The Tropical Issue

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘So?’ I said.

  He puffed gently and removed the pipe again. ‘So they decided to make their own arrangements, and send the cocaine on to Florida.’

  I played with my fork, and there was a short silence. He didn’t break it.

  I said, ‘The Paramount Princess is going to Miami. You think I’ll give you away, if those people in masks were the Curtises?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I expect she’s sailed by now, anyway,’ Johnson said. ‘But I thought you should realise that van Diemen’s partners may very well be people you think of as friends. People whom van Diemen knows too, or they wouldn’t have troubled to keep their masks on in front of him.’

  ‘Unless they don’t know each other either,’ I said.

  ‘It’s possible. But at least one of them must have been on Madeira. At least one of them must be on his or her way now to Florida. Someone may possibly land in St Lucia, to keep an eye on what van Diemen is doing.

  ‘We know who’s on the Princess, and where she’s going. She’ll get quite a reception at Miami. If she’s full of cocaine, there will be a full-scale enquiry, and the link with van Diemen and Coombe’s will probably come out without too much trouble.

  ‘My part of the job is watching Roger van Diemen, and anyone else who has decided, for various powerful reasons, to move from Barbados to St Lucia.’

  I said, ‘Last night at the chalet, I said they might switch their plans. And you agreed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson. He continued to smoke, quite calmly. ‘They’ve a lot of cocaine. They have to put it somewhere.’

  There was another silence. I said, ‘And you’re afraid, if I come on Dolly, that I can’t keep quiet about all this?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Johnson said. ‘You couldn’t trust anybody.’

  ‘Except you,’ I said.

  ‘Um,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you’d have to trust me. Actually, I know you don’t much like Lenny or Raymond, but they wouldn’t see you stuck either.’

  He paused, and said, ‘And on top of that, I must tell you that it would be dangerous. People who cut people’s heads off are usually not short of weapons, and the will to use them. Also St Lucia is a hundred miles to the north-west, and there’s a bloody storm coming up.’

  He sounded cross, and I suddenly knew why, but I didn’t say so. I said, ‘I think you are saying that I can come if I want to. I want to.’

  ‘Want to what?’ said the Hon. Maggie, peering round the kitchen door. ‘J-J., Ferdy is having what he calls a little crise of the foie. Any suggestions?’

  Johnson tapped out his pipe, and picking up his empty plate, carried it to the sink. ‘Third of rum, third of whisky, third of absinthe,’ he said. ‘It’ll blow him into the middle of next week. Then we carry him down to the Dolly. If you’ve both decided you’re coming, that is. I want to sail in two hours.’

  Maggie laughed. ‘It’s a pipe-dream,’ she said. ‘D’you know how long it took the three of us to do all the paperwork last time?’

  Johnson smoothed the folds of his kimono and walked primly towards the door.

  ‘Supplies and paperwork long since set up by Raymond and Lenny. Do you imagine,’ said Johnson, ‘that this is a sudden decision? With the Rotary Club of St Lucia stamping their feet there in the Green Parrot?’

  Chapter 18

  We sailed out of Carlisle Bay at half past six, just before sunset, waved off by a number of tiddly holidaymakers from the Holiday Inn, and by a select number of properly dressed parties from the Royal Barbados Yacht Club who used (said Johnson) to play bridge with him, but could still apparently afford the fare to Barbados.

  To the people who stood stirring their planter’s punch and asking why the hell he was leaving at night, Johnson replied, waiting for the rope that Raymond was throwing him, that he had a date in St Lucia, and Dolly would be a damned sight safer in Rodney or Castries than here.

  Which was apparently true. I asked Raymond, as I was helping him to stow the dinghy on the saloon roof.

  After the digital watch, I didn’t expect to be Raymond’s favourite passenger, but he was less rude than I’d expected, maybe because there seemed to be so much to do. Also, remembering the handstands in the Mandarin cap and the tassels, I realised that even Raymond had his moments.

  You couldn’t actually say the same for Lenny, who hardly said a word as he showed me where to stow the satchel of clothes and my make-up kit, which was all that I’d been allowed to bring with me.

  All the rest of my gear, and my fifty quids’ worth of scent, were back in Ferdy’s house, by kind permission of Ferdy.

  And that was another thing. Ferdy was to share the master stateroom, it turned out, with Johnson.

  I had a bunk in the double cabin in the front of the boat. Sharing with Maggie.

  With Raymond brutally outcast to the single cabin, and Lenny aggressive, and Maggie after both Ferdy and Johnson, it looked like being a great voyage. With a storm blowing up.

  No one bothered to tell me what that meant. ‘Take a pill,’ said Johnson abstractedly, when I asked him. ‘We’ll be in St Lucia by teatime.’

  He was lying, and he knew he was lying. But I didn’t find that out till later.

  Ask me about tropical storms.

  The last one to hit the West Indies came from well down the African coast. This one had to be corny. It started where we had all started. From a little disturbance somewhere just south of Madeira.

  By the time Johnson and I were playing in the steel band, it had become a tropical depression, moving westerly.

  He knew that too, because Raymond heard all the broadcasts and told him.

  By the time we were at the banana plantation, it had become a tropical storm, moving slowly west at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. In thirty-six to forty-eight hours, it should reach the Windward and southern Leeward Islands on its way to Central America. Giving Dolly an easy sail of a night and a day to get into St Lucia before it hit us.

  Unless, of course, it weakened first.

  Unless, of course, it strengthened, from a tropical storm to a hurricane.

  Hurricanes can travel across an area 400 miles wide, and produce wind gusts of over 125 miles an hour. Hurricanes in one day release the same energy as a 420 megaton hydrogen bomb.

  Don’t ask me about hurricanes.

  All I knew that evening was that there was a lot of movement in the sea, and that nobody lay around the cockpit cushions drinking, or admiring Dolly’s lights on the water, or the glow of Barbados disappearing behind us.

  Instead, Johnson stayed almost all the time at the helm, his glasses flashing green in the binnacle light and saying things periodically to Lenny or Raymond or Maggie which caused little bursts of action, with rubber soles thudding on deck, or the buzz of a winch, and a bit of puffing and swearing.

  Ferdy had been given the charts, and would occasionally come up from the saloon with his glasses on, which I had never seen before, frowning over a folded bit of paper, which he and Johnson would peer at.

  Supper came early and was taken in relays down below, except by Johnson, who ate at the wheel and drank what looked like Perrier water. Nobody heroically took his place, so I assumed he was taking first shift, and would go to bed later.

  It wasn’t like the sail from Martinique to St Lucia at all, being at night, and busy, and four times the length, and having Ferdy with us instead of Natalie, which was a definite improvement.

  The change to Owner was something I found I could put up with, as well. Nobody called him Johnson any more; just skipper. Someone had to be the boss, and he was it.

  I tried once or twice to help with what was going on up on deck, and just got in the way, so I went and got hold of Lenny and said if he didn’t mind my breaking all his bloody dishes, I’d clear the table after the last relay and wash up.

  I heard him go and ask Johnson, but the helm must have approved, because Lenny came back and showed me where to put everything, and thanked me.

  Q
uite soon after that, he disappeared to his cot in the prow and after a bit Maggie, too, looked in to say she had been told off to sleep for a spell, and would I kindly keep out of the cabin.

  She sounded as if she’d rather like to have told me to shut up the clash in the galley as well, but no doubt decided that clean pans were worth suffering for.

  I finished with some trouble, because every now and then the ship would shudder, and everything that could jump, jumped. I already knew the signal for going about, when the ship suddenly leaned the other way, and everything that could fall, fell.

  The radio was on, and through the noise of the wind, and the ship heeling her way through the sea, I could hear announcements, in level, distinct voices. Twice I heard Johnson’s voice, pitched differently, apparently speaking on the radio-telephone.

  I was glad we had a radio-telephone. I was glad we had radar, and a direction-finder, and an echo-sounder and even an automatic pilot.

  Lenny and Raymond and Maggie had sailed Dolly across the Atlantic, not Johnson.

  Maggie might know about boats, but I didn’t know her track record for stamina. Ferdy might be light enough on his feet, but I doubted if he really knew much about boats.

  And Johnson might be skipper; might have raced his bleeding boat or other people’s all over the world, but all he had actually sailed since his gruesome smash-up was a calm twenty-five miles out of Martinique.

  I hung up the drying cloths and went up into the cockpit and said to Johnson, ‘I reckon you’re going to need a cook.’

  He looked down from the sails, his glasses glittering green like a comic strip. Which was another thing, with all these ropes and draughts and elbows about.

  He said, ‘I keep a spare pair with my socks,’ and smiled like a kosher cat at Raymond, who was sitting beside him, not understanding, and looking peevish.

  Johnson added to me, ‘All right; you’re it. Flasks and sandwiches. Raymond will show you where to put them. And breakfast from daybreak on demand. If it gets rough, we rig lines on deck. You don’t come up without clipping your harness to it. You obey me, or Lenny or Raymond.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Ferdy. For sailing, he had put on a gung-ho navy hugger and jeans, and natty gold pirate hoops in his ears, matching his two rings and his necklace. ‘Hey, you give orders to Lenny or Raymond. I bags Rita.’

  ‘You don’t know the ship,’ said Johnson calmly. ‘You’rejust the photographer. We’ll let you know when we’re on a good tack for the Yachting Monthly.’

  I said, ‘What’s the forecast?’ and Johnson said, ‘Weather.’

  They were busier than they seemed. I went below, and raided Lenny’s stores in the galley, and struggled with my catsuit in the head, and sneaked into my cabin to change into a cotton-knit shirt and pants, and a sweatband to keep my hair on.

  Maggie was sleeping with her mouth open and gunpowder-green circles under her eyes. You couldn’t tell if it was Ferdy or Valium.

  I nearly got into my bunk, but on second thoughts set my rescued digital alarm, and curled up instead on the saloon seat.

  I slept, too, and missed the changeover, when Johnson went below and Lenny came up to take the helm. Raymond came down, and woke Maggie, and stayed to eat three of my club sandwiches and down some coffee before he went up and took Lenny’s seat.

  The wind was a lot stronger, and so was the bouncing on Dolly, which made the sails jar and jiggle. Raymond’s voice yelling orders was drowned out by the noise down below. The radio crackled and spat. At one point, Maggie came down, her hair soaking, and tuned in to Radio St Lucia, which was just signing off at 11.15.

  The Meteorological Office at Hewanorra, it announced, had just made it known that Tropical Storm Chloe was now moving west at wind speeds of up to 70 m.p.h. Residents of St Lucia should tune in for further news at six a.m. tomorrow.

  She didn’t say anything: just stood pulling at the dripping point of her hair. I said, ‘There’s some fish paella in the dinner-pail thermos. And coffee or punch.’

  Her mascara had all streaked in the spray, so that she looked surprised, like a doll. ‘You cooked it? That’s good.’

  I didn’t need the pat on the head, but it was no time to be fussy. I gave her a spoon and a plateful and said, ‘How far away is the storm?’

  ‘About six hundred miles. We should be O.K.,’ she said. ‘Look, Ferdy ought to come down. Tell him you’re serving food.’

  I was halfway to the steps when she added, ‘Don’t you think?’

  Tropical Storm Chloe, the great equaliser.

  It turned out that Ferdy’s mind was running more on rum punch than on food, but I’d plenty of that as well, and he duly came down. He then came into the galley to inspect the paella, and we were comparing notes about squid when someone rapped on the doorpost and said, ‘Be quiet a minute, will you?’

  You do what you’re told, when you’re in the path of a tropical storm. I felt my heart thud. Ferdy stepped quietly outside, and I followed him.

  Johnson was up, and bent over the radio-telephone, with Raymond and Maggie beside him. It wasn’t producing storm warnings: just a great roar of quacking static. Every now and then, Johnson would move a switch and speak into it himself, but if he’d got any response once, he’d lost it.

  He straightened after a bit. ‘No good. Where’s the chart?’

  ‘What?’ said Ferdy.

  Maggie answered. ‘Boat in trouble. Holiday cruiser. We can’t get proper details.’

  ‘Where?’ said Ferdy.

  Johnson looked up. ‘Between us and Chloe.’

  ‘Anyone else around?’ said Ferdy.

  Johnson said, ‘Look for yourself. There’s the radar.’

  There was no one else around. Not with Chloe approaching, there wouldn’t be. The arm swivelled round, bleeping every time it passed this speck to the east.

  Ferdy said, ‘How long will it take us to reach her?’

  ‘Into the wind? We’d have to motor. Drinking fuel, of course. But I think we could pick her up and still make it. Anyway, we can’t leave her,’ said Johnson, with finality.

  Which of course we couldn’t. Not a powerless boat, with those winds approaching.

  On engine, in rising seas, Dolly stopped being a lady. She stopped doing her best to skim along on one glossy ear, and rolled and pitched and wallowed, with her propeller fizzing out of the water, and her bottom coming down on every fourth or fifth wave with a thud.

  Johnson steered, his shirt stuck to the nylon of his oilskins, tipping her up and round and over the waves like a sculptor.

  After a while, my back ached with the jarring, and I saw Raymond watching Johnson uneasily.

  I remembered Maggie’s method and, handing myself off the woodwork, struggled down below and came up with the rest of the sandwiches in a bag, and something to cut them with, and some mugs and a quart flask of coffee.

  Lenny said, ‘Here. Let me, Miss,’ and handed them round, while Raymond put his hand casually on the wheel and said, ‘Rita’s specials. Take one while you’ve got the chance.’

  Johnson gave up the wheel without comment, and slithered over to where he could brace himself better against the ship’s bucketing. I admired him, rather, for admitting defeat, although Raymond wasn’t nearly as good at the helm as he was.

  Ferdy ate half the sandwiches, and then hopped down and fetched us some punch, which was a help too. Then Johnson leaned forward and called, ‘I think we have her in view. Let’s have some light.’

  The rain had stopped. In the dimness of the cockpit, Raymond had his binoculars up as well. His wet yellow hair had gone like brown varnish.

  Then we all saw it: a collection of lights tossing up and down like dropped stars beyond us. Raymond flicked on a switch.

  A brilliant searchlight sprang from Dolly’s prow. And there, heaving and wallowing in the distance, was the disabled ship, a motor cruiser with no engine power.

  Not a boat you’d see in Monte Carlo, or visiting with the Royal Barbados Yacht Club. A
biggish, shabby boat, probably under charter, with rust on her sides, and a good deal of chipped paint, and some people in oilskins and some in soaked cottons waving to us. I counted five or six, and other faces at the portholes below.

  They were flinging their arms about and yelling in a foreign language. They looked pretty happy to see us. I hoped they also realised what Johnson had done for them. And right away began to wonder how much it would slow us down, towing this thing behind us to harbour.

  Johnson said, ‘We’ll send Lenny over. He may be able to fix their engine.’

  Mind-reader. He took a loud-hailer from Lenny, and began addressing the other boat in what seemed to be its own language. Spanish, perhaps.

  The other boat answered, and as the two ships bounced towards each other, fenders began to appear, and a rope spun through the air, to be caught and made fast for winching. Warped together, the cruiser and Dolly got closer.

  On the other ship, they’d found a loud-hailer as well, and the captain, young and tanned and bare-headed, came to the rail of his own ship and used it.

  He spoke English too.

  He said, ‘We board on your ship. You try to stop us, we kill you.’

  People say that kind of thing in films. It doesn’t happen for real. We were all standing or kneeling on Dolly, in the cockpit or on the side decks. We just all went on standing or kneeling, and looking at this guy making threats at us.

  Except Raymond. He believed it. He moved.

  There was a crack; a whine; and a shower of splinters jumped into the darkness from the mast at Raymond’s side.

  We all saw the red flame come and go on the opposite deck. There were a lot of men standing there now. Twelve, perhaps. And most of them held, pointing at us, these long shiny rifles that give producers such headaches.

  Like the severed head, it was quite different when it was real.

  ‘The next time,’ said the captain, ‘you be killed. No person move.’

  We were so close now, we could hear him without the loud-hailer. Without moving, Johnson spoke.

  No drama. He just said, ‘There’s a hurricane coming.’