Stormchild

by Bernard Cornwell

  He saw my contraption, which consisted of the flashlight’s two batteries and one of the printed circuit boards I had taken from the dead handheld radio. I had also ripped out some of the radio’s connecting wires and managed to fasten them to the batteries, which, like the circuit board, hung ominously over the lip of the bag. The wires were anchored inside the bag by my unconsumed tins of baked beans. The contraption was entirely useless, yet to the bearded man, who had already witnessed three explosions this night, the device must have looked as devilish as any terrorist’s lethal concoction.

  “It’s going to explode very soon,” I told him, “and when it does there’ll be nothing left of this house. Do you understand me?”

  He made a strangulated noise, then nodded.

  “So you’re to go upstairs,” I told him, “and move everyone out of the house. You’re all to go down to the beach and shelter under the bluff, otherwise that bomb will likely kill you. That bag is stuffed with Semtex, and I’ve equipped it with a trembler switch so that even I can’t take it down and defuse it. Do you still understand me?”

  He nodded again. If I had told him that the old fishing knapsack was in reality a multiple-targeted independent reentry vehicle equipped with thirty three thermonuclear warheads he would probably have nodded.

  “And don’t try to radio von Rellsteb for help,” I told him, “because I’ve dismantled your aerial. Now go upstairs and tell Lisl to get everyone out of this house quickly! Go!”

  The two of them fled, and I picked the man’s discarded M-16 out of the mud. Above my head there were sudden screams, then a stampede of footsteps on the stairs, proof that the threat of the baked bean bomb was working. Somewhere in the darkness, and sounding as if it had been fired from much closer than the escarpment’s crest, Jackie’s gun suddenly cracked three times and I smiled to think how adventurous she was becoming. The candle on the kitchen table flickered in the draft from the broken windows while upstairs a baby cried. The kids, I thought, were in for a very rough night, but better these few hours of cold misery and hunger than a lifetime of enslavement to von Rellsteb’s green tyrrany.

  I moved to the kitchen door and saw that a flood of people, gray and ill-dyed green, were scrambling down the stairs, across the broken doors, and out into the rainy darkness. Some carried their children, while others had snatched up blankets. A few green-dressed men carried guns, but they were too intent on escape to use them. Most of the fugitives glanced at me, but they did not speak, they just fled from my threat in the certain knowledge that their house was about to be destroyed, just as their fishing boat and their reservoir had vanished on this night of nightmare.

  Lisl was the last to flee. She gave me a cool look, but otherwise offered no defiance. I waited till she was gone and the house was empty, and until the only sounds were those of the rain falling and the wind sighing and of Molly Tetterman demanding her release from her damp prison cell. None of the Genesis people had thought to free Molly Tetterman, but she wasn’t in any danger, so I was happy to leave her in her makeshift cell.

  So now, other than the imprisoned Molly, I had the house to myself. I had captured von Rellsteb’s sanctuary, which, with two guns on my shoulder, I went to explore.

  I edged past the shattered and scorched front doors and climbed the stairs. The stairway walls had once been decorated with a dark paper that had since been embellished by the Genesis children with chalk pictures of spouting whales, soaring albatrosses, and waddling penguins. The top of the stairwell had a fine cast-iron balustrade; doubtless one of the many thousands that had been used in the nineteenth century as ballast for empty ships outbound for the southern hemisphere, and which, to this day, so handsomely decorate Australian balconies. The stairs themselves were made of mahogany, a reminder that although the exterior of the house might have been remarkably plain, the first von Rellsteb had clearly spent money on its interior, perhaps so that when he drew his tasseled velvet curtains he could pretend that a wilderness did not press dark against his windowpanes.

  The upper landing opened onto a main corridor that stretched dimly on either hand. I walked slowly down the left-hand corridor, pushing open doors to peer into the abandoned rooms. Some of those rooms were still lit by candles and lanterns, and their stark bleakness was another forcible reminder of the boarding-school dormitories of my youth. These bedrooms contained very little beyond cold metal bunks fitted with thin mattresses. Some betrayed a more cheerful touch with homemade rag rugs or curtains fashioned from threadbare bolts of cloth, yet the most comfortable aspect of these sleeping quarters were the ubiquitous otter-fur coverlets on the beds, and I assumed that the sheer misery of the Patagonian cold had driven these self-styled enviromentalists to slaughter. One large room was a nursery and had homemade toys on the floor, bright yellow curtains, and two decrepit sofas, but despite those efforts at domesticity the effect of the living quarters was gruesomely cheerless. I found three bathrooms, all with old-fashioned wooden stands on which chipped enamel bowls rested, big zinc baths hanging from their walls, and tin lavatories that stank because their contents were being saved to fertilize the vegetable fields. The bathrooms, unlike the bedrooms, had no fireplaces, or indeed any other means of being heated. In one bathroom rainwater was dripping to puddle on the ancient cracked linoleum and I shuddered to imagine how in winter these washrooms would be skimmed with ice.

  The corridor ended in a window which looked out on the northern hills. I peered into the darkness where Jackie, with an unexpected eagerness, was still banging shots into the night. I half smiled at her enthusiasm, then turned and walked in the opposite direction, past the stairhead and past more spartan rooms. My candle guttered, but its flame cast just enough light to show me that the shorter southern corridor ended, not in a window, but at a handsome mahogany door.

  I pushed the door handle down to find it locked.

  I took the Lee-Enfield off my shoulder, aimed it at the lock, and fired. In the cinema such a violent act would have sprung the door open with the facility of an exploding bomb, but my shot simply seemed to have jammed the door’s mechanism even more firmly. I kicked at the recalcitrant lock with my right heel, but only succeeded in shooting a pang of agony into my already pained foot, then fired a second shot into the tangle of splintered wood and bright bullet-gouged brass. The second bullet, like the first, mangled the mechanism most spectacularly, yet was no more efficient in opening the wretched door than the first shot.

  It took me six bullets and a bruised shoulder to finally smash the door open, but, at last, on unoiled hinges, the mahogany swung back and I found myself in the rooms that were evidently reserved for the privileged crew members of Genesis.

  It was like passing from a slum to a palace. Whatever lavish comforts and decencies might have mitigated the rigors of this awful place had been put into these rooms. In truth, anywhere other than in Patagonia, these luxuries would have looked tawdry, but here, on this barren, far island of the world’s most bitter shore, the furnishings of these last rooms suggested an air of the most voluptuous carnality, and it was no wonder that the fanatical Nicole had spurned such hedonism to house her crew in the more spartan buildings at the mine.

  The floors in von Rellsteb’s rooms were covered with a profusion of faded oriental carpets that lent the rooms a feeling of instant opulence. The damp wallpaper was hidden by closely hung paintings and prints, most of which showed romantic German landscapes heavy with gloomy crags, turreted castles, and plunging waterfalls. I suspected that the paintings, like some of the oil lamps that stood on the unwaxed tables, must have been brought to the house by the first von Rellsteb to settle in Patagonia. Between the landscapes hung prints of German cathedrals and etchings of famous Germans; I recognized Blucher, Frederick the Great, Martin Luther, and Goethe, while a plaster bust of Beethoven frowned from the mirror-crowned mantelpiece. Fringed velvet tablecloths were draped over some of the pieces of furniture, while the ancient horsehair armchairs and sofas were carefully protected by
the remnants of lace antimacassars. The furniture had doubtless been intended to convey a sense of Germanic respectability, but now its very incongruity somehow made it seem salacious; a reminder that in frontier territories the first buildings to be lavishly furnished were almost always the brothels. After them came the lawyers’ offices, but it was always the whores who had the first carpets.

  The two bathrooms that served these privileged rooms were decently equipped with claw-footed tubs and mahogany-seated commodes. The bedrooms were cozy, all with beds so stacked with mattresses that they looked as high as haystacks. One of the smaller rooms was the settlement’s radio room; von Rellsteb would never have allowed his farm workers near the transmitters and had taken care to install the equipment behind locked doors. Inside the radio room was a board hung with keys, one of which I supposed would unlock the stable where Molly Tetterman was still imprisoned.

  Molly, I decided, would have to wait as I explored these unexpectedly luxurious quarters, of which the final room was by far the most lavish. It was a bedroom with windows facing east toward the sea and south toward the wild moors, and, from the luxury of its furnishings, I guessed that this was where von Rellsteb and Lisl stayed when they were in the settlement. The room was dominated by a vast, carved, wooden bed, on which a grubby white eiderdown floated like a cloud. A cavernous wardrobe stood next to a tile-surrounded fireplace that still held the warm remnants of a log fire. Beside the bed was an antique mahogany dressing table with a huge oval mirror. If it had not been for the rain that dripped from my soaking clothing onto the rugs, and for the two guns on my shoulder I might have thought myself in some Victorian mansion in respectable Frankfurt.

  I put my candle into an elegant brass holder on a bedside table, then paused to listen. Jackie, clearly reveling in her sudden discovery of guns, ripped a whole clip of bullets into the air, but otherwise I heard nothing to alarm me. I knew that some of the Genesis refugees were armed, but I was trusting that they were now so cowed by the night’s disasters that they would not dare come back to the house. I also knew their supine inactivity would not last forever, and I therefore could not risk spending too long exploring the house. Yet the temptation to ransack von Rellsteb’s own quarters was too great and so I hung the M-16 from my shoulder, tossed the Lee-Enfield onto the bed where it was swallowed in the fluffy billows of the great eiderdown, and then began a feverish search of the big room. I found very little. One drawer of the dressing table had a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings, which told of Genesis’s triumphs over their polluting enemies, but the cuttings were few and the victories hardly worth remembering. There were oilskins in the wardrobe and a pile of sweaters in another cupboard, while a small bedside table held a tiny cache of coins and jewels which looked like some tawdry pirate’s hoard. It was all so pathetic.

  Somewhere in the night a gun fired three deliberate shots. I could not tell whether it was Jackie or one of the Genesis people, so I edged to the eastern window, taking care not to silhouette myself, and stared into the darkness. At first I saw nothing, then, with a horrid shock, I saw a flicker of light out in the bay. My first thought was that the burning trawler had drifted off the rocks, then I realized this new light was too white to be the remnants of any fire.

  Then I wondered if Stormchild had returned to the bay and if I was seeing a glimmer of her cabin light, because the light was certainly made by a ship’s lantern of some kind, but then I forgot the strange light in the bay because something heavy thumped on the bedroom’s floor behind me.

  I turned in panic to see a tin of baked beans rolling across the carpet toward me.

  “Bang,” said Caspar von Rellsteb, and laughed.

  He leaned in the doorway, dressed in wet oilskins, and with an amused expression on his thin face. He carried a rifle, as did Lisl, who stood beside him. She also carried my old fishing knapsack, which she scornfully dropped on the floor so that another of the baked bean tins rolled pathetically clear. Then, a smile on her face, she turned her gun’s muzzle toward me. “Put the gun down,” she ordered me, “but do it very slowly!”

  I very slowly unslung the M-16 and placed it on the floor.

  “Kick it toward me,” von Rellsteb said.

  I kicked the assault rifle toward him. It skidded against a rug, then disappeared under the bed. The Lee-Enfield, on top of the bed, was concealed by the folds of the eiderdown, but I was too far from the bed for the hidden gun to be of any use to me. I had been trapped by my overconfidence.

  Now von Rellsteb had the advantage and I did not see how he could lose it. “I should have killed you in Florida,” he said in an oddly friendly voice. “Your daughter was angry that I hadn’t. She wants to inherit your boatyard, you see. She still does, in fact, though I’ve told her that you’ve probably changed your will by now. Even so, she was right. I should have killed you.”

  Was he trying to shock me by talking so casually of Nicole’s wish to kill me? I refused to rise to his bait, preferring to keep my voice very calm as though we merely talked about the weather. “Was that why you agreed to meet me there? Did you lose your nerve?”

  He shook his head. “I met you out of mere curiosity, Mr. Blackburn. You said you had important news, remember, and I wanted to hear it. I was wasting my time, but it was still interesting, and your letter was very pathetic.”

  “You bastard,” I said in impotent anger.

  He mocked me with a grimace of feigned sympathy. “I think you have had your revenge here tonight. A pity. It will take us weeks to clear up the mess, but in the meantime we shall feed your body to the hawks.”

  “It’s no good shooting me,” I said defiantly, “because the authorities know I’m here.”

  “Oh, my God! I am so very frightened!” Von Rellsteb laughed. “The authorities! You hear that, Lisl? Perhaps we had better surrender immediately.”

  “My boat will be in Puerto Natales by now,” I plowed on in the face of von Rellsteb’s mockery, then tried a little of my own. “You probably thought it was going north?” I smiled, as though I pitied him his misconception.

  “Actually,” von Rellsteb put a scornful English accent on the word, “I think your boat is on its way here. I suspect it has been hiding offshore for the last two days.”

  I said nothing. How the hell did he know these things? And once again, just as I had when we confronted each other at the mine, I wondered if this devil was a mind reader.

  Von Rellsteb laughed. “Mr. Blackburn, what VHF channel would you monitor if you knew you were dealing with the owner of an English boatyard? Which channel does your daughter prefer when she wants a measure of privacy?” He shook his head as though he was disappointed in my stupidity. “I have been monitoring channel 37 ever since you first arrived in our waters! I thought you might use it to try and reach Nicole, but instead I heard your friend answer your transmission last night. We couldn’t hear you, I imagine because you were using a low-power transmitter? Whatever, your friend is now innocently sailing toward us, and I assure you we will prepare a suitable welcome for him; you, I think, will be dead by then. But first, tell me! Are you responsible for the dreadful Mrs. Tetterman being here?”

  I tried to look very vague. “Who?”

  Von Rellsteb was silent for a second, then shrugged as though he did not really care whether I told the truth or not. “How did you escape at the quarry?”

  It was my turn to shrug. “I flew.”

  Lisl fired a burst of three or four bullets that missed my right shoulder by a whisker. The room was suddenly echoing with noise and stinking with the acrid smell of the gun’s propellant. “How did you escape?” she asked harshly.

  “When you saw me fall,” I confessed, “I had a rope round my waist. I then climbed to the quarry floor and waited you out.”

  “Nicole inherited your cunning,” von Rellsteb said with a touch of genuine admiration, “and perhaps also your daring. She is very brave. Too brave. I have always thought that one day she will come too close to a Japanese fishing b
oat and they will ram her. Of all of us, you see, she has caused the most damage to the Japanese nets. There are also times”—he smiled—”when I am tempted to hope that she will come too close to a Japanese fishing boat. She wants to take over from Lisl and me, but luckily for us Nicole does not, how do you say, own the farm? Which is why she went to England. She wanted her own farm.” He was watching me very closely. “But you already knew that. How does it feel to have a daughter who wants to kill you? Who killed her own mother? She meant to get you both, of course.”

  He was trying to rile me, but I said nothing. That was not defiance, but helplessness. My heart was thumping in my chest, my stomach was bitter with defeat, my knees were weak and my mind a blur of hopeless schemes: I could jump to the window, I could leap to the hidden gun on the bed, I could grow wings and fly away. The truth was that I was going to die and von Rellsteb was enjoying the infliction of that truth.

  “Why?” I finally managed to find my voice, though it was a very weak and plaintive voice. “Why do you do this? You’re supposed to be preserving life, not taking it.”

  “Now you’re being very boring and entirely predictable,” von Rellsteb said. “Do you think that by enticing me into a sophomoric discussion of my motives you will gain time? Or perhaps you imagine you can persuade me to let you live? Maybe I should let you live until Nicole reaches us? She is coming, you know. I talked to her on the radio not three hours ago and told her you were here. Would you like to wait for her?”

  “Yes!” I pleaded.

  “I think not.” Von Rellsteb enjoyed thus contradicting my hopes, “because my people are waiting outside in the rain, and I would like them to come inside and get warm, which means I have to kill you before they return. Most of them are loyal, but some of them are still naive enough to be shocked by murder.” He aimed the rifle at my face and I saw Lisl half smile in anticipation of my death, then Jackie, who must have climbed the stairs to stand in the doorway that I had blown open with the Lee-Enfield, ordered von Rellsteb to put the gun down.