Desmond Bagley - The Freedom Trap

We went deep right from the start, going down to about twenty-five feet before heading on course. I knew my speed and I had estimated the distance so I kept a steady count of the seconds and minutes. The problem in this sort of exercise was to keep swimming in a straight line. Occasionally I looked back and saw Alison swimming strongly in echelon, behind and to the left.

When I estimated we had arrived at the point I had chosen I waved Alison to a halt and we swam lazily in circles while I looked about. There was an oncoming rumble and a shadow overhead as a vessel passed, her propellers flailing the water and causing eddies which jerked us about. The propellers stopped and presently there was an audible clang transmitted through the water. That would be the fueller coupling to Artina.

I waved to Alison and we went on in the new direction. As we went on towards the two boats I hoped that no one was looking over the side to see the line of bubbles breaking on the surface. But we were coming in at the side of the fueller and all the action would be where they were coupling up the fuel and water lines. If anyone had time to look over the side then that fueller was overmanned.

The light diminished as we swam underneath the two boats and I paused again before heading aft and rising to trail my fingers along Artina’s keel. We came to the stern and I stopped with my left hand on one blade of the port phosphor-bronze propeller, hoping that no damned fool in the engine room would punch the wrong button and start the engine. If those three blades started to move I’d be chopped into bloody mincemeat.

Alison swam up on the starboard side as I fumbled with the strap holding the rope to my thigh. I got it free and began to uncoil it with care. The propeller was about four feet in diameter, and the shaft was supported by struts before it entered the stern gland in the hull. I slipped the end of the rope in between the strut and the hull and coiled it around the shaft and then passed a loop around the shaft in between the propeller and the strut. When I tugged gently it held firm, so that was a start.

That rope was the damnedest stuff. At times it was like wrestling with a sea serpent — the coils floated around in the water dangerously, threatening to strangle us or bind our legs, and Alison and I must have closely resembled that remarkable piece of antique statuary, the Laocoön.

But we finally did it. We entangled those two propellers in such a cat’s cradle that when the engines started and the ropes began to tighten all hell would break loose. Most probably everything would grind to a sudden halt, but a shaft could bend and, at worst, one of the engines might slam a piston through the cylinder casing. It was a good job.

We slipped away and swam back to shore, emerging from the water quite a distance from where we had gone in. My sense of direction had become warped, but then it always does underwater. An unshaven character leaning on the rail of a tramp steamer looked at us with some astonishment as we climbed up to the quay, but I ignored him and Alison and I walked away, our back packs bumping heavily.

We went back to our original position and I lit a cigarette and looked across at Artina. The fueller had finished and was just casting off, and the skipper was returning in the tender. It seemed as though they intended a faster turnaround than Gibraltar. I wondered where the skipper had cleared for — it wouldn’t be Durazzo, the port for Tirana, although I’d be willing to bet that was where he intended to go.

The skipper climbed aboard and the companionway was unshipped immediately. There was a lot of movement on deck and even as the tender was hoisted clear of the water someone was at the winch on the foredeck ready to lift anchor.

Alison said, ‘They’re very much in a hurry.’

‘It seems so.’

‘I wonder why.’

‘I don’t know — but I expect they’ll be very annoyed within the next few minutes.’

The anchor came up and Artina moved off slowly. I hadn’t expected her to move at all and it came as a shock. Apparently 700 horse-power was more than a match for a few coils of nylon line. Alison drew in her breath. ‘It isn’t working!’

Artina turned and headed for the open sea, picking up speed so that a bow wave showed white. I lowered the binoculars, and said, ‘It was a good try.’ I felt gloomy. Albania was only 450 miles away and Artina could be there in less than two days. The only way I could think of stopping her was by a kamekazi attack in the Apache.

Alison was still watching through her monocular. ‘Wait!’ she said urgently. ‘Look now!’

Artina had swerved suddenly and unnaturally as though someone had spun the wheel fast, and she was now heading straight for the shore. She slowed and water boiled at her stern as the engines were put into reverse. Then the bubble of white water stopped and she drifted helplessly, right into the path of a big Italian cruise liner which was leaving harbour.

There was a deep booom as the liner peremptorily demanded right of way but Artina did not react. The liner altered course fractionally at the last moment and her sheer side might have scraped Artina s paintwork. From the bridge of the liner an officer in whites was looking down and I guessed that a string of choice Italian imprecations was being directed down at the hapless skipper of Artina.

The liner went on her way and Artina bobbed inertly in the waves raised by her wake. Presently a little tug put out and went to her aid and she was towed back to where she had come from and dropped anchor again.

I grinned at Alison. ‘For a moment there I thought... Well, it’s done and she’ll be staying the night. When they find out what’s happened they’ll be cursing the idiot who carelessly dropped a line in the water.’

‘There’s no chance they’ll guess it was done deliberately?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’ I looked over the water at Artina. The skipper was at the stern looking down. ‘They’ll soon find out what it is, and they’ll send down a diver to cut it free. It’ll take a hell of a lot longer for him to free it than it did for us to tangle it — those engines will have tightened the tangle considerably.’ I laughed. ‘It’ll be like trying to unscramble an omelette.’

Alison picked up her gear. ‘And what now?’

‘Now we wait for nightfall. I’m going to board her.’

We went into Marsamxett Harbour from Ta’Xbiex to where Artina was anchored in Lazzaretto Creek. A tug had moved her during the afternoon and put her with the rest of the yachts. We went out in a fibreglass object that resembled a bathtub more than a boat, but Alison seemed to find no difficulty in handling it and she used the oars as though she’d been trained as stroke for Oxford. More of Mackintosh’s training coming to the surface.

It was a moonless night but the sky was clear so that it was not absolutely pitch-black. Ahead loomed Manoel Island and beyond a light flashed at Dragutt Point. To our left Valletta rose, clifflike and impregnable, festooned with lights. There were no lights on Artina, though, apart from the obligatory riding lights; since it was 2.30 a.m. this was not surprising. I hoped everyone on board was in the habit of sleeping soundly.

Alison stopped sculling as we approached and we drifted silently to Artina’s stern. The rope ladder which the diver had been using was not there but I hadn’t been counting on it even though it was nine feet from the water to the stern rail. What I wanted was a grapnel, but those are hard to come by at a moment’s notice, so I had improvised. A shark hook is shaped like a grapnel, being three big fish-hooks welded together. I had wrapped it in many layers of insulating tape, not only to prevent myself from being nastily hooked but also for the sake of silence.