Operation Destruct

by Christopher Nicole

  Jonathan worked his jaw; now the handkerchief was gone he could taste only musk. There was no feeling left in either his hands or his feet; even if by some miracle he could get free there was no chance of taking on Enwright until he could restore his circulation. Yet surprisingly, the fear and the panic had disappeared. The game was lost, unless his opponents made a mistake. But he had been in this position often enough above a chessboard; and occasionally his opponents had made mistakes. He could only hope.

  “I warned you, mind,” Enwright said. “But when you started asking questions about the woman, well, I had to do something about it. I mean to say, this is espionage. If I was caught, how long do you think I’d get? Ten, fifteen years, most like.”

  “How long do you think you’ll get for murder?”

  “I’m not murdering anybody, young fellow. I’m waiting patiently while you mess around that wreck. You’re committing suicide, if you ask me. Mind you, I’m hoping to God you don’t come to any harm. I warned you how dangerous it is.”

  “It won’t work,” Jonathan said. “They’re making a patsy out of you, Ted. So I work for the British Government. Help me out of this lot and I’ll see you don’t go to jail.”

  “You think so? I’ve been to the Soviet Union, young fellow. I lived there four years, getting to know about things. I’d buck your people any day, but not the K.G.B.”

  “They wouldn’t dare touch you, here in Guernsey.”

  “You been reading any newspapers recently? If they can get a big-time spy out of a top-security prison, what chance does a chap like me have? Now you shut up.” He released Jonathan’s ankles, but left his wrists secured, then crawled forward and from the smaller bag took goggles and a pair of flippers.

  Desperately Jonathan worked his wrists, against each other and against the rope. He thought they were a little slacker than they had been at the house, but he was still a long way from freedom. And now he discovered he was not as completely recovered from the effects of the drug as he had supposed; the sea breeze had wakened him up and cleared some of the cobwebs from his brain, but his head was still spinning, and he had difficulty focusing.

  “Ahoy!” Alexis called from the water.

  “I see you.” Enwright came aft, put the engine into gear, and the boat moved forward again.

  Alexis vaulted over the side, scattering water. “It is cold.”

  “Yeah. You lost the lamp?”

  “I have placed it on the hull. How is he?”

  “Awake, and anxious. What’s it like down there, captain?”

  “Wrecked ships are unhappy things,” Alexis said. “Especially when they are ships in which you have sailed yourself. But I have found the place to leave Mr. Anders; the bridge windows are shattered, and I will thrust him in there. He will not drift out by himself, and it would be the easiest place in the world to become trapped. Prepare the line.” He sat in front of Jonathan, pulled the flippers onto his feet. “Does he look complete to you? I am leaving the lamp down there with him, of course.”

  Enwright pulled his lip. “He’d have a knife.”

  “I agree. But it would be dangerous to place one within his reach until he is dead. We will leave him down there for ten minutes, and then I will go down again to make sure everything is in order, and I will throw my knife in the windows beside him.”

  “Sounds all right.” Enwright passed the rope twice round Jonathan’s waist, secured it, leaving a considerable tail, to which he tied the lead bar they had brought from the house; the end of the rope he made fast to a cleat in the boat.

  “Very good,” Alexis said. “What is the tide doing now?” He took the hammer from the bag, stuck it in his belt beside the knife.

  “Coming up to slack water in another half hour. You won’t have any trouble getting him down.”

  “I was thinking more of my swim to Lihou.” Alexis stood up, gazed around the boat. The evening was already drawing in, and Guernsey was nothing more than a blue cloud hanging on the water’s edge. South of them Lihou Island was a shaggy dark mass, while to the northeast the headland guarding Perelle Bay, with the castellated silhouette of Fort Richmond looming above it, seemed unnaturally close. Near at hand, the last of the jagged black rocks had disappeared, their positions marked only by the break-up of each swell into surging white foam. A gull wheeled overhead, mystified by this fishing boat which was not fishing. It occurred to Jonathan that he was already in a twilight world, halfway between life and death.

  “There is a boat coming out,” Alexis said.

  Enwright squinted at the fishing boat which had apparently just dropped its mooring in Perelle Bay. “Belongs to Peter Martyn. He has pots off Lihou. Don’t worry about it. It’s too far off for him to see us clear, and if he comes over here it’ll be more real, eh, me sitting here waiting for you to come up. But you’d best take Anders down now.”

  Alexis nodded, seized Jonathan round the waist, and stood up.

  “So long, young fellow,” Enwright said. “No hard feelings.”

  Jonathan dragged air into his lungs, calculated he had about five minutes to live. Alexis leaned backward, and they went overboard.

  *

  Jonathan sank rapidly, carried by the lead weight on the end of the uncoiling line. Here was a world of immense gloom, a darkness which looked as cold as it was, out of which the black reef loomed at him like an irregular, serrated wall, from which protruded slowly waving tentacles of seaweed. Desperately he worked his wrists. The awareness that he was living the last minutes of his life seemed to give him enormous energy. The only way to die was to insist on living to the last breath.

  Now he saw the gleam from the lamp, and a moment later the Ludmilla lay beneath him, on her side. She had struck the reef a tremendous glancing blow, opening a gash some twenty feet long in her port hull, slid back off the rocks, and gone down like a punctured gasoline can. Now she hardly suggested a ship at all, both because she had turned over—and indeed might even have been capsizing when she settled on the bottom, and thus showed more bilge keel than superstructure—and because her single funnel and her mast had disappeared. He sank farther, passed the metal plates of the deck, and dangled opposite the hatch cover to the hold, which had been torn away, leaving an aperture some six feet across. He found this ironic; were he diving to see what he could find, as he had been instructed to do, this would be the answer to his every hope.

  The bridge was on his left now, slightly above him. The windows, as Alexis had said, were shattered and gaping, and already, only three days after the ship had come to rest, seaweed was reaching out from the base of the reef to twine itself around the iron uprights. He figured he’d been underwater just about one minute, and already his lungs were aching.

  Alexis appeared beside him, pulling the hammer from his belt as he did so, his face impassive behind the glass mask, and reached above Jonathan’s head to carry the rope over to the shattered window. Jonathan ducked, and tried to kick himself away. The hammer struck him on the left shoulder; the pain was dull, but the rubber suit absorbed much of the force. Desperately he swung round again, and as he did so his hands came free; the long wrestle, aided by the softening action of the water on the rope, had at last paid off. For a moment he was so surprised he just stared at them, waving in front of his face, but now Alexis was closing on him again, and he was still held by the rope round his waist.

  He reached up, caught Alexis’ wrist as it thrashed through the water. For a moment they gazed at each other, their empty lungs calling upon each of them to return to the surface, and then Alexis reached for the knife in his belt. He was losing his nerve, judging by the eye-rollings behind the mask. Jonathan seized his left wrist in turn, and once again they stared at each other, only inches apart, exerting every ounce of their muscles. But the drug was still gripping Jonathan’s brain, and the temptation to inhale had become overwhelming; Alexis for the moment had the greater strength, and his hands forced Jonathan’s backward, gradually bringing both knife and hammer clos
er, while the rope swayed to and fro through the water, and then suddenly it gave a tremendous jerk, followed by another. Jonathan felt himself whipped upward, swirling above Alexis’ head, and then the rope slipped away from him altogether, and climbed toward the surface. He looked up, and saw the reason for Enwright’s warning tug. There was another boat up there, close to Enwright’s, tossing in the swell.

  Alexis reached up toward him, flailing the water with his flippers. But the Russian had dropped both hammer and knife, and he was not thinking of Jonathan anymore, only of regaining the surface. Jonathan realized he must have kicked him in the face as he was dragged upward. The goggles were gone and Alexis was breathing water, his expression twisted with fear. But Jonathan was scarcely better off. In one long, agonizing moment he raced through twenty feet of turbulent water and shot clear, wrenching off his mask, drawing great breaths of air into his lungs, sucking salt water as well, vomiting, fighting to control his breathing and his muscles.

  He heard shouting, and then someone close to him in the water. “Easy now,” Helen Bridges cried. “Easy.”

  Her hands were in his armpits, pulling him backward, and he gazed up at the evening sky, and then at Clark Bridges and another man, leaning out of a fishing boat, reaching down for him. A moment later he was tumbled over the side and into the bottom of the boat, and Helen, who was also wearing a wet suit, had followed him. “Brother!” she gasped. “We thought you were gone. Your boatman said you were gone.”

  “I warned him,” Enwright shouted from the other boat. “I tried to tell that young fellow. It’s blooming dangerous down there.”

  Jonathan forced himself upward. His head was spinning, and he wanted to be sick again. “Alexis!” he gasped.

  “You want to take it easy,” Clark Bridges said. “You’ve had a pretty rough time.”

  “There’s another man,” Jonathan shouted desperately. “Somewhere. In the water.”

  “Hey, Ted!” shouted Peter Martyn. “You have another passenger?”

  “Not me,” Enwright said. “That young fellow hired me to bring him out to the wreck, like I told you.”

  “Listen,” Clark Bridges said. “You don’t want to worry about anything else right now, Jon. Just lie back and take it easy and we’ll have you ashore in no time. Then you can get everything straight in your mind, eh?”

  Jonathan picked up his goggles. “I must dive.”

  “You must be out of your mind,” Clark said. “You’re in no condition to walk down the street.”

  “You’ve had a shock, Jon,” Helen said. “I really think you should rest up a bit, and get some warm clothing on, and . . .”

  “You listen,” Jonathan said desperately. “There is another man in the water, a Rus . . .” He changed his mind. “Another man. We have to find him.”

  “There’s nobody else around now,” Clark said. “And your boatman . . .”

  “My boatman is lying,” Jonathan said.

  “Well, hell,” Enwright said. “I’m not staying around here to be insulted. He’s gone round the bend, he has. You want to take him to see a doctor. Hallucinations. Air bubbles rushing about his brain, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m off.” He put his engine into gear.

  Jonathan hesitated. But Enwright could always be found in Guernsey. “Helen,” he said. “I have to dive again. So I’ve had a bit of a shock. But you have got to believe me when I say there was another man.”

  Helen gazed at him, then looked at her brother. She frowned. “Are you sure you feel okay?”

  “Okay enough for one more dive.”

  She picked up her goggles. “Then I’m coming down with you. You keep this boat right here, Mr. Martyn.”

  The fisherman scratched his head. “Well, miss, like Ted Enwright said, this whole thing is dangerous like, and then there’s this young man all upset, and all this talk about there being another fellow . . .”

  “All the more reason for finding out what it’s all about,” Clark said, having decided to support his sister. “We’ll take a circle up here, Helen, and see if we can spot anyone. You stay close to Jon.”

  “You bet,” she said. “Let’s go.” She sat on the gunwale, fell backward. Jonathan followed, and they planed down into the darkness. Jonathan touched her shoulder and pointed to where the light still glowed from the top of the bridge. There was no sign of Alexis, but the lamp picked out a gleam of fresh steel lying on the sea bed, and Helen dived down to pick up the discarded knife.

  Jonathan retrieved the lamp, swam toward the half-opened hatch cover leading to the hold. Helen rose beside him, shook her head violently, pointed upward. He shook his head in turn; this time his lungs felt fine. He gave her the lamp, dropped through the opening into the deepest darkness he had ever known; Helen stayed in the hatchway, shining the light after him. As Craufurd had suggested, there was no fishing tackle down here, but instead a variety of scientific equipment, gauges, ammeters, pumps, television screens, even a small computer, mostly dislodged by the impact of hitting the reef and lying scattered around the place like a laboratory gone mad. But Jonathan’s attention was caught by a series of large boxes above his head, so securely fastened to the trawler’s hull that even the terrific shock of the impact followed by the slump to the bottom of the sea had not dislodged them.

  He waved at her, pointed to her knife, and then back to the boxes, but she shook her head again, and left the hatch to rise to the surface. He swam at her heels.

  “You took a heck of a chance, going in there at all,” she gasped. “Why, anyway?”

  “I’m looking for something,” he panted. “I’ve an idea it was in those boxes. I’m going back down to take a look inside. Let me have the knife.”

  “You’ll need a lung.”

  “It’ll only take me a minute.”

  “Ahoy there!” Clark Bridges shouted, as the boat surged toward them. “Find anything?”

  “Jon wants to dive again,” Helen said.

  Clark leaned over the side. “We didn’t spot anyone swimming around, either. Look here, Jon, enough’s enough, surely. Let’s go ashore and get ourselves a few pints of black coffee and talk this out like sensible human beings.”

  “Sweep toward Lihou,” Jonathan said. “That’s where the other fellow will have gone. I’m going to dive once more. You stay with Clark, Helen.”

  “I wouldn’t let you out of my sight for nuts,” she said. But she gave him the knife.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “You stick by the hatch, like just now. I’m going straight in.”

  “And coming straight back out again, I hope,” she said, and dived.

  Helen was below him, waiting for him, her light shining on the hatchway. Jonathan swam past her, dropped his legs to go through the opening feet first, until his head was clear. Helen sat astride the hatch cover, one leg inside and the other out, bracing herself as she directed the beam of the lamp toward him.

  The boxes hung above his head, each bolted to the hull. He thrust his blade into the planking, using it as a lever, leaning his weight against it. Again and again he pressed, counting now, for he figured they’d already been down a full minute. But the planking was loose, and a moment later he had opened a crack stretching the whole width of the box. He stuck the knife in his belt, dug his fingers into the opening and pulled. Helen placed the lamp against the iron hatch supports, and swam across to help him. Shoulder to shoulder they dragged on the wood, opening the split until, suddenly, the entire side of the box came away. The effort sent them both spinning across the hold, grasping each other for stability.

  Helen was the first to recover, and she pointed over Jonathan’s shoulder. He turned, treading water to steady himself, and gazed at the split box. Inside was a mass of straw and cotton wool, which now came drifting out, releasing a dozen small plastic flasks, several of which were already cracked and leaking a yellowish fluid into the water.

  Helen pointed upward, nodding as she did so, to indicate that she would be prepared to make another dive. But althoug
h his lungs were bursting, Jonathan was too close to success to delay now. He shook his head and planed downward, reaching for one of the flasks which appeared to be undamaged. He reached it just before it touched the hull, kicked as he turned upward, and watched Helen reaching through the discolored sea for the interior of the box, seeking another sample. A strange sense of urgency sang through his system, and he swam up, but as he did so she suddenly recoiled, kicking her flippers and streaking for the opened hatch, hitting the sides in her haste to regain the surface.

  Lungs aching, Jonathan followed, avoiding the discolored water and soaring upward, exploding out of the waves into the darkening evening, wrenching his mask from his face and tossing it to one side. “Helen!” he called. “Helen, are you all right?”

  “Over here,” she panted. “Over here.”

  “What happened?” He swam toward her, still clutching the flask.

  “I don’t know.” She was low in the water, barely able to keep her face clear, and now she retched and vomited. “The sea tasted . . . awful.” Her face was white, and she breathed jerkily.

  He put his arm around her waist. “Lean on me.” He peered into the evening, alarm twisting in his mind as he realized the boat was nowhere around, and it would soon be quite dark. “Hello!” he shouted. “Clark! Clark Bridges!”

  “I hear you,” came a distant reply, and he listened to the mutter of the engine. “Keep calling!”

  “Over here! They’ll be with us in a moment,” he said into Helen’s ear.

  She sighed, and rested her head against his. “It was so unexpected,” she whispered. “I couldn’t see anything different, but it tasted bitter . . .”

  Jonathan’s fingers tightened on the bottle in his left hand. But now the fishing boat was almost up to them.

  Clark Bridges’ face was grim as he leaned over the side. “You two okay?”

  “Just about. Here, take this.” Jonathan handed him the bottle. “Easy with it. I’ve an idea it could be dangerous.”