-condition Italian, Vasari, the least (I suspected) of our adversaries. And if he’d had a gun when he fell, it must have bounced into the sea.

  I glanced up. I could hear nothing, but I could see the dark shape of Pa descending the cliff. Even at seventy, he made it look easy.

  I turned my attention to the boat, stepping carefully on board for fear of putting my foot through rotten planks.

  She was not as bad as I’d thought, but a bloody sight worse. From above I’d merely got the impression of a wallowing tub. Now I realized that she was much narrower in the beam than I’d imagined, but that someone (probably those land-grubbing peasants in the villa who fancied doing a bit of fishing but knew nothing of boats) had attempted to give her more stability by nailing four or five planks across the foredeck and lashing an oil-drum under the bows on either side. Everything about that pathetic botch-up of a boat had the mark not of the amateur, but of the pig-ignorant. The mast was broken off above the forestay. Sailing had obviously proven too difficult. The gooseneck fitting on the mast was bent as if someone had dragged the boom off by main force in order to get rid of this dangerous lump of redundant wood. The foresail halyard was attached and what looked like a spitfire jib was lying creased and sodden across the foredeck. But a couple of oars in the well showed what the principle method of locomotion was, and it looked as if the rudimentary rowlocks had been carved in the gunwale with a hatchet.

  The wind was still on shore and rising and every blast sent this ugly duckling of a boat slamming against the landing platform. Elementary fenders in the shape of a couple of plastic bags stuffed with God knows what were absorbing some of the impact, but eventually she’d just be dumped unceremoniously and probably upside down on to the platform surface.

  Pa arrived and leapt lightly aboard.

  ‘Time to be on our way,’ he said, picking up one of the oars. ‘Cast off.’

  That proved easier said than done. The stern was made fast by a loop of thin wire hawser dropped over the jut of rock which acted as a bollard and I lifted this off and tossed it into the boat. But the bow was attached by a length of line drawn tight in a sodden and amateurish knot. I could hear voices now and a sudden scatter of small stones. The pursuit was close. Suddenly, as I struggled with the line, it parted behind me, almost precipitating me into the sea. Pa had produced a small penknife and cut it at the bow. I fell rather than jumped into the boat, sprawling in inches of foul water and fish scales. The peasants must have met with some success. Pa was pushing us off with one of the oars. I seized the other and dropped it into its crude rowlock. A moment later Pa joined me on the thwart and cried, ‘Pull!’

  We strained at the oars, fighting against the strong swell which was strengthening by the second and threatening to drive us back against the platform. For a moment it seemed impossible that we could win. We strained at a standstill, then we slid down into the trough of the swell and when we rose up again the gap had widened. Another few strokes and we were out of the greatest turbulence, where water met land.

  ‘Well, Lem,’ said Pa in my ear. ‘On such a night as this we once sailed to hear the Sirens, remember.’

  Again, memory flooded back. It hadn’t been such a wild night but wild enough. We had sailed to Positano in the evening and the sudden bad weather had penned us there till late. On the way home with the sea still rough we had diverted to the Isole Galli, those rocky islets which are the traditional home of the Sirens. There we had strained our ears, Pa pretending to hear wild music and enchanted singing, I hearing nothing but the slap of water and the sough of wind. Pa told me laughingly that, like Ulysses’ sailors, my ears were full of wax.

  I said, ‘I wish to God it was Ariel we had under us now.’

  He laughed quietly and replied, ‘I thought you hadn’t twigged. It is, boy. It is!’

  For a moment I couldn’t believe him. Then the truth of what he said hit me and rattled round my mind like a golf ball sliced into a car park. This poor maltreated boat was indeed all that remained of my beloved Ariel! How could I have missed it before? I suppose I shouldn’t have had anger to spare for such a trivial matter, but anger I felt, strong and hot, as I recalled the times in those golden days when we had slipped away from our mooring like a dolphin racing for the open sea.

  I began to speak but Pa shushed me imperatively. The clouds had eaten up the entire sky and only the violence of their movement distinguished them from the looming bulk of the cliff. Darkness so complete was now on the face of the waters that though the distance we’d covered was short, the landing-stage was completely invisible. Except that now the beam of a flashlight bobbed there to show us that Krylov and his men had at last reached the foot of the cliff.

  Pa leaned forward to cut down on his silhouette and hide the whiteness of his face. I followed suit and we held the boat steady with our oars. It seemed impossible that they would not spot us at this distance but I reminded myself how small a patch of darkness we were against the shifting shadowy sea, and there are few things blacker than the ocean when it has no sky light to give back again.

  Light there was from the torch and this slipped over the waves like Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. I felt an insane desire to cry do you believe in fairies? at the silent watchers on the shore. But I guessed my answer would come in a hail of bullets. Any inhibition Krylov had about causing a disturbance wasn’t going to extend to letting us escape, and besides, as the wind rose now it was unlikely that the noise of their weapons would be audible beyond fifty yards or so.

  But if the wind was our enemy as far as noise went, it was becoming our friend for direction. The southerly swell which had been trying to push us inshore began to die away. The wind was veering sharply into the opposite quarter and now we laid our blades flat on the water to preserve stability while minimizing resistance as every second drifted Ariel further away from the searching torch.

  Pa put an end to my brief delight by pressing his mouth to my ear and murmuring, ‘Tramontana’. I took his point at once. With the wind veering to the north it would soon be coming straight down the steep mountain gorges behind us and exploding out over the sea in one of those violent squalls the local fishermen so feared. Thirty years before we had safely run through one of the worst of these, but those thirty years had not left any of us unscathed, not Pa, or me, and least of all, Ariel. I realized with dismay that my feet were already ankle deep in water. One big sea and she would be swamped beyond redemption. The oil drums might keep her afloat but she’d be completely at the mercy of the waves.

  Our only hope was to make a landfall in one of the neighbouring coves before the violence of the storm made that impossible.

  We rose upright once more and laid ourselves into our oars with all our strength. I thought I heard a cry from the shore and looking back I could see the flashlight waving madly. Well, let them see us! Bobbing around on waves like these, we must present a more difficult target than a pingpong ball on a water-jet at a fairground.

  I dipped and pulled, dipped and pulled, till the blood throbbing in my ears almost obliterated the sound of wind and water. Something plucked at my arm. A gust o
f wind, I thought. Then again. I looked. It was Pa, resting now on his oar. I thought at first he was telling me he was exhausted. But then he pointed.

  I looked back once more. The throbbing in my ears had not all been the pulse of my blood. We were no longer alone on the water. Not more than fifty yards away I could see the lights of another vessel. It was hard to tell in the circumstances, but it looked and sounded like a small motor-cruiser, probably no more than ten metres away. Our rescuer, I thought optimistically. But sent by whom? And why was it edging closer and closer to the Villa Colonna landing, urged on by the flashlight which was waving as enticingly and seductively as any ever held by a Cornish wrecker?

  Then the more likely explanation came to me. No rescue boat, this, but our transport to the Bulgarian freighter. Why risk the road journey and the dock police when they could lift us by boat and transfer us outside the limit?

  But we might be safe yet. The men on the motor-cruiser could have no way of knowing that we were loose and at sea. And it seemed to me that only a lunatic would attempt a landing in these conditions. And it was doubtful if they would even get within decent communicating distance and be put on our scent.

  As I watched, it looked as if my picture of a Cornish wrecking might come to life.

  The launch had got within a dozen metres of the landing-stage, far too close for safety, and the helmsman had decided he’d had enough. The bow was coming round to the open sea when suddenly a huge surge of wind and water picked them up and thrust them landwards. It seemed impossible that they would not be smashed against the concrete platform. Certainly they must have come within a couple of feet. I heard a confusion of cries both from the launch and the shore. Then she was running out to sea again as the gust temporarily abated.

  I found myself letting out my breath which I did not know I’d been holding. Oddly, it was in relief. I hate to see any vessel wrecked. But the relief didn’t last.

  Pa shouted in my ear, ‘Krylov!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Krylov jumped. I saw him.’

  I looked at him in doubt and amazement, doubt that he could have seen anything in these conditions, amazement that anyone would have behaved so suicidally.

  Then I looked back at the launch. If indeed Krylov had got on board, that’s where the evidence would come from.

  It came as if I’d given a cue. A white light suddenly exploded outwards from the cruiser’s deck. No flashlight, this, but a broad, dazzling, sharp-edged beam which sliced through the darkness towards us with a most un-Tinker-Bell-ish purpose and menace.

  ‘Row!’ cried Pa. ‘Row for your life.’

  And we flung ourselves against the oars as the light broke like a wave over our stern and the shooting began.

  22

  … grasp my reaching hand …

  The Cambridge Eight on a good day with the wind at their backs and the tide running beneath them might have struck a couple of dozen times before that motor-cruiser caught them.

  The Bessacarr Coxless Pair, on the other hand, had less scope for manœuvre. Indeed, all I managed was one decent stroke and one complete air shot before the cruiser’s bows reared above us. Krylov was up there somewhere, rattling out a feu dejoie. I heard something thud into the gunwale close to me and instinctively ducked sideways. A huge finger of water curled around my oar and flicked it away as a fastidious father might remove the dirty twig a child has picked up in the garden. The loss seemed of little consequence, as did the bullets. A thirty-foot motor-cruiser is not exactly your Titanic, but when it’s about to fall on top of you, you start straining your ears for the Palm Court orchestra. I suspect that if Krylov could have contrived to be at the helm as well as firing his gun, that would have been the end of us. But fortunately this craft’s skipper had other ideas. Probably he reckoned his contract was for a simple picking-up job.

  The bow swung away and the wave created by its passage drove us apart. It could only be a momentary respite. Even if the cruiser lost us, the ocean wouldn’t. The wind was more intermittent now, but in its gusts it seemed to have aspirations to becoming a full-blooded gale. I had no doubt whose full blood it would be. With only one oar, we had lost all control of movement or direction. The open sea held little prospect of safety and the only way we were going to make a landfall was from a great height and with almost certain fatal results. We didn’t even have the option of a nice sandy little beach to run aground in. There was nothing close by but solid rock-face, as hard and unyielding as state charity.

  The launch was coming at us again, its one bright eye gleaming, like a lustful Cyclops hot from Sicily in search of a mate. If anyone were watching from the shore, this light must be tracing such an erratic pattern of movement that surely they’d contact the coastguard. At least, they would in England. Here, I doubted it and could only hope that nothing in its oscillations could be taken as a confirming signal to the yo-yos in charge of Angie’s accident.

  That was the only thing which held me back from surrender. Our case was hopeless. We had no means of evasion nor of defence, and least of all of counter-attack. I don’t know about Pa, but my own death meant nothing. Even if I wasn’t dying already, it meant nothing. But as long as my life kept Angie alive, I was going to go on fighting.

  Now in typical Tyrrhenian Sea style, the weather was definitely changing. The wind’s fury was diminishing as it veered into the southern quarter once more, but I didn’t see this as being particularly advantageous. What I didn’t like at all was the improvement in visibility. The cloud was thinning fast and in the east a hazy moon, low-hanging like a pale breast glimpsed through black chiffon, was making our pursuers’ task easier. I could see Pa’s face by its light. He yelled something at me. At first I thought it was simply a fond farewell, but I could see nothing of paternal sentimentality on his face, only the familiar exasperation. Now he rose and turned so that he was facing the bows and reached forward.

  I watched with an amazement that did not diminish as I caught his purpose.

  He was untying the oil drums lashed to the side of the boat.

  At first I thought he’d simply opted for a rather strange form of suicide. Ariel had no built-in buoyancy apparatus and we’d taken on so much water I was sure that the oil drums were the only things keeping us up. Then I saw that just the opposite applied. Pa’s finger stabbed out a line of bullet holes running clear across the bows. Both drums must be badly punctured. Once full of water and they’d drag us down like tubs of concrete.

  I joined him at his task. My pinched and sodden fingers made little impression on the water-tightened knots. I looked at Pa who passed me his small penknife with a sigh which not even the wailing wind could conceal from my mental ear. I sawed away and a moment later the oil drums were released simultaneously. We tore at the planks which had held them, ripping their nails out by main force, and hurled them into the ocean. For a moment the only change seemed to be the expected one in our stability. We were lying across the wind and we almost turned turtle. Then Pa grabbed at his oar and using it both for momentum and stability turned us downwind. And now the incredible happened. As she moved forward on the swell, I could feel that ancient, leaky, rotten tub trying to gather her strength beneath me, like an old fighter after fourteen rounds. I reached forward and grasped the foresail halyard. I had no real hope that the peasant butchers who’d been using the boat would have left her properly rigged, but presumably that spitfire jib was there for a purpose. It was. It came up almost smoothly and though it was the smallest, scruffiest bit of sail I’ve ever seen, it caught the strong south wind, every plank in the old boat creaked, and suddenly she was under sail and our Ariel once more.

  Pa and I looked at each other and laughed like madmen. He pushed his oar over the side and sprang to the helm. The rudder, hitherto useless and unusable, was now operative again. A feeling of such tangible vitality ran down the whole length of the boat that I experienced the crazy certainty that if we wanted we could sail beyond the sunset and the western stars. Pa s
hared it with me, I knew that. Our gazes met and locked. In that moment we were completely united, loving equals in a great adventure.

  It was all we had. In another moment we were back in the sordid world of squalid deceit and violent death. The launch was back upon us, its light holding us steady in the calming seas. I could hear bullets chomping at the woodwork and I felt a violent burning sensation down my right side. I sat heavily on the thwart. Pa seemed to be untouched and was holding a course directly towards the huge bulk of the cliff whose rim was marked by a set of car headlights which seemed to be pointing directly out to sea. My hand was exploring my wound reluctantly and even more reluctantly my mind explored those lights. Revelation was simultaneous. I felt the hot pulse of blood beneath my shirt in the same instant as those headlights came over the cliff. For a second I could see no car, just the lights. Then a third of the way down it hit, bounced, hit again and burst into flames.

  And now for the rest of its descent, which seemed as long and as slow as that fabled for the rebelling angels thrown from the ramparts of Heaven, I could see the bulk of the car clearly in the middle of those defining flames till it hit the sea not a furlong from us and left a blackness which began at my soul.