Alistair MacLEAN: The Dark Crusader

I sat up stiffly and because the only thing I had left me were my few remaining shreds of pride I didn’t shout out at the top of my voice when I inadvertently put some weight on my left hand. It was near as a toucher, though. I leaned my good shoulder against the wall and someone stirred beside me.

‘You awake, Bentall?’ It was Captain Griffiths.

‘Uh-huh. What’s the time?’

‘Just after three o’clock in the morning.’

‘Three o’clock!’ Captain Fleck had promised to make it by midnight at the latest. ‘Three o’clock. Why didn’t you wake me, Captain?’

‘Why?’

Why, indeed. Just so that I could go round the bend with worry, that was why. If there was one thing certain it was that there was nothing I or anyone else could do about getting out of that place. For thirty minutes after we’d been locked in Griffiths, Brookman and myself had searched with matches for one weak spot in either the walls or the door of that ante-chamber, a hopelessly optimistic undertaking when you considered that those walls had been built of reinforced concrete, designed to withstand the sudden and violent impact of many tons of air pressure. But we had had to do it. We had found what we expected, nothing.

‘No sound, no movement outside?’ I asked.

‘Nothing, just nothing at all.’

‘Well,’ I said bitterly, ‘it would have been a pity to spoil the fine record I’ve set up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that every damned thing I’ve touched on this damned job has gone completely wrong. When it comes to sheer consistency, Bentall’s your man. Too much to hope for a change at this late hour.’ I shook my head in the dark. ‘Three hours overdue. At least three hours. He’s either tried and been caught or they’ve locked him up as a precaution. Not that it matters now.’

‘I think there’s still a chance,’ Griffiths said. ‘Every fifteen minutes or so one of my men has stood on another’s shoulders and looked through the ventilation grille. Can’t see anything of interest, of course, just the hill on one side and the sea on the other. The point is that there has been brilliant moonlight nearly all night. Make it impossible for Fleck to get away unobserved from his ship. He might get the chance yet.’

‘Nearly all night, you said. Nearly?’

‘Well, there was a dark patch, lasting maybe half an hour, round about one o’clock,’ he admitted reluctantly.

‘He wouldn’t want half an hour, fifteen minutes would be all he needed,’ I said heavily.

‘There’s no future in kidding ourselves.’

There was no future anyway. I’d expected far too much. To expect him to slip away unobserved from his ship, in clear moonlight, with a guard on the pier and a working party with brilliant floodlamps not a hundred yards away, was to expect just a little bit too much: and to expect him afterwards to reach unseen the captain’s hut where the keyboard was, not fifty yards from the hangar, steal the keys, free Marie from the armoury and then free us – well, it had been expecting far too much altogether. But it had been the only shadow of hope that we had had and the clutch of a drowning man is pretty fierce.

The time dragged on, a night that could never end but, for all that, a night that would end all too soon. I don’t think anyone slept, there would be time and to spare for rest later on. The scientists and their wives murmured away softly most of the time, it occurred to me with a sense almost of shock that I wouldn’t have been able to identify any of those women had I met them again, I had never seen one in daylight. The air became more and more vitiated, breathing in that foul used-up atmosphere was becoming painful, the heat became steadily worse and sweat dripped from my face, ran down my arms and back. Every now and then a seaman would be hoisted up to look through the grille, and every time he had the same to report: bright moonlight.

Every time, that was, until four o’clock. The seaman had no sooner reached eye-level to the grille than he called out: ‘The moon’s gone. It’s pitch dark outside. I can’t see–’

But I never did hear what he couldn’t see. There came from outside in swift succession the sounds of a quick rush of feet, a scuffle, a heavy blow then a metallic scratching as someone fumbled for the keyhole. Then a solid click, the door swung open and the cool sweet night air flooded into the room.

‘Fleck?’ Griffiths said softly.

‘Fleck it is. Sorry to be late but–’

‘Miss Hopeman,’ I interrupted. ‘She there?’

‘Afraid not. Armoury key wasn’t on the board. I spoke to her through the window bars, she told me to give you this.’ He thrust a paper into my hand.

‘Anyone with a match?’ I asked. ‘I want–’

‘It’s not urgent,’ Fleck said. ‘She wrote it this afternoon, been waiting for a chance to–’ He broke off. ‘Come on. No time to waste. That damn moon isn’t going to stay behind a cloud all night.’

‘He’s right, you know,’ Griffiths said. He called softly: ‘Outside, all of you. No talking. Straight up the face of the hill and then cut across. That’s best, eh, Bentall?’

‘That’s best.’ I stuck the note into my shirt pocket, stood to one side to let the others file quietly out. I peered at Fleck. ‘What you got there?’

‘A rifle.’ He turned and spoke softly, and two men came round the corner of the blockhouse, dragging a third. ‘LeClerc had a man on guard. Gun belongs to him. Everybody out? All right, Krishna, inside with him.’

‘Dead?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Fleck didn’t sound worried one way or another. There came the sound of something heavy being dumped unceremoniously on the concrete floor inside and the two Indians came out. Fleck pulled the door quietly to and locked it.

‘Come on, come on.’ Griffiths whispered impatiently. ‘Time we were off.’

‘You go off,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get Miss Hopeman out of the armoury.’

He was already ten feet away, but he stopped, turned and came back to me.

‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘Fleck said there’s no key. That moon comes out any minute now. You’ll be bound to be seen. You won’t have a chance. Come on and don’t be so damn stupid.’

‘I’ll take the chance. Leave me.’

‘You know you’re almost certain to be seen,’ Giffiths said softly. ‘If you’re out, they’ll know we’re all out. They will know that there’s only one place we could go. We have women with us, it’s a mile and a half to that cave entrance, we would be bound to be intercepted and cut off. What it amounts to, Bentall, is that you are prepared to risk almost certain loss of all our lives on the selfish one in a thousand chance of doing something for Miss Hopeman. Is that it, Bentall? Is that how selfish you are?’

‘I’m selfish all right,’ I said at last. ‘But I’m not all that bad, I just hadn’t thought of it. I’ll come with you to the point where there is no further possibility of interception. Then I’ll turn back. Don’t make the mistake of trying to stop me.’

‘You’re quite crazy, Bentall.’ There was anger and worry both in Griffiths’ voice. ‘All you’ll do is lose your life, and lose it to no purpose.’

‘It’s my life.’

We moved straight towards the face of the hill, all in a closely bunched group. No one talked, not even in whispers, though LeClerc and his men were then well over half a mile away. After we’d gone about three hundred yards the hill started to rise steeply. We’d made as much offing as we could so now we turned south and began to skirt the base of the mountain. This was where things began to become dangerous, we had to pass by the hangar and buildings to get to the cave entrance, and just behind the hangar a sharp spur of the mountain rose above the surrounding level and would force us to come within two hundred yards of where LeClerc and his men were working.