Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“Not me!” she protested. “Daddy.”

“Look at me. Say that without blushing.”

She looked at me. She blushed. With those green eyes the effect was devastating. I thought about my constitution again and looked away, and then I heard her saying: “Daddy wants you to be the manager of the new oil-port. So then you and the bo’sun would be in business together after all. Wouldn’t you?”

I turned slowly and stared at her. I said slowly: “Was that the job he meant when he asked me if I’d like to work for him?”

“Of course. And you didn’t even give him a chance to tell you. Do you think he’d given up – he hadn’t really started. You don’t know my father. And you can’t claim I’d anything to do with it either.”

I didn’t believe her. I said: “I can’t tell you how – well, how grateful I am. It’s a terrific chance, I know and admit. If you see your father again this evening thank him very much indeed from me.”

Her eyes were shining. I’d never seen a girl’s eyes shining for me before. Not in this way.

“Then you’ll – then you’ll–”

“And tell him no.”

“And tell him–”

“It’s a foolish thing to have pride, perhaps, but I’ve still got a little left.” I hadn’t meant my voice to sound so harsh, it just came out that way. “Whatever job I’ll get, I’ll get one I found for myself, not one bought for me by a girl.” As a thumbs-down on a genuine offer, I reflected bitterly, the refusal could have been more graciously phrased.

She looked at me, her face suddenly very still, said, “Oh, Johnny” in a curiously muffled voice, turned and buried her face half on the pillow, half on the sheets, her shoulders heaving, sobbing as if her heart would break.

I didn’t feel good at all. I could have walked under a five-barred gate without opening it. I reached out and touched her head awkwardly and said: “I’m terribly sorry, Susan. But just because I turn down–”

“It’s not that, it’s not that.” She shook her head in the pillow, voice more muffled than ever. “It was all make-believe. No, not that, everything I said was true, but just for a few moments we – well, we weren’t here. We – were away from the Campari , it was something that had nothing to do with the Campari . You – you understand.”

I stroked her hair. “Yes, Susan, I understand.” I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“It was like a dream.” I didn’t see where she came into the dream. “In the future. Away – away from this dreadful ship. And then you burst the dream and we’re back on the Campari . And no one knows what the end’s to be, except us – Mummy, Daddy, all of them, Carreras has them believing their lives will be spared.” She sobbed again, then said, between sobs: “Oh, my dear. We’re just kidding ourselves. It’s all over. Everything’s over. Forty armed men and they’re prowling all over the ship. I saw them. Double guards everywhere – there are two outside this door. And every door locked. There’s no hope, there’s no hope. Mummy, Daddy, you, me, all of us – this time tomrorrow it will all be over. Miracles don’t happen any more.”

“It’s not all over, Susan.” I’d never make a salesman, I thought drearily, if I met a man dying of thirst in the Sahara I couldn’t have convinced him that water was good for him. “It’s never all over.” But that didn’t sound any better than my first attempt.

I heard the creak of springs and saw MacDonald propped up on one elbow, thick black eyebrows raised in puzzlement and concern. The sound of her crying must have awakened him.

“It’s all right, Archie,” I said. “Just a bit upset, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry.” She straightened herself and turned her tear-stained face in the bo’sun’s direction. Her breath was coming in the quick, short, indrawn gasps that are the aftermath of crying. “I’m terribly sorry. I woke you up. But there is no hope, is there, Mr. MacDonald?”

“ ‘Archie’ will do for me,” the bo’sun said gravely.

“Well, Archie.” She tried to smile at him through her tears. “I’m just a terrible coward.”

“And you spending all day with your parents and never once being able to tell them what you knew? What kind of cowardice do you call that, miss?” MacDonald said reproachfully.

“You’re not answering me,” she said in tearful accusation.

“I am a West Highlander, Miss Beresford,” MacDonald said slowly. “I have the gift of my ancestors, a black gift at times that I’d rather be without, but I have it. I can see what comes tom morrow or the day after tommorrow: not often, but at times I can. You cannot will the second sight to come, but come it does. I have seen what is to come many times in the past few years, and Mr. Carter there will tell you that I have never once been wrong.” This was the first I had ever heard of it, he was as fluent a liar as myself. “Everything is going to turn out well.”

“Do you think so, do you really think so?” There was hope in her voice now, hope in her eyes, that slow, measured speech of MacDonald’s, the rock-like steadiness of the dark eyes in that sun-weathered face, bespoke a confidence, a certainty, an unshakable belief that was most impressive. There, now, I thought, was a man who would have made a great salesman.

“I don’t think, Miss Beresford.” Again the grave smile. “I know. Our troubles are almost at their end. Do what I do – put your last cent on Mr. Carter here.”

He even had me convinced. I, too, knew that everything was going to turn out just fine, until I remembered who he was depending on. Me. I gave Susan a handkerchief and said: “Go and tell Archie about that job.”

“You’re not going to trust your life to that thing?” There was horror in Susan’s face, panic in her voice as she watched me tie a bowline round my waist. “Why, it’s no thicker than my little finger.” I could hardly blame her: the thin three-stranded rope, no bigger than an ordinary clothes line, was hardly calculated to inspire confidence in anyone. It didn’t inspire much in me, even although I did know its properties.

“It’s nylon, miss,” MacDonald explained soothingly. “The very rope mountaineers use in the Himalayas – and you don’t think they’d trust their lives to anything they weren’t dead sure of? You could hang a big motor-car on the end of this and it still wouldn’t break.” Susan gave him her it’s-all-right-for-you-to-talk-it’s-not-your-life-that’s-depending-on-it look, bit her lip and said nothing.

The time was exactly midnight. If I’d read the clock dial settings on the Twister properly, six hours was the maximum delayed action that could be obtained. Assuming Carreras rendezvoused exactly on time at 5 a.m., it would be at least another hour before he could get clear: so, the Twister wouldn’t be armed until after midnight.

Everything was ready. The sick-bay door had been cautiously locked on the inside with the key I’d taken from Tony Carreras so that neither of the two guards could burst in unexpectedly in the middle of things. And even if they did get suspicious and force an entrance, MacDonald had a gun.

MacDonald himself was now sitting at the top of my bed, beside the window. Marston and I had half-carried him there from his own bed. His left leg was quite useless – like myself, he’d been given an injection by Doc Marston to deaden the pain, mine being twice as powerful as the previous night’s dose – but then MacDonald was not going to be called upon to use his leg that night, only his arms and shoulders, and there was nothing wrong with MacDonald’s arms and shoulders. They were the strongest on the Campari . I had the feeling I was going to need all their strength that night. Only MacDonald knew the purpose I had in mind that night. Only MacDonald knew that I intended returning the way I went. The others believed in my suicidal plan for an attack on the bridge, believed if I were successful I would be returning via the sick-bay door. But they didn’t believe I would return at all. The atmosphere was less than festive.