by Wilbur Smith
“That was bad,” said Angelo.
“We will be drinking a lager in the Lord Nelson before they could tell anyone who matters.” I knew that most of the fishermen on this coast kept their own secrets, close with words like most of their kind. I was not perturbed by the sighting.
Looking ahead I saw the first bend coming up, and the current began to push Dancer out towards the far bank. I hit the starter buttons, the engines murmured into life, and I edged back into the deep water.
We worked our way up the snaking channel, coming out at last into the broad placid reach where the mangrove ended and firm ground rose gently on each side.
A mile ahead I saw the tributary mouth of the Salsa as a dark break in the bank, screened by tall stands of fluffy headed reeds. Beyond it the twin signal lanterns glowed yellow and soft, one upon the other.
“What did I tell you, Chubby, a milk run.”
“We aren’t home yet.” Chubby the eternal optimist. “Okay, Angelo.
Get up on the bows. I’ll tell you when to drop the hook.”
We crept on down the channel and I found the words of the nursery rhyme running through my mind as I locked the wheel and took the hand spotlight from the locker below the rail.
“Three, Four, knock at the door, Five, Six, pick up sticks.” I thought briefly of the hundreds of great grey beasts that had died for the sake of their teeth - and I felt a draught of guilt blow coldly along my spine at my complicity in the slaughter. But I turned my mind away from it by lifting the spotlight and aiming the agreed signal upstream at the burning lanterns.
Three times I flashed the recognition code but I was level with the signal lanterns before the bottom one was abruptly extinguished.
“Okay, Angelo. Let her go,” I called softly as I killed the engines. The anchor splashed over and the chain ran noisily in the silence. Dancer snubbed up, and swung around at the restraint of the anchor, facing back down the channel.
Chubby went to break out the cargo nets for loading, but I paused by the rail, peering across at the signal lantern. The silence was complete, except for the clink and croak of the swamp frogs in the reed banks of the Salsa.
In that silence I felt more than heard the beat like that of a giant’s heart. It came in through the soles of my feet rather than my ears.
There is no mistaking the beat of an Allison marine diesel. I knew that the old Second World War Rolls-Royce marines had been stripped out of the Zinballa crash boats and replaced by Allisons, and right now the sound I was feeling was the idling note of an Allison marine.
“Angelo,” I tried to keep my voice low, but at the same time transmit my urgency. “Slip the anchor. For Christ’s sake! Quick as you can.”
For just such an emergency I had a shackle pin in the chain, and I thanked the Lord for that as I dived for the controls.
As I started engines, I heard the thump of the fourpound hammer as Angelo drove out the pin. Three times he struck, and then I heard the end of the chain splash overboard.
“She’s gone, Harry,” Angelo called, and I threw Dancer in to drive and pushed open the throttles. She bellowed angrily and the wash of her propellers spewed whitely from below her counter as she sprang forward.
Although we were facing downstream, Dancer had a fiveknot current running into her teeth and she did not jump away handily enough.
Even above our own engines I heard the Allisons give tongue, and from out of the reed-screened mouth of the Salsa tore a long deadly shape.
Even by starlight, I recognized her immediately, the widely flared. bows, and the lovely thrusting lines, greyhound waisted and the square chopped-off stern - one of the Royal Navy crash boats who had spent her best days in the Channel and now was mouldering into senility on this fever coast.
The darkness was kind to her, covering the rust stains and the streaky paintwork, but she was an old woman now. Stripped of her marvellous Rolls marines - and underpowered with the more economical Allisons. In a fair run Dancer would toy with her - but this was no fair run and she had all the speed and power she needed as she charged into the channel to cut us off, and when she switched on her battle lights they hit us like something solid. Two glaring white beams, blinding in their intensity so I had to throw up my hand to protect my eyes.
She was dead ahead now, blocking the channel, and on her foredeck I could see the shadowy figures of the gun crew crouching around the threepounder on its wide traversing plate. The muzzle seemed to be looking directly into my left nostril - and I felt a wild and desperate despair.
It was a meticulously planned and executed ambush. I thought of ramming her, she had a marine ply wooden hull, probably badly rotted, and Dancer’s fibreglass bows might stand the shock - but with the current against her Dancer was not making sufficient speed through the water.
Then suddenly a bullhorn bellowed elecamically from the dark behind the dazzling battle lights.
“Heave to, Mr. Fletcher. Or I shall be forced to fire upon you.
One shell from the threepounder would chop us down, and she was a quick firer. At this range they would smash us into a blazing wreck within ten seconds.
I closed down the throttles.
“A wise decision, Mr. Fletcher - now kindly anchor where you are,” the bullhorn squawked.
Okay, Angelo,” I called wearily, and waited while he rigged and dropped the spare anchor. Suddenly my arm was very painful again - for the last few hours I had forgotten about it.
“I said we should have brought that piece,” Chubby muttered beside me.
“Yeah, I’d love to see you shooting it out with that dirty great cannon, Chubby. That would be a lot of laughs.”
The crash boat manoeuvred alongside inexpertly, with gun and lights still trained on us. We stood helplessly in the blinding illumination of the battle lights and waited. I didn’t want to think, I tried to feel nothing - but a spiteful inner voice sneered at me.
“Say goodbye to Dancer, Harry old sport, this is where the two of you part company.”
There was more than a good chance that I would be facing a firing squad in the near future - but that didn’t worry me as much as the thought of losing my boat. With Dancer I was Mister Harry, the damnedest fellow on St. Mary’s and one of the top billfish men in the whole cockeyed world. Without her, I was just another punk trying to scratch his next meal together. I’d prefer to be dead.
The crash boat careered into our side, bending the rail and scraping off a yard of our paint before they could hook on to us.
“Motherless bastards,” growled Chubby, as half a dozen armed and uniformed figures poured over our side, in a chattering undisciplined rabble. They wore navy blue bell bottoms and bum-freezers with white flaps down the back of the neck, white and blue striped vests, and white berets with red porn-poms on the top - but the cut of the uniform was Chinese and they brandished long AK.47 automatic assault rifles with forward-curved magazines and wooden butts.
Fighting amongst themselves for a chance to get in a kick or a shove with a gun butt, they drove the three of us down into the saloon, and knocked us into the bench seat against the for’ard bulkhead. We sat there shoulder to shoulder while two guards stood over us with machineguns a few inches from our noses, and fingers curved hopefully around the triggers.
“Now I know why you paid me that five hundred dollars, boss,” Angelo tried to make a joke of it, and a guard screamed at him and hitt him in the face with the gun butt. He wiped his mouth, smearing blood across his chin, and none of us joked again.
The other armed seamen began to tear Dancer to pieces. I suppose it was meant to be a search, but they raged through her accommodation wantonly smashing open lockers or shattering the panelling.
One of them discovered the liquor cabinet, and although there were only one or two bottles, there was a roar of approval. They squabbled noisily as seagulls over a scrap of offal, then went on to loot the galley stores with appropriate hilarity and abandon. Even when their commanding officer was assist
ed by four of his crew to make the hazardous journey across the six inches of open space that separated the crash boat from Dancer, there was no diminution in the volume of shouting and laughter and the crash of shattering woodwork and breaking glass.
The commander wheezed heavily across the cockpit and stooped to enter the saloon. He paused there to regain his breath.
He was one of the biggest men I had ever seen, not less than six foot six tall and enormously gross - a huge swollen body with a belly like a barrage balloon beneath the white uniform jacket. The jacket strained at its brass buttons and sweat had soaked through at the armpits. Across his breast he wore a glittering burst of stars and medals, and amongst them I recognized the American Naval Cross and the 1918 Victory Star.
His head was the shape and colour of a polished black iron pot, the type they traditionally use for cooking missionaries, and a naval cap, thick with gold braid, rode at a jaunty angle upon it. His face ran with rivers of glistening sweat, as he struggled noisily with his breathing and mopped at the sweat, staring at me with bulging eyes.
Slowly his body began to inflate, swelling even larger, like a great bullfrog, until I grew alarmed - expecting him to burst.
The purple-black lips, thick as tractor tyres, parted and an unbelievable volume of sound issued from the pink cavern of his mouth.
“Shut up!” he roared. Instantly his crew of wreckers froze into silence, one of them with his gun butt still raised to attack the panelling behind the bar.
The huge officer trundled forward, seeming to fill the entire saloon with his bulk. Slowly he sank into the padded leather seat. Once more he mopped at his face, then he looked at me again and slowly his whole face lit up into the most wonderfully friendly smile, like an enormous chubby and lovable baby; his teeth were big and flawlessly white and his eyes nearly disappeared in the rolls of smiling black flesh.
“Mr. Fletcher, I can’t tell you what a great pleasure this is for me.” His voice was deep and soft and friendly, the accent was British upper class - almost certainly acquired at some higher seat of learning. His English was better than mine.
“I have looked forward to meeting you for a number of years.”
“That’s very decent of you to say so, Admiral.” With that uniform he could not rank less.
“Admiral,” he repeated with delight, “I like that,” and he laughed. It began with a vast shaking of belly and ended with a gasping and straining for breath. “Alas, Mr. Fletcher, you are deceived by appearances,” and he preened a little, touching the medals and adjusting the peak of his cap. “I am only a humble Lieutenant Commander.”
“That’s really tough, Commander.”
“No. No, Mr. Fletcher - do not waste your sympathy on me. I wield all the authority I could wish for.” He paused for deep breathing exercises and to wipe away the fresh ooze of sweat. “I hold the powers of life and death, believe me.” “I believe you, sir,” I told him earnestly. “Please don’t feel you have to prove your point.”
He shouted with laughter again, nearly choked, coughed up something large and yellow, spat it on to the floor and then told me, “I like you, Mr. Fletcher, I really do. I think a sense’of humour is very important. I think you and I could become very close friends.” I doubted it, but I smiled encouragingly.
“As a mark of my esteem you may use the familiar form when addressing me - Suleiman Dada.”
“I appreciate that - I really do, Suleiman Dada, and you may call me Harry.” “Harry,” he said. “Let’s have a dram of whisky together.” At that moment another man entered the saloon. A slim boyish figure, dressed not in his usual colonial police uniform but in a lightweight silk suit and lemon-coloured silk shirt and matching tie, with alligator-skin shoes on his feet.
The light blond hair was carefully combed forward into a cow’s lick, and the fluffy, moustache was trim as ever, but -he walked carefully, seeming to favour an injury. I grinned at him.
“So, how does the old ball-bag feel now, Daly?” I asked kindly, but he did not answer and went to sit across from Lieutenant Commander Suleiman Dada.
Dada reached out a huge black paw and relieved one of his men of the Scotch whisky bottle he carried, part of my previous stock, and he gestured to another to bring glasses from the shattered liquor cabinet.
When we all had half a tumbler of Scotch in our hands, Dada gave us the toast.
“To lasting friendship, and mutual prosperity.” We drank, Daly and I cautiously, Dada deeply and with evident pleasure. While his head was tilted back and his eyes closed, the crew man attempted to retrieve the bottle of Scotch from the table in front of him.
Without lowering the glass Dada hit him a mighty openhanded clout across the side of the head, a blow that snapped his head back and hurled him across the saloon to crash into the shattered liquor cabinet. He slid down the bulkhead and sat stunned on the deck, shaking his head dazedly. Suleiman Dada, despite his bulk, was a quick and fearsomely. powerful man, I realized.
He emptied the glass, set it down, and refilled it. He looked at me now, and his expression changed. The clown had disappeared, despite the ballooning rolls of flesh, I was confronting a shrewd, dangerous and utterly ruthless opponent.
“Harry, I understand that you and Inspector Daly were interrupted in the course of a recent discussion,” and I shrugged.
“All of us here are reasonable men, Harry, of that I am certain.” I said nothing, but studied the whisky in my glass with deep attention.
“This is very fortunate - for let us consider what might happen to an unreasonable man in your position.” He paused, gargled a little with a sip of whisky. Sweat had formed like a rash of little white blisters on his nose and chin. He wiped it away. “First of all, an unreasonable man might watch while his crew were taken out one at a time and executed. We use pickaxe handles here. It is a gruelling business, and Inspector Daly assures me that you have a special relationship with these two men.” Beside me Chubby and Angelo shifted uneasily in their seats. “Then an unreasonable man would have his boat taken in to Zinballa Bay. Once that happened there would be no way in which it would ever be returned to him. It would be officially confiscated, out of my humble hands.” He paused, and showed me the humble hands, stretching them towards me. They would have fitted a bull gorilla. We both stared at them for a moment. “Then the unreasonable man might find himself in Zinballa jail - which, as you are probably aware, is a maximum security political prison.”
I had heard of Zinballa prison, as had everyone on the coast.
Those who came out of it were either dead or broken in body and spirit.
They called it the “Lion Cage.
“Suleiman Dada, I want you to know that I am one of nature’s original reasonable men,” I assured him, and he laughed again.
“Iwas certain of it,” he said. “I can tell one a mile off,” then again he was serious. “If we leave here immediately, before the turn of the tide we can be out of the inshore channel before midnight.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that we could.”
“Then you could lead us to this place of interest, wait while we satisfy ourselves as to your good faith - which I for one do not doubt one moment - you and your crew will then be free to sail away in your magnificent boat and you could sleep tomorrow night in your own bed.”
“Suleiman Dada - you are a generous and cultivated man. I also have no reason to doubt your good faith,” - no more than that of Materson and Guthrie, I silently qualified the statement - “and I have a peculiarly intense desire to sleep tomorrow night in my own bed.”
Daly spoke for the first time, snarling quietly under his little moustache. “I think you should know that a turtle fisherman saw your boat anchored in the lagoon across the channel from the Old Men and Gunfire Reef on the night before the shooting incident - we will expect to be taken that way.”
“I have nothing against a man who takes a bribe, Daly God knows I have done so myself - but then where is the honour among thieves that the p
oet sings of? I was very. disappointed in Daly, but he ignored my recriminations.
“Don’t try any more of your tricks,“he warned me.
“You really are a champion turd, Daly. I could win prizes with you.”
“Please, gentlemen.” Dada held up his hands to halt my flow of rhetoric. “Let us all be friends. Another small glass of whisky - and then Harry will take us all on a tour of interest.” Dada topped up our glasses, and paused before drinking again. “I think I should warn you, Harry - I do not like rough water. It does not agree with me. If you take me into rough water I shall be very very angry. Do we understand each other?”
“Just for you I shall command the waters to stand still, Suleiman Dada,” I assured him, and he nodded solemnly, as though it was the very least he expected.
The dawn was like a lovely woman rising from the couch of the sea, soft flesh tones and pearly light, the cloud strands like her hair tresses flowing and tousled, gilded blonde by the early sunlight.
We ran northwards, hugging the quieter waters of the inshore channel. Our order of sailing placed Wave Dancer in the van, she ambled along like a blood filly mouthing the snaffle, while half a mile astern the crash boat waddled and wallowed, as the Allisons tried to push her up on to the plane. We were headed for the Old Men and Gunfire Reef.
On board Dancer I had the con, standing alone at the wheel upon the open bridge. Behind me stood Peter Daly, and an armed seaman from the crash boat.
In the saloon below us, Chubby and Angelo still sat on the bench seat and three more seamen, armed with assault rifles, kept them there.
Dancer had been looted of all her galley stores, so none of us had breakfasted, not even a cup of coffee.
The first paralysing despair of capture had passed - and I was now thinking frenetically, trying to plot my way out of the maze in which I was trapped.