Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

"Well, now," Smithy said softly. "Our lad's down at the boats or the sub. If we go to investigate we might bump into him. If we go down to the end of the jetty for a quick look-see and don't bump into him he's still bound to see our tracks on his return trip. We want to make our presence known?"

No. No law against a man taking a stroll when he feels like it, even though it is in a blizzard. And if we declare ourselves you can be damn sure he'll never put another foot wrong as long as we remain on Bear Island."

We withdrew to the shelter of some rocks only a few yards distant along the beach, an almost wholly superfluous precaution in that close to zero visibility.

"What do you think he's up to?" Smithy said.

"Specifically, no idea. Generally, anything between the felonious and the villainous. We'll check down there when he's gone."

Whatever purpose he'd had in mind, it hadn't taken him long to achieve it for he was gone within two minutes, The snow was so thick, the darkness so nearly absolute, that he might well have passed by both unseen and unheard had it not been for the erratic movement of the small torch he held in his hand. We waited for some seconds then straightened.

"Was he carrying anything?" I said.

"Same thought here," Smithy said. "He could have been. But I couldn't swear to it."

We followed the double tracks in the snow down to the end of the Jetty where they ended at the head of the iron ladder leading down to the submarine mock-up. No question but this was where he'd gone for apart from the fact that there was nowhere else where he could have been his footprints were all over the hull and, when we'd climbed into it, the platform in the conning tower. We dropped down into the hull of the submarine. Nothing was changed, nothing appeared to be missing from our earlier visit. Smithy said: "I've taken a sudden dislike to this place. Last time we were here I called it an iron tomb. I wouldn't want it to be our tomb."

"You feel it might?"

"Our friend seemingly didn't take anything away. But he must have had some purpose in coming here so I assume he brought something. On the track record to date that purpose wouldn't be anything I'd like and neither would be that something he brought. How would it be if he'd planted something to blow the damn thing up?"

"Why would he want to do a crazy thing like that?" I didn't feel as disbelieving as I sounded.

"Why has he done any of the crazy things he's done? Right now, I don't want a reason. I just want to know whether, as of now, and here and now, he's just done another crazy thing. What I mean is, I'm nervous."

He wasn't the only one. I said: "Assuming you're right, he couldn't blow this thing up with a little itsy-bitsy piece of plastic explosive. It would have to be something big enough to make a big bang. So, a delayed action fuse."

"To give him time to be asleep in his innocent bed when the explosion goes off? I'm more nervous than ever. I wonder how long he figured it would take him to get back to his bed."

"He could do it in a minute."

"God's sake, why are we standing here talking?" Smithy flashed his torch around. "Where the hell would a man put a device like that?"

"Against a bulkhead, I'd say. Or on the bottom."

We examined the deck first but all the bars of cast-iron ballast and their securing wooden battens appeared to be undisturbed and firmly in place.

There was just no room there for even the smallest explosive device. We turned to the rest of the hull, looked behind the mushroom anchors, among the chains, under the compressor unit and the windlass and behind the plastic models of periscope and guns. We found nothing. We even peered at the cleaning plates on the ballast tanks to see if any of those could have been unscrewed but there were no marks on them. And there was certainly no place where such a device could have been attached to the bulkheads themselves without being instantly detectable.

Smithy looked at me. It was difficult to say whether he was perplexed or, like me, increasingly and uncomfortably conscious of the fact that if such a time device did exist time might be swiftly running out. He looked towards the fore end of the hull and said: "Or he might just have dropped it in one of those lockers. Easiest and quickest place to hide anything, after all."

"Most unlikely," I said, but I reached there before he did. I ran the beam of the torch over the paint locker and then the light steadied on a wooden batten close by the floor of the locker. I kept the light where it was and said to Smithy: "You see it, too?"

"A giveaway piece of fresh and unmelted snow. From a boot." He reached for the lid of the locker. "Well, time's a-wasting. Better open the damn thing."

"Better not." I'd caught his arm. "How do you know it's not boobytrapped."

"There's that." He'd snatched back his band like a man seeing a tiger's jaws closing on it. "It would save the cost of a time fuse. How do we open it, then?"

"Gradually. It's unlikely that he had the time to rig up anything so elaborate as an electrical trigger but if he did there'll be contacts in the lid. More likely, if anything, a simple pull cord. In either event nothing can operate in the first two inches of lift for he must have left at least that space to withdraw his hand."

So we gingerly opened the lid those two inches, examined the rim and what we could see of the interior of the locker and found nothing. I pushed the locker lid right back. There was no sign of any explosive. Nothing had been put inside. But something had been removed-two cans of the quick-dry paint and two brushes. Smithy looked at me and shook his head. Neither of us said anything. The reasons for removing a couple of paint cans were so wholly inconceivable that, clearly, there was nothing that could be gainfully said. We closed the locker, climbed up the conning tower and regained the pier. I said: "It's very unlikely that he would have taken them back to the cabin with him. After all, they're large cans and not easy things to hide in a tiny cubicle especially if any of your friends should chance to come calling."

"He doesn't have to hide them there. As I said earlier, there are a thousand snowdrifts where you can hide practically anything."

But if he'd hidden anything he hadn't hidden them in any of the snowdrifts between the jetty and the cabin, for his tracks led straight back to the latter without any deviation to either side. We followed the footprints right back close up to the cabin walls and there they were lost in the smudged line of tracks that led right round the cabin's perimeter. Smithy hooded his torch and examined the tracks for some seconds.

He said: I think that track's wider and deeper than it was before. I think that someone-and it doesn't have to be the same person-has been making another grand tour of the cabin."

I think you're right," I said. I led the way back to the window of our own cubicle and was about to pull it open when some instinct-or perhaps it was because I was now subconsciously looking for the suspicious or untoward in every possible situation-made me shine my torch on the window frame. I turned to Smithy. "Notice something?"

I notice something. The wad of paper we left jammed between the window and frame-well, it's no longer jammed between window and frame." He shone his torch on the ground, stopped and picked something up. "Because it was lying down there. A caller or callers."

"So it would seem." We clambered inside and while Smithy started screwing the window back in place I turned up the oil lamp and started to look around partly for some other evidence to show that an intruder had been there but mainly to try to discover the reason for his being there. Inevitably, my first check was on the medical equipment and my first check was my last and very brief it was too.