Amber Nine

by John Gardner

  Pistol right into the neck now. Flesh pulling away as though the muzzle was red hot. ‘Come on, Lynne. Fast. Fast across the lake. Move, you bitch. Move.’

  A word spat from the girl’s mouth. Increased speed. The skin drawn taut over the bone structure of Lynne’s face. Femininity disappearing. Hamlet again—’Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.’ Teeth biting into her lip. Faster. Bows coming up. The roar. A tiny smear of blood where a tooth penetrated the flesh.

  ‘Boysie?’ Petronella trying to move forward. Then Lynne reacted. A snarling roar of speed and the wheel spinning hard over. All balance gone, Boysie thought he would be thrown out.

  Vaguely he glimpsed Petronella behind him, her mouth open. Shouting. Clinging on—hair a wild wet ragged stream. A skidding wave of foam as the little speedboat slewed round, propellers shrieking out of the water and then dipping, biting into the spray. Bows aimed straight for the shore. Lynne’s knuckles on the wheel, white. Boysie knew he should shoot. Self-preservation told him to shoot. Ordered him. The boat righted itself. A tiny bay ahead. Blurred. Rocks. Like bloody great Henry Moore statues tossed among the pebbles by some giant. He could not pull the blasted trigger. Boysie felt the gun drop from his fingers as he made a dive for Lynne. Her hands leaving the wheel, just as his clenched fist connected. The noise of the clout clipped out above the hysteria of the engine and the wind and water. Rocks rushing towards them. Inflating. Lynne toppling sideways, her head lolling over the starboard gunwale. Boysie grabbed at the wheel and wrenched. Too late. A lurch as their keel struck the shallows. Massive rocks around them. The crunch of fibreglass splitting as the bows crumbled inwards. A force heaved Boysie forward one shoulder hard against the windshield.

  Petronella was screaming, and Boysie just saw Lynne’s head strike the rock, among the debris—a bursting open, hideous, blood and tissue smeared out over brown stone. Head sheared in half. Another lurch. A last growl as the propellers cracked. Then silence.

  ‘Arse uppards,’ Boysie groaned. ‘They’ve all got it arse uppards.’ The original shock—Lynne’s innocent mention of Khavichev. The resurrection of Kadjawaji. The sudden complete reversal of sides and roles—had blocked out the deeper horror, wrapping it away in a dark untouched pocket of his subconscious.

  He dragged the dazed Petronella from the wreckage—retching twice as they stumbled up the beach in the general direction of the road—no definite plan in his addled mind. Grabbing Petronella by the wrist, Boysie yanked her into the bushes. Four paces in (a scratch on his hand; there were some big sharp-pointed leaves) then flat, wishing he could burrow into the earth and shingle. People would be coming any minute. Kadjawaji. A piece of phosphorous spluttered in his guts. He realised that his hands were hard across Petronella’s shoulders—tightening, fingers crushing. Holding her down, pushing her into the ground. He could feel the rise of her back as she fought for breath.

  ‘Boysie?’ Struggling to get words out. ‘Why? Lynne? Why?’

  He shushed her violently, hand in front of the shocked face, fingers outstretched motioning quiet. ‘Your sister. Karen. On the wrong bloody side. Understand?’

  Her face blank. No sign of comprehension.

  ‘Lynne was. I thought Lynne was with me. Us. She thought I was. Klara. She thought. Oh Christ it’s bloody difficult, darling. Just trust me, huh? Trust me. These people here are murder. I know.’

  She was desperately frightened, shoulders quivering under his hands. Somehow her fear helped to repress the stark howl of terror ripping him apart. There were voices coming from along the shore. Agitated. Calling. The sound of feet.

  ‘Keep your head down and keep quiet.’ His main instinct was to hide from his own shadow. To go on living for as long as possible. Petronella nodded violently—a cowering serf. In the middle of the panic Boysie was momentarily aware of a rising sexual need. Conscious of the material under his fingers. One hand moved from the girl’s shoulder and caressed her buttocks, gently soothing. Then, in a wild rush he felt a whole pile of physical desires and feelings—sex hunger, the pain in his shoulder, the scratch on his hand, thirst and certain knowledge that it was a long time since he had been to the lavatory.

  There were two men and two girls. Running, slithering over the pebbles. Crunching heavily as they broke out on to the beach. Then, a shorter, halt step. Kadjawaji limping along in the rear. Boysie could hear the sharp little pants of breath, like a dog excited after running for a stick. One of the girls called something, revulsion, distaste in her voice. They must have reached the shattered boat. Kadjawaji replied—a squeaky, piping note edged with authority.

  Boysie swore as loudly as he dared. ‘My gun. I’ve left me bleeding gun in the boat.’ Gingerly he raised himself on to one knee. Kadjawaji had joined the group who were trying to disentangle the thing that had once been Lynne from the smashed and scattered speedboat.

  His concentration kept fluttering from idea to idea, like a crazed butterfly unable to settle. Lynne had said a path led to the villa’s boathouse. The one down which Kadjawaji had just come? It could not be far. A hundred yards at the most. Amber Nine? What the hell was Amber Nine? And ‘the fun’? Lynne had said that Kadjawaji had arrived ‘just in time for the fun’. The boathouse. Make for the boathouse and then, maybe, back across the lake. He had a mental picture of himself in a skiff, rowing like the clappers. Speeded up. An old movie.

  Boysie lowered his head and spoke softly. ‘Trust me. I want you to move as quickly and as quietly as you can. To the left. There should be some kind of boat down there.’

  They crawled forward, keeping in the undergrowth as far as possible. Exaggerating their steps, moving with unnatural caution. After a few yards the beach petered out, replaced by reddish soil. The villa was directly ahead. A solidly built stone wall—the boathouse—with the strange distorted building on top. One door in the wall. Boysie turned the handle, and to his relief, the door swung inwards.

  ‘Light switch?’ He queried. They both fell along the wall. Petronella found it, low, near the door—a big fusebox handle. She pushed downwards as Boysie closed the door. A circle of Fresnel Spot lanterns, mounted on a wide central ring up near the roof, flashed on, accentuating the coldness of the air inside the building.

  They were standing on a catwalk, water only a few inches from their toes. It was a vast pen with a narrow entrance—barred by a roll-up door—widening into a bay which comfortably held six heavy motor cruisers, each around eighteen feet overall, moored in two sets of three. Bolted to the bows of each craft a pair of Degtyarev light machine guns—stubby, obscene-looking silencers screwed to their snouts. The catwalk surrounded the whole bay. Water skiing equipment hung on the walls. But Boysie only took this in as part of the background. His eyes were fixed on the piece de résistance. Directly in front of them, filling the entire entrance bay, was a twenty-seven-foot craft. The bows and stern were those of a normal light vessel, but the sides bulged out like an elongated lift raft. Four troughs in the bows held four machine guns in a neat row forward of a streamlined cabin, large enough to hold at least a dozen people. After, a rear-facing triple-bladed airscrew and engine sprouted from a smooth aerofoil-shaped pedestal. Behind this, a high fin. The whole, like the motor cruisers, was painted in a sinister matt black.

  ‘Oh my gawd, a bloody great hovercraft.’ Boysie could have cried. If Kadjawaji’s lot were Klara’s opposition it put Boysie firmly and unflinchingly on Klara’s side of the railings. He was not sure of the unflinching bit, but obviously he had to get back to the island. Or at least to the other side of the lake. The only way across from the boathouse was on the hovercraft and he would really rather not try that. He opened the door a fraction. Then closed it, very fast, slamming the bolt into place. Kadjawaji was coming down the path with the two girls—all three armed, carefully searching the scrub and undergrowth. Boysie looked left, looked right, and then looked left again. There was a large door at the far end of the boathouse—ob
viously leading to the villa.

  ‘They’re coming this way. That door. Quick.’ And he was off up the catwalk—playing hare to Petronella’s tortoise—his bare feet flip-flapping on the wet stones. Again a picture of the school swimming bath floated into his head.

  The door was a recent addition to the building: steel, and locked from the outside. It would not take long for Kadjawaji to figure out their possible location. Boysie said that word. In this context it had nothing to do with sex. Back down the catwalk to the main roll-up garage-type door. Petronella plodding behind. On the wall another large switch was marked Porta. Aperto. Chiuso. The lever was in the Chiuso position. Electrically operated door. That was all right. Petronella stood on the catwalk looking lost and vacant.

  ‘Please, Boysie, what’s happening?’

  ‘We’re bloody trapped that’s what’s happening and if that short-arsed little curry-eater gets his hands on me—oh grief ...’ Boysie had a vivid vision of what would happen if Kadjawaji got him. ‘We’re going out.’

  ‘In that?’ A hand towards the hovercraft.

  ‘If she’s tanked up.’

  ‘But do you know how to ...?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be difficult.’ Boysie’s knees clipping against each other with a tympanic resonance. After all he had once flown an aeroplane. Bile rushed into his mouth at the thought. It was not at all bad. Was it bloody hell? A shout from outside. One of the girls calling. Lord knew how many of Kadjawaji’s mixed thugs were in the villa on the other side of the steel door.

  ‘Up into the fiendish thing then.’ He patted Petronella’s bottom, trying to sound breezy, pushing her towards the thin metal ladder curving up the side of the craft. The cockpit, for two, was infernally like that of an aeroplane—rudder pedals, control column and half-wheel in front of the left-hand seat; two separate throttles and a bank of switches to the right. In front, a dashboard straight out of science fiction. There was a feeling of newness in the smell, the upholstery, even the way the hatch slid open.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Boysie settling in the pilot’s seat and tentatively touching the controls. His eyes did a swivel search for an instruction manual.

  ‘Do you know anything about hovercraft?’ Petronella dubious.

  ‘Certain amount.’ This consisted of a quick flip through an article in one of the Sundays. Boysie had retained little. There was something about plenum chambers and compressor fans, he remembered. Aloud he said, ‘Hump speed and ram effect.’ The double entendre of the two terms particularly fascinated him.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘What? Oh yes, hump speed and ram effect. Not sure what they mean. Got something to do with drag—technically speaking, not kinky.’

  ‘Boysie.’

  ‘Hang on, let me figure this out.’

  ‘But, do you think it’s safe?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trying to drive this thing without ...’

  ‘Well it’s not safe to stay here.’

  ‘But ...’

  Boysie was getting touchy. It was bad enough having to work the machine. Now prattling women already. He got acid. ‘Look, you can stay if you want to, but I’m for out. Right?’

  ‘Right, Boysie.’ Subservient.

  Boysie relented a little. ‘And while we’re at it I feel terrible. I need mothering. A bloody great breast to cushion me cheek. I need loving. Right?’

  ‘Right, Boysie darling.’ Leaning forward she kissed his cheek. ‘I would not mind,’ thought Boysie. ‘Maybe she is a girls’ girl, but I definitely would not mind.’

  Pushing sex aside, he concentrated on the controls. Above the throttles two banks of switches stood in little erect rows; below them a pair of red buttons. Compressor. Power. Boysie argued that if he threw all the switches and pressed both buttons something ought to happen. His eyes ranged over the instrument panel, finally sorting out the fuel gauges. The needles were steady in the full position.

  ‘We got sea lions in our tanks,’ mused Boysie—the problems of galvanising the hovercraft into action temporarily erasing fear.

  ‘From the top then. How long will it take you to get from the switchboard—the one by the doors—back into the cabin?’

  ‘I haven’t got to get out again?’ Petronella on the brink of outrage.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why can’t you do it?’

  ‘Because I’ll be wrestling with the controls, you lovely twit. As soon as that door begins to move I’ve got to get the engines turning.’

  ‘All right.’ Grudgingly. ‘From the switch back to the cabin? A minute at the most.’

  Boysie checked that the door on his side was firmly closed, then leaned over and slid Petronella’s hatch open to full—a tentative hint. ‘Make it half a minute. Untie her first, she’s moored fore and aft on your side. Then switch the doors to open and split-arse back—I mean get back here as quickly as you can.’ He patted her shoulder, a stupid grin hiding the flesh-quake lying under the skin. ‘Off you go. Good luck.’

  ‘I love you, too.’ A grimace. ‘Don’t go away.’ She was out of the cabin, coming into view a few seconds later by the switch. Thumbs up. Thumbs up from Petronella. Switch down. The roll-up door began to lift—a shaft of natural light stripping into the boathouse. Petronella running back out of his line of vision.

  Boysie made a dive for the switches on the dash, clicking them on—in threes—with the flat of his hand. An almighty whine swept upwards, and, as the last switches went on, so Boysie pressed the starter buttons. He could feel the power from behind. Glancing back through the glass of the cabin roof he saw the airscrew turning. A rumble from the bows—compressor fans starting to build up the lifting pressure of air around the craft. The roll-up was fully open—a high oblong, cinemascope and 3D of the lake. Petronella clambered into the cabin, sliding her door. Boysie’s hands moved the throttles forward, the roar and rumble rising. Louder.

  ‘I wonder how the hell you get the thing moving?’ He shouted easing back on the control column. ‘They only fly about a foot high.’ Comforting himself. ‘I think.’ Now they were moving. Backwards. A shudder and tearing noise as their stern hit the motor cruisers behind them—a poing-de-clank-poing sound usually associated with shunting yards—Boysie thrown forward, pushing on the control column. The hovercraft seemed to do a tango step to left, then right, hitting and bumping against the sides of the boathouse. Boysie piled on a bit of power. Unsteady, but fast, the craft wobbled out on to the lake.

  ‘Hey, it works. You push forward to go forward.’

  ‘They’re on top of the boathouse.’ Petronella twisted in her seat, craning to look back through the cabin. ‘On the terrace. Oh god, they’re shooting. Look out.’

  There was a dull thump behind the growl of motors. Something shattering. Boysie’s head whipped to one side. Part of the cabin roof was cracked into a cobweb where a bullet had struck.

  ‘How the hell d’you steer this thing?’ They seemed to be moving fast, steady and true, but Boysie had more than a vague suspicion that the slightest buffet would send them out of control. He pressed heavily on one of the rudder pedals. The world began to turn.

  ‘Hang on,’ yelled Boysie as they stewed about in a great circle, the craft almost turning on its own axis. He had never been particularly happy about the Big Dipper or the Waltzer since six of chips did a rebound from his stomach at the September Fair when he was ten years old. On that occasion he had ridden on both Waltzer and Dipper. Now, the sensation came back over the years with an appalling accuracy of taste, smell and general feeling. Petronella grabbed at the D-shaped safety handle in front of her seat. It pulled away slightly as she caught hold—puffs of smoke appearing forward of the cabin. Boysie felt the recoil. PS-type 7.62 mm bullets (with the mild steel core) pumping out of the Degtyarevs at the rate of 650 a minute. The beach and villa were sliding through Boysie’s sight-line. Bullet splashes on the water. Stonework chipping. People ducking for cover on the terrace. Down near the boathouse doors Kadjawaji trying to disguise h
imself as a pile of pebbles.

  ‘Let go of that. It’s the trigger. The guns. For Pete’s sake you’ll kill someone.’

  Petronella let go and the spurt of bullets from the bows stopped. Boysie had got his foot off the rudder pedals and they were moving parallel to the shore. Perilously close. Getting closer.

  ‘Shook ‘em up a bit.’ Petronella, pleased.

  ‘Probably shook one or two early risers as well. Wish I could point this bloody boat in the right direction.’ Boysie gave the left rudder pedal gentle pressure. Very careful. Edgy, in case they started doing sharp turns again. The bows moved a fraction to the left. He had some control now. Experimenting again he applied more pressure. The bows slid round. In the far distance the Brissago islands were clearly visible. Tender pressure until the bows lined up with islands. On course. No erratic movements. He must remember. Daringly, Boysie tried the control wheel. They bucketed like a banking aeroplane, churning up a mist of spray. A plunge in the lower bowel. No more experiments. Just keep the thing straight and level, bounding over the water.

  ‘They’re trying to get one of the motor boats out.’ Petronella giving a running commentary, leaning back to get a better view of the shore. ‘No, it’s all right. The little man is calling them back. They’re not following.’

  ‘Too fast for ‘em.’ Boysie grinned and inched the throttles forward. ‘Simple once you know.’ The craft wallowed for a second, swung to the right and pitched slightly. When things were under control again he had another go at the grin. ‘See?’

  ‘My hero,’ said Petronella with a tincture of acid. She allowed a small smile to filter over her lips, dropped her head in a spur-of-the-moment gesture pressing it against Boysie’s shoulder. ‘No, you’ve been wonderful.’ Straightening up. ‘Boysie Oakes, the man with the built-in luck.’

  ‘That’s it. It’s always luck. I never seem to accomplish anything through my consummate skill. Reckon I must have nine lives.’ The grin turned to a look of nausea.