by Wilbur Smith
I was on the left-hand path again. The path I had chosen at seventeen, when I had deliberately decided against the university bursary which I had been awarded and instead I bunked from St. Stephen’s orphanage in north London and lied about my age to join a whaling factory ship bound for the Antarctic. Down there on the edge of the great ice I lost my last vestige of appetite for the academic life.
When the money I had made in the south ran out I enlisted in a special service battalion where I learned how violence and sudden death could be practised as an art. I practised that art in Malaya and Vietnam, then later in the Congo and Biafra - until suddenly one day in a remote jungle village while the thatched huts burned sending columns of tarry black smoke into an empty brazen sky and the flies came to the dead in humming blue clouds, I was sickened to the depths of my soul I wanted out.
In the South Atlantic I had come to love the sea, and now I wanted a place beside it, with a boat and peace in the long quiet evenings.
First I needed money to buy those things - a great deal of money - so much that the only way I could earn it was in the practice of my art.
One last time, I thought, and I planned it with utmost care. I needed an assistant and I chose a man I had known in the Congo.
Between us we lifted the complete collection of gold coins from the British Museum of Numismatology in Belgrave Square. Three thousand rare gold coins that fitted easily into a medium-sized briefcase, coins of the Roman Caesars and the Emperors of Byzantium, coins of the early states of America and of the English Kings florins and leopards of Edward III, nobles of the Henrys and angels of Edward IV, treble sovereigns and unites, crowns of the rose from the reign of Henry VIII and five-pound pieces of George ill and Victoria - three thousand coins, worth, even on a forced sale, not less than two million dollars.
Then I made my first mistake as a professional crimina I trusted another criminal. When I caught up with my assistant in an Arab hotel in Beirut I reasoned with him in fairly strong terms, and when finally I put the question to him of just what he had done with the briefcase of coins, he snatched a .38 Beretta from under his mattress. In the ensuing scuffle he had his neck broken. It had been a mistake. I didn’t mean to kill the man - but even more I didn’t mean him to kill me. I hung a DON’T DISTurb ” sign on his door and I caught the next plane out. ten days later the police found the briefcase with the coins in the left-luggage department at Paddington Station. it made the front page of all the national newspapers.
I tried again at an exhibition of cut diamonds in Amsterdam, but I had done faulty research on the electronic alarm system and I tripped a beam that I had overlooked.
The plain clothes security guards who had been hired by the organizers of the exhibition rushed headlong into the uniformed police coming in through the main entrance and a spectacular shoot-out ensued, while a completely unarmed Harry Fletcher slunk away into the night to the sound of loud cries and gunfire.
I Was halfway to Schiphol airport by the time a ceasefire was called between the opposing forces of the law - but not before a sergeant of the Dutch police received a critical chest wound. I sat anxiously chewing MY nails anddrinking inumarable beers in my room in the Holiday Inn near Zurich Airport, as I followed the gallant sergeant’s fight for life on the TV set. I would have hated like all hell to have another fatality on my conscience, and I made a solemn vow that if the policeman died I would forget for ever about my place in the sun.
However, the Dutch sergeant rallied strongly and I felt an immense proprietary pride in him when he was finally declared out of danger. And when he was promoted to assistant inspector and awarded a bonus of five thousand crowns I persuaded myself that I was his fairy godfather and that the man owed me eternal gratitude.
Still, I had been shaken by two failures and I took a job as an instructor at an Outward Bound School for six months while I considered my future. At the end of six months, I decided for one more try.
This time I laid the groundwork with meticulous care. I emigrated to South Africa, where I was able with my qualifications to obtain a post as an operator with the security firm responsible for bullion shipments from the South African Reserve Bank in Pretoria to overseas destinations. For a year I worked with the transportation of hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of gold bars, and I studied the system in every minute detail. The weak spot, when I found it, was at Rome - but again I needed help.
This time I went to the professionals, but I set my price at a level that made it easier for them to pay me out than put me down and I covered myself a hundred times against treachery.
It went as smoothly as I had planned it, and this time there were no victims. Nobody came out with a bullet or a cracked skull. We merely switched part of a cargo and substituted leaded cases. Then we moved two and a half tons of gold bars across the Swiss border in a furniture removals van.
In Basie, sitting in a banker’s private rooms furnished with priceless antiques, above the wide swift waters of the Rhine on which the stately white swans rode in majesty, they paid me out. Manny Resnick signed the transfer into my numbered account of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling and he laughed a fat hungry little laugh.
“You’ll be back, Harry - you’ve tasted blood now and you’ll be back. Have a nice holiday, then come to me again when you’ve thought up another deal like this one.”
He was wrong, I never went back. I rode up to Zdrich in a hire car and flew to Paris Orly. In the men’s room there, I shaved off the beard and picked up the briefcase from the pay locker that contained the passport in the name of Harold Delville Fletcher. Then I flew out Panam, for Sydney, Australia.
Wave Dancer cost me one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds sterling and I took her under a deck load of fuel drums across to St. Mary’s, two thousand miles, a voyage on which we learned to love each other.
On St. Mary’s I purchased twenty-five acres of peace, and built the shack with my own hands - four rooms, a thatched roof and a wide veranda, set amongst the Palms above the white beach. Except for the occasions when a night run had been forced upon me, I had walked the right-hand Path since then.
it was late when I had done my reminiscences and the tide was pushing high up the beach in the moonlight before I went into the shack, but then I slept like an innocent.
They were on time the following morning. Charly Materson ran a tight outfit. The taxi deposited them at the head of the Wharf while I had Dancer singled up at stern and stern and both engines burbling sweetly.
I watched them come, concentrating on the third member of the group. He was not what I had expected. He was tall and lean with a wide friendly face and dark soft hair. Unlike the others, his face and arms were darkly suntanned, and his teeth were large and very white. He wore denim shorts and a white sweatshirt and he had a swimmer’s wide rangy shoulders and powerful arms. I knew instantly who was to use the diving equipment.
He carried a big green canvas kitbag over one shoulder. He carried it easily, though I could see that it was weighty, and he chatted gaily with his two companions who answered him in monosyllables. They flanked him like a pair of guards.
He looked up at me as they came level and I saw that he was young and eager. There was an excitement, an anticipation, about him, that reminded me sharply of myself ten years previously.
“Hi,” he grinned at me, an easy friendly grin, and I realized that he was an extremely good-looking youngster. “Greetings,” I replied, liking him from the first and intrigued as to how he had found a place with the wolf pack. Under my direction they took in the mooring lines and, from this brief exercise, I learned that the youngster was the only one of them familiar with small boats.
As we cleared the harbour, he and Materson came up on to the flying bridge. Materson had coloured slightly and his breathing was raggedy from the mild exertion. He introduced the newcomer.
“This is Jimmy,” he told me, when he had caught his breath. We shook hands and I put his age at not much over
twenty. Close up I had no cause to revise my first impressions. He had a level and innocent gaze from seagrey eyes, and his grip was firm and dry.
“She’s a darling boat, skipper,” he told me, which was rather like telling a mother that her baby is beautiful.
“She’s not a bad old girl.”
“What is she, forty-four, forty-five feet?” “Forty-five,” I said, liking him a little more.
“Jimmy will give you your directions,” Materson told me. “You will follow his orders.” “Fine,” I said, and Jimmy coloured a little under his tan. “Not orders, Mr. Fletcher, I’ll just tell you where we want to go. “Fine, Jim, I’ll take you there.”
“Once we are clear of the island, will you turn due west.”
“Just how far in that direction do you intend going?” I asked.
“We want to cruise along the coast of the African mainland,” Materson. cut in.
“Lovely,” I said, “that’s great. Did anybody tell you that they don’t hang out the welcome mat for strangers there?”
“We will stay well offshore.” I thought a moment, hesitating before turning back to Admiralty Wharf and packing the whole bunch ashore-* “Where do you want to go - north or south of the rivermouth?” North said Jimmy, and that altered the proposition for the good.
South of the river they patrolled with helicopters and were very touchy about their territorial waters. I would not go in there during daylight.
In the north there was little coastal activity. There was a single crash boat at Zinballa, but when its engines were in running order, which was a few days a week, then its crew were mostly blown out of their minds with the virulent palm liquor brewed locally along the coast. When crew and engines were functioning simultaneously, they could raise fifteen knots, and Dancer could turn on twenty-two any time I asked her.
The final trick in my favour was that I could run Dancer through the maze of’offshore reefs and islands on a dark night in a roaring monsoon, while it was my experience that the crash boat commander avoided this sort of extravagance. Even on a bright sunny day and in a flat calm, he preferred rhe quiet and peace of Zinballa Bay. I had heard that he suffered acutely from sea sickness, and held his present appointment only because it was far away from the capital, where as a minister of the government the commander had been involved in a little unpleasantness regarding the disappearance of large amounts of foreign aid.
From my point of view he was the ideal man for the job.
“All right,” I agreed, turning to Materson. “But I’m afraid what you’re asking is going to cost you another two-fifty dollars a day - danger money.”
“I was afraid it might,“he said softly.
I brought Dancer around, close to the light on Oyster Point.
It was a bright morning with a high clear sky into which the stationary clouds that marked the position of eacch group of islands towered in great soft columns of blinding white.
The solemn Progress of the trade winds across the ocean was interrupted by the bulwark of the African continent on which they broke. We were getting the backlash here in the inshore channel, and random squalls and gusts of it spread darkly across the pale green waters and flecked the surface chop with white. Dancer loved it, it gave her an excuse to flounce and swish her bottom.
“You looking for anything special - or just looking?” I asked casually, and Jimmy turned to tell me all about it. He was itchy with excitement, and the grey eyes sparkled as he opened his mouth.
“Just looking,” Materson interrupted with a ring in his voice and a sharp warning in his expression, and Jimmy’s mouth closed.
“I know these waters. I know every island, every reef. I might be able to save you a lot of time - and a bit of money.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Materson thanked me with heavy irony.
“However, I believe we can manage.”
“You are paying,” I shrugged, and Materson. glanced at Jimmy, inclined his head in a command to follow and led him down into the cockpit. They stood together beside the stern rail and Materson spoke to him quietly but earnestly for two minutes. I saw Jimmy flush darkly, his expression changing from dismay to boyish sulks and I guessed that he was having his ear chewed to ribbons on the subject of secrecy and security.
When he came back on to the flying bridge he was seething with anger, and for the first time I noticed the strong hard line of his jaw. He wasn’t just a pretty boy, I decided.
Evidently on Materson’s orders, Guthrie, the muscle, came out of the cabin and swung the big padded fighting chair to face the bridge. He lounged in it, even in his relaxation charged-with the promise of violence like a resting leopard, and he watched us, one leg draped over the arm rest and the linen jacket with the heavy weight in its pocket folded in his lap.
A happy ship, I chuckled, and ran Dancer out through the islands, threading a fine course through the clear green waters where the reefs lurked darkly below the surface like malevolent monsters and the islands were fringed with coral sand as dazzling white as a snowdrift, and crowned with dark thick vegetation over which the palm stems curved gracefully, their tops shaking in the feeble remnants of the trade.
It was a long day as we cruised at random and I tried to get some hint of the object of the expedition. However, still smarting from Materson’s reprimand, Jimmy was tight mouthed and grim. He asked for changes of course at intervals, after I had pointed out our position on the large, scale admiralty chart which he produced from his bag.
Although there were no extraneous markings on his chart, when I examined it surreptitiously I was able to figure that we were interested in an area fifteen to thirty miles north of the multiple mouths of the Rovuma River, and up to sixteen miles offshore. An area containing perhaps three hundred islands varying in size from a few acres to many square miles - a very big haystack in which to find his needle.
I was content enough to perch up on Dancer’s bridge and run quietly along the seaways, enjoying the feet of my darling under me and watching the activity of the sea animals, and birds.
In the fighting chair Mike Guthrie’s scalp started to show through the thin cover of hair like strips of scarlet neon lighting.
Cook, you bastard,” I thought happily, and neglected to warn him about the tropical sun until we were running home in the dusk. The next day he was in agony with white goo smeared over his bloated and incarnadined features and a wide cloth hat covering his head, but his face flashed like the port light of an ocean-goer.
By noon on the second day I was bored. Jimmy was poor company for although he had recovered a little of his good humour he was so conscious of security that he even thought for thirty seconds before accepting an offer of coffee.
It was more for something to do than because I wanted fish for my dinner that when I saw a squadron of small kingfish charging a big shoal of sardine ahead of us, I gave the wheel to Jimmy.
“Just keep her on that heading,” I told him and dropped down into the cockpit. Guthrie watched me warily from his swollen crimson face as I glanced into the cabin and saw that Materson had my bar open and was mixing himself a gin and tonic. At seven hundred and fifty a day I didn’t grudge it to him. He hadn’t emerged from the cabin in two days.
I went back to the small tackle locker and selected a pair of feather jigs and tossed them out. As we crossed the track of the shoal I hit a kingfish and brought him out kicking, flashing golden in the sun.
Then I recoiled the lines and stowed them, wiped the blade of my heavy baitknife across the oil stone to brighten up the edge and split the kingfishs belly from anal vent to gills and pulled out a handful of bloody gut to throw it into the wake.
Immediately a pair of gulls that had been weaving and hovering over us screeched with greed and plunged for the scraps. Their excitement summoned others and within minutes there was a shrieking, flapping host of them astern of us.
Their din was not so loud that it covered the metallic snicker close behind me, the unmistakable s
ound of the slide on an automatic pistol being drawn back and released to load and cock. I moved entirely from instinct. Without thought, the big baitknife spun in my right hand as I changed smoothly to a throwing grip and I turned and dropped to the deck in a single movement, breaking fall with heels and left arm as the knife went back over my right shoulder and I began the throw at the instant that I lined up the target.
Mike Guthrie had a big automatic in his right hand. An old-fashioned naval .45, a killer’s weapon, one which would blow a hole in a man’s chest through which you could drive a London cab.
TWO things saved Guthrie from being pinned to the back of the fighting chair by the longheavy blade of the baitknife. Firstly, the fact that the .45 was not pointed at me and, secondly, the expression of comical amazement on the man’s scarlet face.
I prevented myself from throwing the knife, breaking the instinctive action by a major effort of will, and we stared at each other. He knew then how close he had come, and the grin he forced to his swollen sunburned lips was shaky and unconvincing. I stood up and pegged the knife into the bait chopping board.
“Do yourself a favour,” I told him quietly. “Don’t play with that thing behind my back.”
He laughed then, blustering and tough again. He swivelled the seat and aimed out over the stern. He fired twice, the shots crashing out loudly above the run of Dancer’s engines and the brief smell of cordite was whipped away on the wind.
Two of the milling gulls exploded into grotesque bursts of blood and feathers blown to shreds by the heavy bullets, and the rest of the flock scattered with shrieks of panic. The manner in which the birds were torn up told me that Guthrie had loaded with explosive bullets, a more savage weapon than a sawn-off shotgun.