Operation Nassau: Dolly and the Doctor Bird; Match for a Murderer

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘It’s fifty miles an hour, dearie. He’ll be on Crab in ten minutes,’ said Harry. I could hear Johnson’s voice above, talking to someone persuasively. He could be very persuasive, could Johnson.

  Harry said, ‘Listen, dearie. Would you rather I went back with Sir Bartholomew?’

  It was one way, I suppose, of finding out which of the men I was interested in. Or maybe he thought that he knew. I said, ‘No. It’s all right,’ just as Trotter appeared on the steps and said, ‘We’re ready, if you can show us how to carry him. Violet’s going.’

  Edgecombe roused at once and got to his feet: between us we got him on deck and down the gangway into Dolly’s white launch. Violet was already ensconced there, her face-tucks showing in the clear light. Brady got down beside her and steadied Edgecombe as we lifted him down.

  We were still in the slack of the tide and there was a slight jopple, enough to make the boat lurch more than it should. Edgecombe arrived in the well of the boat, stumbled, and put out a hand. Brady, not expecting it, lost his balance and saved himself by gripping the engine casing. There was a roar, and the engine, which had been idling, went into gear.

  We saw the launch shoot backwards, graze Dolly’s virginal side; and then, as Brady frantically grabbed at the lever, stop and plunge nose outwards away from the yacht.

  The lashing on deck unfurled like grey smoke and vanished. We saw Violet’s arms batten her hat, and Edgecombe fall and Brady, his eyes white with fright, try to regain his balance and wrench at the launch’s controls.

  He throttled down, and started to bring the launch back. I saw Edgecombe move in the bottom, and Violet straightened her hat.

  We stopped shouting. It had happened so quickly; but I suppose there had been no acute danger. Spry, beside me, had a line ready to throw them, and I stayed on the gangway with Trotter, whose language would have enchanted an Army anaesthetist.

  He grinned at me. ‘If you ask me, that lad needs some help with his steering,’ said Trotter. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get you on.’

  But neither of us got on. As the launch came within earshot we could see Edgecombe had struggled up and that he and Brady were talking. Then Brady stood up and hailed us. ‘We won’t come back . . Now we’re off, Sir Bart thinks we should just carry on without spoiling your fishing. Save us a nice sixty-pound grouper.’

  He gave a cheerful wave and stood down to the wheel. The throttle opened and the white launch, turning sleekly in the blue water, heeled and made off, gaining speed, southwards.

  Harry had found Violet’s shrimps, but I think the other four of us stood staring at the boat until she curved out of sight; and Johnson had his binoculars on her to the end. Then he said flatly, ‘Poor Bart. I’ll go and radio the nurse to expect them. You might as well start fishing, Beltanno. Harry and Spry here are the experts. What about you, Trotter?’

  His hand shading his eyes, Trotter was still watching the spot where the launch had disappeared. I wondered if it was Brady’s erratic steering he was worried about, or Brady’s interest in Edgecombe. He turned back and said, ‘Fishing it is. Mind you, I don’t know much about it, but I don’t suppose your amberjacks go much for launches. Would it be worth moving somewhere there’s been less commotion?’

  Half-way down the companionway, Johnson glanced at his watch. ‘I’m not sure actually it’s worth moving anywhere,’ he said. I knew he had promised the Begum to bring us back in good time for lunch. I said, ‘If you want to start back. I don’t mind. We can fish another day.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Johnson; and went forward to the R/T. Trotter said, ‘I’m not much on for amberjacks either. I’d rather get back and see how the old fellow is.’

  There couldn’t have been ten years between them. It was merely the reaction of an active man to a stricken one. Poor Bart indeed. I thought. I said, ‘Harry?’

  Harry, shirtless, shrugged his shoulders tanned by several seasons of Great Harbour Cay sun. ‘Go ahead. I can fish anytime.’

  ‘Majority decision,’ said Trotter. ‘Come on, Spry. You start her up and I’ll winch up the anchor.’

  Johnson came up as Spry pressed the button and the engine spluttered, hesitated and caught. Spry said, ‘They want to go back, sir.’

  Johnson said, ‘You could sail and trawl, if you like.’ He looked preoccupied. His impulse, no doubt, I thought, was to race Dolly home. But whether he speeded or lingered, the launch with Edgecombe, dead or alive, would be home long before us.

  No one wanted to trawl. Dolly moved. Spry and Harry went forward, so far as I remember, while Trotter and I sat in the cockpit with Johnson, who had perched on the coaming, chart on knees, moving the wheel with one canvas-shod foot. He had changed his bifocals for black Polaroid glasses which made his face even more unreadable: the warm, forced air hardly stirred his black hair.

  Trotter said, ‘No records broken today. Poor old Sir Bartholomew ain’t got his troubles to seek. He won’t get to the barbecue now, will he?’

  I had forgotten the barbecue. And my (prospective) fiancé.

  Trotter said, ‘We had a little accident like that in India once. The Bengali Tattoo. God Save the President of Poland in fireworks, and the exclamation mark fell off on this fellow’s turban. Near burned to a cinder, he did.’

  I said, ‘Do they have exclamation marks in Hindi?’

  ‘They have in Polish,’ said Trotter quickly. He half rose. ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘There,’ said Trotter. ‘On the horizon, on the left of the bowsprit. A boat, coming towards us. It isn’t the launch, coming back?’

  Johnson said, ‘Take the wheel, will you?’ and in two moves was standing up on the coach roof, his binoculars to his eyes. In the same moment Spry’s voice came from the foredeck. ‘Something coming towards us up from the south, sir. It could be the launch.’

  ‘It’s white,’ Johnson said. He glanced down at Trotter. ‘Keep her well out to starboard, will you? There’s hellish shoaling out on the left. Spry, what do you see?’

  Spry looked back. ‘I think it’s the launch. It’s the right size. And it’s coming straight for us.’

  Johnson looked at the chart in his hand. ‘I suppose it could have dropped Edgecombe and turned. It’s in the right region for Bullock’s Harbour.’

  But his voice was deliberate, as Trotter’s had been, telling that story. We were all on edge after the mishap, and Johnson with more reason than most. I wondered what disasters befell senior officials who allowed their colleagues to be assassinated under their noses. He stood watching for some time, the binoculars still in his hands. Then he said suddenly, ‘It isn’t. It isn’t the launch . . .’ and lent me the glasses to look.

  It was not the launch. It was a long, shallow boat approaching at speed, and steering for Dolly. Johnson sprang down and, taking the wheel over from Trotter, boosted the engine. He then turned the wheel very slightly to starboard. After a moment, the other boat altered course also. There was no doubt she was coming to meet us. Johnson turned the wheel back and gave it to Trotter again while he stepped up on the coach roof and studied her again through the glasses. All at once, he said, ‘Spry?’

  In a hospital one always looks placid. Even in a hurricane case, an illness which degenerates within moments, one never runs or raises one’s voice in the wards. But one learns to know one’s consultant. The pitch of the voice that means trouble. The inflection which says This is terminal.

  I knew what it was like, to be in danger with Johnson, and the pitch was there, in his voice. He said,’Spry. Who’s steering?’

  There was a second’s silence. And then Spry answered, unemphatically, ‘I can’t see anyone, sir.’

  Johnson said, ‘Give the glasses to Harry. Trotter, take mine.’

  They changed, and for a moment, no one said anything. Then Harry spoke. ‘There isn’t anyone steering. The boat’s loaded with cargo, but there isn’t a helmsman. There isn’t anyone on board, I should say.’

  He’s right,�
�� said Trotter. ‘Unless they’re lying in the well of the boat with their feet up.’ It was a good effort, but his voice wasn’t quite normal. ‘Marie Celeste,’ he added. ‘She must’ve got loose from her moorings. Should we catch her, do you think?’

  I relaxed a little, I believe. It was eerie, but the explanation was probably simple. One of the boys had overbalanced, starting her off from the quayside, and she had driven out of harbour under her own steam. At any rate, it wasn’t the launch, with the dead body of Bart Edgecombe inside it.

  Johnson said, ‘She’s going too fast to get hold of. She’ll run out of gas: we’ll report her once we get a look at her name. Meantime, let’s give her a nice lot of room just in case the sea kicks her rudder.’

  He had turned Dolly sharply to starboard, and instead of the bows, the white flank of the other boat began to appear.

  Trotter focused on it with the glasses. ‘It’s the Hay something.” he said. ‘Hell?’ He brought the binoculars down.

  Harry, Spry and I looked at him and he looked at Johnson’s black polaroids.

  ‘Try again,’ said Johnson mildly; and this time turned the wheel hard over to port. Ahead, I could see the flash of Spry’s anxious face, and then the two pairs of binoculars were lifted again. This time I stood up and watched, hanging on to the boom.

  It was remarkable in that short space of time how much closer the white boat had come. Even with the naked eye it was perfectly obvious that she carried no crew and no helmsman: merely a large rectangle of unspecified cargo lashed down with tarpaulin.

  For a moment the white beaked bow far over the water faced us directly. Then as Dolly veered left, answering Johnson’s pull on the helm, we began to expose the other boat’s shallow white flank and the name, which to the binoculars must now be quite legible. Then, as I looked, the flank foreshortened; the name slid out of view, and we in Dolly’s stern were again facing the other boat across a lessening distance of water, and looking straight at her bows.

  Trotter lowered the glasses very slowly, and his face had lost a lot of its colour. ‘She’s the Haven,’ he said. Both Spry and Harry had dropped their glasses and were also looking, without speaking, at Johnson.

  ‘Once more,’ said Johnson, and turned the helm hard over to starboard.

  I hung on. We heeled. The sun slid to our port quarter and, above me, the halyards whipped the bare poles. I saw that Harry’s shoulderblades were catching the sun; he pushed his arms into his shirt without looking. My cheekbones stung. Engine beating. Dolly settled to her new angled course.

  Haven took a moment or two to adapt, but not very long. The view of her flank opened, and closed. Behind her, the scar of her wake, white on blue, began to lean outwards. We were moving round: adjusting. She was on course in thirty-five seconds. In thirty-five seconds we found ourselves looking straight into the beak of the oncoming boat as if into the stare of a predator.

  A hawk. A familiar. An enemy. A pilotless ship following us as the barracudas below follow blood.

  This time Johnson held the helm down. The bows continued to swing. ‘The Haven?’ he said to Trotter. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘The construction teams use her.’ said Trotter. ‘She runs between various jobs.’ He halted. Ahead, Spry and Harry signalled by Johnson had left the foredeck abruptly and were scrambling past the saloon roof towards us.

  Johnson said, ‘Yes?’ It was like winding up an automaton. Trotter’s face had gone rather pale, and he was perspiring. He said. ‘Brady had her loaded some days ago, ready to call at the Tamboo Marina.’

  He stopped again, staring at Johnson, and Johnson stared back and said slowly, ‘I see.’

  None of the rest of us saw. Harry said, ‘What is it? What’s the matter? Is she going to crash into us?’

  ‘She’s going to crash into us,’ Trotter said. His face was glistening, but his voice was quite firm as always. ‘She’s steering by radio - yes. Mr Johnson - beamed on a homing-device hidden somewhere on Dolly.’

  ‘And?’ I said sharply.

  The bows had swung round. We were going due north now, the sun blazing behind us. The white boat settled undeviatingly on our tail and began to creep forward.

  ‘And,’ said Johnson, ‘she’s full of explosives.”

  THIRTEEN

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ said Harry.

  Johnson changed course. He said, without looking at Harry, ‘Wrong mammal, wrong gender. I wish that I were. The transmitter’ll be in the bilges or under the hull. We can look for it later, but I doubt if we’ll find it. Meanwhile, Haven’s faster than we are.’

  Harry said, ‘What’ll happen? What’ll happen if she overtakes us?’

  Johnson changed course by forty-five degrees, and, in our wake, the white boat changed course also. Johnson said, ‘She won’t overtake us. She’ll crash into us, and if she hurries, we’ll make the 1.25 news after Peyton Place.’

  ‘You’re zig-zagging?’ said Trotter.

  ‘Righty,’ said Johnson. ‘In the classical phrase. Haven’s rudder is giving a thirty-five-second delay on the turns, and so long as our fuel lasts, we may hold her until help arrives.’

  Trotter said quickly, ‘Could we explode her? A rifle?’

  I had already thought of my Frommer. Johnson said, ‘I haven’t a rifle. In any case, whatever the range, the explosion would wreck us. You don’t need to tell me it’s a pity we’ve lost the Avenger.’

  He had changed course again. Harry, wrenching his gaze from the Haven, said breathlessly, ‘We could jump.’

  Around us the sea stretched, blue and empty. ‘We could,’ said Johnson. ‘Sharks permitting. But I don’t think we should get very far. And the explosion would still take place very close to us.’

  Spry came up quickly from below and said, ‘I can’t see anything, sir. Shall I send an SOS on the radio telephone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson. He began to say something else and broke off suddenly. I realized the engine had altered in tone. Spry stopped dead.

  ‘Well?’ said Harry.

  The engine hesitated.

  ‘Intermittently well,’ Johnson said. It was time to change course. He turned the wheel steadily. The even tone of the engine changed, broke off, and resumed instantly again. Harry said, ‘My God, is the tub breaking down?’

  The engine stopped. ‘The tub has broken down,’ Johnson said. His eyes on Spry, he had a hand on the starter. The engine coughed and was silent again. Spry disappeared suddenly below. We heard the hatch open which gave access to the engine under the floorboards. Dolly pitched in the silence, the advancing waves slapping her bows with a cluck. ‘All right. Let’s sail,’ Johnson said curtly. ‘Mainsail with me, Trotter. Harry, mizzen. Beltanno. take the wheel and bring her into the wind when I tell you. Spry!’

  ‘I heard you. You’ll want the spinnaker,” said Spry from the ladder. ‘The fuel pump’s choked. Sugar, I think, in the tank.’

  Sabotage, as they say. I didn’t even take it in. The wheel was thrust in my hands and obeying the ceaseless stream of Johnson’s instructions, I brought Dolly round into the wind. Into the wind, stationary, and full in the path of that white, on-rushing arsenal.

  It had to be done, to allow the sails to break out. And the sails were our only means now of escaping; those square yards of canvas Spry and Trotter and Harry were hauling up by main force while we rocked there in silence.

  They worked as fast as they could. The heavy blocks rattled. I could hear the men’s breathing as their arms pulled in rhythm, their throats exposed to the sun and then masked by the lifting dark of the canvas. Johnson was everywhere, issuing orders, guiding, pulling. belaying. Watching the wind; the spinnaker bent on the fore- deck with Spry kneeling beside it; the Haven rushing towards us.

  I watched the Haven as well. I could see her quite plainly. I could see her windshield and the neat, taped tarpaulin. I could see the empty seat and the empty wheel, turning a little, delicately, to left or to right, correcting her rudder, keeping a straight course
towards us as she crossed the spent white expanse of our wake.

  She was as near as that, and my hands were wet on my own steering-wheel when Johnson said, ‘Right. Beltanno. Ready to gybe . . ‘and I turned the wheel as the main topping lift was belayed and the mainsheet freed and held at the winch.

  The mizzen slid up and pulled taut and. as Dolly swung round, the sails both bellied full, boomed out to catch the following wind. Then with a great huff of sound forward the spinnaker filled, a shining and fragile balloon, lifting the boat from under our feet with its pull, and Johnson vaulted down and took the wheel from me, his eyes on the sails. ‘Farther out, Spry . . What about this one? No. Clew up and leave it. A point or two for the mizzen . . That’s it. Now . . .?’

  Now we were sailing. I had never travelled as fast as this on a yacht under canvas. The seas hissed beneath us: the sun, the shadow, the whirling draught of the sails made the escape a live thing: as personal as flight on the back of a horse. Johnson turned, one hand on the wheel and the other on the brown varnished coaming, and stood without moving, his eyes on the Haven behind.

  We all stood. Through the glass you could see a graze on the Haven’s white paintwork where she had been brought too fast one day into the jetty, and the black lettering on either side of her bows, where her name started and ended. She hit our fresh wake and jolted, and the wheel moved itself crossly, correcting. But she was no longer devouring the distance between us.

  Spry said. ‘You’ve done it, sir. We’ll hold her for a little.”

  ‘Christ! I hope so,’ said Trotter. The brown of his face glowed like beechwood under a running varnish of sweat: sweat had chequered Harry’s smart coloured beach shirt with great patches of grey. Johnson’s hair was merely wet at the edges. He didn’t say anything. He looked at Spry, and Spry vanished below, his lips pressed together.

  To try and restart the engine. Because if Haven’s engine was faster than Dolly’s then it was certainly faster than Dolly’s top sailing speed under canvas. ‘We’ll hold her for a little,’ was all Spry said.