Alistair MacLEAN: The Dark Crusader

Perhaps it wasn’t the filthiest vessel in all the seven seas, I’d never seen them all, but it would have taken a good ship to beat it. It was bigger, much bigger, than I had thought, close on a hundred feet in length, and everyone of them greasy, cluttered with refuse, unwashed and unpainted. Or there had been paint, but most of it had sun-blistered off. Two masts, sparred and rigged to carry sails, but no sails in sight, and between the mastheads a wireless aerial that trailed down to the radio cabin, about twenty feet for’ard from where I sat. I could see the rusted ventilator beyond its open door and beyond that a place that might have been Fleck’s charthouse or cabin or both and still further for’ard, but on a higher elevation, the closed-in bridge. Beyond that again, I supposed, below deck level, would be the crew quarters. I spent almost five minutes gazing thoughtfully at the superstructure and fore part of the ship with the odd vague feeling that there was something wrong, that there was something as it shouldn’t have been. Maybe Colonel Raine would have got it, but I couldn’t. I felt I had done my duty by the colonel, and keeping my eyes open any longer wouldn’t help anyone, asleep or awake they could toss us over the side whenever they wished. I’d had three hours’ sleep in the past forty-eight. I closed my eyes. I went to sleep.

When I awoke it was just on noon. The sun was almost directly overhead, but the chair shades were wide and the trade winds cool. Captain Fleck had just seated himself on the side of the hatchway. Apparently whatever business he had to attend to was over, and guessing the nature of that business was no trick at all, he’d just finished a long and difficult interview with a bottle of whisky. His eyes were slightly glazed and even at three feet to windward I’d no difficulty at all in smelling the Scotch. But conscience or maybe something else had got into him for he was carrying a tray with glasses, a bottle of sherry and a small stone jar.

‘We’ll send you a bite of food by-and-by.’ He sounded almost apologetic. ‘Thought you might like a snifter, first?’

‘Uh-huh.’ I looked at the stone jar. ‘What’s in it? Cyanide?’

‘Scotch,’ he said shortly. He poured out two drinks, drained his own at a gulp and nodded at Marie who was lying facing us, her face almost completely hidden under her windblown hair. ‘How about Mrs Bentall?’

‘Let her sleep. She needs it. Who’s giving you the orders for all of this, Fleck?’

‘Eh?’ He was off-balance, but only for a second, his tolerance to alcohol seemed pretty high. ‘Orders? What orders? Whose orders?’

‘What are you going to do with us?’

‘Impatient to find out, aren’t you, Bentall?’

‘I just love it here. Not very communicative, are you?’

‘Have another drink.’

‘I haven’t even started this one. How much longer do you intend keeping us here?’

He thought it over for a bit, then said slowly: ‘I don’t know. Your guess isn’t so far out, I’m not the principal in this. There was somebody very anxious indeed to see you.’ He gulped down some more whisky. ‘But he isn’t so sure now.’

‘He might have told you that before you took us from the hotel.’

‘He didn’t know then. Radio, not five minutes ago. He’s coming through again at 1900 hours – seven o’clock sharp. You’ll have your answer then. I hope you like it.’ There was something sombre in his voice that I didn’t find very encouraging. He switched his glance to Marie, looked at her for a long time in silence, then stirred. ‘Kind of a nice girl you got there, Bentall.’

‘Sure. That’s my wife, Fleck. Look the other way.’

He turned slowly and looked at me, his face hard and cold. But there was something else in it too, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

‘If I were ten years younger or maybe even half a bottle of whisky soberer,’ he said without animosity, ‘I’d have your front teeth for that, Bentall.’ He looked away across the green dazzle of the ocean, the glass of whisky forgotten in his hand. ‘I got a daughter just a year or two younger than her. Right now she’s in the University of California. Liberal Arts. Thinks her old man’s a captain in the Australian Navy.’ He swirled the drink around in his glass. ‘Maybe it’s better she keeps on thinking just that, maybe it’s better that she never sees me again. But if I knew I would never see her again…’

I got it. I’m no Einstein but I don’t have to be beaten over the head more than a few times to make me see the obvious. The sun was hotter than ever, but I didn’t feel warm any more. I didn’t want him to realize that he had been talking to me, too, not just to himself, so I said: ‘You’re no Australian, are you, Fleck?’

‘No?’

‘No. You talk like one, but it’s an overlaid accent.’

‘I’m as English as you are,’ he growled. ‘But my home’s in Australia.’

‘Who’s paying for all this, Fleck?’

He rose abruptly to his feet, gathered up the empty glasses and bottles and went away without another word.

It wasn’t until about half past five in the evening that Fleck came to tell us to get below. Maybe he’d spotted a vessel on the horizon and didn’t want to take the chance of anyone seeing us if they approached too closely, maybe he just thought we’d been on deck long enough. The prospect of returning to that stinking hole was no pleasure, but apart from the fact that both of us had slept nearly all day and felt rested again, we weren’t too reluctant to go: black cumulus thunderheads had swept up out of the east in the late afternoon, an obscured sun had turned the air cool and the rain wasn’t far away. It looked as if it were going to be a black and dirty night. The sort of night that would suit Captain Fleck very well indeed: the sort of night, I hoped, that would suit us even better.

The hatch-cover dropped in place behind us and the bolt slid home. Marie gave a little shiver and hugged herself tightly.

‘Well, another night in the Ritz coming up. You should have asked for fresh batteries – that torch isn’t going to last us all night.’

‘It won’t have to. One way or another we’ve spent our last night on this floating garbage can. We’re leaving this evening, just as soon as it’s good and dark. If Fleck has his way we’ll be leaving with a couple of iron bars tied to our feet: if I have mine, we’ll leave without them. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Fleck.’

‘What do you mean?’ she whispered. ‘You – you were sure that nothing was going to happen to us. Remember all the reasons you gave me when we arrived on board last night. You said Fleck was no killer.’

‘I still don’t think he is. Not by nature, anyway. He’s been drinking all day, trying to drown his conscience. But there are many things that can make a man do what he doesn’t want to do, even kill: threats, blackmail, a desperate need for money. I was speaking to him while you slept. It seems that whoever wanted me out here no longer needs me. What it was for I don’t know, but whatever it was the end appears to have been achieved without me.’

‘He told you that we – that we–’

‘He told me nothing, directly. He merely said that the person who had arranged the kidnap thought that he no longer wanted me – or us. The definite word is to come through at seven but from the way Fleck spoke there wasn’t much doubt about what the word is going to be. I think old Fleck’s got a soft spot for you and he spoke of you, by inference, as if you already belonged in the past. Very touching, very wistful.’

She touched my arm, looked up at me with a strange expression I’d never seen before and said simply: ‘I’m scared. It’s funny, all of a sudden I look into the future and I don’t see it and I’m scared. Are you?’