by Wilbur Smith
He swivelled the chair back to face me and blew into the muzzle of the pistol like John Wayne. It was fancy shooting with that heavy calibre weapon.
“Tough cooky,” I applauded him, and turned to the bridge ladder, but Materson was standing in the doorway of the cabin with the gin in his hand and as I stepped past him he spoke quietly.
“Now I know who you are,” he said, in that soft putty voice.
“It’s been worrying us, we thought we knew you.”
I stared at him, and he called past me to Guthrie.
“You know who he is now, don’t you?” and Guthrie shook his head.
I don’t think he could trust his voice. “He had a beard then, think about it - a mug shot photograph.”
“Jesus,” said Guthrie. “Harry Bruce!” I felt a little shock at hearing the name spoken out loud again after all these years. I had hoped it was forgotten for ever.
“Rome,” said Materson. “The gold heist.”
“He set it up.” Guthrie snapped his fingers. “I was sure I knew him. It was the beard that fooled me.”
“I think you gentlemen have the wrong address,” I said with a desperate attempt at a cool tone, but was thinking quickly, trying to weigh this fresh knowledge. They had seen a mugshot - where? When? Were they law men of from the other side of the fence? I needed time to think and I clambered up to the bridge.
“Sorry,” muttered Jimmy, as I took the wheel from him. “I should have told you he had a gun.” “Yeah,” I said. “it might have helped.” My mind was racing, and the first turning it took was along the left-hand path. They would have to go. They had blown my elaborate cover, they had sniffed me out and there was only one sure way. I looked back into the cockpit but both Materson and Guthrie had gone below.
An accident, take them both out at one stroke, aboard a small boat there were plenty of ways a greenhorn could get hurt in the worst possible way. They had to go.
Then I looked at Jimmy, and he grinned at me.
“You move fast,” he said. “Mike nearly wet himself, he thought he was going to get that knife through his gizzard.”
The kid also? I asked myself - if I took out the other two, he would have to go as well. Then suddenly I felt the same physical nausea that I had first known long ago in the Biaftan village.
“You okay, skipper?” Jimmy asked quickly, it had shown on my face.
“I’m okay, Jim,” I said. “Why don’t you go fetch us a can of beer.”
While he was below I reached my decision. I would do a deal. I was certain that they didn’t want their business shouted in the streets. I’d trade secrecy for secrecy. Probably they were coming to the same conclusion in the cabin below.
I locked the wheel and crossed quietly to the corner of the bridge, making sure my footsteps were not picked up in the cabin below.
The ventilator there funnels fresh air into the inlet above the saloon table. I had found that the ventilator made a reasonably effective voice tube, that sound was carried through it to the bridge.
However, the effectiveness of this listening device depends on a number of factors, chief of these being the direction and strength of the wind and the precise position of the speaker in the cabin below.
The wind was on our beam, gusting into the opening of the ventilator and blotting out patches of the conversation in the cabin. However, Jimmy must have been standing directly below the vent for his voice came through strongly when the wind roar did not smother it.
“Why don’t you ask him now?” and the reply was confused, then the wind gusted and when it cleared, Jimmy was speaking again.
“If you do it tonight, where will you-2 and the wind roared, ” - to get the dawn light then we will have to Then entire discussion seemed to be on times and places, and as I wondered briefly what they hoped to gain by leaving harbour at dawn, he said it again. “If the dawn light is where-” I strained for the next words but the wind killed them for ten seconds, then ” - I dont see why we can’t—2 Jimmy was protesting and suddenly Mike Guthrie’s voice came through sharp and hard. He must have gone to stand close beside Jimmy, probably in a threatening attitude.
“Listen, Jimmy boy, you let us handle that side of it. Your job is to find the bloody thing, and you aren’t doing so good this far.”
They must have moved again for their voices became indistinct and I heard the sliding door into the cockpit opening and I turned quickly to the wheel and freed the retaining handle just as Jimmy’s head appeared over the edge of the deck as he came up the ladder.
He handed me the beer and he seemed to be more relaxed now. The reserve was gone from his manner. He smiled at me, friendly and trusting.
“Mr. Materson says that’s enough for today. We are to head for home.”
I swung Dancer across the current and we came in from the west, past the mouth of Turtle Bay and I could see my shack standing amongst the palms. I felt a sudden chilling premonition of loss. The fates had called for a new deck of cards, and the game was bigger, the stakes were too rich for my blood but there was no way I could pull out now.
However, I suppressed the chill of despair, and turned to Jimmy.
I would take advantage of his new attitude of trust and try for what information I could glean.
We chatted lightly on the run down the channel into Grand Harbour.
They had obviously told him that I was off the leper list. Strangely the fact that I had a criminal past made me more acceptable to the wolf pack. They could reckon the angles now. They had found a lever, so now they could handle me - though I was pretty sure they had not explained the whole proposition to young James.
It was obviously a relief for him to act naturally with me. He was a friendly and open person, completely lacking in guile. An example of this was the way that his surname had been guarded like a military secret from me, and yet around his neck he wore a silver chain and a Medic-alert tag that warned that J.A. NORTH, the wearer, was allergic to penicillin.
Now he forgot all his former reserve, and gently I drew small snippets of information from him that I might have use for in the-future. In my experience it’s what you don’t know that can really hurt you, I chose the subject that I guessed would open him up completely.
“See that reef across the channel, there where she’s breaking now?
That’s Devil Fish Reef and there is twenty fathoms sheer under the sea side of her. It’s a hangout of some real big old bull grouper. I shot one there last year that weighed in at over two hundred kilos.”
“Two hundred-” he exclaimed. “My God, that’s almost four hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Right, you could put your head and shoulders in his mouth.”
The last of his reserves disappeared. He had been reading history and philosophy at Cambridge but spent too much time in the sea, and had to drop out. Now he ran a small diving equipment supply company and underwater salvage outfit, that gave him a living and allowed him to dive most days of the week. He did private work and had contracted to the Government and the Navy on some jobs.
More than once he mentioned the name “Sherry” and I probed carefully.
“Girl friend or wife?” and he grinned.
“Sister, big sister, but she’s a doll - she does the books and minds the shop, all that stuff,” in a tone that left no doubt as to what James thought about book-keeping and counter-jumping. “She’s a red-hot conchologist and she makes two thousand a year out of her sea shells.” But he didn’t explain how he had got into the dubious company he was now keeping, nor what he was doing halfway around the world from his sports shop. I left them on Admiralty Wharf, and took Dancer over to the Shell Basin for refuelling before dark.
That evening I grilled the kingfish over the coals, roasted a couple of big sweet yams in their jackets and was washing it down with a cold beer sitting on the veranda of the shack and listening to the surf when I saw the headlights coming down through the palm trees. The taxi parked beside my pickup, and the driver stayed
at the wheel while his passengers came up the steps on to the stoep. They had left James at the Hilton, and there were just the two of them now - Materson and Guthrie.
“Drink?” I indicated the bottles and ice on the side table.
Guthrie poured gin for both of them and Materson sat opposite me and watched me finish the last of the fish.
“I made a few phone calls,” he said when I pushed my plate away.
“And they tell me that Harry Bruce disappeared in June five years ago and hasn’t been heard of since. I asked around and found out that Harry Fletcher sailed into Grand Harbour here three months later - inward bound from Sydney, Australia.”
“Is that the truth?” I picked a little fish bone out of my tooth, and lit a long black island cheroot.
one other thing, someone who knew him well tells me Harry Bruce had a knife scar across his left arm,” he purred, and I involuntarily glanced at the thin line of scar tissue that laced the muscle of my forearm. It had shrunk and flattened with the years, but was still very white against the dark sunbrowned skin.
“Now that’s a hell of a coincidence,” I said, and drew on the cheroot. It was strong and aromatic, tasting of sea and sun and spices. I wasn’t worried now - they were going to make a deal.
“Yeah, isn’t it,” Materson agreed, and he looked around him elaborately. “You got a nice set-up here, Fletcher. Cosy, isn’t it, really nice and COSY.
“It beats hell out of working for a living,” I admitted. Or out of breaking rocks, or sewing mail bags.”
“I should imagine it does.”
“The kid is going to ask you some questions tomorrow. Be nice to him, Fletcher. When we go you can forget you ever saw us, and we’ll forget to tell anybody about that funny coincidence.”
“Mr. Materson, sir, I’ve got a terrible memory,” I assured him.
After the conversation I had overheard in Dancer’s cabin, I expected them to ask for an early start time the following morning, for the dawn light seemed important to their plans. However, neither of them mentioned it, and when they had gone I knew I wouldn’t sleep so I walked out along the sand around the curve of the bay to Mutton Point to watch the moon come up through the palm trees. I sat there until after midnight.
The dinghy was gone from the jetty but Hambone, the ferry man, rowed me out to Dancer’s moorings before sun-up the following morning and as we came alongside I saw the familiar shape shambling around the cockpit, and the dinghy tied alongside.
“Hey, Chubby.” I jumped aboard. “Your Missus kick you out of bed, then?”
Dancer’s deck was gleaming white even in the bad light, and all the metal work was brightly burnished. He must have been at it for a -couple of hours; Chubby loves Dancer almost as much as I do.
“She looked like a public shit-house, Harry,” he grumbled.
“That’s a sloppy bunch you got aboard,” and he spat noisily over the side. “No respect for a boat, that’s what.”
He had coffee ready for me, as strong and as pungent as only he can make it, and we drank it sitting in the saloon.
Chubby frowned heavily into his mug and blew on the steaming black liquid. He wanted to tell me something. “How’s Angelo?”
“Pleasuring the Rawano widows,” he growled. The island does not provide sufficient employment for all its able, bodied young men - so most of them ship out on three-year labour contracts to the American satellite tracking station and airforce base on Rawano, island. They leave their young wives behind, the Rawano widows, and the island girls are justly celebrated for the high temperature of their blood and their friendly dispositions.
“That Angelo’s going to shag his brain loose, he’s been at it night and day since Monday.”
I detected more than a trace of envy in his growl. Missus Chubby kept him on a pretty tight lead - he sipped noisily at the coffee.
“How’s your party, Harry?”
“Their money is good.”
“You not fishing, Harry.” He looked at me. “I watch you from Coolie Peak, man, you don’t go near the channel you are working inshore.”
“That’s right, Chubby.” He returned his attention to his coffee.
“Hey, Harry. You watch them. You be good and careful, hear.
They bad men, those two. I don’t know the young one - but the others they are bad.”
“I’ll be careful, Chubby.”
“You know the new girl at the hotel, Marion? The one over for the season?” I nodded, she was a pretty slim little wisp of a girl with lovely long legs, about nineteen with glossy black hair, freckled skin, bold eyes and an impish smile. “Well, last night she went with the blond one, the one with the red face.” I knew that Marion sometimes combined business with pleasure and provided for selected hotel guests services beyond the call of duty. On the island this sort of activity drew no social stigma.
“Yes,” I encouraged Chubby.
“He hurt her, Harry. Hurt her bad.” Chubby took another mouthful of coffee. “Then he paid her so much money she couldn’t go to the police.”
I liked Mike Guthrie a little less now. Only an animal would take advantage of a girl like Marion. I knew her well. She had an innocence, a childlike acceptance of life that made her promiscuity strangely appealing. I remembered how I had thought I might have to kill Guthrie one day and tried not to let the thought perish.
“They are bad men, Harry. I thought it best you know that.”
“Thanks, Chubby.”
“And don’t you let them dirty up Dancer like that,” he added accusingly. “The saloon and deck - they were like a pigsty, man.”
He helped me run Dancer across to Admiralty Wharf and then he set off homewards, grumbling and muttering blackly. He passed Jimmy coming in the opposite direction and shot him a single malevolent glance that should have shrivelled him in his tracks.
Jimmy was on his own, fresh-faced and jaunty.
“Hi, skipper,“he called, as he jumped down on to Dancer’s deck, and I went into the saloon with him and poured coffee for us.
“Mr. Materson says you have some questions for me, is that right?”
“Look, Mr. Fletcher, I want you to know that I didn’t mean offence by not talking to you before. It wasn’t me but the others.” “Sure,” I said. “That’s fine, Jimmy.”
“It would have been the sensible thing to ask your help long ago, instead of blundering around the way we have been. Anyway, now the others have suddenly decided it’s okay.” He had just told me much more than he imagined, and I adjusted my opinion of Master James. It was clear that he possessed information, and he had not shared it with the others. It was his insurance, and he had probably insisted on seeing me alone to keep his insurance policy intact.
“Skipper, we are looking for an island, a specific island. I can’t tell you why, I’m sorry.”
“Forget it, Jimmy. That’s all right.” What will there be for you, James North, I wondered suddenly. What will the wolf pack have for you once you have led them to this special island of yours? Will it be something a lot less pleasant than penicillin allergy?
I looked at that handsome young face, and felt an unaccustomed flood of affection for him - perhaps it was his youth and innocence, the sense of excitement with which he viewed this tired and wicked old world. I envied and liked him for that, and I did not relish seeing him pulled down and rolled in the dirt.
“Jim, how well do you know your friends?” I asked him quietly, and he was taken by surprise, then almost immediately he was wary.
“Well enough,“he replied carefully. “Why?”
“You have known them less than a month,” I said as though I knew, and saw the confirmation in his expression. “And I have known men like that all my life!
“I don’t see what this has to do with it, Mr. Fletcher.” He was stiffening up now, I was treating him like a child and he didn’t like that.
“Listen, Jim. Forget this business, whatever it is. Drop it, and go back to your shop and your salvage com
pany-” “That’s crazy,” he said. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand, Jim. I really do. I travelled the same road, and I know it well.”
“I can look after myself Don’t worry about me.” He had flushed up under his tan, and the grey eyes snapped with defiance. We stared at each other for a few moments, and I knew I was wasting time and emotion. If anyone had spoken like this to me at the same age I would have thought him senile.
“All right, Jim,” I said. “I’ll drop it, but you know the score.
just play it cool and loose, that’s all.”
“Okay, Mr. Fletcher.” He relaxed slowly, and then grinned a charming and engaging grin. “Thanks anyway.”
“Let’s hear about this island,” I suggested and he glanced about the cabin.
“Let’s go up on the bridge,” he suggested, and out in the open air he took a stub of pencil and a scrap pad from the map bin above the chart table.
“I reckon it lies off the African shore about six to ten miles, and ten to thirty miles north of the mouth of the Rovuma River. -“
“That covers a hell of a lot of ground, Jim - as you may have noticed during the last few days. What else do you know about it?”
He hesitated a little longer, before grudgingly doling out a few more coins from his hoard. He took the pencil and drew a horizontal line across the pad.
“Sea level.” he said, and then above the line he raised an irregular profile that started low, and -then climbed steeply into three distinct peaks before ending abruptly, ” and that’s the silhouette that it shows from the sea. The three hills are volcanic basalt, sheer rock with little vegetation!
“The Old Men-” I recognized it immediately, you are a long way out in your other calculations, it’s more like twenty miles offshore-“
“But within sight of the mainland?” he asked quickly. “it has to be within sight.”