Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  Gunnar nodded gently. ‘He has had a lot to bear.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘Did you know that he was dismissed from the navy in disgrace?’

  Gunnar saw her mouth tremble. ‘Yes, I knew.’

  She reached up impulsively and pressed his hand. ‘And yet you said nothing. You are a good man. I was so wrong about you that I am ashamed.’

  ‘I am the one who should be ashamed, Lea. But I am grateful for one thing only. Of meeting you.’

  She shook her head violently so that her hair fell across his legs. ‘You must not say that! Not because you think you have to!’

  Gunnar touched her hair and answered, ‘You know that’s not the reason.’ Cautiously he added, ‘Your father cannot expect you to stay here for ever.’

  ‘I would rather do that than see him shamed again in another country.’

  Gunnar gripped her shoulder and eased her gently against his leg. ‘He must think the world of you.’

  She smiled sadly. ‘I wonder. In his eyes over the years 1 have come to represent his downfall, the one indiscretion which ruined his life!’

  ‘Would you leave here if I asked you?’ He tightened his grip and knew he was hurting her.

  She looked down at his fingers biting into her smooth skin and said quietly: ‘I would do anything for you. I do not understand my own feelings, but I know what they mean towards you.’

  Gunnar dropped on to his knees beside her, his eyes searching her face. ‘But I’ve told you nothing of myself, of my own life?’

  ‘I know a lot about you, Captain. The rest will find its own way.’

  Gunnar felt as if he was spinning round in tight circles. ‘You must not call me “captain”. It’s indecent!’

  She touched his mouth with her fingers, her eyes moving across his face as if to search out the tension and destroy it. ‘But you are my captain now!’

  How long they sat together Gunnar could not remember, and the tea, untouched, grew cold on the table. Outside, the sky seemed paler and more angry, and Gunnar vaguely remembered the circling gulls above the village. Probably a storm blowing up. But it could keep. They both looked towards the window as a siren hooted impatiently in the distance. He felt her stiffen.

  ‘It’s my father coming back with Osprey,’ she said quickly.

  Gunnar pressed her close, conscious of the pounding of his heart which matched hers with its eagerness. ‘I must see you again soon.’ He looked into her face, aware of the complications and the barriers which Payenhau demanded of him.

  ‘Soon. Very soon.’ She was trembling, and added in a small voice: ‘I trust you. I must trust you.’

  He held her a while longer, feeling the power of love coursing through her, laying bare her innermost thoughts in a way he had never known before. He knew what she meant by trust. It was something real. A thing which nothing must spoil.

  He heard the fishing boat squeak against the jetty and said urgently: ‘The sandspit by the wrecked ship. Can you get there tonight? Tomorrow might be too late. There might be no tomorrow.’

  She nodded and turned her face away. ‘After sunset. It will be safe there.’

  As Gunnar strode into the hot wind which stirred the dust in the square he felt her watching him.

  When he reached the pier he saw Regan supervising a party of seamen in doubling the mooring wires. He said in his harsh voice: ‘Storm warning, Captain. But we should be snug enough in here.’

  Gunnar stepped aboard the ship, which suddenly seemed safe and friendly. He saw Maddox’s broad shoulders disappearing around the bridge and knew he was deliberately avoiding him.

  In the wardroom Kroner untwined his long legs and held out a despatch flimsy. ‘Just decoded this one, sir.’ He could hardly contain the excitement in his voice. ‘Sailing orders!’

  Gunnar snatched the paper and read it twice, his eyes misty as each word made itself felt.

  Hibiscus would sail for Taiwan in one week. She would be replaced in two weeks’ time by the destroyer John Dundas, which would assume the duty until plans for a new base were completed.

  Kroner said brightly: ‘That means we’ll be paying off, sir. Back to home and beauty!’

  Gunnar did not hear. ‘This is confidential. But yes, I guess that is what it means.’

  It also meant that Payenhau would be without immediate surface support for a complete week. He thought of the girl waiting back in the village and knew that it meant more than that.

  He walked blindly to his cabin and sat for several minutes on the edge of his bunk and tried to compose his thoughts. Jago would do nothing, he had complete faith in his own arrangements. He might be right. But then again … Gunnar rang the bell at his side and heard a door slam in the passageway.

  His yeoman, Bella, stood waiting in the doorway. ‘Sir?’ He looked ten years older, and his dark face was blotchy from lack of sleep. Gunnar did not notice and said quickly: ‘I want you to type out some orders for Commander Burgess of the Osprey. When I have signed them I want you to take them to him yourself, and see that he reads them.’

  Gunnar’s mind began to recover from its initial shock. If Burgess could be sent to Taiwan on some pretext or other, he could carry a full report to the commander-in-chief. It would be natural and could not possibly offend Jago, who might not even hear of it. It was so simple that Gunnar almost laughed aloud. It would also mean that he and his daughter would be clear of Payenhau if the eruption came. Suddenly he was quite sure that it would come.

  Anyway, tied as he was by the admiral’s over-all strategy and his own radio silence, there was no other way. It would be the one last card. He couldn’t explain his uneasiness any longer, but he knew now that the danger was there.

  * * *

  Bella drew heavily on his cigarette and listened to the wind sighing against the hull of the moored fishing boat Osprey. It was snug in the small forward cabin, and he watched the big, bearded Englishman as he scrutinised the two typed sheets which Gunnar had signed only two hours before.

  He had made his way to Burgess’s house by a roundabout route, calling first at the wrecked freighter with a parcel of food for Pirelli. He had been shocked by the change which had come over the man. Dirty, unshaven, he had become a scarecrow shadow of his former self, and there was a kind of wildness which made Bella long to get away.

  Pirelli, on the other hand, seemed unwilling to allow Bella’s departure, even though every minute meant danger of discovery. He had rambled on about trivial things concerning the ship, the crew and day-to-day routine. All his outer belligerence seemed to have vanished, and had left in its place a pathetic hunger for the only world he understood.

  Bella had told him about Gunnar’s intention of sending the Osprey to Taiwan, more to fill in time than for any real information value. Pirelli had grasped it with something of his old eagerness. ‘I know that boat, Mike.’ His eyes flashed in the half light. ‘I can stow away in her. Yes, I could do just that!’ His lip curled in a sneer. ‘It’s no use waitin’ for your Chink friends to get me off. They’re goddamn useless!’

  Bella had turned away in case Pirelli had seen the sudden guilt on his face. He had been right. The Chinese captain had met him on more than one occasion. That part had been easy, as Bella was one of the few people from the ship who had regular access to the shore with messages and so forth. Once the Chinese captain had vanished for several days with a vague promise that when he returned he would be bringing the girl with him. Now it was urgent. If she arrived after Hibiscus had sailed, he would never see her again, and what was worse, Peach might end up in the prison camp, isolated from her family and the prey of anyone who cared to adopt her. But at last he had something to tell the big Chinese sailor. With his new-found knowledge he could force an issue one way or the other. If he told the man that Hibiscus was sailing finally for Taiwan he would realise that Bella could no longer supply him with information. His quick mind had already plotted what he was going to say when he met him again. It would be easy to bring forwar
d the Hibiscus’s sailing date by a few days for his benefit. Then by promising to arrange a similar information service through the yeoman on the relieving destroyer, he might get things speeded up. Anyway, it was worth trying. As things stood, he could be no worse off.

  Burgess folded the message and asked, ‘Any idea what he wants me to take?’

  Bella shrugged indifferently. ‘Just a despatch or something.’

  ‘It could be important.’ Burgess’s mind was obviously working on a different tack. ‘It could make all the difference.’

  Outside, the wind plucked more urgently at the stout hull, and Bella could feel the normally quiet waters surging around the piles of the jetty. ‘Is it going to be rough, do you think?’

  ‘We get a lot of storms here. They soon pass over. We’re pretty sheltered in this anchorage.’ Burgess seemed impatient, unwilling to prolong the conversation as Bella might have expected. Well, he thought, that suits me. It’ll give me more time before dark.

  Burgess smiled quickly as the yeoman stood up and jammed on his cap. He could hardly disguise his eagerness to guide him over the side, and once when he looked back Bella saw the Englishman already walking into the village, his head bowed against the rising wind.

  Bella trudged through the swirling dust, his hands deep in his pockets as he prepared what he was going to say. He had one hundred dollars which he had carefully saved in Hong Kong, and he guessed it would help to smooth the paths of diplomacy which lay ahead. In his locker he had another roll, as well as the expensive length of red silk which he had been hoarding for Peach.

  He thought momentarily of Pirelli. It would all work out very well after all. Pirelli would be away at last, and from then on he would be on his own. Pirelli asked all the time about the ship, yet it was strange how his name hardly ever cropped up now. It was as if he had died with Grout and the others. It might have been better if he had, Bella thought grimly. The Hibiscus’s sailors had enough of their own worries. In the navy you soon forgot broken friendships and old faces. Just as you soon cleared your memory of the dead.

  He shielded his face from the miniature sandstorm and squinted along the coast road. It was empty but for a parked jeep, its occupants sheltering miserably beneath the canvas hood, and with a final glance he turned sharp left and made his way up the hill towards the meeting place.

  * * *

  Robert Maddox lifted his head to listen to the muffled twitter of the bosun’s whistle. Evening colours, but instead of the usual grand sunset it was already dark and subdued, so that in the wardroom the messboys had switched on the lights, and from the quaking movement of the deck the ship could have been at sea.

  Maddox toyed with his ballpoint and stared again at the blank sheet of notepaper which he had balanced across a magazine on his lap. He still did not really believe what he was doing. He tried to tell himself that it was an escape, an answer to the shame he had endured because of the girl, Lea Burgess. Every man needed an escape. Like the handsome Kroner, who kept a full-length photograph of a stunning girl in a bikini beside his bunk. Only a very close inspection showed that the girl was a part of an advertisement for camping equipment which he had filched from somewhere or other. Yet Kroner doted on that picture, and stared at it with unfailing fascination. It was his sea anchor, his brake.

  Maddox lifted his eyes slightly to look at Regan who was sitting at the table his narrow head lowered over some new plan of gunnery mechanism. He was always studying his trade. Some day he might be a senior officer with a couple of stars on his collar instead of a tarnished bar. Heaven help his poor subordinates, Maddox thought savagely.

  He looked down again at the paper. It was still there in his untidy handwriting … Dear Mary. How in God’s name could he continue? Even if she forgave him, which was most unlikely, did he really want her?

  He moved his mind away from the empty page and thought of Gunnar. The captain had called him to his cabin and told him about the despatch. Sailing orders, the magic words. Gunnar had been correct and cool, gave no hint of the tension between them. Gunnar would make him eat dirt when they touched Taiwan, he thought grimly. His angry outburst in defence of Pip, his clumsy handling of the tow, and all the other things he had omitted to do paraded across his troubled thoughts like spectres. On the other hand, Gunnar would find little praise for his own doings. The realisation gave him no comfort, however.

  At that moment Pip Maddox entered the doorway, his khakis dripping with spray, and wiping the moisture from his unruly hair. ‘Colours completed, sir.’ He grinned at his brother’s gloomy face. ‘You should see the water, quite big waves in the anchorage!’

  Behind the pantry hatch they could hear the clatter of dishes as Slattery and his mates got ready for the last meal of the day. Pip sniffed hopefully. ‘What’s for chow?’

  Regan said without looking up, ‘Goddamn tinned ham again, I expect!’

  Pip threw himself into a chair and stretched luxuriously. ‘I pulled down my first flag tonight! It was quite a ceremony.’

  The others looked at him with surprise, but he grinned and added: ‘There was I, booted and spurred, saluting at the correct angle, and doing it by the book. And what happened? Chief Tasker is moaning because his rheumatism is playing him up, and the quartermaster was holding a cigar behind his rump while the flag was actually dipping!’

  Regan grimaced. ‘What, no mighty throng paying homage?’

  Pip scowled. ‘Only a couple of ancient Chinks who were gathering scraps from our galley chute!’ He smiled uncertainly at his brother. ‘I did see the Burgess girl, however.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘What a dish!’

  Malinski said, ‘Where was she going?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘I dunno. But the skipper bounced ashore a few minutes later, so I guess he’s gone a-courting!’

  Maddox half rose from his chair. ‘The captain? Jesus, Pip, you should have told me!’

  ‘Yeh, you must tell the exec when you’re O.O.D., Pip!’ Regan grinned with obvious pleasure. ‘He likes to know these things!’

  Pip looked at his brother uncomfortably. ‘Sorry, Bob, but he did say it was okay. Said he didn’t want to bother anyone.’

  Regan nodded sagely. ‘Oh sure, I can imagine!’

  Maddox glared at his brother and then checked himself as Kroner lounged into the wardroom his despatch folder under his arm. He looked round, as if sniffing out the possible dangers, and drawled: ‘Broadcast from Hong Kong. Fresh gale blowing up from the south-east. Looks nasty.’

  Malinski remarked slowly, ‘It’s gone round then?’

  ‘Sure has. It was due west a few hours ago.’ Kroner sighed. ‘All we need is a storm just as we sail for home!’

  Maddox buried his face in his letter-writing. It can blow to hell for all I care, he thought savagely. Just let me get out of here!

  So the captain had gone ashore after the girl. She would tell him what his exec had tried to do. If her father had not come in at that moment Maddox could not imagine what might have happened. It made him sweat just to remember her tear-stained face and what he himself must have looked like. It was little removed from attempted rape. No better than Pirelli! He swallowed hard. It was no use trying to believe that she wanted him to do it. If he had been in a different mood, with less drink under his belt, it might have been different. But only might have been. You could never be absolutely sure. With something like a groan he tried again … Dear Mary … Then after a few more minutes he began to write.

  * * *

  In the fast-fading light the waters of the anchorage surged angrily in a mass of broken whitecaps. The heavy, humid breath of the wind pushed at it and held back the receding tide, so that instead of sliding gently from the long sandspit it tossed and broke across the wrecked ship’s counter and rattled the rusty plates with thrown pebbles as if to mock its dishonour.

  The two lines of footmarks in the sand met and mingled as Gunnar reached the girl who was waiting in the lee of the towering hulk. Whipped by the wind, her hair floated
like a black banner, and in the strange light from the angry water her eyes looked huge and bright.

  Gunnar took her arm and called above the hiss of spray and sand: ‘We must get under cover! I don’t want you blown away!’

  They found the sad, frayed ladder which Pirelli and Bella had already used, and after a moment’s hesitation Gunnar led the way up and over the ship’s buckled rail. In the dancing shadows the ship had regained some of its old dignity, and the scars and fractured plates merged together as a whole.

  Gunnar took off his jacket and spread it on the canting boat-deck beside the chewed stack, and with a quick laugh the girl sat down, her hands pushing the rebellious hair across her shoulders, her lips parted and happy.

  It was strangely quiet on the sheltered deck, and even the sea noises seemed far away.

  He lowered himself to her side, and with a sudden, impetuous movement she turned to face him and was in his arms. He felt her face pressing into his chest and heard her say: ‘Let me keep it like this. Shut out everything else. I feel safe here, with you!’

  Gently he stroked her neck and shoulder and said quietly, ‘My ship is leaving in a few days.’ He waited, conscious of her stillness, as if she had stopped breathing. ‘I had to tell you, although it is supposed to be a secret.’

  Far away, ‘I shall never see you again.’

  The words cut at his heart, so that he said with sudden fierceness : ‘You must never say that! I can tell you now. I love you!’

  She lifted her chin, her eyes shining in the darkness. ‘Where will you go? What will happen?’

  He looked over the rail at the maddened whitecaps. ‘Taiwan for a bit, then maybe Pearl Harbour. I’m not sure. But I’m not going back to the States. Not yet, if I can help it.’