Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  ‘You know that there was an attempt on my life?’

  ‘I know that and much more. There will be more blood and suffering before the future is clear. We are not mere pebbles to be trodden down to save the faces of your leaders, Captain! We are people, we matter very much, at least in our own eyes!’

  Gunnar stood up. ‘I understand. Thank you for your patience and your concern.’

  Tao-Cho allowed himself to be lifted by his companions. ‘We will meet again whenever you wish, Captain. Yours is not a happy task. No matter how thick the paint, the boat beneath remains the same!’

  * * *

  Connell’s hurriedly arranged celebration party was in danger of ending as suddenly as it had begun. With Regan staying aboard the ship and Kroner getting suddenly called away to resume his duty as O.O.D., the others were left in that awkward frame of mind which could influence any party one way or the other. It was still early, and the cool night sky outside the brightly lit shack which the doctor had grandly labelled ‘hospital’ was far too inviting, too restful to encourage a hasty return to the crowded confines of the Hibiscus.

  Connell stood with hands on hips, shirt open to the waist, as he puffed a cheroot, his eyes bright as he surveyed the spartan, whitewashed interior of his new possession. The makeshift operating table was covered with a flag, upon which stood two enamel dishes of melting ice and an ambitious selection of bottles, most of which were two-thirds empty. He levered the top from a fresh Coke and drained it without effort. The tiny hospital seemed to symbolise his other self, so that in Maddox’s eyes he appeared larger, and perhaps more willing to share his thoughts with his companions.

  Malinski squatted on a box of dressings swilling a tall glass with thoughtful, precise movements, his face dull and contented, and seated together like two white ghosts, the doctor’s new Chinese assistants which he had lured or bribed from the town seemed quite happy to drink in complete silence and watch their new masters with placid but interested calm.

  Maddox poured another stiff measure of whisky and groped for some ice with his fingers. It was just like Regan, he thought, to summon Kroner back to the ship without prior notice. For that reason alone Maddox felt determined that the party should continue to its bitter end.

  Connell waved his Coke bottle. ‘Aha! Another guest I see!’

  Maddox saw the great bulk of the Englishman, Burgess, framed in the open door, his face fixed in his normal expression of hopeful determination. ‘I’m glad you could make it, Commander.’ Maddox looked hopefully beyond the other man in case the girl had relented and accepted their invitation. But he was alone. He added hurriedly: ‘Grab a drink, Commander! There’s plenty left.’

  Burgess took a bottle, his big hand trembling noticeably. ‘Just left your C.O. with the headman wallah. They are going great guns down there.’

  ‘Anything useful?’ Connell squatted on the table, his dark hair falling over one eye. ‘Have they decided to kiss and make up, or fight?’

  Burgess grinned uncomfortably. ‘Come now, we mustn’t be cynical, eh?’ He passed down his drink and poured another, larger one. ‘I think your captain has a lot on his plate at the moment. By Jove. I remember when I was in his shoes.’ He shook his head gravely. ‘But that’s another story.’

  Malinski sat up sharply as if awakened from a deep sleep. ‘What was that? I thought I heard a shot!’

  Burgess had an empty glass again. ‘Maybe it was. There’s always shooting of some sort going on. Might be fireworks on the other hand. The Chinks love ’em at any time.’

  The engineer yawned and reached shakily for the table. ‘Fill me glass then!’

  Burgess lay back in a chair and allowed the tide of whisky to wash completely over his tired mind. He had been on edge all day and had allowed himself to betray his own set rule about drinking. In the tiny wheelhouse of his boat was a deep locker, used originally for signal flares, but now a glory-hole for anything unsightly or out of place in a well-run vessel. Beneath some carefully rolled flags and unused bundles of canvas, Burgess had secreted his store of bottles. Between his rare runs to Hong Kong or Taiwan, when he did his best to restock his small hoard, he sampled the bottles in order of importance. He always saved the whisky until the end. Shared with no one, unless with a suitable visitor, which, God knows, was rare enough.

  Today he had been tested to the full. Three visits he had made to the wheelhouse, and then in addition he had been pleasantly surprised by a half-bottle from Gunnar when he had come aboard to meet the old Chinese headman. Burgess had not eaten, and his inside seemed to swell with fiery power. It was like old times, he thought vaguely. The mess parties, the noisy laughter, and antics which were so meaningless to any outsider. By a stretch of the imagination he could picture Maddox and his companions as some of his own officers in the past. Reliable, unworried men who cared nothing for the meanness and base stupidity of those outside the service.

  He sighed and massaged his sagging stomach. Although only fifty, he felt every bit of his age. Every hour seemed to drag and clog him down nowadays.

  Whatever anybody said, these Americans were good fellows, he thought. One of them was already filling his glass, and they all seemed quite happy just to let him sit there, as if they too were short of company. He liked the senior one very much. Maddox, for all his cheerful brashness, seemed reliable and intelligent. Burgess had noted the academy ring on the exec’s hand, the careless way with the man, which signified one not relying on service pay. He tried to picture Maddox beside his daughter Lea outside some grey-stoned church with green fields beyond. There would be a navy guard-of-honour, crossed swords and gay, sincere speeches. He could see himself also, somehow returned to service life, proud and magnificent in his best blue uniform which he still kept hidden in an old tin trunk at his house on the quay. If only she would be reasonable, try to understand what he was attempting to do for her, for both of them. Every day she seemed to move further away from him, to immerse herself in a different and forbidden way of life.

  The spirit scored across his throat and his eyes misted over. One day, very soon now, he would show her. All the privations, the lies and the uncertainties would be forgotten, and she would be proud of him once again. He frowned to himself. Proud of him? Had she ever been?

  It was too easy to recall the distant past, but more difficult to trace its threads up to the present day. Like Maddox, he had once been second-in-command of a small ship on the Far East squadron. But that was long ago, in another world. A lost, unobtainable sphere when everything had revolved around the majesty of the Royal Navy, which he had entered at the age of twelve. As for his father, and his grandfather, there had been no question, no choice. It was duty, it was their way of life.

  He could remember the lines of sloops and destroyers, the tall grey superstructures and waving flags. Faces flitted through his mind like ghosts, like the distant memorials they had become.

  Burgess had been in Singapore when the Japanese had invaded. The select, private world he had understood and cherished had reeled and fallen almost with the first bombardment, the first salvo of death which was unleashed by the confident Japs.

  Burgess’s ship had been sunk at her anchor without ever firing a shot. With some of the survivors he had tried to help in the frenzy and panic ashore, his service mind rebelling against the stupidity and fear of the authorities, the mounting confusion and the sure knowledge that defeat was unavoidable.

  His wife had already returned to England, and Burgess still realised that her departure and not the fire of battle was the beginning of his own destruction. With effort he could still picture her dried-up face and aristocratic mouth curved in anger and disdain, her contempt, and what Burgess now knew to be her only attempt at pity.

  At first it had been more of a game. Many of the officers had secret Chinese mistresses. It was a joke, something one did, nothing more than that. In Burgess’s case it might have ended just as quietly, but for his wife’s sudden arrival and discovery of the gi
rl her husband had made pregnant.

  Burgess had found her in the blackened and smoking hospital even as the Japanese troops had forced their way on the peninsula, and as the real horror of Singapore had begun. The birth of their child had been careless and hurried, with no one really caring about just one more life soon to be sacrificed with all the others. Burgess could not ever recall her saying a word to him. Only her eyes had spoken. He had seen the small, desperate hands pushing the wrapped baby towards him, like a dying lioness will try to find sanctuary for her cub even in her last moments. Then she had died, and Burgess had run with the child in his arms, run for the sea, the only thing he really understood.

  With a handful of other escapees he had watched the death pall rise above the harbour, like the token of an old way of life. For days the listing ship had dodged the bombers and the hunting ships, but only when Burgess had reached safety did he realise what he had done.

  The child, Lea, grew up almost as an orphan. From home to home, from school to school, while Burgess continued with his interrupted career in a navy which was fighting for its existence.

  Then, at the end of the war, when he was once more looking forward to a return of something firm and familiar, life changed again. He soon found that things were not the same. At first it only showed when officers were promoted above his head, or when appointments became fewer and less important. He had no wife to control his path, no woman’s voice to carry his case to the places where it counted in the clubs and at the admirals’ parties. He started to go down, but made the final mistake of trying to buy his security with drink.

  There had been one occasion when Lea had been brought to a shore establishment in Plymouth where Burgess had been serving as an instructor. She was eight years old, with the dark, vivacious beauty he had once seen in her mother. Looking back it now seemed likely that the ‘friend’ who had decided to introduce the child to Burgess’s world had done so with the cold deliberation of an executioner. The secret smiles, nods and unspoken comments filled him with an all-destroying anger. He still did not know if it was because of the cruel amusement, or because of Lea herself.

  After that he had given way completely. He had not intended to steal the money. It was just a loan from the mess funds, which he had intended to replace. The axe had fallen, and the court-martial had been merciless. Even the president of the court, an officer who had joined with Burgess, was not slow to ram home his bitter contempt. Burgess had broken the rules, betrayed the code. There was no reprieve.

  Since then it had been a long journey. Strangely enough, Lea had helped to save him in those early days. She depended upon him so completely, looked to him for everything. When there was no longer money for schooling, no work for a cashiered officer, Burgess had taken it upon himself to go back to the East, although he had no idea what he was looking for. Burma, Malaya, Siam, he had been to them all. Yet in spite of everything he seemed unable to find success.

  When the Korean war had started he had written to the Admiralty offering his services. Also during the Suez crisis, and even to the Americans when Viet Nam had exploded upon a war-weary world. His replies were hardly more than acknowledgements. Nobody wanted Jack Burgess.

  Outwardly he still continued to play a part, to act the role he still understood. Time washed away memory and recognition, and fewer faces came from the past to torment him. He built a fresh image, a new personality which he offered to the world around him. Deep in his soul he desired to hit back, to humiliate the very ones who had wronged him into behaving as he had. As the years passed he could see little beyond that, and as one barrier after another presented itself he became more desperate, more hopeless.

  Just one more try, he repeatedly told himself. There has to be a break somewhere. A lump sum of cash, and we’ll show the lot of them!

  When he had been offered the job in Payenhau he had seen it as the beginning of a breakthrough. The orientals always needed men like him, were hopeless organisers on their own. It was not much of a job, but it was a start, and he was in charge of his own boat!

  From now on he would fight his battles their way, no holds barred. What did a few lies count? What did it matter if someone else got hurt for a change?

  The glass rolled from his hand and his big frame slithered sideways against the wall. His mind was no longer fighting, and had become subdivided by the whisky so that he could only see faded, indistinct pictures which no longer menaced him.

  Maddox stood looking at him doubtfully. ‘Shall we leave him here, d’you think?’

  Malinski grinned. ‘He’s enjoying himself for once!’

  ‘All the same …’ Maddox’s blurred thoughts moved into sudden focus. ‘I think I’ll just pop down and tell his daughter.’

  Malinski coughed. ‘You do just that, Bob!’ He winked. ‘Wish you luck!’

  * * *

  Some of Maddox’s eagerness gave way to uncertainty on the darkened veranda of Burgess’s house, and he stood for several minutes to regain his breath and get his bearings. Shutters had been drawn across the big windows, but through the sun-dried slats he could see the girl sitting cross-legged on a rug, her hands spread across an open magazine as she studied it with obvious concentration. The shaded oil lamps seemed to show dark blue shadows on her long hair, and once more Maddox was struck by her beauty, her sense of enchantment.

  Suddenly she looked up, her calm giving way immediately to an alert watchfulness. She seemed to see right through the shutters, and Maddox knocked unnecessarily on the screen door, his voice awkward and loud. ‘Sorry to crash in on you, Miss Burgess, but——’ He broke off, feeling slightly foolish, and by the time he had opened the door the girl was already on her feet, her back to the wall as if expecting an attack.

  Maddox took off his cap and blinked in the lamplight. ‘I just wondered if I ought to help your father down the road.’ He saw her dark eyes watching his face. ‘He’s a bit merry, you know how it is!’

  She did not smile. ‘I suppose you’ve got him drunk again?’ She passed one hand across her forehead. ‘I will send the houseboys or Tsung for him as soon as you leave.’ It was curt, almost a dismissal.

  ‘I expect he finds it a bit lonely here.’ Maddox stood his ground. He had got so far, it was too early to admit defeat. He only wished he had not had so much to drink. It made him feel clumsy and juvenile in her presence, and the realisation of her contempt made him suddenly angry. ‘I didn’t have to come, you know!’

  She smiled, the brightness of her mouth completely transforming her face. ‘No, you did not have to come. I suppose you meant well.’ She gestured towards a chair. ‘Rest for a moment if you like. I promise not to attack you.’

  Maddox sank gratefully into the cane chair and peered at the open magazine. It was a tattered Esquire that he guessed Burgess had taken during his visit to the Hibiscus’s wardroom. The page was open at one of the giant, glossy advertisements, and from his chair Maddox could see well enough the usual scene, the impeccable women, the expensive car, the hint of riches and perfect contentment. All at once he was deeply moved. Several thoughts came crowding in on him simultaneously, each made more obvious by the old magazine’s unwitting comparison. Burgess’s false life, his self-deception built to cover his miserable failure to recognise the things which really mattered. And his daughter, this perfect, black-haired creature, dressed once more in faded jeans and coolie shirt, who was a prisoner of past convention, a girl prevented from enjoying all the things which others had denied her.

  With shock he realised she was staring at him with anger. ‘Always you stare, Lieutenant! I can guess what you are thinking!’

  ‘You’d be wrong, I can assure you.’ Maddox had never known himself to be so long on the defensive. ‘I am trying to be a friend, if you’ll let me?’

  She relaxed slightly, and as she lowered herself on to a bench seat, Maddox saw a strip of tanned skin reveal itself below her rumpled shirt. He tore his eyes away and said in a strained voice, ‘I understand how you mu
st feel here, it can’t be much fun.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘It is sufficient. We were managing before your ship came, you know. It must not be allowed to spoil things for us.’

  Maddox was not quite sure what she implied, but said quickly: ‘We can do a lot of good for these people, your friends. We don’t spoil everything we touch, as some people seem to think!’

  ‘I would like to believe that. But from what I have seen I think your hopes are soon to be dashed. There is rarely aid given freely, without strings. Always there is a catch, a bargain. And always the weak must get the unfair side to that bargain.’

  Maddox said jokingly, ‘Look at me, do I look like an exploiter of the poor?’

  She jumped up again and dashed a piece of hair from her eyes. ‘You see? You are making fun of me already!’

  ‘Not really, believe me. It’s just that I hate to see you like this, cut off from everything you deserve.’

  She stared at him in surprise. ‘You meant that! Just for an instant you were being sincere!’

  Maddox grinned uncomfortably. ‘It does happen. And believe me, I do apologise about your father. It was my fault. We had this party, and it seemed to misfire somewhere.’

  ‘I see.’ She studied him gravely. ‘Would you like some tea?’ As Maddox started to rise she said: ‘It’s no trouble. I was just making some.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Maddox crossed his legs to control the excitement which was coursing through his body. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  She walked through a curtain saying as she went, ‘Keep talking, I can hear you quite well here.’

  He looked round at the long, shadowed room. ‘There are some nice pieces of carving here.’

  Immediately her head appeared round the curtain, her eyes watchful as before. ‘Let me see if you are mocking me!’

  Maddox stared from her to the small, delicate carvings with pleasant surprise. Quite unwittingly he had stumbled on her weakness. ‘Did you do these?’