Alistair MacLean - When Eight Bells Toll

Imrie, Lavorski and Dollmann were the ones for me. I moved forward until I could see the barrel of the machine-gun and until they could also see that it was pointing at them.

"Come close," I said. "Yes, you three. Captain Imrie, speak to your men. Tell them that if they move, if they try anything at all, I'll kill all three of you. I've killed four of you already. If I double the number, what then? Under the new laws you get only fifteen years. For murderous vermin, that is not enough. I'd rather you died here. Do you believe me, Captain Imrie?"

"I believe you." The guttural voice was deep and sombre. "You killed Quinn this afternoon."

"He deserved to die."

"He should have killed you that night on the Nantesville," Imrie said, "Then none of this would have happened."

"You will come aboard our boat one at a time," I said. "In this situation, Captain Imrie, you are without question the most dangerous man. After you, Lavorski, then — "

"Please keep very still. Terribly still." The voice behind me was totally lacking in inflection, hut the gun pressed hard against my spine carried its own message, one not easily misunderstood. "Good. Take a pace forward and take your right hand away from the gun."

I took a pace forward and removed my right hand. This left me holding the machine-pistol by the barrel.

"Lay the gun on the deck."

It obviously wasn't going to be much use to me as a club, so I laid it on the deck, I'd been caught like this before, once or twice, and just to show that I was a true professional I raised my hands high and turned slowly round.

"Why, Charlotte Skouras!" I said. Again I knew what to do, how to act, the correct tone for the circumvented agent, bantering but bitter. "Fancy meeting you here. Thank you very much my dear." She was still dressed in the dark sweater and slacks, only they weren't quite as spruce as the last time I'd seen them. They were soaking wet. Her face was dead white and without expression. The brown eyes were very still. "And how in God's name did you get here?"

"I escaped through the bedroom window and swam out. I hid in the after cabin."

"Did you indeed? Why don't you change out of those wet clothes?"

She ignored me. She said to Hutchinson: "Turn off that searchlight."

"Do as the lady says," I advised.

He did as the lady said. The light went out and we were all now in full view of the men ashore. Imrie said; "Throw that gun over the side, Admiral."

"Do as the gentleman says, "I advised.

Uncle Arthur threw the gun over the side. Captain Imrie and Lavorski came walking confidently towards us. They could afford to walk confidently, the three men in the hold, the two men who had suddenly appeared from behind the diving-boat's wheelhouse and the winch-driver — a nice round total of six — had suddenly sprouted guns. I looked over this show of armed strength and said slowly: "You were waiting for us."

"Certainly we were waiting for you," Lavorski said jovially. "Our dear Charlotte announced the exact time of your arrival. Haven't you guessed that yet, Calvert?"

"How do you know my name?"

"Charlotte, you fool. By heavens, I believe we have been grievously guilty of overestimating you."

"Mrs. Skouras was a plant," I said.

"A bait," Lavorski said cheerfully. I wasn't fooled by his cheerfulness, he'd have gone into hysterics of laughter when I came apart on the rack. "Swallowed hook, line, and sinker. A bait with a highly effective if tiny transmitter and a gun in a polythene bag. We found the transmitter in your starboard engine." He laughed again until he seemed in danger of going into convulsions. "We've known of every move you've made since you left Torbay. And how do you like that, Mr, Secret Agent Calvert?"

"I don't like it at all. What are you going to do with us?"

"Don't be childish. What are you going to do with us, asks he naively. I'm afraid you know all too well. How did you locate this place?"

"I don't talk to executioners."

"I think we'll shoot the admiral through the foot, to begin with," Lavorski beamed. "A minute afterwards through the aim, then the thigh — - "

"All right. We had a radio-transmitter aboard the Nantesville."

"We know that. How did you pin-point Dubh Sgeir?"

"The boat belonging to the Oxford geological expedition. It is moored fore and aft in a little natural harbour south of here. It's well clear of any rock yet it's badly holed. It's impossible that it would be holed naturally where it lay. It was holed unnaturally, shall we say. Any other boat you could have seen coming from a long way off, but that boat had only to move out to be in full sight of the boathouse — and the anchored diving-boat. It was very clumsy."

Lavorski looked at Imrie, who nodded. "He would notice that. I advised against it at the time. Was there more, Calvert?"

"Donald MacEachern on Eilean Oran. You should have taken him, not his wife. Susan Kirkside — you shouldn't have allowed her out and about, when did you. Last see a fit young twenty-one-year-old with blue shadows that size under her eyes? A fit young twenty-one-year-old with nothing in the world to worry about, that is? And you should have disguised that mark made by the tail fuselage of the Beechcraft belonging to Lord Kirkside's elder son when you ran it over the edge of the north cliff. I saw it from the helicopter."

"That's all?" Lavorski asked. I nodded, and he looked again at Imrie.

"I believe him," Imrie said. "No one talked. That's all we need to know. Calvert first, Mr. Lavorski?" They were certainly a brisk and business-like outfit.

I said quickly: "Two questions. The courtesy of two answers. I'm a professional. I'd like to know. I don't know if you understand."

"And two minutes," Lavorski smiled. "Make it quick. We have business on hand."

"Where is Sir Anthony Skouras? He should be here."

"He is. He's up in the castle with Lord Kirkside and Lord Charnley. The Shangri-la's tied up at the west landing stage."

"Is it true that you and Dollmann engineered the whole plan, that you bribed Charnley to betray insurance secrets, that you — or Dollmann, rather selected Captain Imrie to pick his crew of cut-throats, and that you were responsible for the capture and sinking of the ships and the subsequent salvaging of the cargoes. And, incidentally, the deaths, directly or indirectly, of our men?"

"It's late in the day to deny the obvious." Again Lavorski's booming laugh. "We think we did rather well, eh, John?"

"Very well indeed," Dollmann said coldly. "We're wasting time."

I turned to Charlotte Skouras. The gun was still pointing at me. I said: "I have to be killed, it seems. As you will be responsible for my death, you might as well finish the job." I reached down, caught the hand with the gun in it and placed it against my chest, letting my own hand fall away. "Please do it quickly."

There was no sound to be heard other than the soft throb of the Firecrest's diesel. Every pair of eyes in that boatshed was on us, my back was to them all, but I knew it beyond any question. I wanted every pair of eyes in that boatshed on us. Uncle Arthur took a step inside the starboard door and said urgently: "Are you mad, Calvert? She'll kill you! She's one of them."

The brown eyes were stricken, there was no other expression for it, the eyes of one who knows her world is coming to an end. The finger came off the trigger, the hand opened slowly and the gun fell to the deck with a clatter that seemed to echo through the boatshed and the tunnels leading off on either side. I took her left arm and said: "It seems Mrs. Skouras doesn't feel quite up to it. I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else to — "

Charlotte Skouras cried out in sharp pain as her legs caught the wheelhouse sill and maybe I did shove her through that doorway with unnecessary force, but it was too late in the day to take chances now. Hutchinson had been waiting and caught her as she fell, dropping to his knees at the same time, I went through that door after her like an international rugby three-quarter diving for the line with a dozen hands reaching out for him, but even so Uncle Arthur beat me to it. Uncle Arthur had a lively sense of self-preservation. Even as I fell, my hand reached out for the loudhailer that had been placed in position on the wheelhouse deck.