The Golden Rendezvous

by Alistair MacLean

  “And Mr. Carter?” Carreras queried.

  “Don’t touch my leg,” I yelled. “Not until I get an anæsthetic.”

  “He’s probably right,” Marston murmured. He peered closely. “Not much blood now, you’ve been lucky, John: if the main artery had been severed—well, you’d have been gone.” He looked at Carreras, his face doubtful. “He could be moved. I think, but with a fractured thigh-bone the pain will be excruciating.”

  “Mr. Carter is very tough,” Carreras said unsympathetically. It wasn’t his thigh-bone, he’d been a Good Samaritan for a whole minute now and the strain had proved too much for him. “Mr. Carter will survive.”

  VII.

  Wednesday 8.30 p.m.—Thursday 10.30 a.m

  I survived all right but no credit for that was due to the handling I received on the way down to the sick-bay. The sick-bay was on the port side, two decks below the drawing-room: on the second companionway one of the men who were carrying me slipped and fell and I was aware of nothing more until I woke up in bed.

  Like every other compartment on the Campari, the sickbay was fitted out regardless of cost. A large room, twenty feet by sixteen, it had the usual wall-to-wall Persian carpeting and pastel walls decorated with murals depicting water-skiing, skin-diving, swimming and other such sporting activities symbolic of fitness and good health craftily designed to encourage to get on their feet and out of there with all possible speed any patient unfortunate enough to be confined to any of the three beds. The beds themselves, with their heads close up to the windows in the ship’s side, struck a jarring note: they were just plain standard iron hospital beds, the only concession to taste being that they were painted in the same pastel tints as the bulkheads. In the far corner of the room remote from the door was old Marston’s consulting desk, with a couple of chairs: farther along the inner bulkhead, nearer the door, was a flat-topped couch that could be raised for examinations, or, if need be, the carrying out of minor operations. Between couch and desk, a door led to two smaller compartments, a dispensary and a dentist’s surgery. I knew that because I had recently spent three-quarters of an hour in that dentist’s chair, with Marston attending to a broken tooth: the memory of the experience would stay with me the rest of my days.

  The three beds were occupied. Captain Bullen was in the one nearest the door, the bo’sun next to him and myself in the corner, opposite Marston’s desk, all of us lying on rubber sheets placed over the beds. Marston was bent over the middle bed, examining the bo’sun’s knee: beside him, holding a metal tray with bowls, sponges, instruments and bottles containing some unidentifiable liquids, was Susan Beresford. She looked very pale. I wondered vaguely what she was doing here. Seated on the couch was a young man, badly in need of a shave: he was wearing green trousers, a green sweat-stained epauletted shirt and green beret. He had his eyes half closed against the smoke spiralling up from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and carried an automatic carbine in his hand. I wondered how many men with how many automatic carbines were posted all over the Campari. Detailing a man to guard three broken-down crocks like MacDonald, Bullen and myself showed that Carreras had plenty of men to spare or was excessively cautious. Or maybe both.

  “What are you doing here, Miss Beresford?” I asked.

  She looked up, startled, and the instruments rattled metallically on the tray in her hands.

  “Oh, I am glad,” she said. She sounded almost as if she meant it. “I thought, I—how do you feel?”

  “The way I look. Why are you here?”

  “Because I needed her.” Doc Marston straightened slowly and rubbed his back. “Dealing with wounds like these—well, I must have a helper. Nurses, John, are usually young and female and there are only two on the Campari in that category. Miss Beresford and Miss Harcourt.”

  “I don’t see any signs of Miss Harcourt.” I tried to visualise the glamorous young actress in the real-life role of Florence Nightingale, but my imagination was in no shape to cope with absurdities like that. I couldn’t even see her playing it on the screen.

  “She was here,” he said curtly. “She fainted.”

  “That helps. How’s the bo’sun?”

  “I must ask you not to talk, John,” he said severely, “You’ve lost a great deal of blood and you’re very weak. Please conserve your strength.”

  “How’s the bosun?” I repeated.

  Dr. Marston sighed.

  “He’ll be all right. That is, he’s in no danger. Abnormally thick skull, I should say: that saved him. Concussion, yes but not fractured. I think. Hard to say without an X-ray. Respiration, pulse, temperature, blood pressure—none of them shows any signs pointing to extensive brain injury. It’s his leg I’m worried about.”

  “His leg?”

  “Patella. Knee-cap to you. Completely shattered, beyond repair. Tendons sliced, tibia fractured. Leg sawn in half. Must have been hit several times. The damned murderers!”

  “Amputation? You don’t think——”

  “No amputation.” He shook his head irritably. “I’ve removed all the broken pieces I can find. Bones will either have to be fused, so shortening the leg, or a metal plate. Too soon to say. But this I can say: he’ll never bend that knee again.”

  “You’re telling me he’s crippled? For life?”

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re very friendly.”

  “So he’s finished with the sea?”

  “I’m sorry,” Marston repeated. Medical incompetence apart, he was really a pretty decent old duffer. “Your turn now, John.”

  “Yes,” I wasn’t looking forward to my turn. I looked at the guard. “Hey, you! Yes, you. Where’s Carreras?”

  “Señor Carreras.” The young man dropped his cigarette on the Persian carpet and ground it out with his heel. Lord Dexter would have gone off his rocker. “It is not my business to know where Señor Carreras is.”

  That settled that. He spoke English. I couldn’t have cared less at that moment where Carreras was. Marston had his big scissors out, and was preparing to slit up my trouser leg.

  “Captain Bullen?” I asked. “What chance?”

  “I don’t know. He’s unconscious now.” He hesitated. “He was wounded twice. One bullet passed clean through below the shoulder, tearing the pectoral muscle. The other entered the right chest a little lower, breaking a rib, then must have gone through the lung near the apex. The bullet is still lodged inside the body, almost certainly in the vicinity of the shoulder-blade. I may decide to operate later to remove it.”

  “Operate.” The thought of old Marston hacking around inside an unconscious Bullen made me feel even paler than I looked. I choked down the next few words I thought of and said: “Operate? You would take the grave chance, you would be willing to risk your lifetime’s professional reputation——”

  “A man’s life is at stake, John,” he said solemnly.

  “But you might have to penetrate the chest wall. A major operation, Dr. Marston. Without assistant surgeons, without skilled nurses, without a competent anæsthetist, no X-rays, and you might be removing a bullet that’s plugging a vital gap in the lung or pleura or whatever you call it. Besides, the bullet might have been deflected anywhere.” I took a deep breath. “Dr. Marston, I cannot say how much I respect and admire you for even thinking of operating in such impossible conditions. But you will not run the risk. Doctor, as long as the captain is incapacitated I am in command of the Campari—in nominal command, anyway,” I added bitterly. “I absolutely forbid you to incur the very heavy responsibility of operating in such adverse conditions. Miss Beresford, you are a witness to that.”

  “Well, John, you may be right,” old Marston said weightily. He was suddenly looking five years younger. “You may indeed be right. But my sense of duty——”

  “It does you great credit, Doctor. But think of all those people who have been carrying a bullet about inside their chests since the First World War and still going strong.”

  “There’s that, of course,
there’s that.” I had rarely seen a man looking so relieved. “We’ll give nature a chance, hey?”

  “Captain Bullen’s as strong as a horse.” The old man had at least a fighting chance now. I felt as if I’d just saved a life. I said weakly: “You were right, Doctor. I’m afraid I have been talking too much. Could I have some water, please?”

  “Of course, my boy, of course.” He brought some, watched me drink it and said: “That feel better?”

  “Thank you.” My voice was very faint. I moved my lips several times, as if speaking, but no words came. Marston, alarmed, put his ear close to my mouth to make out what I was trying to say, and I murmured, slowly and distinctly: “My thighbone is not broken: but pretend it is.”

  He stared, eyes reflecting astonishment, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He wasn’t all that slow, the old boy. He nodded slightly and said: “Ready for me to begin?”

  He began. Susan Beresford helped him. My leg was a gory sight but looked worse than it was. One bullet had passed directly through the leg, but the other two had just torn ragged superficial gashes on the inside, and it was from those that most of the blood had come. All the while he was working, Dr. Marston kept up, for the sake of the guard, a running commentary on the extent and severity of my wounds, and if I hadn’t known he was lying fluently he would have made me feel very ill indeed. He certainly must have convinced the guard. When he’d cleaned and bound the wounds, a process I bore with stoic fortitude only because I didn’t want to start yelling in front of Susan Beresford, he fixed some splints to my leg and bound those on also. This done, he propped up my leg on a pile of pillows, went into the dispensary and reappeared with a couple of screwed pulleys, a length of wire with a heavy weight attached to the end and a leather strap. The strap he fitted to my left ankle.

  “What’s this in aid of?” I demanded.

  “I’m the medical officer, please remember,” he said curtly. His left eyelid dropped in a slow wink. “Traction, Mr. Carter. You don’t want your leg to be permanently shortened for life?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. Maybe I had been misjudging old Marston just a little. Nothing would ever make me reconsider my opinion of him as a doctor, but he was shrewd enough in other things: the first thing a man like Carreras would have asked was why a man with a broken bone in his leg was not in traction. Marston screwed the two hooks into holes in the deckhead, passed the wire through, attached the weight to one end and the strap to the other. It didn’t feel too uncomfortable. He then picked up the length of trouser leg that had been cut off, checked quickly to see if the guard was watching, splashed some water on it and then wrung it out on top of my bandages. Even to myself I had to admit that I’d seldom seen a more convincing sight, a patient more completely and thoroughly immobilised.

  He finished just in time. He and Susan Beresford were just clearing away when the door opened and Tony Carreras came in. He looked at Bullen, MacDonald and myself, slowly, consideringly—he wasn’t a man who would miss very much—then came to my bedside.

  “Good evening, Carter,” he said pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Where’s that murderous parent of yours?” I asked.

  “Murderous parent? You do my father an injustice. Asleep, at the moment, as it happens: his hand was giving him great pain after Marston had finished with it”—I wasn’t surprised at that—“so he was given a sleeping draught. The good ship Campari is all buttoned up for the night and Captain Tony Carreras in charge. You may all sleep easy. You’ll be interested to hear that we’ve just picked up Nassau on the radar-scope—port 40, or some such nautical term—so you weren’t playing any funny tricks with that course after all.”

  I grunted and turned my head away. Carreras walked across to Marston. “How are they, Doctor?”

  “How do you expect them to be after your thugs have riddled them with bullets?” Marston demanded bitterly. “Captain Bullen may live or die, I don’t know. MacDonald, the bo’sun, will live, but he’ll be a stiff-legged cripple for life. The chief officer has a compound fracture of the femur—the thigh-bone. Completely shattered. If we don’t get him to hospital in a couple of days, he also will be crippled for life: as it is, he’ll never be able to walk properly again.”

  “I am genuinely sorry,” Tony Carreras said. He actually sounded as if he meant it. “Killing and crippling good men is an unforgivable waste. Well, almost unforgivable. Some things justify it.”

  “Your humanity does you credit,” I sneered from my pillow.

  “We are humane men,” he said.

  “You’ve proved that all right.” I twisted to look at him. “But you could still show a little consideration for a very sick man.”

  “Indeed?” He was very good at lifting eyebrows.

  “Indeed. Dan’l Boone, here.” I nodded towards the sentry with the gun. “You permit your men to smoke on duty?”

  “José?” He smiled. “José is an inveterate chain-smoker. Take his cigarettes away and he’d probably go on strike. This isn’t the Grenadier Guards, you know, Carter. Why the sudden concern?”

  “You heard what Dr. Marston said. Captain Bullen. He’s in a critical condition with a hole through his lung.”

  “Ah, I think I understand. You agree, Doctor?”

  I held my breath. The chances were that the old boy haden’t even the faintest idea what we were talking about. But again I’d underrated his astuteness.

  “For a man with a ruptured lung,” he said gravely, “there can be nothing worse than a smoke-laden atmosphere.”

  “I see. José!” Carreras spoke rapidly in Spanish to the guard, who grinned amiably, got to his feet and made for the door, picking up a chair en route. The door swung to behind him.

  “No discipline,” Tony Carreras sighed. “None of the brisk sentry-go marching and counter-marching like Buckingham Palace, Mr. Carter. A chair tilted against a wall. Our Latin blood, I fear. But I warn you, none the less effective a guard for all that. I see no harm in his keeping a watch outside, apart from jumping through one of the windows into the sea below—not that you are in any condition to do that anyway—I can’t see what mischief you can get up to.” He paused, looked at me consideringly. “You are singularly incurious, Mr. Carter? Far from being in character. Makes one suspicious, you know.”

  “Curious about what?” I growled. “Nothing to be curious about. How many of those armed thugs do you have aboard the Campari?”

  “Forty. Not bad, eh? Well, thirty-eight effectives. Captain Bullen killed one and you seriously damaged the hand of another. Where did you learn to shoot like that, Carter?”

  “Luck. Cerdan recovered yet?”

  “Yes,” he said briefly. He didn’t seem to want to talk about Cerdan.

  “He killed Dexter?” I persisted.

  “No. Werner, the nurse—the one you killed tonight.” For a professed humanitarian, the death of one of his colleagues in crime left him strangely unmoved. “A steward’s uniform and a tray of food at face level. Your head steward—White—saw him twice and never suspected: not that he went within thirty feet of White. And it was just Dexter’s bad luck that he saw this steward unlocking the radio room.”

  “I suppose the same murderous devil got Brownell?”

  “And Benson. Benson caught him coming out of the radio room after disposing of Brownell, and was shot. Werner was going to dump him straight over the side, but there were people—crew—directly beneath. He dragged him across to the port side. Again crew beneath. So he emptied a life-jacket locker and put Benson inside.” Carreras grinned. “And just your bad luck that you happened to be standing right beside that locker when we sent Werner up to dispose of the body, just before midnight last night.”

  “Who dreamed up this scheme of having the fake Marconi-man in Kingston drill through from the wireless office to the cold air trunking in Cerdan’s room below and buttoning the earphones permanently into the wireless officer’s receiving circuit? Cerdan, your old man or you?”


  “My father.”

  “And the Trojan horse idea. Your father also?”

  “He is a brilliant man. Now I know why you were not curious. You knew.”

  “It wasn’t hard to guess,” I said wearily. “Not, that is, when it was too late. All our troubles really started in Carracio. And we loaded those huge crates in Carracio. Now I know why the stevedores were so terrified when one of the crates almost slipped from its slings. Now I know why your old man was so damned anxious to inspect the hold—not to pay his respects to the dead men in their coffins but to see how his men were placed for smashing their way out of the crates. And then they broke out last night and forced the battens of the hatch. How many men in a crate, Carreras?”

  “Twenty. Rather uncomfortably jammed, poor fellows. I think they had a rough twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty. Two crates. We loaded four of those. What’s in the other crates?”

  “Machinery, Mr. Carter, just machinery.”

  “One thing I am really curious about.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s behind all this murderous business? Kidnap? Ransom?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss those things with you.” He grinned. “At least, not yet. You remaining here, Miss Beresford, or do you wish me to—ah—escort you up to your parents in the drawing-room?”

  “Please leave the young lady,” Marston said. “I want her to help me keep a twenty-four hour watch on Captain Bullen. He might have a relapse at any moment.”

  “As you wish.” He bowed to Susan Beresford. “Good night all.”

  The door closed. Susan Beresford said: “So that’s how they came aboard. How in the world did you know?”

  “How in the world did I know! You didn’t think they had forty men hidden up inside the funnel, did you?” Once we knew it was Carreras and Cerdan, it was obvious. They came aboard at Carracio. So did those huge crates. Two and two, Miss Beresford’ have never failed to add up to four.” She flushed and gave me a very old-fashioned look, but I ignored it and went on: “You both see what this means, don’t you?”