“Give me a hand,” Jonathan said, and ran into the chartroom.
Clarence stood in the doorway and stared at the dead man. “Did you mean to?”
“It just happened. I’m not proud.” He heaved the still unconscious wireless operator to his feet, hefted him to the top of the companion ladder. A man was halfway up, armed with a length of lead piping. He ducked as he saw Jonathan and received the wireless operator on his head. They collapsed in a heap at the foot of the ladder. “Grab some chairs from the chartroom,” Jonathan panted.
Between them they unbolted two chairs, wedged them into the top of the ladder. The barricade would not keep a determined man out for more than five seconds. But it could not be moved quietly.
“What’s the play?” Clarence asked.
“We hold this deck.”
“Until?”
“I’ll let you know when I find out, shall I?”
Behind them Anna Cantelna was leaning out of the port, shouting. “Make like Horatius,” Jonathan said, and ran forward. She heard him coming and turned. She seemed to shrink; he thought for the first time in her life she might be afraid.
“What did you tell them?” he asked.
She sucked air into her lungs, pressed her back against the wheel. “I have told the engineer to stop engines. We will stay here until the captain arms his men and regains control of his ship.”
Jonathan nodded. “So let’s go back to the wireless cabin. It’s cozy in there.”
“You hope to summon assistance?”
“I have already summoned assistance. I know even less about navigation than did Katorzin.”
Again she cursed, in Russian. “But we will not stand still, you foolish boy. We will drift on to the rocks.”
“Not for a while. The tides up here aren’t quite what they are off Guernsey.”
“No, you don’t,” Clarence muttered from the top of the ladder, and fired. Jonathan ran back to help him, and as he did so a rifle on the foredeck exploded. The bullet shattered the upper part of the bridge window, scattered a shower of glass splinters over the deck. Anna Cantelna gave a sharp exclamation and fell to her knees. She pulled hair from her forehead, stared at the blood on her fingers; a piece of glass had nicked her cheek.
“Stay close to the deck,” Jonathan told Clarence. “We’re coming up to the crunch.” He knelt beside Anna Cantelna, drew his finger over the wound. “It’s just a scratch. But I still think the wireless cabin is safest.”
To his surprise she crawled in front of him, stepped carefully over the dead man, and sat on the floor against the bulkhead. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it against her face. She looked exhausted.
Jonathan pulled the dead man outside, left him in the chart room. Clarence lay on the deck beside the ladder.
“Hear anything?”
“Not a murmur.”
“Well, don’t try to cope on your own. They’re getting set for their big effort.”
A crash sent him back to the wireless cabin. Anna Cantelna had smashed the operator’s chair into the set. Sparks flew and there was a sizzling noise and a smell of burning. She faced him, nostrils dilated and lips slightly parted. Now she took off her oilskin, threw them on the littered table. She wore a white sweater. “Why don’t you shoot me?”
“Never anticipate. I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that until I discover what you’re up to.”
She gazed at him, frowning. “You are pretending that you have hunted me for two days, from one end of Great Britain to the other, without knowing why?”
“You did commit a murder. Didn’t you?”
“Enwright? I watched him fall apart before my eyes, like a hundred little pieces. When that happens to someone, he is no longer a man.” Suddenly she smiled, and it reached her eyes, lit up her face, made her quite disturbingly beautiful. She walked round the desk and stood close to him. He was clouded in musk, could feel her breath on his face. “I believe you,” she said. “I believe you have been speaking the absolute truth from the very beginning. It fits the pattern of British performance in recent years. Noninvolvement. Your government would have accepted with thanks any information Katorzin was able to deliver to them. But until the Ludmilla was moored in Portland they were determined not to associate themselves with the scheme in any way. So they sent an inexperienced boy to look things over. But you are not an ordinary government official, intent on doing what is necessary and nothing more. You are ambitious, enthusiastic. Perhaps you are overenthusiastic. You have followed me all this way on your own. Without orders.”
“You could put it that way.”
“And now you are on a Soviet ship, and you have killed a Soviet citizen, not to mention committing piracy. Listen to me, Jonathan. Even supposing you could succeed, your government might possibly be grateful, but having learned what they could they would still sacrifice you to Moscow, claim you acted on your own initiative, apologize, pay indemnities. They might even send you to Moscow for trial.”
Her face was very close, her eyes very soft, her lips just parted.
“And you can offer me an alternative?”
“Indeed I can. You crashed into the sea. No one except the crew of this trawler knows you were picked up. To all intents and purposes you are dead. And we know how to use talent like yours, enthusiasm like yours, tenacity like yours, in the Soviet Union. I will guarantee your safety. More, I will guarantee your future. If the K.G.B. do not wish you, I will employ you myself, as my personal bodyguard. This I swear. You have impressed me in a way no man has done for a very long time. Too long a time.”
She was so close he thought she was going to kiss him. Then she seemed to change her mind. Her gaze left his face, drifted past his ear. He thought perhaps she was less feminine than she thought. But she was staking all on winning him over.
“So tell me about Destruct,” he whispered.
“Operation Destruct.” She smiled. “I should have taken another half hour and eliminated Robert and Edna as well. Operation Destruct is a contingency plan, Jonathan. It is the responsibility of a government to prepare for every eventuality. Most of all must it prepare for the possibility of war, in order to be sure of winning that war, for the protection of its citizens. So we are thinking ahead to the next war. Realistically. Because what will happen when that day comes? The nuclear stalemate will have reached even more senseless proportions. And at the same time no nation will be willing to undertake another mass slaughter with conventional weapons, as has happened twice already this century. So do you know how we foresee the future? We believe history will repeat itself, up to a point. It always does, up to a point. So there will be a casus belli, some small and irrelevant country, and there will be guarantees, and someone will ignore the guarantees, and war will be declared. And then, just as in 1939, everything will stop. Neither side will be prepared to make the first move, which might bring about the end of the world. Hitler marked time for six months while he prepared a frontal assault on France. Such a program is no longer possible. Until the enemy have already been seriously weakened.”
“And Operation Destruct will do this?”
“Operation Destruct is merely one of a dozen contingency plans directed to this goal. My concern is with fish, but fish is only a small part of human diet, human necessities. My brief was to devise a way of making fish dangerous to man. This I have done. This ship carries a liquid which will assimilate with plankton and thus be eaten by fish. It will not harm the fish themselves, but it will remain in their bodies, and it is extremely dangerous to man. Cooking does nothing to reduce its potency. In a month a fleet of trawlers equipped like this one could cut the food supplies of the maritime nations in half.”
“Don’t tell me we’re at war already?”
“Of course not. This is still in the experimental stage. I have given you the theory, and we have tested it in our tanks. Now we are engaged in testing it on the ocean. We meant the peoples of Britain and America no harm. My two trawlers wer
e intending to collect all the fish in the area we were intending to impregnate.”
“Some would have got away.”
“Some,” she agreed.
“More, now you’re down to one ship. But you were going ahead.”
“You have a western mind,” she said. “With an overdeveloped sense of individual importance. In this crowded modern world, Jonathan, only the state is important, since without the state all the individuals would perish. Thus the odd individual must always be prepared to perish for the good of the state.” Her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers tight. Her body was against his. But again, so strangely, she seemed unable to meet his gaze, and looked over his left shoulder.
He placed his hand on her chest and pushed. She struck the edge of the desk and fell down. Jonathan turned, dropping to his knees and drawing his pistol. The man climbing the forward superstructure realized he had been seen, and struck the window with the butt of his rifle, scattering glass. Jonathan fired twice, sending the heavy bullets pumping into the oilskin-clad body. The man disappeared.
Shots and yells came from the companionway, and the cracks of Clarence’s Luger as he emptied it down the ladder. “I’m out of lead,” he gasped.
“Have mine.” Jonathan sent the Mauser skidding across the deck, then leaped to his feet and ran forward. A second man was climbing through the shattered windows. Jonathan crossed the chartroom in four gigantic strides and hurled himself through the air, both feet up. He struck the invader on the chest, rammed him into the radarscope. He picked up the discarded rifle, ran aft again. But Clarence was sitting up, shaking his head in amazement, wreathed in the scent of powder.
The silence was ringing, and the air was bitter. Two men lay at the bottom of the ladder, silent companions of the man in the chartroom and the man on the foredeck. Anna Cantelna knelt in the doorway to the wireless cabin, her head bowed, her right hand pressed to her left shoulder. Blood trickled down her white sweater, merged with the crimson of her pants.
Jonathan took the spare clip from his pocket, handed it to Clarence, who reloaded with trembling fingers. Then he knelt beside the woman, probed at the wound. She winced, and her eyes opened very wide.
“Your shoulder’s broken,” he said. “But you’ll recover. I’m going to take off your sweater and bind you up.”
She gazed at him, her eyes brittle with hatred. “You will be wasting your time,” she said. “My orders were to make one attempt on the bridge, and if that failed, to scuttle. In ten minutes we shall all be at the bottom of the sea.”
Jonathan grabbed the rifle, slapped Clarence on the shoulder. “Let’s go!”
“Eh? Where?”
“I figure at least half the crew is out of action. If we don’t finish the job now we’re not going to. You collect Helen, get her back up here, just in case. Use the rifle, and let me have the pistol.”
Clarence nodded, got up. Jonathan jerked the chairs out of the hatchway, slid down. A seaman waited at the saloon door, armed with a rifle. He gave a shout and fired without taking aim. Jonathan replied from the hip, also missing, but the Russian was already on his way back through the door, tripping in his haste and landing on his hands and knees. A moment later Clarence was over him, swinging the rifle. Jonathan opened the bulkhead door, ran along the deck. Someone fired at him, and he instinctively ducked, descended another ladder, sent two shots scorching aft as a head emerged from the crew’s quarters, and then pulled open the engine-room door.
He stood on a narrow catwalk, twenty feet above the idling turbines, now drowned by the sinister gurgle of incoming water. He descended the ladder in a long slide, reached the bottom as the chief engineer ran out of the forward compartment. Already a thin stream of water was spreading across the deck.
“Stop right there,” Jonathan snapped, “and turn these things off.”
The man shrugged, waved his hands, “Nyet!” He stepped past Jonathan, reached for the ladder.
Jonathan grabbed his shoulder, spun him round, drove the pistol into his ribs. “You’d better, or you won’t have the chance to drown.”
The chief rolled his eyes. He was a thin man, not much older than Jonathan, with a strong face. “Not possible,” he said. “Not now.”
Jonathan glanced around him. No machinery was destroyed. The water welled up to his ankles, deepening with every roll of the ship. “Three,” he said, holding up the fingers of his left hand.
For a moment they gazed at each other, then something struck the Katrina very hard, and she moved to port, sliding down a trough. Jonathan lost his balance and went with her, slipping in the water and hitting the deck. He lost the pistol, which splashed some feet away. The chief had also nearly fallen. Now he ran for the ladder. Desperately Jonathan hurled himself forward, seized his ankle. They fell together in the water. The chief was first up, swinging his fist in a smashing blow which sent Jonathan spinning across the engine room. He touched something hot and jerked away with a cry of pain. The chief climbed the ladder. Once again Jonathan reached after him, sucking blood from his burst lips. This time they fell even more heavily. Jonathan sat up, gripped the chief’s shoulder, swung him round for another blow, and checked. The chiefs head lolled, and his eyes were shut.
“Hey!” Jonathan shouted. “Wake up!” He scooped water from beside him, knee deep now, and splashed it into the chief’s face. The Russian’s eyelids flickered, but did not open.
The door at the top of the ladder swung inward and a man came down. Jonathan struggled to his feet, his head swinging, wondering how deep the water could become before it would be impossible to close the cocks. He staggered forward, slipped, and fell at the very foot of the ladder. A black cloud seemed to be closing about his brain. Grimly he raised his head, saw a never-to-be-forgotten, granite-hard face above him.
“Headly!” he shouted. “Do you know anything about engines?”
Headly stepped into the water with a splash. “No,” he said. “Is that chap alive?”
Jonathan looked over his shoulder. The chief engineer was sitting against the bulkhead, the water lapping at his chin. “Just,” he said.
“Then let’s get him upstairs. I’m told we have less than five minutes.”
*
“Complete mental and physical exhaustion,” said the doctor. He spoke with a gentle and reassuring Scottish burr. “A compound of extreme strain and lack of sleep over forty-eight hours. Surprisingly, Mr. Anders, had you been older you might have withstood it better. How do you feel?”
“Groggy.”
“Aye. Well, you’ve just slept for sixteen hours. I’ll have a meal sent up. Once you’ve eaten that you’ll be perfectly fit again. But it’s not something you want to try every week of the year. I’ll bid you good-bye. And to you, Mr. Headly.”
“And thanks,” Headly said. He stood by the window.
“Do you know where we are?” Jonathan asked. “I can’t remember a thing since the sea cocks.”
“According to the doctor,” Headly said. “You were so wound up and at the same time so exhausted that to all intents and purposes you were blind drunk. We’re in Castlebay, as a matter of fact. On Barra.”
“And the Katrina?”
“It’s been a bad week for Russian trawlers. And their crews. There were two dead men on board Katrina, and four more hospitalized. You seem to have been conducting a one-man war.”
“I had no choice.”
“A totally emotional and unsatisfactory response, Anders. I’ve just been on the private line to Mr. Craufurd, and what he had to say does not bear repeating. He also had quite a lot to say yesterday, when your friend Bridges descended upon us. I do believe he nearly broke the rule of a lifetime and left England. However, his common sense got the better of him, so he sent me instead. He wishes to see you the moment we get back to London, which will be as soon as you leave that bed. This place is becoming rather popular with reporters.”
“Oh, dear,” Jonathan said. “But I can explain . . .”
“Y
ou can’t, you know,” Headly said. “Strictly speaking, you don’t have a leg to stand on. Your mission was to discover what the Ludmilla was carrying, and whether or not Madam Cantelna was on board. You completed your mission very satisfactorily on Sunday. Then you seem to have gone right round the bend.”
“By Sunday evening I was charged with murder!” Jonathan shouted. “And then there was the stuff on board the Ludmilla . . .”
“You knew what it was?”
“No. But I could tell it was pretty potent. One taste of it made Miss Bridges violently sick.”
“But you weren’t content to leave it to the lab boys.”
“I couldn’t risk their spraying it all over the North Atlantic. And what about the Guernsey fishermen?”
“We’ve put an embargo on fishing off the west coast of Guernsey, for a week, while we discover just how wide an area was impregnated. First reports are that we’ve been lucky, though; very little of the stuff actually got out of the hold. Of course, if the ship had broken up it would have been a different matter. But didn’t it occur to you that stuff that nasty could be as much an embarrassment to Moscow as an asset? That’s why they were prepared to scuttle the Ludmilla, and then the Katrina, to stop us from getting our hands on any of it. After all, with East and West getting closer together, officially, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence to know the Russians are working on schemes like Operation Destruct. I’m thinking of public opinion, of course. We know they’re at it, and they know we’re at it. But John Bull and John Doe and Igor Sokolski don’t know we’re at it, and in the long run it’s their feelings that are going to count. The mere fact that we held a bottle of Madam Cantelna’s compound would have been sufficient to make them call a halt to this experiment. But you never gave us the time.”
“It seemed to me . . .” Jonathan began.
“Fortunately,” Headly continued. “We decided to play that trick anyway. We called at the Soviet Embassy and informed them that not only did we know all about the experiment, but that we had a murder warrant for Madam Cantelna. That got the wires humming. And having induced a certain state of alarm we were then able to confess that unfortunately, one of our agents had got a bee in his bonnet and was hunting the madam, intent on collecting her, dead or alive. This seemed a probable prospect to us, in view of your behavior on Guernsey. Unfortunately again, the Katrina had been placed under orders to maintain strict radio silence until she had picked up Madam Cantelna, so much so that her wireless had been disconnected.”
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