Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“After I’m finished in the wireless office no one will ever be able to send or receive on that set again.”

“All right. So you’ll smash it up. That itself would be enough to let Carreras know what you’ve done. And you can’t smash up every radio receiver on the Campari . You can’t for instance, get near the ones in the drawing-room. Everybody will know, you say. That means that the generalissimo and his government will know also: and then all the stations on the island will do nothing but keep up a non-stop broadcast of news. Carreras is bound to hear it.”

I said nothing. I thought vaguely that I must have lost a great deal of blood. Her mind was working about ten times as quickly and clearly as mine. Not that that made her very smart.

She went on: “You and the bo’sun seem very sure that Carreras won’t let us – the passengers and crew – live. Perhaps you think it’s because he can’t have any witnesses, that whatever advantage the generalissimo gained from getting this money would be offset over and over again by the world wide reaction against him if the world knew what he had done. Perhaps–”

“Reaction!” I said. “Reaction! He’d find the American and British navies and air forces on his doorstep the following morning and that would be the end of the generalissimo. Not even Russia would raise a hand to help him, they wouldn’t as much as rattle a rocket. Of course he can’t afford to let anyone know. He’d be finished.”

“In fact, he couldn’t even afford to let anyone know he’d made the attempt? So, as soon as Carreras picks up the news of your SOS, he gets rid of all the witnesses – permanently – sheers off, trans-ships to this other vessel that’s waiting and that’s that.”

I stood there saying nothing. My mind felt dull and heavy and tired, my body even more so. I tried to tell myself it was just the drug Marston had pumped into me, but it wasn’t that, I knew it wasn’t that, the sense of defeat is the most powerful opiate of all. I said, hardly knowing what I was saying: “Well, at least we would have saved the gold.”

“The gold!” You had to be a multi-millionaire’s daughter before you could put all that scorn into your voice when you mentioned the word “gold.”

“Who cares a fig for all the gold in the world? What’s gold compared to your life and my life, my mother’s and father’s and the lives of everyone on the Campari ? How much money did Carreras say the Fort Ticonderoga was carrying?”

“You heard him. A hundred and fifty million dollars.”

“A hundred and fifty million! Daddy could raise that in a week and still have as much again left.”

“Lucky Daddy,” I muttered. Light-headed, that’s what I was getting.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing. It all seemed such a good idea when MacDonald and I worked it out, Susan.”

“I’m sorry.” She caught my right hand in both of hers and held it tight. “I’m truly sorry, Johnny.”

“Where did you get this ‘Johnny’ business from?” I mumbled.

“I like it. What’s good enough for Captain Bullen – your hands are like ice;” she exclaimed softly. “And you’re shivering.” Gentle fingers pushed up under my hood. “And your forehead is burning. Running a temperature and fever. You’re not well, oh, you’re not well. Come on back down to the sick-bay, Johnny. Please.”

“No.”

“Please!”

“Don’t nag at me, woman.” I pushed myself wearily off the ventilator. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?” She was quickly beside me, her arm in mine, and I was glad to hang on.

“Cerdan. Our mysterious friend Mr. Cerdan. Do you realise that we know practically nothing about Mr. Cerdan – except that he seems to be the one who lies back and lets the others do all the work? Carreras and Cerdan – they seem to be the king-pins and maybe Carreras isn’t the boss after all. But I do know this: if I could get a knife sticking into the throat or a gun jabbing into the back of either of those men I would have a big card to play in this game.”

“Come on, Johnny,” she pleaded. “Come on down below.”

“All right, so I’m loopy. But it’s still true. If I could shove either of those men into the drawing-room ahead of me and threaten the two guards with his death if they don’t drop their guns, I rather think they would. With two machine-guns and all the men in there to help I could do a lot on a night like this. I’m not crazy, Susan, just desperate, like I said.”

“You can hardly stand.” There was a note of desperation in her voice now.

“That’s why you’re here. To hold me up. Carreras is out of the question. He’ll be on the bridge and that’ll be the most heavily-guarded place on the ship, because it’s the most important place.” I winced and shrank back into a corner as a great blue-white jagged streak of forked lightning, almost directly overhead, flickered and stabbed through the black wall of cumulonimbus clouds and the driving rain, momentarily illuminating every detail of the Campari ’s decks in its blinding glare. The curiously flat explosive clap of thunder was muffled, lost in the teeth of the gale.

“That helps,” I muttered. “Thunder, lightning, a tropical rainstorm and moving into the heart of a hurricane. King Lear should have seen this little lot. He’d never have complained of his blasted heath again.”

“Macbeth,” she said. “That was Macbeth.”

“Oh, hell,” I said. She was getting as nutty as I was. I took her arm or she took mine, I forget which. “Come on. We’re too exposed here.”

A minute later we were down on “A” deck, crouched against a bulkhead. I said: “Finesse will get us nowhere. I’m going into the central passageway, straight into Cerdan’s cabin. I’ll stick my hand in my pocket, pretend I have a gun. Stay at the entrance to the passageway, warn me if anyone comes.”

“He’s not in,” she said. We were standing at the starboard for’ard end of the accommodation, just outside Cerdan’s sleeping cabin. “He’s not at home. There’s no light on.”

“The curtains will be drawn,” I said impatiently. “The ship’s fully darkened. I’ll bet Carreras hasn’t even got the navigation lights on.” We shrank against the bulkhead as another lightning flash reached down from the darkened clouds, seemed almost to dance on the tip of the Campari ’s mast. “I won’t be long.”

“Wait!” She held me with both hands. “The curtain’s aren’t drawn. That flash – I could see everything inside the cabin.”

“You could see–” for some reason I’d lowered my voice almost to a whisper. “Anyone inside?”

“I couldn’t see all the inside. It was just for a second.”

I straightened, pressed my face hard against the window, and stared inside. The darkness in the cabin was absolute – absolute, that is, until another forked finger of lightning lit up the entire upperworks of the Campari once more. Momentarily, I saw my own hooded face and staring eyes reflected back at me in the glass, then exclaimed involuntarily for I had seen something else again.

“What is it?” Susan demanded huskily. “What’s wrong?”

“This is wrong.” I fished out Marston’s torch, hooded it with my hand and shone it downwards through the glass.

The bed was up against the bulkhead, almost exactly beneath the window. Cerdan was lying on the bed, clothed and awake, his eyes staring up as if hypnotised by the beam of the torch. Wide eyes, staring eyes. His white hair was not just where his white hair had been, it had slipped back, revealing his own hair beneath. Black hair, jet black hair, with a startling streak of iron-grey almost exactly in the middle. Black hair with an iron-grey streak? Where had I seen somebody with hair like that? When had I ever heard of somebody with hair like that? All of a sudden, I knew it was “when” not “where”: I knew the answer. I switched off the light.