Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

The two men who had been so lately bent on my destruction and were now no doubt full of that righteous glow which comes from the satisfaction of a worthwhile job well done were now no more than two vaguely discerned shadows disappearing into the even deeper shadows of the storage sheds on shore. I pulled myself on to the gangway and crouched there for a moment until I had located the source of the diesel, then stooped, ran quickly along the gangway till I came to the place where the barge was secured to a side gangway, first dropping to my hands and knees, then inching along on knees and elbows before peering over the edge of the gangway.

The barge was at least seventy feet in length, broad in proportion and as totally lacking in grace of design as it was possible to be. The for’ard three quarters of the barge was given up entirely to battened holds, then after that came the wheelhouse and, right aft and joined to the wheelhouse, the crew accommodation. Yellow lights shone through the curtained windows. A large man in a dark peaked cap was leaning out of a wheelhouse window talking to a crew member who was about to clamber on to the side gangway to cast off.

The stern of the barge was hard against the main gangway on which I was lying. I waited till the crew member had climbed on to the side gangway and was walking away to cast off for’ard, then slithered down soundlessly on to the stern of the barge and crouched low behind the cabin until I heard the sound of ropes being thrown aboard and the hollow thump of feet on wood as the man jumped down from the side gangway. I moved silently for’ard until I came to an iron ladder fitted to the fore end of the cabin, climbed up this and edged for’ard in a prone position till I was stretched flat on the stepped wheelhouse roof. The navigation lights came on but this was no worry: they were so positioned on either side of the wheelhouse roof that they had the comforting effect of throwing the position in which I lay into comparatively deeper shadow.

The engine note deepened and the side gangway slowly dropped astern. I wondered bleakly if I had stepped from the frying-pan into the fire.

I had been pretty certain that I would be putting out to sea that night and anyone who did that under the conditions I expected to experience should also have catered for the possibility of becoming very wet indeed; if I had used even a modicum of forethought in that respect I should have come along fully fitted out with a waterproof scuba suit: but the thought of a waterproof scuba suit had never even crossed my mind and I had no alternative now but to lie where I was and pay the price for my negligence.

I felt as if I were rapidly freezing to death. The night wind out in the Zuider Zee was bitter enough to have chilled even a warmly clad man who was forced to lie motionless, and I wasn’t warmly clad. I was soaked to the skin with sea-water and that chilling wind had the effect of making me feel that I had turned into a block of ice – with the difference that a block of ice is inert while I shivered continuously like a man with black-water fever. The only consolation was that I didn’t give a damn if it rained: I couldn’t possibly become any wetter than I was already.

With numbed and frozen fingers that wouldn’t stay steady I unzipped my jacket pockets, took both the gun and the remaining magazine from their waterproof coverings, loaded the gun and stuck it inside my canvas coat. I wondered idly what would happen if, in an emergency, I found that my trigger finger had frozen solid, so I pushed my right hand inside my sodden jacket. The only effect this had was to make my hand feel colder than ever, so I took it out again.

The lights of Amsterdam were dropping far behind now and we were well out into the Zuider Zee. The barge, I noticed, seemed to be following the same widely curving course as the Marianne had done when she had come into harbour at noon on the previous day. It passed very close indeed to a couple of buoys and, looking over the bows, it seemed to me as if it was on a collision course with a third buoy about four hundred yards ahead. But I didn’t doubt for a minute that the barge skipper knew just exactly what he was doing.

The engine note dropped as the revolutions dropped and two men emerged on deck from the cabin – the first crew to appear outside since we’d cleared the barge harbour. I tried to press myself even closer to the wheelhouse roof, but they didn’t come my way, they headed towards the stern. I twisted round the better to observe them.

One of the men carried a metal bar to which was attached a rope at either end. The two men, one on either side of the poop, paid out a little of their lines until the bar must have been very close to water level. I twisted and looked ahead. The barge, moving very slowly now, was no more than twenty yards distant from the flashing buoy and on a course that would take it within twenty feet of it. I heard a sharp word of command from the wheelhouse, looked aft again and saw that the two men were beginning to let the lines slip through their fingers, one man counting as he did so. The reason for the counting was easy to guess. Although I couldn’t see any in the gloom, the ropes must have been knotted at regular intervals to enable the two men who were paying them out to keep the iron bar at right angles to the barge’s passage through the water.

The barge was exactly abreast the buoy when one of the men called out softly and at once, slowly but steadily, they began to haul their lines inboard. I knew now what was going to happen but I watched pretty closely all the same. As the two men continued to pull, a two-foot cylindrical buoy bobbed clear of the water. This was followed by a four-bladed grapnel, one of the flukes of which was hooked round the metal bar. Attached to this grapnel was a rope. The buoy, grapnel and metal bar were hauled aboard, then the two men began to pull on the grapnel rope until eventually an object came clear of the water and was brought inboard. The object was a grey, metal-banded metal box, about eighteen inches square and twelve deep. It was taken immediately inside the cabin, but even before this was done the barge was under full power again and the buoy beginning to drop rapidly astern. The entire operation had been performed with the ease and surety which bespoke a considerable familiarity with the technique just employed.

Time passed, and a very cold, shivering and miserable time it was too. I thought it was impossible for me to become any colder and wetter than I was but I was wrong, for about four in the morning the sky darkened and it began to rain and I had never felt rain so cold. By this time what little was left of my body heat had managed partially to dry off some of the inner layers of clothing, but from the waist down – the canvas jacket provided reasonable protection – it just proved to have been a waste of time. I hoped that when the time came that I had to move and take to the water again I wouldn’t have reached that state of numbed paralysis where all I could do was sink.

The first light of the false dawn was in the sky now and I could vaguely distinguish the blurred outlines of land to the south and east. Then it became darker again and for a time I could see nothing, and then the true dawn began to spread palely from the east and I could see land once more and gradually came to the conclusion that we were fairly close in to the north shore of Huyler and about to curve away to the south-west and then south towards the island’s little harbour.

I had never appreciated that those damned barges moved so slowly. As far as the coastline of Huyler was concerned, the barge seemed to be standing still in the water. The last thing I wished to happen was to approach the Huyler shore in broad daylight and give rise to comment on the part of the inevitable ship-watchers as to why a crew member should be so eccentric as to prefer the cold roof of the wheelhouse to the warmth inside. I thought of the warmth inside and put the thought out of my mind.