Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  And what did it matter anyway? Of course Sir Leon would back both of us, because all he had ever wanted was the painting. He did not care who had stolen it, only that it came to him.

  I had said nothing for a few seconds. “My lord?” Sir Leon prompted me.

  “How did these people communicate with you?” I asked.

  He paused, evidently finding the question irrelevant. “By letter. It was delivered by messenger yesterday.”

  “Have you given it to the police?”

  “I don’t intend to involve the police.”

  “Damned if I’m going to be involved then. Those people have tried to kill me twice, and if you think I’ll wander into their trap just to get you a pretty picture, you’re wrong.”

  “I beg you –” Sir Leon began.

  “Call Harry Abbott.” I was tired, and I really didn’t care any more. I hung up the phone before he could say another word.

  “What was all that about?” Charlie asked.

  I told him. It was all so clear to me. If Elizabeth’s plans went well today she would receive a ransom of four million pounds. She would also receive the gift of my death, which would make her the beneficial owner of a Van Gogh. Sir Leon, if he wanted to hang that painting in his gallery, would be forced to negotiate a price with her, and I was damned sure the price would be greater than twenty million. Sir Leon would doubtless claim that I had given him the painting, but he had nothing on paper and Sir Oliver Bulstrode would chop him into shreds. In brief, Elizabeth was about to become a very rich woman. She could buy Stowey back and start an equestrian centre that would dazzle the world. She doubtless imagined Royalty coming to her stables and she foresaw winters in warm palaces and summers on the languorous beaches of the very rich.

  And to make all that happen, to give my sister the fulfilment of all her dreams, I only had to deliver the ransom. “Don’t do it,” Charlie said earnestly.

  “You heard me,” I said. “I told him to call Harry.” Except, I thought, my one last chance of revenging Jennifer was to co-operate with Sir Leon.

  But I was not the best instrument of justice. Harry Abbott was, and if Sir Leon wouldn’t tell the police that the ransom was being paid, then I would. “Can I use the phone, Charlie?”

  “Help yourself.”

  The phone rang a half-second before I picked it up. It was Harry Abbott himself. “I was about to phone you,” I said.

  “Don’t do a thing, Johnny.” He sounded excited. “I’m coming to get you.”

  “What for?”

  “Why do you bloody think? We’re off and running, of course. Buzzacott just phoned me. I’ve got a police chopper…”

  “Harry!” I almost shouted his name to calm him down. “For Christ’s sake. They want to kill me!”

  “Of course they want to kill you. Just stay there, Johnny, I’m coming to get you.” He slammed the phone down.

  “Bloody hell,” I said to Charlie, “Harry’s bought the idea. They want me to pay the ransom!” I felt a chill crawl up my back.

  Charlie pointed at me. “Don’t do it, Johnny. Don’t do it! They’ll push you up shit creek without a paddle!”

  “I know.” But I’d also made a promise to a girl I wanted to marry, so perhaps the creek had to be risked and a paddle improvised. For revenge.

  Harry arrived in a police helicopter. The thing thwacked across Salcombe harbour, reared up to flatten Charlie’s unmown grass, then settled down close to his kids’ sandpit. Harry jumped out and ran crouching across to the house. He was full of his own importance; they’d given him a chopper all of his own, and he felt like a policeman in a TV programme. “Are you ready?” he shouted at me.

  “No, I’m bloody well not ready. Come in.”

  He was clearly reluctant. Things were at last moving, and the villains were being forced to show their hand, and I was being obstreperous. But Harry needed me, so he had to come into Charlie’s kitchen where the double glazing cut down the thumping noise of the helicopter’s engine.

  “So tell me what they want me to do,” I said.

  Harry glanced at Charlie, then realised that I would insist on Charlie listening anyway. “We don’t know yet.”

  “Oh, terrific!” I said. “You mean we’re skidding about the sky like a blue-arsed fly and we don’t know why?”

  “We have to go to Exeter. There’s a plane waiting there to take us to Guernsey. We meet Sir Leon at St Peter Port and wait at the outdoors café at the Victoria Marina. That’s all we know.”

  “Don’t go,” Charlie said to me.

  “Piss off, Charlie.” Harry had known Charlie a long time.

  “Who’s we?” I asked.

  “Just you, really,” Harry admitted. “The bastards insist they’ll only deal with you, but I’ve got a back-up team arranged.” To listen to him you’d have thought the SAS were on alert, but I suspected the ‘back-up team’ was an overweight squad of Harry’s usual dipsomaniacs.

  “They’ve already tried to kill Johnny twice,” Charlie protested.

  “I know that,” Harry said impatiently, “and of course it’s a trap. A demented four year old would know it’s a trap, but if you go slowly, Johnny, we’ll be with you all the way. You don’t have to go the whole way, not if you think it’s dangerous. We’ll be a half-step behind you, but if you lose us, then get the hell out of it. And if I think it’s becoming too risky, I’ll stop everything. The object of the exercise isn’t to give them the money, but to spot them, and once we’ve done that you can leave the rest to me.”

  “Don’t do it,” Charlie said to me. “It’s only a bloody picture of some rotten flowers.”

  The helicopter whined and pulsed beyond the window and Charlie’s dogs, safely kennelled, whined back. Harry waited for my decision and, when none came, tried a last appeal. “They’re showing themselves, Johnny. If we don’t respond then they might not risk it again. We’ve got to go! For God’s sake, don’t you want to know who tried to kill you?”

  “I know who it is,” I said. “It’s Garrard and Peel. And if you lot were any good, Harry, you’d have had both of them wired up to a generator and singing their hearts out by now.”

  “I’ll never have a chance of doing that if we don’t catch them.”

  “Don’t do it,” Charlie said to me.

  Except I knew Harry was right. By collecting the ransom, our enemies had to show themselves, which meant we had a chance, a very narrow chance, of trapping them. And it was Garrard, I was certain, who had condemned Jennifer to months of pain, and I had promised her to pay back that pain. I sighed, then I shrugged. “OK, Harry.”

  Charlie’s face stiffened into an expression that I knew only too well. It was Charlie’s stubborn look, the face he wore when things were bad, and when the only solution lay in his own strength and abilities. He had worn that face in the Tasman Sea, and now he had it again. “If you’re going,” he said to me, “then I’m going too.”

  “Hang on…” Harry began to protest, then realised it was no use. “You’ll be about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike,” he grumbled.

  “Johnny needs someone to look after him, Harry, and that’s me.” Charlie grinned. His tiredness dropped away because there was a prospect of mischief and he was involved. The two of us were back in business together. He grabbed his coat, shouted to Yvonne that she shouldn’t wait up for him, then followed us out.

  The helicopter took us to Exeter airport where a small plane waited to fly us to the Channel Islands. Two plain-clothes policemen waited by the plane, but one of them had to stay on the ground because Charlie claimed his seat. Harry, unhappy at losing one of his men, could only agree for he knew how unstoppable a determined Charlie could be.

  Both Harry and his man had guns. They showed the weapons to us as we climbed up from the Devon coast. The sight of the black-handled automatics made my blood run chill. It reminded me that this was a very deadly game, and not just another adventure with Charlie. Harry sensed my change of mood. “Remember, Johnn
y, you don’t have to go through with it. Go as far as you can, but don’t risk your life.”

  “I won’t let him,” Charlie said.

  “The further you go” – Harry ignored Charlie – “the more chance you give us of spotting the bastards, but I don’t want to be scraping you off the floor, Johnny, so don’t push your luck.”

  “Do I get a gun?” I asked.

  Harry shook his head. “Not from me, Johnny. These are police issue. It would be more than my job’s worth to let you have one.”

  I shrugged off his refusal. He was probably right to turn me down. I’d never fired a handgun in anger, and would probably make a mess of it. I stared down at the sea. It looked so very calm, all its treachery smoothed out by our height. I took a cigarette from Charlie. I was nervous. I was being enticed into danger, like making a night approach to an unlit coast without any charts. I suddenly wished I had not accepted so easily, then thought of Jennifer’s pain and knew I had no choice. “Why Guernsey?” I wondered aloud.

  Harry could only guess at the answer. “Perhaps they think the island police are dozy? And think of all those tight little lanes. You could get lost there very easily.”

  “Is that what they want?”

  “They want to know they’re safe. The danger point of a ransom is the handover, because it’s possible the police will be watching. So the usual trick is to send the bagman from public phone to public phone. The route will appear to be random, but they’ll be watching somewhere and looking out for cars following you. If they see the same cars too often, then they’ll pull out.”

  The pilot turned in his seat to interrupt Harry. “Fog,” he said laconically, and I twisted round to see that a milk-white fog bank was stretching across the sea ahead. The Channel Islands were notorious for their fogs, and the recent still weather had made such fogs more likely.

  “Bugger,” Harry said viciously.

  The pilot was radioing ahead. He listened on his earphones, then turned to give us the news. “Guernsey’s still clear. That lot’s over Alderney and the Casquets. But they think the larger islands may get socked in later.”

  “Just get us there,” Harry said, “never mind what happens later.”

  Charlie was peering down at the thick white cloud blanketing the sea. “Remember that night off the Casquets?”

  I nodded. We’d been seventeen or eighteen years old and had made a night crossing to Cherbourg. Except that we misread the tides and had been swept much further west and south than we knew. The wind had piped up, the sea was kicking, and we were in our open dinghy. We’d turned east on to a broad reach, expecting to see the lights on the Cap de la Hague, and instead we’d found ourselves being driven on to the rocks about the Casquets’ light. It was one of our earlier lessons in seamanship. A tough lesson, too, for we damn nearly died on the vicious Casquets’ bank, but somehow we’d scraped round to the west and had run down to Guernsey where we’d gone ashore like half-drowned rats. It seemed funny now, but at the time we’d both been scared rigid.

  The fog bank slipped away behind, revealing a calm sea, though more fog lingered towards the French coast. “The forecast says there could be wind later,” the pilot volunteered.

  “That’ll get rid of the fog,” the plain-clothes policeman said.

  “Not round here,” Charlie said with the satisfaction of superior knowledge. “I’ve seen these waters blowing a full gale and still shrouded in a fog as dense as a Frenchman’s armpit. Bloody dangerous place, this.”

  “Cheer me up,” Harry said gloomily, then settled back to watch as we descended towards Guernsey. The island came nearer, a labyrinth of narrow roads, ugly bungalows, greenhouses and cars, then our wheels thumped on the tarmac, the smoke spurted from the protesting rubber, and we had arrived.

  The local police met us and drove us to St Peter Port where Sir Leon Buzzacott waited at an outdoors table by the marina café. An untouched cup of coffee stood beside a very slim leather attache case on the table. Two very large and taciturn men flanked and dwarfed Sir Leon. If we were trying to be inconspicuous then we were failing hopelessly for, with Harry’s local reinforcements, we now numbered ten men, and all but Charlie and myself were dressed in heavy suits, while around us the holiday-makers and yacht crews lounged in shorts or jeans.

  “I’ve got other chaps located round the marina,” the local policeman said. “They’re disguised, of course.”

  Sir Leon greeted me. Considering that I was about to risk my life to get him a picture that I’d already given to him, I thought his greeting lacked warmth, but then my last conversation with him had not exactly been amicable. We didn’t mention Elizabeth, nor his dealings with her. I introduced Charlie. Sir Leon gave him a cold look and a bare acknowledgement. Charlie nodded happily back. “Nice morning for a bit of nonsense,” he said cheerfully.

  Sir Leon ignored the remark. “The money,” he said, and nudged the thin leather case towards me.

  “Four million?” I said disbelievingly. I’ve seen enough movies and television films to know that four million pounds would need a fair-sized suitcase rather than this slender and expensive case. For a second I even wondered whether Sir Leon had simply written them a cheque.

  Sir Leon unzipped the bag and showed me its contents. “These are unregistered Municipal Bearer Bonds, my lord, from the United States. Safer than cash, just as anonymous, and negotiable anywhere in the world.”

  “But traceable?” Harry Abbott asked hopefully.

  “If you can persuade the authorities in various tropical tax havens to co-operate with you, yes,” Sir Leon said disparagingly, “but I wouldn’t pin your hopes on that cooperation. I assure you that our enemies won’t be using the bond coupons to claim their interest payments, which would betray them, but will simply sell the bonds themselves. Nor will they have any shortage of buyers. Unregistered bonds are becoming a rare and precious commodity.”

  “So are Van Goghs,” I said helpfully.

  Sir Leon ignored that. Harry zipped up the case and pushed it towards me. “Let’s hope we get the blackmailers before Johnny has to hand the stuff over.” Harry was in a fine mood again, relishing the chase. He looked round the marina as if he expected to see men with stocking masks over their faces.

  I looked at Sir Leon. “You know they want to kill me?”

  He nodded primly. “It had occurred to me, my lord.”

  “And you set this up. You encouraged my sister. You gave her the money to hire the killers.”

  The pale eyes didn’t blink. “I shall assume,” he said, “that the day’s events are making you overwrought. I trust that when the moment of crisis comes you will not allow that stress to affect your judgment.”

  “And fuck you, too.” I doubted whether anyone had ever said that to Sir Leon Buzzacott, and he looked gratifyingly startled. I leaned over the table. “Tell me something. What will you put on my gravestone? That I wasn’t good enough to marry your stepdaughter, but I graciously died for your gallery?” He said nothing. One of the security guards moved closer to me, perhaps fearing that I would hit Buzzacott, but I ignored the man. “Do you know why I’m doing this, Sir Leon? I’m doing it for Jennifer. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for your painting. But I’m going to find the man who burned Jennifer and I’m going to pull his guts out and shove them down his throat. And when I’ve done that, Sir Leon, I’m going back to Jennifer and I’ll marry her. And if you try to stop me, I’ll have your guts for dinner too.”

  Charlie laughed. Sir Leon just blinked.

  I turned away from him. My anger had cowed Sir Leon, but it had been nothing but bravado. My chances of taking revenge this day were very slight; the best I could hope for was that Harry would succeed in making an arrest. I looked around the marina complex, but I could see nothing untoward. The huge car park which served the town centre was full. If Harry was right then one of the parked cars would probably be the one in which I would spend the next few hours criss-crossing the island’s leafy and twisting lanes. The
thought made me nervous.

  I distracted myself by watching the boats. The Victoria Marina at St Peter Port is a stone-walled harbour filled with pontoons. The entrance has a raised sill to trap the falling tide, but we had arrived just after high tide, so the sill was invisible and the passage was still clear for yachts to leave or enter. I guessed there were a hundred yachts berthed at the pontoons. Most were French. The Channel Islands are a wonderful playground for French yachtsmen. Two girls in tiny shorts climbed one of the pontoon bridges and walked towards us. All of us, except Sir Leon, watched them. They put on a wiggle for our benefit, called bonjour, and strolled past us into the café.

  “If we weren’t here on business,” Charlie said wistfully, “I’d be doing a spot of parley-voo by now.”

  “Like old times, Charlie.”

  Then the girls had to be forgotten because an ancient taxi, blue smoke pouring from its exhaust, braked close to the café tables. The driver, clearly puzzled by his errand, leaned out of his window. “Is one of you the Earl of Stowey?”

  For a second none of us moved, then, plunged into unreality, I nodded. “I am.”

  “I don’t know what this is about, but this is for you.” The driver held out a brown business envelope, then gasped as four policemen closed in on his car. “Hang on!” he protested, but the police had their first link with the villains, and the driver was hauled away to be questioned. “Not that we’ll learn anything,” Harry said complacently. “These people aren’t fools, but we have to go through the motions.”

  Sir Leon wanted to open the envelope, as did Harry, but I was the addressee, and I insisted on the privilege. One of the local policemen had a pair of plastic tweezers which I used to extract the single page. After I had read the page it would be taken away to be finger-printed, though none of us really believed the senders would be so foolish as to leave such marks. I clumsily unfolded the sheet and read aloud its typed instructions. The instructions were very simple and very clear. I was to strip down to shorts, pick up the money, and go to the pontoon nearest to the marina café. I was to carry nothing except the money, and should I feel like disobeying that order, I should know that I would be watched all the way. At the end of the pontoon I would find a yacht named Marianne. I was to get on board alone. No one was even to walk down the pontoon with me. Once on board I should take Marianne to sea where further instructions would be provided. No boat should follow me, and if such a boat was detected the Van Gogh would be destroyed. But if the instructions were followed faithfully, and the money was safely handed over, a telephone call to Sir Leon’s gallery would reveal where the Van Gogh could be found.