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‘But you said -’
‘I don’t know how I know,’ I said irritably. ‘I know. They went through the after end of the Firecrest like a Treble Chance winner hunting for the coupon he’s afraid he’s forgotten to post. Then half-way through the engine-room search – click! – just like that and they weren’t interested any more. At least Thomas wasn’t. He’d found out something. You saw him afterwards in the saloon, the fore cabins and the upper deck. He couldn’t have cared less.’
‘The batteries?’
‘No. He was satisfied with my explanation. I could tell. I don’t know why, I only know I’m sure.’
‘So they’ll be back.’
‘They’ll be back.’
‘I get the guns out now?’
‘There’s no hurry. Our friends will be sure we can’t communicate with anyone. The mainland boat calls here only twice a week. It came to-day and won’t be back for four days. The lines to the mainland are down and if I thought for a moment they would stay down I should be back in kindergarten. Our transmitter is out. Assuming there are no carrier pigeons in Torbay, what’s the only remaining means of communication with the mainland?’
‘There’s the Shangri-la.’ The Shangri-la, the nearest craft to ours, was white, gleaming, a hundred and twenty feet long and wouldn’t have left her owner a handful of change from a quarter of a million pounds when he’d bought her. ‘She’ll have a couple of thousand quids’ worth of radio equipment aboard. Then there are two, maybe three yachts big enough to carry transmitters. The rest will carry only receivers, if that.’
‘And how many transmitters in Torbay harbour will still be in operating condition to-morrow?’
‘One.’
‘One. Our friends will attend to the rest. They’ll have to. We can’t warn anyone. We can’t give ourselves away.’
‘The insurance companies can stand it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘This would be a nice time to wake up Uncle Arthur.’
‘I can’t put it off any longer.’ I wasn’t looking forward to talking to Uncle Arthur.
Hunslett reached for a heavy coat, pulled it on, made for the door and stopped. ‘I thought I’d take a walk on the upper deck. While you’re talking. Just in case. A second thought – I’d better have that gun now. Thomas said they’d already checked three boats in the harbour. MacDonald didn’t contradict him, so it was probably true. Maybe there are no serviceable transmitters left in Torbay now. Maybe our friends just dumped the cops ashore and are coming straight back for us.’
‘Maybe. But those yachts are smaller than the Firecrest. Apart from us, there’s only one with a separate wheelhouse. The others will carry transmitters in the saloon cabin. Lots of them sleep in their saloon cabins. The owners would have to be banged on the head first before the radios could be attended to. They couldn’t do that with MacDonald around.’
‘You’d bet your pension on that? Maybe MacDonald didn’t always go aboard.’
‘I’ll never live to collect my pension. But maybe you’d better have that gun.’
The Firecrest was just over three years old. The Southampton boatyard and marine-radio firm that had combined to build her had done so under conditions of sworn secrecy to a design provided by Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur had not designed her himself although he had never said so to the few people who knew of the existence of the boat. He’d pinched the idea from a Japanese-designed Indonesian-owned fishing craft that had been picked up with engine failure off the Malaysian coast. Only one engine had failed though two were installed, but still she had been not under command, an odd circumstance that had led the alert Engineer Lieutenant on the frigate that had picked her up to look pretty closely at her: the net result of his investigation, apart from giving this splendid inspiration to Uncle Arthur, was that the crew still languished in a Singapore prisoner of war camp.
The Firecrest’s career had been chequered and inglorious. She had cruised around the Eastern Baltic for some time, without achieving anything, until the authorities in Memel and Leningrad, getting tired of the sight of her, had declared the Firecrest persona non grata and sent her back to England. Uncle Arthur had been furious, especially as he had to account to a parsimonious Under-Secretary for the considerable expense involved. The Waterguard had tried their hand with it at catching smugglers and returned it without thanks. No smugglers. Now for the first time ever it was going to justify its existence and in other circumstances Uncle Arthur would have been delighted. When he heard what I had to tell him he would have no difficulty in restraining his joy.
What made the Firecrest unique was that while she had two screws and two propeller shafts, she had only one engine. Two engine casings, but only one engine, even although that one engine was a special job fitted with an underwater bypass exhaust valve. A simple matter of disengaging the fuel pump coupling and unscrewing four bolts on top – the rest were dummies – enabled the entire head of the diesel starboard engine to be lifted clear away, together with the fuel lines and injectors. With the assistance of the seventy foot telescopic radio mast housed inside our aluminium foremast, the huge gleaming transmitter that took up eighty per cent of the space inside the starboard engine casing could have sent a signal to the moon, if need be: as Thomas had observed, we had power and to spare. As it happened I didn’t want to send a signal to the moon, just to Uncle Arthur’s combinex office and home in Knightsbridge.
The other twenty per cent of space was taken up with a motley collection of material that even the Assistant Commissioner in New Scotland Yard wouldn’t have regarded without a thoughtful expression on his face. There were some packages of pre-fabricated explosives with amatol, primer and chemical detonator combined in one neat unit with a miniature timing device that ranged from five seconds to five minutes, complete with sucker clamps. There was a fine range of burglar’s house-breaking tools, bunches of skeleton keys, several highly sophisticated listening devices, including one that could be shot from a Very-type pistol, several tubes of various harmless-looking tablets which were alleged, when dropped in some unsuspecting character’s drink, to induce unconsciousness for varying periods, four pistols and a box of ammunition. Anyone who was going to use that lot in one operation was in for a busy time indeed. Two of the pistols were Lugers, two were 4.25 German Lilliputs, the smallest really effective automatic pistol on the market. The Lilliput had the great advantage that it could be concealed practically anywhere on your person, even upside down in a spring-loaded clip in your lower left sleeve – if, that was, you didn’t get your suits cut in Carnaby Street.
Hunslett lifted one of the Lugers from its clamp, checked the loading indicator and left at once. It wasn’t that he was imagining that he could already hear stealthy footsteps on the upper deck, he just didn’t want to be around when Uncle Arthur came on the air. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t really want to be around then either.
I pulled out the two insulated rubber cables, fitted the powerfully spring-loaded saw-toothed metal clamps on to the battery terminals, hung on a pair of earphones, turned on the set, pulled another switch that actuated the call-up and waited. I didn’t have to tune in, the transmitter was permanently pre-set, and pre-set on a V.H.F. frequency that would have cost the licence of any ham operator who dared wander anywhere near it for transmission purposes.
The red receiver warning light came on. I reached down and adjusted the magic eye control until the green fans met in the middle.
‘This is station SPFX,’ a voice came. ‘Station SPFX.’
‘Good morning. This is Caroline. May I speak to the manager, please?’
‘Will you wait, please?’ This meant that Uncle Arthur was in bed. Uncle Arthur was never at his best on rising. Three minutes passed and the earphones came to life again.
‘Good morning, Caroline. This is Annabelle.’
‘Good morning. Location 481, 281.’ You wouldn’t find those references in any Ordnance Survey Map, there weren’t a dozen maps in existence with them. But Uncle Arthur had one. And so had I.
There was a pause, then: ‘I have you, Caroline. Proceed.’
‘I located the missing vessel this afternoon. Four or five miles north-west of here. I went on board to-night.’
‘You did what, Caroline?’
‘Went on board. The old crew has gone home. There’s a new crew aboard. A smaller crew.’
‘You located Betty and Dorothy?’ Despite the fact that we both had scramblers fitted to our radio phones, making intelligible eavesdropping impossible, Uncle Arthur always insisted that we spoke in a roundabout riddle fashion and used code names for his employees and himself. Girls’ names for our surnames, initials to match. An irritating foible, but one that we had to observe. He was Annabelle, I was Caroline, Baker was Betty, Delmont, Dorothy and Hunslett, Harriet. It sounded like a series of Caribbean hurricane warnings.
‘I found them.’ I took a deep breath. ‘They won’t be coming home again, Annabelle.’
‘They won’t be coming home again,’ he repeated mechanically. He was silent for so long that I began to think that he had gone off the air. Then he came again, his voice empty, remote. ‘I warned you of this, Caroline.’
‘Yes, Annabelle, you warned me of this.’
‘And the vessel?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know. Just gone. North, I suppose.’
‘North, you suppose.’ Uncle Arthur never raised his voice, when he went on it was as calm and impersonal as ever, but the sudden disregard of his own rules about circumlocution betrayed the savage anger in his mind. ‘North where? Iceland? A Norwegian fjord? To effect a trans-shipment of cargo anywhere in a million square miles between the mid-Atlantic and the Barents Sea? And you lost her. After all the time, the trouble, the planning, the expense, you’ve lost her!’ He might have spared me that bit about the planning, it had been mine all the way. ‘And Betty and Dorothy.’ The last words showed he’d taken control of himself again.
‘Yes, Annabelle, I’ve lost her.’ I could feel the slow anger in myself. ‘And there’s worse than that, if you want to listen to it.’
‘I’m listening.’
I told him the rest and at the end of it he said: ‘I see. You’ve lost the vessel. You’ve lost Betty and Dorothy. And now our friends know about you, the one vital element of secrecy is gone for ever and every usefulness and effectiveness you might ever have had is completely negated.’ A pause. ‘I shall expect you in my office at nine p.m. to-night. Instruct Harriet to take the boat back to base.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The hell with his Annabelle. ‘I had expected that. I’ve failed. I’ve let you down. I’m being pulled off.’
‘Nine o’clock to-night, Caroline. I’ll be waiting.’
‘You’ll have a long wait, Annabelle.’
‘And what might you mean by that?’ If Uncle Arthur had had a low silky menacing voice then he’d have spoken those words in a low silky menacing voice. But he hadn’t, he’d only this flat level monotone and it carried infinitely more weight and authority than any carefully modulated theatrical voice that had ever graced a stage.
‘There are no planes to this place, Annabelle. The mail-boat doesn’t call for another four days. The weather’s breaking down and I wouldn’t risk our boat to try to get to the mainland. I’m stuck here for the time being, I’m afraid.’
‘Do you take me for a nincompoop, sir?’ Now he was at it. ‘Go ashore this morning. An air-sea rescue helicopter will pick you up at noon. Nine p.m. at my office. Don’t keep me waiting.’
This, then, was it. But one last try. ‘Couldn’t you give me another twenty-four hours, Annabelle?’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous. And wasting my time. Good-bye.’
‘I beg of you, sir.’
‘I’d thought better of you than that. Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye. We may meet again sometime. It’s not likely. Good-bye.’
I switched the radio off, lit a cigarette and waited. The call-up came through in half a minute. I waited another half-minute and switched on. I was very calm. The die was cast and I didn’t give a damn.
‘Caroline? Is that you, Caroline?’ I could have sworn to a note of agitation in his voice. This was something for the record books.
‘Yes.’
‘What did you say? At the end there?’
‘Good-bye. You said good-bye. I said good-bye.’
‘Don’t quibble with me, sir! You said -’
‘If you want me aboard that helicopter,’ I said, ‘you’ll have to send a guard with the pilot. An armed guard. I hope they’re good. I’ve got a Luger, and you know I’m good. And if I have to kill anyone and go into court, then you’ll have to stand there beside me because there’s no single civil action or criminal charge that even you, with all your connections, can bring against me that would justify the sending of armed men to apprehend me, an innocent man. Further, I am no longer in your employment. The terms of my civil service contract state clearly that I can resign at any moment, provided that I am not actively engaged on an operation at that moment. You’ve pulled me off, you’ve recalled me to London. My resignation will be on your desk as soon as the mail can get through. Baker and Delmont weren’t your friends. They were my friends. They were my friends ever since I joined the service. You have the temerity to sit there and lay all the blame for their deaths on my shoulders when you know damn’ well that every operation must have your final approval, and now you have the final temerity to deny me a one last chance to square accounts. I’m sick of your damned soulless service. Good-bye.’
‘Now wait a moment, Caroline.’ There was a cautious, almost placatory note to his voice. ‘No need to go off half-cocked.’ I was sure that no one had ever talked to Rear-Admiral Sir Arthur Arnford-Jason like that before but he didn’t seem particularly upset about it. He had the cunning of a fox, that infinitely agile and shrewd mind would be examining and discarding possibilities with the speed of a computer, he’d be wondering whether I was playing a game and if so how far he could play it with me without making it impossible for me to retreat from the edge of the precipice. Finally he said quietly: ‘You wouldn’t want to hang around there just to shed tears. You’re on to something.’
‘Yes, sir, I’m on to something.’ I wondered what in the name of God I was on to.
‘I’ll give you twenty-four hours, Caroline.’
‘Forty-eight.’
‘Forty-eight. And then you return to London. I have your word?’
‘I promise.’
‘And Caroline?’
‘Sir?’
‘I didn’t care for your way of talking there. I trust we never have a repetition of it.’
‘No, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Forty-eight hours. Report to me at noon and midnight.’ A click. Uncle Arthur was gone.
The false dawn was in the sky when I went on deck. Cold heavy slanting driving rain was churning up the foam-flecked sea. The Firecrest, pulling heavily on her anchor chain, was swinging slowly through an arc of forty degrees, corkscrewing quite heavily now on the outer arc of the swing, pitching in the centre of them. She was snubbing very heavily on the anchor and I wondered uneasily how long the lengths of heaving line securing the dinghy, outboard and scuba gear to the chain could stand up to this sort of treatment.
Hunslett was abaft the saloon, huddling in what little shelter it afforded. He looked up at my approach and said: ‘What do you make of that?’ He pointed to the palely gleaming shape of the Shangri-la, one moment on our quarter, the next dead astern as we swung on our anchor. Lights were burning brightly in the fore part of her superstructure, where the wheelhouse would be.
‘Someone with insomnia,’ I said. ‘Or checking to see if the anchor is dragging. What do you think it is – our recent guests laying about the Shangri-la radio installation with crow-bars? Maybe they leave lights on all night.’
‘Came on just ten minutes ago. And look, now – they’re out. Funny. How did you get on with Uncle?’
‘Badly. Fired me, then changed his mind. We have forty-eight hours.’
‘Forty-eight hours? What are you going to do in forty-eight hours?’
‘God knows. Have some sleep first. You too. Too much light in the sky for callers now.’
Passing through the saloon, Hunslett said, apropos of nothing: ‘I’ve been wondering. What did you make of P.C. MacDonald? The young one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, glum, downcast. Heavy weight on his shoulders.’
‘Maybe he’s like me. Maybe he doesn’t like getting up in the middle of the night. Maybe he has girl trouble and if he has I can tell you that P.C. MacDonald’s love-life is the least of my concerns. Good night.’
I should have listened to Hunslett more. For Hunslett’s sake.
THREE (#ulink_7867f768-c667-5564-924f-7c00fadcaf7c)
Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. (#ulink_7867f768-c667-5564-924f-7c00fadcaf7c)
I need my sleep, just like anyone else. Ten hours, perhaps only eight, and I would have been my own man again. Maybe not exuding brightness, optimism and cheerfulness, the circumstances weren’t right for that, but at least a going concern, alert, perceptive, my mind operating on what Uncle Arthur would be by now regarding as its customary abysmal level but still the best it could achieve. But I wasn’t given that ten hours. Nor even the eight. Exactly three hours after dropping off I was wide awake again. Well, anyway, awake. I would have had to be stone deaf, drugged or dead to go on sleeping through the bawling and thumping that was currently assailing my left ear from what appeared to be a distance of not more than twelve inches.
‘Ahoy, there, Firecrest! Ahoy there!’ Thump, thump, thump on the boat’s side. ‘Can I come aboard? Ahoy, there! Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy!’
I cursed this nautical idiot from the depths of my sleep-ridden being, swung a pair of unsteady legs to the deck and levered myself out of the bunk. I almost fell down, I seemed to have only one leg left, and my neck ached fiercely. A glance at the mirror gave quick external confirmation of my internal decrepitude. A haggard unshaven face, unnaturally pale, and bleary bloodshot eyes with dark circles under them. I looked away hurriedly, there were lots of things I could put up with first thing in the morning, but not sights like that.
I opened the door across the passage. Hunslett was sound asleep and snoring. I returned to my own cabin and got busy with the dressing-gown and Paisley scarf again. The iron-lunged thumping character outside was still at it, if I didn’t hurry he would be roaring out ‘avast there’ any moment. I combed my hair into some sort of order and made my way to the upper deck.
It was a cold, wet and windy world. A grey, dreary, unpleasant world, why the hell couldn’t they have let me sleep on. The rain was coming down in slanting sheets, bouncing inches high on the decks, doubling the milkiness of the spume-flecked sea. The lonely wind mourned through the rigging and the lower registers of sound and the steep-sided wind-truncated waves, maybe three feet from tip to trough, were high enough to make passage difficult if not dangerous for the average yacht tender.
They didn’t make things in the slightest difficult or dangerous for the yacht tender that now lay alongside us. It maybe wasn’t as big – it looked it at first sight – as the Firecrest, but it was big enough to have a glassed-in cabin for’ard, a wheel-house that bristled and gleamed with controls and instrumentation that would have been no disgrace to a VC-10 and, abaft that, a sunken cockpit that could have sunbathed a football team without overcrowding. There were three crewmen dressed in black oilskins and fancy French navy hats with black ribbons down the back, two of them each with a boat-hook round one of the Firecrest’s guardrail stanchions. Half a dozen big inflated spherical rubber fenders kept the Firecrest from rubbing its plebeian paintwork against the whitely-varnished spotlessness of the tender alongside and it didn’t require the name on the bows or the crew’s hats to let me know that this was the tender that normally took up most of the after-deck space on the Shangri-la.
Amidships a stocky figure, clad in a white vaguely naval brass-buttoned uniform and holding above his head a golf umbrella that would have had Joseph green with envy, stopped banging his gloved fist against the Firecrest’s planking and glared up at me.
‘Ha!’ I’ve never actually heard anyone snort out a word but this came pretty close to it. ‘There you are at last. Took your time about it, didn’t you? I’m soaked, man, soaked!’ A few spots of rain did show up quite clearly on the white seersucker. ‘May I come aboard?’ He didn’t wait for any permission, just leaped aboard with surprising nimbleness for a man of his build and years and nipped into the Firecrest’s wheelhouse ahead of me, which was pretty selfish of him as he still had his umbrella and all I had was my dressing-gown. I followed and closed the door behind me.
He was a short, powerfully built character, fifty-five I would have guessed, with a heavily–tanned jowled face, close-cropped iron-grey hair with tufted eyebrows to match, long straight nose and a mouth that looked as if it had been closed with a zip-fastener. A good-looking cove, if you liked that type of looks. The dark darting eyes looked me up and down and if he was impressed by what he saw he made a heroic effort to keep his admiration in check.
‘Sorry for the delay,’ I apologised. ‘Short of sleep. We had the customs aboard in the middle of the night and I couldn’t get off after that.’ Always tell everyone the truth if there’s an even chance of that truth coming out anyway, which in this case there was: gives one a reputation for forthright honesty.
‘The customs?’ He looked as if he intended to say ‘pshaw’ or ‘fiddlesticks’ or something of that order, then changed his mind and looked up sharply. ‘An intolerable bunch of busybodies. And in the middle of the night. Shouldn’t have let them aboard. Sent them packing. Intolerable.
