by Wilbur Smith
I stopped smiling. I knew it was true. “In the meantime I have reason to believe the security of the State is endangered.” He smiled now, thinly and with the mouth only. “Before we go any further I want you to be sure I am serious.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“I have two weeks with you alone, here, Fletcher. These walls are pretty thick, you can make as much noise as you like.”
“You are a monstrous little turd, you really are.”
“There is only one of two ways you are going to leave here.
Either you and I come to an arrangement - or I’ll get Fred Coker to come and fetch you in a box.”
“Let’s hear your deal, little man.”
“I want to know exactly - and I mean exactly - where your charter carried out their diving operations before the shoot out.” “I told you - somewhere off Rastafa Point. I couldn’t give you the exact spot.”
“Fletcher, you know the spot to within inches. I’m willing to stake your life on that. You wouldn’t miss a chance like that. You know it. I know it - and they knew it. That’s why they tried to sign you off.”
“Inspector, go screw,” I said.
“What is more it was nowhere near Rastafa Point. You were working north of here, towards the mainland. I was interested - I had some reports of your movements.”
“It was somewhere off Rastafa Point,” I repeated doggedly. “Very well,” he nodded. “I hope you aren’t as tough as you put out, Fletcher, otherwise this is going to be a long messy business. Before we start though, don’t waste our time with false data. I’m going to keep you here while I check it out - I’ve got two weeks.”
We stared at each other, and my flesh began to crawl. Peter Daly was going to enjoy this, I realized. There was a gloating expression on those thin lips and a smoky glaze to his eyes.
“I had a great deal of experience in interrogation in Malaya, you know. Fascinating subject. So many aspects to it. So often it’s the tough, strong ones that pop first - and the little runts that hang on for ever.
This was for kicks, I saw clearly that he was aroused by the prospect of inflicting pain. His breathing had changed, faster and deeper, there was fresh colour in his cheeks.
“–of course, you are at a physical low ebb right now, Fletcher.
Probably your threshold of pain is much lowered after your recent misadventures. I don’t think it will take long.”
He seemed to regret that. I gathered myself, tightening up for an attempt.
“No,” he snapped. “Don’t do it, Fletcher.” He placed his hand on the butt of the pistol. He was fifteen feet away. I was one-armed, weak, there was a locked door behind me, two armed constables - my shoulders sagged as I relaxed.
“That’s better.” He smiled again. “Now I think we will handcuff you to the bars of a cell, and we can get to work. When you have had enough you have merely to say so. I think you will find my little electrical set-up simple but effective. It’s merely a twelve-volt car battery - and I clip the terminals on to interesting parts of the body-” He reached behind him - and for the first time I noticed the button of an electric bell set on the wall. He pressed it and I heard the bell ring faintly beyond the oaken door.
The bolts shot back and the two constables came back in.
“Take him through to the cells,” Daly ordered, and the constables hesitated. I guessed they were strangers to this type of operation.
“Come on,” snapped Daly, and they stepped up on either side of me.
Wally laid a hand lightly on my injured arm, and I allowed myself to be led forward towards the cells and Daly.
I wanted to have a chance at him, just one chance. “How’s your mom, Wally? I asked casually.
“She’s all right, Mister Harry,” he muttered embarrassedly.
“She get the present I sent up for her birthday?”
“Yeah, she got it.” He was distracted as I intended.
We had come level, with Daly. he was standing by the doorway to the cells, waiting for us to go through, slapping the malacca, swagger stick against his thigh.
The constables were holding me respectfully, loosely, unsure of themselves, and I stepped to one side pushing Wally slightly off balance - then I spun back, breaking free.
Not one of them was ready for it, and I covered the three paces to Daly before they had realized what I was doing - and I put my right knee into him with my full body weight behind it. It thumped into the crotch of his legs, a marvellously solid blow. Whatever the price I was going to have to pay for the pleasure, it was cheap.
Daly was lifted off his feet, a full eighteen inches in the air, and he flew backwards to crash against the bars. Then he doubled up, both hands pressed into his lower body, screaming thinly - a sound like steam from a boiling kettle. As he went over I lined up for another shot at his face, I wanted to take his teeth out with a kick in the mouth - but the constables recovered their wits and leaped forward to drag me away. They were rough now, twisting the arm.
“You didn’t ought to do that, Mister Harry,” Wally shouted angrily. His fingers bit into my bicep and I gritted my teeth.
“The President himself cleared me, Wally. You know that,” I shouted back at him, and Daly straightened up, his face twisted with agony, still holding himself.
“This is a frame up.” I knew I had only a few seconds to talk, Daly was reeling towards me, brandishing the swagger stick, his mouth wide open as he tried to find his voice.
“If he gets me in that cell he’s going to kill me Wally!”
“Shut up!” screeched Daly.
“He wouldnt dare try this if the President–2 “Shut up! Shut up!” He swung the swagger stick, a side, arm cut, that hissed like a cobra. He had gone for my wounds deliberately, and the supple cane snapped around me like a pistol shot.
The pain of it was beyond belief, and I convulsed, bucking involuntarily in their grip. They held me.
“Shut up!” Daly was hysterical with pain and rage. He swung again, and the cane cut deeply into half-healed flesh. This time I screamed.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard.” Daly staggered back, still hunched with pain, and he fumbled with his holstered pistol.
What I had hoped for now happened. Wally released me and jumped forward.
No,” he shouted. “Not that.”
He towered over Daly’s slim crouching form and with one massive brown hand he blocked Daly’s draw.
“Get out of my way. That’s an order,” shouted Daly, but Wally unclipped. the lanyard from the pistol’s butt and disarmed him, stepping back with the pistol in his hand.
“I’ll break you for this,” snarled Daly. “It’s your duty-“
“I know my duty, Inspector,” Wally spoke with a simple dignity, “and it’s not to murder prisoners.” Then he turned to me. “Mister Harry, you’d best get out of here.”
“You’re freeing a prisoner-” Daly gasped. “Man, I’m going to break you.”
“Didn’t see no warrant,” Wally cut in. “Soon as the President signs a warrant, we’ll fetch Mister Harry right back in again.”
“You black bastard,” Daly panted at him, and Wally turned to me.
“Get!“he said. “Quickly.”
It was a long ride out to the shack, every bump in the track hit me in the chest. One thing I had learned from I the evening’s joliffications was that my original thoughts were correct - whatever that bundle off Big Gull Island contained, it could get a peace-loving gentleman like myself into plenty of trouble.
I was not so trusting as to believe that Inspector Daly had made his last attempt at interrogating me. just as soon as he recovered from the kick in his multiplication machinery which I had given him, he was going to make another attempt to connect me up to the lighting system. I wondered if Daly was acting on his own, or if he had partners and I guessed he was alone, taking opportunity as it presented itself.
I parked the pick-up in the yard and went through on to the veranda of my shack. Miss
us Chubby had been out to sweep and tidy while I was away. There were fresh flowers in a jam-jar on the dining-room table - but more important there were eggs and bacon, bread and butter in the icebox.
I stripped off my blood-stained shirt and dressing. There were thick raised welts around my chest that the cane had left, and the wounds were a mess.
I showered and strapped on a fresh dressing, then, standing naked over the stove, I scrambled a pan full of eggs with bacon and while it cooked, I poured a very dark whisky and took it like medicine.
I was too tired to climb between the sheets, and as I fell across the bed I wondered if I would be fit enough to work the night run on schedule. It was my last thought before sun-up.
And after I had showered again and swallowed two Doloxene painkillers with a glass of cold pineapple juice and eaten another panful of eggs for breakfast I thought the answer was yes. I was stiff and sore, but I could work. At noon I drove into town, stopped off at Missus Eddy’s store for supplies and then went on down to Admiralty.
Chubby and Angelo were on board already, and Dancer lay against the wharf.
“I filled the auxiliary tariks, Harry,” Chubby told me. “She’s good for a thousand miles.”
“Did you break out the cargo nets?” I asked, and he nodded.
“They are stowed in the main sail locker.” We would use the nets to deck load the bulky ivory cargo.
“Don’t forget to bring a coat - it will be cold out on the stream with this wind blowing-“
“Don’t worry, Harry. You the one should watch it. Man, you look bad as you were ten days ago. You look real sick.”
“I feel beautiful, Chubby.”
“Yeah,” he grunted, “like my motherin-law,” then he changed the subject. “What happened to your carbine, man?”
“The police are holding it.”
“You mean we going out there without a piece on board?”
“We never needed it yet.”
“There is always a first time,” he grunted. “I’m going to feel mighty naked without it.”
Chubby’s obsession with armaments always amused me. Despite all the evidence that I presented to the contrary, Chubby could never quite shake, off the belief that the velocity and range of a bullet depended upon how hard one pulled the trigger - and Chubby intended that his bullets go very fast and very far indeed.
The savage strength with which he sent them on their way would have buckled a less robust weapon than the FN. He also suffered from a complete inability to keep his eyes open at the moment of firing.
I have seen him miss a fifteen-foot tiger shark at a range of ten feet with a full magazine of twenty rounds. Chubby Andrews was never going to make it to Bisley, but he just naturally loved firearms and things that went bang.
“It will be a milk run, a ruddy pleasure cruise, Chubby, you’ll see,” and he crossed his fingers to avert the hex, and shuffled off to work on Dancer’s already brilliant brasswork, while I went ashore.
The front office of Fred Coker’s travel agency was deserted and I rang the bell on the desk. He stuck his head through from the back room.
“Welcome, Mister Harry.” He had removed his coat and tie and had rolled up his shirt sleeves, about his waist he wore a red rubber apron. “Lock the front door, please, and come through.”
The back room was in contrast to the front office with its gaudy wallpaper and bright travel posters. It was a long, gloomy barn. Along one wall were piled cheap pine coffins. The hearse was parked inside the double doors at the far end. Behind a grimy canvas screen in one corner was a marble slab table with guttering around the edges and a spout to direct fluid from the guttering into a bucket on the floor.
“Come in, sit down. There is a chair. Excuse me if I carry on working while we talk. I have to have this ready for four o’clock this afternoon.”
I took one look at the frail naked corpse on the slab. It was a little girl of about six years of age with long dark hair. One look was enough and I moved the chair behind the screen so I could see only Fred Coker’s bald head, and I lit a cheroot. There was a heavy smell of embalming fluid in the room, and it caught in my throat.
“You get used to it, Mister Harry.” Fred Coker had noticed my distaste.
“Did you set it up?” I didn’t want to discuss his gruesome trade.
“It’s fixed,” he assured me.
“Did you square our friend at the fort?”
“It’s all fixed.”
“when did you see him!” I persisted, I wanted to know about Daly.
I was very interested in how Daly felt.
“I saw him this morning, Mister Harry.”
“How was he?”
“He seemed all right.” Coker paused in his grisly task and looked at me questioningly.
“Was he standing up, walking around, dancing a jig, singing, tying the dog loose?”
“No. He was sitting down, and he was not in a very good mood “It figures.” I laughed and my own injuries felt better. “But he took the pay off?”
“Yes, he took it.”
“Good, then we have still got a deal.” “Like I told you, it’s all fixed.”
“Lay it on me, Mr. Coker.”
“The pick up is at the mouth of the Salsa stream where it enters the south channel of the main Duza estuary.” I nodded, that was acceptable. There was a good channel and the holding ground off the Salsa was satisfactory.
“The recognition signal will be two lanterns - one over the other, placed on the bank nearest the mouth. You will flash twice, repeated at thirty-second intervals and when the lower lantern is extinguished you can anchor. Got that?”
“Good.” It was all satisfactory.
“They will provide labour to load from the lighters.” I nodded, then asked. “They know that slack water is three o’clock - and I must be out of the channel before that?” “Yes, Mister Harry. I told them they must finish loading before two hundred hours.”
“All right then - what about the drop off?”
“Your drop off will be twenty-five miles due east of Rastafa Point.”
“Fine.” I could check my bearings off the lighthouse at Rastafa.
It was good and simple.
“You will drop off to a dhow-rigged schooner, a big one. Your recognition signal will be the same. Two lanterns on the mast, you will flash twice at thirty seconds, and the lower lamp will extinguish. You can then off load. They will provide labour and will put down an oil slick for you to ride in. I think that is all.”
“Except for the money.”
“Except for the money, of course.” He produced an envelope from the front pocket of his apron. I took it gingerly between thumb and forefinger and glanced at his calculations scribbled in ballpoint on the envelope.
“Half up front, as usual, the rest on delivery,” he pointed out.
That was thirty-five hundred, less twenty-one hundred for Coker’s commission and Daly’s pay-off. It left fourteen hundred, out of which I had to find the bonus for Chubby and Angelo - a thousand dollars - not much over.
I grimaced. “I’ll be waiting outside your office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Coker.”
“I’ll have a cup of coffee ready for you, Mister Harry.” “That had better not be all,” I told him, and he laughed and stooped once more over the marble slab.
We cleared Grand Harbour in the late afternoon, and I made a fake run down the channel towards Mutton Point for the benefit of a possible watcher with binoculars on Coolie Peak. As darkness fell, I -came around on to my true heading, and we went in through the inshore channel and the islands towards the wide tidal mouth of the Duza River.
There was no moon but the stars were big and the break of surf flared with phosphorescence, ghostly green in the afterglow of the setting sun.
I ran Dancer in fast, picking up my marks successively the loom of an atoll in the starlight, the break of a reef, the very run and chop of the water guided me through the channels and warned of shoal
s and shallows.
Angelo and Chubby huddled beside me at the bridge rail.
Occasionally one of them would go below to brew more of the powerful black coffee, and we sipped at the steaming mugs, staring out into the night watching for a flash of paleness that was not breaking water but the hull of a patrol boat.
Once Chubby broke the silence. “Hear from Wally you had some trouble up at the fort last night.”
“Some, I agreed.
“Wally had to take him up to the hospital afterwards.”
“Wally still got his job?” I asked.
“Only just. The man wanted to lock him up but Wally was too big.”
Angelo joined in. “Judith was up at the airport at lunch time.
Went up to fetch a crate of school books, and she saw him going out on the plane to the mainland.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Inspector Daly, he went across on the noon plane.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Didn’t think it was important Harry. “No, I agreed. “Perhaps it isn’t.”
There were a dozen reasons why Daly might go out to the mainland, none of them remotely connected with my business. Yet it made me feel uneasy - I didn’t like that kind of animal prowling around in the undergrowth when I was taking a risk.
“Wish you’d brought that piece of yours, Harry,” Chubby repeated mournfully, and I said nothing but wished the same.
The flow of the tide had smoothed the usual turmoil at the entrance to the southern channel of the Duza and I groped blindly for it in the dark. The mud banks on each side were latticed with standing fish traps laid by the tribal fishermen, and they helped to define the channel at last.
When I was sure we were in the correct entrance, I killed both engines and we drifted silently on the incoming tide. All of us listened with complete concentration for the engine beat of a patrol boat, but there was only the cry of a night heron and the splash of mullet leaping in the shallows.
Ghost silent, we were swept up the channel; on each side the dark masses of mangrove trees hedged us in and the smell of the mud swamps was rank and fetid on the moisture-laden air.
The starlight danced in spots of light on the dark agitated surface of the channel, and once a long narrow dugout canoe slid past us like a crocodile, the phosphorescence gleaming on the paddles of the two fishermen returning from the mouth. They paused to watch us for a moment and then drove on without calling a greeting, disappearing swiftly into the gloom.