by Wilbur Smith
Chubby and Angelo went ashore in the dinghy - but I was too exhausted to make the effort, and dinnerless I collapsed across the double bunk in the master cabin and slept without moving until Judith woke me after nine in the morning. Angelo had sent her down with a dinner pail of fish cakes and bacon.
“Chubby and Angelo gone up to Missus Eddy’s to buy some stores they need to repair the boat,” she told me. `They’ll be down soon now.”
I wolfed the breakfast and went to shave and shower. When I returned she was still there, sitting on the edge of the bunk. She clearly had something to discuss.
She brushed away my clumsy efforts at dressing my wound, and had me sit while she worked on it.
“Mister Harry, you aren’t going to get my Angelo killed or jailed, are you?” she demanded. “If you go on like this, I’m going to make him come ashore.”
`That’s great, Judith.” I laughed at her concern. “Why don’t you send him across to Rawano for three years, while you sit here.”
“That’s not kind, Mister Harry.” “Life is not very kind, Judith,” I told her more gently. “Angelo and I are both doing the best we can. just to keep my boat afloat, I’ve got to take a few chances. Same with Angelo. He told me that he’s saved enough to buy you a nice little house up near the church. He got the money by running with me.”
She was silent while she finished the dressing, and when she would have turned to go I took her hand and drew her back. She would not look at me, until I took her chin and lifted her face. She was a lovely child, with great smoky eyes and a smoothly silken skin.
“Don’t fuss yourself, Judith. Angelo is like a kid brother to me.
I’ll look after him.”
She studied my face a long moment. “You really mean that, don’t you?” she asked.
“I really do.” “I believe you,” she said at last, and she smiled. Her teeth were very white against the golden amber skin. “I trust you.” Women are always saying that to me. “I trust you.” So much for feminine intuition.
“You name one of your kids for me, hear?”
The first one, Mister Harry.” Her smile blazed and her dark eyes flashed. That’s a promise.”
They do say that when you fall from a horse you should immediately ride him again - so as not to lose your nerve, Mister Harry.” Fred Coker sat at his desk in the, travel agency, behind him a poster of a beefeater and Big Ben - “England Swings’, it said. We had just discussed at great length our mutual concern at Inspector Peter Daly’s perfidious conduct, though I suspected that Fred Coker’s concern was considerably less than -mine. He had collected his commission in advance and nobody had put his head in a noose, nor had they almost wrecked his boat. We were now discussing the subject of whether or not our business arrangement should continue.
“They also say, Mr. Coker, that a man with his buttocks hanging out of the holes in his trousers should not be too fussy,” I said, and Coker’s spectacles glittered with satisfaction. He nodded his head.
“And that, Mister Harry, is probably the wiser of the two sayings,” he agreed.
“I’ll take anything, Mr. Coker. Body, box or sticks. just one thing, the cost of dying has gone up to ten thousand dollars a run - all in advance.”
“Even at that price, we’ll find work for you,” he promised, and I realized I had been working cheaply before.
“Soon,” I insisted.
“Very soon,” he agreed. “You are fortunate. I do not think that Inspector Daly will be returning to St. Mary’s now. You will save the commission usually payable there.”
“He owes me that at least,” I agreed.
I made three night runs in the next six weeks. Two body carries, and a box job - all below the river into Portuguese waters. The bodies were both singles, silent black men dressed in jungle fatigues, and I took them far south, deep penetrations. They waded ashore on remote beaches and I wondered briefly upon what unholy missions they travelled - how much pain and death would arise from those secret landings.
The box job involved eighteen long wooden crates with Chinese markings. We picked up from a submarine out in the channel, and dropped off in a rivermouth, unloading into pairs of dugout canoes lashed together for stability. We spoke to no one and nobody challenged us.
They were milk runs and I cleared eighteen thousand dollars - enough to carry me and my crew through the offseason in the style to which we were accustomed. More important, the intervals of quiet and rest were sufficient to heal my wounds and give me back my strength. At first I lay for hours in the hammock under the palms, reading or sleeping. Then as it came back to me, I swam and fished and sun-baked, went for oysters and crayfish - until I was hard and lean and sunbrowned again.
The wound healed into a thickened and irregular cicatrice, tribute to Macnab’s surgical skills, it curled around my chest and on to my back like an angry purple dragon. In one thing he had been correct, the massive damage to my upper left arm left it stiff and weakened. I could not lift my elbow above shoulder-level, and I lost my title in Indian wrestling to Chubby in the bar of the Lord Nelson. However, I hoped that swimming and regular exercise would strengthen it.
As my strength returned so did my curiosity and sense of adventure. I began dreaming about the canvas-wrapped package off Big Gull Island. In one dream I swam down and opened the package - it contained a tiny feminine figure, the size of a Dresden doll, a golden mermaid with Sister May’s lovely face and a truly startling bosom, the tail was the graceful sickle shape of a marlin’s. The little mermaid smiled shyly and held out her hand to me. On her palm lay a shiny silver shilling.
“Sex, money and billfish—2 I thought when I woke, “-good old uncomplicated Harry, real Freud food.” I knew then that pretty soon I would be going for Big Gull Island.
It was very late in the season before I could prevail on Fred Coker to arrange a straight fishing charter for me, and it turned sour as cheap wine. The party consisted of two overweight, flabby German industrialists with fat bejewelled wives. I worked hard for them, and put both men into fish.
The first was a good black marlin, but the party screwed down on his stardrag, freezing the reel while the fish was still green and crazy to run. It lifted the German’s huge backside out of the seat, and before I could release the stardrag for him, it had my three hundred dollar rod down on the gunwale. The fibreglass rod snapped like a matchstick.
The other member of the party, after losing two decent fish, panted and sweated three hours over a baby blue marlin. When he finally brought it to the gaff, I could hardly bring myself to put the steel in, and I was too ashamed to hang it on Admiralty. We took the photographs on board Dancer and I smuggled it ashore wrapped in a tarpaulin. Like Fred Coker I also have a reputation to preserve. The German industrialist, however, was so delighted by his prowess that he slipped an extra five hundred dollars into my avaricious little paw. I told him it was a truly magnificent fish which was a thousand-dollar lie. I always give good value. Then the wind backed into the south , the temperature of the water in the channel dropped four degrees and the fish were gone. For ten days -we hunted far north but it was over, another season was past.
we stripped and cleaned all the billfish equipment and laid it away in thick yellow grease. I pulled Dancer up on to the slip at the fuelling basin and we went, over her hull, cleaning it down, re-working the temporary patches I had put on the injuries she had received at Gunfire Reef.
Then we painted her until she glistened, sleek and lovely, before we refloated her and took her out to moorings. There we worked lackadaisically on her upper works, stripping varnish, sandpapering, re-varnishing, checking out the electrical system, re-soldering a connection here, replacing wiring there.
I was in no hurry. It would be three weeks before my next charter arrived - an expedition of marine biologists from a Canadian university.
In the meantime the days were cooler, and I was feeling the old glow of good health and bodily wellbeing again. I dined at Government House,
sometimes as often as once a week, and each time I had to tell the full story of the shoots out with Guthrie and Materson. President Biddle knew the story by heart and corrected me if I omitted a single detail. It always ended with the President crying excitedly, “Show them your scar, Mister Harry,” and I had to open the starched front of my dress shirt at the dinner table.
They were good lazy days. The island life drifted placidly by.
Peter Daly never returned to St. Mary’s - and at the end of six weeks, Wally Arorews was promoted to acting Inspector and commanding officer of the police force. One of his first acts was to return to me my FN carbine.
This quiet time was spiced by the secret tingle of anticipation which I felt. I knew that one day soon I was going back to Big Gull Island and the piece of unfinished business that lay there in the shallow limpid waters - and I teased myself with the knowledge.
Then one Friday evening I was rounding out the week with my crew in the bar of the Lord Nelson. Judith was with us, having replaced the flock that had previously gathered around Angelo on Friday nights. She was good for him, he no longer drunk to the morbid stage.
Chubby and I had just begun the first duet of the evening and were keeping within a few beats of each other when Marion slipped into the seat beside-me.
I put one arm around her shoulders and held my tankard to her lips while she drank thirstily, but the distraction caused me to forge even further ahead of Chubby in the song.
Marion worked on the switchboard at the Hilton Hotel. She was a pretty little dan with a sexy pugface and long straight black hair. It was she whom Mike Guthrie had used for a punch-bag so long ago.
When Chubby and I straggled to the end of the chorus, Marion told me, “There is a lady asking for you, Mister Harry.”
“What lady?”
“At the hotel, one of the guests, she came in on this morning’s plane. She knew your name and everything. She wants to see you. I told her I would see you tonight and give you the message.”
“What is she like?” I asked Marion with interest. “She’s beautiful, Mister Harry. Such a lady too.”
“Sounds like my type,” I agreed], and ordered a pint for Marion.
“Aren’t you going to see her now? ” With you beside me, Marion, all the beautiful ladies of the world can wait until tomorrow.”
“Oh, Mister Harry, you are a real devil man,” she giggled, and snuggled a little closer.
“Harry,” said Chubby on my other side, “I’m going to tell you now what I never told you before.” He took a long swallow from his tankard, then went on with sentimental tears swimming in his eyes. “Harry, I love you, man. I love you better than my own brother.”
I went up to the Hilton a few minutes before midday. Marion came through from her cubicle behind the reception desk. She still had her earphones around her neck.
“She’s waiting for you on the terrace.” She pointed across the vast reception area with its emaz Hawaiian decor. “The blonde lady in the yellow bikini.”
She was reading a magazine, lying on her belly on one of the reclining sun couches, and she had her back to me so my first impression was of masses of blonde hair, thick and shiny, teased up like the mane of a lion, then falling in a slick golden cascade.
She heard my footsteps on the paving. She glanced around, pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, then she stood up to face me, and I realized that she was tiny, seeming to reach not much higher than my chest. The bikini also was tiny and showed a flat smooth belly with a deep navel, firm shoulders lightly tanned, small breasts, and a trim waist. Her legs had lovely lines and her neat little feet were thrust into open sandals, the nails painted clear red to match her long fingernails. Her hands as she pushed at her hair were small and shapely.
She wore heavy make-up, but wore it with rare skill, so that her skin had a soft pearly lustre and colour glowed subtly on her cheeks and lips. Her eyes had long dark artificial lashes, and the eyelids were touched with colour and line to give them an exotic oriental cast.
“Duck, Harry!” Something deep inside me shouted a warning, and I almost obeyed. I knew this type well, there had been others like her - small and purringly feline - I had scars to prove it, scars both physical and spiritual. However, one thing nobody can say about old Harry is that he runs for cover when the knickers are down.
Courageously I stepped forward, crinkling my eyes and twisting my mouth into the naughty small boy grin that usually dynamites them.
“Hello I said, “I’m Harry Fletcher.”
She looked at me, starting at my feet and going up six feet four to the top where her gaze lingered speculatively and she pouted her lower lip.
“Hello,” she answered, her voice was husky, breathlesssounding - and carefully rehearsed. “I’m Sherry North, Jimmy North’s sister.”
We were on the veranda of the shack in the evening. It was cool and the Wspectacular sunset was a display of pyrotechnics that flamed and faded above the palms.
She was drinking a Pimms No. I filled with fruit and ice one of my seduction specials - and she wore a kaftan of light floating stuff through which her body showed in shadowy outline as she stood against the rail backlit by the sunset. I could not be certain as to whether or not she wore anything beneath the kaftan - this and the tinkle of ice in her glass distracted me from the letter I was reading. She had showed it to me as part of her credentials. It was a letter from Jimmy North written a few days before his death. I recognized the handwriting and the turn of phrase was typical of that bright and eager lad. As I read on, I forgot the sister’s presence in the memory of the past. It was a long bubbling letter, written as though to a loving friend, with veiled references to the mission and its successful outcome, the promise of a future in which there would be wealth and laughter and all good things.
I felt a pang of regret and personal loss for the boy in his lonely sea grave, for the lost dreams that, drifted with him like rotting seaweed.
Then suddenly my own name leapt from that page at me, ” - you can’t help liking him, Sherry. He’s big and tough-looking, all scarred and beat up like an old tom cat that’s been out alley-fighting every night. But under it, I swear he is really a softy. He seems to have taken a shine to me. Even gives me fatherly advice!-” There was more in the same vein that embarrassed me so that my throat closed up and I took a swallow of whisky, which made my eyes water and the words swim, while I finished the letter and refolded it.
I handed it to Sherry, and walked away to the end of the veranda.
I stood there for a while looking out over the bay.
The sun slid below the horizon and suddenly it was dark and chill.
I went back and lit the lamp, setting it up high so the glare did not fall in our eyes. She watched me in silence until I had poured another Scotch and settled in my cane, backed chair.
“Okay,” I said, “you’re” Jimmy’s sister. You’ve come to St. Mary’s to see me. Why?”
“You liked him, didn’t you?” she asked, as she left the rail and came to sit beside me.
“I like a lot of people. It’s a weakness of mine.” “Did he die - I mean, was it like they said in the newspapers?” “Yes” I said. “It was like that.”
“Did he ever tell you what they were doing out here?”
I shook my head. “They were very cagey - and I don’t ask questions.”
She was silent then, dipping long tapered fingers into her glass to pick out a slice of pineapple, nibbling at the fruit with small white teeth, dabbing at her lips with a pink pointed tongue like that of a cat.
“Because Jimmy liked and trusted you, and because I think you know more than you’ve told anyone, also because I need your help, I am going to tell you a story - okay?”
“I love stories,” I said.
“Have you heard of the “pogo, stick’T she asked. ,, it’s a child’s toy.”
“It’s also the code name for an American naval experimental vertical take-off all-weather strike aircraft
.”
“Oh yes, I remember, I saw an article in Time Magazine. Questions in the Senate. I forget the details.”
“There was opposition to the fifty million development allocation.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Two years ago, on the 16th August to be precise, a prototype “pogo stick” took off from Rawano airforce base in the Indian Ocean. it was armed with four air-to-surface “killer whale” missiles, each of them equipped with tactical nuclear warheads–-“
“That must have been a fairly lethal package.”
She nodded. “The “killer whale” is designed as an entirely new concept in missiles. It is an anti-submarine device which will seek and track surfaced or submerged naval craft. It can kill an aircraft carrier or it can change its element air for water - and go down a thousand fathoms to destroy enemy submarines.” wow I said, and took a little more whisky. We were talking heady stuff now.
“Do you recall the 16th August that year - were you here?”
“I was here, but that’s a long time ago. Refresh my memory.”
“Cyclone Cynthia,“she said.
“God, of course.” It had come roaring across the island, winds of 150 miles an hour, taking away the roof of the shack and almost swamping Dancer at her moorings in Grand Harbour. These cyclones were not uncommon in this area.
“The “Pogo stick!” took off from Rawano a few minutes before the typhoon struck. Twelve minutes later the pilot ejected and the aircraft went into the sea with her four nuclear missiles and her flight recorder still aboard. Rawano radar was blanked out by the typhoon. They were not tracking.”
it was starting to make some sort of sense at last. “How does Jimmy fit into this?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Wait,” she said, then went on.
“Do you have any idea what the value of that cargo might be in the open market?”
“I should imagine you could write your own cheque give or take a couple of million dollars.” And old bad Harry came to attention, he had been getting exercise lately and growing stronger. Sherry nodded. `The test pilot of the “pogo stick” was a Commander in the US Navy named William Bryce. The aircraft developed a fault at fifty thousand feet, just before he came out through the top of the weather. He fought her all the way down, he was a conscientious officer, but at five hundred feet he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He ejected and watched the aircraft go in.”.