Medusa

by Hammond Innes

  But then the glow of a cigarette, showing for an instant under the hospital wall, brought my mind back to reality. Away to the right I could just make out the dim shape of a sailor standing in silhouette against the stars, and when I climbed to the top of a rock there was the outline of the frigate, stern-on and not a light showing. Somebody coughed, a hastily suppressed sound, and as I went back into the tent I heard a clink of metal on stone somewhere out beyond the dig.

  It was almost four. Another hour and dawn would be starting to break. Perhaps it was the coffee, or perhaps I was just too damned tired, but I couldn’t seem to sleep, my mind going round in circles, worrying about Soo, about the future, about what it would be like if she were killed.

  Then suddenly I was being shaken violently and Petra’s voice was saying, ‘Wake up! Wake up, Mike! It’s all over.’

  ‘What the devil are you talking about? What’s all over?’ I sat up so abruptly my head caught her on the chin. The flap of the tent was drawn back, the sun blazing in. Blinking in the glare of it, I asked her what time it was.

  ‘Just after ten and there’s three Spanish warships steaming past us.’

  I wriggled out of the sleeping bag, slipped my shoes on and went outside. They made a brave sight, two destroyers and what looked like some sort of a logistic ship, the sun blazing full on them, outsize Spanish flags streaming from the ensign staffs on the ships’ sterns and the water of the harbour mirror-calm ahead of them, Mahon blindingly white above. The tanker was back in Cala Figuera, moving in to the fuel depot with the tug in attendance.

  It really did look as though Petra was right and it was all over. But the Navy was clearly taking no chances, the frigate lying there against the rocks, silent and watchful, no movement on deck and only the hum of machinery to show that the inside of it was alive with men. No movement on the island either, only the occasional whisper of a voice to indicate that there were sailors there, standing to their weapons and waiting.

  I clambered up on to the ruined wall above the dig, where I had an uninterrupted view eastwards towards La Mola. No sign of the Libyan freighter, the water flat calm and empty of anything except a small boat trawling for fish. The slit trench with the Scots leading seaman I had talked to in the night was quite close, but all they could tell me was that they had heard the freighter fetching its anchor sometime around three-thirty, just after they had seen the lights of a dozen or more vehicles moving away from La Mola along the road above Cala Llonga. They couldn’t tell me whether the freighter had headed seaward or gone back to Mahon.

  They were far more relaxed than when I had talked to them in the early hours. Medusa’s galleys had produced a hot breakfast for them at the usual time, the ground still strewn with mess tins and eating irons. They thought it wouldn’t be long now before they were allowed to stand down.

  I was still in my underpants and I went back to the tent to get myself dressed. Petra was cooking us some breakfast. I remember that very distinctly, the smell of bacon and eggs, and sitting there in the sunshine, neither of us talking. I don’t know how many men there were around us, but the sense of hushed expectancy was almost overpowering.

  Then suddenly the frigate’s broadcast system was blaring out Rule Britannia, men erupting on to the deck, the island around us coming alive as word was passed to stand down, everybody talking at once, a roar of voices mingled with the high quick laughter that comes of nervous relief.

  I joined a party lugging equipment and the debris of a meal down to the stern of the ship. There was an officer there, a man I hadn’t seen before. He refused to let me on board and I was forced to scribble a note to Gareth on a message pad. But even as a seaman went for’ard to deliver it, I saw Gareth, dressed in what looked like his best uniform, scrambling down a rope ladder and jumping into the launch, which then headed for the harbour where the Spanish warships were anchored close off the Naval Base. I would now have to wait until he had paid his respects to the Spanish naval commander, and even then he might not feel able to send me ashore.

  Shortly after that I walked out to the dig and stood by the red-flashing beacon, staring across the narrow strip of water to the steep rise of the land beyond with villas perched white on the slopes. Where would they have taken her? Pulling out suddenly like that, what for Christ’s sake would they have done with her? They would hardly have taken her in that convoy of vehicles that had left from La Mola in the dark of night. Or would they?

  I sat down on a rock, my mind going round and round, gnawing at the problem. And in the sunshine, with wild flowers in every crevice, I saw her as she had been back in Malta when I had first met her. A picnic on Gozo, her body lying on a rock all golden warm like the limestone of the buildings on the hill above caught in the slanting rays of a glorious sunset. And in that little trellis garden of her mother’s, bougainvillaea and morning-glory, and the two of us dancing to that old portable gramophone, our bodies close and the moon full above the curved roof tiles. A world apart, the two of us hopelessly in love in the moonlight, not another thought in our heads, not a care in the world, our bodies tingling to the touch of our fingers, the ache for each other growing.

  God in heaven! What had happened to us? To me? What had changed it?

  Questions, questions, the result emotional torment and my heart reaching out to her. Surely to God two people who had been as close to each other as we had been then could make contact across the distance that now separated us. If I thought hard enough, if I could concentrate my mind sufficiently, surely I could evoke some response from her, some telepathic indication of where she was.

  I was there by that beacon for a long time, alone with my thoughts, and right above me the Golden Farm to remind me of two other lovers. And then Petra came to say the launch had finally returned.

  ‘Any message from the ship?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head and I stared at that narrow strip of water, wondering whether I could make it, picturing him back in his day cabin, his desk piled with urgent messages. In the circumstances, my note would hardly seem of great importance. Soo would either be dead or abandoned somewhere. Whichever it was, he had every reason to think a few more hours would make little difference.

  I was in the tent, stripped to my underpants and stuffing my clothes, pipe, matches, keys, money, everything I might need ashore, into a plastic bag, when the flap was pulled back and I looked up to find Petty Officer Jarvis standing there. ‘Captain’s compliments, sir, and the launch is waiting to take you ashore.’

  I shall always bless him for that. In the midst of all his problems he had read my note and understood my urgency, the depth of my feeling. I didn’t attempt to see him. I just scribbled a note of thanks and handed it to Jarvis as he led me up the gangway on to the stern and for’ard to where the rope ladder was rigged. The same midshipman was in charge of the launch, and as we swung away from the frigate’s side, I asked him what the news was. He looked at me, wide grey eyes in a serious face. ‘News, sir? You haven’t heard?’ And when I told him it had been a long night and I had slept late, he grinned at me and said, ‘They miffed off. The revolutionaries and those mercenaries who put that Fuschia chap in. The fleet, too – the fleet that was going to support the new government. It just faded off the radar screen. And all because of Medusa.’

  ‘A Russian fleet, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, the Russians. The American Sixth Fleet is shadowing them.’

  ‘Is that official?’ I asked him. ‘About the Russian and American fleets?’ We had swung away from the ship’s side and were heading for Cala Figuera, the note of the engine making it difficult to talk. ‘Did you hear it on the news?’

  He shook his head. ‘I haven’t had a chance to listen to the BBC, but that’s what they’re saying – saw them off all on our own, long before those Spanish ships arrived.’ And he added, ‘Now that he’s back from seeing the Spanish admiral, I’ve no doubt the Captain will be making an announcement. I’d like to have heard that.’ He gave an order to the h
elm, then turned back to me. ‘You know him well, don’t you, sir?’ It was more a statement than a question and he didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘He’s a super man. Never batted an eye all night, going the rounds, chatting and joking with everybody and all of us expecting to be blown out of the water any minute. Then, when it’s all over, he has a thanksgiving in the wardroom.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘It was early, about 04.30. Just those on the ship. A few prayers, a hymn or two. All he told us then was that the situation had improved and we should give thanks to God.– The boy was smiling to himself, remembering the scene. ‘Lead kindly light … I can still hear him singing it in that fine voice of his. He’s Welsh, you see.’ And he grinned apologetically, embarrassed at being carried away and forgetting I would have known that. And when I asked him how the ship had come to land up on Bloody Island, he looked at me uncertainly, suddenly hesitant. But the excitement of events and his admiration for his Captain got the better of him. ‘The buzz is he put her aground himself,’ he said brightly.

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir. I wasn’t on the bridge. But that’s what they’re saying – so that there was no way they could shift us. We were committed then, you see, a Nato ship stuck there and prepared to fire at anything that didn’t support the legitimate Spanish government and the Spanish King.’

  I nodded. He wouldn’t know about Soo, of course. None of them would, except Mault. At least I hoped he was the only one. For the time being anyway. The midshipman saw it solely in terms of naval tactics, the sort of move Nelson or Cochrane might have made, not realising that what Gareth had done was to take the one positive action that could nullify absolutely his half-brother’s threats. God knows what it had cost him in mental anguish to take such a gamble, not just with Soo’s life, but with his own, and with the lives of all his men. He had called Evans’s bluff and he had won, and I was hearing it from this kid of a midshipman, who was standing there, starry-eyed and bubbling with excitement, as he told me how he had spent the first half of the night in charge of half a dozen seamen on the hospital tower, acting as lookouts and armed with hand-held rocket-launchers.

  It was hot as the launch slowed to run alongside our quay, the sun blazing out of a blue sky, the surface of the water oily-calm, and traffic moving on the steep road from the Martires Atlante to the Carrero Blanco. Everything looked so normal it was hard to believe that there had been several hours during the night when the future of Menorca had hung in the balance, the threat of hostilities looming.

  And then I was ashore, the chandlery door open and Ramón coming out of the store in answer to my call. No, he had no news of the señora. I raced up the stairs. Somebody had cleared the place up, the maid I suppose. The telephone was still working. I sat down at the table by the window and rang the Renatos, but Manuela had no information about her. She suggested I ring the Gobierno Militar. Gonzalez had been there since early morning and might have heard something. But her husband was no longer there, and when I finally tracked him down at the ayuntamiento, he had heard nothing. I tried the policia, the Guardia Civil, finally in desperation I rang the Residencia Sanitaria. They had quite a few casualties in, but they were all men, including an Australian who had just been brought in from the English warship. When I asked how serious his injuries were, they said he had not yet been fully examined. If I liked to enquire a little later …

  I said I would ring back in an hour’s time, and then as a last resort tried to get through to Perez at the Naval Base, but the phone was engaged and when I finally did manage to reach his office, he was out and the officer who answered the phone had no idea when he would be back. I rang the Army then, out at La Mola, and to my surprise I was connected immediately with some sort of duty officer. He put me through to somebody in one of the casements, who said a woman had been seen with a group of the ‘soldadi del revolution’, but where they had taken her he did not know. Needless to say he was not prepared to discuss what had happened the previous day nor even where she had been held.

  All this took time and it was late afternoon before I had exhausted all possible sources of information and was forced to the conclusion that I would have to go out to Addaia, or wherever it was they had embarked, in the hope of finding somebody who had actually witnessed their departure. But first I needed a car. Mine had disappeared. I tried to borrow one, but everybody I rang was either out or their car was in use, and I couldn’t hire one because my driving licence was in the pocket of my own car. In the end I persuaded the people who provided cars for tourists staying at the Port Mahon Hotel to let me have one of their little Fiats on the understanding that I applied immediately for a copy of my licence.

  I tried the hospital again while I was waiting for one of their drivers to bring it round. After some time I was able to speak to one of the sisters, who told me Lennie’s cheek had been stitched up and the knife wound in the chest, which had narrowly missed the heart, had pierced the lung. He was under sedation at the moment, so no point in my trying to see him. She advised me to ring again in the morning.

  As I put the phone down Ramón called to me from below. I thought it was to say the car had arrived, but he shouted up to me that it was Miguel Gallardo’s wife, asking to see me.

  She was waiting for me in the chandlery, her large, comfortable-looking body seeming to fill the place, but all the vivacity gone out of her, a worried look on the round, olive-complexioned face, her large eyes wide below the black hair cut in a fringe. She had been trying to phone me, she said. About Miguel. She was speaking in a rush and obviously in a very emotional state. He hadn’t been home for two nights and she wondered whether I had seen him or had any idea where he might be. She had been to the Guardia, of course, and the hospitals, but everything was so confused following all the happenings of the last two days … And I just stood there, listening to her, a sickening feeling inside me, remembering how her husband had driven up to that villa in his battered estate car. Christ! I’d forgotten all about it until that moment.

  What the hell could I tell her? That Miguel, innocent and unsuspecting, had driven straight into a bunch of men loading arms and ammunitions from an underground cache and on the brink of a desperate coup? And then, as I stood there, speechless and unable to give her a word of encouragement, it hit me. That cellar, that hole in the floor. An oubliette. Oh, God!

  I told her he might have had business somewhere, and in the circumstances he might not have been able to let her know he was delayed in some other part of the island. She nodded, drinking in my words, clutching at hope – and my own heart thumping. Would I know – if she were alive, or if she were dead? Would Miguel’s wife, her hands folded and on the verge of tears, know if he were alive?

  The car arrived and thankfully I escaped into the routine of taking it over. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ I told her. ‘But I’ll keep an eye open and if I see him …’ I left it at that, the sickening feeling with me again as I offered her a lift. But she was all right. Her daughter had a shoe shop just by the Club Maritimo. She would take her home. Her hands were warm and pudgy as she clasped mine, thanking me profusely, her lips trembling. ‘You will telephone me plees.’ She was very near to tears now. ‘If you hear anything. Plees, you promise.’

  I promised, escaping quickly out to the car, close to tears myself as I thought of what might have happened. Evans wouldn’t have taken any chances. He wouldn’t have left her body lying about. And the villa of that absent German businessman was barely four miles from Addaia, ten minutes by car. Less if the Santa Maria had been shifted to the seaward end of the inlet and had been waiting for him at Macaret The villa wasn’t two miles from Macaret, and I had been so busy trying to find somebody in Mahon who might have seen her or know where she was that I hadn’t thought of it.

  I dropped the driver off at his garage on the Villa Carlos road, then took the shortest route to the waterfront, cutting down the General Sanjurjo to the Plaza España. It was getting dark already, t
he lights on in the shops and the narrow streets thronged with people, most of whom seemed there just to meet their friends and express their pleasure at the return to normality. And when I finally reached the waterfront even the Passo de la Alameda was full of people come to look at the Spanish warships anchored off.

  There was considerable activity at the three Naval Base jetties, a coastal minesweeper coming alongside with what looked like a fishing boat in tow and a fishery protection launch pulling out. Standing off was a fierce little warship that I knew, the Barcelo-class fast attack patrol boat that Fernando Perez had taken me over one hot September day the previous year. All this, and the destroyers, with the Manuel Soto, the big white ferry from Barcelona, towering over the Muelle Commercial, was enough to give the Menorquins back their confidence. There was a lot of drinking going on in the port, an air of gaiety, and at the bottom of the Abundancia I had threaded my way through a crowd of about a hundred dancing in the street to a guitar.

  Past the turning off to the right that led to the Naval Base and La Mola, I was suddenly on my own, the road ahead empty. Nothing now to distract my mind as I put my foot down, pushing the little car fast towards the crossroads and the turning to Macaret and Arenal d’en Castell. There is a garage on the right going towards Fornells. Its lights were on and I stopped there briefly to obtain confirmation from Señora Garcia that a convoy of vehicles had in fact passed along this road in the early hours of the morning. She had been woken up by several very noisy motor bikes ridden flat out and was actually standing at her window looking out when the line of vehicles passed. She had counted them – nineteen Army trucks and over thirty private cars, all heading towards Fornells. The Guardia Civil and the Army had already, questioned her about the numbers and she had told them that all the vehicles had been crowded with men. I asked her if she had seen a woman in any of them, but she said no, it had been too dark.