Rick Boyer - Billingsgate Shoal

"Knock on it. Hard."

I did.

"Who is it?" said a barely audible voice.

"Hartzos. I found a spy, John."

"Police?"

"Don't know. He knocked Micky cold out on the dock, then worked his way in."

"Where were you, Hartzos?"

"He must've come in when I was with Micky. I got to get back up quick. Want help with him?"

"No. Step back." I thought the voice was faintly familiar…A The heavy door slid open. It was almost dark beyond; A flashlight shone on our faces.

"Well?" asked Hartzos.

Still the man with the light was silent.

"John, do you want me to stay?"

"Uh uh," was the grunted reply. I heard the sound of fading footsteps behind me as Hartzos the watchman returned to his post. They certainly had the place sealed off effectively. Two tall fences with barbed wire, a series of deserted buildings, a lower level of an old wharf with solid rock walls, and a swarm of silent `guards that prowled around in the pitch black.

The man grabbed me by my upper arm hard and I felt a gun in my ribs, He spun me fast around and up against the doorjamb as he flicked off the flashlight. I heard the big door slide shut and John and I were alone. I didn't like the feeling one bit. When I next heard his voice it was right in my ear: "Well, well, Doctor Adams, you certainly dawnt seem to have such bleedin' keen luck mucking about in old buildings, eh?"

"You!"

"Shhhhhh! Now you listen good these next few seconds or we're both dead, hear?"

"I hear. But tell me who you are-"

"Shhhhh!" He jammed me in the rib cage hard with the gun. The voice commenced again, in a whisper almost delicate for all the menace it conveyed.

"Who I am's not important. Savin' your neck should be, and your chances aren't good. If they find out we've met before we're both dead. You've never laid eyes on me."

"Right. Never laid-"

"C'mon!"

He marched me through a narrow hall into the room beyond. I will never forget that room. As I entered it I was almost buoyant with hope that I'd run into my friend from the barn again. But one glance around the dismal chamber with the damp rock walls was enough to take the tar out of anybody. The room was perhaps twenty by thirty feet. The ceiling was low. It was full of junk: old cable spools, machinery, and crates and pallets. A doorway in the far wall led to another room or passageway that was dark. What dominated the room was a chute that projected at an angle from above. At the chute's end was a long narrow table of sheet metal with wooden sides to it. It was a dressing table for fish. Along the sides of this table were troughs, no doubt for the fishheads and offal that were discarded. These emptied into another chute directly above a large grating in the floor as big as a door. The steel grate that covered the black hole in the floor had an ominous look. It could have been the doorway to an oubliette. A sound came up through the grating. The sound of sloshing water. This room, originally used to store cable, had been converted into a processing room by the fishery. Now abandoned even in that role, it made a perfect place to hide in.

The big man sat with his back to me. He was listening to a VHF radio, his head bowed in concentration. A slender, lithe figure emerged from the far dark doorway and stopped and stared at us. John prodded with the gun and I sat down on a stack of pallets.

"Jim, look," said the figure.

Schilling turned around and scowled at us. The slim figure disappeared into the dark doorway and reappeared immediately with something long and dark. It approached us silently, and then became fully visible a few feet from us. The delicate hands pointed a Colt Commando assault rifle at me.

"Ah the charming Doctor Adams. You surprised to find me here?" asked Laura Kincaid.

"Not really," I answered. "I realized that you were the only person who could have told Schilling about my suspicions. I told nobody else. And I think it was your big friend here who opened the front door while we were talking/out in the garden. I know you don't really have a maid."

"Yes, it was a clever game you played with me. I realized too late who it probably was on the phone, and that made us even more anxious to get rid of you."

"Ah, but we didn't," said Schilling as he shuffled up behind Laura Kincaid. "You were lucky. I hit you too lightly up in Gloucester. I knew it before you hit the water. You had turned a bit at just the right instant and the sap slid off the side of your head-"

"So you waited around to make sure."

"But it wasn't good enough. You're a wily one, Adams, but stupid. Even our warning of the dog wasn't enough I see."

I turned to Laura.

"I guess it's not too difficult to imagine what happened to your husband."

She looked away impatiently for a second, then faced me, frowning. .

"I knew you were trouble as soon as you called me. I told Jim to put himself out underneath the car so he could get a good look at you as you left. You were stupid to hunt out Murdock."

"And he was obviously stupid to help you," I said. I looked at my watch. "There are several things you should know. One: the police and Coast Guard all know I'm here. They also know you're not hanging around the Rose. Even they can spot a decoy as obvious as that-"

Schilling and Laura exchanged a quick glance. It was fleeting, but enough to tell me they were a little bit afraid.

"Second, this whole place is going to come alive shortly after four o'clock. That's in less than half an hour."

Schilling lost control. With a deep, guttural roar he leapt forward and pasted me one on the side of the jaw and sent me sprawling on the smooth concrete floor. It was damp and very cold. Apparently I'd messed up his plans enough so that he was mighty irritated.

"It won't work, Adams, your making up a cock and bull story to throw us off balance. You're the one who's in trouble now. A few things you should know. First, the security here's air tight. It's a wonder you managed to get in at all but as we can see, you didn't get far. Second, there are four or five ways out of here, including that long tunnel behind us. If need be we'll leave that way and we've got some stuff back there that'll make anyone chasing us wish he'd never been born. We were just getting ready to make our last run; we got skunked earlier tonight but now we're ready and nobody's getting in our way. You're leaving here too, Adams, but by a different exit."

He spun around and went over to the big grate, which he snatched up from a deep squat, just like an Olympic weightlifter. He staggered three steps with the huge metal screen and dropped it. It clanged down in a flurry of sparks. Schilling walked over to the pit and peered down.

"Put you right in here with all the old fish guts."

I felt a deep sickening dread under my ribs. My lower half seemed made of water and my mouth had a fuzzy, electric feeling. I felt on the verge of some kind of seizure. I was very scared. I had to talk, to keep them talking. I needed all the time I could buy. I glanced over at John, who held his Walther muzzle down. In a sense he represented my only hope, and I didn't even have the faintest idea who the hell he was.

"I wouldn't have… wouldn't have become at all interested if it weren't for the boy's death," I said.

"That was an accident," said the woman. "Jim saw the Navy insignia and panicked. The boy was on the far side of the boat and he took a swipe at him with a fish billy. He just… never came back up."

"Ah. So that settles it. That easy is it?"

She struck me across the face with the muzzle of the rifle. The flash arrester did a nice job of opening up the left side of my cheek.

"You shut up. Shut up!"

"So you know my name. How did you find out?" asked the big man. He was built like a fullback, and had obviously worked out heavily to increase the beef up around his chest and shoulders, But there was something missing, something weak about the eyes and mouth that turned my stomach.