Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

I looked around the white, strained, still unbelieving faces, there was no real understanding there yet of what the captain was saying, the shock, the fear, the near-hysteria left no room for thought in their minds: of them all, I had to admit that old Beresford had taken it best, to adjust himself to what must have been the incredible spectacle of seeing fellow-passengers suddenly gunned down by officers of the Campari , to fight his way out of this fog of crazy bewilderment.

“But – I mean, Captain, what part can an old cripple like Mr. Cerdan have in all this?”

“According to Mr. Carter, Cerdan isn’t old at all – he’s just made up to look old. And also according to Mr. Carter, if Cerdan is a cripple, paralysed from the waist down as he is supposed to be, then you’re going to witness a modern miracle of healing just as soon as he recovers consciousness. For all we know, Cerdan is very probably the leader of this bunch of murderers. We don’t know.”

“But what in God’s name is behind it all?” Beresford demanded.

“That’s just what we are about to find out,” Bullen said tightly. He glanced at Carreras, father and son. “Come here, you two.”

They came, MacDonald and Tommy Wilson following: Carreras Senior had a handkerchief wrapped round his shattered hand trying, not very successfully, to stem the flow of blood, and the eyes that caught mine were wicked with hate: Tony Carreras on the other hand, seemed calmly unconcerned, even slightly amused. I made a mental note to keep a very close eye indeed on Tony Carreras. He was calm and relaxed by half.

They halted a few feet away. Bullen said: “Mr. Wilson.”

“Sir?”

“That sawn-off shotgun belonging to our late friend here. Pick it up.”

Wilson picked it up.

“Do you think you could use it? And don’t point the damned thing at me,” he added hastily.

“I think so, sir.”

“Cerdan and that so-called nurse. A sharp eye on them. If they come to try anything–” Bullen left the sentence unfinished. “Mr. Carter, Carreras and his son may be armed.”

“Yes, sir.” I moved round behind Tony Carreras. careful to keep out of the line of fire of both Bullen and MacDonald, caught his jacket by the collar and jerked it savagely down over shoulders and arms till it reached the level of his elbows.

“You seem to have done this sort of thing before, Mr. Carter,” Tony Carreras said easily. He was a cool customer all right, too damned cool for my liking.

“Television,” I explained. He was carrying a gun, under the left shoulder. He was wearing a specially made shirt with a couple of hemmed slips front and back on the left-hand side so that the chest strap for the holster was concealed under the shirt. Tony Carreras was very thorough in his preparations.

I went over his clothes, but he’d only the one gun. I went through the same routine with Miguel Carreras, he wasn’t anywhere near as affable as his son, but maybe his hand was hurting him. He wasn’t carrying any gun. And maybe that made Miguel Carreras the boss: maybe he didn’t have to carry any gun, maybe he was in a position to order other people to do his killing for him.

“Thank you,” Captain Bullen said. “Mr. Carreras, we will be in Nassau in a few hours’ time. The police will be aboard by midnight. Do you wish to make a statement now or would you rather make it to the police?”

“My hand is broken.” Miguel Carreras’s voice was a harsh whisper. “The forefinger is smashed, it will have to be amputated. Someone is going to pay for this.”

“I take it that is your answer,” Bullen said calmly. “Very well. Bo’sun, four heaving lines, if you please. I want those men trussed like turkeys.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The bo’sun took one step forward, then stood stockstill. Through the open doorway had come a flat staccato burst of sound – the unmistakable chattering of a machine-gun. It seemed to come from almost directly above, from the bridge. And then all the lights went out.

I think I was the first person to move. I think I was the only person to move. I took a long step forward, hooked my left arm round Tony Carreras’s neck, rammed the Colt into the small of his back and said softly: “Don’t even think of trying anything, Carreras.”

And then there was silence again. It seemed to go on and on and on, but it probably didn’t last more than a few seconds altogether. A woman screamed, a brief choking sound that died away into a moan, and then there was silence once more, a silence that ended abruptly with a violent crashing, splintering and tinkling as heavy solid metallic objects, operating in almost perfect unison, smashed in the plate-glass windows that gave to the deck outside: at the same instant there came a sharp echoing crash of metal against metal as the door was kicked wide open to smash back against the bulkhead.

“Drop your guns, all of you,” Miguel Carreras called in a high, clear voice. “Drop them – now! Unless you want a massacre.”

The lights came on.

Vaguely outlined against the four smashed windows of the drawing-room I could see the blurs of four indistinct heads and shoulders and arms. The blurs I didn’t care about, it was what they held in their arms that worried me – the wicked-looking snouts and cylindrical magazines of four sub-machine-guns. A fifth man, dressed in jungle green and wearing a green beret on his head, stood in the doorway, a similar automatic carbine cradled in his hands.

I could see what Carreras meant by dropping our guns. It seemed an excellent idea to me, we had about as much chance as the last ice-cream at a children’s party. I was already starting to loosen my grip on the gun when, incredulously, I saw Captain Bullen jerk up his Colt on the armed man in the doorway. It was criminal, suicidal folly, either he was acting completely instinctively, without any thought at all, or the bitter chargin, the killing disappointment after having thought that he had held all the cards in his hands, had been too much for him. I might have known, I thought briefly and wildly, he’d been far too calm and self-controlled, the safety valve screwed down on the bursting boiler.

I tried to shout out a warning, but it was too late, it was far too late. I shoved Tony Carreras violently aside and tried to reach Bullen, to strike down his gun-hand, but I was still far too late, a lifetime too late. The heavy Colt was roaring and bucking in Bullen’s hand, and the man in the doorway, to whom the ridiculous idea of resistance must have been the very last thought in his head, let the machine-gun slide slowly out of his lifeless hands and toppled backwards out of sight.

The man outside the window nearest the door had his machine-gun lined up on the captain. Bullen, in that second, was the biggest fool in the world, a crazy suicidal maniac, but even so I couldn’t let him be gunned down where he stood. I don’t know where my first bullet went but the second must have struck the machine-gun, I saw it jerk violently as if struck by a giant hand, and then came a continuous cacophonous drumfire of deafening sound as a third man squeezed the trigger of his machine-gun and kept on squeezing it. Something with the power and weight of a plunging pile-driver smashed into my left thigh, hurling me back against the bar. My head struck the heavy brass rail at the foot of the counter and the sound of the drumfire died away.

The stink of drifting cordite and the silence of the grave. Even before consciousness came fully back to me, even before I opened my eyes, I was aware of those, of the cordite and the unearthly stillness. I opened my eyes slowly, pushed myself shakily up till I was sitting with my back more or less straight against the bar, and shook my head to try to clear it. I had, understandably enough, forgotten about my stiff neck: the sharp stab of pain did more to clear my head than anything else could have done.