Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

"This is so important to you, then, my boy?"

It is.

"Very well. With this gnarled hand on a vat of the choicest malt-?'

I left him to get on with what promised to be a very lengthy promise indeed and approached Conrad and Mary Stuart who seemed to be engaged in an argument that was as low-pitched as it was intense. They broke off. and Mary Stuart put a beseeching hand on my arm. She said: "Please, Dr. Marlowe. Please tell Charles not to go. He'll listen to you, I know he will." She shivered. I just know that something awful is going to happen tonight."

"You may well be right at that," I said. "Mr. Conrad, you are not expendable."

I could, I immediately realised, have lighted upon a more fortunate turn of phrase. Instead of looking at Conrad she kept looking at me and the implications of what I'd said dawned on me quite some time after they had clearly dawned on her. She put both hands on my arm, looked at me with dull and hopeless eyes then turned and walked towards her cubicle.

"Go after her," I said to Conrad. "Tell her-"

"No point. I'm going. She knows it."

"Go after her and tell her to open her window and put that black box I gave her on the snow outside. Then close her window."

Conrad looked at me closely, made as if to speak, then left. He was nobody's fool, he hadn't even given a nod that could have been interpreted as acknowledgement.

He was back within a minute. We pulled on all the outer clothes we could and furnished ourselves with four of the largest torches. On the way to the door, Mary Darling rose from where she was sitting beside a still badly battered Allen. "Mr. Marlowe."

I put my head to where I figured her ear lay behind the tangled platinum hair and whispered: "I'm wonderful?"

She nodded solemnly, eyes sad behind the huge horn-rimmed glasses, and kissed me. I didn't know what the audience thought of this little vignette and didn't much care: probably a last tender farewell to the good doctor before he moved out forever into the outer darkness. As the door closed behind us, Conrad said complainingly: "She might have kissed me too."

I think you've done pretty well already," I said. He had the grace to keep silent. With our torches off. we moved across to what shelter was offered to the now quite heavily falling snow by the provisions hut and remained there for two or three minutes until we were quite certain that no one had it in mind to follow us. Then we moved round the side of the main cabin and picked up the black box outside Mary Stuart's window. She was standing there and I'm quite sure she saw us but she made no gesture or any attempt to wave goodbye: it seemed as if the two Marys had but one thought in common.

We made our way through the snow and the darkness down to the jetty, stowed the black box securely under the stern sheets, started up the outboard-5-1/2 horsepower only, but enough for a fourteen-footer-and cast off. As we came round the northern arm of the jetty Conrad said: "Christ, it's as black as the earl of hell's waistcoat. How do you propose to set about it?"

"Set about what?"

"Finding Heissman and company, of course."

"I couldn't care if I never saw that lot again," I said candidly. "I've no intention of trying to find them. On the contrary, all our best efforts are going to be brought to bear to avoid the While Conrad was silently mulling over this volte-face, I took the boat, the motor throttled right back for prudence's sake, just over a hundred yards out until we were close into the northern shore of the Sor-Hamna and cut the engine. As the boat drifted to a stop I went foreword and eased anchor and rope over the side.

"According to the chart," I said, "there are three fathoms here. According to the experts, that should mean about fifty feel? of rope to prevent us from drifting. So, fifty feel?. And as we're against the land and so can't be Silhouetted, that should make us practically invisible to anyone approaching from the south. No smoking, of course."

Very funny," Conrad said. Then, after a pause, he went on carefully: "Who are you expecting to approach from the south?"

"Snow White and the seven dwarfs."

"All right, all right. So you don't think there's anything wrong with them?"

I think there's a great deal wrong with them, but not in the sense you mean.

"Ah!" There was a silence which I took to be a very thoughtful one on his part. "Speaking of Snow White."

"Yes?"

"How about whiling away the time by telling me a fairy story?"

So I told everything I knew or thought I knew and he listened in complete silence throughout. When I finished I waited for comment but none came so I said: "I have your promise that you won't clobber Heissman on sight?"

"Reluctantly given, reluctantly given." He shivered. Jesus, it's cold."

"It will be. Listen."

At first faintly, intermittently, through the falling snow and against the northerly wind, came the sound of an engine, closing: within two minutes the exhaust beat was sharp and distinct. Conrad said: "Well, would you believe it. They got their motor fixed."

We remained quietly where we were, bobbing gently at anchor and shivering in the deepening cold, as Heissman's boat rounded the northern arm of the jetty and cut its engine. Heissman, Goin, and Jungbeck didn't just tie up and go ashore immediately, they remained by the jetty for over ten minutes. It was impossible to see what they were doing, the darkness and the snow made it impossible to see even the most shadowy outlines of their forms, but several times we could see the flickering of torch beams behind the jetty arm, several times I heard distinctly metallic thuds and, twice, I imagined I heard the splash of something heavy entering the water. Finally, we saw three pinpoints of light move along the main arm of the jetty and disappear in the direction of the cabin.

Conrad said: I suppose, at this stage, I should have some intelligent questions to us!"

"And I should have some intelligent answers. I think we'll have them soon. Get that anchor in, will you?"

I started up the outboard again and, keeping it at its lowest revolutions, moved eastwards for another two hundred yards then turned south until, calculating that the combination of distance and the northerly wind had taken us safely out of earshot of the cabin, I judged the moment had come to open the throttle to its maximum.

Navigating, if that was the word for it, was easier than I had thought it would be. We'd been out more than long enough now to achieve the maximum in night sight and I had little difficulty in making out the coastline to my right: even on a darker night than this it would have been difficult not to distinguish the sharp demarcation line between the blackness of the cliffs and the snow-covered hills stretching away beyond them.

Neither was the sea as rough as I had feared it might be: choppy, but no more than that, the wind could hardly have lain in a more favourable quarter than it did that night. Kapp Malrogren came up close on the starboard band and I turned the boat more to the southwest to move into the Evjebukta, but not too much, for although the cliffs were easily enough discernible, objects low in the water and lying against their black background were virtually undetectable and I had no wish to run the boat onto the islands that I had observed that morning in the northern part of the bay.

For the first time since we'd weighed anchor Conrad spoke. He was possessed of an exemplary patience. Clearing his throat, he said: "Is one permitted to ask a question?"

"You're even permitted to receive an answer. Remember those extraordinary stacks and pinnacles close by the cliffs when we were rounding the south of the island in the Morning Rose?"

"Of blessed memory," Conrad said yearningly.

"No need for heartbreak," I said encouragingly. "You'll be seeing her again tonight."