When eight bells toll (6 page)

What made the
Firecrest
unique was that while she bad 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 preset, 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 hfe 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 the 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. "1 shaft 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'sbreaking 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 bave 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 burningbrightly 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

Tuesday;   10 asn. — 10 p.m..

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. Iwould 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 "a vast there "any moment. I combed my hair into some sort of order and made my way to die 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 coining 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 wheelhouse 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 inflatedspherical rubber fenders kept the
Firecrest
from rubbing its plebeian paintwork against the whitely-vamished 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 figu«j 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 nimble-ness 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. What the deuce did they want?" He gave the distinct impression of having himself had some trouble with the customs in the past.

"They were looking for stolen chemicals. Stolen from some place in Ayrshire. Wrong boat."

"Idiots!" He thrust out a stubby hand, he'd passed his final judgment on the unfortunate customs and the subject was now closed. "Skouras. Sir Anthony Skouras,"

"Petersen." His grip made me wince, fess from the sheer power of it than from the gouging effects of the large number of thickly encrusted rings that adorned his fingers. I wouldn't have been surprised to see some on his -thumbs but he'd missed out on .that. I looked at him with new interest "Sir Anthony Skouras. I've heard of you of course."

"Nothing good. Columnists don't like me because they know I despise them. A Cypriot who made his shipping millions through sheer ruthlessness, they say. True. Asked by the Greek Government to leave Athens. True. Became a naturalised British citizen and bought a knighthood. Absolutely true. Charitable works and public services. Money can buy anything. A baronetcy next hut the marker's not right at the moment. Price is bound to fall. Can I use your radio transmitter? I see you have one."

"What's that?" The abrupt switch had me off-balance, no great achievement the way I was feeling.

"Your radio transmitter, man! Don't you listen to the news? All those major defence projects cancelled by the Pentagon. Price of steel tumbling. Must get through to my New York broker at once!"

"Sorry. Certainly you may - but, but your own radio-telephone? Surely------"

"It's out of action." His mouth became more tight-lipped than ever and the inevitable happened: it disappeared. "It's urgent, Mr. Petersen."

"Immediately.   You know how  to operate this model?"

He smiled thinly, which was probably the only way he was capable of smiling. Compared to the cinema-organ job he'd have aboard the
Shangri-la,
asking him if he could operate this was like asking the captain of a transatlantic jet if he could fly a Tiger Moth. "I think I can manage, Mr. Petersen."

." Call me when you're finished, 113 be in the saloon." He'd be calling roe before he'd finished, he'd be calling me before he'd even started. But I couldn't tell him. Word gets around. I went down to the saloon, contemplated a shave and decided against it. It wouldn't take that long,It didn't. He appeared at the saloon door inside a minute, his face grim.

"Your radio is out of order, Mr. Petersen."

"They're tricky to operates some of those older fobs," I said tactfully. "Maybe if I------"

"I say it's out of order. I mean if a out of order."

"Damned odd.  It was working------"

"Would you care to try it, please?"

I tried it. Nothing. I twiddled everything I could lay hands on. Nothing.

"A power failure, perhaps," I suggested.  "I'll check------"

"Would you be so good as to remove the face-plate, please?"

I stared at him in perplexity, switching the expression, after a suitable interval, to shrewd thoughtfulness. "What do you know, Sir Anthony, that I don't?"

"You'll find out."

So I found out and went through all the proper motions of consternation, incredulity and tight-lipped indignation. Finally I said: "You knew. How did you know?"

"Obvious, isn't it?"

"Your transmitter," I said slowly. "It's more than just out order. You had the same midnight caller."

"And the
Orion."
The mouth vanished again. "The big blue ketch lying close in. Only other craft in the harbour apart from us with a radio transmitter. Smashed. Just come from there,"

"Smashed? Theirs as well? But who in God's name - it must be the work of a madman."

"Is it? Is it the work of a madman? I know something of those matters. My first wife------"He broke off abruptly and gave an odd shake of the head, then went on slowly: "The mentally disturbed are irrational, haphazard, purposeless, aimless in their behaviour patterns. This seems an entirely irrational act, but an act with a method and a purpose to it. Not haphazard. It's planned. There's a reason. At first I thought the reason was to cut off my connection with the mainland. But it can't be that. By rendering me temporarily incommunicado nobody stands to gain, I don't stand to lose."

"But you said the New York Stock------"

"A bagatelle," he said contemptuously. "Nobody likes to lose money." Not more than a few millions anyway. "No, Mr. Petersen, I am not the target. We have here an A and a B. A regards it as vital that he remains in constant communication with the mainland. B regards it as vital that A doesn't. So B takes steps. There's something damned funny going on in Torbay. And something big. I have a nose for such things."

He was no fool but then not many morons have ended up as multi-millionaires. I couldn't have put it better myself. I said: "Reported this to the police yet?"

"Going there now. After I've made a phone call or two," The eyes suddenly became bleak and cold, "Unless our friend has smashed up the two public call boxes in the main street."

"He's done better than that. He's brought down the lines to the mainland. Somewhere down the Sound. No one knows where."

He stared at me, wheeled to leave, then turned, his face empty of expression. "How did you know that?" The tone matched the face.

"Police told me. They were aboard with the customs last night."

"The police? That's damned odd. What were the police doing here?" He paused and looked at me with his cold measuring eyes. "A personal question, Mr. Petersen. No impertinence intended. A question of elimination. What are
you
doing here? No offence."

"No offence. My friend and I are marine biologists. A working trip. Not our boat - the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries." I smiled. "We have impeccable references, Sir Anthony."

"Marine biology, eh? Hobby of mine, you might say. Layman, of course. Must have a talk sometime." He was speaking absent-mindedly, his thoughts elsewhere. "Could you describe the policeman, Mr. Petersen?"

I did and he nodded. "That's him all right. Odd, very odd. Must have a word with Archie about this."

"Archie?"

"Sergeant MacDonald. This is my fifth consecutive season's cruising based on Torbay. The South of France and the Egean can't hold a candle to these waters. Know quite a few of the locals pretty well by this time. He was alone?"

"No. A young constable. His son, he said. Melancholy son of lad."

"Peter MacDonald. He has reason for his melancholy, Mr. Petersen. His two young brothers, sixteen years old, twins, died a few months back. At an Inverness school, lost in a late snow-storm in the Cairngorms. The father is tougher, doesn't show it so much. A great tragedy. I knew them both. Fine boys."

I made some appropriate comment but he wasn't listening.

"I must be on my way, Mr. Petersen. Put this damned strange affair in MacDonald's hand. Don't see that he can do much. Then off for a short cruise."

I looked through the wheelhouse windows at the dark skies, the white-capped seas, the driving rain. "You picked a day for it."

"The rougher the better. No bravado. I like a mill-pond as well as any man. Just had new stabilisers fitted in the Clyde - we got back up here only two days ago - and it seems like a good day to try them out." He smiled suddenly and put out his hand. "Sorry to have barged in. Taken up far too much of your time. Seemed rude, I suppose. Some say I am. You and your colleague care to come aboard for a drink to-night? We eat early at sea. Eight o'clock, say? I'll send the tender." That meant we didn't rate an invitation to dinner, which would have made a change from Hunslett and his damned baked beans, but even an invitation like this would have given rise to envious tooth-gnashing in some of the stateliest homes in the land: it was no secret that the bluest blood in England, from Royalty downwards, regarded a holiday invitation to the island Skouras owned off the Albanian coast as the conferment of the social cachet of the year or any year. Skouras didn't wait for an answer and didn't seem to expect one. I didn't blame him. It would have been many years since Skouras had discovered that it was an immutable law of human nature, human nature being what it is, that no one ever turned down one of his invitations.

"You'll be coming to tell me about your smashed transmitter and asking me what the devil I intend to do about it," Sergeant MacDonald said tiredly. "Well, Mr. Petersen, I know all about it already. Sir Anthony Skouras was here half an hour ago Sir Anthony had a lot to say. And Mr. Campbell, the owner of the
Orion,
has just left. He'd a lot to say, too." "Not me, Sergeant. I'm a man of few words." I gave him what I hoped looked like a self-deprecatory smile. "Except, of course, when the police and customs drag me out of bed in the middle of the night. I take it our friends have left?"

"Just as soon as they'd put us ashore. Customs arc just a damn' nuisance." Like myself, he looked as if he could do with some hours' sleep. "Frankly, Mr, Petersen, I don't know what to do about the broken radio-transmitters. Why on earth - who on earth would want to do a daft vicious thing like that?"