Alistair MacLean - The Golden Rendezvous

Dr. Caroline’s cabin was in darkness. I was pretty sure that the windows were uncurtained, but I left my torch where it was. Susan had said that Carreras’ men were prowling round the decks that night: the chance wasn’t worth it. And if Dr. Caroline wasn’t already in number four hold, then the chances were high indeed that he would only be in one other place in his bed, and bound to it hand and foot. I climbed up to the next deck and padded along to the wireless office. My breathing and pulse were almost back to normal now; the shaking had eased, and I could feel the strength slowly flooding back into my arms and shoulders. Apart from the constant dull ache in my neck where the sandbag merchant and Tony Carreras had been at work, the only pain I felt was a sharp burning in my left thigh where the salt water had got into the open wounds. Without the anaesthetic I’d have been doing a war dance. On one leg, of course.

The wireless office was in darkness. I leaned my ear against the door, straining to hear the slightest sound from inside, and was just reaching out a delicate hand for the doorknob when I just about had a heart attack. A telephone bell had gone off with a shatteringly metallic loudness not six inches from the ear I’d so hard pressed against the door. It jarred me rigid; for all of five seconds lot’s wife couldn’t even have hoped to compete with me, then I pussyfooted silently across the deck into the shelter of one of the life boats.

I heard the vague murmur of someone talking on the telephone, saw the light come on in the wireless office, the door open, and a man come out. Before he switched off the light I saw two things: I saw him bring a key from his right-hand trouser pocket, and I saw who it was, the artist with the machine gun who had killed Tommy Wilson and cut down all the rest of us. If I had to settle any more accounts that night, I hoped bleakly it would be with this man. He closed the door, locked it, and went down the ladder to “A” deck below. I followed him to the top of the ladder and stayed there. There was another man at the foot of the ladder, lit torch in hand, just outside Dr. Caroline’s cabin, and in the backwash of light from the cabin bulkhead I could see who it was. Carreras himself. There were two other men close by, and I could distinguish neither of them, but I was certain that one of them would be Dr. Caroline. They were joined by the radio operator and the four men moved off aft. I never thought of going after them. I knew where they were going.

Ten minutes. That was the detail the news broadcast about the disappearance of the twister had mentioned. There were only one or two men who could arm the twister, and it couldn’t be done in less than ten minutes. I wondered vaguely if Caroline knew he had only ten minutes to live. And that was all the time I had to do what I had to do. It wasn’t long.

I was coming down the ladder while Carreras’ swinging torch was still in sight. Three quarters of the way down, three steps from the bottom, I froze into immobility. Two men leaning into that driving rain — their black blurred shapes were barely distinguishable, but I knew it was two men because of the low murmur of voices — were approaching the foot of the ladder. Armed men — they were bound to be armed, almost certainly with the ubiquitous Tommy gun which seemed the standard weapon among the Generalissimo’s henchmen.

They were at the foot of the ladder now. I could feel the ache in my hands from the tension of my grip round marlinespike and opened clasp knife. Then suddenly they went veering off to the right, round the side of the ladder. I could have reached out and touched them both. I could see them almost clearly now, clearly enough to see that both had beards, and had I not been wearing the black hood and mask they would have been bound to see the white glimmer of my face. How they didn’t even see my shape standing there on the third bottom step was beyond me: the only reason I could think of was that they both had their heads lowered against the driving rain.

Seconds later I was inside the central passageway of “A” accommodation. I hadn’t poked my head round the outside passage door to see if the land was clear; after that escape I’d felt that nothing mattered; I’d just walked straight inside. The passageway was empty.

The first door on the right, the one opposite Caroline’s, was the entrance to Carreras’ suite. I tried the door. Locked. I walked down the passage to where Benson, the dead chief steward, had had his cubicle, hoping that the luxurious carpet underfoot was absorbent enough to soak up the water that was almost cascading off me. White, Benson’s successor, would have had a blue fit if he could have seen the damage I was doing.

The master key to the passengers’ suites was in its secret little cubby-hole. I removed it, went back to Carreras’ cabin, unlocked the door, and went inside, locking it behind me.

The lights were on throughout the suite. Carreras probably hadn’t bothered to switch them off when he’d left he wasn’t paying for the electricity. I went through the cabins, sending each door in turn flying open with the sole of my stockinged foot. Nothing? No one. I had one bad moment when I entered Carreras’ own sleeping cabin and saw this desperate hooded, crouched figure, dripping water, hands clenched round weapons, with wide, staring eyes and blood dripping down beside the left eye. Myself in a looking glass. I had seen prettier sights. I hadn’t been aware that I’d been cut; I supposed it must have been the result of one of the many knocks I’d had against the side of the Campari, opening up the wound in my head.

Carreras had boasted that he had a complete loading plan of the Fort Ticonderoga in his cabin. Nine minutes now, maybe even less. Where in the name of god would he keep the plan? I went through dressing tables, wardrobes, lockers, cupboards, bedside tables. Nothing. Nothing. Seven minutes.

Where, where would he keep it? Think, Carter, for heaven’s sake, think. Maybe Caroline was getting on with the arming of the twister faster than anyone had thought possible. How did anyone know, as the broadcast had said, that it took all of ten minutes to arm it? If the twister was such a secret and until it had been stolen it had been such a top-priority hush hush secret that no member of the public had known of its existence — or did anyone know it took ten minutes to arm it? How could anyone know? Maybe all it required was a twist here, a turn there. Maybe — maybe he was finished already… Maybe.

I put those thoughts to one side, drove them out of my mind, crushed them ruthlessly. That way lay panic and defeat. I stood stock-still and forced myself to think, calmly, dispassionately. I had been looking in all the most obvious places. But should I have been looking in the obvious places? After all, I’d gone through this cabin once before, looking for a radio; I’d gone through it pretty thoroughly, and I hadn’t seen any signs. He would have it hidden; of course he would have it hidden. He wouldn’t have taken a chance on anyone finding it, such as the steward whose daily duty it was to clean out his cabin, before his men had taken over the ship. No stewards on duty now, of course, but then he probably hadn’t bothered to shift it since the take-over. Where would he have hidden it where a steward wouldn’t stumble across it?

That ruled out all the furniture fittings, all the places I’d wasted time in searching. It also ruled out bed, blankets, mattresses but not the carpet! The ideal hiding place for a sheet of paper.

I almost threw myself at the carpet in his sleeping cabin. The carpets in the Campari’s accommodation were secured by press-button studs for ease of quick removal. I caught the corner of the carpet by the door, ripped free a dozen studs, and there it was right away, six inches in from the edge. A large sheet of canvas paper, folded in four, with “T.E.S. Fort Ticonderoga. Most secret” printed in one corner. Five minutes to go.