Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  I stubbed out my cigarette. ‘This is it,’ I said, and tightened the straps of the scuba gear. ‘Can you swim as far as that?’

  Alison splashed water into her mask. ‘Easily.’

  ‘Just stick close to me.’ I pointed. ‘We’re not going to swim right for it. We’ll pass by about twenty yards from the stern and then come in from the other side. The fueller might be there—I hope it is—so keep your head down.’

  I had the skein of nylon rope strapped to my thigh; I tested to see if it was secure and then slipped into the water. I doubt if skin-divers are encouraged in the Grand Harbour, not that they would want to make a habit of swimming there—the water is none too clean and decapitation by the churning propellers of passing traffic a constant hazard. I had chosen a quiet spot where we could go into the water unobserved.

  We went deep right from the start, going down to about twenty-five feet before heading on course. I knew my speed and I had estimated the distance so I kept a steady count of the seconds and minutes. The problem in this sort of exercise was to keep swimming in a straight line. Occasionally I looked back and saw Alison swimming strongly in echelon, behind and to the left.

  When I estimated we had arrived at the point I had chosen I waved Alison to a halt and we swam lazily in circles while I looked about. There was an oncoming rumble and a shadow overhead as a vessel passed, her propellers flailing the water and causing eddies which jerked us about. The propellers stopped and presently there was an audible clang transmitted through the water. That would be the fueller coupling to Artina.

  I waved to Alison and we went on in the new direction. As we went on towards the two boats I hoped that no one was looking over the side to see the line of bubbles breaking on the surface. But we were coming in at the side of the fueller and all the action would be where they were coupling up the fuel and water lines. If anyone had time to look over the side then that fueller was overmanned.

  The light diminished as we swam underneath the two boats and I paused again before heading aft and rising to trail my fingers along Artina’s keel. We came to the stern and I stopped with my left hand on one blade of the port phosphor-bronze propeller, hoping that no damned fool in the engine room would punch the wrong button and start the engine. If those three blades started to move I’d be chopped into bloody mincemeat.

  Alison swam up on the starboard side as I fumbled with the strap holding the rope to my thigh. I got it free and began to uncoil it with care. The propeller was about four feet in diameter, and the shaft was supported by struts before it entered the stern gland in the hull. I slipped the end of the rope in between the strut and the hull and coiled it around the shaft and then passed a loop around the shaft in between the propeller and the strut. When I tugged gently it held firm, so that was a start.

  That rope was the damnedest stuff. At times it was like wrestling with a sea serpent—the coils floated around in the water dangerously, threatening to strangle us or bind our legs, and Alison and I must have closely resembled that remarkable piece of antique statuary, the Laocoön.

  But we finally did it. We entangled those two propellers in such a cat’s cradle that when the engines started and the ropes began to tighten all hell would break loose. Most probably everything would grind to a sudden halt, but a shaft could bend and, at worst, one of the engines might slam a piston through the cylinder casing. It was a good job.

  We slipped away and swam back to shore, emerging from the water quite a distance from where we had gone in. My sense of direction had become warped, but then it always does underwater. An unshaven character leaning on the rail of a tramp steamer looked at us with some astonishment as we climbed up to the quay, but I ignored him and Alison and I walked away, our back packs bumping heavily.

  We went back to our original position and I lit a cigarette and looked across at Artina. The fueller had finished and was just casting off, and the skipper was returning in the tender. It seemed as though they intended a faster turnaround than Gibraltar. I wondered where the skipper had cleared for—it wouldn’t be Durazzo, the port for Tirana, although I’d be willing to bet that was where he intended to go.

  The skipper climbed aboard and the companionway was unshipped immediately. There was a lot of movement on deck and even as the tender was hoisted clear of the water someone was at the winch on the foredeck ready to lift anchor.

  Alison said, ‘They’re very much in a hurry.’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘I don’t know—but I expect they’ll be very annoyed within the next few minutes.’

  The anchor came up and Artina moved off slowly. I hadn’t expected her to move at all and it came as a shock. Apparently 700 horse-power was more than a match for a few coils of nylon line. Alison drew in her breath. ‘It isn’t working!’

  Artina turned and headed for the open sea, picking up speed so that a bow wave showed white. I lowered the binoculars, and said, ‘It was a good try.’ I felt gloomy. Albania was only 450 miles away and Artina could be there in less than two days. The only way I could think of stopping her was by a kamekazi attack in the Apache.

  Alison was still watching through her monocular. ‘Wait!’ she said urgently. ‘Look now!’

  Artina had swerved suddenly and unnaturally as though someone had spun the wheel fast, and she was now heading straight for the shore. She slowed and water boiled at her stern as the engines were put into reverse. Then the bubble of white water stopped and she drifted helplessly, right into the path of a big Italian cruise liner which was leaving harbour.

  There was a deep booom as the liner peremptorily demanded right of way but Artina did not react. The liner altered course fractionally at the last moment and her sheer side might have scraped Artina s paintwork. From the bridge of the liner an officer in whites was looking down and I guessed that a string of choice Italian imprecations was being directed down at the hapless skipper of Artina.

  The liner went on her way and Artina bobbed inertly in the waves raised by her wake. Presently a little tug put out and went to her aid and she was towed back to where she had come from and dropped anchor again.

  I grinned at Alison. ‘For a moment there I thought.…Well, it’s done and she’ll be staying the night. When they find out what’s happened they’ll be cursing the idiot who carelessly dropped a line in the water.’

  ‘There’s no chance they’ll guess it was done deliberately?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ I looked over the water at Artina. The skipper was at the stern looking down. ‘They’ll soon find out what it is, and they’ll send down a diver to cut it free. It’ll take a hell of a lot longer for him to free it than it did for us to tangle it—those engines will have tightened the tangle considerably.’ I laughed. ‘It’ll be like trying to unscramble an omelette.’

  Alison picked up her gear. ‘And what now?’

  ‘Now we wait for nightfall. I’m going to board her.’

  III

  We went into Marsamxett Harbour from Ta’Xbiex to where Artina was anchored in Lazzaretto Creek. A tug had moved her during the afternoon and put her with the rest of the yachts. We went out in a fibreglass object that resembled a bathtub more than a boat, but Alison seemed to find no difficulty in handling it and she used the oars as though she’d been trained as stroke for Oxford. More of Mackintosh’s training coming to the surface.

  It was a moonless night but the sky was clear so that it was not absolutely pitch-black. Ahead loomed Manoel Island and beyond a light flashed at Dragutt Point. To our left Valletta rose, clifflike and impregnable, festooned with lights. There were no lights on Artina, though, apart from the obligatory riding lights; since it was 2.30 a.m. this was not surprising. I hoped everyone on board was in the habit of sleeping soundly.

  Alison stopped sculling as we approached and we drifted silently to Artina’s stern. The rope ladder which the diver had been using was not there but I hadn’t been counting on it even though it was nine feet from t
he water to the stern rail. What I wanted was a grapnel, but those are hard to come by at a moment’s notice, so I had improvised. A shark hook is shaped like a grapnel, being three big fish-hooks welded together. I had wrapped it in many layers of insulating tape, not only to prevent myself from being nastily hooked but also for the sake of silence.

  I looked up and saw the ensign-staff silhouetted against the sky and used that to mark the position of the rail. Holding a coil of the rope I threw up my grapnel so it went over the rail. There was a soft thud as it landed on the deck and, as I drew the line back, I hoped it would hold. It did; it caught on the rail and a steady pull told me it would be not unreasonable to climb the rope.

  I bent down and whispered, ‘Well, this is it. I may come back with Slade or I may not. I may come over the side in a bloody hurry so stick around to fish me out of the drink.’ I paused. ‘If I don’t come back then you’re on your own and the best of British luck to you.’

  I swarmed up the rope and managed to hook my arm round the ensign-staff, taking the strain off the shark hook. The pistol thrust into the waist of my trousers didn’t help much; as I twisted like a contortionist to get a foot on deck the muzzle dug into my groin agonizingly and I was thankful that I’d made sure there wasn’t a bullet in front of the firing pin.

  I made it at last and in silence. At least nobody took a shot at me as I looked back at the water. Alison was nowhere to be seen and there was just a suspicious looking ripple where no ripple should have been. I stayed there quietly for a moment and strained my ears listening to the loud silence.

  If there was a man, on watch he was being quiet in his watching. I hazarded a guess that anyone on watch would stay up forward, perhaps in the wheelhouse or comfortably in the dining saloon. To get to the stern cabins I didn’t have to go forward; the entrance to the cabin deck was by a staircase in the deck lounge, and the door to the lounge was just in front of me if the ship plans I had studied were correct.

  I took out a pen-light and risked a flash. It was lucky I did so because the deck immediately in front of me was cluttered with diver’s gear—I could have made a Godawful clatter if I hadn’t seen that. I managed to navigate the booby traps safely until I got to the deck lounge door and was thankful to find it unlocked; which was just as expected because who locks doors on a ship?

  The lounge was in darkness but I saw light gleaming through a glass-panelled door on the starboard side. There was just enough light spilling through to illumine the hazards of furniture so I stepped over to look through the door and I froze as I saw movement at the end of a long passage. A man came out of the dining saloon and turned into the galley and out of sight. I opened the door gently and listened; there was the slam of something heavy followed by the clink of crockery. The man on watch was enlivening the night hours by raiding the refrigerator, which suited me very well.

  I crossed the lounge again and went below to the cabin deck. There were three cabins down there, all for guests. Wheeler’s master cabin was ‘midships’, the other side of the engine room, so I didn’t have to worry about him. The problem that faced me was if he had any guests, apart from Slade, occupying any of the three guest cabins.

  The cabin that had been curtained in broad daylight at Gibraltar was the big stern cabin, and that was my first objective. This time the door was locked, and this raised my hopes because Slade would certainly be kept under lock and key. I inspected the lock with a guarded flash of the light. It wasn’t much of a problem; no one installs Chubb triple-throw locks on a cabin door and I could have opened one of those if I had to—it would have taken longer, that’s all.

  As it was I was inside the cabin inside two minutes and with the door locked again behind me. I heard the heavy breathing of a sleeping man and flicked my light towards the port side, hoping to God it was Slade. If it wasn’t I was well and truly up that gum tree I had shown Mackintosh.

  I needn’t have worried because it was Slade all right and I cheered internally at the sight of that heavy face with the slightly yellowish skin. I took the gun from my waist and pushed a bullet up the spout. At the metallic sound Slade stirred and moaned slightly in his sleep. I stepped forward and, keeping the light on him, I pressed gently with my finger at the corner of his jaw just below the ear. It’s the best way to awaken a man quietly.

  He moaned again and his eyelids flickered open, and he screwed up his eyes at the sudden flood of light. I moved the pen-light so that it illumined the gun I held. ‘If you shout it’ll be the last sound you make on earth,’ I said quietly.

  He shuddered violently and his adam’s apple bobbed convulsively as he swallowed. At last he managed to whisper, ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Your old pal, Rearden,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  It took some time to sink in, and then he said, ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Probably,’ I admitted. ‘Anyone who wants to save your life must be mad.’

  He was getting over the shock. The blood was returning to his face and the self-possession to his soul—if he had one. ‘How did you get here?’ he demanded.

  I let the light wander to the nearest port. It wasn’t curtained, after all; plates of sheet metal had been roughly welded over the oval scuttles so that it was absolutely impossible for Slade to see outside—more security expertise on the part of the Scarperers. I grinned at Slade, and asked softly, ‘Where is here?’

  ‘Why—on board this ship,’ he said, but his voice was uncertain.

  ‘I’ve been following you.’ I watched with interest as his eyes shifted sideways to look at a bell-push by the side of his berth, and I hefted the gun so that it came into prominence again. ‘I wouldn’t,’ I warned. ‘Not if you value your health.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he whispered.

  ‘I suppose you could say that I’m in the same business as yourself, but in the other corner. I’m in counter-espionage.’

  The breath came from him in a long, wavering sigh. ‘The executioner,’ he said flatly. He nodded towards the gun. ‘You won’t get away with it. You have no silencer. Kill me with that thing and you’re dead, too.’

  I’m expendable,’ I said lightly, and hoped I wouldn’t have to make that statement stick. ‘Use your brains, Slade. I could have slid into this cabin and cut your throat in your sleep. It would have been messy, but silent. A better way would have been to stick a steel knitting needle through the nape of your neck and into the medulla oblongata—there’s not much blood. The fact that we’re talking now means I want to take you out alive.’

  He frowned slightly and I could almost see the wheels spinning as he thought it out. I said, ‘But don’t have any misconceptions. I either take you out alive or you stay here dead. It’s your choice.’

  He had recovered enough to smile slightly. ‘You’re taking a big chance. You can’t keep me under the gun all the time. I could win yet.’

  ‘You won’t want to,’ I said. ‘Not when you’ve heard what I have to say. My guess is that you were taken from that room we shared, given a shot of dope, and woke up in this cabin where you’ve been ever since. Where do you think you are?’

  That set the wheels going round again, but to no effect. At last he said, ‘There’s been no temperature change, so I couldn’t have been taken very much north or south.’

  ‘This hooker has a very efficient air-conditioning plant,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t know the difference. Do you like Chinese food?’

  The switch confused him. ‘What the hell! I can take it or leave it.’

  ‘Have you had any lately?’

  He was bemused. ‘Why, yes—only yesterday I…’

  I cut in. ‘The ship has a Chinese cook. Do you know whose ship it is?’ He shook his head in silence, and I said, ‘It belongs to a man called Wheeler, a British MP. I take it you haven’t seen him.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Slade. ‘I’d have recognized him. I met him a couple of times in…in the old days. What the devil is all this about?’

&nbs
p; ‘Do you still think you are going to Moscow?’

  ‘I see no reason to doubt it,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Wheeler was born an Albanian,’ I said. ‘And his Chinese cook does more than rustle up sweet and sour pork. They’re not your brand of communist, Slade. Right now you’re in Malta and the next scheduled stop is Durazzo in Albania; from there I guess you’ll be shipped by cargo plane straight to Peking. You’d better acquire a real taste for Chinese cooking—always assuming they give you any food at all.’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘What’s so crazy about the Chinese wanting to get hold of you? What you have locked up inside that skull of yours would interest them very much—the secrets of two top intelligence services. And they’d get it out of you, Slade—even if they had to do it by acupuncture. The Chinese invented the term “ brainwashing”.’

  ‘But Wheeler?’

  ‘What’s so odd about Wheeler? You got away with it for over a quarter of a century—why shouldn’t someone else be as smart as you? Or smarter? Wheeler hasn’t been caught—yet.’

  He fell silent and I let him think it out. Yet I hadn’t much time to waste so I prodded him again. ‘It seems to me that your choice is simple. You come with me willingly or I kill you right now. I think I’d be doing you a favour if I killed you because I’d hate to see you after you’d been in the hands of the Chinese for a month. I think you’d better come with me and retire to a nice, safe, top-security wing in one of Her Majesty’s nicks. At least you won’t be having your brains pulled out through your ears.’

  He shook his head stubbornly. ‘I don’t know if I believe you.’

  ‘For God’s sake! If Wheeler wanted you to go to Moscow then why didn’t he transfer you to one of those ubiquitous Russian trawlers? In the Atlantic they’re as thick as fleas on a mangy dog. Why bring you to the Mediterranean?’

  Slade looked at me cunningly. ‘I’ve only your word for that, too.’