I said, “All the necessary viewing as you call it can be done by satellite surveillance, Perro. You know that.”
“That is not entirely so. Much can be concealed from the satellites. Always Russia has insisted on the right of close inspection on the ground. So has the west.”
“And Kulachev? What would be his reaction to such a refusal?”
Again Perro shrugged his heavy shoulders. “There can be but two opposed reactions. One, Kulachev will break off the talks at once. Or two, he will concede similarly, agreeing to accept that there will be no rights of inspection – ”
“On both sides, obviously.”
“Yes. But whichever way he chooses, Kulachev will be finished. He will be seen to have failed.”
“You mean the Party, or anyway his enemies in the Kremlin, will put it across that way.”
“As I have said before – yes.”
Perro went on to say that Ross Mackenzie would be given until the eleventh hour. The ceremony of signing the agreement would, as I already knew from Max, be televised worldwide, all the ballyhoo the Americans and the rest of the western alliance could put on. There was to be a great parade of drum majorettes, symbols of peace not war, high-stepping it with a band provided by the US Marine Corps showing that they too were part of peace. It would be like a visit from the Pope; already the razmataz had started, the stores all across America selling baseball caps and T-shirts stamped with Mac For President or with Kulachev and Mackenzie beaming at each other across the wings of a dove. Mrs Kulachev had written an article for a women’s magazine, all about the love the Russian people bore for the people of the west. She had been mobbed when doing a walkabout in Washington, heavily guarded by the CIA and the blank-faced Russian security guards who had not been able to prevent a number of spontaneous demonstrations of hope and joy, the American mommas whooping out endearments and waving flags with more doves on them, overjoyed that because of Kulachev and Mackenzie their boys would never again be sent overseas to fight a war.
It was one hell of a lot for Ross Mackenzie to buck. But if he didn’t, Perro’s face said for him, the boy would die the moment the signatures went onto the documents. We aboard the power-boat would be able to witness the whole ceremony, live as it took place. And Perro was as confident as ever of the outcome.
So was I. Ross Mackenzie was only human. I was convinced he would concede. More talks could be held at some future date, after a lot more spadework had been done to heal the breach. More talks, but Kulachev wouldn’t be there; Perro, who didn’t care one way or the other about peace, would have brought his own plans to success. And next time the west would be face-to-face with the hard liners of the old guard.
But young James’ end would be final. No second chance. That was why Mackenzie would concede and shove his spanner in the works. He, too, would be forced to resign; but that would be the last thing weighing on his mind now.
*
I thought about Kulachev as the power-boat carried on heading out into the North Atlantic. I believed Kulachev to be a good man and one genuine for peace. He had a look of solid decency, and his smiles were genuine when the TV cameras caught him. He looked to me like anybody’s favourite uncle, indulgent and good company, generous at birthdays, dependable.
I didn’t want to see him thrown to the Kremlin wolves, down-graded in the hierarchy, maybe exiled to Siberia to end his days in disgrace and ignominy. He was a communist, yes; but he wanted freedom for his people and he’d given his life to Russia and didn’t deserve what was being planned for him. Kulachev was in a sense a part of my brief, in fact a very basic part.
But my first concern was James Jervolino.
I had further talks with the boy. He was a bright youngster and I formed the impression he was doing well at school, which he’d started a couple of years earlier, attending nursery school and then first grade. He spoke about his dead parents, whom he clearly missed though they were tending to fade a little into the background. The nanny had been more immediate and he talked about her a lot, fighting back the tears. She had called him her little bundle of mischief or sometimes her square wool, square wools being what he’d called squirrels when he was younger, and he had loved her, because she was kind. I believed he would never get over that sight of her in the steel-lined section back near Montignac. He spoke about his grandparents more than about his parents, or would have done if, with Tanya’s close interest in mind, I’d not side-tracked him onto monsters again.
He wanted to know if there were monsters in the sea.
I said I didn’t think there were; only such more or less normal things as whales and sharks and, inshore, sea-elephants and sea-lions, seals and grampuses and so on which I suppose could have ranked with monsters.
“Like the Loch Ness Monster?”
“Sort of. Not so big.”
He was silent for a while, staring with those big, dark eyes across the cabin’s confinement, through the port where now and again the seas swept past, giving a greenish light to the cabin until they fell away again. The sea was getting up, but the boy seemed to have got over his seasickness and had even become hungry, asking for something to eat.
Suddenly he turned those eyes on me and asked very seriously, “Are there monsters in heaven, Mr Shaw?”
I was caught off guard by that one. I said, “Well, James, I really don’t know. Why do you ask?”
He answered that by asking another question: “Where do monsters go when they die?”
Again I said I didn’t know. He said, “They must have some place to go. Maybe it’s Disneyland. I guess that must be it.” He nodded away to himself, apparently satisfied with his own explanation. In his mind they could, those cardboard and papier-maché monsters, have once lived, strolling America upon their lawful occasions. Disneyland would be a happy place to go to, on death. Anyway, I shifted the subject; I didn’t want to talk about death. I wondered what would be in the boy’s thoughts as to his future. I didn’t believe he’d taken it in fully. I think that on the whole he trusted grown-ups; no doubt in his life in America he’d had plenty of reason to do so, and didn’t believe now that any grown-up would kill him. Earlier, soon after we’d been brought aboard, he’d asked me what was going to happen and of course I’d been reassuring. It was going to be all right, I’d said, perfectly all right and he wasn’t to worry. He seemed to believe that, which put a heavier burden on me.
As another night’s dark came down, the weather worsened. The boat rolled and pitched, plenty of water came aboard, swilling back along the deck and spilling down the ladder from time to time so that the deck of the cabin became awash with water that slopped from side to side on the roll. I could hear the shriek of the wind, coming up quickly to gale force. Every so often the screw would come clear of the water as the boat pitched, and there was a shudder as the blades raced, free in the air, bringing a high note that scared the boy.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I told him. “Nothing to worry about. It often happens at sea in bad weather.” I was bracing myself against the bulkhead, unhandy with the steel cuffs on my wrists. Tanya was hanging on as if for her life, her face contorted with fear, her legs drooping over the side of the bunk and dangling into the slop of water. Soon a nasty drumming sound started up, coming from for’ard. Again James asked what it was.
I said, “It’s probably the anchor. The slips may have carried away.” I explained about slips, and the way they held the anchor cable tight to the deck so that it didn’t bang about. I said that, too, often happened in bad weather.
“Will we sink?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, James. Just try to look upon the boat as a monster, fighting through big waves. Monsters don’t sink, do they?”
He considered that for a moment then said, “No, I guess they don’t. But they live in water, the water ones do, so it’s kind of different for them.”
“Not very different,” I said. “The boat’s swimming along, isn’t it, just like the Loch Nes
s Monster?”
He nodded. “Maybe. Okay, we’re a monster, right?”
Tanya scowled from her bunk. She was what Ross Mackenzie would probably have called a sourpuss, unless my American vernacular was out of date. I noticed, looking across at her, that the slop of water was deepening and suddenly I didn’t like the feel of the boat. There was something soggy, the feeling of a dead weight somewhere, a tendency to stiffness. We were taking too much water below, and not just in this cabin either, even though I’d heard the hatch from the wheelhouse being clipped down when the bad weather had started earlier. It was possible the maintenance hadn’t been all it should have been.
Ten minutes or so later, the hatch was opened up and Perro came down with a surge of water behind him, water that swilled up nearly to the bottom of the bunks. Perro was wearing a lifejacket and had an automatic in his hand, the one that wasn’t clinging for support to every handhold he could find. He didn’t look happy.
He said, “My skipper is injured. He has slipped on the deck. I believe he is dead. I believe he has broken his neck.”
“Too bad,” I said. I wondered what other crew, qualified crew, Perro had available. With Perro himself in charge, I didn’t like the prospect at all. “So why tell me?”
The answer was obvious. “You have served in the British Navy. You are an experienced seaman. You will come up and take over.”
I agreed readily; I didn’t want to drown under Perro’s captaincy. I said the handcuffs would need to be removed; if they were not, I wouldn’t operate. He nodded: he’d no doubt expected this. He produced the key and released my wrists. I flexed my fingers, all the joints. They felt stiff for a while as I gave a word of cheer to little James Jervolino and went ahead of Perro, out of the cabin, up to the hatch which was opened on Perro’s knock. I felt the hardness of the automatic’s muzzle against my backbone as I climbed through descending water into a scene of chaos.
Twelve
The wind was shrieking, howling like a hundred demons; all hands were wearing lifejackets now and as I reached the wheelhouse a man was told off to take lifejackets down to Tanya and the boy below, and I was given one myself. The visibility was down to nil, the air filled with rain borne along the wind. One of the glass screens of the wheelhouse had gone, fragments were everywhere, and water was coming through. Thanks no doubt to the late skipper – and late he was, lying obviously dead in a corner of the wheelhouse – the boat was headed into the wind, which was blowing from the south-west at around ninety knots according to the dial on the wind-gauge, and gusting higher rather too often.
Perro shouted in my ear, something about the course.
I shouted back, “We’re way off course of the USA if that’s your objective. But we have to keep heading as we are now. It’s the only safe way.”
There was a man on the wheel and I told him to hold the boat’s head into the wind, not to deviate by a single degree. He nodded his understanding of my French. There was another man present, slumped in a corner at the after end of the wheelhouse, probably the mate. He looked scared out of his wits, as though he’d never before ventured far from the mouth of the Vezere; he looked like a cafe lounger, a man with jeans and a tiger-striped T-shirt, and the inevitable beret, and his face was a greenish colour in the light from the binnacle, as though he’d recently been seasick. Currently he was useless, but I saw that like Perro he had a gun handy, so he was in fact there for a purpose. Not that I had a fight-back in mind just then: the boat had to be brought through the storm first and there would be no time for anything else meanwhile. I wondered what the battering was doing to Perro’s sophisticated radio and electronic equipment. If the water got in, it wouldn’t look too happy.
The pitch and roll continued and a lot more water was shipped over the bows. I’d been up there for not much longer than five minutes when more of the wheelhouse windows, those facing for’ard, went with a crack like gunshot and a shower of toughened glass globules. Water came in bodily, lifted by the wind as the big waves reared. I estimated those waves as perhaps fifty feet in height. We were just a toy, being sailed by someone like James on a pool in somewhere like Disneyland, but a very, very wild pool. The cold was deadly. After the window went a mammoth of a wave dropped smack down on the foredeck and the wheelhouse. Woodwork splintered overhead, more water came through, and some of the festoons of aerials went over the side; the boat felt soggier than ever, driven down into the sea as if by a giant’s fist. When she recovered a little, she had swung over to starboard.
I shouted at the helmsman, and he shouted back, something I didn’t catch. He was struggling with the wheel but to no effect. I shouldered him away and took the wheel myself and then I realised that something had gone wrong with the engine and the boat was losing way as well as losing steering.
Perro was beside me, his face scared. “What is it?” he asked, and I told him.
I said, “The chances are we’ll broach-to. You know what that means?”
He muttered that he did, but I gave it him for good measure. I said, “If we broach-to, we’ll come across the wind and sea. That’s what happens when you can’t steer, can’t hold the ship’s head the right way, on the right heading. When you broach-to, you bring the wind and sea abeam. That’s dangerous, Perro. Very dangerous. You know why? Because even a big ship can be laid on her beam ends. And capsize.”
“Capsize?”
“Yes. Go right over. There’s a point of no return when a ship rolls badly, the point beyond which you’ve had it. She can’t right herself.”
“You speak of a big ship. What will happen in this boat, which is small – ”
“Curtains,” I said. “If you want my advice, I’d abandon before it’s too late. Once she goes, it will be too late. Too late to get your rubber dinghy away.”
“But a dinghy in this sea – ”
“It may not last. But the boat definitely won’t last.” A few seconds later, while Perro was making up his mind, there was more splintering of woodwork, this time along the starboard side aft where a wave had overshot the wheel-house and had crashed its tons weight in the after section. I said, “She’s starting to break up, Perro. Get the boy on deck pronto. And the woman.” I had some idea of women and children first, if Tanya counted as a woman. Perro saw the urgency and yelled at the slack figure in the corner. The man got himself into action, opened up the hatch and went below while Perro shouted down a voice-pipe for the deckhands to get the dinghy ready for launching. James and Tanya came up, both obviously dead scared, and I took charge of them and of Perro and the weirdo mate, and told them to remain in such cover as the wheelhouse could still provide until the dinghy was ready. I said they would have to jump for it when I gave the word, and swim for the rubber dinghy as best they could. I said I would take the boy myself, and as a kind of preventer I secured a length of rope to his waist beneath his life-jacket. It was a tremendous risk to ditch in that sea, and, as often happens in storm conditions, some easing might come with the dawn. But I knew the boat wouldn’t be there to see it. Already she was going lower in the water, with a feeling of death in her, a sogged mass just about riding the waves with a sickening, inert motion, just being tossed about. Through the shattered wheelhouse windows, through the windborne fling of the rain, I was aware of two deckhands struggling with the dinghy, inflating it by means of its gas cylinders. Then, as I watched their superhuman efforts helplessly, I saw the dinghy take off, caught by a frantic gust of wind, and go over the side into the rearing waves.
I shouted, “Now!” and, clutching James tight, I went over. I was aware of Perro and two other bodies jumping after me, and then I was striking out towards the dinghy bobbing about on the wave-crests, striking out one-armed, on my back and using my legs to give me thrust, with young James clinging like a limpet.
That was when we had some luck: the scend of the sea took the dinghy and headed it on a kinder course, and with the wind behind it, it came down on us like an express train, heading straight for me. I reache
d above my head and got a firm grip on one of the looped lifelines, held on tight to both James and the dinghy, and stopped it in its tracks.
I saw Perro’s head not far away, the eyes almost starting from their sockets. Then the two other men. I shouted to them to get a grip on the lifelines to steady the dinghy, but I doubt if they heard me in that tearing, howling gale. As I clung to my lifeline and got my breath back, I saw the woman, Tanya. She hadn’t jumped, nor had three men I saw on deck with her. I saw them outlined against a miniature searchlight that someone had switched on. I saw, in that light, the boat go lower in the water, and then I saw the light go out. I saw no more of Tanya or the men.
*
I had heaved James over safely into the dinghy, telling him to grab a lifeline and not on any account to let go until I was inside as well. He was dead scared but receptive and he trusted me. He held on like a man as I dragged myself over behind him and landed in a heap inside the hood, where at last there was protection from the wind and water.
“All right?” I asked.
“Yes, I – I think so.”
I gave him a grin. “Some monster!”
“I don’t think I like monsters any more,” he said in a small, scared voice.
“This is a kind one, James. He’s going to save us – you’ll see.” I felt the pull as someone grabbed the life-line on the wrong side of the dinghy. I got to my feet and leaned out from the flap in the hood, yelling at whoever it was to haul himself round to the entry. A minute later Perro’s head appeared, and with much difficulty I heaved him through where he collapsed in the bottom of the dinghy and lay shaking like a leaf. He had no gun with him now. After him came just one more of his crew. The other who’d jumped hadn’t made it and now probably never would. I didn’t waste energy over him. Perro, his teeth chattering with cold and wet and fear, asked what would happen now.
The Boy Who Liked Monsters (Commander Shaw Book 19) Page 13
