Evans nodded. ‘No problem. We’ll have her waiting for you there. Then you can see her and identify her through your glasses. Okay?’ And he added, ‘There’s some countries I been in where death is a way of life, as you might say. So don’t fool around with me, either of you, see.’ He turned on his heel then and left the cabin just as Sergeant Simmonds arrived.
Gareth told him to take me down to the armoury and issue me with whatever weapon he thought most suitable for holding a dangerous man hostage for half an hour or so. He was quite close to me when he said that and he gripped hold of my arm. ‘Don’t let him jump you. Just keep your distance and the gun on him the whole time.’ His fingers were digging into me, his hand trembling. God help me, I thought, he was scared of the man. ‘Just keep your distance,’ he said again. ‘All the time you’re alone with him on the island. Particularly at the moment of exchange. If it gets to that, if they actually bring her out to the island, then he’ll have those two thugs of his to back him up, so don’t let your eyes stray. He’ll be waiting for that, the moment when Soo moves towards you.’ And he added, ‘Both of you held as hostage would complicate things.’
His hand relaxed his grip on my arm. He turned and picked up his cap. ‘I’m going up to the bridge now. When you’re armed, you can join Pat at the gangway. By then the launch will be waiting to run you over to the island. And remember – watch him, every moment.’
Chapter Two
‘Zulu One Zero, this is Zulu One. Come in, Zulu One Zero. Over … Yes, I’ve been put ashore as agreed on the island. You can bring the woman down as soon as the frigate starts to fetch its anchor … Yes, of course they did. It’s the husband. That fellow Steele … Sure he’s got a gun, one of those Stirling sub-machine pistols, but I don’t know how good he is with it …’ He glanced across at me, his teeth gleaming in the light of my torch. ‘That’s right, wait till you see the frigate’s stern light disappear beyond Lazareto, then put her in the speedboat. You can come out for me soon as the Colonel reports he is locked on. Okay? … Good. Out.’
He turned to me, his teeth still showing white in that strange smile of his. ‘Relax, for Chris’sake. Another half-hour and with any luck you’ll have your wife back and I’ll be gone.’ He slipped the radiophone back into the pocket of his jacket and came down from the ruined wall on which he had been standing. I backed away, watching him, and he laughed as he came towards me. ‘Think I’m going to jump you? No way. I’ve seen the silverware in that room of yours above the chandlery.’ He walked right past me, out into the open where he had a clear view of the frigate. The launch was just going alongside and at the same moment all the upper-deck lights that gave the outline of the ship such a fairy look went suddenly out.
He walked past the dig, out to the northern end of the hospital’s long seaward-facing block. From there the frigate was no more than three cables away and we could hear the voices of the men on the fo’c’s’le as they waited for the order to weigh anchor. Evans lit a cigarette, his features picked out in the flare of the match. ‘Suppose Gareth boy takes his tin can out and you don’t get your wife back – what then, eh?’ He blew out a stream of smoke, watching me.
I didn’t say anything. The man was built like a tank, all hard bone and muscle. How many shots would it take to kill him? I had never fired a machine pistol before and I tried to remember what I’d been told. Was it high they fired, or low?
‘Well?’ He was grinning at me, but his eyes were cold and calculating in the torchlight, as though he were trying to make up his mind whether I was capable of shooting him down in cold blood.
A searchlight stabbed out from somewhere by the radio mast on the high point of La Mola, the beam blinding me. He could have rushed me then, but he had turned his head away and was staring out towards the frigate, now a black shape in silhouette. The clank of the anchor cable sounded loud in the stillness as they shortened in. The clanking stopped and in the searchlight’s brilliant beam I could see the chain itself hanging straight up and down from the bows. Shortly after that the hum of machinery told us they had got one of the two turbines going again.
‘Any minute now,’ I said, my voice sounding strained. I only said it to relieve the tension.
Evans was still staring intently at the ship and I heard him mutter, it’s against all his training …’ He swung round on me. ‘You reck’n he’ll take her out, or is he up to something?’ He started towards me. ‘If you and he …’
I told him to stay where he was, my finger back on the trigger. ‘Don’t make me fire this thing.’
I don’t think he heard me, for he had turned and was staring out again across the dark water. ‘Like I said, it’s against all his training. And if he thinks he’s going to lie off the entrance till you’ve got your wife back –’
‘You’ve been over all that,’ I said. ‘Once those guns can be brought to bear …’
‘The guns – yes.’ He nodded. ‘A direct hit and he’d be blown out of the water.’ He shook his head, standing very still. ‘To throw it all away for that woman.’ He glanced round at me, the teeth showing white again. ‘No offence, but Christ! I don’t understand.’
‘Then you’ve never been in love,’ I said.
He laughed. It was more like a guffaw. ‘A four-letter word or a three-letter word, what the hell? It’s sex, isn’t it, and my mother taught him about that on board the Betty Ann. Didn’t he tell you?’ The clank of the anchor chain started up again. ‘In a mud berth.’ He seemed to find that funny, laughing still as he watched the ship. ‘Quite a girl, my mother. But to throw away his whole career, everything he’s worked for … Or is he scared? Is that why he’s getting his anchor up, scared of being blown to hell if he stays?’
He looked at me for a moment, then his gaze switched back again to the black shape of the ship, his body quite still, almost tense. The navigation lights were on now, the anchor just coming clear of the water. The frigate was beginning to move. ‘Poor little bugger!’ I heard him murmur. Then he turned on me suddenly. ‘Suppose I don’t let her go? You going to gun me down?’ The searchlight was switched off and I heard him laugh, everything suddenly very dark. I stepped back, expecting him to rush me, and tripped over a stone.
‘He’s going astern,’ Evans said.
I switched on my torch again. He hadn’t moved, but now his head was turned back, his gaze fixed on the dim shape out there on the water. The frigate’s bows were swinging, the stern coming towards us. The sound of the engines suddenly increased. Or was it just one engine? The sound died abruptly as the ship lost way. Was there really something wrong with her machinery after all? The sound increased again, the bows swinging. It was as though they were having difficulty with the steering. I could see the stern light, the ship again coming straight towards us and growing steadily larger.
Several times she started to go ahead, but each time she veered to port, finally entering the narrows on the north side of Bloody Island stern-first. It wasn’t exactly the most direct route if he was making out to sea, but it seemed it was only at slow astern they could steer a reasonably straight course.
Evans followed them back along the north shore of the island as far as the dig. I kept about twenty paces behind him. By this time the frigate was so close I was looking straight into the bridge, and in the brief moments I dared take my eyes off him, I could actually identify individual officers. Gareth was there and I saw him slip out of the captain’s chair and move to the front of the bridge. Mault followed him.
The next time I glanced at the bridge the two of them seemed to be arguing, and they had been joined by Peter Craig. Evans had now crossed the dig and was standing by the beacon, staring at the frigate, which was then level with us, the slightly waved metal side of her gliding past within biscuit-toss. I stopped, and as the bridge came level with me I saw Robin Makewate had joined the other three. At that moment Mault turned and walked off the bridge.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and half turned. Evans had sh
ifted his position and was looking behind him, towards Cala Figuera. I heard it then, the buzz-saw sound of an outboard coming nearer. At the same time Medusa’s stern came clear of the narrows and began to swing towards us. There was a great threshing under the counter and she checked just in time, moving slowly ahead, her bows swinging all the time to port.
Evans left his post by the beacon and came towards me. ‘I should have stayed on board.’
I motioned him to keep his distance, the gun pointed at his stomach. ‘Why?’
Then I’d have some idea what the hell’s going on.’
The sound of the outboard died, but I was barely conscious of it, my eyes half on Evans, half on the frigate, which was now going astern again and swinging more sharply. In this way it turned itself completely round until it was lying just off the landing place with its bows pointing almost directly at the big hotel above our house. ‘Has he really got engine trouble?’
I didn’t say anything, wondering about that glimpse I had had of Mault arguing with Gareth on the bridge.
The frigate was beginning to go ahead again. I thought she was endeavouring to round the island and head seaward through the wider southern passage, but the bows started to swing again so that it looked as though the whole grey bulk of her would land up stern-first in the hospital ruins.
Evans was hurrying now as he skirted the dig, took the path to the landing place, then turned off on the track that circled the old hospital building. It was brighter here, the frigate outlined against the lights of Villa Carlos. Water swirled at her stern, small waves rushing against the rocks. Evans had stopped. I think, like me, he was too astonished to do anything but stare at the dark shape coming closer, the bows swinging clear, but the low flat stern, with its flight deck and hangar, closing the rocks just south of our boat landing. She was coming towards us with no check, the hum of the one engine, the suck of the prop, the waves beating at the shore, all getting louder.
The grinding crunch of her grounding on the rocks was a rising cacophony of sound that seemed to go on and on, the stern rising till it was so close it looked from where I stood as though Evans could step across on to the deck itself. Then suddenly everything was still, a quietness gradually descending over the scene, the propeller bedded against rock, the water subsiding to the stillness of a balmy Mediterranean night. The silly bloody idiot!’ The anger of Evans’s voice was tinged with something else. Resignation? I wasn’t sure. And there were other voices now, from on board the frigate. Men tumbling up from below, out on to the deck to see what had happened, and Gareth standing there in the open wing door of the bridge on the port side, standing still as stone as though shocked into immobility.
It was like that for a moment, a blurred picture of disaster recorded by the eye’s retina and made strange by the darkness and the lights beyond, the ruined hospital standing over it all like the mirror image of the stranding. Then Gareth moved, the upper-deck broadcast system blaring orders. The lights came on again, the ship’s outline illuminated for all the world to see that she was ashore, her stern smashed into the rocks. God! What he must be feeling!
I knew who it was running up from the landing point before she reached me. I heard her panting and at the same time Evans had whipped out his radiophone and was talking into it, passing the word that the frigate was aground.
‘He did it on purpose.’ She caught hold of my arm. ‘I saw it, Mike. I was right there in the boat. Christ! I thought he was going to drive her straight over me.’ Her mouth was wide, her teeth white in the frigate’s lights and those big eyes of hers almost starting out of her head. ‘Why? Why did he do it?’
‘Where have you been?’ I asked her.
‘Looking for Soo. But why for God’s sake?’ She was staring at me. ‘I didn’t find her. I don’t know where they’ve taken her. Nobody seems to know.’ And she said urgently, ‘What will happen to him? It’s a court martial, isn’t it – running your ship aground? The Navy won’t stand for that.’
‘Probably not,’ I said. The ship’s decks were alive with men now and Gareth was down at the hangar doors, Mault with him. The sense of activity and purpose was fascinating to watch as the hangar door was slid back to reveal the dark interior of it stacked with wooden cases and all sorts of weapons, some that looked like rocket-launchers.
That was when he grabbed her. Fool that I was, I hadn’t registered the fact that he should have been standing in dark silhouette against the light. But instead of being in full view, he suddenly appeared out of the shadows to my right. I heard Petra gasp, and as I turned and flashed my torch, the blade of a knife flicked in the beam, a steely glint pointing straight at her throat, his face, hard as rock, right beside hers as she opened her mouth wide and began to scream, her left arm twisted up behind her as he frog-marched her slowly backwards.
He didn’t bother to tell me to drop the gun. He knew I wouldn’t shoot as long as he was holding her as a shield. ‘Don’t move.’ The order was hissed at me through those big teeth. ‘Stay where you are and she’ll be all right.’ He was backing on to the path leading to the landing. ‘And tell your wife’s lover, he’s just signed his death warrant. Hers too.’
He kept Petra between himself and me all the way back to the track that ran past the tent and down to the landing place. I didn’t dare move. I had a feeling he was a desperate man now and capable of anything, even cold-blooded murder if it served his purpose. And then the incredible happened. The flap of the tent was pushed aside and Lennie appeared.
He stood there, stretching and yawning. I don’t know whether he was still drunk, or just half asleep, but it took a moment for the scene to register with him. Then his eyes were suddenly wide with shock as he saw, first the ship, then Petra in the grip of Evans as he backed down the path.
He was like that for an instant, his eyes wide. Then they narrowed, and in the same instant he moved, an instinctive, almost reflex action, moved with extraordinary speed, so that Evans was quite unprepared, Lennie’s fist slamming into his face, knocking him backwards. ‘Out of the way, girl!’ He was moving after Evans and she just stood there in a daze, blocking his path.
It almost cost him his life. She moved, but too late, Evans pulling himself to his feet again and brushing past her in a crouching run. The knife flashed as Lennie lashed out at him, and the next thing I saw was the Australian staggering backwards, clutching at his face and blood spurting between his fingers.
The knife slashed again and he went down, a strangled screaming like a trapped rabbit. Then Evans turned and ran, dropping out of sight almost immediately as he made for the landing place. I didn’t shout. I didn’t go after him. My concern was for Lennie. I couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead. He just lay there on a bed of wild flowers at the edge of the path, blood spurting from the loose flap of his cheek, where the knife had slashed it open, and a dark patch beginning to spread over his shirt as blood welled up from somewhere not far from his heart.
Petra moved to my side, her eyes wild as she grabbed at my arm. She was sobbing. But then she was suddenly silent, squatting down, her bare knee bent against a rock, still as a statue, horror-struck as she stared at the blood on Lennie’s face, the ghastly cheek flap. ‘Oh, my God!’ He was no longer screaming, his body quite still. ‘Is he dead?’
I shook my head. Blood was welling out over his shirt and I thought I could detect a slight movement of his chest. ‘You look after him,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if the ship will take him.’
It was then, as I rose to my feet, that I heard the outboard start, the sound of it rising as Petra’s inflatable shot into view, hugging the rocks. I glimpsed it briefly as Evans skidded it round the north-western bulge of the island. Then it was lost to view as he ran it under the beacon and into the narrows. I turned back to the ship then, and as I hurried up the path under the hospital walls, I met two naval ratings lugging a case of rockets. Others passed me as I ran to the frigate’s stern, shouting for the Captain.
Nobody took any notice o
f me for a moment. They had rigged a gangway from the stern to the top of a flat rock close by the path, the scene chaotic as almost the whole crew swarmed like ants from ship to shore, humping equipment from the hangar, listening gear and telephones, as well as rocket-launchers and ammunition. Orders were being shouted, arms issued, cases ripped open and ammunition got ready.
In the end it was Peter Craig who answered my call for help and, after some delay, he managed to find the medical orderly who finally got Lennie on to a stretcher and carried him on board. I wasn’t allowed to go with him. Craig was adamant about that. And when I asked for Gareth, he told me the Captain was in the Communications Office and there was absolutely no chance of my seeing him until the situation had clarified itself.
‘They’ll do what they can for him,’ he assured me. ‘We’ve no doctor on board. You know that, I think, but those two did a good job on John Kent. Looked after him until we could get him ashore. They’ll do the same for your man, and we’ll get him ashore and into the military hospital as soon as possible. That is,’ he added, ‘if any of us are alive by morning.’
He smiled at me a little uncertainly. ‘Remember what I said to you on the bridge that night, about the Captain carrying a weight of responsibility few of the officers realised. Well, now they do. We’re in the thick of it, and if you or I are around in the morning, then by God I’ll stand you a drink.’ He tried to smile again, to make a joke of it, but it didn’t work. Instead, he clapped me on the back before hurrying off up the gangway to continue supervising the unloading.
Back at the camp I found Petra busy preparing a meal. I think she was doing it more to distract herself from what was happening than from any want of food. ‘Is he all right?’
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