I couldn’t believe it. I stared at Lloyd Jones. He’d heard it, but he made no move to counteract the order. ‘Can you drop me off now?’ I asked him. The harbour launch …’
He was staring at me, his eyes wide, that shocked look on his face as though suddenly aware that he had a civilian witness to what was happening on board. He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ He held up the sheet of paper. ‘Orders. No contact with the shore and put to sea immediately. Resist any attempt to prevent departure. Ministry of Defence. Whitehall’s orders.’ He put his hand to his head, leaning forward. ‘Downing Street by the sound of it. Christ!’ And then he suddenly seemed to get a grip of himself. He smiled. ‘Glad to have you aboard. My God I am!’ The steward brought him his coffee and he gulped it down, then reached for his cap and jumped to his feet. ‘Make yourself at home. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with us for some time now.’ He stopped in the doorway, his face grim as he said very quietly, so that only I could hear him, ‘Medusa is to leave now – immediately.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘It’s Menorca. Port Mahon. I’m sorry, but those are my orders.’ He turned then, putting his hat on and dropping the curtain behind him. There were feet pounding the deck, the throb of engines again and a clanking for’ard, the chain coming in.
I went up to the bridge. Everyone was back at their stations and the officer on the fo’c’s’le reporting the anchor up and down, the shorelights beginning to move as the ship got under way. The harbour and police launches were maintaining station on the port side and one of their officers shouting through a loudhailer, his amplified voice clearly audible and nobody paying attention, the beat of the engines increasing, the ship gathering speed. Port Mahon! Why Mahon? Why was Medusa ordered to Menorca immediately? Regardless of the Maltese.
‘Vessel putting out from Kalkara, sir. Looks like a patrol boat.’
It was Mault who acknowledged the lookout’s report, the Captain merely raising his glasses to look at it.
‘They’re signalling, sir. An order to stop.’
Gareth nodded. ‘Maximum revs as soon as you’re clear of that ferry.’
I had tucked myself as inconspicuously as possible against the rear bulkhead, between the chart table and the echo-sounder, which was clicking away over my left shoulder. I saw the ferry emerge virtually from under our bows as we sliced into its wake, the rising hum of the engines almost swamped by the surge of the bow wave as Gareth pulled open the port-side door to look back at the launches.
‘That’s not a patrol boat.’ Mault’s voice sounded high and a little tense. ‘It’s that big customs launch.’ He strode across the bridge to Gareth. ‘What happens if they open fire?’
‘They won’t.’ Gareth’s voice was firm and absolutely calm.
‘You mean they won’t dare. Then what about that cruiser?’
Gareth spun round. ‘Our orders are specific. Leave Malta immediately. Are you seriously suggesting the Russians would risk an international incident of such magnitude? To open fire on a British warship in a friendly harbour would amount to something very close to a declaration of war – against us, against Nato.’ He had spoken with sudden heat, an outburst almost. It indicated the pressure he was now under, the nervous strain. I also realised that his words were spoken for the benefit of everybody on the bridge, and thus for the ship as a whole.
He turned to the open doorway again, his back and the raising of his glasses indicating that the subject was closed. Nobody spoke after that, except for essential orders and reports, the hum of machinery, the sound of water, the shuddering and clattering of loose items, everything building to a crescendo as the two double reduction geared turbines piled on full power and the ship’s twin props reached maximum revs. We were out past Gallows Point, the end of the breakwater approaching fast and the light at the end of it swinging across us so that every five seconds we were caught in its beam. Nobody fired at us, nobody followed as we pounded past it and out to sea, where we turned to port and set course to clear Gozo and leave the volcanic island of Pantelleria to port.
Craig pulled out Chart 165, and looking over his shoulder as he pencilled in our final course past the southern tip of Sardinia, I saw on the extreme left of it the eastern half of Menorca. Six hundred miles, say thirty to thirty-four hours at full speed. Why the hurry? And what would my position be when we got there? Customs, health and immigration would come on board in the usual way when we arrived and it was very unlikely Gareth would attempt to conceal my presence.
‘If you care to come with me, sir, I’ll show you to your cabin.’ It was Petty Officer Jarvis and he had a bag in his hand. ‘I’ve looked out some clothes of the Captain’s – shirt, sweater, pyjamas, socks, that sort of thing. He thought they’d fit all right, you being about his size.’
The cabin was two decks down, just aft of the room housing the gyro compass machinery. It had two berths, both unoccupied, and when I finally turned in, lying there, conscious of the movement of the ship and unable to sleep, I couldn’t help thinking how odd it was to be wearing the pyjamas of a man who would probably cuckold me within the week, may indeed have already done so. But that hardly seemed so important now as I stared into the darkness, my mind going over and over the events of the day. I thought of Wade, that telephone conversation, the trouble he had taken to trace my background, that bastard Evans trying to implicate me, and now this ship, sent to Malta, then, just after a nasty little shooting incident, sent off on a wild dash to Mahon. Why? And we had actually left Grand Harbour at action stations with gun crews closed up. Turning it over in my mind it seemed so incredible that at length I couldn’t think of anything else.
III
Mercenary Man
Chapter One
I must have slept, for the next thing I knew was the shrill note of the bo’s’n’s pipe echoing over the main broadcast followed by a metallic voice declaring the start of another day: ‘Call the hands, call the hands, call the hands.’ It was 06.30 and since the movement had become a jerky roll and an occasional shivering crash for’ard, I guessed we had now cleared the western tip of Sicily with the full fetch of the Tyrrhenian Sea on our starb’d beam. The cabin door lurched back and Petty Officer Jarvis entered balancing a cup with a saucer on top of it. ‘Captain’s compliments, sir, and would you join him for breakfast as soon as you’re ready.’
The tea was dark, strong and very sweet. I drank it quickly, then staggered along the passageway to the heads. It took me some time to shave and dress because of the unpredictability of the ship’s movement, so that by the time I reached the Captain’s day cabin he had finished his meal and was seated at the desk reading through a clipboard of signals with the Yeoman standing by. ‘Sleep well?’ It was a perfunctory query, his mind concentrated on the sheets in his hand, his face drawn and tense, dark shadows under his eyes. After a while he said, ‘Very good, Yeo. Better send it now. They’ll need to have all the details.’ And then he turned to me. ‘The BBC had it on the six o’clock news and it was also referred to in the round-up of the day’s papers. The Times called it The Malta Incident and one of the tabloids had the headline: NAVY SCUTTLES OUT OF GRAND HARBOUR.’ He smiled, but without humour, and he didn’t refer to it again, the routine of a ship taking over as the Marine Engineer Officer came in to report engine and fuel states, followed by other officers with reports and queries.
I had finished breakfast and was having a final cup of coffee when he suddenly stood up and reached for his cap. ‘Care to come round the ship with me?’
I followed him out into the passageway and down the ladder. For that moment we were alone, the first opportunity I had to ask him if he knew why he’d been despatched to Mahon in such haste.
He looked at me, tight-lipped, ‘I seem to remember I told you, last night. I shouldn’t have done, but I did.’ And he added, ‘I wasn’t quite myself, a bit tensed-up.’
‘You told me you’d had orders to leave, and you mentioned 10 Downing Street. But nothing else.’
‘That’s it – orde
rs.’
‘But why?’
He stopped then. ‘This is the Navy, Mike. Politicians make the decisions, we carry out the orders.’
‘But you must have some idea of the reasons for those orders.’
‘Some idea, yes.’ He said it slowly, hesitantly. ‘The rest I’m having to guess at.’ He started down the next ladder to the deck below. It was then that I passed on to him what Jarvis had said about the mood on the mess decks. He turned on me. ‘I know about that. It can’t be helped.’ And when I persisted, suggesting that some hint of the reason for the orders he had received would make his men, and myself, a good deal happier, he gripped hold of my arm and said angrily, ‘Leave it at that, will you. I’m pleased to have you on board, but don’t ask questions.’
He went on ahead then, down a long passageway to the sick bay, where we found Kent pale but cheerful, sitting up bare-chested and heavily bandaged. ‘Pity we’ve no helicopter,’ Gareth told him. ‘But another twenty-four hours and we’ll either have a Spanish surgeon here on board to get that bullet out or we’ll fly you home.’
‘I’d rather have it out on board, sir.’ But as we left him there were beads of perspiration forming on his forehead, his skin very white. Gareth said to me quietly, ‘Good man, that. He’ll leave a gap I’ll have great difficulty in filling.’ And he added, ‘If we’d had a helicopter, we could have flown him ashore from here.’
The tour of inspection took in three decks and lasted just over half an hour, and all the time Gareth was making an effort to imprint his personality on the officers and men he talked to and play down what had happened at the wharf in Malta. Finally we reached the flight deck, going through the hangar to look down on to the quarterdeck below where the white of our seething wake and the roar of water boiling up from the twin screws made it almost impossible to talk. ‘What’s wrong with the helicopter – out of service?’ I shouted to him.
He shook his head. ‘I haven’t been allocated one.’
‘So what do you keep in the hangar?’ I was curious because the shut steel doors had seals on the locks.
He didn’t answer that, looking at me sharply, then turning away. Later, talking to the Pilot on the bridge, I learned that those seals were inspected by the Captain or WEO personally mornings and evenings, that they each held a key to the doors and it required both of them present in person to unlock them.
But by then I was less interested in the sealed hangar than in the political repercussions of the Malta affair. It was, in fact, the main topic of conversation, not just on the bridge or among the officers, but throughout the ship. At first it was no more than a small item at the end of the early morning news. By 09.00 the BBC had slotted it in as a major news item immediately following the latest exchange of notes between the Kremlin and the White House, and it was clear from the way in which the incident was being presented that it was being blown up into a major political row. Later the World Service of the BBC announced that the British High Commissioner had been summoned to the office of the Maltese premier where he had been handed a note of protest to the British Government for the ‘high-handed, irresponsible and internationally outrageous behaviour of one of HM ships in opening fire on innocent people when on a courtesy visit’. Almost simultaneously the Maltese High Commissioner in London had been called to the Foreign Office. The Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs had put down a question for the Prime Minister to answer at Question Time in the House that afternoon and there was even some talk of an emergency cabinet meeting later in the day.
The repercussions of all this bore heavily on Gareth, who spent most of the day at his desk replying to the stream of signals that came in, one of them from 10 Downing Street itself demanding an immediate personal report of the affair direct to the Prime Minister’s Office.
And on top of this, in the late afternoon, there was a sudden flurry on the bridge, messages flying around the ship and the Captain himself finally being called. We were then approaching Cape Spartivento at the southern end of Sardinia with the wind increasing from the north-east, the surface of the sea flecked with whitecaps and the sky so overcast it looked as though night was about to fall.
It was the Communications Officer who first alerted the officer of the watch. He was a flamboyant, cocky lieutenant with a round, smiling face. His name was Woburn, so everybody referred to him as The Smiler. But he wasn’t smiling when he appeared on the bridge in the late afternoon, his face set as he and the Pilot searched the murk through the bridge glasses. We were on collision course apparently with a section of the Sixth Fleet, which had left the Bay of Naples the previous day and was now spread out over quite a large area of sea.
Night had fallen before we sighted the aircraft carrier. It came up over the horizon like the gas flare of an oil rig, so bright and red was the masthead light, and then, as we closed it, two American destroyers powered towards us at full speed, swirling round and stationing themselves between us and the carrier like protecting sheepdogs. When we passed it we were so close that the side of it was like the blurred outline of a harbour wall, and always the destroyers tracking alongside us, close enough at one point for Gareth to slide open the starb’d bridge door and exchange greetings with one of their captains over loud-hailers. Then they peeled away and for the next half-hour we were threading through a litter of radar blips that only occasionally resolved themselves into fleeting glimpses of actual ships.
As a result our evening meal was later than usual. It was also a rather hurried one with Gareth hardly saying a word, his mind concentrated on the problems facing him. One of those problems was, of course, my presence on the ship. Due to the decrease in speed while crossing the track of the US ships, and the fact that we had to alter course to starb’d, our eta at Mahon the next day had been delayed by about two hours to 08.45. It was hardly likely he would risk putting me ashore in daylight, and once we were tied up at the Naval Base …’ ‘What are you going to do about me?’ I asked him.
He looked at me vaguely. Then his eyes focused as though suddenly recalling my presence in the cabin. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ He got suddenly to his feet, hesitated, then crossed to his desk. ‘This came in just after we cleared that carrier.’
Time of receipt of the message he passed to me was 21.13. It read: Weapon that killed Jorge Martinez found in home of Michael Steele. Police statement just issued indicates Steele arrived Malta on twin-hulled yacht Thunderflash then disappeared. Recent owner of yacht name of Evans also wanted for questioning; thought to be on fishing expedition. Political situation here still tense. In view of what happened Malta suggest you anchor off Villa Carlos well clear of Mahon port area.
I was still in a state of shock, reading again the first lines of that message, when he said, ‘You understand, I hope – the sooner you’re off my ship the better.’ I began to protest that I had had nothing to do with the Martinez killing, but he stopped me. ‘Whether you were involved or not is immaterial. The gun was apparently found in your house and I’ve got troubles enough –’
‘It wasn’t in my house. It was in the port engine compartment –’
‘I don’t care where it was,’ he cut in. ‘I want you off the ship and the sooner –’
‘For God’s sake, listen will you …’
‘No, you listen.’ His hand was up, an abrupt, imperative gesture. ‘I’m sorry, but you must understand. You’re dynamite in my present circumstances.’ He took the paper from me, staring down at it and muttering something about ‘he was bound to be mixed up in it somewhere’, then folding it and slipping it into his pocket with a bitter little laugh as he told me I was probably the least of his worries, everybody blaming him for the Malta Incident. ‘And the PM insisting I act with more circumspection in Menorca. Circumspection! That’ll be the Foreign Office putting their oar in.’ The boyish smile flashed out, but it was only a glimmer, then he banged his cap on his head and was gone, hurrying down the ladder to the Communications Office.
I finished my coffee, my
mind in turmoil. Finally I went back up to the bridge, preferring contact with the outside world to the confines of the cabin, where I had nothing to do but think about Soo and what the hell had been going on for that gun to have been found in the house.
The watch was just changing, and shortly afterwards young Davison, a fresh-faced, tow-headed officer-under-training appeared at my elbow to say the Captain had phoned to enquire if I would join him for a drink.
I found him sitting hunched over his desk, the reading light pulled down to spotlight the pad on which he had been making notes, hs face, his whole body set rigid, and a cigarette smouldering in a scallop-shell ashtray. He looked up, his eyes blank.
‘What is it?’ I asked. And when he didn’t reply, I said, ‘You asked me down for a drink.’
‘Oh yes.’ His eyes blinked quickly and he seemed to pull himself together, jumping to his feet and waving me to a seat at the low table. He picked up the bottle standing there. ‘Real cognac, or would you prefer brandy and ginger ale?’ I opted for the cognac, and as he poured it the neck of the bottle rattled against the rim of the glass. That, and the awkward silence as he helped himself to a Coke and sat down opposite me, was an indication of how tensed-up he was.
‘You’re thinking about tomorrow,’ I said.
He nodded, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette, lighting another, then leaning back, drawing the smoke into his lungs as though he were at high altitude sucking in oxygen. In the silence that followed I was conscious of the engines, the far-off sound of the bow wave surging along the frigate’s side, the rattle of crockery in the steward’s pantry.
‘I was wondering …’ But it’s not easy to ask a favour of a man who’s in love with your wife. ‘Why don’t you drop me off on one of the islands as you go into Mahon?’ I asked him finally, very conscious of the hesitancy in my voice. He was the Captain of a Royal Navy ship on an official visit and my suggestion was tantamount to smuggling a wanted man back into Spain. And when he didn’t say anything, I made the point that I hadn’t asked to stay on his ship. ‘You virtually kidnapped me.’ And I added, ‘Drop me off. Forget I was ever on board.’
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