Bloody Sunset

by Bloody Sunset (retail) (epub)

  They were in this new channel now. Remembering the chart – not its detail, which was so unreliable, but the general configuration of the delta – it was a reasonable guess that fairly soon they might be emerging into another of the north-south channels, and with any luck – as long as it didn’t have any destroyers anchored in it, for instance – a direct exit to the sea. It would be marvellous if this proved to be the case, particularly from the point of view of having to get back in here in a week’s time.

  ‘Hey – Bob’s your uncle!’

  Here it was. A north-south channel.

  ‘Well – for small mercies…’

  Solovyev’s hand on his arm: ‘Here?’

  ‘Might as well take him a bit farther inland.’ Pope was easing the wheel over to port. ‘Couple of minutes for us, half an hour’s hard pull for him – what?’

  ‘Don’t think so, Johnny.’ Bob had the glasses at his eyes. ‘No – no need. This isn’t a river channel, it’s the head of an inlet, a cul-de-sac… Run up there for two minutes, you’d be on the putty.’

  ‘Be damned.’ Centring the wheel, cutting the revs, lifting his own glasses… Bob told him, ‘That’s the mainland. Can’t not be.’ He added, ‘Land of the Kirghizi. As cut-throat a bunch as you’d ever meet.’

  * * *

  It was past two-thirty by the time they had the lashings off the skiff – three of them working at it, while Pope kept his CMB in mid-channel with her long, slim bow pointing the way they’d be going in a minute. Which wasn’t an unhappy thought at all… Meanwhile, with the lashings, Bob and the Count and McNaught were shoulder to shoulder on the starboard side of the torpedo-trough, with very little to hold on to except the skiff itself – which had now to be tilted up on to its port gunwale so it could then be toppled over into the water right-side-up.

  ‘One-two-six – heave…’

  Over, and – teetering, then – splashing in. Heavy, noisy, and drenching them all.

  McNaught fetched crutches and oars out of the engine-space; Bob shook hands with the Count. ‘We’ll be saying prayers for you, Nick. See you in a week, or not much longer.’

  ‘Yes.’ Solovyev hung on to his hand for another moment. ‘I’m more grateful to you than I can say, Bob.’

  Pope called from the wheel, ‘Tell him goodbye and good luck.’

  The Count got into the boat then, shipped the crutches and settled the oars into them, while Bob lay more or less flat in the trough to hold the boat alongside and then push it off. He called again as they separated, ‘See you, Nick.’ Engine-noise already rising – Pope wasting no time, water already sluicing along the sides and swirling in a froth astern before he’d climbed back into the cockpit.

  In less than a minute the Count and his skiff were out of sight in the darkness astern. The cockpit felt rather empty without its third occupant. Bob said, ‘Home, James, and bugger the horses.’

  ‘Before, or after?’ He added, ‘Channel may widen beyond that bend. I’ll crack a few revs on then.’

  Bob didn’t think it did widen – not at that point, not that soon. The opening to the lateral channel, the one by which they’d arrived in this inlet, was visible from here, but the bulge of land beyond it might presage a bend – as Pope was assuming – might alternatively be indicative of a bottleneck.

  Not that one cared, as long as it was navigable. Sooner or later you’d have clearer water; then it shouldn’t be long before you’d be out of the delta altogether, in more or less open sea. Which, from the point of view of returning here next week…

  Wouldn’t be bad from the point of view of getting back to Zoroaster and a hot bath and a comfortable bunk, either.

  ‘Narrows a bit, doesn’t it?’

  He grunted. ‘Quite a bit.’

  The CMB was making about twelve knots. It was the highest speed she could make without a breaking bow-wave or any wash to speak of. Pope had now seen the bottleneck – where the channel curved around that bulge – but he wasn’t cutting the revs at all. Speaking again now – shouting – ‘If there’s a guardship or anything of that kind, I’ll open her right up and dash past before they can say Jack Robinsonovich.’

  ‘No – for God’s sake…’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Johnny – we have to be back here in seven days, and we don’t want ’em on their guard, If we meet something – well, much better turn around, sneak out the way we came – don’t you agree?’

  A moment’s silence… Then: ‘You’ve a point, I dare say.’

  Colleagues surprised one, at times. They could make you feel as old as you looked, even, on occasion… Pope had reduced speed now, anyway. And beyond the bottleneck – they were coming up to it now – the fairway looked clear. Wide open, and empty. Touching wood – continually, with his elbows, needing both hands for the binoculars… Hearing Pope begin, ‘Anyway, once we’re through this little hole, Bob old chap—’

  The crash threw him backwards from the wheel. Bob had been knocked down too. With the thought – as the bow rose and he heard that now recognizable, ugly rasping – chain cable grating timber again – Another bloody boom… Pope had got back to his controls and slammed the throttle shut; the scraping noise stopped before it had come more than a few feet aft from the bow. There was a bow-up angle. Could have ripped the bottom out of her… Bob recognizing – checking in the engine-space whether she might be taking in water, but she didn’t seem to be and McNaught was prospecting for damage now – that any ordinary kind of ship would have struck the cable with her forefoot, whereas the CMB with her small draft had ridden over it. In other words, that the chain-boom had not been rigged there with CMBs in mind.

  Pope muttering – pointlessly – ‘Should’ve damn well guessed…’

  He was right, he should have. Bob amended that to we should have. Where one channel had been barred, why not another? And they’d obviously have chosen a narrow spot like this – easier to rig it up, and only a comparatively short span of chain required; the chain on which the CMB was now well and truly stuck – having hit it a lot harder than she’d hit the first one.

  For what purpose, though? Triggering some kind of alarm?

  But the other one hadn’t. That one, of course, had only been barring access to the inlet, might quite probably be shut at night and opened in daylight hours. It would be operated by a winch and when it was open the chain would lie slack on the bottom. While the purpose of this one would be – well, to leave only one way of coming from or going to the open sea – the route by which they happened to have come in by tonight. If this was the case, it would prescribe the action that needed to be taken now: get her off this chain – somehow – and then go back, take that same route, creeping past the anchored destroyer as before.

  But – God almighty – same damn procedure in a week’s time, then every second day!

  Pope was musing aloud: ‘Can’t back off under power. Need to back off, though. If we still had the skiff, might have towed her off – one strong man on each oar. But we haven’t… Bob – you and McNaught over the side – if it’s in your depth so you can stand, and keep a footing…’

  ‘I’ll check. McNaught – got that boathook?’

  He hung over the side with it, poking vertically, eventually using its full length with his hands and its top end actually in the water and still not finding any bottom.

  ‘Not in our depth, Johnny. Anyway the bottom’s probably soft mud.’ He asked the mechanic – giving him back the boathook – ‘How about you and I swimming – each of us with a line to her?’

  ‘Not a hope.’ Pope was sure of it – probably right, at that. ‘She’s not a bloody skiff, you know.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘So we can’t back off it. But we do have to get off. So – no option, Bob…’ Turning to McNaught. ‘Look, here’s what. I’ll give her a touch ahead – no more than a touch, just get her moving over the chain. She’ll slide her keel over it all right, and we’ll hear it, won’t we. When it’s right aft here, we get the boat
hook on it, try to push it down. While you, Bob – I’ll want you right up on the stern, your weight up there – help bring her stern up.’ Nodding to McNaught: ‘Might actually hook on to it, drag it aft – drag ourselves forward, comes to the same thing… And failing all else, another little burst of engine-power – huh?’

  ‘But Johnny – if you wipe your screw off, or bend a blade – or even just snag it in the cable…’

  ‘There’s a guard round it, old man. Sort of cage affair. Designed so things’ll skid over it. Besides, if we’re pushing the damn thing down…’

  Bob looked at McNaught. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Och…’ A shake of the head. ‘Lieutenant Pope’s the skipper, sir.’

  ‘No man e’er spoke a truer word. Let’s get a wriggle on, now. Boathook handy? That’s it… Bob, you stay here until we’ve manoeuvred the thing well aft – all right?’

  It wasn’t all right at all. He thought it was extremely likely that the chain would smash or damage the propeller or snag on its guard. Probably strip the screw of its blades and then snag between it and the rudder. But he wasn’t a CMB man, he’d never seen one out of water, therefore knew nothing of its underwater construction – or the shape or strength of that propeller-guard, for instance. Whereas Pope did, presumably knew every square inch of his boat above and below the waterline. And McNaught was right – he was the skipper.

  The first stage went as expected. One short burst of power that sent her rasping forward, brought the cable grating to a stop somewhere abaft the cockpit. Pope was quietly – giving him his due, very quietly – cock-a-hoop.

  ‘So far, so good. Bob, may we have your not inconsiderable avoirdupois right up on the sharp end, please?’

  He went up the starboard side and squatted on the bullring, facing aft. Fearing the worst, hoping for the best, hearing them splashing and banging around with the boathook, an occasional crash against the hull as it skidded off the cable. Thinking of the huge weight of that chain – that much iron, enough to stretch across this channel – and Johnny Pope actually believing he could push it this way or that with a boathook?

  You could slide a boat – her keel – over it. As they had done. You could perhaps even lift the boat to a limited extent in the water – if you got her rocking, bouncing, the disturbance of the water itself assisting in the process… From this thought, he hit on a way it might be done. One man each side, over the side but standing on the chain: and from that position manhandling the boat over, inch by inch.

  He was about to stand up and call to Johnny, ask him to listen to this proposal. But at that moment Johnny threw in the clutch and opened the throttle for a short, sharp burst that was intended to drive her right over the obstruction by brute force. It snagged, as he’d known it would, on the propeller or the propeller-guard, the heavy chain was jerked bar-taut, and the mines attached to it were whipped up from the seabed on their steel-wire pendants, one of them right under the CMB’s midships section – the cockpit, under the floor of which was the boat’s petrol tank. The explosion was upward through the centre of the boat, a sheet of flame visible for miles, the sound of it audible in Astrakhan and Nikolsk let alone nearer settlements – Krasni-Yar, Seitovka…

  All Bob was aware of – and all of it in one split second – was the shattering blast, blinding flash, intense heat instantly snuffed out in oblivion.

  5

  The voice in his skull beat all the surrounding noise: and it was warmly, supremely welcome – despite its serrated edge and harsh, overbearing tone – having just ordered him to get his head up, and now – harsher still, really hectoring – ‘And keep it up! God’s sake, a man can’t breathe water!’

  ‘Well – you’d know…’

  ‘Hah! Don’t I just!’

  Twice. It was odd that one hadn’t thought of it this way before – that they’d failed to drown him when he was a boy, made a proper job of it more recently. Properness of the job having been duly certified by that blue-pencil scrawl commencing Their Lordships deeply regret to inform you…

  If it had been brought to the same conclusion when he’d been eleven nobody would have regretted anything at all. ‘See her, lad?’

  Seeing her, indeed. Sweet, oval face, soft dark hair falling as she bent over him, over the cot, and in the half-light – bedroom door half-open, light outside in the passage – a pale-yellow satin jacket open over a shimmery silver figure-hugging dress. And her perfume… Soft murmur then – her lips close to his face – ‘Night, my darling, see you in the morning – spokoinii noich, golubchik. Lyublyoo tebya…’ and his father’s voice breaking in then, ‘Did any other feller ever have such luck? Old roughneck like me, and – Christ, did you ever really look at her, boy?’

  ‘Oh, yes…’

  He thought – with a certainty of enduring happiness – And all the time in the world to go on looking, now…

  As soon as one could get through this. Whatever it was. Not a dream, it didn’t feel like dreaming. Limbo? Halfway house? But the old man had intercepted that thought – or that preference, intention. Snarling at him – ‘You’ll do no such thing, boy! God, what a damn-fool way to—’

  ‘But I want—’

  ‘Want, bollocks!’

  ‘Vot, shto…’ Different voice entirely – thin, rather distant. As well as the switch of language. Not totally unfamiliar: but here and now only an intrusion. Discomfort too: he was aware of it now, of something tight round his chest, under his arms, cuttingly tight and getting tighter still… But the old man’s voice again – less rough, the soothing tone he’d sometimes adopted when he’d been trying to put one over – ‘You’ll be all right now, lad. You’ll see, you’ll be fine…’

  * * *

  ‘Better for that, are we?’

  Russian, again. Not his father’s. His father seemed to have left him to this other chap. But they’d always spoken English to each other when they’d been alone, Russian at other times including those when his mother had been with them, as she’d had hardly any English. A little French and a smattering of German, but for some reason her parents hadn’t bothered with an English teacher. The old man had been giving her lessons – sporadically, when he’d remembered and she’d had the inclination – with a view to eventual retirement to Scotland. At least to have that option, he’d explained, if when he got to be about a hundred they’d both wanted it.

  Choking. Then – another gush…

  Gagging: And more to come… The Russian was telling him something or other, his voice as muffled as if he might have been talking through a pillow. And meanwhile another memory as it were materializing – God, from so long ago, one he hadn’t even known he possessed. He’d been a small boy then, eight or so, and his mother – swollen, big-bellied – pregnant, obviously, might have been the pregnancy that had killed her – he’d have been just nine, at that time – telling him in that sweet, quiet voice of hers, mellow, fluid Russian, ‘He saved my life, Bobbie. I’d have done away with myself if it hadn’t been for him. My own people were throwing me out – I can’t explain it to you – not until you’re older – but – oh, I’d been – very naughty… Although even then – well, one day I’ll tell you. When you’re grown up – I promise. But now, I want you to know this much about – this man, your father – whom I love, Bobby darling, as deeply as any man was ever loved – I want you to know that if he hadn’t come along – and saved me…’

  ‘Saved – me…’

  ‘Man’s found his tongue!’

  Memory fading, flickering out. Struggling to hold on to it… Saved her how, and from what? Suicide, was the implication: her own people having – ‘thrown her out’? For – well, for God’s sake, what ‘naughtiness’ so-called could possibly have justified that kind of cruelty – and to someone so gentle…

  Crying…

  Aged – nine. Crying at the very thought—

  ‘Hey! Hey! Hey, Bob! Listen, you’re going to be all right now, you’re…’

  ‘Nearly killed him…�
��

  ‘Nearly killed whom?’

  Clinging to memory. While the Russian voice – low, but urgent – dragged at him like a grapnel. And the answer was of course his father – that was whom. When she died, he was – God, like a madman…

  ‘You’re the only one it didn’t kill!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah – at last. Conscious… Bob, are you conscious? Because – look, you have to be. Now… Christ almighty…’

  ‘What’s – this?’

  Struggling up. Cold… In long grass – reeds – with the Count’s dark figure crouched beside him: a hand on his mouth, hissing some kind of warning… He pushed the hand away. Freezing bloody cold. This thing he was picking at with numb fingers was a rope, a hemp line around his chest so tight it was embedded in the soaked material of his reefer jacket. ‘Damn it, what’s…’

  ‘I had to tow you. Couldn’t lift you into the boat, so…’

  ‘Slip-knot… Might at least’ve used a bowline.’ Peering, with a hand out, touching him: ‘Nikolai Petrovich. How the hell…’

  Thoughts all jumbled: a mess of confusions, conflicts, questions, the biggest of them being What now? In fact ‘big’ was hardly the word for it: it was so huge it was unanswerable, the utter lack of even the beginnings of an answer more than bewildering, actually frightening. He was aware of this and affected by the fear of it even without having any clear notion yet as to where he was or how he’d come to be here.

  ‘Bob – now listen to me—’

  ‘Hey, what’s—’

  Light flaring overhead. The Count pushed him down – he seemed frantic, with a sort of whinnying in his fast breathing. But it was dark again, the searchlight – that was what it was, had been – had moved on, sweeping the level surface of the land but perhaps in its operators’ primary intention searching the water, the momentary overspill here quite unintentional. Bob was up on an elbow again, and the Count was kneeling, rather like a dog up on its hind legs to see over long grass, but with a hand on Bob’s shoulder to keep him down where he was: then he crouched down, beside him. ‘The searchlight’s on the ship – over there, where I found you. Probably the one we saw earlier – destroyer, you said it was?’