Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

For another five minutes this deadly game of hide-and-seek went on, running, taking cover, loosing off a shot, then running again, while all the time they closed in inexorably on me. They were being very circumspect now, taking the minimum of chances and using their superior numbers cleverly to advantage, one or two engaging my attention while the others scuttled forward from the shelter of one barge to the next. I was soberly and coldly aware that if I didn’t do something different and do it very soon, there could be only one end to this game, and that it must come soon.

Of all the inappropriate times to do so, I chose several of the brief occasions I spent sheltering behind cabins and wheelhouses to think about Belinda and Maggie. Was this, I wondered, why they couldn’t see me now, for not only would they have known they had behaved so queerly the last time I had seen them? Had they guessed, or known by some peculiarly feminine intuitive process, that something like this was going to happen to me and known what the end would be and been afraid to tell me? It was as well, I thought, that they had been right but their faith in the infallibiliy of their boss would have been sadly shaken. I felt desperate and I supposed I must have looked pretty much the same way; I’d expected to find a man with a quick gun or a quicker knife lying in wait for me and I think I could have coped with that, with luck even with two of them: but I had not expected this. What had I said to Belinda outside the warehouse? ‘–He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.’ But now I had no place to run to for I was only twenty yards short of the end of the main gangway. It was a macabre feeling to be hunted to death like a wild animal or a dog with rabies while hundreds of people were sleeping within a hundred yards of me and all I had to do to save myself was to unscrew my silencer and fire two shots in the air and within seconds the entire barge harbour would have been in life-saving uproar. But I couldn’t bring myself to do this, for what I had to do had to be done tonight and I knew this was the last chance I would ever have. My life in Amsterdam after tonight wouldn’t be worth a crooked farthing. I couldn’t bring myself to do it if there was left to me even the slenderest chance imaginable. I didn’t think there was, not what a sane man would call a chance. I don’t think I was quite sane then.

I looked at my watch. Six minutes to two. In yet another way, time had almost run out. I looked at the sky. A small cloud was drifting towards the moon and this would be the minute they would choose for the next and almost certainly last assault: it would have to be the moment I chose for my next and almost certainly last attempt to escape. I looked at the deck of the barge: its cargo was scrap and I picked up a length of metal. I again gauged the direction of that dark little cloud, which seemed to have grown even littler. Its centre wasn’t going to pass directly across the moon but it would have to do.

I’d five shots left in my second magazine and I fired them off in quick succession at where I knew or guessed my pursuers had taken cover. I hoped this might hold them for a few seconds but I don’t think I really believed it. Quickly I shoved the gun back in its waterproof covering, zipped it up and for extra security stowed it not in its holster but in a zipped pocket of my canvas coat, ran along the barge for a few steps, stepped on the gunwale and threw myself on to the main gangway. I scrambled desperately to my feet and as I did I realized that the damned cloud had missed the moon altogether.

I suddenly felt very calm because there were no options open to me now. I ran, because there was nothing else in the world I could do, weaving madly from side to side to throw my wouldbe executioners off aim. Half a dozen times in not three seconds I heard soft thudding sounds – they were as close to me as that now – and twice felt hands that I could not see tugging fiercely at my clothes. Suddenly I threw my head back, flung both arms high in the air and sent the piece of metal spinning into the water and had crashed heavily to the gangway even before I heard the splash. I struggled drunkenly and briefly to my feet, clutched my throat, and toppled over backwards into the canal. I took as deep a breath as possible and held it against the impact.

The water was cold, but not icily so, opaque and not very deep. My feet touched mud and I kept them touching mud. I began to exhale, very slowly, very carefully, husbanding my air reserves which probably weren’t very much as I didn’t go in for this sort of thing very often. Unless I had miscalculated the eagerness of my pursuers to do away with me – and I hadn’t – the two men on the central gangway would have been peering hopefully down at the spot where I had disappeared within five seconds of my disappearance. I hoped that they drew all the wrong conclusions from the slow stream of bubbles drifting to the top of the water and I hoped they drew them soon, for I couldn’t keep up this kind of performance very much longer.

After what seemed about five minutes but was probably not more than thirty seconds I stopped exhaling and sending bubbles to the surface for the excellent reason that I had no more air left in my lungs to exhale. My lungs were beginning to hurt a little now. I could almost hear my heart – I could certainly feel it – thudding away in an empty chest, and my ears ached. I pushed clear of the mud and swam to my right and hoped to God I’d got myself orientated right. I had. My hand came in contact with the keel of a barge and I used the purchase obtained to pass quickly under, then swam up to the surface.

I don’t think I could have stayed below for even a few seconds longer without swallowing water. As it was, when I broke surface it took considerable restraint and will-power to prevent me from drawing in a great lungful of air with a whoop that could have been heard half-way across the harbour, but in certain circumstances, such as when your life depends on it, one can exercise a very considerable amount of will-power indeed and I made do with several large but silent gulps of air.

At first I could see nothing at all, but this was just because of the oily film on the surface of the water that had momentarily glued my eyelids together. I cleared this but still there wasn’t much to see, just the dark hull of the barge I was hiding behind, the main gangway in front of me, and another parallel barge about ten feet distant. I could hear voices, a soft murmuring of voices. I swam silently to the stern of the barge, steadied myself by the rudder and peered cautiously round the stern. Two men, one with a torch, were standing on the gangway peering down at the spot where I had so recently disappeared: the waters were satisfactorily dark and still.

The two men straightened. One of them shrugged and made a gesture with the palms of both hands held upwards: the second man nodded agreement and rubbed his leg tenderly. The first man lifted his arms and crossed them above his head twice, first to his left, then to his right. Just as he did so there was a staccato and spluttering coughing sound as a marine diesel, somewhere very close indeed, started up. It was obvious that neither of the two men cared very much for this new development, for the man who had made the signal at once grabbed the arm of the other and led him away, hobbling badly, at the best speed he could muster.

I hauled myself aboard the barge, which sounds a very simple exercise indeed, but when a sheer-sided hull is four feet clear of the water this simple exercise can turn out to be a near-impossibility and so it turned out for me. But I made it eventually with the aid of the stern-rope, flopped over the gunwale and lay there for a full half minute, gasping away like a stranded whale, before a combination of the beginnings of recovery from complete exhaustion and a mounting sense of urgency had me on my feet again and heading towards the barge’s bows and the main gangway.