Operation Destruct

by Christopher Nicole

  “And they’re truly independent?”

  “The British Government looks after their foreign relations, and technically their laws have to be approved by the British Home Office. That’s the same as your Department of the Interior, I suppose. But for practical purposes they’re independent of Britain. And of each other. The head man of each island is a cross between a mayor and a president, called the Bailiff. He’s appointed by the Queen, on the recommendation of the British Government, but he’s always someone acceptable to the islanders.”

  “Gee, that’s very interesting.” She looked over Jonathan’s shoulder. “Clark! Clark! I’m over here. Come and meet Jon Anders. Jon thinks we’re straying too far afield.”

  Jonathan stood up to shake hands. The man was several inches taller than he was, older, very broad-shouldered and slim hipped, with a sunburned face beneath a mass of curly brown hair. He would have been handsome but for a badly broken nose. He suggested a quarterback who had never required padding.

  “I seem to have put my foot in it,” Jonathan said. “I was saying to your wife that one just doesn’t expect to hear a New York accent on the way to a place like Guernsey.”

  “New Jersey,” Helen said. “There’s a difference. And Clark is my brother, not my husband.”

  “My day for boobs,” Jonathan said. “But maybe I’m not so unlucky after all.”

  “We’re touring Europe,” Clark Bridges said. “You a Guernseyite?”

  “I think the word is Guernseyman. No, I’m on holiday, like you.”

  “Well, here’s hoping we all have fun. Say, there’s our flight.”

  “Only ten minutes late.” Jonathan slung his binoculars over his shoulder. “I say,” he called after Helen Bridges, “you’ve forgotten those newspapers you wanted.”

  “Silly me,” she said, and came back for them. “I’ll forget my head, one day.”

  *

  From the window of the Viscount turboprop, Guernsey seemed even smaller than Jonathan remembered. He studied it as the aircraft made its descent over several smaller islands, all surrounded, even in a calm sea, by patches of white where the swell broke against the granite rocks. He refreshed his memory with the aid of the survey map on his lap. The island was shaped like a wedge of cheese, declining from three-hundred-foot cliffs in the south to sea level in the north. From the air it suggested an entire suburban area transported into the middle of the sea; miles of paved road, curving back and forth, every one walled on each side by a row of small houses, each of which was in turn backed by green fields and spans of greenhouses. Although of growing importance as a tourist resort, Guernsey was still dependent on its early tomato crop for its prosperity. The west coast consisted of a series of sandy beaches, off which extended large areas of pale blue, shallow water; the tide was low, and the granite reefs which guarded the western approach to the island showed like an irregular but deliberately placed breakwater protecting the beaches. At high tide those rocks would become invisible, their jagged, serrated teeth just beneath the surface.

  The Viscount planed low over a city of greenhouses, touched down on the concrete strip, braked in front of a small terminal building. Helen Bridges smiled at Jonathan from across the aisle as she unfastened her seat belt. She had made a great point of reading each of the newspapers from front to back during the hour-long journey, but he did not think she had been terribly interested. She made him nervous. Pretty girls often did, but in her case it was more than the fact that she had spoken first. At the same time, Helen and her brother certainly looked like tourists. He decided he would have to probe further.

  He followed them into the little arrival lounge, wondering how many other people might be interested in arrivals and departures from Guernsey at this moment. But most of the people waiting were obviously friends or relations of the incoming passengers. He and the Bridges were left alone, standing by the conveyer belt as the first of the suitcases came rumbling along, isolated in a world of greetings.

  “Touring out of season always makes me feel kind of flat,” Clark remarked.

  “I’m with you on that,” Jonathan said. “How long are you going to be in Guernsey?”

  Clark shrugged. “As long as we can find something to do, I guess. Maybe we’ll see you around.”

  “Ever done any skin diving?”

  “A bit. You planning on doing some here?”

  “My main reason for coming.” Jonathan grinned. “I thought I might take a look at this sunken ship. While it’s still around.”

  “Now there’s an idea,” Helen said. “When were you thinking of going out?”

  “I’ll have to see if I can get a boat. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, if it’s fine. Why not give me a ring, say tomorrow morning. I’m staying at the Oceanview.”

  “We’ll do that,” Clark suggested. “See you.”

  Helen waved, and they went in search of a taxi. Jonathan collected his bag, followed slowly. They had not volunteered the name of their own hotel. Nor had his announced determination to dive to the wrecked trawler aroused any unusual interest, although they had accepted his invitation willingly enough. Were this a spy film he would be able to make a telephone call and some all-knowing filing clerk would tell him just who the Bridges were, how old they were and what they liked best for breakfast, and incidentally, whom they were working for. He wondered what Craufurd would say to such a request for information.

  Oceanview stood on the crest of a hill looking west, across sloping fields and gleaming greenhouses, to Perelle Bay. From his bedroom window Jonathan could see one of the watchtowers built by the Germans during the Second World War, rising like a Martian-designed villa on the sea shore, six floors high, circular, constructed from reinforced concrete and strong enough to withstand anything less than a direct hit from a high explosive shell, each floor facing seaward from behind narrow slits, forbidding assault in a most comprehensive manner. He wondered if in a hundred years’ time tourists would crawl through the underground passages and elaborate concrete and steel bunkers the way they now crawled through Norman donjons. Guernsey was a museum of man’s more permanent creative inclinations. Apart from the German efforts, there were many classic examples of eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture; before then the island had been used as a political prison, a period represented by the massive might of Castle Cornet rising at the entrance to St. Peter Port Harbor; earlier the Normans had defended themselves against the Vikings from a splendid example of the motte and bailey fortress dominating a hilltop in the northern half of the island; and even before the Romans it had been the home of a considerable civilization—on his last visit he had entered one of the several prehistoric tombs, man-made caves under the ground, silent, cool places more than two thousand years old. Suddenly he wished he were once again on holiday, as a history student, with nothing to do except lap up atmosphere and knowledge, and perhaps get to know a pretty girl named Helen.

  But beyond the L’Eree watchtower he could see the island of Lihou, connected to Guernsey by a causeway only passable at low tide, and beyond Lihou were the black granite reefs; on those reefs, not two miles away in a straight line from his window, waited the wreck of the Ludmilla. He presumed. Nothing was visible above the waves, even through his binoculars.

  He unpacked his suitcase, stowed his rubber suit, goggles, and flippers in a canvas carryall, and went downstairs. Mrs. Constant came out of the kitchen. She at least could be regarded as just a human being, small and bustling, gray haired and flat heeled, with a refreshingly West Country accent. “I hope everything is all right for you, Mr. Anders? I’ve put a clean towel in the bathroom. And the gong will go for lunch at one o’clock.”

  He glanced at his watch; it was just after eleven. “Then I think I’ll take a stroll down to the bay. I’ve been reading about this shipwreck of yours. Do you think I might find a fisherman willing to take me out to have a look at it?”

  Mrs. Constant sighed. “Shouldn’t waste your time, if I was you, Mr. Anders. There’s not
hing there. They do say you can see her below the waves, but that’s about all. Funny thing, that was.”

  “She’s just off Lihou, isn’t she? Did you see her strike?”

  “Lord, no. It was the middle of the night.” She frowned at him over the tops of her glasses. “We generally lock up pretty early, here.”

  “I believe in being in bed by ten, myself. I think I will take a walk down to Perelle, though.”

  “You want to ask for Ted Enwright,” Mrs. Constant said. “And remember, lunch at one.”

  “I’ll be here.” Jonathan slung his binoculars and the canvas carryall over his shoulder, walked down the hill. In ten years Guernsey had changed. Buildings spread everywhere, encroaching on the countryside. There was more traffic than he remembered, too; even on a quiet country lane he was passed by several cars. He had always considered Guernsey and Jersey as the most civilized places on earth, where crime and violence was in the main limited to the odd fracas outside a public house after closing time. To associate such surroundings with a shipwreck which might well have been deliberate murder was absurd. Yet Guernsey possessed an atmosphere of its very own which contained a certain element of mystery, and which even a bursting population could not quite obliterate. Perhaps it had something to do with the centuries-old tradition of witchcraft which hung over these islands; he had always put it down to a feeling of isolation. Guernsey was not really isolated. From the east coast the other islands, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and even, on a clear day, the French coast, could be seen. But Guernsey was the outermost of the group, and to the west was only the Atlantic Ocean between the wreck of the Ludmilla and the United States of America. The prevailing winds came from the ocean, often fierce, always fresh, blowing the sounds of modern Guernsey toward France, leaving the islands just a little breathless, and for that reason amazingly quiet. And when the breeze did die away, instantly the sea mists gathered, seeping upward in clouds of swirling gray, isolating the hilltops, cutting off the island and its forty thousand inhabitants in a world entirely their own. Jonathan recalled that on his last visit a mist had come down and prevented any planes from landing or taking off for four days. This morning there was a pleasantly warm westerly wind rustling up the hill, he was glad to find. The last thing he wanted was fog.

  Perelle was a fisherman’s rather than a tourist’s bay. Beneath the sea wall there was shingle instead of sand, and the black rocks clustered out to sea to make a narrow and well-protected little harbor which required local knowledge for safe navigation. The tide had just turned, and the fishing boats still lay on the hard, fifty yards from the concrete slipway, waiting for the sea to come up to them. Jonathan’s shoes crunched on the loose stones as he walked toward a fisherman mending his net. “Mr. Enwright?”

  “You’ll find him in his boat, over there.”

  Jonathan nodded, followed a strip of sand toward the boats. Out here it was damp, scarcely dried from the last tide, impatient to be swallowed by the next. Ted Enwright was a short, thickset man, wearing a guernsey and enormous sea boots. He knelt in the bottom of his boat, tinkering with his engine. “That’s me,” he replied, in answer to Jonathan’s inquiry.

  “I’d like to hire a boat to take me out to that wrecked trawler,” Jonathan said. “Mrs. Constant suggested you’d be the man to see.”

  Slowly and carefully Enwright removed a spark plug, peered at it. “Interested in wrecks, are you?”

  “Ghoulish of me, I know,” Jonathan admitted. “I read in the newspapers that one of the lifeboats was washed ashore here.”

  “Right up against that slipway,” Enwright said. “Next morning, when the gale was going back a bit. Upside down, she was.”

  “And where did the bodies come ashore? Near the lifeboat?”

  “Over there.” Enwright pointed down the coast in the direction of Lihou Island.

  “Is it true there was a woman on board?”

  At last Enwright raised his head. “What’s that you said?”

  “You know, some of these Russian ships have women as crew. Isn’t there a woman who’s captain of a pretty big ship?”

  “No woman came ashore,” Enwright said.

  “You saw the bodies?”

  Enwright gazed at him. “I saw the bodies, young fellow. They looked pretty nasty. You ever seen a drowned man?”

  “Not yet. I didn’t mean to offend you. Will you take me out to have a look at her?”

  Enwright replaced the plug. Then he climbed out of the boat and dropped to the sand. “Maybe tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

  “I’d like to go this afternoon.”

  “Tide won’t be right for a good couple of hours.” He walked up the beach.

  Jonathan followed. “What time?”

  “She’ll float by four.” Enwright paused, turned. “Mrs. Constant give you my name, you say? You staying at Oceanview?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just arrived, have you?”

  “This morning.”

  “On holiday, are you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “With friends?”

  “By myself. Bit of a dead loss, you know, having to take my holiday this time of year. That’s what comes of being a junior in the firm.”

  Enwright looked at the half-open bag, saw the goggles and the flippers. “You figuring on diving?”

  “It’s a hobby of mine.”

  Enwright stroked his chin. “It’s your funeral, young fellow. You be down about four and I’ll take you out. Five quid for the afternoon.”

  “Done. Although I have an idea you’re swindling me.” Jonathan crossed the road, walked up the lane. Out of the wind it was almost hot, with the sun dominating an empty sky. Oceanview was backed by a pleasant, sheltered lawn. For an hour after lunch he might very well relax in a deckchair. If he was going to dive this afternoon he’d need to be fresh.

  An engine gunned, and a small van pulled up beside him. “Going up the hill?” The driver was a dark man with a pencil moustache. He wore a sports coat and a flat cap, might have been any farmer or grower on his way home. “I can give you a lift.”

  “That’s very decent of you,” Jonathan said. “But I’m enjoying the walk.”

  “Get in,” the man said, and threw open the nearside door. Ted Enwright knelt in the back of the van, holding the double-barreled shotgun; the muzzles pointed at Jonathan’s stomach.

  *

  Jonathan wondered if Craufurd had had anything like this in mind when he had forbidden violence. He also wondered just how the baldheaded old coot would expect him to get out of this particular mess. But things had happened too suddenly for him to feel afraid. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked. “This is Guernsey, not Saigon.”

  “And the sight of a good-looking young fellow like you with his head blown off would shake them up a bit,” said the driver, who was unmistakably English. “Might even make them forget about that trawler for a while. No one would be upset by the explosion, you know. We shoot a lot of rabbits around here.”

  “Then I’d better get in,” Jonathan said. “I wouldn’t want to distract the good people.”

  “Move very slowly,” the man recommended. “Pull the seat forward and sit in the back.”

  Jonathan obeyed. Any faint prospect he might have had of knocking the gun aside vanished as Enwright retreated to the rear of the van, the shotgun still leveled. “I thought you weren’t very pleased to see me,” he remarked. “But this is ridiculous.”

  “Just shut up and sit on the floor,” Enwright said. The driver dropped a screen behind him, and the interior was suddenly dark. “Now you enjoy the drive,” Enwright suggested. “Move a muscle and I’ll blow you apart. It’ll sound just like a backfire. The van does it all the time.”

  Jonathan leaned against the spare tire. “Mrs. Constant will have something to say when I don’t show up for lunch.” As always, when faced with a crisis, he felt his doubts disappearing. Brooding on all the imponderables of life was so m
uch wasted time, in a situation like this. He was either going to get away from these men, or he was not. It was as simple as that.

  First thing was to identify where they were going. The van was climbing the hill; then the driver changed down to swing right, still on a good surface, changed up again, all the way into top, to suggest they had stopped climbing, let the engine brake the van as they descended again. Then a hard braking was followed by a right turn, and the good surface was behind them. They bounced across a succession of ruts, came to a stop. The driver slammed his door as he got out, and Jonathan listened to the rumbling crash of a garage door being dropped into place. A moment later the rear doors of the van swung open.

  “Out you get, young fellow,” Enwright said.

  Jonathan dropped to the ground. The interior walls of the garage were unfinished Guernsey granite, dark and damp, and the floor was earth. A Vauxhall Viva waited beside the van. He listened, heard the roar of a bus or a heavy truck not too far away. But this meant nothing, in Guernsey. They could have been anywhere on the island.

  “Over here.” Enwright opened a door in the far wall, showed him into a short passage. Here the plaster was painted white and the ceiling mushroom; both sadly needed a fresh coat. “The door on the left,” Enwright said.

  Jonathan hesitated. Beyond he could see a modern kitchen, but there was no one in it. The house might have been deserted. He glanced over his shoulder. Enwright remained by the door, and the shotgun was leveled. He entered a low-ceilinged, comfortably furnished living room; the decorations were in reasonably good condition, and if the upholstery was old, it was far from threadbare. Through a window to his right he looked out on a cobbled courtyard, and then a wall. There was a gate away to the left, and beyond that a narrow road and then a field brilliant with daffodils. There was nothing to identify the whereabouts of the building; Guernsey was full of old farmhouses.