Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

There were no big cranes at that berth, but the broad dockside was littered with stacks of timber that filled the night air with a rich resin smell and left a road perhaps only ten yards wide alongside the ship. They went slowly, a very close foursome, passing the bows of the ship on their left, the timber on their right and Blagg watching that way with constant nervous twitches of his head and the shotgun. The irregular piles made little dark alleyways in the harsh dockside lights.

Nobody was in sight, and the only sound was the mumble of a generator somewhere in the fo'c'sle. Maxim halted the group about twenty yards before they came level with the wheelhouse.

Sims must have been watching from behind the superstructure, because he immediately stepped out into the light and raised his hand.

"Are you ready, Major?" he called in a voice that was half whisper, half shout.

Maxim waved his left hand. Somebody pushed Caswell out beside Sims. He was heavily blindfolded and his hands were tied in front of him. He limped as he walked.

"I am afraid your friend got a little hurt, " Sims called down. "But he is all right." From the deck beside the wheelhouse they had to come down a steep flight of steps to the main deck level, which was about the same height as the dockside. Sims helped Caswell carefully down, step by step.

"All right, Major?"

Maxim looked carefully all round, but saw nothing. Hehadn't expected to. It was just the moment of decision… "Ron?" he asked.

"Go ahead."

Maxim unlocked the handcuffs from 82 and 83, but held one of them back, close. Sims let Caswell go forward, feeling his way with his bound hands on the side of the ship that reached up perhaps four feet above the deck level. After a few paces he caught his foot on something, stumbled, but saved himself even though his face fell nearly into his hands.

"That's notjim\"Blagg shouted, but Maxim had seen the fully bent left elbow himself and was dropping and rolling aside. There was a vicious rattle on the hull and the dockside went totally dark.

Perhaps not totally, but enough for a human eye striving to adjust, and that moment was what Sims had planned on. All Seesperling's lights and the nearest dockside lamps had gone out while the silenced submachine gun, somewhere in the timber stacks, had nearly taken Blagg out of contention for good.

The moment was gone. The shotgun boomed – Blagg had shifted a surprising distance – and the fake Caswell, hands suddenly free, collapsed as he jumped the ship's side to reach Maxim. The two goons were galloping away somewhere, but unarmed so he ignored them and fired twice down the nearest alleys among the stacks. Then he ripped two grenades from his pocket and threw one into the ship, one over the nearest stack.

"Grenade!" He flattened himself, hands over his ears and hoping Blagg did the same.

A four-second delay can be infinity or the blink of an eye, depending on which you don't want. Then both exploded almost together, so either the fuses varied or he'd acted faster than he realised.

He scrambled up. "Get the bastard with the SMG!" They rushed the little village of timber-stack houses, moving as fast as they could behind the dazing, deafening grenade. They worked entirely by trained instinct, swapping sharp barks of command, fire and move, fire and move.

Somebody staggered out from a cross-alley and Maxim shot him in the face, but he had no gun with him. Perhaps he'dbeen the one to turn off the lights. He jumped past the alley mouth and the wood tore open behind him, slashing him with splinters. The shotgun blasted. Blagg said: "Okay now, Major."

Maxim took the silenced gun – it was a 9 mm. Patchett/ Sterling after all – and tried to test how many rounds were left by the pressure of the magazine spring, but that was never much help. Call it fifteen for certain. There couldn't have been more than nineteen fired.

"Reload," he ordered, but of course Blagg was doing so already. "And give me your grenades. I'm going for the ship."

"Sure, Major." Blagg sounded surprisingly breathless until Maxim remembered the lung.

"Are you all right?"

"Course I am. " But in the feeble glow from across the dock, he saw Blagg smear away a trickle of blood from his lip. Maxim hesitated, then there came a gabble of distant shouting.

"You're the light machine-gun. Give me the Go."

Blagg moved through the stacks to get a better angle on the ship's superstructure. Maxim peered out at the Seesperlingand now his eyes were getting used to what was really only half darkness. The fake Caswell lay sprawled, unmoving, on the dockside. Where S2 and S3 had got to he couldn't tell; probably still running.

Blagg called softly: "Go," and Maxim ran for the ship.

Behind him the shotgun boomed regularly, one… two… three, spattering the wheelhouse and the portholes aft of it with shot. Fire and move, always keeping one foot on the ground – and as he ran he had a brief sharp vision of the schoolboy sergeant on the bright Kent cricket field. Then he had vaulted into the ship and came up in the narrow walkway between the side and the hatch coaming. He moved towards the wheelhouse, the muzzle-heavy submachine gun trying to droop in his hands and still counting. Five. He froze as Blagg's gun emptied.

"Major? Major, is it you?"

Sims's voice sounded tired, but Maxim tried to grovel himself invisible among the deckplate rivets until he could justmake out the shape jammed in a space between the steep steps and the foot of the wheelhouse. Sims must have dived in there when the grenade clattered aboard; the blast couldn't have slotted him in so neatly.

"Where's Jim? Where's my man?"

"A hand grenade… I should not get into fights with soldiers… What has happened to my men?"

"Where's Jim?"

"It is too late, Major… It was too late from very early on… Colonel Eismark got angry with your man when he would not talk… he is not very subtle, as I told you…"

Blagg called: "Okay."

"Hold it, Ron." Maxim dragged Sims from his corner one-handed, finding surprising strength in anger. He had been within six or eight feet of the grenade when it exploded, and the steps hadn't been enough protection: his face was nearly blind with blood and he was limp, panting at every movement.

"How many more?" Maxim demanded. "How many more guns?"

"There is one… I think he is down there…"

Maxim rammed him against the steps and then up them, using him blatantly as a shield. Behind the cabin affair at the back of the wheelhouse there was an open metal door leading into darkness.

"Say something, " Maxim ordered. "Like: Don't Shoot Me. '

"I say you do not have to go down. Your man, he is already -"

"Tell them to put on a light."

"Einschaltendas Lichtl"It was a tired shout.

Nothing happened. Maxim reached around and fired the Patchett/Sterling one-handed into the dark. It made only a pobbling noise, but bucked in his hand and the bullets clanged and crashed very convincingly.

"Tell them a grenade comes next."

Sims told them. A feeble yellow glow came on, from somewhere down a stairwell directly in front of them. Maxim called Blagg on board, waiting until he was beside them before moving. One foot on the ground, as they said.

Clutching Sims by the nape of the neck ahead of him, Maxim stumbled down the steep companionway. At the bottom was a tiny U-shaped lobby, its veneered panels ripped by his burst of fire. Doors led off each arm of the U; one was open, showing light. With his back to the wall, Maxim pushed Sims through.

The man sitting upright with his hands on the folding table must be Colonel Manfred Eismark. He looked like his photograph, anyway, which was just about all Maxim could remember for the debriefing team later; it didn't impress them. But he could have told them, only they didn't ask, exactly what Jim Caswell looked like, stripped to his underpants and socks to clothe the phoney Caswell on the dockside. There were bullet wounds, which must be from the silenced gun Maxim now held, but they weren't what had killed him.