Redcap

by Philip McCutchan

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, we can’t leave him in this filth. Can you give me a hand? I want to roll him on to his side so we can ease him back on to the stretcher.”

  “Sure.” To O’Hara’s instructions, Shaw rolled the man towards the bulkhead. Yellow faces leered at them through the murk, through the haze of foul smoke. Shaw sweated in the heat and stench, sweated with something more than heat as he saw the man’s injuries. The back seemed to be one whole purple bruise, and the filthy blankets were clotted with blood which stuck them fast to the flesh. Quickly O’Hara cut away the free material, leaving the adhering parts for the time being. He said,

  “If ever we get him back aboard, we can remove that. Too painful to do it now. . . .” He peered closer, shone a torch on to the man’s back. Then he caught his breath, whistled. After a careful examination he said, “I don’t like the look of this lot at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’ve seen backs broken in falls before now—but never one that looked like this! See? It’s terribly badly bruised right away from the fracture. That can happen, but . . . it’s the general picture that’s all wrong.”

  “What does it suggest, then?”

  O’Hara rubbed sweat from his eyes. “It’s almost as though it’s been broken by a blow from some instrument that missed the first time, if you see what I mean—say, an iron bar. Possibly in a fight.”

  Shaw stiffened. “Or—intentionally? Not in a fight, but just hit until the backbone went?”

  O'Hara looked up at him quizzically. ''I suppose that’s possible. What’s on your mind. Commander?”

  “Quite a lot,” Shaw said grimly. “I’d like to ask him a few questions, if that's all right.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Very. I’d like to find out if his injuries are due to a desire for authenticity on the part of his Captain. And if so—why!”

  O’Hara said reluctantly, “All right, but don’t overdo it And you'd better hurry. Just wait while I get the stretcher under him.” Shaw and O’Hara, assisted now by the big Chinaman, manoeuvred the stretcher under the seaman, who gave low moans of pain; then, when he was flat and strapped in, O’Hara nodded to Shaw. He said, “Go ahead, but make it snappy. Maybe he doesn’t speak English anyway.”

  “I’ll try.” Shaw bent low over the blink, said: “Listen, John. You speak English?”

  Two black eyes looked up, glittering, full of pain. “Some words,” the man said faintly, his face wet with sweat. “Velly small bit.”

  Shaw said urgently, “Just tell me how it happened. Tell me how you got hurt.”

  “Tank cleaning, fall down tank, bleak back.”

  “H’mmmm. . . . Didn’t have a fight, did you?”

  The man repeated, “Tank cleaning, fall down tank, bleak back.”

  Shaw thought it sounded just a little pat, a little too much like something learned off parrot-fashion. The big man, the bos’n, was leaning forward anxiously now, his face ugly, muttering away to himself.

  Shaw asked, “Is there anything . . . unusual about your ship, John?”

  There was no reaction; the man’s eyes were closed now. Shaw, who had no knowledge of pidgin-English, searched his mind desperately for something which might penetrate. He asked urgently, “Ship him make-um funny-funny, queer?”

  There was a gasp of pain from the injured man, but he opened his eyes again. He said, “Plain tanker, velly ordinaly, in ballast, bound for Persian Gulf to load spilit for Shanghai.” To Shaw, it didn’t sound as though the man really understood what he was saying. He went on, “Ship good? You happy here?”

  “Velly good ship, velly happy, Captain good man, mate good too. Also bos’n.”

  Shaw was about to speak again when there was a sudden outburst of jabbering from the bos’n. Shaw swung round on him, snapped: “You keep out of this.” When the man persisted, Shaw brought out his gun, rammed it in the bos’n’s stomach.

  He said, “Any more of that and I’ll shoot.” He turned back to the man in the bunk. The eyelids fluttered, there was an indistinct murmur, and then the head lolled and the body gave a spasmodic jerk. O’Hara bent forward swiftly, felt for pulse and heart. Then he stood back.

  He said, “That’s all.”

  “Dead?”

  “Very.” The doctor looked at Shaw’s face, added: “He was going anyway. You didn’t make any difference. I wouldn’t say the same for this bloke.” He jerked his head towards the bos’n. “Somebody broke that man’s back for him, and I wouldn’t put it past this big bastard . . . but she’s a Chinese ship and that’s not our affair. Or is it?”

  Shaw said grimly, “That depends.”

  He went out of the stinking mess-room, past silent groups of men squatting about the decks in blue overalls, staring and impassive; Shaw fancied he could detect an air of expectancy, of waiting for something. He went up to the bridge and found the Master, told him curtly what had happened. He added,

  “I think there’s just a little more behind this, Captain, something you haven’t told me.” He stood threateningly above the squat man, long jaw thrust out. “Would you care to tell me if you have any special orders with regard to the New South Wales?"

  The yellow face was inscrutable, the eyes, downcast now, hooded by heavy lids. “There is nothing.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “I am quite sure.”

  “Are you?” Shaw pushed his revolver into the man’s ribs. “Does this make you feel a little less, sure, Captain?”

  The Chinese didn’t move. He said calmly in a sing-song voice, “It makes me sure only of this: that you take an unpardonable liberty and I shall make a report to our representative in Abadan.”

  “Suppose I arrest your ship?”

  Imperturbably the Chinese replied, “On what grounds? I am a peaceful tanker Master, and I asked for you to come only to take away an injured man, in the name of a common humanity.” He raised his eyes then, looked straight into Shaw’s. “That is not enough for you? You must demand further reason? Not enough, that the man was so badly injured that he is now dead?” He made a hopeless gesture. “I do not know what to say. It is not the business of you or any British shipmaster to ask these questions on the high seas.”

  Shaw bit his lip, frowned. The man was right on that point, anyway. Certainly neither he nor Sir Donald Mackinnon had any authority to detain a foreign flag ship, and he had already gone a little too far in pulling a gun on the Tungtai’s Master. And there really had been a sick man . . . and the Master didn’t seem in the least worried by that covering aircraft overhead. Besides, he’d made no attempt to interfere with Shaw or the sailors—let alone with the liner’s cargo!

  Shaw said stiffly, “Very well, then. I’m returning aboard the New South Wales now, but I’m not satisfied that man of yours really had an accident. If I were you, I’d watch out you don’t run into trouble over that. That’s nothing to do with me, I know, but it may be somebody’s job to investigate, Captain.” And that, he thought was just about all there was in it; an injury, most likely not an accidental one—but Sir Donald had been right to answer the call. Shaw gave the Chinese a long, hard look but there was no reaction; he nodded to the liner’s Second Officer. “Let’s go, Mr Kelly.”

  They went down to the fore tank deck, hailed the boat which was lying off. It came alongside and they were pulled back to the New South Wales. As they hooked on to the falls and rose on the winches to the embarkation deck, the tanker was already under way again and steaming north-westwards for the Persian Gulf.

  Shaw and the doctor climbed to the bridge and reported to Sir Donald. Soon after, the New South Wales swung back on to the track for Fremantle, proceeding fast so as to make up as much as possible of the time lost. The covering aircraft made a farewell signal and flew off.

  Very soon after that the tanker was a fast-fading speck astern, and, aboard her, a small, skinny man with large ears and grey hair was climbing somewhat fearfully up the deep, sh
ining shaft of a cargo-tank. Reaching the deck, he told a member of the crew to send down a rope and bring up the radio transmitter which he had been using. When he had seen this brought up carefully and tenderly, he climbed up to the bridge, looking anxious—and disappointed.

  It was late that evening that some news came through to the New South Wales.

  First there was a signal from Captain James in Sydney to say that an air patrol had reported the tanker Tungtai as having made a big alteration of her course, swinging round almost on a reciprocal of her previous track to head in towards the north Australian coast. Inquiries were being made of her Australian agents, but for the time being the patrolling aircraft had lost her in haze and low cloud as the sun went down. The second piece of news emerged when Shaw went up to the radio room to send an acknowledgment to James and tell him that in his opinion it was not a matter of urgency that the Tungtai should be intercepted whatever trouble it caused. He was, in fact, extremely worried now, for there seemed to be no logical, lawful reason why the Tungtai should suddenly go back on her tracks like this.

  When he handed in his cypher the First Radio Officer said: “Another message, eh, Commander Shaw? You’re spending a fortune.”

  Shaw grinned, lit a cigarette. “I’ll claim it back, don’t worry!”

  “I suppose the Navy pays all your expenses,” the radio man agreed. “Lucky you didn’t want anything to go out this morning.” He took off his spectacles, wiped them, rubbed at his prominent eyes. “We couldn’t have got anything through the interference.”

  “Oh?” Shaw asked casually, paying little attention. “How was that, then?”

  “Don’t know, really. It was when we were stopped, alongside the Chinese tanker. She must have been sending, I suppose, though the characteristics weren’t what I’d have expected of a merchant ship.”

  Shaw looked up, felt a sudden leap of his heart. “You certain it was the tanker?”

  “Well, no, but I think it must have been. It was very close, and she was the only ship around. It wasn’t the aircraft.” The radio man screwed up his eyes, seemed puzzled. “It was intermittent transmitting on a V.H.F. wavelength which somehow or other cut across all our ordinary transmissions and mucked ’em up completely.”

  “V.H.F.” Shaw repeated softly. “Any idea what kind of signals they were?”

  “Couldn’t read ’em, of course. But from the characteristics of the interference . . . well, I’d say it fitted in with the transmission of three-letter groups.”

  Shaw’s mouth set. He asked harshly, “You didn’t think of reporting this to anybody, did you?”

  The radio man seemed surprised. “No—why should I? Nothing anyone could do about it, except maybe to ask ’em to pipe down. But I thought perhaps it was something to do with the medical case, and we hadn’t anything important going out. The incomings can mostly wait, too. . .

  Shaw interrupted, “Was it going on all the time, then?”

  “Yes. Whole time we were stopped, pretty well.”

  “But for some of the time at least, their wireless office wasn’t manned.” He had particularly noticed that; the tanker’s wireless office had let off the wheelhouse, and the door had been open both times he had been on the bridge.

  The Radio Officer shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. They may have a secondary transmitting position. It’d be unusual, though, but then, as I say, so was the transmission itself. Didn’t sound like an ordinary merchant ship’s signals, somehow. But it was certainly going on all the time.”

  Shaw left the room, his mind racing, going back over all he’d seen aboard the Tungtai. He went along to the Senior Second Officer’s cabin. Kelly was in there alone, and Shaw asked him:

  “Mr Kelly, did you happen to notice the tanker’s wireless room while I was below with the doctor this morning?”

  “Yes. Door was open all the time. Why?”

  Shaw said non-committally, “Oh, just a thought . . . you didn’t notice if they were transmitting, I suppose?”

  Kelly shook his head. “They weren’t. Place was empty all the time.”

  “I see. Well—thanks very much.”

  Shaw left the cabin, went down to the tween-deck and had a look at REDCAP, his mind full of unformulated suspicions and fears. But all was well in the tween-deck, and the MAPIACCIND guard reported that nothing unusual had taken place all day. When Shaw reached his cabin, a sealed envelope came down from the Captain with a copy of a cable just received for Andersson. Shaw read it carefully, but it conveyed nothing to him. After that he turned in, worrying and fretting. For the moment there was nothing more he could do; Captain James in Australia would now, he trusted, spare no effort to have the tanker intercepted, and he could only hope they would be lucky enough to get her before she made an Australian landfall and disappeared into that wild northern coastline.

  In his own cabin Sigurd Andersson was reading the wireless message which had just come in. His face was expressionless as he read it, but soon afterwards he walked out of his room and went circumspectly along to the engineers’ alleyway and knocked at Siggings’s door. Going in, he accepted a glass of whisky. Sitting back comfortably on the settee, he said:

  “The first stage of the plan has met with a check. I am therefore ordered, as a precaution against any checks in the next stage, to proceed with what we have already discussed, you and I.”

  Siggings asked, “You mean that box?”

  Andersson nodded. “Correct! You will place it to-morrow. I leave the time to you, but let me know beforehand when it is to be, also the precise thickness of the deck to which it is to be fixed. I shall then make the settings and start it working just before I hand it to you.”

  Shaw’s troubled thoughts ran on and on, round and round. He’d felt suspicious all along about that tanker. That seaman, his back deliberately smashed if O’Hara was right, smashed most likely so that the New South Wales, finding a genuinely injured man, would remain close for long enough . . . long enough for somebody to transmit three-letter groups on V.H.F.

  The implications of that couldn’t be ignored.

  Perhaps REDCAP’s operational ability could be destroyed by outside radio interference. There would have to be a full-scale technical overhaul now, once the crate reached Bandagong.

  Shaw lay there, tossing and turning in his bunk, working things out in his mind, and at last sleep came.

  He dreamed away, horrible dreams, was almost conscious at times of his own snores; he slept so near the surface that when he heard the faint rustle of his door-curtain he awoke immediately, and fully alert.

  He remained quite still, held his breath and listened.

  There was some one there right enough ... in the faint sea-light creeping through the jalousie he thought he saw the curtain move aside, very gently. He felt under the pillow for his revolver. He wasn’t conscious of having made any noise as he shifted in the bunk, but the curtain dropped at once. Shaw snapped,

  “Still or I’ll fire!”

  At the same moment he reached out, found the light switch. As light flooded the cabin he saw the curtain move again as though in a draught, and then he fired. The roar and the smell of gunsmoke filled the cabin. There was no movement from outside, no sound at all. Shaw jumped out of bed and ran for the doorway, ripped the curtain aside.

  No one there. . . .

  He dashed out through the small lobby into the alleyway. There was no sign of anyone who might have come into his cabin, though the alleyway was already coming to life as scared faces peered from doorways; there was a babble of talk, women’s voices frightened, men’s taut but reassuring. They stared at the pyjama-clad figure running fast now along the passage and holding a smoking gun. Women began to cry. A blue-uniformed night-steward, white-faced, hurried up from ahead. He saw the gun, but nervously barred the way.

  He said, “Just a minute, sir—just a minute if you please, sir-”

  Shaw snapped, “Out of my way. I’ll explain later.” He pushed the man aside, jabbing at him
with his gun, and ran on.

  It wasn’t—it couldn’t have been—much more than a minute after he’d awoken that Shaw reached Andersson’s cabin and flung back the curtain. A faint snore drifted across. He jabbed at the light switch savagely.

  Andersson was in his bunk, flat out, a sheet drawn half across his naked, hairy chest, arms flung wide, chest rising and falling rapidly—as though he was breathless from running. There was a stink of whisky on his breath as Shaw approached. A half-empty bottle stood on the shelf beside the bunk. Shaw jabbed the man with his gun, and Andersson sat up, blinked, looked startled and angry.

  He demanded, “What does this mean?”

  “Beautifully done,” Shaw said savagely, “but not quite beautiful enough. It means this: you tried to kill me, just as you killed Gresham, and—”

  “Really, I don’t—”

  “Listen, Karstad. Or Andersson, if you prefer it. I’ll give you thirty seconds. If you haven’t told me by that time exactly what you’re doing aboard this ship, I’ll shoot.”

  He held the gun steady at the man’s stomach.

  Andersson laughed. He -said calmly, “Really, my dear fellow, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard such a thing . . . you’ll hear more of this—”

  “I’m waiting.”

  Andersson shrugged. “Then you may go on waiting, if you wish to. I do not believe you will kill an accredited agent of the Swedish Government!” There was a triumphant, confident glitter in the man’s eyes. As Shaw heard a movement behind, he half turned. Two night-stewards were in the doorway and behind them was a master-at-arms and then more heads bobbing about. He heard Andersson say,

  “Will you kindly take this man away at once? I shall make my complaint to the Captain in the morning. Meanwhile, I wish to sleep.”

  Shaw swallowed.

  One of the men came in, took away his gun. Shaw’s eyes blazed with helpless fury, but he shut his mouth tight, said nothing. In front of all these people there was nothing he was permitted to say, nothing that he must give away in self-justification, and again he had no proof of what Andersson must have tried to do. He was taken away from the cabin, along the alleyways past the curious, staring eyes and the rising sound of many voices, was taken up to the Captain’s cabin.