Terror's Cradle

by Duncan Kyle

  But I was by no means sure of what I was doing. I'd told Elliot and Willingham that Anderson could be in any

  one of a million places and that remained true. All the same, I had a kind of mental picture of the man now : he had an instinct for high and lonely places, plus strong independence of spirit. Anderson would choose his own way, and follow it. And the Holm of Noss was his by conquest if not by title. More than that: scarcely anyone knew he'd done it. He'd kept it quiet because of the snowy owls. There, he would not be found unless he chose to be.

  I headed south down the channel between Mainland and Bressay, watching the dark Bressay cliffs climb high and black above and sticking as close to them as I dared. I realized suddenly that I'd no idea how much fuel was in the tank and there seemed to be no way of finding out. I prayed there would be sufficient. Certainly the engine mumbled steadily enough, but then it would, of course, until the last drops had burned. I shrugged to myself. There was nothing I could do about it now.

  I used more of the hot water to make more tea, added a generous slug of whisky and thought about Marasov. He'd certainly got here fast from Gothenburg. How? Then I remembered my geography; The Shetlands lie closer to Scandinavia than to Aberdeen. That accounted for the strong Norse links; also accounted, of course, for Marasov's quick trip across. A big fishing boat going flat out wouldn't take very long to cross and Marasov probably had even faster transport at his disposal. But what he said was less easy to understand. He knew I was in the Shetlands: his men at Sandness had radioed the information. Okay. He'd kept watch for me, spotted me, grabbed me. But why, after that, had he let me go? The more I thought about it, the more I returned to one, simple conclusion : that Marasov must think I was his best chance. He must believe I was more concerned about Alsa than anything else. Well, he was certainly right about that! But there was an awful finality about his warning. The transparency must be returned without anybody else seeing it. Or else it was curtains for Alsa! I wondered what the transparency showed. Was it, like some nineteen-twenties melodrama with a touch of technology, a photograph of the plans? Or the ship itself? Would it be possible to tell, from a single photograph, what kind of ship she was? I thought of the characteristic flaring hull of an air, craft carrier and decided it would, if construction was far enough advanced. In which case, I realized grimly, a sight of that transparency would mean curtains for me, too. And not even a sight. To have touched it would be enough. Marasov wasn't going to say, if I did succeed in getting hold of it, `Thanks for your help and here's your girl friend.' He was going to say to himself that if I'd had a chance to see it, I must be put out of the way, permanently, before I had the chance to describe what I'd seen. So either way we were done for, both of us. And James Anderson too, if he so much as touched the lens case addressed to him!

  Marasov had himself a work-horse and knew it. As long as I believed Alsa was alive, he knew I'd go on chasing. And I daren't not believe it.

  Ahead of me a red light glowed a warning. I checked Lincoln's chart and found a red-ink cross marked and beside it, heavily underlined, the words oil rig wreck. Minutes later, I passed close to a tangle of steel girders sticking out of the water, with the waves washing at them. The waves were getting bigger now as Catriona came out of the shelter of Bressay Sound and became exposed to the wider sea. Beneath my feet she began to rise and fall disconcertingly and I held tight to the wheel as she rolled and pitched beneath the high cliffs. Had I bitten off more than I could chew, trying to make this trip? I remembered all the radio warnings I'd heard over the years, of all the gales in Orkney and Shetland, force this and that. Even the names on the chart now had a sinister flavour; something called Geo of the Veng lay just behind me, above towered Bard Head, beyond lay Hamar and Muckle Hell. I was warmer now, but I shuddered and forced myself to concentrate as I brought Catriona round the towering headland and turned her slowly through heavier seas to head north for Noss.

  Clinging to the wheel one-handed, I held the chart with

  the other and stood swaying as I tried to work out What I must do. The chart's legend showed Noss to be all cliffs apart from two tiny sandy beaches, one on each side of a narrow neck of land at the extreme west. The island itself stretched about a mile and a half, east to west, a mile north to south. At the western end, where the two beaches were marked, the land was low, as a fifty-foot contour line showed. Looking ahead, I found I could dimly see Noss now and its dark wedge-shape confirmed what the chart showed. The land rose steadily from that low western tip towards a towering cliff named The Noup, at the extreme east. The Holm of Noss lay a little less than half a mile south of the Noup. I thought about continuing in Catriona to the Holm, but reluctantly decided against it. Lincoln had said the sea stack was two hundred feet high..If I got there, what would I do? Shout? The sound of the sea alone would make me inaudible. I could hardly climb the bloody thing. So the only way was to go ashore, to cross the island. In spite of the hot drinks, the spirits, the food I'd consumed, I felt weak as a kitten. The long day had drained my physical and mental strength. I hadn't slept the night before. I ached to pull this pitching boat in somewhere, just to lie on one of the bunks and let the world drift away. But there wasn't a chance. For a start, there was nowhere for the boat to go except that little beach on Noss. And I must go on!

  I needed energy above all things. Sugar gave quick energy, didn't it? And there was a container of sugar in the food locker. The remaining water in the kettle was still warm and I half filled my cup with sugar, managed to pour some of the water on to it, then half-drank, half-ate the sweet revolting result and came close to vomiting it straight back. But, rather precariously at first, then more easily, it stayed down. By the time I was bringing Catriona cautiously in towards the little dull stretch of moonlit sand the chart called Nesti Voe, I'd stopped thinking about my stomach and was trying to think how to get ashore dry-footed. There wasn't any way, as it turned out. I just had to run the boat up on to the sand and jump down into the shallows clutching

  the anchor. I found an embedded rock and dug the anchor flukes hard in behind it, tugged the chain to persuade myself it would hold, then sat down and tipped the water out of Lincoln's rubber boots.

  That done, I turned and began to walk up off the beach. There was a house on the eastern tip of the island, which the chart had described as a shepherd's house. It wasn't in fact, but it looked empty and slightly forlorn and I ignored it. Instead I set off on my steady eastward climb. The land rose a little, then fell away, then rose again, a straight and steep inclined plane towards the great cliff. I kept to the south, following a narrow track worn by generations of sheep. It stayed always a few yards away from the sharp drop to my right. Even so, it was unnerving. I was alone on the island, the cliffs were getting higher with every step I took, and I had the feeling that if I slipped or put my foot accident tally in one of the dozens of rabbit holes, I'd fall and roll inexorably over. It probably wasn't true. If I fell I'd be able to grab at something and hold myself; the slope to the cliff edge wasn't as steep as my mind made it, but that didn't stop the fear mushrooming inside my head, or stop my eyes straying endlessly towards the cliff edge when I should have been keeping them firmly on the little sheep track.

  Whether it was adrenalin produced by fear, or whether the sugar and the food I'd eaten were doing what I'd hoped they'd do, it was impossible to tell. But I managed to keep climbing. I was still tired, my legs began to ache as my muscles faced the unaccustomed effort of a long, hard, uphill walk; but I was getting there. Stopping and turning, I looked down and across the long slope and saw that, even if I appeared to be making no headway, a third of the journey lay behind me. I turned and plodded on, hands on my knees now, pushing my legs downward with each step, bent low and leaning forward to minimize the effort. After a few more minutes, I stopped and gave myself another breather, and, looking back, guessed I'd come about a mile. Not far now, then. A few more minutes,.less than ten anyway, and the Holm should be visible. I was getting higher, and
the air

  grew colder. Had I not been working so hard, I would have been very chilled, and up here there was quite a strong wind.

  I came quite suddenly on a sharp little down slope that ran direct to a low, ruined wall. To my left, the Noup itself reared still higher into the night sky; below and a couple of hundred yards to my right, a slash of darkness cut across the grassy slope. There was grass this side, grass the other. But that black tear into the earth must be the chasm between the island and the Holm.

  I stopped for a moment, looking down at the acre top of the great stack, but could see nothing on it. The surface was not entirely flat; bumps and shadowed hollows told me that. I began carefully to pick my way down the slope, which was short and steep and far more genuinely dangerous than the sheep track I'd followed. If I fell here, I'd certainly roll; there were gaping holes in that low wall and on the other side of it, hundreds of feet of empty space.

  Finally, with dreadful care, I came to the gap. Lincoln had told me Anderson had rigged up something called a Tyrolean traverse. I didn't know what that was and had imagined some kind of rope network stretched across the gap. If so, it wasn't there now. Instead, there was an apparatus like the earlier one Lincoln had described : a thick stake driven deep and held by pegged restraining wires. From the stake a heavy nylon rope stretched across to the Holm. I shouted Anderson's name, but the wind up here was in my face, carrying any sound I made back over Noss, not over to the Holm. I shouted and shouted, but drew no response. It was then I knew, sickeningly, that I should have to cross. I was beginning to believe Anderson wasn't there, but I couldn't be sure. And I had to be sure. If he was on the Holm he could be sleeping; after all, he'd built a hide there from which to watch his birds, and I hadn't been able to make enough noise to reach him, let alone to penetrate sleep.

  But how to cross? There seemed to be no cradle; just the rope running down and across to the stack. As I came

  carefully closer, I realized there was not one rope but two; the heavier was two-inch nylon, the lighter was of the same material, but only a slender line, running over a pulley on the stake and tied to a cleat below it. On the far side of the chasm, the heavy line ran into dark shadow and I could see nothing. But – and my heart thumped at the thought –if there was some kind of cradle, and it was on the other side, it could mean only one thing: Anderson had used the cradle to cross!

  Quickly I untied the light line and pulled. A yard, and nothing had happened. Two yards. Hand over hand I pulled it in. There was a weight on the end and it was moving to wards me.

  The cradle! As it came closer I could see that it was little more than a large, deep box. At front and rear, the wooden ends rose higher than the sides, and the rope ran through holes drilled into the wood. Simple. Efficient if the rope and timber held. Lethal if the rope failed, or the stakes were uprooted.

  I looked at it with an apprehension approaching horror. In a moment or two I'd have to make myself get into the thing and move out over that black chasm. What was it Lincoln had called it?A hole into hell. He'd been exactly and precisely right; no exaggeration, no hyperbole. Except that the hell below was anything but fiery. I'd got the cradle over the cliff edge now and I hesitated a long minute before I could force myself to climb in. As I did, the rope sagged under my weight, the cradle rocked terrifyingly and I could hear my own uncontrolled grunt of panic. I squatted in the bottom of the cradle, keeping the centre of gravity as low as I could, and grasped the heavy nylon line securely. Then, drawing a deep, shuddering breath, I allowed the cradle to begin its slide down the rope.

  I couldn't see what was beneath, and I was insanely glad I couldn't. There was only a vision of death down there and I was close enough, without actually seeing it. Slowly, passing the rope very carefully through my hands, I slid backward down the line, making sure every time I changed

  hands, that my grip was hard and firm. If my hand slipped, the cradle would bucket away down the slope and while I'd no idea what was at the other end, it seemed frighteningly probable that I'd be thrown out and maybe flung into the depths below. The distance was only twenty yards or so, but it seemed endless; I moved only a foot with each fresh clutch at the rope and the sheer cliff of Noss was sliding into view above the end of the cradle, still very near.

  Inch by inch, I made my way across, tense with fear, my mind empty of everything but that line and my own grip on it. Empty, that is, until a glance at the Noss cliff made me ask myself how I'd get back. I'd have to haul myself up the line, instead of merely stopping myself sliding down. It would take strength to do that, and to supply the leverage, I'd have to stand up in the swaying cradle. If only someone were standing on the Noss side, to pull on the lighter line!

  That thought brought a new question stamping brutally into my mind. It was a question that made my skin crawl. The cradle had been on the Holm side. And the light line had been tied to the cleat. If Anderson had crossed to the Holm, then who had tied the line?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I got my answer as the cradle gave a sudden bump behind me. The bump itself was, at that moment, bad enough; my first jolting thought was that something had gone dangerously wrong; and so it had, but not with the cradle. When I realized it could slide no further and that I was really across, actually on the Holm itself, I raised my body from its awkward crouch to look cautiously over the side. I was seven or eight feet from the edge, in a little cleft in the rock wall. I stood slowly upright, turning carefully to climb out, and found myself looking at the dark figure of a man.

  He stood about five feet away, booted feet planted well apart. His back was to the moon so his face was in shadow but the moon gleamed on something else: on the blue barrel of the weapon in his hands.

  He gave a quick jerk of the rifle, ordering me from the cradle, then stood back as I climbed gingerly out on to the Holm's thick grass surface. Another jerk of the rifle had me moving away from the edge, walking awkwardly backward, my arms raised. He didn't speak. When he'd got me where he evidently wanted me, near the middle of the flat top of the stack, he pointed to the ground, making me sit. He bent, picked up something from the ground and stepped back a pace or two before he took a fresh onehanded grip on the rifle and fumbled awkwardly with the other hand until a slender length of metal appeared. A radio. He was one of Marasov's men. He spoke quickly, in Russian, and I saw him 'look at me carefully as he talked, presumably giving a description. It didn't take long, and he snapped the aerial back in place, lowered the radio to the ground and took a proper grip of the rifle before he came closer again.

  `How on earth did you know about this?' said.

  No reply. He wasn't talking. His mouth was flat and hard and wasn't going to open. Or maybe he didn't speak English. I thought about it and worked out for myself how Marasov knew about the Holm. He could only know because Alsa had told 'him, and Alsa knew because Anderson had told her. That told me two things: first that Alsa was probably still alive; secondly that the man who'd impersonated Schmid had possibly been right when he'd said Alsa intended to marry Anderson. At least they were very close. So Marasov, knowing about this place, had simply put a man here to wait. If Anderson came, fine. If he didn't, it was merely a short spell of sentry-go. Marasov, it was becoming increasingly obvious, was very well-organized indeed. Then another question reared in my mind. I was wearing two heavy roll-necked sweaters, the top one navy blue. Also dark trousers and

  boating boots. A wholly different rig-out from the one I'd been wearing when I was pitched into Lerwick harbour and Marasov dragged me away. How then would this man have described me? My clothes? Well, it was a rough working rig-out. He'd say that I was in my mid-thirties, on the fair side. Anderson was about the same age; I knew that from the photograph. Might this man think I was Anderson? If he did, Marasov would come tearing over here like a terrier after a rat. And when he got here, he'd decide that if my ideas were no forwarder than his, he might as well dispose of me now as later. Which made it very urgent indeed that I do somethin
g. But what?

  Up there we were exactly like two flies on top of a jam jar, except that one fly had a sting and neither could fly away. The only way off the Holm was by the cradle, and my captor would clearly wait until the other side of the rope-way was manned before sending me across. He was armed and standing, I was unarmed and sitting. All the advantage to him. I move, he fires. I thought about-it. Wait a minute . . . would he shoot? Not if I was Anderson he wouldn't, because Anderson was vital! They wanted Anderson very badly indeed. Suddenly the memory of the men who'd shot to frighten me in the Valley of Fire came back, Elliot's men, bloody vivid in my mind. Firing dozens of shots, all going wide. Orders to miss?

  Maybe.

  It was a hell of a chance to take. I'd taken that chance in the Valley of Fire and been right. But you could only be wrong once.

  What if I didn't try? Well, then Marasov would come and say to himself, it's only Sellers and Sellers is patently no use any more. In that case there was the nice, high cliff of a remote island all too close to hand! Farewell Sellers. And goodbye Alsa, too, because there was no-one else to care except Anderson, and Anderson could have no real knowledge of the set-up. Nor could he know that the only possible end was sudden death all round. If Marasov

  found Anderson and said, it's a fair exchange, the trans.. parency for the girl, Anderson would jump at it. And thereby sentence the pair of them.

  I'd screwed my courage to the sticking point before and it had taken a ghastly act of will. By rights it should have been easier this time. Same scenario. Same act of lunacy required. But it wasn't easier. It was almost impossible. One part of my mind ordered my legs and arms to move, while another part, the sensible part that deals in selfpreservation, said don't believe a word of it. Inertness is the watchword. Disobey this fool! But somehow -I made myself stand. And stretch. In spite of the cold, my back ran with sweat. He stared at me, stone-faced, and I'd have given everything I had to know what was in his mind, what his orders were.