Operation Destruct

by Christopher Nicole

  “This is the man we have been expecting to arrive,” said foreign accent.

  Jonathan turned. His captors had followed him into the room, Enwright still carrying the shotgun. With them was a slight man whose hair matched the daffodils in gleaming yellow. His features were unremarkable, his eyes pale blue. Like Enwright he wore a fisherman’s sweater over jeans. He looked surprisingly young, and not in the least hostile.

  “This is the man we have been expecting to arrive,” said the driver.

  “Because he was talking with Enwright?”

  “He arrived in Guernsey at ten-thirty this morning,” Enwright said. “He was down on Perelle Beach the moment he’d checked in at his hotel, trying to get me to take him out to the wreck.” He threw the canvas carryall onto the settee. “He was going to dive; there’s his gear.”

  “So? That is very interesting. It would still have been better for you to obey your orders and keep an eye on him, at least until we could discover something more about him.”

  “He asked me if there had been a woman on board,” Enwright said.

  The blond man gazed at Jonathan. “Then perhaps you acted wisely, after all,” he said at last. “Who is likely to be looking for him?”

  “No one, for a while,” promised the car driver. “There was no one around when we picked him up, and we put him in the back of the van.”

  “He’s staying at Oceanview,” Enwright said. “Mrs. Constant is an old friend of mine. She believes in letting her guests get on with it. She won’t start worrying about him before tonight.”

  “Yes,” said the blond man thoughtfully. “You understand that you have placed us in a most difficult position, Mr. . . .?”

  “Anders,” Jonathan said. “And you?”

  “You may call me Alexis,” the man said. “Please sit down, Mr. Anders. As I said, you have placed us in an embarrassing position, which has been complicated by the zeal of my two associates. While we have no objection to the local skin divers using the wreck of my ship as playground, we have no intention of allowing an expert to look her over. You are an expert?”

  “You did say ‘my ship’?” Jonathan countered.

  Alexis shrugged. “The first I have ever lost.” He turned as the door opened.

  Jonathan rose. The woman was short and slender, with fine black hair. Her eyes were a soft gray, but he suspected the softness might be deceptive. Her face was thin, her nose sharp. He estimated she was in her late thirties, and she was a long way from being beautiful, or even attractive in the overwhelmingly healthy fashion of Helen Bridges, but there was a peculiar magnetism about her face. Or was it just that the men were obviously affected by her presence? She wore a shapeless woollen dress, and her bare feet were thrust into single-strap sandals. “This is your idea of a joke, Robert?” she asked the car driver. Her voice was very quiet.

  “Unfortunately, no,” Alexis said. “There seems little doubt that this man, a Mr. Anders, has come to Guernsey to investigate the wreck.”

  “Ah!” She sat on the settee, took a cigarette from the box on the table beside her. The man called Robert stepped forward with a match. She blew smoke over Jonathan’s head. “Perhaps you would explain, Mr. Anders.”

  It occurred to Jonathan that, however incredible such a turn of events might seem, he had completed his assignment. “I would rather hear an explanation from you, Madam Cantelna.”

  Chapter Four

  The woman gazed at Alexis, who shrugged. Then she glanced at the man called Robert. The very air in the room had suddenly become more hostile, and Jonathan realized he might have been a shade impetuous. “I recognized you from your photograph in the newspapers.”

  Anna Cantelna’s smile was frosty. “My photograph has not been in a Western newspaper for a very long time. And you are not in the least surprised to find me shipwrecked on this quaint little island. You will have to do better than that, Mr. Anders.”

  Jonathan’s brain raced like a runaway roller coaster. Whatever these people’s intentions, for the moment Anna Cantelna was puzzled; she had not expected such a direct approach.

  “I’m more relieved than surprised, Madam Cantelna. We were afraid you had gone down with the ship. Eleven bodies have been recovered, and we were told that was the Ludmilla’s total complement.”

  She frowned, glanced at the captain again, stubbed out her cigarette. “You do not deny that you were sent here to investigate the wreck?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “A foreign vessel has been sunk in British territorial waters in suspicious circumstances and with the loss of all its crew, so far as we were aware. My government would like to know if the circumstances were suspicious, or merely the result of incompetence. No offense intended, captain. So we were sent over here to see what we could find.”

  “He certainly has a nerve,” Robert said.

  “Be quiet,” Anna Cantelna said. “Perhaps you would explain your use of the word ‘we,’ Mr. Anders.”

  “My boss and I, of course,” Jonathan said, meeting her gaze.

  Very softly Anna Cantelna stroked the index finger of her right hand down her nose, across her lips, and as far as the point of her chin, an intensely thoughtful but curiously unfeminine gesture, although as she wore no lipstick she did no damage to her appearance. “Was there anyone with Mr. Anders at the beach, Enwright?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Enwright said. “He was by himself.”

  “And he told you he was staying at a guest house known to you. Did you check this?”

  “Well, no, ma’am, I didn’t think I ought to. But he was asking for me at the beach, and Mrs. Constant was one of the people I told that I’d be prepared to take skin divers out to the wreck, like you suggested.”

  “So our precaution has turned out very well,” Anna Cantelna said. “But I think you could start looking for Mr. Anders’ companion at Oceanview.”

  “We don’t stay at the same hotel,” Jonathan said.

  “Then where is your ‘boss’ staying?”

  “I suggest you find out.”

  “Oh, I am going to do that, Mr. Anders. Robert . . . no, you had better stay here with us. Ask Edna to come in here, will you? And Enwright, keep that shotgun trained on Mr. Anders.” She sat at the desk in the far corner of the room, took a sheet of paper, and began to write, quickly and jerkily. “Edna, this is Mr. Anders, an unexpected and, I’m afraid, an unwanted guest. Edna is Robert’s wife, Mr. Anders.”

  “My pleasure,” Jonathan murmured.

  The woman was plump and pink cheeked, in her late twenties. She looked breathless, and afraid. “He’s a copper,” she said. “I knew it, ma’am. We’re all going to wind up in jail.”

  “Not unless we lose our heads, Edna,” Anna Cantelna said. “I want you to find out if Mr. Anders was accompanied on his journey, or if he came alone. Can you do that?”

  “I know some people at the airport,” Edna said uncertainly.

  “Then you must encourage their memories. When you’ve done that I wish you to go into St. Peter Port and get me some things from a chemist. Can you read this?” She held out the sheet of paper.

  Edna squinted. “It don’t make any sense, though.”

  “It will, to a chemist. Now off you go. Enwright, give the gun to Alexis, please.”

  The captain took the gun from the fisherman, sat down on the opposite side of the room, keeping the barrels pointed at Jonathan’s stomach.

  “Thank you. Now, Robert, you and Enwright close the door, but remain in the kitchen, so that I can call you if necessary, and of course, please see that we are not disturbed unless I do call you.” She waited, her fingers drumming on the desk.

  “This is ridiculous, you know,” Jonathan said. “I mean, you may be able to get away with kidnaping and that sort of thing in central London. But you’ll never do it here. Once my boss discovers I’m not at Oceanview, and he probably knows it by now, he’ll have this island torn apart.” He hoped he sounded as confident as he wished.

  “I would
suggest you be quiet and listen to me, very carefully,” Anna Cantelna recommended. “You are either a fool, Mr. Anders, or a remarkably clever young man. You wish to pretend that you are nothing more than some sort of policeman at the scene of a road accident rather than an investigator at a murder. But that will not work, firstly because you knew I was on board, and secondly because the wreck was the result of neither an accident nor incompetence. It was the result of an act of piracy, to all intents and purposes.” She walked to the window, looked out at the cobbled courtyard, her back to Jonathan. “I feel that you are an intelligent young man. Perhaps the word ‘young’ would be the only criticism I have to make of your performance, so far. Are you comfortable?”

  The sudden question took him by surprise. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Good.” She took the straight chair from in front of the desk, placed it behind his chair, and sat behind him. “Do not attempt to look at me, Mr. Anders. I wish you to watch Alexis. You may be sure he intends to watch you.”

  She was very close to him now, leaning forward, he thought, so that her mouth was immediately behind his right ear. He was enveloped in the scent of musk.

  “You are British,” she said softly. “Perhaps you think in terms of civilized fair play, of winners and losers shaking hands and saying, better luck the next time. But there are still some stakes in the world which are too high for sportsmanship, Mr. Anders.” Her fingers suddenly clasped his neck. They were very firm, and he thought they would probably prove surprisingly strong. They closed over his carotid artery. “I am not hurting you?”

  “No.” His voice sounded strange.

  “Good. Then you must remain absolutely still, if you please. And tell me about Katorzin.”

  It occurred to Jonathan that his attempt to unsettle her had failed, that she was not the sort of woman to become unsettled by anything. And he had encountered this method of interrogation more than once during his training. Anna Cantelna was handicapped by having only her fingers instead of an electronic counter; but he did not doubt she was sufficiently alert to note every change in his pulse rate. The way to combat her was to think about other things, utterly normal things, to keep his breathing as steady as possible, to try not to listen to what she was saying. But he desperately wanted to listen to what she was saying, and her presence, the scent of musk, the pressure of her fingers, made irrelevant thought difficult.

  “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “Come now, Mr. Anders. Tigran Katorzin is a colleague of yours.”

  “My job is to find out why the Ludmilla struck those rocks, Madam Cantelna. If you would tell me that, then I can take my leave and be on my way. My boss is a very busy man.”

  Her fingers tightened. “You are a very cool young man. You seem so unconcerned by the position in which you find yourself that I am almost inclined to believe you. But only almost, Mr. Anders. However, I am prepared to cooperate with you. I will tell you how and why the Ludmilla went on the rocks, in so far as either Alexis or I know what happened, and then perhaps you will be good enough to reciprocate and tell me where and how deeply the British Government is involved. Now, does that not sound like a fair arrangement?”

  “It sounds admirable to me.” But now, if ever, he must be on his guard. She was deliberately trying to absorb him, to relax his concentration.

  “Admirable,” she repeated. “Yes. Good, I am glad you approve. Well, then, as I am sure you know, I am perhaps the leading marine biologist in the world. I have a large laboratory on the shores of the Black Sea, and another, smaller laboratory in Leningrad. I have a staff of several hundred men and women working under me. Of them all, Tigran Katorzin was the most talented. He came to me several years ago, straight out of university. As a student he had been a well-known athlete, and had made several trips to the west, with Soviet teams. This fact assumes a considerable significance, now. However, I am afraid my interest has hitherto been overly concerned with my work, rather than with politics. I liked Tigran, and as I have said, his ability was unmistakable. I gave him increasingly responsible work to do, and just over a year ago I promoted him to be my chief assistant. He proved an admirable assistant, especially as we were then bringing to fruition a most ambitious series of experiments.”

  “Concerned with exactly what aspect of marine biology?” Jonathan asked.

  Anna Cantelna smiled into his ear. “You are not a scientist, Mr. Anders, and so it would merely bore you were I to become technical. We are discussing Tigran Katorzin. Early this year it was decided that the final test for these experiments could only be carried out under actual conditions, and so two . . . and so the Ludmilla was fitted out as a floating laboratory, and we put to sea from Sevastopol three weeks ago. We were a normal scientific expedition, although owing to the limited space at our disposal my team had necessarily to consist of just Tigran and myself. Part of our plan was to increase our knowledge of fish movements in coastal waters, and thus we took our time about our voyage, following the coastline of Europe all the way round from the Aegean, while remaining, of course, outside of territorial waters. Thus it was that last Wednesday we left the Bay of Biscay and rounded Ushant. We were not intending to pass right through the English Channel. We meant to come as far as the Channel Islands, and then make for Land’s End and Ireland, and go north. But off Ushant the weather became very bad, and Alexis decided to shelter off the south coast of England until the gale blew itself out. Throughout our journey to this point, there had been absolutely nothing suspicious about Tigran’s behavior. And I had been working in the closest possible cooperation with him during the two previous years. So you will agree that I felt I knew him very well. I would have noticed anything the least bit unusual about him. But there was nothing to be noticed. And then, on Thursday morning, well you had better tell Mr. Anders exactly what happened on Thursday morning, Alexis.”

  “The weather was really very bad,” Alexis said. “The wind was force nine, gusting to ten. The time was shortly after midnight, and I was awake, both because of the movement of the ship, which was considerable, and because I knew the middle watch would just have taken over the bridge, and I had left orders for them to inform me the moment Guernsey appeared on our radar screen. With the wind having been at gale force throughout the previous twenty-four hours, and the tides running strongly in this area, I was not as positive as I would have liked of our position, and so I was seeking a fix, eh, before laying a course for Lyme Bay, where I was sure we would be able to ride out the storm in safety. Suddenly my door opened, and Katorzin stood there. He held on to the door with one hand; the other was in his jacket pocket. He told me I was needed on the bridge. Well, I thought something had gone wrong, so I got up immediately and dressed, and I asked him what had happened. He said, ‘Nothing has happened, yet. I wish you to accompany me to the bridge.’ Well, I still did not understand what he meant, and I thought he was afraid of the weather. So I laughed, and said, ‘There is nothing to worry about, Tigran. By dawn we will be sheltering in Lyme Bay.’” And he said, ‘Not Lyme Bay, Alexis. Portland Harbour.’ And he took his hand from his pocket and showed me a Mauser automatic pistol.”

  He paused, gazing at Jonathan.

  “The poor fellow must have gone round the bend,” Jonathan said.

  “I thought so too, until I remembered that Portland is a British Naval Dockyard. But there was nothing I could do about it, at that moment; I recognized the pistol as my own, stolen from my desk drawer, and our other weapons were locked in the strong room. He made me go to the bridge, where there were my mate and my quartermaster. We four were the only people awake, so far as I knew. That is the trouble with these modern ships. They are controlled entirely from the bridge. With just a subtle alteration of course we would have been off Portland by the time the morning watch came on duty. So I reasoned that far from being out of his mind, Tigran was carrying out a very cleverly calculated piece of piracy.

  “I will confess to you, Mr. Anders, I found myself in a difficult positio
n. My only hope lay in the fact that Tigran knew very little about navigation. He assumed that we were already steering on Portland Bill, intending to alter course to port when we sighted the lighthouse, at which time he would command me to alter course to starboard for the harbor. That is how you would steer a car, eh, from signpost to signpost. But we were still steering on Guernsey. Now my instructions were perfectly clear. My ship was a floating laboratory, containing the most up-to-date Soviet discoveries in the field of marine biology; under no circumstances was the Ludmilla to be allowed to fall into the hands of any foreign power. I decided therefore to continue on the course as set, in the hopes of regaining control of the bridge before Tigran realized what was happening. On the other hand, if the worst came to the worst and I failed, well, then, we would approach too close to Guernsey, and in such bad weather, once we found ourselves in the grip of the tremendous tides that run in these waters, we would certainly come onto the rocks. As a matter of fact, had I been told to select a coast on which to wreck a ship irretrievably, I could not have chosen one more suitable, for I knew that off Guernsey we were most likely to strike some distance out, and go down in fairly deep water, where there would be no possibility of the British Navy salvaging the wreck. It seemed this was my only alternative, and so I took it.”

  He shrugged. “It did not prove possible to disarm Tigran in time. We were, as it happened, closer to land than I had estimated, but as Tigran had taken up his position beside our radarscope I did not learn this until it was too late; it would have alerted him that I was up to something had I checked the radar when he was under the impression that we would not approach land for another two hours.”

  Jonathan stared at him with his mouth open, for the first time oblivious of Anna Cantelna’s fingers. “You deliberately let your own ship steam into a reef?”