Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

“Not round here,” Charlie said with the satisfaction of superior knowledge. “I’ve seen these waters blowing a full gale and still shrouded in a fog as dense as a Frenchman’s armpit. Bloody dangerous place, this.”

“Cheer me up,” Harry said gloomily, then settled back to watch as we descended towards Guernsey. The island came nearer, a labyrinth of narrow roads, ugly bungalows, greenhouses and cars, then our wheels thumped on the tarmac, the smoke spurted from the protesting rubber, and we had arrived.

The local police met us and drove us to St Peter Port where Sir Leon Buzzacott waited at an outdoors table by the marina café. An untouched cup of coffee stood beside a very slim leather attache case on the table. Two very large and taciturn men flanked and dwarfed Sir Leon. If we were trying to be inconspicuous then we were failing hopelessly for, with Harry’s local reinforcements, we now numbered ten men, and all but Charlie and myself were dressed in heavy suits, while around us the holiday-makers and yacht crews lounged in shorts or jeans.

“I’ve got other chaps located round the marina,” the local policeman said. “They’re disguised, of course.”

Sir Leon greeted me. Considering that I was about to risk my life to get him a picture that I’d already given to him, I thought his greeting lacked warmth, but then my last conversation with him had not exactly been amicable. We didn’t mention Elizabeth, nor his dealings with her. I introduced Charlie. Sir Leon gave him a cold look and a bare acknowledgement. Charlie nodded happily back. “Nice morning for a bit of nonsense,” he said cheerfully.

Sir Leon ignored the remark. “The money,” he said, and nudged the thin leather case towards me.

“Four million?” I said disbelievingly. I’ve seen enough movies and television films to know that four million pounds would need a fair-sized suitcase rather than this slender and expensive case. For a second I even wondered whether Sir Leon had simply written them a cheque.

Sir Leon unzipped the bag and showed me its contents. “These are unregistered Municipal Bearer Bonds, my lord, from the United States. Safer than cash, just as anonymous, and negotiable anywhere in the world.”

“But traceable?” Harry Abbott asked hopefully.

“If you can persuade the authorities in various tropical tax havens to co-operate with you, yes,” Sir Leon said disparagingly, “but I wouldn’t pin your hopes on that cooperation. I assure you that our enemies won’t be using the bond coupons to claim their interest payments, which would betray them, but will simply sell the bonds themselves. Nor will they have any shortage of buyers. Unregistered bonds are becoming a rare and precious commodity.”

“So are Van Goghs,” I said helpfully.

Sir Leon ignored that. Harry zipped up the case and pushed it towards me. “Let’s hope we get the blackmailers before Johnny has to hand the stuff over.” Harry was in a fine mood again, relishing the chase. He looked round the marina as if he expected to see men with stocking masks over their faces.

I looked at Sir Leon. “You know they want to kill me?”

He nodded primly. “It had occurred to me, my lord.”

“And you set this up. You encouraged my sister. You gave her the money to hire the killers.”

The pale eyes didn’t blink. “I shall assume,” he said, “that the day’s events are making you overwrought. I trust that when the moment of crisis comes you will not allow that stress to affect your judgment.”

“And fuck you, too.” I doubted whether anyone had ever said that to Sir Leon Buzzacott, and he looked gratifyingly startled. I leaned over the table. “Tell me something. What will you put on my gravestone? That I wasn’t good enough to marry your stepdaughter, but I graciously died for your gallery?” He said nothing. One of the security guards moved closer to me, perhaps fearing that I would hit Buzzacott, but I ignored the man. “Do you know why I’m doing this, Sir Leon? I’m doing it for Jennifer. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for your painting. But I’m going to find the man who burned Jennifer and I’m going to pull his guts out and shove them down his throat. And when I’ve done that, Sir Leon, I’m going back to Jennifer and I’ll marry her. And if you try to stop me, I’ll have your guts for dinner too.”

Charlie laughed. Sir Leon just blinked.

I turned away from him. My anger had cowed Sir Leon, but it had been nothing but bravado. My chances of taking revenge this day were very slight; the best I could hope for was that Harry would succeed in making an arrest. I looked around the marina complex, but I could see nothing untoward. The huge car park which served the town centre was full. If Harry was right then one of the parked cars would probably be the one in which I would spend the next few hours criss-crossing the island’s leafy and twisting lanes. The thought made me nervous.

I distracted myself by watching the boats. The Victoria Marina at St Peter Port is a stone-walled harbour filled with pontoons. The entrance has a raised sill to trap the falling tide, but we had arrived just after high tide, so the sill was invisible and the passage was still clear for yachts to leave or enter. I guessed there were a hundred yachts berthed at the pontoons. Most were French. The Channel Islands are a wonderful playground for French yachtsmen. Two girls in tiny shorts climbed one of the pontoon bridges and walked towards us. All of us, except Sir Leon, watched them. They put on a wiggle for our benefit, called bonjour , and strolled past us into the café.

“If we weren’t here on business,” Charlie said wistfully, “I’d be doing a spot of parley-voo by now.”

“Like old times, Charlie.”

Then the girls had to be forgotten because an ancient taxi, blue smoke pouring from its exhaust, braked close to the café tables. The driver, clearly puzzled by his errand, leaned out of his window. “Is one of you the Earl of Stowey?”

For a second none of us moved, then, plunged into unreality, I nodded. “I am.”

“I don’t know what this is about, but this is for you.” The driver held out a brown business envelope, then gasped as four policemen closed in on his car. “Hang on!” he protested, but the police had their first link with the villains, and the driver was hauled away to be questioned. “Not that we’ll learn anything,” Harry said complacently. “These people aren’t fools, but we have to go through the motions.”

Sir Leon wanted to open the envelope, as did Harry, but I was the addressee, and I insisted on the privilege. One of the local policemen had a pair of plastic tweezers which I used to extract the single page. After I had read the page it would be taken away to be finger-printed, though none of us really believed the senders would be so foolish as to leave such marks. I clumsily unfolded the sheet and read aloud its typed instructions. The instructions were very simple and very clear. I was to strip down to shorts, pick up the money, and go to the pontoon nearest to the marina café. I was to carry nothing except the money, and should I feel like disobeying that order, I should know that I would be watched all the way. At the end of the pontoon I would find a yacht named Marianne . I was to get on board alone. No one was even to walk down the pontoon with me. Once on board I should take Marianne to sea where further instructions would be provided. No boat should follow me, and if such a boat was detected the Van Gogh would be destroyed. But if the instructions were followed faithfully, and the money was safely handed over, a telephone call to Sir Leon’s gallery would reveal where the Van Gogh could be found.

“Damn it,” Harry said softly. Till that moment I don’t think any of us had imagined that the money might be handed over at sea, yet the insistence on me, because I was a sailor, and the choice of Guernsey, a yachtsmen’s paradise, should have told us that the handover might be made afloat.