The Golden Rendezvous

by Alistair MacLean

  I left, skirted the hatch and made my way to the bo’sun’s store. I fumbled around in the darkness, found what I wanted, a heavy marline-spike, and then was on my way, marline-spike in one hand, MacDonald’s knife in the other.

  Dr. Caroline’s cabin was in darkness. I was pretty sure that the windows were uncurtained, but I left my torch where it was. Susan had said that Carreras’s men were prowling around the decks that night: the chance wasn’t worth it. And if Dr. Caroline wasn’t already in number four hold, then the chances were high indeed that he would only be in one other place—in his bed, and bound to it hand and foot.

  I climbed up to the next deck and padded along to the wireless office. My breathing and pulse were almost back to normal now, the shaking had eased and I could feel the strength slowly flooding back into my arms and shoulders. Apart from the constant dull ache in my neck where the sandbag merchant and Tony Carreras had been at work, the only pain I felt was a sharp burning in my left thigh where the salt water had got into the open wounds. Without the anæsthetic, I’d have been doing a war dance. On one leg, of course.

  The wireless office was in darkness. I leaned my ear against the door, straining to hear the slightest sound from inside, and was just reaching out a delicate hand for the door-knob when I just about had a heart-attack. A telephone bell had gone off with a shattering metallic loudness not six inches from the ear I’d so hard pressed against the door. It jarred me rigid, for all of five seconds Lot’s wife couldn’t even have hoped to compete with me, then I pussy-footed silently across the deck into the shelter of one of the lifeboats.

  I heard the vague murmur of someone talking on the telephone, saw the light come on in the wireless office, the door open and a man came out. Before he switched off the light I saw two things: I saw him bring a key from his right-hand trousers’ pocket, and I saw who it was, the artist with the machine-gun who had killed Tommy Wilson and cut down all the rest of us. If I had to settle any more accounts that night, I hoped bleakly it would be with this man.

  He closed the door, locked it and went down the ladder to “A” deck below. I followed him to the top of the ladder and stayed there. There was another man at the foot of the ladder, lit torch in hand, just outside Dr. Caroline’s cabin, and in the backwash of light from the cabin bulkhead I could see who it was. Carreras himself. There were two other men close by, and I could distinguish neither of them, but I was certain that one of them would be Dr. Caroline. They were joined by the radio operator and the four men moved off aft. I never even thought of going after them. I knew where they were going.

  Ten minutes. That was the detail the news broadcast about the disappearance of the Twister had mentioned. There were only one or two men who could arm the Twister, and it couldn’t be done in less than ten minutes. I wondered vaguely if Caroline knew he had only ten minutes to live. And that was all the time I had to do what I had to do. It wasn’t long.

  I was coming down the ladder while Carreras’s swinging torch was still in sight. Three-quarters of the way down, three steps from the bottom, I froze into immobility. Two men—in that driving rain their black blurred shapes were barely distinguishable but I knew it was two men because of the low murmur of voices—were approaching the foot of the ladder. Armed men, they were bound to be armed, almost certainly with the ubiquitous tommy-gun which seemed the standard weapon among the generalissimo’s henchmen.

  They were at the foot of the ladder now, I could feel the ache in my hands from the tension of my grip round marline-spike and opened clasp-knife, then suddenly they went veering off to the right, round the side of the ladder. I could have reached out and touched them both, I could see them almost clearly now, clearly enough to see that both had beards, and had I not been wearing the black hood and mask they would have been bound to see the white glimmer of my face. How they didn’t even see my shape standing there on the third bottom step was beyond me: The only reason I could think of was that they both had their heads lowered against the driving rain.

  Seconds later I was inside the central passageway of “A” accommodation. I hadn’t poked my head round the outside passage door to see if the land was clear, after that escape I’d felt that nothing mattered, I’d just walked straight inside. The passageway was empty.

  The first door on the right, the one opposite Caroline’s, was the entrance to Carreras’s suite. I tried the door. Locked. I walked down the passage to where Benson, the dead chief steward, had had his cubicle, hoping that the luxurious carpet underfoot was absorbent enough to soak up the water that was almost cascading off me. White, Benson’s successor, would have had a blue fit if he could have seen the damage I was doing.

  The master-key to the passengers’ suites was in its secret little cubby-hole. I removed it, went back to Carreras’s cabin, unlocked the door and went inside, locking it behind me.

  The lights were on throughout the suite. Carreras probably hadn’t bothered to switch them off when he’d left, he wasn’t paying for the electricity. I went through the cabins, sending each door in turn flying open with the sole of my stockinged foot. Nothing? No one. I had one bad moment when I entered Carreras’s own sleeping cabin and saw this desperate hooded, crouched figure, dripping water, hands clenched round weapons, with wide staring eyes and blood dripping down beside the left eye. Myself in a looking-glass. I had seen prettier sights. I hadn’t been aware that I had been cut, I supposed it must have been the result of one of the many knocks I’d had had against the side of the Campari, opening up the wound in my head.

  Carreras had boasted that he had a complete loading plan of the Fort Ticonderoga in his cabin. Nine minutes now, maybe even less. Where in the name of God would he keep the plan? I went through the dressing-tables, wardrobes, lockers, cupboards, bedside tables. Nothing. Nothing. Seven minutes.

  Where, where would he keep it? Think, Carter, for heaven’s sake think. Maybe Caroline was getting on with the arming of the Twister faster than anyone had thought possible. How did anyone know, as the broadcast had said, that it took all of ten minutes to arm it? If the Twister was such a secret—and until it had been stolen it had been such a top priority hush-hush secret that no member of the public had known of its existence—how did anyone know it took ten minutes to arm it? How could anyone know? Maybe all it required was a twist here, a turn there. Maybe—maybe he was finished already. Maybe——

  I put those thoughts to one side, drove them out of my mind, crushed them ruthlessly. That way lay panic and defeat. I stood stock-still and forced myself to think, calmly, dispassionately. I had been looking in all the obvious places. But should I have been looking in the obvious places? After all I’d gone through this cabin once before, looking for a radio, I’d gone through it pretty thoroughly, and I hadn’t seen any signs. He would have it hidden, of course he would have it hidden. He wouldn’t have taken a chance on anyone finding it, such as the steward whose daily duty it was to clean out his cabin, before his men had taken over the ship. No stewards on duty now, of course, but then he probably hadn’t bothered to shift it since the take-over. Where would he have hidden it where a steward wouldn’t stumble across it?

  That ruled out all the furniture fittings, all the places I’d wasted time in searching. It also ruled out bed, blankets, mattresses—but not the carpet! The ideal hiding-place for a sheet of paper.

  I almost threw myself at the carpet in his sleeping cabin. The carpets in the Campari’s accommodation were secured by press-button studs for ease of quick removal. I caught the corner of the carpet by the door, ripped free a dozen studs, and there it was right away, six inches from the edge. A large sheet of canvas paper, folded in four, with “T.E.S. Fort Ticonderoga. Most Secret” printed in one corner. Five minutes to go.

  I stared at the paper until I had memorised its exact position relative to the carpet, picked it up and smoothed it out. Diagrams of the Ticonderoga with complete stowage plans of the cargo. But all I was interested in was the deck cargo. The plan showed crates stacked on b
oth fore- and aft-decks, and twenty of those on the foredeck were marked with a heavy red cross. Red for gold.

  In a small careful hand Carreras had written on the side: “All deck cargo crates identical in size. Gold in waterproof, kapok-filled welded steel boxes to float free in event of damage or sinking. Each crate equipped with yellow water-stain.” I supposed this was some chemical which, when it came into contact with salt water, would stain the sea for a wide area around. I read on: “Gold crates indistinguishable from general cargo. All crates stamped ‘Harmsworth & Holden Electrical Engineering Company.’ Stated contents generators and turbines. For’ard deck cargo consigned to Nashville Tennessee, exclusively turbines: afterdeck cargo consigned to Oak Ridge Tennessee, exclusively generators. So marked. For’ard twenty crates on for’ard deck gold.”

  I didn’t hurry. Time was desperately short, but I didn’t hurry. I studied the plan, which corresponded exactly to Carreras’s observations, and I studied the observations themselves until I knew I would never forget a word of them. I folded and replaced the plan exactly as I had found it, pressed the carpet snap-studs back into place, went swiftly through the cabins on a last check to ensure that I had left no trace on my passing: there were none that I could see. I locked the door and left.

  The cold driving rain was falling even more heavily than ever now, slanting in across the port side, drumming metallically against the accommodation bulkheads, rebounding ankle-high off the polished wooden decks. On the likely enough theory that Carreras’s patrolling men would keep to the sheltered starboard side of the accommodation, I kept to the opposite side as I hurried aft: in my stocking soles and wearing that black suit and mask, no one could have heard or seen me at a distance of more than a few feet. No one heard or saw me, I heard or saw no one. I made no attempt to look, listen or exercise any caution at all. I reached number four hold within two minutes of leaving Carreras’s cabin.

  I needn’t have hurried. Carreras had made no attempt to replace the tarpaulin he’d had to pull back in order to remove the battens, and I could see straight down into the bottom of the hold. Four men down there, two holding powerful electric lanterns, Carreras with a gun in the hand hanging by his side, the lanky, stooped form of Dr. Slingsby Caroline, still wearing that ridiculous white wig askew on his head, bent over the Twister. I couldn’t see what he was doing.

  It was like a nineteenth-century print of grave-robbers at work? The tomb-like depths of the hold, the coffins, the lanterns, the feeling of apprehension and hurry and absorbed concentration that lent an evilly conspiratorial air to the scene—all the elements were there. And especially the element of tension, an electric tension that you could almost feel pulsating through the darkness of the night. But a tension that came not from the fear of discovery but from the possibility that at any second something might go finally and cataclysmically wrong. If it took ten minutes to arm the Twister, and obviously it took even longer than that, then it must be a very tricky and complicated procedure altogether. Dr. Caroline’s mind, it was a fair guess, would be in no fit state to cope with tricky and complicated procedures: he’d be nervous, probably badly scared, his hands would be unsteady, he was working, probably with inadequate tools, on an unstable platform by the light of unsteady torches and even though he might not be desperate enough or fool enough to jinx it deliberately there seemed to me, as there obviously seemed to the men down in the hold, that there was an excellent chance that his hand would slip. Instinctively, I moved back a couple of feet until the coaming of the hatch came between me and the scene below. I couldn’t see the Twister any more so that made me quite safe if it blew up.

  I rose to my feet and made a couple of cautious circuits of the hatch, the first close in, the second farther out. But Carreras had no prowlers there: apart from the guards on the gun, the after-deck appeared to be completely deserted. I returned to the port for’ard corner of the hatch and settled down to wait.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait too long. The sea-water had been cold, that heavy rain was cold, the wind was cold, I was soaked to the skin and was recurringly and increasingly subject to violent bouts of shivering, shivering I could do nothing to control. The fever ran fiercely in my blood. Maybe the thought of Dr. Caroline’s hand slipping had something to do with the shivering: whatever the reason, I’d be lucky to get off with no more than pneumonia.

  Another five minutes, and I took a second cautious peek down into the hold. Still at it. I rose, stretched and began to pace softly up and down to ward off the stiffness and cramp that was settling down on my body, especially on the legs. If things went the way I hoped I couldn’t afford to have stiffness anywhere.

  If things went the way I hoped. I peered down a third time into the hold and this time stayed in that stooped position, unmoving. Dr. Caroline had finished. Under the watchful eye and gun of the radio operator, he was screwing the brass-topped lid back on to the coffin while Carreras and the other man had the lid already off the next coffin and were bent over it. Presumably fusing the conventional explosive inside: probably it was intended as a stand-by in case of the malfunction of the Twister, or even more probably, in the event of the failure of the Twister’s timing mechanism, it was designed to set it off by sympathetic detonation. I didn’t know, I couldn’t guess. And, for the moment, I was not in the slightest worried. The crucial moment had come.

  The crucial moment for Dr. Caroline. I knew—as he was bound to know—that they couldn’t afford to let him live. He’d done all they required of him. He was of no further use to them. He could die any moment now. If they chose to put a gun to his head and murder him where he stood, there was nothing in the world I could do about it, nothing I would even try to do about it. I would just have to stand there silently, without movement or protest, and watch him die. For if I let Dr. Caroline die without making any move to save him, then only he would die: but if I tried to save him and failed—and with only a knife and marline-spike against two sub-machine-guns and pistols the chances of failure were a hundred per cent—then not only Caroline but every member of the passengers and crew of the Campari would die also. The greatest good of the greatest number … Would they shoot him where he stood or would they do it on the upper deck?

  Logic said they would do it on the upper deck. Carreras would be using the Campari for a few days yet, he wouldn’t be wanting a dead man lying in the hold and there would be no point in shooting him down there and then carrying him up above when he could make the climb under his own steam and be disposed of on the upper deck. If I were Carreras, that is what I would have figured.

  And that was how he did figure. Caroline tightened the last screw, laid down the screwdriver and straightened. I caught a glimpse of his face, white, strained, one eye twitching uncontrollably. The radio operator said: “Señor Carreras?”

  Carreras straightened, turned, looked at him, then at Caroline and nodded.

  “Take him to his cabin, Carlos. Report here afterwards.”

  I moved back swiftly as a torch shone vertically upwards from the hold. Carlos was already climbing the ladder. “Report here afterwards.” God, I’d never thought of so obvious a possibility! For a moment I panicked, hands clenched on my pitiful weapons, irresolute, paralysed in thought and action. Without any justification whatsoever I’d had the picture firmly in my mind of being able to dispose of Caroline’s appointed executioner without arousing suspicion. Had Carlos, the radio operator, been under instructions to knock off the unsuspecting Caroline on the way for’ard then carry on himself to his wireless office, then I might have disposed of him and hours might have passed before Carreras got suspicious. But now what he was, in effect, saying was: “Take him up top, shove him over the side and come back and tell me as soon as you have done so.”

  I could see the heavy rain slanting whitely through the wavering torch beam as Carlos climbed swiftly up the ladder. By the time he reached the top I was round the other side of the hatch coaming, lying flat on the deck.

  Cautiously
, I hitched an eye over the top of the coaming. Carlos was standing upright on the deck now, his torch shining downwards into the hold. I saw Dr. Caroline’s white head appear, saw Carlos move back a couple of steps and then Caroline, too, was over the top, a tall hunched figure pulling high his collar against the cold lash of the rain. I heard, but failed to understand, a quick sharp command and then they were moving off diagonally, Caroline leading, Carlos with his torch on him from behind, in the direction of the companion-way leading up to “B” deck.

  I rose to my feet, remained immobile. Was Carlos taking him back to his cabin after all? Had I been mistaken? Could it be——

  I never finished the thought, I was running after them as quickly, as lightly, as silently as the stiffness in my left leg would permit. Of course Carlos was taking him in the direction of the companionway, had he marched him straight towards the rail Caroline would have known at once what awaited him, would have turned and hurled himself against Carlos with all the frantic savagery of a man who knows he is about to die.

  Five seconds, only five seconds elapsed from the time I started running until I caught up with them. Five seconds, far too short a time to think of the suicidal dangers involved, far too short to think what would happen if Carlos should swing his torch round, if any of the three guards at the gun should happen to be watching this little procession, if either Carreras or his assistant in the hold should choose to look over the coaming to see how the problem of disposal was being attended to, far too little time to figure out what I was going to do when I caught up with Carlos.