Desmond Bagley - The Tightrope Men

His finger was on the trigger but he was hesitant about firing. For all he knew these men were innocent Finns caught up in a fortuitous battle with those gun-happy, crazy Czechs. One of the men turned and there was a sharp cry and Denison knew the punt had been seen. The other man brought up his arm stiffly and he saw two brief flashes just as the mist began to close in again.

That did it — no innocent Finn would shoot on sight. He squeezed the trigger, only remembering at the last moment to pull back his head and jerk up his knees from the bottom boards.

There was a pause of a single heart beat and then the gun went off. Flame flared from the touch-hole under the hammer and dazzled him but not so much that he could not see the monstrous flame that bloomed from the muzzle of the gun. Orange and yellow with white at its heart, it shot out twelve feet ahead of the punt, blinding him, and was accompanied by a deep-throated booom. The punt shivered and jerked back violently in the water and the bottom boards leaped convulsively under him. Then it was gone and a cloud of black smoke lazily ascended and there was the acrid stink of burnt powder in the air.

Although deafened by the concussion he thought he heard a shriek from ahead. Retinal images danced before his eyes as he tried to penetrate the suddenly dense mist and he could see nothing. An automatic rifle hammered from behind and suddenly the water ahead fountained in spurts right across the channel as someone traversed in a blind burst. There was a whipping sound overhead and bits of reed dropped on to his face as he looked up.

The rifle fire stopped.

After a moment Harding said weakly, ‘What about reloading?’

‘How long?’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Christ, no!’ Denison burst into activity. ‘We’ve got to move and bloody fast.’ He brought up his legs and sat on his haunches so as to give the paddles a better grip in the water. This was no time to hang around and dead silence was not as important as getting clear. He jabbed the paddles into the water and made the punt move. As he skirted the promontory he kept a careful watch, not wanting to run aground, and still less wanting to meet whoever had been there.

The violence of that single shot was seared into him. What, in God’s name, could it have been like at the receiving end? He looked sideways but there was only the drifting mist, and all he could hear was the quickened splashing of the others as they increased their pace to his speed.

He paddled until he was thoroughly weary, occasionally changing course as the channel wound among marshy islands or as Harding dictated from the compass. After half an hour at top speed he was exhausted and stopped with his shoulders bowed and paddles trailing in the water. His breath rasped in his throat and his chest felt sore.

Harding touched him on the shoulder. ‘Rest,’ he said. ‘You’ve done enough.’

McCready came up, half wading and half swimming. ‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘You set a pace.’

Denison grinned weakly. ‘It was that last rifle burst. A bit too much for me. All I wanted to do was to get away.’

McCready held on to the side of the punt and surveyed the gun. ‘When this thing went off I was sure the barrel had burst. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘How far have we come?’ asked Denison.

Harding used his good hand to fish in the bottom of the punt. He came up with the map, soggy and running with water, and gave it to Denison who unfolded it. He pointed over Denison’s shoulder. ‘I think we’ve just crossed that wide bit of water.’

‘It was deep as well as wide,’ said McCready. ‘We had to swim.’

‘That’s much more than half-way,’ said Denison. ‘Dry land not far ahead.’

Diana and Lyn splashed up along the reeds in the shallower water. They were soaked and bedraggled. Denison pushed with a paddle and eased the punt towards them. ‘You all right?’ he asked quietly.

Diana nodded wearily and Lyn said, ‘How much more of this?’

‘Not far,’ said Denison. ‘You can travel the rest of the way in the punt.’

McCready nodded. ‘I think we’ve got clear. I haven’t heard any shooting for quite a while.’

Harding was still doing something at the bottom of the punt. ‘I’m afraid we’re in trouble,’ he said. ‘I thought this water was the accumulated drips from the paddles, but I think we have a leak. The punt is sinking.’

‘Oh, hell!’ said McCready.

‘My fault,’ said Harding unhappily. ‘I think I overloaded the gun. The strain on the punt was too much.’

Denison blew out his breath. McCready could have been right; the barrel could have burst. He said, ‘It seems you’ll have to walk the rest of the way, Doctor. Do you think you can make it?’

‘I’ll be all right when I’ve given myself another injection.’

‘We’ll jam the boat into the reeds,’ said McCready. ‘And then get going. I think the mist is lifting and I want to be out of this swamp by then.’

Carey strolled through a stand of tall timber and looked towards the house. It was not the sort of house you’d expect to see in Britain because the architecture was all wrong, mainly in matters of detail, but he supposed that if it had been in England it would have been called a manor house — one of the lesser stately homes.

He stopped and lit his pipe, ruminating on history. In the days when Finland was a Grand Duchy and part of Imperial Russia the house would have been the residence of one of the minor nobility or, possibly, a bourgeois Swedish Finn of the merchant class. More recently it had belonged to a company in Helsinki who used it as a holiday home for top staff and as a venue for executive conferences. Now it was rented by British Intelligence for their own undisclosed purposes.

Certainly Carey, as he strolled in the grounds clad in Harris tweed and puffing contemplatively on his pipe, looked every inch — or centimetre — the squire or whatever was the Finnish equivalent. He struck another match and, shielding it with his hand, applied it to his recalcitrant pipe. If he was worried it did not show in his manner. With the back of his mind he worried about McCready and his party who had not yet shown up, but with the forefront he worried about what was happening back in London. Apparently his boss, Sir William Lyng, had been unable to do much about Thornton and the in-fighting in Whitehall was becoming severe.

He achieved satisfaction with the drawing of his pipe and glanced towards the house again to see Armstrong approaching. He waited until he was within easy conversational reach, then said, ‘Is that boffin still fiddling with those equations?’

‘He’s finished.’

‘About time. Has he found it?’

‘No one tells me anything,’ said Armstrong. ‘But he wants to see you. Another thing — George McCready phoned in. He couldn’t say much on the phone but I gather he has a tale to tell. He wants medical supplies for a bullet in the arm.’

‘Who?’

‘Dr Harding.’

Carey grunted. ‘Any other casualties?’

‘None that George mentioned.’

‘Good! Let’s go to see the boffin.’

Armstrong fell in step with him. ‘And there’s a man to see you — a chap called Thornton.’

Carey’s pace faltered. ‘He’s here now?’

‘I put him in the library.’

‘Has he seen the boffin?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He mustn’t.’ Carey looked sideways at Armstrong. ‘Do you know anything about Thornton?’

‘I’ve seen him around,’ said Armstrong. ‘But not to speak to. He’s a bit above my level on the totem pole.’

‘Yes,’ said Carey. ‘One of the Whitehall manipulators and as tricky as they come. These are my specific instructions regarding Thornton. You’re to go back to the library and offer him tea — he’ll like that. You’re to keep him busy until I see him. I don’t want him prowling around; he makes me nervous. Got that?’