The Golden Rendezvous

by Alistair MacLean

  The transfer of human livestock had gone even further: all of the passengers, as far as I could judge, and at least half of the Campari’s crew were already standing on the after-deck of the Ticonderoga, making no move except to brace themselves against the rolling of the ship: their stillness was encouraged by a couple of hard-faced characters in green jungle uniform, each with a machine-pistol cocked. A third gunman covered two Ticonderoga seamen who were stationed at lowered guard-rails to catch and steady men as they stepped or jumped from the after-deck of the Campari to that of the Ticonderoga, as the two ships rolled together. Two more supervised Ticonderoga crew members fitting slings to the crates still to be transferred. From where I lay I could see four other armed men—there were probably many more—patrolling the decks of the Ticonderoga and four others on the after-deck of the Campari. Despite the fact that most of them were dressed in a quasi-uniform of jungle-green, they didn’t look like soldiers to me: they just looked like what they were, hardened criminals with guns in their hands, cold-eyed men with their history written in their faces by the lines of brutality and depravity. Although he was maybe a bit short on the side of æsthetic appreciation, there was no doubt but that Carreras picked his killers well.

  The sky was low with grey tattered cloud stretching away to the grey indistinctness of a tumbled horizon, the wind, westerly now, was still strong, but the rain had almost stopped, no more than a thin cold smirr of a drizzle, felt rather than seen. Visibility was poor, but it would be good enough to let Carreras see that there were no other ships in the vicinity: and the radar-scope, of course, would be working all the time. But apparently the visibility hadn’t been good enough to let Carreras see the three ropes still attached to the base of the guard-rail stanchion on the port side. From where I lay I could see them clearly. To me they looked about the size of the cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge. I hastily averted my eyes.

  But Carreras, I could now see, had no time to look around him anyway. He himself had taken personal charge of the trans-shipment of crates, hurrying on both his own men and the crew of the Ticonderoga, shouting at them, encouraging them, driving them on with an unflagging unrelenting energy and urgency which seemed strangely at variance with his normally calm, dispassionate bearing. He would, of course, be understandably anxious to have the transfer completed before any curious third ship might heave in sight over the horizon, but even so … And then I knew what accounted for all the nearly desperate haste: I looked at my watch.

  It was already ten minutes past six. Ten past six! From what I’d gathered of Carreras’s proposed schedule for the transfer and from the lack of light in the sky I’d have put the time at no more than half past five. I checked again, but no mistake. Six-ten. Carreras would want to be over the horizon when the Twister went up—he would be safe enough from blast and radio-active fall-out but heaven alone knew what kind of tidal wave would be pushed up by the explosion of such an underwater nuclear device—and the Twister was due to go up in fifty minutes. His haste was understandable. I wondered what had held him up. Perhaps the late arrival of the Ticonderoga or the lapse of a longer period of time than he had expected in luring it alongside. Not that it mattered now.

  A signal from Carreras and it was time for the stretcher cases to be transferred. I was the first to go. I didn’t much fancy the prospect of the brief trip, I’d just be a reddish stain spread over a couple of hundred square feet of metal if one of the bearers slipped as the two big ships rolled together, but the nimble-footed seamen probably had the same thought in mind for themselves, for they made no mistake. A minute later and both other stretchers had been brought across.

  We were set down near the for’ard break of the after-deck, beside our passengers and crew. In a group slightly to one side, with a guard all to themselves, stood a few officers and maybe a dozen men of the Ticonderoga’s crew. One of them, a tall lean angry-eyed man in his early fifties with the four gold rings of a captain on his sleeves and carrying a telegraph form in his hand was talking to McIlroy, our chief engineer, and Cummings. McIlroy, ignoring the sudden lift of the guard’s gun, brought him across to where we’d been set down.

  “Thank God you all survived,” McIlroy said quietly. “Last time I saw you three, I wouldn’t have given a bent penny for any of your chances. This is Captain Brace of the Ticonderoga. Captain Brace, Captain Bullen, Chief Officer Carter.”

  “Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,” Bullen whispered huskily. “But not in those damnable circumstances.” No question about it, the old man was on the way to recovery. “We’ll leave Mr. Carter out of it, Mr. McIlroy. I intend to prefer charges against him for giving undue and unwarranted aid to that damned monster Carreras.” Considering I’d saved his life by refusing to let Doc Marston operate on him, I did think he might have shown a little more gratitude.

  “Johnny Carter?” McIlroy looked his open disbelief. “It’s impossible!”

  “You’ll have your proof,” Bullen said grimly. He looked up at Captain Brace. “Knowing that you knew what cargo you were carrying, I should have expected you to make a run for it when intercepted, naval guns or no naval guns. But you didn’t, did you? You answered an SOS, isn’t that it? Distress rockets, claims that plates had been sprung in the hurricane, sinking, come and take us off? Right, Captain?”

  “I could have outrun or out-manoeuvred him,” Brace said tightly. Then, in sudden curiosity: “How did you know that?”

  “Because I heard our first mate here advising him that that was the best way to do it. Part of your answer already, eh, McIlroy.” He looked at me without admiration, then back at McIlroy. “Have a couple of men move me nearer that bulkhead. I don’t feel too comfortable here.”

  I gave him an injured glance but it bounced right off him. His stretcher was shifted and I was left more or less alone in front of the group. I lay there for about three minutes watching the cargo transfer. A crate a minute, and this despite the fact that the manilla holding the after-ends of the two vessels together snapped and had to be replaced. Ten minutes at the most and he should be all through.

  A hand touched my shoulder and I looked round. Julius Beresford was squatting by my side.

  “Never thought I’d see you again, Mr. Carter,” he said candidly. “How do you feel?”

  “Better than I look,” I said untruthfully.

  “And why left alone here?” he asked curiously.

  “This,” I explained, “is what is known as being sent to Coventry. Captain Bullen is convinced that I gave unwarranted help or aid or some such legal phrase, to Carreras. He’s not pleased with me.”

  “Rubbish!” he snorted.

  “He heard me doing it.”

  “Don’t care what he heard,” Beresford said flatly. “Whatever he heard he didn’t hear what he thought he did. I make as many mistakes as the next man, maybe more than most, but I never make a mistake about men. … Which reminds me, my boy, which reminds me, I can’t tell you how pleased I am—and how delighted. Hardly the time and place for it, but nevertheless my very heartiest congratulations. My wife feels exactly the same way about it, I can assure you.”

  It was taking me all my time to pay attention to him. One of those crates was swinging dangerously in its slings, and if one of those crates dropped, fell on the deck and burst open to reveal its contents I didn’t see that there was going to be much future for any of us. It wasn’t a thought I liked to dwell on, It would be better to turn my mind to something else, like concentrating on what Julius Beresford was saying.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said.

  “The job at my Scottish oil-port.” He was half impatient, half smiling. “You know. Delighted that you are going to accept. But not half as delighted as we are about you and Susan. All her life she’s been pursued, as you can guess, by hordes of gold-digging dead-beats, but I always told her that when the day came that she met a man who didn’t give a damn for her money, even though he was a hobo, I wouldn’t stand in her way. Well, she’s found him. An
d you’re no hobo.”

  “The oil-port? Susan—and me?” I blinked at him. “Look, sir——”

  “I might have known it, I might have known it!” The laugh was pretty close to a guffaw. “That’s my daughter. Never even got around to telling you yet. Wait till my wife hears this!”

  “When did she tell you?” I asked politely. When I’d last seen her about two-fifteen that morning I would have thought it the last thing in her mind.

  “Yesterday afternoon.” That was even before she had made the job proposal to me. “But she’ll get around to it, my boy, she’ll get around to it.”

  “I won’t get around to it!” I didn’t know how long she had been standing there, but she was there now, a stormy voice to match stormy eyes. “I’ll never get around to it. I must have been mad, I’m ashamed of myself for even thinking of it, I heard him, Daddy. I was there last night with the others in the sick-bay when he was telling Carreras that the best way of stopping the Ticonderoga was——”

  A long piercing blast on a whistle brought the tale of Carter’s cowardice to a merciful end. Immediately green-shirted armed men began to appear from other parts of the Ticonderoga, from the bridge and engine-room where they had been on guard during the trans-shipment, which was now finished except for one last crate. Two of the men with guns, I noticed, were dressed in blue Merchant Navy uniforms: those would be the radio officers Carreras had introduced aboard the Ticonderoga. I looked at my watch. Six twenty-five. Carreras was cutting it fine enough.

  And now Carreras himself had jumped across to the after-deck of the Ticonderoga. He said something to Captain Brace, I couldn’t hear what it was, but I could see Brace, his face hard and grim, nodding reluctantly. Carreras arranging for the transfer of the coffins. On his way back to the rail he stopped beside me.

  “You see that Miguel Carreras keeps his word. Everybody safely transferred.” He glanced at his watch. “I still need a lieutenant.”

  “Goodbye, Carreras.”

  He nodded, turned on his heel and left as his men brought the coffins on to the after-deck of the Ticonderoga. They handled them very reverently indeed, with a tender delicacy that showed they were only too aware of the contents. The coffins were not immediately recognisable as such: in the final gesture of the consummate actor paying the minutest attention to the last detail in his role, he had draped them with three Stars and Stripes. Knowing Carreras, I was pretty sure he’d brought them all the way from the Caribbean.

  Captain Brace stooped, lifted a corner of the flag on the coffin nearest him and looked down at the brass plaque with the name of Senator Hoskins on it. I heard a quick in-drawing of breath, saw that Susan Beresford, hand to her parted lips, was staring down wide-eyed at it too, remembered that she must still be under the impression that the Twister was inside, reached out and grabbed her ankle. I grabbed it hard.

  “Be quiet!” I muttered fiercely. “For heaven’s sake shut up!”

  She heard me. She kept quiet. Her old man heard me, but he kept quiet also, which must have taken quite a bit of doing on his part when he saw me with my hand round his daughter’s ankle. But the ability to keep expressions and emotions buttoned up must be among the most elementary training for an aspiring multimillionaire.

  The last of Carreras’s men was gone. Carreras with them. He didn’t waste any time wishing us “Bon voyage” or anything of the kind, he just ordered ropes cast off and disappeared at speed for the bridge. A minute later the Campari was under way and her after-deck haphazardly packed with crates, was slewing round and heading away towards the east.

  “Well,” Bullen said into the heavy silence. “There he goes, the murderer. With my ship, damn his soul!”

  “He won’t have it for long,” I said. “Not even for half an hour. Captain Brace, I advise you——”

  “We’ll dispense with your advice, Mister.” Captain Bullen’s voice was a series of rat-traps snapping shut, the blue eyes very frosty indeed.

  “This is urgent, sir. It’s imperative that Captain Brace——”

  “I gave you a direct order, Mr. Carter. You will obey——”

  “Will you please be quiet, Captain Bullen?” Respectful exasperation, but more exasperation than respect.

  “I think you’d better be listening to him, sir,” the bo’sun put in, gravely unhappy. “Mr. Carter was not idle last night, unless I’m much mistaken.”

  “Thanks, Bo’sun.” I turned to Captain Brace again. “Phone the officer of the watch. Due west 180 degrees from the Campari and full speed. No, emergency power. Now, Captain Brace.”

  The urgency in my voice got through. For a person who had just lost 150 million dollars in gold Brace reacted surprisingly quickly and well to the man who had caused him to lose it. He gave a few quick words of instruction to a junior officer, then turned a coldly speculative gaze on me.

  “Your reasons, sir?”

  “In number four hold of the Campari Carreras is carrying an armed atomic bomb with the time fuse running out. The Twister, the new missile stolen from the Americans a week or so ago.” A glance round the strained incredulous faces of the listeners showed that they knew what I was talking about all right; it showed equally clearly that they couldn’t believe it. “The Twister——”

  “Atomic bomb?” Brace’s voice was harsh and too loud. “What damned rubbish——”

  “Will you listen? Miss Beresford, am I telling the truth?”

  “You’re telling the truth.” Her voice was unsteady, her green eyes jumpy and still on that coffin. “I saw it, Captain. But——”

  “So,” I said. “The bomb. Armed. Due to go off in”—I glanced at my watch—“less than twenty-five minutes. Carreras knows it’s due to go off then. That’s why he’s in such a tearing hurry to get away: he imagines the Twister is aboard here. And that’s why I’m in such a tearing great hurry to go in the opposite direction: I know it’s not.”

  “But it is here,” Susan said violently. “It is, you know it is! That coffin! There!”

  “You’re wrong, Miss Beresford.” The Ticonderoga was picking up speed now, the rumbling thrust of her propeller shaft vibrating through the deck-plates. I wouldn’t have put it past Carreras to have had his glasses trained on our after-deck as long as he possibly could, so I lay quietly there where I was for the next ten or fifteen seconds while about forty pairs of frankly terrified eyes stared at the flag-shrouded coffins. Then the poop of the Ticonderoga had swung round to the east, the Campari was blocked from sight and I was out of my blankets, ripping off the outside bandages and splints and fishing for the concealed screwdriver before getting stiffly to my feet. The effect upon the passengers and crew, who had believed implicitly that Chief Officer Carter had a compound fracture of the thigh, was startling, to say the least. But I had no time to consider effects. I hobbled to the nearest coffin and pulled the flag clear.

  “Mr. Carter.” Captain Brace was by my side. “What on earth are you doing? Criminal though Carreras may be, he told me Senator Hoskins——”

  “Ha!” I said. With the handle of the screwdriver I rapped out three sharp double-knocks on the lid of the coffin: three knocks came in reply. I glanced round the ever-closing ring of watchers: a cameraman should have been there, recording those expressions for posterity.

  “Remarkable recuperative powers, those American senators,” I said to Captain Brace. “You just can’t keep them down. You’ll see.”

  I had the lid off that coffin in two minutes flat: in coffin-lid removing, as in everything else, practice makes perfect.

  Dr. Slingsby Caroline was as pale as any corpse I’d ever seen. He looked as if he had been frightened to death. I didn’t blame him: there must be lots of harrowing experiences calculated to drive a man around the bend, but I think being screwed down in a coffin for about five hours must beat the lot. Dr. Caroline wasn’t yet round the bend, but he’d been approaching it pretty fast, with the throttle wide open, by the time I got to him. He was shaking like a broken bed-spring, h
is eyes were wide with fear and he could hardly speak: that knock of mine must have been the sweetest music he’d ever heard.

  I left the ministrations to other hands and headed for the next coffin. The lid on this one was either pretty stiff or I was pretty weak, and I wasn’t making much progress when a burly seaman from the Ticonderoga’s crew took the driver from my hand. I wasn’t sorry to let it go. I looked at my watch. Seventeen minutes to seven.

  “And this time, Mr. Carter?” It was Captain Brace once more at my elbow, a man whose expression clearly showed that his mind had given up trying to cope. It was understandable enough.

  “Conventional explosive with a time-setting. I think it’s meant to blow up the Twister in sympathetic detonation if the Twister’s own time mechanism doesn’t work. Frankly, I don’t know. The thing is that even this could sink the Ticonderoga.”

  “Couldn’t we—Couldn’t we just heave it over the side?” he asked nervously.

  “Not safe, sir. About due to go off and the jar of its hitting the water might be enough to trigger off the clock. It would blow a hole the size of a barn through the side of your ship. … You might get someone to unscrew the third lid, too.”

  I looked at my watch again. Fifteen minutes to seven. The Campari was already hardly more than a dark smudge far down on the lightening horizon to the east, six, perhaps seven miles away. A fair distance off: but not far enough.

  The lid was clear of the second coffin. I pulled back the covering blankets, located the primer and the two slender leads of the inset detonator, and gingerly sliced through these, one at a time, with a knife. Just to be on the safe side I threw detonator and primer over the side. Two minutes later I’d rendered the time-bomb in the third coffin equally harmless. I looked round the after-deck, if those people had any sense, the place should have been deserted by now. No one seemed to have stirred an inch.