by Ann Michaels
Chapter 24
The night of Monday 21th November, 1988
Harry de Groot
All at Sea
I didn’t even have time to prepare myself for certain death before the syringe entered my arm. As it happened, I was trying to send silent messages to Liam, with my eyes, as I knew he remembered me, despite the confusion and anguish he had experienced only a few hours ago, when I was pretending to measure up the yacht’s cabin for repairs.
But it was strange; I still felt essentially the same after the old battle-axe speared me with the syringe. I closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep or unconscious, but actually, I didn’t feel any different than I had before the shot. Bloody strange that.
I heard Kristina Ruslen’s footsteps heading over toward Dana and I cracked an eye. Dana was looking at me, as the old dragon injected her with the insulin. I saw Dana’s body slump. I felt myself screaming inwardly, hoping that Dana was putting on an act, but I couldn’t be sure.
Kristina Ruslen gave Dana a swift kick, with her snakeskin gym shoe, and then said to Liam, ‘we’ll throw these pair overboard, when we get further out.’ Liam swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbling like a lifebuoy. He blinked and followed Kristina Ruslen out of the room.
As the stairs closed the room exit, I started to wiggle and worm my way over to Dana. She didn’t move. I felt my heart begin to speed up. I was very afraid that I had lost her. Then, I felt ashamed of myself, as I thought about how my last words to this wonderful and confusing woman had been about her clothes and the way she looked.
‘I should be shot’, I said aloud.
‘True’, was all Dana said, as she gave me a wink; then she sighed and moaned, ‘I’ve have had more fun in my life’.
‘Me too’, I returned. But my mind was wondering what might be coming next, if we couldn’t work out how to get out of this room and off this moving yacht.
We lay there trying to think of some way out of the situation, in which we found ourselves.
‘I wonder why the insulin didn’t work’, Dana mused. ‘We should be dead.’
The staircase door was opening again and Dana stared at me in horror. ‘If this is it, Harry, I want you to know that you were one of the best…….’
But it wasn’t Kristina Ruslen, and Liam, who entered the room; it was a middle aged woman dressed as a nurse, accompanied by a pretty, red headed, teenage girl. I heard Dana cry out ‘Beryl!’ and I realised that she must know, at least one of the pair. I hoped that this was a good thing.
The red headed girl crouched down, and immediately, began to untie, what looked to me to be very complicated knots, with apparent ease, and very soon we were free and able to hop about and get some blood and feeling back into our limbs.
‘We came after you, when you ran from the car’, Beryl the nurse said. ‘And we saw you being taken onto the yacht. We followed, but Janie and I hid out in the nurse’s station - the room that I usually inhabit when I would accompany Mr Ruslen on small trips…. when that she-devil wanted to demonstrate that her husband was still alive,’ Beryl finished bitterly.
Janie broke in. ‘We’d just got in the room when we heard footstep, and so, we ran into the bathroom and locked the door. But we were able to hear Mrs Ruslen, as she entered, telling the Captain that she was going to kill you both with insulin,’
Beryl took over the telling of the tale. ‘Luckily for you pair, the Captain was called away by Liam, the boatswain…… something about where to store the money, and Mrs Ruslen said she would go with him. So, I whipped out of the bathroom and opened the fridge and saw the bottles of insulin that I had placed in there only two weeks before. One bottle had already been opened, for Phillip Ruslen’s use, when I was last on the yacht. I had just emptied it, when Liam rushed back into the room and he saw me about to refill the bottle with water. He said that he had been going to do that himself and told me to, ‘Hurry’. Then I did the same with the other unopened bottle, as he rushed away.’
‘We got out of there toot suite, because I was pretty sure that I knew where you both were being held prisoner’, Janie piped up.
Instantly it hit me. ‘Would Liam happen to be your brother?’ I asked Janie. She nodded. ‘He got me the job with the Ruslen’s, though I wasn’t supposed to…yet…. He showed me this secret room….. and other stuff….’, she added looking about. ‘He’s a good bit older than me’, she added.
Dana gave Janie an unreadable look, and then said, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. Dana then grabbed my arm, squeezing my upper arm muscle a bit, and flashing me a cheeky smile; she pulled me through the doorway, and then, we all began to travel along the rolling corridor and to tramp up the spiral staircase to the upper deck, holding the wall as the yacht plunged and rocked about. Nobody mentioned a plan.
‘I’ve only been on this yacht once’, Janie whispered as we neared the top of the staircase. ‘It was a few months ago before I stated my job with the Ruslen’s. Liam sneaked me on one day…… he used to get so lonely…..I was worried about him……he wouldn’t go to the doctor. Anyway, he told me something really amazing, which he wasn’t supposed to tell me…….’
‘Shhhh, be quiet’, Dana shrilled. ‘Look’, she said, pointing through the glass. As all of us swivelled our heads in unison and we could see, Kristina Ruslen, lying inside a glowing sun bed, in a white bikini.
‘No wonder she looks like she’s made of leather’, Janie gasped, saying what the rest of us had been thinking.
‘She obviously feels no pangs of conscience. She’s looking quite relaxed’, I added drily. And as Kristina Ruslen was facing away from us, there seemed to be little danger that she would see us, so we continued on our way, along the corridor, until we came to another set of stairs, where we suddenly stopped.
‘What the hell is that?’ squeaked Janie, as a pulsing, whirring, thundering noise grew louder and louder, as we climbed the stairs to the captain’s deck. Soon it felt as if we would be swallowed whole by its force. Then it stopped and silence opened like a chasm, as the yacht heaved and shuddered.
Pushing the others aside, I leapt up the stairs and pushed open the very official looking door, to see the captain seated in a large, tan chair, something like a dentist’s chair, surrounded by instrument panels and holding a metal steering wheel. His epaulettes joggled about and his mouth gaped open stupidly, stunned. Beyond him, through the curve of the windows, lit up by the blazing, light beams, was the roiling ocean, and beyond that lay an exquisite darkness.
‘There’s a chopper’, he said in an odd monotone.
There was a scream, which tore through the air. But before my feet could leave the floor, the captain was sailing toward me, with eyes blazing, holding something in his hand. As I crashed to the floor, with my eyes and throat burning, I knew that I had just copped a hit of chloroacetophenone; otherwise known as tear gas, right in the face.