Queen's Pawn

by Victor Canning

  Surprised at the strangeness of his own voice he said, was forced to say to beat back the iciness that surrounded him, ‘Captain, when I go down to the foredeck I want you to come with me.’

  He could have spoken to the dead. Not a head turned his way. There was not the slightest movement of acknowledgement.

  It was with gratitude that he suddenly heard the walkie-talkie in the Captain’s pocket announce, ‘We’re at the Specie Room now, sir, and loading.’

  The Captain lifted the instrument and said, ‘Very good.’ Then he moved across to Raikes, stood in front of him, a head shorter almost, solid, his eyes almost hidden as they narrowed in contempt, and said, ‘ There’s no need for you to stay on my bridge any longer. We’ll go down to One Deck.’ He looked back at the First Officer. ‘Take over, Mr Dormer.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Keep her as she is.’

  Raikes, anger now stirring under his control despite all his power to contain it, said, ‘There’s still the second signal from the wing. Two Very lights when the bullion is on deck.’

  Without a word the Captain held out his hand. Raikes put the pistol and two cartridges in it. The Captain moved back to the Third Officer.

  ‘When the first of the bullion comes out on deck, fire two shots from the port wing.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Captain came back, passing Raikes. As he reached the bridge door he said, without looking back, ‘ Your signals will be fired.’

  Raikes followed the Captain from the bridge. They went out through the Officers’ Quarters to the main stairway outside the 736 Room, and then down to One Deck. There were one or two passengers about still and they looked curiously at Raikes and the Captain as they passed.

  On One Deck the lift door was open and three seamen were already unloading wooden bullion boxes under the supervision of the Bosun’s Mate of the Watch. Raikes and the Captain went by them without a word. As they moved across to the starboard side to pass through the crew’s quarters to the foredeck exit, the walkie-talkie in the Captain’s hand broke into life.

  ‘Second Officer here, sir. The first boxes are on the foredeck now, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The Captain answered not breaking his walk. Behind him Raikes could have been non-existent. They turned down the alleyway, past the Stewardesses’ Mess and Recreation Room and out through the iron door on to the foredeck. As they did so the wind came full into their faces and there was a faint lick of passing rain with it. Behind them from the port bridge wing a green Very signal flared in the sky and then another. A voice inside Raikes said coldly. It’s going as it should, as it must. Go with it. Don’t think of people except as bulk and movement. Don’t be touched by the solid, rejecting, condemning figure ahead. This is not you, not Raikes, moving and commanding here. It is a man being forced as much as any of these other men. In a few hours you will be free, and alone in the only kind of isolation you understand.

  On One Deck Lido Belle saw the two green flares hang lurid against the dark sky. There was nothing in her now of anxiety or of relief. It was going as he had said it would. That was his genius. You planned and the plan became fact. You took people and you used them. That, maybe, was his only real strength. That he knew how to capture and hold people and make them his puppets. Could there ever be any true tenderness in him, any core of softness that would feed and strengthen love … love for someone else … for her? Maybe, yes, now; now that this was all moving smoothly to an end. Maybe after this the growth would stir and spring fast to blossom.… Oh, God, she hoped so. She hoped so.

  She eased her large bag to the rail, snapped it open and one by one dropped the canisters over the side. She went inside from the Lido and made her way up to the Upper Deck and forward to the Look-Out Room.

  She had no need to pull aside a blind from one of the windows. Two of the blinds were up and a small knot of passengers was gathered round, looking out at the foredeck. She saw him at once, tall, hatted, and the overcoat swinging a little loose in the wind, just as the helicopter came swinging in over the bows, the roar of engine and main rotor breaking through into the room. She saw seamen coming out, crabbed and bowed, with the weight of bullion boxes, and three officers, one of them short, with four rings on his jacket cuffs who she knew was the Captain.

  Someone said, ‘What’s it all about? What’s happening?’

  ‘Some emergency I suppose. Or perhaps it’s a publicity stunt.’

  ‘At this time of night—and no cameras? What do you think, barman?’

  And the barman who had come to the window looked and said, ‘Dunno. Whatever it is it’s all in order. That’s the Captain and the Security Petty Officer.’

  ‘Who’s the civilian? What are those boxes, anyway?’

  She could have told them. But looking out she suddenly knew that she couldn’t stay even to watch. He was out there, a thousand miles remote from her in his mind at this moment, and when he was lifted off the thousand she feared would stretch to two, to three thousand, to infinity. He would be lifted off and she would never see him again. And, because the conviction was now so strong in her, she knew she could not wait to see that moment come. It was better to go away and force herself to a hopeless hope rather than have for ever a picture of his passing from the lit deck, from her life, up into the blackness of the clouds.

  She moved away from the group of people and went to her cabin.

  The bullion boxes were being stacked around the housing of the telescopic mast, now withdrawn, forward of the capstans and the two raised anchor chain runs. The noise from the helicopter was deafening as it hovered steadily above. Looking up Raikes saw the side hatch door open and then the arm of the external hoist on the helicopter’s roof swing out and the cable drop a few feet. A man, unknown to him, stood in the hatch-opening and dropped a net to the deck and the hoist cable began to run down smoothly; snaking gently in the swing of helicopter and the wind. As it came down Raikes saw Berners’s face move palely into sight in the hatchway. Berners saw him and he saw Berners but they made no signal to one another.

  Raikes said to the Captain at his side, ‘Not more than ten double boxes, or the equivalent, in each net.’

  Without acknowledging him the Captain looked at the Second Officer and nodded, to him when he saw that the man had heard Raikes.

  ‘Ten double boxes in each net, men. And watch that cable.’

  The net was spread, the boxes loaded and the sides of the net drawn up and caught on the hook at the end of the cable. Raikes looked up, raised a hand, and the cable went taut, took the strain and the net rose swinging up from the deck. The down draught from the main rotor as it speeded up blew a seaman’s hat across the deck, sending it rolling in white-topped cartwheels.

  Upon the bridge the First Officer, Mr Dormer, looked down at the group on the deck, his eyes singling out Raikes and he thought, Why don’t they just jump him, the bastard?

  Someone looked out through the Look-Out Room window said, ‘Those boxes are bullion, I swear. You think this is a hold-up?’

  ‘What, with the Captain and other officers out there? Don’t be an ass.’

  ‘But that other chap, the civvy—he’s got a scarf round his mouth.’

  ‘Toothache.’

  ‘No markings on that chopper …’

  Level with the hatch door the net was swung inwards by the turn of the hoist arm and Raikes saw Berners and the other man grab it, swing it for momentum and then draw it in. Almost immediately another net was dropped free to the deck and the seamen began to load. A few moments later the cable snaked down towards the deck.

  As it went up loaded with boxes, Raikes looked at his watch. They were running slightly ahead of the best time he had hoped for and nearly all the boxes were out on the deck.

  Up in the wheelhouse, the bridge boy had moved to the centre window on the port side and was staring out, one hand idly holding a rag against the glass. The helicopter was almost level with him sixty yards away. He could see the pilo
t at the controls and the two men handling the net. He was a bright boy and it puzzled him to try and make out who was handling the operation of the hoist mechanism. As the cable went down for the third time, he saw that the two men in the main cabin were busy hauling farther inboard the second net with its load, dumping out boxes and making room for the third load to come up. They weren’t doing anything about the cable, so the pilot must be operating it for them. Blimey, fancy sitting up there like a bloody buzzing mosquito, keeping her steady over the bows and having to watch that cable, too. A rain squall pock-marked the windows briefly. Without being ordered the boy moved and switched on the wipers and the scene cleared below.

  Down in Belle’s cabin, the steward had long ago been in and turned down her bed. Her nightdress lay across it. It was flame coloured silk, a baby-doll affair with brief pants to match, bought for the trip. Raikes had never seen it.

  She began to undress and when she was naked she stood back from the dressing table mirror and looked at herself. She wasn’t showing yet … or was she? Perhaps a little; but in a way that did something for her. It was like that in the early stages. Just gave you that something extra, they said. Well, if anyone needed something extra to get what they wanted, she did. Something extra not around the body, but inside … something that would be there to hold him when bed wouldn’t. She put her hand over her navel and wondered when it would begin to kick. Ages yet. He’d said he’d wanted her to keep it. That must mean something. She reached out for her night dress and pants. Perhaps the colour was a bit tarty, but hell, wasn’t that what men liked in bed?

  In the helicopter Berners was sweating. He had the unobtrusive strength of small-framed, wiry men, but humping the heavy boxes just far enough to make room for others, stacking a few here and there was taking it out of him and the other man. Perspiration fogged his eyes as it trickled from his eyebrows. And the noise was deafening. The rain was thickening up now, coming in longer squalls. The deck below was smooth, glistening putty.

  The fourth and final net was coming up and he knew without looking at his watch that they were doing well for time. An hour back and then no dawdling. By six in the morning he would be motoring well south, through Nantes and on to Limoges.… He began to think of a catalogue illustration he had seen of a thirteenth century Limoges enamelled copper candlestick. Beautiful … So many beautiful things he would like to have … would have … Perhaps he would never go back to England. Well … just to clear up and sell up maybe. Not like Raikes. England was for him. Rivers and all that fishing and the hordes of officials riding your back more and more. He looked down, past the upcoming last net at Raikes. Through all the operation he had stood there, alongside the Captain, the Captain his hands half in his jacket pockets, rain meaning nothing to him as it wreathed the deck run now and then; Raikes, raising his hand, each time they were ready to haul … and everything going like clockwork, matching the clockwork of their minds, his and Raikes’ … and people so easy to manage, to gull and rob, never expecting a wrong until it was done and past and then cursing or wondering how they could ever have been taken in.

  The net was level with the opening and the hoist arm swung it in. The man at his side, as they hauled, panted, ‘Thank Christ for that. I wasn’t built for hard work.’

  Quickly they unloaded four boxes from the net and then between them hauled the partly loaded net clear of the opening.

  ‘That’ll do,’ said the man. ‘Unship the cable and put the sling on the hook and we’ll send it down for him. Mr. Him, eh? Like you. No names, no pack drills.’

  Berners turned from him and bent over the collapsed net to free the hook. As he did so, the man behind him reached to a cabin support and snapped free the working length of Berners’ harness. Berners heard the sound and glanced round. The man was holding an automatic a foot from his eyes.

  He said, ‘Sorry, chum, but orders is orders.’

  There was no time for Berners to make any move; only a flash of bitter irony in his mind as he acknowledged the end … fitting, a falling from a dream of so much beauty to be possessed to crash on the deck at Raikes’ feet.

  The man fired and the bullet smashed into Berners’ temple. The force of the blow took his body backwards, half out of the helicopter. The man raised a foot and pushed the body over the side, holding the edge of the hatchway as he watched it. Berners sailed down, arms and legs widespread, and crashed across the end of the port anchor chain mounting and hung there, back broken, the pulped face turned up to the little group of seamen four feet away, the working length of the safety harness swinging gently, just brushing the deck. Above, the helicopter lifted fast, filling the night with noise and began to crab away swiftly southwards.

  Coldness went, but not control. Understanding, swift, needing no sequence of thought to stimulate the mind, flooded like a great warmth through him. For a moment there was deep pity, that even before the surprise, and then pity and surprise were gone, and the facts, the altered shape of situation and attendant movements, formed smoothly in his brain as he saw the pulped face, the broken marionette stir of the body and the loose swing of the body strap. Before anyone else had moved, before even a man had mouthed any cry of shock or horror, he had pulled out his automatic and was running, back across the deck to the entry to One Deck.

  He ran through the alleyway leading to the crew’s quarters and then turned sharp to the right along a small passage-way and came out, tugging off his overcoat, on to the stairway landing at the head of Number One lift. The door was open still but no one attended it. He ran down the stairs to Two Deck and as he went he dropped his hat and coat over the blue handrail for them to fall clear to the bottom of the stairway on Six Deck. A man running in a hat and coat would be noticed; He pulled the scarf from his face and put it in his pocket with his automatic as he turned off the landing on Two Deck and dropped at once to a slow walking pace.

  Now he was a passenger, any passenger going late to bed. Unhurried, thinking ahead calmly, he walked aft to the Midships Lobby and then took the midships stairway down to Four Deck. There was no question in his mind of where he was going. For the moment he had to be out of sight, have a few hours’ sanctuary and only one person could give him that. On Four Deck he left the stairway and walked forward along the port alleyway past the cabins, right forward until the alleyway ended and then he turned left down the short angle of corridor to the facing door of Belle’s cabin.

  It was then, only after he had turned off the long cabin run down the port side into this small branch which held the doors to two cabins only, 4002 and 4004, which was Belle’s, that some of the pressure went from him. For a moment or two, isolated here, Belle waiting for him only a few feet away, the time now well past one o’clock and no one much about, and certainly no one likely to turn the corner and see him, he could pull himself up, take the curb off primitive desire to run and run blindly instead of forcing himself to a slow, late promenading passenger walk. He leant against the wall and ran a hand over his face and was surprised to find that he had been sweating heavily. What now? Berners had been shot and pushed out of the helicopter. He himself had heard, the sound of the shot over the rattle of helicopter noises, heard it and seen Berners’s smashed-in face. He and Berners had been betrayed, and that was the one contingency they had never allowed for in their plans. He and Berners, he thought bitterly … the one thing which had never troubled them. They had been gulled as hopelessly and completely as any of their victims in the past. Out there on the foredeck he had panicked and run. A controlled panic, but desperate, bridled flight it had been, bringing him straight to this point, straight to the only immediate sanctuary that offered. Now, immediate crisis ebbing, he asked himself whether he had the right to move the few feet ahead, open the door and involve Belle? Long ago he had involved her and she had played her part. Had he the right to involve her again—and this time offer nothing but moment to moment expediency against danger? He didn’t have to ask her the question, because he knew what her answer would
be. She loved him and there was nothing she would refuse him. But tonight, up on the bridge he had for the first time seen something of his true self, and seen more of himself as others saw him, and the impression was hard on him that maybe, for all his self-sufficiency and strength, his time was running out, that total rejection lay close to him. And the answer to it in his present state of mind seemed brutally simple. Not only men, but the gods were turned against him. Men had been able to do little against his arrogance, but the gods had turned against him—first with that small red ballpoint mark and now with Mandel’s unexpected treachery—in order to humiliate and reduce him. They had let him stand on the verge of all he longed for and then had pulled him back. Now they still beset him, demanding perhaps some real form of contrition, some genuine penance from him which would be absolute and all absolving. He still had the resources of his own wit and strength and cunning to carry him out of this moving, sea-borne trap, but none of these would override the wrecking finger of the gods if they were still against him. So, before he went in to Belle, he knew—the instinct streaming through him from his mother, from the long line of ancestral superstitions—that he had to make his gift to the gods if in return he wished for their protection. And the gift could never be recalled, or shabbily snatched back. Made, it was made for ever. And, the thought flowing unbidden, as though some unseen presence in this gloomy cabin run dictated the terms, he knew what the gift must be. The woman in there carried his child, the wanted loin-springer. It must open its eyes to January snows and frosts, see the yeast of rain clouds over the Taw valley, hear the rush on still nights of the waters where spent salmon and sea trout turned from the redds, they too ancestor-shot, the blood lines from moorland, narrow, shallowed waters to salt-sharp estuary floods and still, green-cool, food-rich Atlantic depths ensured, and that ensurement their only purpose. The child he wanted, but not her. But the gift must be made and he made it, vowed it to them. Let him but get safely off this ship and he would take her, make her his wife, love her with all the willingness there was in him to love, and bring her as mistress, wife and mother to Alverton Manor and guard and protect her there as though she had been the woman of his own free choosing and desire. This he would do and, as the vow was made, he moved forward to meet her.