Alistair MacLean - The Golden Rendezvous

“It’s a damned sight better than parading about the upper deck in the middle of the night wearing a white uniform. Where’s this black dress you spoke of?”

“Here.” she pulled it out from the bottom blanket. “Thanks.”

I looked at the label. Balenciaga. Should make a fair enough mask. I caught the hem of the dress between my hands, glanced at her, saw the nod, and ripped, a dollar a stitch. I tore out a rough square, folded it into a triangle, and tied it round my face, just below the level of my eyes. Another few rips, another square, and I had a knotted cloth covering head and forehead until only my eyes showed. The pale glimmer of my hands I could always conceal.

“Nothing is going to stop you then?” She said steadily.

“I wouldn’t say that.” I eased a little weight onto my left leg, used my imagination and told myself that it was going numb already. “Lots of things can stop me. Any one of forty-two men, all armed with guns and submachine guns, can stop me. If they see me.”

She looked at the ruins of the Balenciaga. “Tear off a piece for me while you’re at it.”

“For you?” I looked at her. She was as pale as I felt. “What for?”

“I’m coming with you.” She gestured at her clothes, the navy blue sweater and slacks. “It wasn’t hard to guess what you wanted daddy’s suit for. You don’t think I changed into these for nothing?”

“I don’t suppose so.” I tore off another piece of cloth. “Here you are.”

“Well.” she stood there with the cloth in her hand. “Well. Just like that, eh?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

she gave me a slow, old-fashioned up-from-under, shook her head, and tied on the cloth. I hobbled back to the sick bay, Susan following. “Where’s Miss Beresford going?” Marston demanded sharply. “Why is she wearing that hood?”

“She’s coming with me,” I said. “So she says.”

“Going with you? And you’d let her?” He was horrified. “She’ll get herself killed.”

“It’s likely enough,” I agreed. Something, probably the anaesthetic, was having a strange effect on my head: I felt enormously detached and very calm. “But, as the bo’sun says, what’s a couple of days early? I need another pair of eyes, somebody who can move quickly and lightly to reconnoitre, above all a lookout. Let’s have one of your torches, doctor.”

“I object. I strongly protest against “get him the torch,” Susan interrupted.

He stared at her, hesitated, sighed, and turned away. Macdonald beckoned me.

“Sorry I can’t be with you, sir, but this is the next best thing.” He pressed a seaman’s knife into my hand, wide hinged blade on one side, shackle-locking marlinespike on the other; the marline came to a needle point. “If you have to use it, hit upward with the spike, the blade under your hand.”

“Take your word for it any time.” I hefted the knife, saw Susan staring at it, her eyes wide.

“You you would use that thing?”

“Stay behind if you like. The torch, Dr. Marston.” I pocketed the flash, kept the knife in my hand, and passed through the surgery door. I didn’t let it swing behind me; I knew Susan would be there.

The sentry, sitting wedged into a corner of the passage, was asleep. His automatic carbine was across his knees. It was an awful temptation, but I let it go. A sleeping sentry would call for a few curses and kicks, but a sleeping sentry without his gun would start an all-out search of the ship.

It took me two minutes to climb up two companionways to the level of “A” deck. Nice wide, flat companionways, but it took me two minutes.

My left leg was very stiff, very weak, and didn’t react at all to autosuggestion when I kept telling myself it was getting less painful by the minute. Besides, the Campari was pitching so violently now that it would have been a full-time job for a fit person to climb upwards without being flung off.

Pitching. The Campari was pitching, but with a now even more exaggerated corkscrew motion, great sheets of flying water breaking over the bows and being hurled back against the superstructure. At some hundreds of miles from the centre of a hurricane — and I didn’t need any barometers or weather forecasts to tell me what was in the calling it is the outspreading swell that indicates the direction of the centre of a hurricane; but closer in, and we were getting far too close for comfort, it is the wind direction that locates the centre. We were heading roughly twenty degrees east of north and the wind blowing from dead ahead. That meant the hurricane was roughly to the east of us, with a little southing, still keeping pace with us, travelling roughly northwest, a more northerly course than was usual, and the Campari and the hurricane were on more of a collision course than ever. The strength of the wind I estimated at force eight or nine on the old Beaufort scale: that made the centre of the storm less than a hundred miles away. If Carreras kept on his present course at his present speed, everybody’s troubles, his as well as ours, would soon be over.

At the top of the second companionway I stood still for a few moments to steady myself, took Susan’s arm for support, then lurched aft in the direction of the drawing room, twenty feet away. I’d hardly started lurching when I stopped. Something was wrong.

Even in my fuzzy state it didn’t take long to find out what was wrong. On a normal night at sea the Campari was like an illuminated Christmas tree; tonight every deck light was off. Another example of Carreras taking no chances, although this was an unnecessary and exaggerated example. Sure, he didn’t want anyone to see him, but in a black gale like this no one could have seen him anyway, even had any vessel been heading on the same course, which was hardly possible, unless its master had taken leave of his senses. But it suited me well enough. We staggered on, making no attempt to be silent. With the shriek of the wind, the thunderous drumming of the torrential rain, and the repeated pistol-shot explosions as the earing Campari’s bows kept smashing into the heavy rolling ombers ahead no one could have heard us a couple of feet way.

The smashed windows of the drawing room had been roughly boarded up. Careful not to cut a jugular or put an eye out on one of the jagged splinters of glass, I pressed my face close to the boards and peered through one of the cracks. The curtains were drawn inside, but with the gale whistling through the gaps between the boards, they were blowing and flapping wildly most of the time. One minute there and I’d seen all I wanted to see and it didn’t help me at ail. The passengers were all herded together at one end of the room, most of them huddled down on close-packed mattresses, a few sitting with their backs to the bulkhead. A more miserably seasick collection of millionaires I had never seen in my life: their complexions ranged from a faintly greenish shade to a dead-white pallor. They were suffering all right. In one corner I saw some stewards, cooks, and engineer officers, including Mcllroy, with Cummings beside him; seaman’s branch apart, it looked as if every off-duty man was imprisoned there with the passengers. Carreras was economising on his guards: I could see only two of them, hard-faced, unshaven characters with a Tommy gun apiece. For a moment I had the crazy idea of bursting in the door and rushing them, but only for a moment. Armed with only a clasp knife, and with a top speed of about that of a fairly active tortoise, I wouldn’t have got a yard.

Two minutes later we were outside the wireless office. No one had challenged us; no one had seen us; the decks were entirely deserted. It was a night for deserted decks.

The wireless office was in darkness. I pressed one ear to the metal of the door, closed a had over the other ear to shut out the clamour of the storm, and listened as hard as I could. Nothing. I placed a gentle hand on the knob, turned, and pushed. The door didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. I eased my hand off that doorknob with all the wary caution and thistledown delicacy of a man withdrawing the Kohinoor from a basket of sleeping cobras. “What’s the matter?” Susan asked. “Is that was as far as she got before my hand closed over her mouth, not gently. We were fifteen feet away from that door before I took my hand away.