Lawrence Block - Tanner’s Virgin

I had another drink, a long one, and by the time Daly came back with four of his friends in tow, I was feeling positively giddy.

“So we’re all of us bound for Afghanistan,” I said. “Fancy that.”

“No one tells us of you,” the bearded one said.

“Nor I of you, for that matter. I received my instructions, how to cross the Channel and where to go. I thought I was to meet up with you on the other side.”

“Where?”

“I was to receive further instructions at a drop in Cherbourg.”

They looked at each other. “From whom did you receive orders?”

“A man called Jonquil. I do not know his actual name.”

“Which section are you?”

“Section Eight,” I said.

“You are in Section Eight and you were assigned to this operation?”

“I was requisitioned for it. Through Section Three.”

“Ah, that has more sense to it.” Thank heavens for that, I thought. “But this is most remarkable.” The man with the spade-shaped beard turned to a chunky man with a bald head and cheap false teeth. “Get Yaakov,” he said, in Russian.

“He sleeps.”

“He has slept since he boarded this garbage scow. Wake him.”

“He will be displeased.”

“Tell him such are the penalties of leadership.” He turned to me. I looked blank. In English he asked me if I spoke Russian. I told him I did not, and he told me that Yaakov, the leader of the expedition, would come to have a look at me. While we waited, we chatted pleasantly about the wind and the condition of the sea. The crossing was slower than anticipated, I was told, but in another fifteen minutes we should be reaching shore. I looked for France out ahead of the boat, but I could see nothing but inky blackness.

And then Yaakov made his appearance.

He didn’t look as though he was in charge of anything. What he really looked like was Woody Allen, small and skinny and ineffectual. He peered myopically at me through thick horn-rimmed glasses, while the man with the beard explained in Russian who I was and what I was doing there.

Yaakov asked if I spoke Russian. I looked as blank as ever, and the bearded man said I didn’t. Yaakov nodded, fastened his eyes on me again, and smiled shyly.

I returned the smile.

In Russian he said, “You are all fools. This man is not Irish but American. His name is Evan Tanner, he is an assassin who killed a man in London. He is not one of us at all. He is a spy and an assassin.” He was still smiling the same shy smile, and his voice was very gentle. “I am going below now,” he went on. “I will not be disturbed again until we reach the shore. Have the sense to kill this man and throw him overboard.”

They were all looking at me. My friend Daly had evidently not understood the speech. The others had, however. Their faces showed that they had altered their opinions of me.

So I spun to my right and bellowed, “Man overboard!”

They turned to look. I shrugged my mackintosh off my shoulders and looped it over the head and shoulders of the man immediately to my left. While he was clawing at it I dodged around him and raced for the rail. I had time for another fleeting thought of frying pans and fires, and then I vaulted the rail, and then I was in the water.

The water permanentlydispelled thoughts of frying pans and fires. If it had been any colder I could have played hockey on it. I left the rail in a lifesaver’s jump, body bent forward, legs apart, arms wide, but at the last moment I must have done something wrong, because instead of staying above water I sank like a brick. Eventually my brain sent a night letter to my arms and legs and I made furious scrambling motions while waiting for my whole life to pass before me. I guess that only happens if you really drown. I broke the surface and breathed out and in a few times, and then I heard shouts and saw a spotlight swing laboriously around toward me. I drew a last breath and went under again just as the first bullets began slapping at the water’s surface.

I tried swimming underwater, which is something I don’t do awfully well under optimum conditions, which these clearly weren’t. I surfaced and dove again before they could bring the guns around. Movement was very difficult, and at last I realized that it was my clothes which were causing the difficulty. But I’ll be cold without them, I thought. Then it occurred to me that they were doing nothing to keep me warm underwater.

Years ago, when I took a lifeguard course, they taught us to strip completely before entering the water. It only takes a few seconds on land and you more than make up for it in improved swimming speed. But I hadn’t had the time to spare when I left the ship. Now I worked my way out of jacket and shirt, kicked off shoes and socks, ripped open a stuck zipper and squirmed out of trousers. I would have left my undershorts on – they can’t slow one down much, certainly – but I hadn’t had them on to begin with. As far as I knew they remained in Julia’s room in London. So I swam on without them and worried about sharks.

The sharks in the boat were a more immediate source of danger. They must have circled for half an hour, playing that damned spotlight over the water and popping away with their guns in my approximate direction. As far as I know, none of their shots came particularly close. It was pitch dark out, I was underwater more often than not, and the sea was sufficiently choppy to make observation tricky, not to mention marksmanship. After maybe thirty minutes of this I guess they decided that if I hadn’t drowned already I would sooner or later. They stopped circling and went rapidly away. I treaded water for awhile until I couldn’t hear their engines any longer. Then I closed my eyes, and some of the more recent moments in my life passed before me, and drowning, now that I thought about it, seemed like a pretty good idea.

Virgins, white-slavers, smugglers, spies. I sighed heavily. The waves rolled on, as waves are apt to do. I remembered which way the boat had gone and pointed myself in that general direction and set out to swim the English Channel.

It took forever. I used to swim a lot years ago, and they do say it’s one thing you never forget, and evidently I hadn’t. Even so I kept expecting my strength to give out, and I figured that sooner or later a wave would spill me under the surface and I wouldn’t have anything left to pull myself back up again with. But I kept on going. The water didn’t get any warmer, but I stopped feeling it before long.

Until finally there was a point when I knew I was going to make it. The waves were going the same way I was, which helped immeasurably. Whenever I got sufficiently exhausted I could roll over on my back and float for a while. It wasn’t quite as restful as a few hours in a hammock, but it helped.

I went off course, which was predictable but less than helpful. I missed the little peninsula that Cherbourg is at the tip of, and I suppose that must have cost me a couple of extra hours in the water. And when I did wash up on shore a few hours after sunrise there were some people on the beach. I staggered onto dry land, calling to them in French, and a woman shrieked, “Howard, he’s naked as a jaybird!” and Howard aimed his Instamatic at me and took my picture.

Howard, it turned out, had washed up on this very spot almost twenty-five years ago in June of 1944. He was part of the Normandy invasion, and my channel swim had somehow deposited me on Omaha Beach. He said he wanted to bring the wife and have a look at the spot and to hell with what the President said about the gold shortage. His wife, eyes averted, said I would catch my death of cold, a possibility which had already occurred to me.

My skin was more blue than not and my teeth were doing their castanet number. Worse than that, I was lightheaded almost to the point of delirium. If they had asked me anything at all I would have told them some thoughtless approximation of the truth, and I suppose they would have either run away from me or turned me in.