Leslie Charteris - The Saint and the People Importers

He set off back to the car for the picnic provisions which he had thoughtfully packed in Upper Berkeley Mews — some cold tongue and ham, bread and butter, apples, cans of beer in a thermal bag full of ice cubes, and a flask of martinis. Tammy followed him.

“Don’t you think we should get one with a motor on it?” she muttered. “I mean, we’ve got a pistol and binoculars and a flashlight, but not water wings. I’d hate to have to swim back.”

“We’ve got to look innocent,” Simon said. “In a sailboat, we can drift about and tack around the fort in all directions, without looking as if it was our special target. But at the first sign that we’re not a couple of lovebirds enjoying a sail, we’ll become a couple of sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.”

The boat owner was busy with the sails when they returned with their burdens. Tammy gazed pessimistically at the boat, which bore the name Sunny Hours . It appeared to have seen many a sunny hour, and many a stormy one as well. Possibly it would look bright and new after its winter renovation, but right now it looked fit for piecemeal consumption on a fireplace.

It floated, however. Simon took the tiller, Tammy got herself more or less comfortably installed beside him, and the owner waded out in boots to get the craft into deeper water.

“Well,” said Simon as the southerly breeze caught the sails. “Wish us bon voyage.”

“Good luck,” the boatman said dubiously.

It was a long awkward run that they made down the variable waters of the creek, but the channel widened after a while, and at last the Sunny Hours spread her wings in the open river. She had no company except wheeling gulls and a long barge churning its way slowly in the opposite direction towards London.

“I don’t see any forts,” Tammy said, peering ahead.

“They’re out there somewhere,” Simon assured her. “We’re still in the river until we get abeam of Southend. Just enjoy yourself. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”

“And when the sun sinks in the west, so do we?”

Simon smiled at her.

“Think positively. It’s Fowler who’s going to get sunk. Relax.”

The dead forest of smokestacks lay small in the haze behind them. The mouth of the creek from which they had entered the Thames was lost in the dwindling line of the shore. There was no need for tacking. The wind was almost on the starboard beam, growing fresher. The pressure of the sail strained hard against Simon’s hand and as the boat’s speed increased the water gurgled and coiled away from the rudder in a thin white wake. There was a perceptible rolling when they encountered bigger waves farther from the shore.

“Cor,” Tammy said. “I wish the wind would let up a bit.”

“Don’t say things like that,” the Saint warned her. “We seafaring men are notoriously superstitious. All we need to scuttle the whole operation is to get ourselves becalmed.”

“Fat chance of that,” Tammy said, clinging to the side of the boat as it swung skittishly from a swell to a trough.

“Speaking of fat, I wonder how Abdul’s getting along,” Simon said.

“What can go wrong?” Tammy asked.

“Abdul can,” the Saint replied. “He’s got the moral fibre of a three-week-old stick of celery.”

“Well, there’s no point worrying about that. We’ve not only crossed the Rubicon — we’re right in the middle of it.” She stopped suddenly and pointed towards the horizon. “What’s that over there?”

Simon pulled a maritime chart out of one of the large pockets of his windbreaker and with Tammy’s help spread it on his knees.

“It is one of the forts,” he said after a moment. “But it’s the wrong one. Too close in. The one we want has to be somewhere off Shoeburyness. That would be at least thirteen miles from where we started.”

“How lucky,” Tammy commented.

Simon adjusted his course slightly. They were far from the nearest land now. To the north, the Essex coastline was almost parallel to their course. Kent, to the south, curved sharply away into the distance, but was mostly lost in a yellowish mist that seemed absent over the water itself. The fort they had seen was scarcely more than a darkish silvery point, and they drew no closer to it.

For a long time they sailed on. After a while it was like being on the open sea, but their rate of travel was becoming slower. The sheet was tugging less forcefully against Simon’s hand. He tensely endured the slackening of the wind for almost half an hour before saying anything.

“You’ve done it,” he said to Tammy at last.

“Done what?”

“Wished us into trouble. The wind is dropping. We are about to become the victims of light airs.”

“What are they?” she asked anxiously.

“They are airs of insufficient velocity to move a boat with any rapidity through the water. In short, if things get much worse we could be sitting here watching on some very wet sidelines while Fowler does what he pleases.”

Tammy put one of her hands into the water and watched the surface break around it.

“We’re still moving,” she said.

“About half as fast as we were before you jinxed the wind,” he retorted.

The sail became slacker. It had carried them less than half the distance to the island when Tammy tested the relative motion of the water again. There wasn’t any.

“We’ve stopped,” she said meekly.

The sail hung from the mast with dejected limpness. The erstwhile waves had become oily swells.

“I told you we should have had something with an engine,” she said.

“We’ve got something better: we’ve got martinis,” said the Saint cheerfully. “Since we can’t anchor out here, this seems a good time to have lunch. There must be a certain amount of current from the flow of the river, so we still ought to be drifting in the right direction. Fowler isn’t supposed to make his pick-up till late in the afternoon, and this calm won’t last forever unless you do some more reckless wishing.”

Without the wind, the sun was warm enough for the Saint to enjoy taking off his shirt, and for Tammy to peel off her jeans and sit in the short shorts which she had providently worn underneath. The martinis, lunch, and cold beer made a happy interlude that was only incongruous when either of them had a recollection of the mission that had brought them out there, of what had preceded it and what grim climax could be waiting at the end of the day. But Simon Templar could enjoy any pleasurable intermission for itself alone, and for him there was unalloyed pleasure in contemplating the sunlight on Tammy’s shapely legs, and the spontaneous expressions that chased over her impish face.

They were far enough north of the main navigation channels to be untroubled by the regular passage of lighters, freighters, tankers, and an occasional passenger steamship bound in and out of the Port of London. A few small sailboats, to the north, attempted to offer canvas to the unseasonable lull, but most of their potential masters and crew seemed to be less hardy souls who were already trending towards their regular autumnal retreat. A speedboat of two creamed ostentatiously over the inshore mud flats... And after many long lulls, Tammy suddenly cried “Look!”

She was gesturing towards a new silvery point in the water. Simon had missed seeing it before because he had not been urgently looking for it, and in any case the sail had been in his way. He let his craft come about into the weakly reviving wind while he focused his binoculars on the object. It was near the eastern horizon, and he half expected it to be another boat. But a combination of tide and current must have carried them farther than he would have estimated. What he was looking at was distinctly not a boat, even though it bobbed so much in his field of view because of his own motion that he could not make out any details.