Split Code: Dolly and the Nanny Bird

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The wind whined. I said, ‘I suppose I’m going to meet your chief anyway, wherever we’re going. Are you allowed to tell me who he is?’

  He didn’t reply that time either. I told myself it was better than over-friendliness, the other thing I’d been afraid of. I found it hard to convince myself.

  A spatter of rain hit the deck and then, like a pail of cold water, a sudden sharp wind that cut through my green English serge and sent Dolly heeling to starboard, so that I fell headlong against Zorzi.

  From the impatient violence with which he thrust me out of his way, I might have been a shelf-ful of books. He was swearing, his fists cramped on the wheel and his eyes lifted up to the rigging. It had been a powerful squall, to catch our bare poles so sharply. And from the north-east, as the others had been. I said, ‘Zorzi. Do you know what to do in a Bora?’

  As before, he made no reply. But I knew by his face that he didn’t.

  FIFTEEN

  The thunder began at eleven.

  There being nothing in the Margaret Beaseford College rules about wearing your uniform when caring for your employer’s kidnapped child or children, I had changed into pants and sneakers and sweater, with a thick quilted jacket on top. Mihovil, who was occupying Donovan’s bunk with a basin, was uninterested in my activities. Then back in the cockpit with Zorzi and Petar and Trifun I heard above the noise of the big Mercedes-Benz engines an explosion of sound which seemed to come out of the sky all about us. A moment later there was another loud crack, and then the peaks to our left were outlined twice in a blue sudden glimmer which might have been a major explosion, but was more likely, I thought, to be lightning. A rolling peal, and then another proved me right. Thunder. Another of the first signs of the Bora.

  By that time I knew exactly where we were, although not yet where we were heading for. I had learned my lesson well, from the books Johnson had supplied me with. I had watched the Rat Porporela diminish on the southern mole of Dubrovnik and the breakwater light open up from Mlini in the bay of Zupski to the south with Strebeno beside it. Then the village of Plat, and the lights marking the shoals and harbour at Cavtat. The current here was strongly to the north-west and the resulting jopple against the increasing gusts of north wind had been the coping stone of Mihovil’s misery. Petar, I guessed from his face, was beginning to suffer the same sort of uneasiness. Zorzi at the wheel and Trifun his lieutenant appeared so far quite unaffected. They had all, by now, taken off their stocking masks and the three other faces, quite unremarkable, were as unknown and unrevealing as that of Zorzi.

  We heard the thunder first just south of Cavtat. and as we pitched southward steadily in the dark I sat with my eyes on the land, watching for each flash of lightning. That way I saw the church at the airport, and then the aircraft light south of Rat Veliki Pac and a long time later, far ahead, the peninsula of Molunat, with its lights.

  Beyond that, unseen as yet was Ostri Rat, the western entrance point of the Gulf of Kotor. If we left Dubrovnik at ten, we would reach it somewhere round one in the morning. If, that is to say. my kidnappers, intended to sail so far south.

  On the other hand the further south, the safer they would be. All the signs were that Johnson had been right. The original plan had involved nothing more than taking Ben and myself to some quiet stretch of shore near Dubrovnik, whence a car would have driven us swiftly up the winding mountain passes to some obscure hovel. With all the wild Montenegrin mountains to choose from, to hide us would be simple.

  But the roads were barred because of the smallpox. Wherever they moved, they would be stopped and looked at and questioned, and commanded to deliver their papers. Their only hope now was to make their journey by sea, and to contrive a landing as near as possible to the fresh place they had chosen to hide us. And by the time they needed to move out, the emergency might well be over.

  From time to time Zorzi or the others exchanged a few words but I didn’t talk, nor did I give away, yet, that I knew where we were. They were edgy, and inimical. I didn’t want to be drugged or silenced or blindfolded before I had a chance to speak aloud the name of the place we would stop at, for all those hidden microphones to pick up. Soon after that, Ben woke again, fretful with oversleeping, and minus a bottle. Zorzi gave me leave to go below and warm up a feed for the baby.

  This time Trifun came with his gun and watched me and after a bit played with his foot against mine. I put up with it. I was going to be in his power for an indefinite time, and only a fool would arouse his resentment. With Zorzi above, he was unlikely to go further.

  In fact it helped because Ben, unhappy with his new surroundings and my joggling lap, turned the feed into a marathon, with the yacht’s motion increasing every minute. Eventually it was Trifun who got up hastily and bolting open the door, sat and guarded me from a bench in the cockpit.

  With Ben bringing up wind on my shoulder, I watched the lights through the porthole. Ostri Rat, and we were veering east and north. We were going into the Boka Kotorska.

  The Gulf of Kotor, twenty nautical miles from end to end, consists of three enclosed basins connected by narrows, the whole being set among mountains. At the top of the range there is snow, and at the foot, palms, dates, vines, and every kind of sub-tropical foliage grow by the water.

  The finest fjord scenery outside of Norway. The deep-water gulf which could hold in safety the whole of a large Mediterranean fleet. The perfect site for Peter the Great’s naval academy. The indented wandering coast where still remain the crumbling relics of Rome and of Venice; the mosaic floors, the pillars, the palaces. And above all, the towering mountains, between which pours down the cold winter air from the eastern plateaux, driving faster and faster until, whirling down into the water, it strikes the small boats who unwisely or for their own good reasons have not fled to tie up in harbour.

  And I dared not suggest that we ought to put into harbour, or turn aside, or take any action which would jeopardize my captor’s safe landfall in darkness at their chosen rendezvous. Because for my father’s purposes the kidnapping had to proceed without hindrance.

  Only, I wished that Lenny Milligan and Donovan had been conscious, to help and advise. What was more, I suspected that my captors rather wished it as well.

  They had apparently reached the conclusion that I wasn’t dangerous. Having lashed Ben’s carrycot afresh to the sole bunk in my stateroom, I aroused no protest when I crossed to the galley and washed up Ben’s litter and stowed it. In the next cabin Mihovil was now snoring; and an empty bottle laid at his side explained why the bar doors were banging. There were books and cushions on the saloon floor as well and Donovan, sleeping still, had shifted nearer the edge of his bunk-seat.

  I finished my business quickly in the galley and then moving about as best I could with the increasing motion, I began to stow gear, and to close and snib all the cupboards and drawers. I left Mihovil alone but found some rope in the fo’c’sle with which to moor the two drugged men to their benches. Then I checked the hatches and portholes and, last of all, found and pulled out all the life jackets and harness I could find, as well as a couple of ship’s jackets from the hanging locker.

  By then the whole cabin was heaving, and I was sore with being banged about, and weary, and frightened. Up in the cockpit, the two men with Zorzi appeared to be having some sort of argument: it ended with Zorzi’s voice speaking sharply in Serbo-Croat: so sharply that the other voices were silenced. He kicked the door and it swung open, revealing his legs in long rubber boots as he sat with both fists on the wheel. A blast of cold air swept into the saloon and the freshness of it confused me.

  It took a moment to pin down the reason. The air below decks on Dolly smelt different.

  It was two in the morning, and I had just flown the Atlantic and lived through a long, tiring and difficult day, or surely I would have diagnosed it before Zorzi did, leaning down from the cockpit and sniffing. As it was, his raised voice told me nothing. I had to draw a long breath as he had, and then another. Then th
ere was no doubt at all. A distinct and increasing aroma of diesel oil, permeating all the air and rising with fair certainty from the bilges.

  I said, ‘We have a leak,’ in the same second that Zorzi, his gaze on the instrument panel, emitted a string of undoubted obscenities. There followed the clamouring speech of the other two, cut off by another sharp order. The lined face of Petar appeared and they pressed back as he knelt in the cockpit, in process of uncovering the engine.

  Zorzi turned the wheel. Coming round to the wind, the yacht sagged and lurched. On the floor Petar coughed, and then rising, lunged for the lee rail. Then Dolly was round, pitching and rolling, and Zorzi cut the engine and picking up Johnson’s big torch, directed it to where Trifun knelt in Petar’s place, uncovering first the engine, and then the fuel tanks.

  Then he began replacing hatches and floorboards and I said, ‘Well?’ with my hand on the steps.

  Zorzi favoured me with a glance. ‘The deck tube has been fractured at the joint, and possibly the tank itself as well. There is a great deal in the bilges. The tank is almost empty.’

  I said, ‘I don’t see how you can go through the Boka Kotorska under sail in this weather. Where are you making for?’

  There was no point now in secrecy. Petar was vomiting still over the side and Trifun’s face, cramped in the well of the cockpit in the reek of the oil was sweating and pasty. Zorzi said, ‘You and the child are to spend the night on Gospa od škrpjela, an island off Perast. There.’

  He threw the chart down and pointed, and I swallowed too. The innermost basin of the Boka Kotorska is shaped like a butterfly on a pin, the pin being the narrows leading into it. And in the centre of the basin is a shoal with the twin islands of Sveti Djorje and Gospa od škrpjela. Each had a church, I seemed to remember. And each, otherwise, was uninhabited.

  I probably knew more than any of them about the narrows which led to that basin. They were named Tjesnac Verige, after the chain which, legend says, once stretched across them. Legend is probably true: at its narrowest point, the channel is only one and a half cables wide. And there is over a mile of it to navigate, facing directly north-east all the way.

  I had said to Zorzi what anyone with sailing experience would have said. Under sail, it couldn’t be done. And yet he had no real alternative. With the use of the engine, we might have got through the narrows and arrived at the island between three and four in the morning, with an hour to spare before it became light enough for the yacht to be noticed in the vicinity.

  Long before the narrows, the supply of fuel would have run out; and we should be on a lee shore under sail with all the signs of a major storm brewing. To find shelter and wait out the storm was the sensible course. But there was not enough of the night left to do it in. I said, ‘You are risking your lives and the ransom.’

  He lifted the map, watching me. ‘You are not seasick, I see.’

  I said, ‘I used to sail with my father.’

  ‘In the Mediterranean?’

  ‘We kept a small boat at Malta.’ It was true. And it explained how I recognized the Boka Kotorska. Or so I hoped.

  Zorzi said, ‘As you see, my men are not mariners. You know how to sail?’

  I said, ‘I know enough to tell you that you won’t get through the narrows.’

  ‘I didn’t ask your opinion,’ he said. ‘I will show you where we are to go, and you will tell them how to get the sails up. After you have made some food. Can you feed men, or only make messes for babies?’

  ‘I can sail,’ I said, ‘or I can cook. I shall put some soup in a pan and you can order one of your puking friends to go below and watch it. He might try and sober up your other friend at the same time. We’re going to need all the help we can get.’

  The hard, dark eyes stared at mine. ‘I do not recommend,’ said Zorzi, ‘that you speak to my men as if they are children. They might forget themselves . . . And what are you proposing to do?’

  ‘See if there are any storm sails,’ I said. ‘Get up a sea anchor, if there is one. Cover the hatches with canvas. Put on a life jacket and harness, and see that you do the same.’

  ‘So now you care for our health?’ he said.

  ‘Only because I can’t steer and look after sail on my own,’ I retorted. While I was speaking he had switched on the engine and turned Dolly back on her course again. The waves were big, but he knew enough to luff into them. I pursued it. ‘We ought to keep some fuel for emergencies. How much do we have?’

  His teeth flashed briefly under the coarse, swollen nose. ‘The gauge shows empty. If you wish to save fuel, I recommend you raise sail without wasting more time. Trifun will heat soup. Petar will look for the storm sail.’ He grabbed for the chart as the deck tilted and then righted itself to another squall. We were all shouting.

  I looked below as I flung on my life jacket, at the bright, orderly, expensive interior of Dolly where a short time before Donovan and I had been sitting, whisky in hand, peacefully playing gin rummy. Where before that, Johnson had been entertaining the Booker-Readmans. Where long before that Johnson had been living himself, with his own chosen company in other days, in other waters. Below the fear and the weariness I was aware of a dull kind of fury that I should be the one to foul up the Dolly with strangers, and bring to her boards nothing but violence and inferior seamanship.

  Even Trifun was frightened. I got up on deck and shouted at him, and that made me feel better until under my feet I heard Benedict’s awakened wail and remembered.

  I don’t know why I wanted to be a nurse. I don’t want to be a nurse any more.

  I’ve said that Dolly was beautiful, and that was immediately evident both in her profile and in her creature comforts. She was also beautiful in another sense, of which the closest parallel was the smooth-running orderliness of Johnson Johnson’s painting arrangements.

  In a white canvas bag clearly marked there was a storm jib and trysail, and next it an excellent drogue. The trysail was already bent to its own pinewood gaff, with its sheets shackled on; and it was coloured a soft Venetian red, and had been boiled with linseed and beeswax to keep it supple and light in the wet. The storm jib, its sheets ready bent on to it, was dressed in the same way with a wire span spliced to the head cringle to stop the sag between the head of the sail and the purchase block. I got them on deck and with Trifun with a lamp beside me, began issuing orders.

  With Mihovil senseless below and Zorzi at the wheel holding the yacht hove-to, facing the wind and the sea, there were only three of us; and Petar didn’t have English. In the dark and the wind and the violent pitching and rolling of the idling yacht I had to get the sail out of the bag without allowing it to catch the wind, and bend the peak and throat halyard blocks on to the strops on the trysail gaff, ready to hoist.

  The luff of a sail of this kind is made to hold and run up the mast by being sewn at intervals with bracelets of ash parrel balls which have to be clipped round the mast one by one as you are hoisting. The sheets are double, and work through two blocks at the clew. From there, they run to a single block which is shackled to the mainsheet bolts.

  Trifun didn’t know what a mainsheet bolt was, or where to look for it. Petar, his arms embracing the boom, had to be shouted at by Zorzi before he would kneel on the slanting deck and fumble with luff toggles. If the mainsail had been up instead of stowed neatly round the boom, we could never have done it. The jib I bent on myself.

  I had both sails sheeted in and was back in the cockpit, explaining to Trifun, when Zorzi started the engine again, turning the wheel at the same time to point Dolly’s bows across the heaving black expanse of the first of Kotorska’s three basins.

  Above the crash and slap of the waves, above the whining snarl of the wind there came only a coughing sound, quickly guttering to a halt. Zorzi tried again, and then a third time. No response. Water, perhaps in the exhaust. More like the fuel was done. In either case, the engine was finished. Cut our losses.

  I looked at the chart and the compass. ‘Bring th
e wheel round and keep the needle there. You see. If the wind stays steady, we can cross the basin and get through the first set of narrows without tacking. What about hazards? What depths do you have?’

  ‘Read it!’ he said, and pushed the Pilot at me, shouting angrily above the wind to the other two as he turned the wheel. I read it, lying beside me in the light of Trifun’s torch while I sheeted in and waited for the moment to cast off the lee runner. Then our bows were pointing across the first of the three basins with the wind on our port beam, and we were moving, faster and faster. I settled down and began to explain, slowly and clearly, what the ropes were for and what had to be done with them. Then I made them all put on their life jackets and harness, and took the wheel, my own body-rope tied to a cleat, while Zorzi went below to change also.

  Across the bay, nudged and blackened by all the intervening waves, lay the brilliant bouquet of lights that was Herceg-Novi. With a good pair of binoculars I could have picked out the hotel where Bunty lay fast asleep, with Grover and Sukey. A car headlight showed, on the winding road which edged all three waterways, and lights from a street or a jetty where the villages were. The fishing boats you might expect, lantern at prow, were quite absent. Those who made their livelihood from the sea knew when the sea was at its most dangerous.

  When Zorzi came back I said, ‘It would be best if I have the helm. Do you agree?’

  I thought perhaps that pride would stop him, but he consented. Long before I could steer for harbour, they could remove me. And my life as well as theirs was in danger. I took the tiller, instead of the wheel, so that I could sit up, my feet on the cockpit bench, and see all around me. I had it for five minutes only. Then, the lines in the darkness ran white, and I knew the first squall of the Bora was coming.