Alistair MacLean - When Eight Bells Toll

"Don't fire!" The amplified voice boomed cavernously against the rock-faces and the wooden walls of the boatshed. "If you shoot, you'll die! One shot, and you may all die. There's a machine-gun lined up on the back of every man in this boathouse. Just turn round, very very slowly, and see for yourselves."

I half rose to my feet, hoisted a wary eye over the lower edge of a wheelhouse window, got the rest of the way to my feet, went outside and picked up the machine-gun on the deck.

Picking up that machine-gun was the most superfluous and unnecessary action I had performed for many a long day. If there was one thing that boathouse was suffering from at the moment it was a plethora of machine-guns. There were twelve of them in all, shoulder-slung machine-pistols, in twelve of the most remarkably steady pairs of hands I'd ever seen. The twelve men were ranged in a rough semicircle round the inner end of the boathouse, big, quiet, purposeful-looking men dressed in woollen caps, grey-and-black camouflaged smocks and trousers and rubber boots. Their hands and faces were the colour of coal. Their eyes gleamed whitely, like performers in the Black and White Minstrel show, but with that every hint of light entertainment ended.

"Lower your hands to your sides and let your guns fall." The order came from a figure in the middle of the group, a man indistinguishable from the others. "Do please be very careful. Slowly down, drop the guns, utter stillness. My men are very highly trained commandos. They have been trained to shoot on suspicion. They know only how to kill. They have not been trained to wound or cripple."

They believed him. I believed him, They dropped their guns and stood very still indeed.

"Now clasp your hands behind your necks."

They did. All but one. Lavorski. He wasn't smiling any more and his language had little to recommend it.

That they were highly trained I could believe. No word or signal passed. The commando nearest Lavorski walked towards him on soundless soles, machine-pistol across his chest. The butt seemed to move no more than three inches. When Lavorski picked himself up the lower part of his face was covered in blood and I could see the hole where tome teeth had been. He clasped his hands behind his neck.

"Mr. Culvert?" the officer asked.

"Me," I said.

"Captain Rawley, sir. Royal Marine Commandos."

"The castle, Captain?"

"In our hands."

"The

"In our hands."

"The prisoners?"

"Two men are on their way up, after."

I said to Imrie: "How many guards?"

He spat and said nothing. The commando who had dealt with Lavorski moved forward, machine-pistol high. Imrie said: "Two."

I said to Rawley: "Two men enough?"

"I hope, sir, that the guards will not be so foolish as to offer resistance."

Even as he finished speaking the flat rapid-fire chatter of a sub-machine-gun came echoing down the long flight of stone steps. Rawley shrugged.

"They'll never learn to be wise now. Robinson?" This to a man with a waterproof bag over his shoulder. "Go up and open the cellar door. Sergeant Evans, line them up in two rows against the wall there, one standing, one sitting."

Sergeant Evans did. Now that there was no danger of being caught in cross-fire we landed and I introduced Uncle Arthur, full military honours and all, to Captain Rawley. Captain Rawley's salute was something to see. Uncle Arthur beamed. Uncle Arthur took over.

"Capitally done, my boy!" he said to Rawley. "Capitally. There'll be a little something for you in this New Year's List Ah! Here come some friends."

They weren't all exactly friends, this group that appeared at the bottom of the steps. There were four tough but dispirited looking characters whom I’m never seen before, but unquestionably tunic's men, closely followed by Sir Anthony Skouras and Lord Charnley. They, in their turn, were closely followed by four commandos with the very steady hands that were a hallmark of Rawley's men. Behind them came Lord Kirkside and his daughter. It was impossible to tell what the black-faced commandos were thinking, but the other eight had the same expression on their faces, dazed and utter bewilderment.

"My dear Kirkside! My dear fellow!" Uncle Arthur hurried forward and shook him by the hand, I'd quite forgotten that they knew one another. "Delighted to see you safe and sound, my dear chap. Absolutely delighted. It's all over now."

"What in God's name is happening?" Lord Kirkside asked. "You — you've got them? You have them all? Where is my boy? Where is Rollinson? What -?"

An explosive crack, curiously muffled, came down the Sight of steps. Uncle Arthur looked at Rawley, who nodded. "Plastic explosive, sir."

"Excellent, excellent," Uncle Arthur beamed. "You'll see them any minute, Kirkside." He crossed over to where old Skouras was lined up against the wall, hands clasped behind his neck, reached up both his own, pulled Skouras's arms down and shook his right hand as if he were attempting to tear it off.

"You're lined up with the wrong team, Tony, my boy." This was one of the great moments of Uncle Arthur's life. He led him across to where Lord Kirkside was standing. "It's been a frightful nightmare, my boy, a frightful nightmare, But it's all over now."

"Why did you do it?" Skouras said dully. "Why did you do it? God, oh God, you don't know what you've done."

"Mrs. Skouras? The real Mrs. Skouras?" There is the ham actor in all of us, but more than most in Uncle Arthur, He pushed back his sleeve and studied his watch carefully. "She arrived in London by air from Nice just over three hours ago. She is in the London Clinic."

"What in God's name do you mean? You don't know what you are saying. My wife — - "

"Your wife is in London. Charlotte here is Charlotte Meiner and always was." I looked at Charlotte. A total incomprehension and the tentative beginnings of a dazed hope. "Earlier this year, blazing the trail for many kidnappings that were to follow, your friends Lavorski and Dollmann had your wife seized and hidden away to force you to act with them, to put your resources at their disposal. I think they felt aggrieved, Tony, that you should be a millionaire while they were executives: they had it all worked out, even to having the effrontery of intending to invest the proceeds in your empire. However. Your wife managed to escape, so they seized her cousin and best friend, Charlotte — a friend upon whom, shall we say, your wife was emotionally very dependent — and threatened to kill her unless they got Mrs. Skouras back again. Mrs. Skouras surrendered immediately. This gave them the bright idea of having two swords of Damocles hanging over your head, so, being men of honour, they decided to keep Charlotte as well as your imprisoned wife. Then, they knew, you would do exactly as they wanted, when and as they wanted. To have a good excuse to keep both you and Charlotte under their surveillance at the same time, and to reinforce the idea that your wife was well and truly dead, they gave out that you had been secretly married." Uncle Arthur was a kind man: no mention of the fact that h was common knowledge that, at the time of her alleged death, brain injuries sustained by Mrs. Skouras in a car crash two years previously had become steadily worse and it was known that she would never leave hospital again.

"How on earth did you guess that?" Lord Kirkside asked.

"No guess. Must give my lieutenants their due," Uncle Arthur said in his best magnanimous taught- 'em-all-I-know voice. "Hunslett radioed me at midnight on Tuesday. He gave me a list of names of people about whom Calvert wanted immediate and exhaustive inquiries made. That call was tapped by the Shangri-la but they didn't know what Hunslett was talking about because in our radio transmissions all proper names are invariably coded. Calvert told me later that when he'd seen Sir Anthony on Tuesday night he thought Sir Anthony was putting on a bit of an act. He said it wasn't all act. He said Sir Anthony was completely broken and desolated by the thought of his dead wife. He said he believed the original Mrs. Skouras was still alive, that it was totally inconceivable that a man who so patently cherished the memory of his wife should have marked again two or three months later, that he could only have pretended to marry again for the sake of the one person whom he ever and so obviously loved.