Desmond Bagley - The Freedom Trap

‘There’s still a body on Artina,’ said Alison. ‘That would take a lot of explaining away.’

‘Same objection,’ I said. ‘Forget it. Let’s have a look at the fireworks.’

There were a lot of them and they were big; rockets that would go up under their own power and maroons designed to be fired from mortars. ‘This lot should add to the festivities,’ I said in satisfaction. ‘We must get the boat on to the cradle,’

I had to cut bits away from the cradle to accommodate our strange craft and it was forever ruined for handling normal boats. More expense for the Treasury. I installed the engines and hooked up the steering cables and tested them. When I jumped to the ground the boat, now right way up, looked a bit more practicable.

‘How much did you pay for her?’ I asked curiously.

‘Fifteen hundred pounds,’ said Alison.

I grinned. ‘Guided missiles always are expensive. Let’s put the cargo aboard.’

We filled up every spare inch of the hull with the big fireworks. Alison, as foreseeing as ever, had brought along a jerrican full of petrol and, after topping up the tanks, there was still half a gallon left, more than enough to start a fire to get things going. I now had a new worry; I had drilled a dozen holes in the hull to take bolts and had caulked them with putty, and I was wondering if I had sealed her tight. That couldn’t be tested until we put her in the water and that wouldn’t be until it was good and dark.

‘When do they start shooting off the fireworks for the festa ?’ I asked.

‘Two hours after sunset.’

‘I’d like to ram Artina when the official fireworks are going full blast. It’ll help to confuse the issue.’ I sat down wearily and pulled out my ship plan; it was becoming worn and tatty and dirty at the creases, but it was still legible. ‘The trouble is that I might hit one of the main frames,’ I said. ‘In that case I doubt if I’ll get enough penetration.’

The frames were about two feet apart; statistically I had a good chance of missing — the odds were on my side.

Alison said, ‘If we’re going to do more underwater swimming we might as well do it comfortably.’ She got up and dragged some scuba gear from the corner. ‘I took the precaution of hiring this.’

‘That slipped my mind.’ I wondered what else I’d forgotten. I looked at the gear — there were two sets. ‘I’m going to do the swimming,’ I said. ‘Not you.’

‘But I’m coming with you,’ she expostulated.

‘For what? I don’t need you.’

She flinched as though I had slapped her face. I said, ‘You’re right — it’s a dangerous operation, and there’s no point in both of us going. Besides, I need you for something else.’ I thumped the side of the boat. ‘Whether this works or not there’s going to be ructions when these fireworks explode. If I don’t get back someone must be around to have another crack at Wheeler — and you’re elected.’

I reached out for the bottle and poured some more whisky. ‘You can try going to the police; they might be interested enough by then to take you seriously.’

She saw the point, but she didn’t like it. She set her face in a stubborn mould and prepared to argue. I forestalled her. ‘All right; this is what you do. You wait here until nightfall and help me to get the boat into the water. Then you hop over to Ta’Xbiex and hire another boat — if you can get anyone to trust you.’ I smiled. ‘Looking as you do now I wouldn’t trust you with a kid’s bath toy.’

She rubbed her smudged face and distastefully inspected her fingertips, ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll clean up.’

‘If you can’t hire a boat, steal one. There are plenty of loose boats at the Marina. Meet me at the seaward point of Manoel Island and then follow me in, but not too closely. When the balloon goes up watch out for Slade and Wheeler — they should be doing their best to jump overboard if all goes well. See they don’t get ashore.’

‘I lost the gun last night,’ she said.

‘Well, bat them over the head with an oar,’ I said. ‘I’ll be around somewhere so keep your oar away from me.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’ll be dark enough for launching in about an hour.’

That hour seemed to stretch out interminably rather like I’m told it does in an LSD trip; I wouldn’t know about that — I haven’t tried it. We didn’t talk much and when we did it was of inconsequentialities. The sun set and the light slowly ebbed from the sky until at last it was dark enough to take the boat down the slip without anyone seeing it. Once it was in the water it wouldn’t appear too abnormal.

I patted the wickedly gleaming steel axe-head which formed the tip of the ram and went to open the big double doors of the shed, and we steered the cradle down the slip and into the water. I released the boat and we took the cradle away and I turned to see how my handiwork had turned out.

It wasn’t too bad; she was down by the head but not by too much considering the weight of iron under her bows, and she appeared quite normal apart from the bits of angle-iron which showed above water on each side of the hull. In another ten minutes it would be too dark to see even that, but even if I was picked up by a light in the harbour I doubt if anyone would notice anything particularly odd about her.

‘That’s it,’ I said wearily. I was bone-tired; no sleep, a beating-up and a hard day’s work did nothing to improve me.

‘I’ll go now,’ said Alison quietly. ‘Good luck, Owen.’ She didn’t kiss me, or even touch me. She just walked away, picking up her coat as she went.

I climbed into the boat and rearranged a few of the fireworks to make myself more comfortable. I put the scuba gear handy and checked my primitive system of fuses. Then there was nothing to do but wait another hour before I was due to move off.

Again it was a long wait.

I checked my watch for the twentieth time in fifteen minutes and decided that time had come. I put on the scuba gear, tightened the weighted belt around my waist, and hung the mask around my neck. Then I started the engines and the boat quivered in the water. I cast off the painter and pushed the boat away with one hand and then tentatively opened the throttles a notch, not knowing what to expect.

At a slow speed she didn’t handle too badly although there seemed to be something a little soggy about her response to the wheel. I switched on the lights because I didn’t want the harbour patrol to pick me up for running illegally, and went down French Creek into the Grand Harbour. Here, in time past, the British Battle Fleet had lain, line upon line of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers. Now, there was another, but odder, naval craft putting to sea, but this one was in an earlier tradition — more like one of Drake’s fireships.

Across the harbour Valletta was all lit up and there were strings of coloured lights spangling Floriana. Tinny music floated across the quiet water punctuated by the thumping of a bass drum. The merry-making was well under way.

I rounded the head of Senglea and steered to the harbour mouth. Nothing was coming my way so I decided to open up and see what the boat would do. The note of the engines deepened as I opened the throttles and I felt the surge of acceleration as 200 hp kicked her through the water. In terms of horse-power per ton of displacement this little boat was perhaps forty times as powerful as Artina; that’s where the speed came from.

The steering was worse than bad — it was dreadful. The wheel kicked in my hands violently and my course was erratic, to say the least, and I went down the Grand Harbour doing a pretty good imitation of a water boatman, those jerky insects that run across the surface of ponds.