Alistair MacLean - Fear is the Key

The time for circumspection, for the careful reconnoitering of every potential danger in my path, was past. It was all or nothing now. Arrived at the other side I strode down the long corridor where I had whispered to Kennedy earlier in the afternoon, turned right at its end instead of left as we had done before, stopped to orientate myself and headed in the direction of the broad companionway which, Mary had said, led up to the actual drilling deck itself. There were several people wandering around, one of the open doors I passed gave on to a recreation room full of blue smoke and crowded with men: obviously all work on drilling and the upper deck was completely stopped. It didn't worry the drillers, their ten-day tour of duty was paid from the time they left shore till they set foot on it again, and it didn't worry me for it was to the working deck I was going and the absence of all traffic that I'd find up there would make my task all the easier.

Rounding another corner I all but cannoned into a couple of people who seemed to be arguing rather vehemently about something or other: Vyland and the general. Vyland was the man who was doing the talking but he broke off to give me a glare as I apologised for bumping him and continued down the passage. I was certain he could not have recognised me, my sou'wester had been pulled right down to my eyes, the high flyaway collar of my oilskin was up to my nose and, best disguise of all, I had dispensed with my limp, but for all that I had the most uncomfortable sensation between the shoulder blades until I had rounded another corner and was lost to their sight. I wasn't sure whether this obvious argument between the general and Vyland was a good thing or not. If the general had managed to get him deeply interested in some controversial subject of immediate and personal importance to both, then well and good; but if Vyland had been expostulating over what he regarded as some unnecessary delay, things might get very rough indeed. If he got back to the other side of the rig before I did, I didn't like to think what the consequences would be. So I didn't think about them. Instead, I broke into a run, regardless of the astonished looks from some passers-by at a complete loss to understand the reason for this violent activity on what was in effect a well-paid holiday, reached the companionway and went up two steps at a time.

Mary, tightly wrapped in a hooded plastic raincoat, was waiting behind the closed doors at the top of the steps. She shrank back and gave a little gasp as I stopped abruptly in front of her and pulled down the collar of my oilskin for a moment to identify myself.

"You!" She stared at me. "You — your bad leg — what's happened to your limp?"

"Never had one. Local colour. Guaranteed to fool the most suspicious. Kennedy told you what I wanted you for?"

"A — a watchdog. To keep guard."

"That's it. I don't want a bullet or a knife in my back in that radio shack. Sorry it had to be you, but there was no one eke. Where's the shack?"

"Through the door." She pointed. "About fifty feet that way."

"Come on." I grabbed the door handle, incautiously twisted it open, and if I hadn't had a strong grip on it I'd have been catapulted head over heels to the foot of the stairs. As it was, the hammerblow blast of that shrieking wind smashed both door and myself back against the bulkhead with a force that drove all the breath out of my lungs in an explosive gasp and would possibly have stunned me if the sou'wester hadn't cushioned the impact as the back of my head struck painfully against the steel. For a moment I hung there, my head a kaleidoscopic whirl of shooting colour, bent double against the hurricane force of the wind, whooping painfully as I fought to overcome the shock of the blow and me sucking effect of the wind and to draw some breath into my aching lungs: then I straightened up and lurched out through the door, pulling Mary behind me. Twice I tried to heave the door close, but against the sustained pressure of that wind I couldn't even pull it half-way to. I gave it up. They could, and no doubt very shortly would, send up a platoon from below to heave it shut: I had more urgent things to attend to.

It was a nightmare of a night. A dark howling nightmare. I screwed my eyes almost shut against the hurricane-driven knife-lash of the rain and stared up into the black sky. Two hundred feet above my head I could just distinguish the intermittent flicker of the derrick-top aircraft warning lights, utterly unnecessary on a night such as this unless there were some lunatic pilots around, and quite useless as far as giving any illumination at deck-level was concerned. The absence of light was a mixed blessing but on the whole, I felt, favourable: I might run into dangerous, even crippling obstacles because I couldn't see where I was going but on the other hand no one else could see where I was going either.

Arm in arm we lurched and staggered across the deck like a couple of drunks, heading for a square patch of light shining on the deck from a concealed window. We reached a door on the south side, on the near corner and sheltered from the wind, and I was on the point of bending down and having a squint through the keyhole when Mary caught the handle, pushed the door and walked into a small unit corridor. Feeling rather foolish, I straightened and followed. She pulled the door softly to.

"The entrance door is on the far end on the right," she whispered. She'd reached -both arms up round my neck to murmur in my ear, her voice couldn't have been heard a foot away. "I think there's someone inside."

I stood stock still and listened, with her arms still round my neck. Given a more favourable time I could have stayed there all night, but the time wasn't favourable. I said: "Couldn't it be that they just leave that light on to guide the operator to the shack when his call-up bell rings?"

"I thought I heard a movement," she whispered.

"No time to play it safe. Stay out in the passage," I murmured. "It'll be all right." I gave her hands a reassuring squeeze as I disengaged them from my neck, reflecting bitterly that Talbot luck was running typically true to form, padded up the passage, opened the door and walked into the radio room.

For a moment I stood there blinking in the brightness of the light, but not blinking so fast that I couldn't see a big burly character sitting at the radio table whirling round in his seat as the door opened. And even if I couldn't have seen him I'd still have heard him a split second later as he sent his seat toppling backward with a crash and leapt to his feet, spinning so as to face me, with a speed so remarkable in so big a man. In so very big a man. He was taller than I was, a good bit wider, heavier and younger: he had that blue-jowled, black-eyed, black-haired very tough face that you occasionally see in first or second generation Italian-Americans and if he was a genuine radio-man I was the Queen of Sheba.

"What's all the panic about?" I demanded shortly. It was my best American accent and it was terrible. "The boss has a message for you."

"What boss?" he asked softly. A build like a heavyweight champion and a face to match doesn't necessarily mean a mind like a moron and this boy was no moron. "Let's have a look at your face, Mac."

"What the hell's biting you?" I demanded. I turned down the collar of my coat. "Is that what you want?"

"Now the hat," he said quietly.

I took off the hat and flung it in his face just as I heard him spit out the solitary word "Talbot!" I was into a dive even as I threw the hat and I hit him fair and square in the middle with the point of my left shoulder. It was like hitting the trunk of a tree, but he wasn't as well anchored as, a tree and he went over.

His head and shoulders crashed against the far wall with a crash that shook the radio shack to its metal foundations. That should have been that, but it wasn't, I would have sworn that boy didn't even blink. He brought up one knee in a vicious jab that would have been a sad farewell for me had it landed where it had been intended to land. It didn't, it caught me on the chest and upper arm, but even so it had sufficient power behind it to knock me over on one side and the next moment we were rolling across the floor together, punching, kicking, clawing and gouging. The Marquess of Queensberry wouldn't have liked it at all.