Десмонд Бэгли - The Spoilers

‘And we’d still have half the stuff left on our hands,’ said Follet. ‘Maybe all of it. If Eastman is smart enough he’ll have ripped out the firing connections.’

‘So we have to get him out of there,’ said Warren. ‘I think we’d better have Parker in on this — he knows the ship.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Follet. ‘I’m still hanging on to this goddam steering-wheel, so would someone mind telling me where we’re going?’

‘Does it matter?’ said Tozier impatiently.

‘Metcalfe reckons it matters,’ said Follet. ‘He saw Jeanette Delorme on the quay when we left — and she saw him. She’ll reckon it’s a hi-jacking and Tom says she’ll come after us loaded for bear.’

‘So?’

‘So we can stick to the coast or we can head out to sea. She has the same choice. What do you want to do?’

‘I’d sooner stick to the coast,’ said Tozier. ‘If she caught us at sea where it wouldn’t matter how many guns she popped off I wouldn’t give much for our chances, especially if that yacht is loaded to the gunwales with her cutthroats.’

‘Haven’t you thought that she’ll think that you’ll think that and automatically come along the coast and catch us anyway? I’ll bet she can see us right now.’

‘How the hell do I know what she’ll think?’ burst out Tozier. ‘Or what any other woman will think?’

‘There’s a way around that,’ said Follet. ‘Here, take the wheel.’ He stepped on one side and produced a pen and a notebook. ‘Now, if we go along the coast and she searches out to sea our survival is one hundred per cent — right?’

‘Until she catches on,’ said Warren.

‘We could get clear away,’ argued Follet. ‘And the same applies to the situation vice versa — we go to sea and she goes along the coast. Andy, what chance of survival would you give us if she caught us at sea?’

‘Not much,’ said Tozier. ‘Say, twenty-five per cent.’

Follet noted it down. ‘And if she caught us on the coast?’

‘That’s a bit better — she couldn’t be as noisy. I think we’d have a good chance of coming out — say, seventy-five per cent.’

Follet started to scribble rapidly and Warren, looking over his shoulder saw that he was apparently working out a mathematical formula. Follet finished his calculation, and said, ‘What we do is this. We put four pieces of paper in a hat — one marked. If we pick the marked paper we go to sea; if not, we stick to the coast.’

‘Are you crazy?’ demanded Tozier. ‘Would you leave something like this to chance?’

‘I’m crazy like a fox,’ said Follet. ‘How much have I won from you at the coin-matching game?’

‘Nearly a thousand quid — but what’s that got to do with it?’

Follet pulled a handful of loose change from his pocket and thrust it under Tozier’s nose. ‘This. There are eight coins here — three of them dated 1960. When I matched coins with you I pulled one of these at random from my pocket; if it was dated 1960 I called heads — if not, I called tails. That was enough to give me my percentage — my edge; and there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it.’

He turned to Warren. ‘It’s from game theory — a mathematical way of figuring out the best chances in those tricky situations when it’s a case of if I do that you’ll know I’ll do it but I do the other thing because I know the way you’re thinking and so it goes on chasing its goddam tail. It even gives the overall chances — in this case a little over eighty-one per cent.’

Tozier looked at Warren with a baffled expression. ‘What do you think, Nick?’

‘You did lose money consistently,’ said Warren. ‘Maybe Johnny has a point.’

‘You’re goddam right I have.’ Follet stooped and picked up a uniform cap from the deck into which he dropped four coins. ‘Pick one, Nick. If it’s dated 1960 we go to sea — if it’s one of the others we stick to the coast.’

He held the cap out to Warren, who hesitated. ‘Look at it this way,’ said Follet earnestly. ‘Right now, until you pick a coin, we don’t know which way we’re going — and if we don’t know how in hell can Delorme figure it? And the mix of coins in the hat gives us the best chance no matter what she does.’ He paused. ‘There’s just one thing; we do what the coin tells us — no second chances — that’s the way this thing works.’

Warren put out his hand, took a coin, and held it on the palm of his hand, date side up. Tozier inspected it. ‘1960,’ he said with a sigh. ‘It’s out to sea, God help us.’

He spun the wheel and the bows of the Orestes swung towards the west.

Tozier left Warren and Follet on the bridge and went down to the engine-room to consult Parker. He found him with an oilcan strolling amid shining and plunging steel piston rods at a seeming risk to life. Hellier was standing by the engineroom telegraph.

He beckoned to Parker, who put down the oilcan and came over to him. ‘Can you leave here for a while?’ he asked.

‘We’re a bit short-handed,’ said Parker. ‘But it wouldn’t do any harm for a short time. What do you want?’

‘Your friend Eastman has barricaded himself in the torpedo compartment in the bows. We’re trying to get him out.’

Parker frowned. ‘That’ll be a bit dicey. I had a watertight bulkhead put in there in case anythin’ went wrong wi’ the tubes. If he’s behind that it’ll be bloody impossible to get him out.’

‘Haven’t you any suggestions? He’s locked himself in and we can’t do a damn’ thing about the heroin.’

‘Let’s go an’ see,’ said Parker briefly.

They found Metcalfe crouched at the end of a narrow steel corridor, at the other end of which was a solid steel door clamped tightly closed. ‘He’s behind that,’ said Metcalfe. ‘You can open it from this side if you care to try but you’ll get a bullet in you. He can’t miss.’

Tozier looked up the corridor. ‘No, thanks; there’s no cover.’

‘The door’s bullet proof too,’ said Metcalfe. ‘I tried a couple of shots and found it was more dangerous for me than for him the way things ricochet around here.’

‘Have you tried to talk him out?’

Metcalfe nodded. ‘He either can’t hear me or he doesn’t care to answer.’

‘What about it, Parker?’

‘There’s only one way into that compartment,’ said Parker. ‘And it’s through that door.’

‘So it’s a stand-off,’ said Tozier.

Metcalfe gave a wry grimace. ‘It’s more than that. If he can keep us out of there until the ship is retaken then he’s won.’

‘You seem a bit worried about that. Delorme has to find us first and taking us won’t be easy. What have you got on your mind?’

Metcalfe swung round. ‘When I took that stuff to Fahrwaz there were a few things left behind — a couple of heavy machine-guns, for instance.’

That’s bad,’ said Tozier softly.

‘And that’s not the worst of it. She tried to flog four 40-millimetre cannons to Fahrwaz, but he wasn’t having them at any price. They swallowed ammo too quickly for his liking, so she got stuck with them. If she’s had the gumption to stick one of those aboard that yacht, she’d have plenty of time to jack-leg a deck mounting. All she’d need is steel and a welding torch, and mere’s plenty of both back in that shipyard.’

‘You think she might?’

‘That little bitch never misses a trick,’ said Metcalfe violently. ‘You should have let me get her back in Beirut.’

‘And we’d have lost the heroin. We’ve got to get rid of that dope. We can’t let her have it.’

Metcalfe jerked his thumb up the corridor. ‘Be my guest — open that door.’