When Eight Bells Toll

by Alistair MacLean

  The mist had thinned now, giving maybe a hundred yards’ visibility. I looked at the T-shaped crack of light showing where the boathouse doors didn’t quite meet each other in the middle and where the tops of the doors sagged away from the main structure.

  ‘Now it is,’ I said. I turned to Hutchinson. ‘We’ve all of a fifteen foot beam. That entrance is not more than twenty wide. There’s not a beacon or a mark on it. There’s a four knot tide running. You really think it can be done – taking her through that entrance at four or five knots, fast enough to smash open those doors, without piling ourselves up on the rocks on the way in?’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out.’ He pressed the starter button and the warm diesel caught fire at once, its underpass exhaust barely audible. He swung her round to the south on minimum revs, continued on this course for two cables, westwards for the same distance, curved round to the north, pushed the throttle wide open and lit a cigar. Tim Hutchinson preparing for action. In the flare of the match the dark face was quiet and thoughtful, no more.

  For just over a minute there was nothing to be seen, just the darkness and patches of grey mist swirling past our bows. Hutchinson was heading a few degrees west of north, making allowance for the set of the tide. All at once we could see it, slightly off the starboard bow as it had to be to correct for the tide, that big T-shaped light in the darkness, fairly jumping at us. I picked up the sub-machineguns, opened and latched back the port wheelhouse door and stood there, gun in left hand, door-jamb in right, with one foot on the outside deck and the other still in the wheel-house. Uncle Arthur, I knew, was similarly positioned on the starboard side. We were as firmly braced as it was possible to be. When the Firecrest stopped, it would stop very suddenly indeed.

  Forty yards away, Hutchinson eased the throttle and gave the wheel a touch to port. That bright ‘I was even farther round on our starboard side now, but directly in line with us and the patch of dark water to the west of the almost phosphorescently foaming whiteness that marked the point where the flood tide ripped past the outer end of the eastern breakwater. Twenty yards away he pushed the throttle open again, we were heading straight for where the unseen west breakwater must be, we were far too far over to port, it was impossible now that we could avoid smashing bow first into it, then suddenly Hutchinson had the wheel spinning to starboard, the tide pushing him the same way, and we were through and not an inch of Uncle Arthur’s precious paint-work had been removed. Hutchinson had the engine in neutral. I wondered briefly whether, if I practised for the rest of my life, I could effect a manoeuvre like that: I knew damned well that I couldn’t.

  I’d told Hutchinson that the bollards were on the starboard side of the boathouse, so that the diving-boat would be tied up on that side. He angled the boat across the tiny harbour towards the righthand crack of light, spun the wheel to port till we were angling in towards the central crack of light and put the engine full astern. It was no part of the plan to telescope the Firecrest’s bows against the wall of the boathouse and send it – and us – to the bottom.

  As an entrance it erred, if anything, on the spectacular side. The doors, instead of bursting open at their central hasps, broke off at the hinges and we carried the whole lot before us with a thunderous crash. This took a good knot off our speed. The aluminium foremast, with Uncle Arthur’s fancy telescopic aerial inside, almost tore the tabernacle clear of the deck before it sheared off, just above wheelhouse level, with a most unpleasant metallic shrieking. That took another knot off. The screw, biting deep in maximum revs astern, took off yet another knot, but we still had a fair way on when, amid a crackling, splintering of wood, partly of our planking but mainly of the doors, and the screeching of the rubber tyres on our well-fendered bows, we stopped short with a jarring shock, firmly wedged between the port quarter of the diving-boat and the port wall of the boathouse. Uncle Arthur’s feelings must have been almost as bruised and lacerated as the planking of his beloved Firecrest. Hutchinson moved the throttle to slow ahead to keep us wedged in position and switched on the five-inch searchlight, less to illuminate the already sufficiently welllit shed than to dazzle bystanders ashore. I stepped out on the deck with the machine-pistol in my hands.

  We were confronted, as the travel books put it, with a scene of bustling activity, or, more precisely, what had been a scene of bustling activity before our entrance had apparently paralysed them all in whatever positions they had been at the time. On the extreme right three faces stared at us over the edge of the hold of the diving-boat, a typical forty-five-foot M.F.V. about the same size as the Charmaine. Two men on deck were frozen in the act of lifting a box across to the hold. Another two were standing upright, one with his hands stretched above his head, waiting for another box swinging gently from a rope suspended from a loading boom. That box was the only moving thing in the boathouse. The winchman himself, who bore an uncommon resemblance to Thomas, the bogus customs officer, one lever against his chest and another held in his outstretched right hand, looked as if the lavas of Vesuvius had washed over him twenty centuries ago and left him frozen for ever. The others, backs bent, were standing on the wall at the head of the boathouse, holding a rope attached to a very large box which two frogmen were helping to lift clear of the water. When it came to hiding specie, they had one-track minds. On the extreme left stood Captain Imrie, presumably there to supervise operations, and, beside him, his patrons, Lavorski and Dollmann. This was the big day, this was the culmination of all their dreams, and they weren’t going to miss a moment of it.

  Imrie, Lavorski and Dollmann were the ones for me. I moved forward until I could see the barrel of the machine-gun and until they could also see that it was pointing at them.

  ‘Come close,’ I said. ‘Yes, you three. Captain Imrie, speak to your men. Tell them that if they move, if they try anything at all, I’ll kill all three of you. I’ve killed four of you already. If I double the number, what then? Under the new laws you get only fifteen years. For murderous vermin, that is not enough. I’d rather you died here. Do you believe me. Captain Imrie?’

  ‘I believe you.’ The guttural voice was deep and sombre. ‘You killed Quinn this afternoon.’

  ‘He deserved to die.’

  ‘He should have killed you that night on the Nantesville,’ Imrie said. ‘Then none of this would have happened.’

  ‘You will come aboard our boat one at a time,’ I said. ‘In this situation, Captain Imrie, you are without question the most dangerous man. After you, Lavorski, then –’

  ‘Please keep very still. Terribly still.’ The voice behind me was totally lacking in inflection, but the gun pressed hard against my spine carried its own message, one not easily misunderstood. ‘Good. Take a pace forward and take your right hand away from the gun.’

  I took a pace forward and removed my right hand. This left me holding the machine-pistol by the barrel.

  ‘Lay the gun on the deck.’

  It obviously wasn’t going to be much use to me as a club, so I laid it on the deck. I’d been caught like this before, once or twice, and just to show that I was a true professional I raised my hands high and turned slowly round.

  ‘Why, Charlotte Skouras!’ I said. Again I knew what to do, how to act, the correct tone for the circumvented agent, bantering but bitter. ‘Fancy meeting you here. Thank you very much my dear.’ She was still dressed in the dark sweater and slacks, only they weren’t quite as spruce as the last time I’d seen them. They were soaking wet. Her face was dead white and without expression. The brown eyes were very still. ‘And how in God’s name did you get here?’

  ‘I escaped through the bedroom window and swam out. I hid in the after cabin.’

  ‘Did you indeed? Why don’t you change out of those wet clothes?’ She ignored me. She said to Hutchinson: ‘Turn off that searchlight.’

  ‘Do as the lady says,’ I advised.

  He did as the lady said. The light went out and we were all now in full view of the men ashore. Imrie said: �
��Throw that gun over the side, Admiral.’

  ‘Do as the gentleman says,’ I advised.

  Uncle Arthur threw the gun over the side. Captain Imrie and Lavorski came walking confidently towards us. They could afford to walk confidently, the three men in the hold, the two men who had suddenly appeared from behind the diving-boat’s wheelhouse and the winch-driver – a nice round total of six – had suddenly sprouted guns. I looked over this show of armed strength and said slowly: ‘You were waiting for us.’

  ‘Certainly we were waiting for you,’ Lavorski said jovially. ‘Our dear Charlotte announced the exact time of your arrival. Haven’t you guessed that yet, Calvert?’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘Charlotte, you fool. By heavens, I believe we have been grievously guilty of over-estimating you.’

  ‘Mrs Skouras was a plant,’ I said.

  ‘A bait,’ Lavorski said cheerfully. I wasn’t fooled by his cheerfulness, he’d have gone into hysterics of laughter when I came apart on the rack. ‘Swallowed hook, line, and sinker. A bait with a highly effective if tiny transmitter and a gun in a polythene bag. We found the transmitter in your starboard engine.’ He laughed again until he seemed in danger of going into convulsions. ‘We’ve known of every move you’ve made since you left Torbay. And how do you like that, Mr Secret Agent Calvert?’

  ‘I don’t like it at all. What are you going to do with us?’

  ‘Don’t be childish. What are you going to do with us, asks he naïvely. I’m afraid you know all too well. How did you locate this place?’

  ‘I don’t talk to executioners.’

  ‘I think we’ll shoot the admiral through the foot, to begin with,’ Lavorski beamed. ‘A minute afterwards through the arm, then the thigh –’

  ‘All right. We had a radio-transmitter aboard the Nantesville.’

  ‘We know that. How did you pin-point Dubh Sgeir?’

  ‘The boat belonging to the Oxford geological expedition. It is moored fore and aft in a little natural harbour south of here. It’s well clear of any rock yet it’s badly holed. It’s impossible that it would be holed naturally where it lay. It was holed unnaturally shall we say. Any other boat you could have seen coming from a long way off, but that boat had only to move out to be in full sight of the boathouse – and the anchored diving-boat. It was very clumsy.’

  Lavorski looked at Imrie, who nodded. ‘He would notice that. I advised against it at the time. Was there more, Calvert?’

  ‘Donald MacEachern on Eilean Oran. You should have taken him, not his wife. Susan Kirkside – you shouldn’t have allowed her out and about, when did you last see a fit young twenty-one-year-old with blue shadows that size under her eyes? A fit young twenty-one-year-old with nothing in the world to worry about, that is? And you should have disguised that mark made by the tail fuselage of the Beechcraft belonging to Lord Kirkside’s elder son when you ran it over the edge of the north cliff. I saw it from the helicopter.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Lavorski asked. I nodded, and he looked again at Imrie.

  ‘I believe him,’ Imrie said. ‘No one talked. That’s all we need to know. Calvert first, Mr Lavorski?’ They were certainly a brisk and business-like outfit.

  I said quickly: ‘Two questions. The courtesy of two answers. I’m a professional. I’d like to know. I don’t know if you understand.’

  ‘And two minutes,’ Lavorski smiled. ‘Make it quick. We have business on hand.’

  ‘Where is Sir Anthony Skouras? He should be here.’

  ‘He is. He’s up in the castle with Lord Kirkside and Lord Charnley. The Shangri-la’s tied up at the west landing stage.’

  ‘Is it true that you and Dollmann engineered the whole plan, that you bribed Charnley to betray insurance secrets, that you – or Dollmann, rather – selected Captain Imrie to pick his crew of cutthroats, and that you were responsible for the capture and sinking of the ships and the subsequent salvaging of the cargoes. And, incidentally, the deaths, directly or indirectly, of our men?’

  ‘It’s late in the day to deny the obvious.’ Again Lavorski’s booming laugh. ‘We think we did rather well, eh, John?’

  ‘Very well indeed,’ Dollmann said coldly. ‘We’re wasting time.’

  I turned to Charlotte Skouras. The gun was still pointing at me. I said: ‘I have to be killed, it seems. As you will be responsible for my death, you might as well finish the job.’ I reached down, caught the hand with the gun in it and placed it against my chest, letting my own hand fall away. ‘Please do it quickly’

  There was no sound to be heard other than the soft throb of the Firecrest’s diesel. Every pair of eyes in that boatshed was on us, my back was to them all, but I knew it beyond any question. I wanted every pair of eyes in that boatshed on us. Uncle Arthur took a step inside the starboard door and said urgently: ‘Are you mad, Calvert? She’ll kill you! She’s one of them.’

  The brown eyes were stricken, there was no other expression for it, the eyes of one who knows her world is coming to an end. The finger came off the trigger, the hand opened slowly and the gun fell to the deck with a clatter that seemed to echo through the boatshed and the tunnels leading off on either side. I took her left arm and said: ‘It seems Mrs Skouras doesn’t feel quite up to it. I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to –’

  Charlotte Skouras cried out in sharp pain as her legs caught the wheelhouse sill and maybe I did shove her through that doorway with, unnecessary force, but it was too late in the day to take chances now. Hutchinson had been waiting and caught her as she fell, dropping to his knees at the same time. I went through that door after her like an international rugby three-quarter diving for the line with a dozen hands reaching out for him, but even so Uncle Arthur beat me to it. Uncle Arthur had a lively sense of self-preservation. Even as I fell, my hand reached out for the loudhailer that had been placed in position on the wheelhouse deck.

  ‘Don’t fire!’ The amplified voice boomed cavernously against the rock-faces and the wooden walls of the boatshed. ‘If you shoot, you’ll die! One shot, and you may all die. There’s a machine-gun lined up on the back of every man in this boathouse. Just turn round, very very slowly, and see for yourselves.’

  I half rose to my feet, hoisted a wary eye over the lower edge of a wheelhouse window, got the rest of the way to my feet, went outside and picked up the machine-gun on the deck.

  Picking up that machine-gun was the most superfluous and unnecessary action I had performed for many a long day. If there was one thing that boathouse was suffering from at the moment it was a plethora of machine-guns. There were twelve of them in all, shoulder-slung machine-pistols, in twelve of the most remarkably steady pairs of hands I’d ever seen. The twelve men were ranged in a rough semicircle round the inner end of the boathouse, big, quiet, purposeful-looking men dressed in woollen caps, grey-and-black camouflaged smocks and trousers and rubber boots. Their hands and faces were the colour of coal. Their eyes gleamed whitely, like performers in the Black and White Minstrel show, but with that every hint of light entertainment ended.

  ‘Lower your hands to your sides and let your guns fall.’ The order came from a figure in the middle of the group, a man indistinguishable from the others. ‘Do please be very careful. Slowly down, drop the guns, utter stillness. My men are very highly trained commandos. They have been trained to shoot on suspicion. They know only how to kill. They have not been trained to wound or cripple.’

  They believed him. I believed him. They dropped their guns and stood very still indeed.

  ‘Now clasp your hands behind your necks.’

  They did. All but one. Lavorski. He wasn’t smiling any more and his language had little to recommend it.

  That they were highly trained I could believe. No word or signal passed. The commando nearest Lavorski walked towards him on soundless soles, machine-pistol across his chest. The butt seemed to move no more than three inches. When Lavorski picked himself up the lower part of his face was covered in blo
od and I could see the hole where some teeth had been. He clasped his hands behind his neck.

  ‘Mr Calvert?’ the officer asked.

  ‘Me,’ I said.

  ‘Captain Rawley, sir. Royal Marine Commandos.’

  ‘The castle. Captain?’

  ‘In our hands.’

  ‘The Shangri-la?’

  ‘In our hands.’

  ‘The prisoners?’

  ‘Two men are on their way up, sir.’

  I said to Imrie: ‘How many guards?’

  He spat and said nothing. The commando who had dealt with Lavorski moved forward, machine-pistol high. Imrie said: ‘Two.’

  I said to Rawley: ‘Two men enough?’

  ‘I hope, sir, that the guards will not be so foolish as to offer resistance.’

  Even as he finished speaking the flat rapid-fire chatter of a submachine-gun came echoing down the long flight of stone steps. Rawley shrugged.

  They’ll never learn to be wise now. Robinson?’ This to a man with a waterproof bag over his shoulder. ‘Go up and open the cellar door. Sergeant Evans, line them up in two rows against the wall there, one standing, one sitting.’

  Sergeant Evans did. Now that there was no danger of being caught in cross-fire we landed and I introduced Uncle Arthur, full military honours and all, to Captain Rawley. Captain Rawley’s salute was something to see. Uncle Arthur beamed. Uncle Arthur took over.

  ‘Capitally done, my boy!’ he said to Rawley. ‘Capitally. There’ll be a little something for you in this New Year’s List. Ah! Here come some friends.’

  They weren’t all exactly friends, this group that appeared at the bottom of the steps. There were four tough but dispirited looking characters whom I’d never seen before, but unquestionably Imrie’s men, closely followed by Sir Anthony Skouras and Lord Charnley. They, in their turn, were closely followed by four commandos with the very steady hands that were a hallmark of Rawley’s men. Behind them came Lord Kirkside and his daughter. It was impossible to tell what the black-faced commandos were thinking, but the other eight had the same expression on their faces, dazed and utter bewilderment.