Peace banged his fist excitedly on the bridge shield. This is our moment! We go—now—just as we are—with Andre. The gear in the sub's dinghy can be shifted into Andre's boat. Don't forget the transistor radio and the Navy code.'
MKG and I stumbled down the steep ladder into the sub's interior. It was a moment's work to explain the situation to Peters. The dinghy's gear—sextant, charts, compass, oilskins, f o o d , w a t e r — h a d b e e n n e a t l y l a i d o u t i n t h e m e s s . T w o ratings helped us carry it to the bridge. As we went up, we felt the thump of Andres boat alongside. Peters dismissed the two helpers from the bridge. Andre stood in his boat gazing in wonderment at the black sail rising out of the coral. Toss a line,' ordered Peace. Here, Andre.'
Like a man in a dream, but not lacking in seamanship, Andre spun a rope and cast it high. Peace knotted it securely to the base of the radar antenna and swung a leg over.
She's all yours, Bob,' he told Peters.
Peters gripped him firmly by the hand. ' Are you sure I — ? W i s h i t w a s m e , s i r . '
Peace said quietly, ' I'm afraid for you it's a case of they also serve, Bob. Hang on as long as you can to give us the best chance. John, help Adele.'
Help!' She smiled. I've climbed ropes since I was five.'
MKG gave a brief glance round the minute bridge—a strange look of farewell.
Good luck, sir,' said Peters. His hand went instinctively t o h i s f o r e h e a d t o s a l u t e , b u t h e d r e w i t b a c k w h e n h e realized he stood capless in the blowing spray.
MKG simply leaned out and touched him on the shoulder. I think Peters would have gone to the ends of the earth for h i m , t h e n . M K G w e n t d o w n h a n d - o v e r - h a n d i n t o A n d r e ' s boat. I dropped down next to the old fisherman and Peace. Tears streamed unashamedly down the old man's face and he hugged us.
Adele translated, 'He says he does not know what strange ghost of a ship it is which stands part of the coral—he has n e v e r s e e n o n e l i k e i t b e f o r e . Y e t h e i s g l a d f o r t o h o w many is it given to meet a nixie and live?'
Peace clapped him on the shoulder. Ask, will he take us to Raphael—tonight?'
Adele translated. Not to Raphael—he is willing only to take you near Raphael.
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Peace hardened. What's all this about?'
The gay, rippling note was back in Adele's voice. If he returns to Raphael by morning and says, I have a nixie and men who appeared out of the high spray as if from nowhere aboard my boat, the other fishermen will say, there is a new wreck on the reef and Andre has found her. For look, he is drunk with' bacca stronger than the red wine of Mauritius. It is—is— 'she laughed= he calls it, the wine that looks like stirred-up sand in a coral pass and is as dangerous—whisky!
No! From Poulailler to Puits-à Eau the fishermen will watch him and follow. His life will not be worth living. They will find Seahorse Sound. He will then lose his " pension " of fish which is unknown to anyone else. No, he will not take you to Raphael.
I saw the stern clamp of Peace's jaw and I said quickly, Will he take us beyond Raphael?'
Andre made an expressive gesture which embraced the
w h o l e a r c o f t h e s e a . A n y w h e r e — b u t n o t R a p h a e l . ' I glanced at Peace and he nodded. Bellatrix!
Say, our yacht—the one he admired so—is at sea maybe a
hundred miles north of Raphael. That is where we wish to go.'
Andre in reply snatched up a bright red fish from the bottomboards—one of the veielles which haunt the sheltered lagoons and coral overhangs—and snapped it with a curious deft movement across his knee, handing one half to Peace and retaining the other.
It's a deal,' translated Adele.
Andre shoved the hardy little cutter clear. She was about
25 feet long with a broad beam and flared bow—the sort of boat which claims kinship with the New Bedford whalers,
the longboats of Tristan and the flatbooms of the Skeleton Coast. All are built to ride and fight wicked seas. She was half-decked, with a peculiar lateen sail—heritage of some dead-and-gone dhow plying from Zanzibar to Calicut and blown far off course to Limuria. The first chop of the short s e a s h i t u s a s A n d r e h o i s t e d i t . I m a d e f o r t h e t i l l e r , b u t MKG said, This isn't going to be such a cinch—I know boats.'
We headed for the reef.
A n d r e g e s t u r e d t o P e a c e a n d m e t o c o n n t h e b o a t . T h e driving spray seemed thicker. The stern light was out and I c o u l d n o t s e e a h a n d b r e a d t h a h e a d , b u t A n d r e t a c k e d t o windward, turning now and again with a peculiar gesture of his left hand—his thumb like the tiller-head and the palm and fingers the tiller itself—to guide MKG. The Vice-Presi138 dent sat bareheaded, eyes screwed up in that peculiar mannerism of his. Andre let the sail go with a clatter. He gestured—hard sport. The cutter swung wildly on a stern roller for a moment before MKG caught her. Andre whipped up the sail
again and the boat rushed into white water. The stern corkscrewed violently, the tiller kicking loose momentarily from MKG's hands until he snatched at it again. This was the
place where the Indian Ocean roiled its guts on the first land for 2,000 miles. The seas boiled, foamed, thundered, caromed, dragged, volted. A mass of coral loomed. I yelled in fear to Andre. He gave her half a reef and we snaked by a plume
of foam within a hand's touch. We broke into the main pass
in a series of rapid turns, Andre using the sail to keep us ahead of the thrust and rush of the sea. There were kaleidoscopic close-up glimpses of yellow, red, pink and blue coral; barnacle-black rocks and white, savage water.
Time and again Peace and I crashed the heavy wooden oars
against the coral to fend us off. Our oilskins were waterlogged. My first guess that we were well inside the barrier was due not to the lessening of the spray but to a peculiar silveriness which came over the boat and reef. We swept, apparently out of control, round a 12-foot-high buttress of yellow coral and for the first time the lash of the spray was out of my face. I turned. The stars were hard, defined, white in the west towards Raphael. The sail was silver-blue. The
wild magic of the barrier reef was upon the boat. It deepened the grave abstraction of mKG's eyes ; it laid beauty on beauty in Adele's face. It blurred the cruel line of Peace's mouth and overlaid Andre's mahogany with a patina of St Brandon's glory.
Andre dropped the sail. ' Oars!' passed on Adele. There
was an engine, Peace had found, in good working order, but there was no petrol.
Peace and I clunked the oars home into home-made rowlocks. After a few dozen strokes we stripped off our oilskins, which began to steam from our sweat. On the horizon behind MKG appeared a long thin line of pearl.
I cried out, it was so exquisite. Adele, crouched on a thwart, looked towards me and said something softly in. Creole.
The spray was gone now and the sea, at our backs, grumbled. On every hand lay wet coral—yellow, red, pink, blue— stretching as far as our limited horizon would allow, and between were sea-threads of aquamarine, turquoise and
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blue. To starboard, a dark, ill-defined green mass rose out of the sea—Raphael! We were safe.
MKG stretched himself stiffly. Eight days to go.'
Red-eyed from the spray, Peace spoke to Andre through
Adele. The weather—they say there's a cyclone coming?'
The old fisherman shook his head and pointed at the red coral. Not yet, not yet. When it is near, that turns dull.'
P e a c e u n r o l l e d t h e d a m p c h a r t . H e p o i n t e d t o a s p o t north-north-west of St Brandon. Andre, my yacht is somewhere here. . . The old man stared in blank incomprehension and rattled
off a volley at Adele. He says he doesn't know what you are talking about, or what that thing is.' She indicated the chart.
I found the compass I had brought from the sub—I didn't
like the look of the cutter's old compass, any more than MKG did. It hasn't been boxed since Old King Cole ordered the bowl,' he remarked.
Adele leaned over the chart. May I see? The islanders have their own names for places .
Peace pointed. 'Bellatrix will be a hundred miles northnorth-west of Raphael. Adele stared at the map and clapped her hands. There was a
rapid-fire of Creole and Andre shrugged and laughed too.
What does he say?'
" Thank you, sweet Jesus, that I am unable to read and write, when all they mean is Purse-Fish Bank."
What is a purse-fish?' asked MKG.
She shot the question at Andre, who grinned and sketched
a caricature with his expressive hands—a grotesque thing with mean eyes and a Roman nose and—Andre took in the whole compass of yellow coral—as garish as that.
Tell him to strike south of Raphael to start with,' said Peace. Now we've got a boat, I don't want the islanders to , see us any more than Andre himself wants to be spotted.'
T h e r e e f l o s t i t s v i o l e n c e . W e r o d e e a s i l y t h r o u g h t h e channels, Peace and I in the bows. Our course remained south of Raphael till the white guano fang of Siren Island lifted out of the waves. Then we swung north-north-west to intercept Bellatrix—I had drawn a straight line on the chart showing her course after I had left her to Trevor-Davis's charge. Under the steady bite of the trades on our beam, we snored along while MKG and I shared yachtsmen's appreciation of the cutter's sailing qualities. Despite the balminess of the morning, our enjoyment was
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underlaid with unease, Had Tyler broken the news of the space-shot? Was the news of MKG'S disappearance public? M K G f i d d l e d w i t h t h e r a d i o t o g e t a V o i c e o f A m e r i c a newscast, while Peace waited a little impatiently for Adele to see what Tyler and the Seventh Fleet were up to. The newscast blared through. Nothing, beyond day-to-day events. M K G b r e a t h e d a s i g h o f r e l i e f . B u t h i s a n x i e t y w a s n o t allayed, for when Adele switched to the Navy wavelength and the quick groupings started to come in, he muttered, Now for the kicker.'
It wasn't long in coming. Peace read out the decoded signal Adele passed to him.
Willowtrack to Command intelligence Center, carrier Rio Grande x top secret x op-immed x repeat my request immediate assistance search Vice-President x' Admiral Thornton's reply was terse:
CIC to Willowtrack repeat to Chief Naval Operations x top secret x op-immed x entire Seventh Fleet on its way x deployed under my personal command as hunter-killer group x proceeding all speed St Brandon area x
Willowtrack to CIC x last contact with Vice-President aboard British submarine Devastation x no further con- tacts x
CIC to Willowtrack x Keep station x
'Hunter-killer group!' exclaimed Peace.
MKG was withdrawn, thoughtful. I can't make it out,' he said at length. The President had my signal last night. Why has he allowed this operation to be mounted?'
Because, I told myself secretly, he believes Tyler ; he is under the impression that MKG has been kidnapped. Tyler's dramatic news came after MKG's signal, and the President himself had given the okay before learning it.
B u t P e a c e p o i n t e d t o t h e s u p e r s c r i p t i o n t o t h e s i g n a l . '
These are inter-Navy signals and I expect, from my knowledge of official channels, that the White House hadn't had time to step in before Thornton acted on his own initiative, in the light of the seriousness of Willowtrack's appeal. After all, it is less than twelve hours since you let the President know you were safe.'
Auto didn't seem convinced. I, too, wondered whether 141
Peace wasn't trying over-hard to rationalize every adverse
fact in order to keep the mission going. Perhaps MKG felt
so also, because he gave Peace a long, appraising look before he said, There would be a red-hot line from Naval Operations to the White House on news like this. The operation could have been called off within an hour. This is top priority, by any standards.'
There was a long silence, broken only by the crunch of the seas under the cutter's planks.
Then MKG said, You're sure the President got my signal
via the DNI, Commander?'
Peace met his gaze squarely. I give you my word of honour. Until you yourself revealed what Washington meant in your secret code, none of us had the slightest idea. It
could have been the recall, for all we knew.'
Yes,' admitted the Vice-President, that is correct. But you can't have the whole of the Seventh Fleet racing out of base on an unexplained mission and expecting no one to ask why. And once they ask why, the story of the kidnapping
and the space-shot must come out.'
Peace broke in, as if to steer his thought away from these graver implications, There was no mention of the spaceshot. No mention of Semittanté: Tyler is not going to put that on the air before he's seen Thornton personally,' replied MKG. It's too big, coming hard on the heels of his other news.' There was another pause, broken only by a sputter of static from the radio. Commander,' said MKG, your heart is in this mission and so
is mine, or else I wouldn't be sitting in an open boat in the middle of the ocean. But the mere fact of the Seventh Fleet being brought into this may be enough for me to decide that the time has come to call off Little Bear. The decision was to rest at all times with the President and myself. This whole thing may well be construed as endangering my office
and my responsibility to the Presidency. I cannot decide this alone. I must signal the President for full assurance. I must have his approval.'
Peace motioned towards the radio set. We haven't a
transmitter, only that.'
MKG nodded. I want your word that as soon as we pick
up Bellatrix, you will send a signal.'
Peace's jaw tightened. And give our position away again?'
You may choose your own time,' said MKG, but it must be
soon after we reach Bellatrix.'
And meanwhile?'
The Vice-President gave a wry smile. I'll be a very
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interested spectator of the Commander dodging a hunterkiller force in a small boat—if he can.' He glanced into the lightening sky as the cutter hurried through the long seas. Tyler has sure goosed them into action and this—his eyes
were sombre now--' has become an aseptic area as far as the United States Navy is concerned.'
His reserve brought a restrained air to breakfast. Andre fried some fish on a paraffin stove under the forward decking. He also produced a gunny-sack of salted sea-birds--he gave them a Creole name, but Adele told us they were glossy ibis. Adele herself sat with a headphone over one ear, listening in case either Thornton or Tyler should break silence. We munched the salted ibis and drank hot, steaming coffee.
Peace threw the dregs of his cup overside. I must know what the hunter-killer force is up to.
Not a chirp,' replied Adele.
What will they throw at us?' I asked.
' The standard !MK force in the u.s. Navy consists of carriers, destroyers and a couple of nuclear subs,' explained MKG, as if glad to talk. The carriers operate dunking helos and search aircraft. Blimps, too—but in this sort of weather they're not a proposition. Subs are really best for tracking subs, but only in co-operation with cowboys and helos.'
Adele looked up from her radio dials. It's like the soundtrack of a Western!'
MKG laughed for the first time that morning. ' That's what they call them—destroyers are cowboys, subs are goblins, a
dunking helo is a helicopter which hovers and lowers a sonar ball into the water.' He stretched himself. With a day and a boat like this, it's a shame that the world's trying to get on my back.' His easy charm relieved the earlier tension and brought almost a holiday excursion air to the boat. - Peace'
s thoughts, however, were obviously on the massive build-up over the horizon. They'll use a grid pat
tern search.'
They must have a datum point for a grid search,' replied MKG.
Seahorse Sound,' I said.
Despite his reservations, I think MKG was infected with the thrill of the chase. Only after the HUK force has located Devastation.
That won't take the Seventh Fleet long.'
Peace said, half to himself, ' Eight days from now—almost
to the hour—the Little Bear launch is scheduled.'
MKG touched Peace on the shoulder. I wish this thing hadn't gotten snarled up, Commander. All I need is the President to say it's okay.'
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Peace said, I wish the eight days were past.' He glanced a t t h e h o r i z o n , a s i f h e h a l f e x p e c t e d t o s e e h i s v i c t i m : Semittanté! I must have Semittanté!'
MKG smiled. The Navy has a word for a ship like her, an enemy surface ship—we call it a skunk.'
Our skunk will be in everybody's mind after Tyler's call,'
I said.
Thornton doesn't know her significance in relation to the VicePresident—yet,' replied Peace. Tyler isn't going lo foul his own doorstep by sending off what would appear to be a
fantastic message. My bet is that he'll wait to meet Thornton to tell him.'
I rather agree with you, Commander, and that gives me
hope still for the mission. Tyler's a regular guy, a tough guy, but he knows the form.' Some of his earlier mood returned.
Guessing's fine, Commander, but wait until the squeal comes in when Thornton and Tyler meet. Tyler won't play this so cosy once he knows Thornton believes him.'
P e a c e g l a n c e d a g a i n a t t h e s k y . N o r w i l l t h e S e v e n t h Fleet.'
A d o l l o p o f s e a m a d e P e a c e g r a b a t a s t a y t o k e e p h i s f e e t . H e n o d d e d o v e r s i d e . B u t w e ' r e g e t t i n g a b i g a l l y —
soon.'
' The sea?'
Chagos has issued a gale warning, possible cyclone,' replied Peace. We can find Bellatrix under cover of it without the Seventh Fleet being able to spot us.'
Chagos is eight hundred miles away,' I said.
Peace turned to MKG. John knows the cyclone pattern as w e l l a s I d o . T h i s o n e c o u l d b e p e r f e c t c o v e r f o r u s . Cyclones originate round Chagos and then shoot across the o c e a n i n a s o u t h - w e s t e r l y d i r e c t i o n u n t i l t h e y h i t t h e S t Brandon area. They either blow themselves out there or race for Madagascar and the Mozambique Channel.'
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