Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

I never finished the thought, I was running after them as quickly, as lightly, as silently as the stiffness in my left leg would permit. Of course Carlos was taking him in the direction of the companionway, had he marched him straight towards the rail Caroline would have known at once what awaited him, would have turned and hurled himself against Carlos with all the frantic savagery of a man who knows he is about to die.

Five seconds, only five seconds elapsed from the time I started running until I caught up with them. Five seconds, far too short a time to think of the suicidal dangers involved, far too short to think what would happen if Carlos should swing his torch round, if any of the three guards at the gun should happen to be watching this little procession, if either Carreras or his assistant in the hold should choose to look over the coaming to see how the problem of disposal was being attended to, far too little time to figure out what I was going to do when I caught up with Carlos.

And I was given no time to figure. I was only three or four feet away when, in the backwash of light from the torch, I saw Carlos reverse his grip on his tommy-gun, catch it by the barrel, swing it up high over his head. It had reached its highest point and was just started on the down-swing when the base of the heavy marline-spike caught him on the back of the neck with all my weight and fury behind it. I heard something crack, caught the tommy-gun out of his suddenly nerveless hand before it could crash to the deck and made a grab for the torch. I missed. The torch struck the deck with a muffled thud, it must have been a ship’s rubber composition issue, rolled over a couple of times and came to rest, its beam shining straight out over the edge of the ship. Carlos himself pitched heavily forward, struck Dr. Caroline, and the two of them fell against the lower steps of the companionway.

“Keep quiet!” I whispered urgently. “Keep quiet if you want to live!” I dived for the torch, fumbled desperately for the switch, couldn’t find it, stuck the glass face against my jacket to kill the beam, finally located the switch and turned it off.

“What in heaven’s name–”

“Keep quiet !” I found the trigger on the automatic pistol and stood there stock-still, staring aft into the darkness, in the direction of both the hold and the gun, striving to pierce the darkness, listening as if my life depended upon it. Which it did. Ten seconds I waited. Nothing. I had to move, I couldn’t afford to wait another ten seconds. Thirty seconds would have been enough and more than enough for Carlos to dispose of Dr. Caroline: a few seconds after that and Carreras would start wondering what had happened to his trusty henchman.

I thrust gun and torch towards Caroline, found his hands in the darkness “Hold these,” I said softly.

“What – what is this ?” An agonised whisper in the dark.

“He was going to smash your head in. Now shut up. You can still die. I’m Carter, the chief officer.” I’d pulled Carlos clear of the companionway where he’d held Caroline pinned by the legs and was going through his pockets as quickly as I could in the darkness. The key. The key of the wireless office. I’d seen him take it from his right-hand trousers’ pocket but it wasn’t there any more. The left-hand one. Not there either. The seconds were rushing by. Desperately I tore at the patch-pockets of his army type blouse, and I found it in the second pocket. But I’d lost at least twenty seconds.

“Is – is he dead?” Caroline whispered.

“Are you worried? Stay here.” I shoved the key into a safe inner pocket, caught the guard by his collar and started to drag him across the wet deck. It was less than ten feet to the ship’s rail. I dropped him, located the hinged section of the teak rail, fumbled for the catch, released it, swung the rail through 180 degrees and snapped it back in its open position. I caught the guard by his shoulders, eased the upper part of his body over the second rail, then tipped the legs high. The splash he made couldn’t have been heard thirty feet away. Certainly no one in number four hold or under the gun tarpaulin could possibly have heard anything.

I ran back to where Dr. Caroline was still sitting on the lower steps of the companionway. Maybe he was just obeying the order I’d given him, but probably he was just too dazed to move anyway. I said: “Quick, give me your wig.”

“What? What?” My second guess had been right. He was dazed.

“Your wig!” It’s no easy feat to shout in a whisper, but I almost made it.

“My wig? But – but it’s glued on.”

I leaned forward, twisted my fingers in the temporary thatch and tugged. It was glued on, all right. The gasp of pain and resistance offered to my hand showed he hadn’t been kidding: that wig felt as if it was riveted to his skull. It was no night for half measures. I clamped my left hand over his mouth and pulled savagely with my right. A limpet the size of a soup plate couldn’t have offered more resistance, but it did come off. I don’t know how much pain there was in it for him but it certainly cost me plenty: his teeth almost met through the heel of my palm.

The machine-gun was still in his hand. I snatched it away, whirled, and stopped motionless. For the second time in a minute I could see rain slanting whitely through the vertical beam of a torch. That meant only one thing: someone was climbing up the ladder from the bottom of the hold.

I reached the ship’s side in three long steps, placed the wig in the scuppers, laid the gun on top of it, raced back to the companionway, jerked Dr. Caroline to his feet and dragged him towards the bo’sun’s store, less than ten feet inboard from the companionway. The door was still less than halfway shut when Carreras appeared over the coaming, but his torch wasn’t pointing in our direction. I closed the door silently until only a crack remained.

Carreras was closely followed by another man, also with a torch. Both of them headed straight for the ship’s side. I saw the beam of Carreras’s torch suddenly steady on the opened rail, then heard the sharp exclamation as he bent forward and peered in the scuppers. A moment later he was erect again, examining the gun and the wig he held in his hand. I heard him say something short and staccato, repeated several times. Then he started talking rapidly to his companion, but it was in Spanish and I couldn’t get it. He then examined the inside of the wig, indicated something with the torch beam, shook his head in what might have been sorrow but was more probably exasperated anger, flung the wig over the side and returned to the hold, taking the tommy-gun with him. His companion followed.

“Our friend didn’t seem so happy,” I murmured.

“He’s a devil, a devil!” Dr. Caroline’s voice was shaking, only now was he beginning to realise the narrowness of his escape, how closely death had brushed him by. “You heard him. One of his own men dead and all he could call him was a crazy fool, and he just laughed when the other man suggested they turn the ship to look for him.”

“You understand Spanish?”

“Pretty well. He said something like: ‘Just like that sadistic so-and-so to force Caroline to open the rail so that he could see what was coming to him.’ He thinks I turned on the guard, grabbed his gun and that in the fight, before we both went overboard, my wig was torn off. There was a handful of my hair sticking to the underside of the wig, he says.”

“Sorry about that, Dr. Caroline.”

“Good God, Sorry! You saved both our lives. Mine anyway. Sorry!” Dr. Caroline, I thought, was a pretty strong-nerved person, he was recovering fast from the shock. I hoped his nerves were very strong indeed, he was going to need them all to survive the ordeal of the next few hours. “It was that handful of hair that really convinced him.”