To the south was only blackness and wind. The Glycera, moving at twenty knots, was making for the Gulf of Kotor less than two hours away: sheltered waters where all the precious and pampered guests of Ingmar Warr Beckenstaff could dine and dance and listen to cabaret, could get drunk and fall in love and sleep with one another, could make deals and gamble and make and lose interesting social contacts, and face, and fortune. Could arrange, while doing so, for other people to hold a young baby to ransom, to cover the fact that my father was about to be blackmailed. And that I was going to be forced to decode for some murdering bastards a photographed document with the preposterous name of the Malted Milk Folio.
Denny Donovan said, ‘They’ve got some great date palms. I once grew a date palm in a plant pot. You know the cute thing about date palms?’
‘The boys need the girls,’ I said. ‘It’s a neat idea, and I bet it catches on. Where’s the second anchor?’
‘There, Miss,’ said Lenny Milligan. ‘Everything in order for a quiet night. There’s whisky in the cupboard, sir, and if you want me, I’ll be in the cockpit or else the fo’c’sle.’ A smell of orange blossom poured into the boat and out again as we went below, followed by another spatter of rain, and all the rigging shook. Nodding, Dolly began a fresh meandering swing round her anchor.
Ben was asleep. I sat down again in Johnson’s comfortable saloon and watched Donovan root for a pack of cards and the whisky bottles. ‘Or,’ he said turning round, ‘you might prefer the vintage champagne. What do you suppose they’re doing on the Glycera now?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Pickin’ and strummin’ and clappin’ and stompin’. And hunting out their stick-on seasick pills, if they’re watching the barometer.’ ‘I ain’t afraid to say when I’m jealous,’ said Donovan equably. He handed me a large whisky and began dealing out cards. ‘I tell ya. I wouldn’t mind waking up tomorrow morning with a hangover and a pair of Schlumberger cufflinks. You know who’s doing the cabaret?’
‘I don’t suppose it’s the Moofy Puppets,’ I said. ‘Who would you like to be sitting next to if you weren’t playing gin rummy with me?’
‘Any broad on that boat with an average unearned annual income of over three hundred thousand dollars who can’t play gin rummy,’ said Donovan in an offended voice. ‘Hell, how much a point did I say we were playing for?’
‘I’ve got it all noted down here,’ I said. ‘You owe me five dollars. My deal.’
I’d milked him of seventeen dollars fifty when the bleep of Johnson’s special radar could be heard changing in tone and the cockpit door opened to display Milligan’s hand with a liquid rub-across message pad in it. The writing said, ‘Launch coming towards us from the harbour.’ I said, ‘What about another whisky?’ to Donovan.
He had an excuse, then, to be on his feet and glancing out of the porthole. A moment later he didn’t need an excuse, because the sound of several voices hailing the Dolly came quite clearly over the hum and twang and slosh of the wind and the water. Donovan said, ‘Anyone know twelve boys and girls in a big yellow launch out of Dubrovnik? They’re all making this way and yelling fit to bust. Joanna?’
I went and stood beside him. The rain had stopped and the wind risen a little. It looked, out there, a good bit colder. The launch’s own light and the glow from the Dolly lit the distant faces, and the white bow-water shot into the darkness. ‘Wait a minute. That’s the doctor I met at the Radoslav Clinic. Lazar Dogíc,’ I said. ‘Good lord. He asked me to go to his birthday party. It looks as if he’s come to collect me.’
It was Lazar Dogíc: no longer in the white jacket in which he had given Beverley Eisenkopp her injection, or the polo neck in which he had taken plum brandy in the City Café with Johnson and the rest of us. Instead he looked extremely handsome, not to say romantic in a loose white belted tunic with embroidered collar and cuffs and enormous wind-bellied sleeves, each of which was wrapped round a shrieking pinafored girl with the giggles. The water, cut up by the wind, was making the launch pitch and shudder and the rest of his friends, squeezed in behind, were also squealing. As I made for the deck, Donovan following, I could hear Lenny yelling at them to cut down the throttle.
His voice, caught by the wind, had no chance of reaching them, and in any case I much doubted if there was a man there sober enough to obey. The launch, its engine roaring, continued to come straight towards us, while Donovan semaphored with his long arms and Lenny Milligan, with the resignation of long years in Saturday anchorages, ran and threw over fenders, and I stood at the rails and used wildly, over and over, the universal cross and swing of the arms that means No dice: skip it.
They saw me all right. I could hear the groans over the water: sorrow blending into resistance merging into persuasion: all without the slightest slackening of speed. I thought they were going to ram us full astern; but at the last moment someone sobered, or someone lost their nerve. There was a sharp blow aft, followed by an alteration in the note of the launch’s engine. Then the launch bounced past our port quarter, banged Lenny’s fenders, headed out and then shot erratically back, to be met by the ends of two boathooks and Lenny Milligan’s mahogany face.
Hungarian might be the best language for swearing in, but Johnson’s skipper was making a brave try with English. Faced with two angry men and a demonstration of unmistakable abuse, the shouts of the birthday party diminished. The engine cut down to a purr and the launch rocked, idling just within the range of Dolly’s lights while Dr Dogíc, carefully disentangling himself from each of the girls, climbed up on a thwart and addressed us.
‘Miss Joanna! We invite you and your friends to my Saint’s Day. You are in Yugoslavia, and we do not think it polite to refuse. For any damage to Mr Johnson’s beautiful ship, of course we shall pay.’ He then ruined the whole effect by breaking down into giggles: there was a chorus of remarks and a shout of laughter from behind him and the boat lurched, throwing him into a number of eager laps. Lenny said, ‘They’re going to have that bloody launch over. Look at that.’
What he was looking at were the two broad patches of peeled paint and bruised wood in the starboard bow of the speedboat where she had hit the Dolly. I just had time to wonder how serious the damage was and what harm the Dolly had suffered when the launch rocked still further under the shrieking, giggling crowd and dipping, must have shipped water.
Or it might have been a leak. It was enough, at any rate, to induce one of the birthday party to shriek, hanging over the side, that the launch was stoved in and sinking. And for the rest of the birthday party to crush over to see, and by tilting the boat, to propel two of their number with a splash and a shriek into the dark Adriatic.
You could have heard the screaming this time in Split. Man overboard. Nothing more urgent; no greater priority; no emergency, save only fire, more arresting in its demand for quick action.
Don’t trust the doctor.
Perhaps not, but that boatload of drunken youngsters couldn’t all be his accomplices.
Don’t trust the doctor.
Lenny and Donovan were throwing lifebelts. The launch had righted. If they kept their heads, the swimmers would be picked up in five minutes. No one had asked to come aboard. So what was the point of the exercise?
No one was looking at me. Retreating softly, I sat on the coach roof. Beside me, upturned, was Johnson’s old dinghy, offering cover and shade. Drawing up my legs I lay flat on the roof and then very quietly slid forward, with the bulk of the rowing boat between me and everyone else. To my left was the dark open sea and the shining side deck of the Dolly, lit by the uncurtained windows of the saloon. And as I looked, across the nearest yellow lit square slid first one dark shadow, then a second.
We had visitors. Don’t trust the doctor indeed. We should have no fear of the launch. The launch was merely a diversion. While all our attention was to the port, the starboard side had acquired a neat rope ladder and a lashing, to which was attached, floating quietly below, a small and powerful speedboat with just enough room, one
would judge, for four men, and a girl and a baby.
The second anchor was just where Lenny had placed it, but it seemed a pity to alarm anyone unnecessarily, and the rope ladder was nicely placed out of sight of the windows. I took off my shoes and slipped down it into the speedboat and with some regret, opened the sea cock. Then I came up and untied its painter. After that, keeping well clear of the windows, I put my shoes on and returned to my colleagues.
The two swimmers had been fished up and there was a short argument going on about whether or not they could come aboard to dry themselves. Noticeably, when Lenny refused, no effort was made to pursue the point. I remember remonstrating with him for the sake of appearances and because suddenly it seemed ridiculous that one couldn’t bring two soaked and shivering people into the warmth and comfort of Dolly.
But that would ruin the plan. And on the success of the plan depended much more than the comfort of two over-hilarious party-goers. I got Lenny’s message pad and wrote on it ‘Visitors below. Sunk their boat’; showed it to both men and then obliterated it.
In between we all went on calling and gesticulating. The launch came up near for the last time and slung aboard our lifebelts, bumping the stern again as she did so. Then, like a guilty child, she scuttled off to calls of ‘Oprostite!’ and we could see the glint of the bottle repassing. Before they got half-way to the harbour they were all singing. A Eurovision song I had seen called ‘Look Woot You Dun’, to be accurate.
Donovan said, ‘The rain’s coming on again. Who’s for a last drink? Come on, Lenny: you deserve one. You can inspect the damage later.’
‘Well sir, thank you sir. I wouldn’t say no,’ Lenny said.
‘Although I must go round with a lamp right after. She’s not taking water but she had a couple of nasty shunts. You’d think they’d never been in a bloody boat before, begging your pardon.’
‘They were tight,’ I said. I led the way down to the cockpit. It was empty. ‘And I can’t help feeling it’s all my fault. What on earth will Johnson say?’
I opened the saloon door and went down the steps. It was empty, too.
‘I can’t imagine,’ Lenny said. ‘But we’ve had worse before. She’s not a pretty lady just for show, is the Dolly. She can take knocks if she has to.’ He shut the door on the wind and the rain, and came in doffing his cap, while Donovan opened the door of Johnson’s bar and began taking out glasses. The gin rummy cards lay on the table where we’d left them, with my winnings.
The owners of the speedboat were almost as well-rehearsed as we were. Two of them must have been in the master stateroom and two in the forward passage between Donovan’s room and the galley. Donovan had just removed the whisky when both doors to the saloon quietly opened.
Framed in each were two masked men, with cocked guns.
I screamed. In the forward stateroom Benedict suddenly wailed. One of the two men between his door and mine began speaking in distorted English, as if reciting by rote. ‘Put your hands up and stand still. We are taking the baby to ransom. The girl comes also to care for him. We wish no harm, only money.’ His mask, like that of the others, was only a black nylon stocking, inside which one could make nothing of his squeezed and distorted features.
‘What is this? How the hell did you come on board?’ said Donovan loudly, and without pausing, made a lunge for his jacket pocket.
They didn’t shoot him. The leader just swung his gun and clipped the side of his head; and despite his nice thick hair, which must have cushioned the blow quite a bit, Donovan went staggering into the mast and subsided with a crash on the saloon floor where someone, kneeling, began to tie his hands and feet together with great professionalism. ‘Anyone else,’ said the leader, ‘want to try anything?’
‘The child’s too young,’ I said. ‘You won’t get your money. I can’t look after a baby as young as this away from all the things he’s used to. You can’t expect me to.’
No one answered me. One of the two men from the stateroom had put a gun in Lenny’s back, and the other was preparing to tie him up also. They were all big men, and dressed alike in dark sweaters and trousers, with heavy jackets and sneakers. They smelt foreign and reminded me of none of the men we had met so far in the kidnap game: I thought it a pretty safe guess that they were all natives. Except perhaps the leader, the only one who had spoken, whose English was good, although stilted.
I said again, ‘You can’t take him. He’s too young. He can’t stand it.’
The mask moved to some change of expression. ‘Why,’ said the leader, ‘we’ve been waiting for him to grow. Pack. Take what food and bottles you have. Trifun will help you. The child will not starve. Unless no one will pay for him.’
I packed. Trifun helped me by standing masked at the door, playing with his revolver. I was still there when a spate of low, angry voices on deck told that someone was receiving, with disbelief, the tale of the vanished speedboat.
A moment later, the leader came into the cabin. ‘You. Where is the speed launch this yacht usually carries?’
My hands were shaking and I didn’t bother to hide it. I said, ‘In the boatyard somewhere, I think. There was something wrong with it.’
‘Then there is an outboard motor?’ said the mask.
I straightened again from my packing. ‘I don’t know. Ask Mr Milligan.’
He walked away without answering, and when I struggled out shortly with my cases, I saw the reason. Both Johnson’s skipper and Donovan had been manhandled up from the floor and each was now lying apparently sleeping on opposite benches. On the table between them was a syringe.
I dropped the cases and said, ‘What have you done to them?’
In the cabin behind me Benedict, awakened again, started crying. The mask tilted, listening. The voice behind it, irritated, said, ‘They will sleep for twelve hours, that is all.’
Somewhere on deck a voice shouted, ‘Zorzi?’ and added a number of words in Serbo-Croat which Donovan, if conscious, could no doubt have translated with ease.
The leader, it appeared, was Zorzi. He shouted something back, and then turned again to me. ‘Take the child into the big cabin. Mihovil will be with you, with his gun. We sail.’
The mask told me nothing. ‘Where?’ I said. And when he didn’t answer, ‘But the baby -’
He cut me off. ‘The baby is nothing. You know it.’
He turned away, leaving me standing. The baby is nothing. Vindication at last, after all these ambiguous weeks, of what the Department had said, and my father, and Johnson. The baby is nothing. It is you, Joanna, they are after.
All that Johnson had planned was coming to pass. With no boat, they were trapped on the yacht. To go anywhere, they must use Dolly, conspicuous Dolly with all her cunning microphones. Except that these four men didn’t look much like seamen. And if they were not, they must be at least as anxious as I was. For Lenny and Donovan, who might have sailed Dolly, had been stupidly put out of action.
Mihovil was the third masked kidnapper, and one of the obvious land-lubbers. While the other three tramped back and forth over our heads Mihovil sat with his gun in my back in the master bedroom. He showed no interest when I lifted Ben up for some orange juice and no relief when the crying stopped, I finally tucked him up in his carrycot again. I didn’t say anything either because I was listening. But despite the temptation, no one tried to send for a launch through the R/T.
Radio telephone calls could be traced. Instead of a launch, Zorzi and his friends were going to have to sail fifty-four tons of gaff-rigged ketch to our destination and return before daylight. And it must be at least ten o’clock, maybe later.
Dinner on the Glycera would be over, but the night’s programme hardly begun. I wondered, if we were sailing south, how soon we would begin to bump into champagne bottles. I had another thought and turned to my taciturn friend with the gun. ‘I’ve just remembered. We were badly bumped by another boat. If your friend Zorzi is going to sail, he ought to check out the damage.’
The only answer I got was a wave of the gun and a grunted word or two in Serbo-Croat. Mihovil didn’t speak English. Then the boat suddenly drummed to the sound of the engine, followed almost at once by the grind of the anchor cable being wound up. I thought of all the receivers tuned in along the coast through which our voices were speaking, and I looked down at the sleeping face of Benedict, and I thought of my father. Then I saw the lights of the coast rocking past the porthole and knew that we were travelling south, in the wake of the Glycera, over a short, steep sea with a strengthening wind over our port quarter. We pitched suddenly and Mihovil swallowed. I raised my voice and shouted, ‘Zorzi!’
He came at once, the grotesque flattened face lodged in the doorway. I said, ‘Your friend here is going to be sick. And I need to lash the baby, too, if it’s going to be rough. Do I really have to have a gun in my back? There are four of you. And surely I can’t do much harm now we’re sailing.’
I finished up in the cockpit, with Ben lashed safely once more in our own forward stateroom. Also Petar, the fourth man, had been dispatched to look for damage with a hand torch. He returned with news of some surface splintering and little else. From the look of him, he had been in no trim for a vigorous examination, even had there been decent light, but Zorzi had a torch beam thrown into the bilges, and it was quite plain that we were tight and dry so far. The noise of the wind in the rigging jumped another tone or two, dropped and rose again and with an imprecation, Zorzi changed hands on the tiller and as I watched him, peeled off his mask. Then, leaning forward, he switched on the chart light and pulled the chart towards him.
His face, despite the stubble of beard, looked the thick, dark texture of the peasant’s but carried lines that hinted at city articulacy. An educated man, a professional perhaps, with the city man’s superficial experience of pleasure craft. He could have run a launch successfully into its landing-place, but instead he was sailing the Adriatic with Dotty, standing off from the shore to avoid the resorts with their bright, busy lighting.
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