Operation Nassau

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Harry said, ‘What?’ and the bifocals turned coolly on him.

  ‘The R/T isn’t functioning, and neither are the radar nor echo sounder. It may be a simple connection, or it may all be tied up with the engine . . . Yes?’

  Spry’s head, reappearing, said, ‘You won’t get through, sir. Someone’s crossed the leads on the alternator. When you pressed the starter button, you blew every wire on the ship.’

  No engine. No SOS. No help, unless a ship appeared by a miracle from the outside, uncaring, luxurious world. Harry said in a high, scratchy voice, ‘What is this? Big business? Black Power? Politics? What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sergeant Trotter harshly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me either, but I’m not wasting time yapping. Not yet. Not till I know if I’m going to survive. It’s all to do with that fellow Edgecombe. Someone’s trying to kill him. I suppose they got the Haven launched before they found out Edgecombe had gone off back home.’

  ‘Did you know that?’ said Harry to Johnson.

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson. He was looking at the burgee.

  ‘And you allowed him to come here?’ said Harry. ‘Hell to Betsy . . . Come fishing, you tell us. Come and get your goddam gizzard fly-posted because the boat’s been evil-eyed by the Mafia . .

  Harry wasn’t Trotter’s ideal officer. Trotter said, ‘He only made one mistake, didn’t he? He came right along with us all . . . Mr Johnson, what happens if the wind drops?’

  A sail rattled. Spry, glancing at Johnson, ducked forward and tightened a sheet. From the blue sky, the sun shone naked as fire. Behind, the white boat had settled insensibly nearer. We were going fast, but Haven was slowly making up on us. Trotter began to repeat, ‘What happens . . ?’ and Johnson turned his dark glasses from the luff of the mainsail.

  I said, ‘It is dropping. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson. Another sail rattled. We were losing speed. The wind was all we had to propel us. If that failed, we should merely sail slower and slower until we finally sat there, like a piece of cracked driftwood, waiting for that long white boat full of explosives to drive up and hit us.

  I said, ‘What now?’

  ‘What now?’ said Johnson; and turned from contemplation of his sails and the Haven, to the charts spread afresh on his knees. ‘We now employ strategy. Listen, my children.’

  We listened as if he were God; Trotter tense, Harry frowning. They were trusting their lives, they believed, to a vague and unremarkable man with an ill-maintained boat. They obeyed him because there was no alternative. And also, I realized suddenly, because he knew rather well how to make himself obeyed.

  We listened; and ran to our places; and Johnson threw the helm hard over to starboard and sent Dolly straight for the sandbanks.

  You can find some of the best deep-sea fishing in the world in those islands, and soundings between the big groups can reach a thousand fathoms or more. But there are shoals on the west coast of the Berry Islands: a pattern of grass bars and shifting sandbanks which the settlement boats sometimes use, but which charter and freight boats keep clear of. If you drew over four feet, you couldn’t use some of the channels at all.

  Dolly drew 5.75 feet, and we were at the lowest point of the tide. We were going to reduce sail and enter the sandbanks, keeping to the thin winding canals of deep water as shown on the chart. We were going to do it abruptly, and as fast as we could, and we were going to enter a channel whose southern access was guarded by the largest sandbank in the shoal.

  If we set the sails right, and if Johnson steered us correctly, we should scrape past that shoal as we tacked into the channel.

  But Haven, radio-controlled, wouldn’t follow us blindly. A homing beacon drew its partner towards it by the shortest route possible. We should alter course and sail hard to starboard. The signals would change. Haven would receive them and transmit the changed course to her rudder. That, we knew, took thirty-five seconds to answer.

  Dolly would be on her way during that time, and, to reach her, Haven would have to cut corners. And if she cut corners she would land, inescapably, into that sandbank.

  They say blue water sailing is easy, compared with inshore pilotage. I suppose canals are simple compared with sailing on rivers. I’m glad I didn’t fully realize what we were doing, taking a boat of Dolly’s size into that winding, river-like channel, with a crew of five, of whom two were casual amateurs and one was a tyro.

  Johnson didn’t look worried; but then there seemed nothing of his face which wasn’t inset with lenses. He had pinned the chart to the bulkhead, a precaution for which I felt a gratitude encroaching on love. Then he started giving directions again, and we freed the sail, returning Dolly to port, and then brought her round again almost immediately, hardening up to the wind. I belayed and watched the water change from cerulean to almond to apricot off our right flank. Harry was watching it too, his face even greener. It was the bank at the entrance: a drifted pile-up of white coral sand so near in that clear water that there might have been inches between its long spine and the surface, or nothing at all. Spry said, ‘Port a little, sir,’ from the bowsprit, the jib sheet gripped in his hands, but Johnson smiled and said, ‘In a moment.’

  Harry didn’t protest, and neither did I. It only needed a glance to the left. We had no sea room there either. The channel had silted. It was the precise width of Dolly at present: no less, and no more.

  Then Dolly’s sides shaved the sand . . . No one spoke. There was a long hiss like compressed steam escaping, and we felt her slow, quicken and slow. Then Johnson said, ‘All right. Free her a little,’ and she eased a fraction into the left and someone gave a long sigh. I saw there was green water there now, and green water ahead, a narrow band of it, twisting out of our vision, like a soft, grassy canyon: a fairway between low limestone bluffs. I thought of Denise, and Great Harbour Cay, and all the small, violent events which had so shocked me, set in the everyday world with telephones and traffic and people and police.

  Here there was nothing at all to rely on but ourselves. I had always been self-sufficient. I had despised indeed all those who were not. But now I wanted my fellow men. I wanted them very badly indeed.

  I drew in sheets, and let them out, and watched Haven. Since the beginning, she had never gained on us as quickly as now, travelling over deep water with her engine evenly roaring, while we with our manoeuvring sail felt our way along that tortuous cut. Behind us the big sandbank showed now as a patch in the watered silk of the passage, with the deeper blue of the channel beside it.

  From the coach roof, you could see Haven’s bows adjusting to reach us across the shoaled stretch of water. She had not yet reached the sandbank: the bunker; the trap in her fairway. A move of ours to the right, and her bows, it seemed, pointed straight for the shallows. A move to the left, and Haven swung back a little, safely headed for the deep seaworthy channel. Johnson glanced at the chart and said, ‘Damn. There’s a stretch to port coming.’

  Trotter said, ‘Drop the mizzen? Anchor?’ Desperate counsel for desperate measures.

  Johnson said, ‘No. We’d land in a sandbank if we lose much more way.’

  Harry said, ‘Would it matter? Why not ram Dolly to starboard? Then she’d lead Haven straight through the sandbank.’

  Johnson was steering one handed from the sidedeck watching the chart, the sails, and Haven behind us. ‘There are risks,’ he said. ‘She’s nearly got to the channel.’

  ‘What risks?’ said Harry hoarsely. ‘You don’t want to lose your bloody boat, that’s what.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose my bloody life, that’s what,’ said Johnson. ‘Free her. We’re going to port.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Harry said. He leaped forward to stop Johnson freeing the mizzen, but not soon enough. Johnson turned the wheel hard to the left and I freed the main and leaped like a hare to winch it in on the starboard: beside me Trotter worked like a fiend. The boom swung, catching Harry neatly behind his tanned ear, and flin
ging him into the cockpit where he landed on Johnson and pulled him with his weight to the floor. I grabbed the wheel.

  Dolly, wavering, turned to port in a few swaying motions, caught the wind and settled down on her side. I looked aft. Haven had got to the channel.

  Johnson rose to his feet, followed by Harry, their eyes on the white boat astern. Johnson said, ‘Keep her there,’ to me, and got up on the coach roof: the others all followed. Over our wake the shoals were now hard to distinguish. Green water or biscuit: channel or sandbank: which was she entering?

  ‘Well?’ said Johnson.

  Trotter had taken two steps up the shrouds. A little above us, shielding his eyes from the sun, he watched, and said nothing, and climbed higher and watched again. Harry said, ‘Well? Has she missed? Has she got into the channel?’

  Trotter said, ‘No. She hasn’t missed. She’s got to the sandbank.’

  ‘Hell!’ said Johnson with feeling.

  Trotter looked down on him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. She’s over the sandbank. She’s sailing over the sandbank and hasn’t bloody well stuck. That was the risk you took, wasn’t it? Why you wouldn’t jam Dolly? The tide’s making too fast and Haven’s draught is too shallow. Haven can cross them sandbanks. And we can’t.’

  I saw Harry stop breathing. And for the first time I knew, really knew, what it is like to be advised of forthcoming death. Straight as a ruler death was coming towards us: Haven was beating towards us over deep water and shallows alike.

  And idling here, trapped in our imprisoning channel, we had no means now left to avoid her.

  Johnson said, ‘Beltanno, sail straight. Get a bearing and stay on it until I give the word. Spryl’

  He was moving aft as he spoke. Trotter said, ‘What sail do you want, Doctor? Is she pulling the wheel?’ I told him, and he and Harry did what they could with the sheets. I watched the burgee and the wheel, and when I could, the racing blur of the white boat behind. You didn’t need to look. The engine noise was enough, and the sound of the spray. In fact, it was better not to look, and watch the wheel, moving magically, a fraction this way and that. Trotter said, ‘Doctor . . What are they doing?’

  For a moment I couldn’t see it myself. And then I said, ‘They’ve got up a net.’

  It was a heavy, coarse-meshed nylon affair, of the kind they use in fast-catamarans, and bright red in colour. I remember thinking how gay and incongruous it looked, lying on Johnson’s fine varnish. But then it was all out of key: the blue sky and hot beating sun, the marvellous shades of the water, the long white luxury yacht with her elegant cushions. And the workmanlike boat with its neat roped cargo, now devouring the short space between us.

  Johnson said, raising his voice, ‘Right. If this doesn’t work, I want you to jump. There’s not a great deal of hope; we’ll be too near the collision. But dive: don’t stay on the surface a moment longer than you have to. And keep in deep water. No lifebelts. There’ll be plenty of wreckage . . .”

  He didn’t mention the sharks. He said, ‘Now!’ and the red net flew over the stern and into the water, straight in the path of the oncoming Haven. He added gently, ‘Now, Beltanno.’ And I knew why I had to keep Dolly straight.

  I was better off than the others, perhaps, because I had Dolly to think of. The others had nothing to do but to stare helplessly aft, watching the scarlet net float gently backwards, and Haven racing closer and closer towards it. Towards it and us.

  It had seemed a tension past bearing, a moment ago on the sandbank. This time it was happening here, the crisis. If the net didn’t float towards Haven: if it didn’t stop her or slow her or hinder her, death would be upon us in seconds.

  She got to the net in a gush of white spray. Harry said, ‘Oh Christ!’ on a gulp, and I could hear Trotter swear. Haven’s engine roared undiminished. Johnson’s voice said curtly, ‘Ready about!’ and he put the wheel hard down to the left while Spry jumped to the ropes: alter a second Trotter went to help him. I didn’t see that it mattered. In fact, if we were to jump to starboard, it merely meant that Haven would overtake Dolly beside us. Then Johnson said, ‘All right. Get ready to jump,’ and I guessed what he was doing, and saw by Spry’s face that I was right. He was going to off-load us and stay there on board, in order to sail Dolly clear.

  I am used to making decisions. This is one which, thank God, I was saved from completing. Johnson drew breath to call, ‘Jump,’ when he saw me coming towards him. He said instead sharply, ‘Get back, Beltanno,’ and in that instant, one of Haven’s twin screws missed its beat.

  Spry turned, and the two other faces showed from the weather rail, bloodless and taut. The engine grunted again.

  We watched. We had reached the safe right-hand wall of the channel: Johnson turned the wheel gently and Spry without being told adjusted the sail for mid-channel. No one said anything. There was another splutter behind; a moment’s silence and then the rattling sound of Haven’s engine resuming on a new and wholly alien tone.

  The spray at her bows had quite vanished. The boat was still moving; it was still following us; but her speed was now no more than our own. One of her propellers had taken the net.

  One by one we left the side deck, our eyes on Haven, and stepped slowly into the cockpit where Johnson stood, his hand on the wheel, his lips under the dark glasses twitching. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘And how are your emboli doing?’

  Surprisingly, it was Trotter who laughed: a cackle of pure amusement which owed nothing to hysteria. ‘I tell you something,’ he said. ‘At least I know me heart’s good for a century, and you could shove a ball-point pen clean down me arteries. I may, of course, still go off me poor bleedin’ nut.’

  ‘Don’t boast,’ said Johnson. ‘She’s swallowed the net, but she may chew it up and discard it. At best she’s going at the same speed as we are. The wind may die, or we may be stuck on a sandbank. And talking of sandbanks . . .

  Bad news comes soon enough. I hadn’t told him but of course he had noticed. Where the chart had been were four drawing-pins adhering to four scraps of paper. ‘It was torn off,’ I said, ‘when Harry fell into the cockpit. At least, it was gone when I took the wheel. It must have flipped overboard. I’ve looked,’ I added.

  They looked as well, but the chart wasn’t aboard. And while they were looking, Trotter got up in the shrouds and started to call out the soundings.

  Perhaps it sounds easy. He didn’t know the tricks of these waters: he didn’t know what the colours denoted. The person who knew them best was Harry; and Harry, it turned out, had no head for heights. Spry took charge of the sails, with Harry and myself to help him, while high above on the ratlines, Trotter leaned on the top, swaying spar and called out.

  To this day, I remember the lesson. A light blue for ten to fifteen fathoms, said Harry. A light green, four to five fathoms; a pale green one and a half to two fathoms; the pale marine straw of the shoals, a fathom or less. They called that white water, and if we sailed there, we were dead.

  Watch out, he said, for patches of coral and rock: yellow-brown, deep brown or black. Watch out for coral heads embedded in debris: grass, or sponges or marine vegetation. Then they are harder to spot. But look for the ring of white sand around the rock or the coral, where the fish swim and wait for their prey and their plankton, and the bed is fanned clear of grass.

  Trotter had a clear voice: an enunciation ungainly but perfect through years of instructing obscure foreign militia when to jump through their hoops. He had well-trained responses and an ability to keep his head and his balance on a thin swaying ratline on a slow, tacking ketch. He called out what he could see, and we hauled on ropes and released and belayed them: we ducked as the booms swayed across and the next moment seemed to sway back, guided by Spry and by Johnson and by Harry, interpreting the crazy mosaic of that brilliant sea-bed into a channel which would bear the passage of Dolly.

  And all the time the choked whine of Haven’s engine sang in our ears, cutting corners; always there; never falling b
ehind. And I knew what Johnson was doing; stealing every inch to port that he could make with the channel: bearing left and always left; trying to win out of the shallows he had entered so desperately and reach the deep water where we had been once before.

  Then, with our engine failed and wind dropping, we had been no match for Haven. Now, with full sail crammed on her, Dolly could draw away from the crippled storeship and run until she found help or harbour. Help, in the form of another ship which could take us on board, or could explode the Haven by fire from a safe distance. Harbour, only when we were free of our enemy.

  But the shoals held us trapped. The channel wound round the sand bars, but whether it was the right channel we had no means of knowing. Sometimes the sand brushed our keel or our sides and we were all silent, wondering if, like a party astray in a maze, we had come up a blind alley, and, unable to reverse, must wait there to be caught. Dazed with sun and strain, my hands raw from the ropes, my back aching with something which would soon become total exhaustion, I wondered how the others were faring. The men might be stronger, but I wouldn’t give much for Harry’s mental endurance; and the strain Trotter was undergoing, up there on those swaying shrouds under the glare of the sun. About Spry I knew nothing and he showed nothing of weakness. But then neither did Johnson; and I knew more about Johnson than he had wanted me to know.

  And still the sand closed us in. Sometimes ahead Trotter would spy freer water, and we would sail for it, letting the sails fill all they would. But always in the end the channel thickened and narrowed.

  In one of these spaces, Johnson called Trotter down, and when I saw him, I knew he shouldn’t go up again, although he was convinced he could, and said so all the time he was resting. I gave him a drink and a wet towel and dodged along to attend to the sheets on the foredeck while Spry climbed the ratlines as lookout. But I knew I hadn’t Spry’s endurance, or his speed or his grip. In Harry and myself, Johnson had a pretty poor crew. And if Trotter came down with heatstroke . . .