Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

Hands gripping the bo’sun’s bed, I dragged myself to my feet and tried again. Marston had me by the right arm and I needed all the support I could get. I made it to my own bed and sat down heavily. MacDonald’s face was expressionless. Susan looked as if she were about to cry. For some obscure reason that made me feel better. I lurched to my feet like an opening jack-knife, caught hold of the foot of my own bed and had another go.

It was no good. I wasn’t made of iron. The lurching of the Campari I could cope with and the first stiffness was slowly beginning to disappear. Even that frightening weakness in my left leg I could in some measure ignore. I could always hop along. But that pain I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t made of iron, I have a nervous system for transmitting pain just like anyone else’s and mine was operating in top gear at the moment. Even the pain I believe I could have coped with: but every time I set my left foot on the deck the shooting agony in my left thigh left me dizzy and light-headed, barely conscious. A few steps on that leg and I just wouldn’t be conscious at all. I supposed vaguely it must have had something to do with all the blood I had lost. I sat down again.

“Get back into bed,” Marston ordered. “This is madness. You’re going to have to lie on your back for at least the next week.”

“Good old Tony Carreras,” I said. I was feeling a bit lightheaded, and that’s a fact. “Clever lad, Tony. He’d the right idea. Your hypodermic, Doctor. Pain-killer for the thigh. Shoot me full of it. You know, the way a football player with a gammy leg gets an injection before a game.”

“No football player ever went out on a field with three bullet holes through his leg,” Marston said grimly.

“Don’t do it, Dr. Marston,” Susan said urgently. “ Please don’t do it. He’ll surely kill himself.”

“Bo’sun?” Marston queried.

“Give it to him, sir,” the bo’sun said quietly. “Mr. Carter knows best.”

“Mr. Carter knows best,” Susan mimicked furiously. She crossed to the bo’sun and stared down at him. “It’s easy for you to lie there and say he knows best. You don’t have to go out there and get killed, to be shot down or die from the loss of blood.”

“Not me, miss.” The bo’sun smiled up at her. “You won’t catch me taking risks like that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. MacDonald.” She sat down wearily on his bedside. “I’m so ashamed. I know that if your leg wasn’t smashed up – but look at him! He can’t even stand, far less walk. He’ll kill himself, I tell you, kill himself!”

“Perhaps he will. But then he will only be anticipating by about two days, Miss Beresford,” MacDonald said quietly. “I know. Mr. Carter knows. We both know that no one on the Campari has very long to live – not unless someone can do something. You don’t think, Miss Beresford,” he went on heavily, “that Mr. Carter is doing this just for the exercise?”

Marston looked at me, face slowly tightening. “You and the bo’sun have been talking? Talking about something I know nothing about?”

“I’ll tell you when I come back.”

“If you come back.” He went to his dispensary, came back with a hypodermic and injected some pale fluid. “Against all my instincts, this. It’ll ease the pain, no doubt about that, but it will also permit you to overstrain your leg and cause permanent damage.”

“Not half as permanent as being dead.” I hopped across into the dispensary, pulled old man Beresford’s suit out from the pile of folded blankets Susan had fetched and dressed as quickly as my bad leg and the pitching of the Campari would allow. I was just turning up the collar and tying the lapels together with a safety pin when Susan came in. She said, abnormally calm: “It suits you very well. Jacket’s a bit tight, though.”

“It’s a damn’ sight better than parading about the upper deck in the middle of the night wearing a white uniform. Where’s this black dress you spoke of?”

“Here.” She pulled it out from the bottom blanket.

“Thanks.” I looked at the label. Balenciaga. Should make a fair enough mask. I caught the hem of the dress between my hands, glanced at her, saw the nod and ripped, a dollar a stitch. I tore out a rough square, folded it in a triangle and tied it round my face, just below the level of my eyes. Another few rips, another square and I had a knotted cloth covering head and forehead until only my eyes showed. The pale glimmer of my hands I could always conceal.

“Nothing is going to stop you, then?” she said steadily.

“I wouldn’t say that.” I eased a little weight on to my left leg, used my imagination and told myself that it was going numb already. “Lots of things can stop me. Any one of forty-two men, all armed with guns and sub-machine-guns, can stop me. If they see me.”

She looked at the ruins of the Balenciaga. “Tear off a piece for me while you’re at it.”

“For you?” I looked at her. She was as pale as I felt. “What for?”

“I’m coming with you.” She gestured at her clothes, the navy-blue sweater and slacks. “It wasn’t hard to guess what you wanted Daddy’s suit for. You don’t think I changed into those for nothing?”

“I don’t suppose so.” I tore off another piece of cloth. “Here you are.”

“Well.” She stood there with the cloth in her hand. “Well. Just like that, eh?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

She gave me a slow, old-fashioned, up-from-under, shook her head and tied on the cloth. I hobbled to the sick-bay, Susan following.

“Where’s Miss Beresford going?” Marston demanded sharply. “Why is she wearing that hood?”

“She’s coming with me,” I said. “So she says.”

“Going with you? And you’d let her?” He was horrified. “She’ll get herself killed.”

“It’s likely enough,” I agreed. Something, probably the anæsthetic, was having a strange effect on my head: I felt enormously detached and very calm. “But, as the bo’sun says, what’s a couple of days early? I need another pair of eyes, somebody who can move quickly and lightly to reconnoitre, above all a lookout. Let’s have one of your torches, Doctor.”

“I object. I strongly protest against–”

“Get him the torch,” Susan interrupted.

He stared at her, hesitated, sighed and turned away. MacDonald beckoned me.

“Sorry I can’t be with you, sir, but this is the next best thing.” He pressed a seaman’s knife into my hand, wide-hinged blade on one side, shackle-locking marline-spike on the other: the marline came to a needle point. “If you have to use it hit upwards with the spike, the blade under in your hand.”

“Take your word for it any time.” I hefted the knife, saw Susan staring at it, her green eyes wide.

“You – you would use that thing?”

“Stay behind if you like. The torch, Dr. Marston.”

I pocketed the flash, kept the knife in my hand and passed through the surgery door. I didn’t let it swing behind me, I knew Susan would be there.

The sentry, sitting wedged into a corner of the passage, was asleep. His automatic carbine was across his knees. It was an awful temptation, but I let it go. A sleeping sentry would call for a few curses and kicks: but a sleeping sentry without his gun would start an all-out search of the ship.

It took me two minutes to climb up two companionways to the level of “A” deck. Nice wide flat companionways, but it took me two minutes. My left leg was very stiff, very weak and didn’t respond at all to auto-suggestion when I kept telling myself it was getting less painful by the minute: besides, the Campari was pitching so violently now that it would have been a full-time job for a fit person to climb upwards without being flung off.