A Twist of Sand

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  Stein was smiling again. He had some good cards somewhere, and he was playing them skilfully. I bit down my anger.

  "A mental hospital?"

  "Yes, Captain, a mental hospital." He gazed at me as though I were a scientific curiosity.

  "The psychiatrist is a good friend of mine, and he finds the case of the German sailor very interesting. He has what you call a fixation about a hand. Captain Macdonald's little lucky charm triggers off the malady all over again."

  I began to sweat, even in the cold early winter night. I poured myself another Haig. Mac did the same. I didn't offer Stein one.

  "So? "I asked.

  "Ah, Captain, that is much better," smirked Stein. "You may even become so interested in my story that you will offer me a drink next time, eh?"

  "Perhaps," I said grimly.

  "So, both of us being scientists, we go into the case history of this Johann. A curious case, in fact. We find that Johann is, in fact, an orphan — his life only begins after 1944-"

  "What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

  "I will be frank," continued Stein. "Johann has no past. He was found with a tribe of Bushmen on the Khowarib, near Zessfontein, by a missionary in 1944. He was brought to Winkhoek and spent two years in hospital. They never found out who he was. But one thing is clear — he is a sailor, a U-boat man. He knows nothing of how he came to be wandering with a tribe of dirty little wild men. He lives in mortal fear of a hand."

  I thought of the victory hand painted on Trout's conning-tower. The whisky I was drinking might have been water for all the stimulus it gave me.

  "Johann improves daily, however, and he will soon be back at his old job again in Windhoek," smiled Stein. He rose as if to go. He turned back at the doorway. He was playing me as a cat does a mouse.

  "I was interested in Lieutenant Garland," he said casually. "A friend of mine in Cape Town checked on a Navy List, and I was fascinated to know that he also once commanded H.M.S. Trout, a British submarine, with a most distinguished war record under her first captain, one Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Peace."

  I had not heard my own name in years and it sent a cold shudder down my spine. So Stein was going to blackmail me with my past in order to force me to take him to the Skeleton Coast. It was impossible that he should know about Curva dos Dunas.

  Stein came a pace back into the saloon.

  "Lieutenant-Commander Peace was discharged from the Royal Navy after a court martial," said Stein in a harsh voice. "And the emblem of H.M.S. Trout was a hand painted on her conning-tower. Strange, I said to myself, a crazed U-boat sailor who sees the fear of death in a hand, and a British submarine whose victory emblem was a hand, and a South African skipper who carries a lucky charm around in his pocket in the shape of a hand."

  It was Mac who precipitated the situation. His attack on Stein was as swift, unheralded and savage as a wolf's. Like a striking mamba he was behind Stein and had grabbed a handful of loose skin under his left ear and with his right — I never saw the movement, it was so swift, but only heard the tinkle of the broken bottle — thrust the neck of the broken Haig bottle into the other side of his neck.

  Involuntarily I struck at Mac's fearful weapon, even as it broke the skin. I saw the blood run, but it was not the death-spurt of an artery. Where Mac had learned that filthy trick, I do not know. As I grabbed his hand, Stein writhed loose and slipped from Mac's grasp.

  The Luger never even trembled in his hand as he stood back against the padded locker by the porthole. He smiled mirthlessly.

  "Two very desperate and dangerous men," he said, eyeing Mac and myself with respect almost. "I watched Captain… ah… Macdonald twist Hendriks's arm of! with the dirtiest hold I have ever seen. I myself nearly fall victim to an even worse trick from his engineer. You gentlemen must have been brought up very badly indeed."

  Mac did not say a word. The dour mask remained un-penetrated. I measured the distance carefully to see whether I could jump Stein's gun. It seemed a slim chance. Mac would certainly provide the follow-up.

  Stein spoke to Mac although his eyes were as wary as a lynx.

  "I shall kill you in my own good time," he said quite dispassionately. "But not now. Now would not be the time, when we are having such an interesting discussion about Lieutenant Garland and his former skipper. Where is Lieutenant Garland, by the way?"

  "He's ashore with friends," I said, looking for any chink in the man's vigilance.

  "I have friends ashore too — good friends," continued Stein conversationally as cool as though death had not all but touched his jugular vein. There was a faint runnel of blood down his collar, but that was all. The Luger covered us steadily.

  The plan to murder Stein dropped into my mind then.

  It was just too simple. All I would have to do was to agree to his plan — and the Skeleton Coast would do the rest. I did not like the way he had been digging into my past. The merciless sands of Curva dos Dunas would be all that would hear his death-cries. I decided to play it softly, for he was a cunning devil.

  "Are you going to threaten me at pistol-point to take you to the Skeleton Coast?" I asked sarcastically. "Beetle, my Aunt Fanny! Is it a packet of diamonds you are going to pick up?"

  He eyed me blandly. "Strangely enough, Captain… ah… Macdonald, it is a beetle. I want that beetle more than anything else in the world. I am prepared to force you to take me there — at pistol-point if necessary — but somehow I don't think it will be necessary."

  I didn't like the way he said it, but I let it ride.

  "You have the whip-hand of me," I pretended to admit. "All right, I'll take you — but £500 is not enough. I want at least £1,000 and specific guarantees that there will be no leakage to the police."

  Stein looked at me contemptuously and waved the Luger, not threateningly, but to emphasise his words.

  "Five hundred pounds was the original offer, Captain, but now it is much less. In fact, I think I shall ask you to do it free, gratis and for nothing."

  I thought I had bluffed him, but I hadn't. I took a pace towards him, but the Luger swung up at my stomach.

  "Neither of you," said Stein ironically, "is likely to be scared by the mere sight of a Luger. Oh no, Captain Macdonald, your capitulation was much too quick. Perhaps with a less — shall we say, determined and resourceful — man I might have been persuaded. No histrionics, I beg of you. No, you shall take me to the Skeleton Coast and put me ashore just where I wish to be put ashore."

  "The hell you say," I snapped.

  Stein was enjoying himself. "Say you are Lieutenant-Commander Peace, the famous war-time commander of Trout. Assume that it is so for the sake of my argument. What of it? What good would it do either me or Lieutenant-Commander Peace, alias Captain Macdonald, to noise it abroad from the housetops that he is now a trawlerman operating from Walvis Bay? Good luck to him, they'd say. To quote the newspapers, he would have rehabilitated himself. The English sense of fair play. He'd taken his rap and got kicked out, why throw it up again in his face, even if he's got a different name and says he's a South African — and even speaks like one? It would not serve any useful purpose whatsoever. Nor would a man in that position on the mere threat of throwing open his past agree to do a job which might involve him with the law once again and wash out any chance at all of leading a decent life in the future. You agreed far too suddenly, Lieutenant-Commander Peace."

  I inwardly cursed my own bungling. What did he mean? His use of my own name and his veiled references left me uneasy, very uneasy.

  "So what?" I still tried to bluff it out. "Say I am Lieutenant-Commander Peace. What should the Navy care about a man kicked out and treated like dirt after what I'd done for them and the way I risked my neck? I tell you I got a raw deal and a man who has gone through that doesn't sniff at the opportunity of making a little on the side."

  "Nicely taken," sneered Stein. "But when I first saw this ship I asked myself, where does a man like that get the best part of £200,000 for a
modern trawler like Etosha? Why the double-action diesels? Why the yacht-like lines when they should be tubby to hold fish? I hear rumours ashore that Captain Macdonald knows the Skeleton Coast better than any other skipper sailing out of Walvis. They say in the waterfront bars that he keeps to himself. Why? Is he running diamonds from the Skeleton Coast? Is that what those fine lines and fast diesels are for?"

  "Ah, bulldust!" snarled Mac, drawn by the reference to his engines.

  Stein turned to him with a cold smile.

  "That is what I said to myself — bulldust," he remarked agreeably.

  He let it sink in and gestured sociably with the Luger.

  "Don't you think we should sit down? We have so much to discuss — details of the trip to the Skeleton Coast and so on?"

  "There is nothing to discuss," I said flatly, knowing perfectly well that there was. "I won't take you to the Skeleton Coast — under any circumstances whatsoever. That's flat. Now get out — and if you come back again, I'll throw you overboard."

  "Brave words, Captain Peace — or is it Lieutenant-Commander? I can never be quite sure in a situation like this," he sneered. He sighed theatrically. "You force me to use cards I don't want to. Macfadden," he said harshly, anticipating a move by Mac, "I swear before God that I will kill you on the slightest pretext."

  Mac saw that he meant it, too.

  "Now, Captain Peace," he went on. "To get back to this very fine ship. Could it be that this fast, well-found ship is a diamond smuggler? I don't think so."

  "Thanks for damn all," I said sarcastically.

  "The point is, looking at this ship, that the man who bought her must have made his money before, not after. If you can afford a ship like this, you don't need to smuggle diamonds, do you, Captain?"

  I felt the sweat trickling down my shirt. The swine was playing with me.

  "I don't know the purpose of this ship yet," he said quietly. "But I intend to find out."

  So he hadn't heard of Curva dos Dunas. I'd see that he never did — or never came back to tell about it.

  "I became very interested in Lieutenant-Commander Peace," he went on, "and so I asked an acquaintance in Cape Town if he could find out something more about this famous submarine commander. I discovered, in fact, that he was drowned at sea eventually — after the court martial."

  The cold fear tingled across my heart.

  Stein put the Luger back in his pocket. It was a gesture of victory.

  "Lieutenant-Commander Peace took an old merchant ship to sea in — when was it? April, '45. You remember the old Phylira, Captain? Fancy Georgiadou calling an old wreck like that after an ocean nymph! But then the Greeks, even old Georgiadou, are a sentimental lot, are they not?"

  Automatically I poured myself another drink. So the Phylira was calling from her grave — and the twenty-seven men of the crew with her! Icy fear gripped me. So Stein knew about the Phylira, and had found out that I was her captain. By all the rules I was dead — the Phylira sailed from Cape Town for Tangier and was never heard of again.

  "The old Phylira's engines were as bad as they come, weren't they Macfadden?" taunted this evil incarnation of a past which I thought I had buried alongside NP I on the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas.

  Stein laughed.

  "A brilliant submarine commander as the skipper of a rotten old merchantman, and a brilliant engineer to keep her old engines going — just as long as they needed to be kept going, eh?"

  There was pure murder in Mac's eyes. Stein knew he had us. He didn't even bother about the Luger any more.

  "What did you do with her, Captain Peace? How can a man make away with a whole ship and twenty-seven men without a trace? And how did he disappear himself without a trace, to come back with a small fortune? Georgiadou would be terribly interested to know. No one could have been more heart-broken than that unsentimental shipowner about the loss of an old ship, for which he got more than her value in insurance, anyway. If he hadn't been so cut up about the loss of the Phylira, I'd have sworn he'd paid an enterprising, ruthless captain like yourself to get rid of her. But he still mourns the loss of the Phylira, Captain Peace. I'm sure he'd be only too keen to renew acquaintance with his erstwhile captain and the Scottish engineer. Tangier, too. What was her cargo?"

  "If you know all this, I'm sure you've seen Phylira's manifests," I rapped out harshly.

  "Of course I have," he said smoothly. "Canned fruit, brandy, wool — nothing in the least exceptional. But why Tangier? I ask myself. And in '45 when anyone and anything shady could be bought in Tangier."

  I'd often wondered how Georgiadou took the loss of his packet of uncut stones, all £200,000 of them. From what I heard later, Georgiadou, under his respectable merchant trading cloak in Adderley Street, was the biggest rogue south of the Congo in organising the smuggling of uncut diamonds from South West Africa, Sierra Leone and West Africa through Tangier mainly to Iron Curtain countries. I can still see the look on the Greek's face when he handed me over a tiny parcel, carelessly done up in a small cardboard carton with the King's Ransom "round-the-world "label still on it.

  "You will deliver these to Louis Monet in the ' Straits' bar in the Rue Marrakesh," he said incisively. "There are over £200,000 worth of uncut diamonds in that parcel. Many a man has had his throat cut for a tenth of that amount, Captain, so don't get any ideas about private enterprise, see?"

  It was Georgiadou's own remark which sowed the seed.

  Far to the south of Curva dos Dunas, off the mouth of the Orange River, the old Phylira wheezed along. It was a close night and my cabin was hot and stuffy from the dry wind coming off the land. Somewhere beyond the night out to starboard across the water the searchlights would be playing back and forth across the barbed wire which guards the Forbidden Area of the Diamond Coast. As I glanced out through the porthole, I could almost imagine I could see their reflection against the night sky. In that barren wilderness the policemen sent to patrol the desert go mad; they never see a woman in two years' shift of duty; they don't worry about the seaward side which the devilish sandbars make so safe.

  Except for Curva dos Dunas, I thought grimly. That thought triggered the whole idea off. What in God's name was I doing skippering a floating wreck and relegating myself to the status of a pariah when I held sole title to the only harbour, except Walvis Bay, from Cape Town to Tiger Bay? I and I alone knew of the existence — and more particularly, the navigational hazards — of a harbour which either Rhodesia or South Africa would give millions of pounds to own. Curva dos Dunas was mine, but no government would even listen to a sailor's tale without proof. Proof! I could picture myself in the cool arched corridors of the Union 'Buildings in Pretoria being shifted — ever more impatiently — from one civil servant to another, fobbed off with evasive, ever-less polite answers to a man they would consider a crackpot — unless. Unless I had a ship of my own. A ship! I would have to go back and chart the place in case the tides and currents had closed or altered it since I sank NP I. I must have a ship. My own ship.

  Perhaps in that lonely, stuffy cabin the ghost of old Simon Peace came to insinuate the idea into my mind. Above all, his challenge. Curva dos Dunas had cast its spell over him, and I likewise had been bewitched. Without formulating my ideas, or even putting them into rational form, I knew it was the lure, the challenge to me as a sailor and a man, as much as the other thoughts of a key harbour to which I alone held the secret, which drove me on.

  I stared out of the porthole. Curva dos Dunas! The Achilles heel of the whole Skeleton Coast! What a magnificent hidy-hole to smuggle out diamonds!

  The thought hit me with such force that I smacked my palm down on the table. Why not smuggle them in, not out? Georgiadou's precious parcel! Private enterprise! Two hundred thousand pounds would get me the sort of ship I wanted — fast, eminently seaworthy, handy. My thoughts tumbled over one another as it all fell into place. A fast trawler, putting up a front of fishing. I could operate out of Walvis legitimately, and no one would suspect my operatio
ns on the side at Curva dos Dunas.

  Private enterprise!

  The first thought that rushed into my racing brain was to run the old Phylira ashore at Curva dos Dunas and slip ashore. I thrust it aside. I couldn't leave Mac and twenty-seven innocent men to die a hideous death, not for all the diamonds in South West Africa. Automatically I went over and tapped the scuffed old Kew pattern barometer hanging on the bulkhead. It was almost a reflex action, for the weather would be a vital factor in my plans. I didn't like the sultry night. The long swell under the old freighter portended a stiff blow from the west-south-west if — but then one never can tell on the Skeleton Coast. It might remain fine with a heavy sea for days, or, in line with the subtle alchemy of cold South Atlantic currents and hot desert air, to say nothing of the fickle and unpredictable elements which a land breeze might throw into the weather's chemistry, a raging south-westerly gale might descend out of a clear blue sky and whip up the sea in the opposite direction, throwing up a barrage of wind 'and water which would nullify any plans I might have of getting ashore. Olafsen, the mate, in his drunken state would not know how even to keep the old wreck afloat under conditions like that.

  I wiped the sweaty stickiness of my palms, opened a leather suitcase, and took out old Simon's annotated chart, the one I had used when I sank NP I. I spread it out and measured off the distance from Curva dos Dunas to Tiger Bay. About fifty miles as the crow flies, but I would skirt round the Portuguese post at Posto Velho and avoid the track along the seaward dunes running from the outpost on the Cunene River boundary to Cacimba, at the southern end of Tiger Bay. I might have to walk anything up to eighty miles on the detour, if I could get ashore. I hadn't any fixed plan yet. I would come in to Cacimba from the east, not the south. No one would then suspect I was a shipwrecked sailor.

  And the Phylira herself? I felt quite certain Olafsen would put into a Portuguese port once he was sure I was missing — Lobito, probably. He would never attempt Tiger Bay with its tricky entrance. By that time I'd be well out of the way. Certainly Georgiadou wasn't the man to spread it around what the Phylira was carrying; I was quite sure, looking at the scruffy crew, that there was not a man among them who was the wily Greek's watchdog over me.