The Action Page 10

  Thump-thump the doors closed. Nash took a deep breath. Another. “Come on,” said Greenglass. And they went out into the night.

  In Greenglass’s big green Frontera, Nash asked, “What is it?”

  “You’ll see.” Greenglass switched on the radio.

  Sinatra sang: “And I will take the wine...” Strings rising, fading. Silence. “Heart FM,” came the station ID jingle, “From the Heart of London…”

  At No 21 Queen Anne’s Gate, Greenglass stopped the vehicle and let Nash climb out. Even though he had gone to the Barbican alone and was seated in the stalls rather than the dress circle, Nash’s long lean body was clothed in black evening wear, perfectly pressed and immaculate from black bow-tie to patent shoes. He drew himself fully erect, his rigid back and clipped moustache giving him a decidedly military air. He entered No 21, showing his ID and nodding easily to the uniformed doorman in the booth, then he went through a complex of passages, up in a lift at least once, rising into the Broadway Buildings at the back of which No 21, Queen Anne’s Gate is situated.

  In 1914 Sir Mansfield Cumming was chief of Ml6. He signed himself with his initial ‘C’. Since then each of his successors as head of the Secret Intelligence Service has also been known as ‘C’. C was waiting in Nash’s office. He looked worried. He would have to be to send for Nash in the middle of the RSC’s new production of Hamlet. It had to be that thing in the Indian Ocean. Hyde making waves about his boat. Nash waited in silence for the man to begin.

  “Look,” said C, “it’s this business in the Indian Ocean.” He lapsed into silence. Years of experience had taught him that unless your ideas were precisely and perfectly formulated, they should not be uttered. “As you know, I got a standard Action Report from the Cousins when they set up this defection in Hong Kong.” He stopped again. Nash stood easily, almost at attention. He was fifty-five, fit and hard. He had spent years as a field agent, earning his place in the desk-bound hierarchy with more merit than most. “Then of course we received due notification when the centre of action moved to Singapore, and that ship of Jimmy Hyde’s became involved. What’s its name?”

  “ Wanderer, sir.”

  “Yes. That’s it: Wanderer. Well, you will remember we had a very full discussion about that: whether there was any real clandestine involvement there…”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Quite. We ruled it out of course. We didn’t have enough to go on, and quite frankly the idea of an old freighter packed full of agents…well, it’s all very Maltese Falcon, somehow. Very James Bond. So. It was a sound decision.

  Sound. But incorrect I fear. You know the ship vanished five days ago?”

  Nash nodded once: of course he knew.

  “Yes,” said C. “Well, what was at first sight a relatively innocent situation is becoming rapidly compromised. Quite apart from the presence of the Lincoln ‘by coincidence’ in the same theatre, not to mention that Chinese freighter, we have a known American agent going through Masirah on the Indian Ocean coast of Oman. Lydecker - local case officer on the Hong Kong fiasco. And there have been two known Federal Security Service men going through Heathrow heading for Dar es Salaam, and all points East I have no doubt. A thug from Department V called Beria and Andropov the Bear himself.

  “It’s beginning to look as though something important is going on, with which we want to become involved at a high level. So, I’d just like you to slip out there, my boy, and see what’s to be done. I don’t mind telling you it should keep Jimmy Hyde quiet, and stop his bleating about insurance and whatnot, but much more importantly it’ll give you a chance to nursemaid your man on the spot. Quick thinking, that, getting him thrown out of Singapore so he would end up on the boat. What was his name again? Your executive’s name?”

  “Stone,” said Nash. “His name is Alec Stone.”

  Chapter Seven: The Island

  19-24 July

  At first when Stone yelled that he could see land nobody moved. Then, incredibly, came the wild cry of a seagull and a beating of black wings above them. It was so sudden and so loud it cut through even Miss Buhl’s unconsciousness and she cried out, jerking them all out of their immobility.

  “Quick,” ordered Slattery, “Bates, start the engine.”

  Bates yelled, “The diesel! Where’s the fuel can?”

  “Here!” Wells said.

  “The rest of you.” Slattery, his voice breaking. “Get the mast and sails down and stowed. Lively! For God’s sake!” The wind and current were already pulling them away from the shadow on the horizon.

  “Oh HURRY, Mr Bates!” gasped Miss Buhl.

  Bates’ hands were shaking so much he began to spill the fuel.

  “Here,” said Stone, and the big Englishman knelt beside the radio operator and, with the same distanced, self-aware gestures with which he had stopped his own hands shaking in the bar on the Wanderer, he steadied the can and together they poured the dark thick diesel fuel into the engine.

  Within a couple of minutes the engine coughed into life, and Stone relinquished the fuel can to lend a hand at stowing the mast. As the propellor bit and the boat’s motion attained a new, steadier purpose, Slattery swung the fat bow round and everyone looked forward. Only the silver sea like silk under the hot copper bowl of the sky.

  “It’s gone,” said Gant wearily.

  “We’ll pick it up again,” promised Slattery between his teeth. Rebecca half closed her eyes against the vicious glare and scanned the horizon from the bow, moving from port to starboard quarter and back again. “Something...” she said. She pointed away towards the starboard. There was a sort of a cloud, distant and indistinct. Her hand came back to push a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “What is it?” Her tense voice matched her nervous gesture. Stone’s long hand rested lightly on her shoulder. He shaded his stinging eyes, and waited for his vision to clear. The cloud resolved itself into hundreds of individual specks. A fluke in the wind brought a sound like thousands of children screaming.

  “Seabirds. Make for them,” he said. Slattery swung the tiller farther over, the bows came round a little more and they began to battle their way across the monsoon current towards the black column of birds. The waves, following the wind, now on their starboard quarter, made the boat pitch and yaw and drove it even more strongly towards India.

  The spray, whipping up over the gunwales and soaking all of them as they gazed anxiously forward, would have been entirely welcome in the baking afternoon were it not so salty. Each of them had to make a conscious effort of massive proportions not to lick their parched and swollen lips when the icy drops rained down on them.

  It took nearly 20 minutes to get back in sight of the land, and even when they could see it, Slattery had to steer nearly 20 degrees away from it into the wind and current in order to stand any chance at all of making a landfall. It was slow work at a time when the waiting was at its worst. The afternoon poured all its vicious heat upon them. Thirst, with no immediate hope of relief, burned ever more powerfully. A damp cloth over the head - re-soaked once every five minutes and bone dry again within that time - became as much of a Tantalus’ Hell as the cool spray on their lips. But at least now they could see their goal.

  The black shadow became a wedge shape, clear-edged, absolute. And yet the outline cloaked the reality. What would they find when they arrived? None of them doubted that it was an island. It could not be a promontory of any kind, for they all knew well enough that there were no major land masses here. But what would the island be like? There was no discussion, no excited chatter of speculation. Each of them in their own mind imagined an infinite variety of islands and oscillated between wild hope and steely despair. Would it be inhabited? Probably not. Would there be - most urgently - fresh water? Perhaps. At worst it would be a barren rock deep in stinking guano with only foetid pools of sea-spray further poisoned by bird-droppings. At best there might be a stream, some trees, some shade and hope of survival.

  Either way, thought one of t
hem, the deaths would continue, methodically and in secrecy.

  Six hours later, as the sun set behind them, they were turning north-east again to let the wind and current carry them up on their final approach. They came in from the south-west, therefore, catching a glimpse of great dark cliffs away to the north where the weather beat unceasingly for 11 months of the year, all their dizzy heights alive with raucous birds. Then they were swept around a low headland, across a spit of sand and coral which made the water rough as it pushed the waves up to full height, and into a wide shallow bay.

  “We’ll beach here,” said Slattery in an infinitely weary voice.

  He brought the sturdy little boat round in a sharp curve and drove her up onto the beach. Then they killed the engine and sat for a moment in the silence, simply looking around. On their left, the shoulder of a hill rose into the darkening sky, seemingly clothed in sparse, short grass of some kind. On their right, a tail of land dwindled nakedly into the quiet sea. In front of them, the beach gathered itself lazily into a low dune or two, each sporting a light thatch of beach-grass. None of them dared even stand up to look further, for fear of what might be seen. Around them the waves hushed onto the sand. Far away the nesting birds screamed and squabbled. Above them, the wind whispered in the dune-grass.

  Rebecca found that there were tears running down her cheeks. Then the wind veered a little and for a moment or two it blew over the island and right into their faces. And in those moments it carried with it a soft, infinitely beautiful tinkling sound. It was too light to be waves, too liquid to be anything other than water.

  “Oh dear God!” breathed Rebecca, praying for all of them, “Dear God, let it be true!” They began to crawl unsteadily out of the boat, their movements made feverish by anxiety, hesitant by weakness, and unsteady by the unexpected steadiness of the land.

  They went up off the beach, perhaps a hundred yards up a fairly steep slope and over a slight rise. The sound came and went in the shadows like a will o’ the wisp to their ears, but it led them to their left, up the hill towards the distant cliffs. They followed it like sleepwalkers, stumbling but never falling. Shadows ahead became palm trees surrounded by low bushes, leaning in over the beautiful sound, nestling up against a low cliff, perhaps 20 ft high. Above, and a few yards behind it was another, smaller cliff. From the second cliff, across the shoulder of the first to a tiny hanging valley, and then down in a silver fall to a large pool among the bushes ran a tiny stream.

  In a matter of moments they had thrust aside the bushes and fallen on their faces beside the water of the shallow pool. They drank like animals. They ran in to the icy, crystal water and splashed each other like children. They drank more. They laughed. They cried. They linked arms and danced in a rough circle in the water, kicking it up into brief rain. Then one by one they collapsed onto the grassy bank and watched those who still gambolled.

  The pool was roughly circular. Two arms swept down on either side of the waterfall like stairways reaching to a balcony. These did not meet. Instead a broad, shallow valley showed where a rivulet must once have had enough force to run to the sea. On either side of this were low banks clear of trees which made an open space in the vegetation exactly opposite the waterfall.

  After he had drunk and danced and laughed his fill, Stone began to gather dry palm-fronds and dead branches from the low bushes and lit a fire here. Slattery came and sat beside him; he seemed to have washed off years and a weight of worry with the salt and dirt in the pool.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said. “They’ll be a bit cold when they come out.”

  So they were, and hungry. They gathered, dripping, bedraggled but happy round the blaze. Wells went to the boat and returned with tins of corned beef and peaches. They roasted the tins of beef at the edge of the fire, and Stone produced a penknife with a broad, flat blade with which they scooped the hot meat into their suddenly watering mouths. “If only we had some coffee,” said Mrs Gash. “If that had been an American ship, there would have been coffee.” Everyone agreed, but nobody really cared.

  They lay back on the soft ground and as the fire died the moon came up. The sky, visible through the gently-waving palms, was packed with stars. Fatigue washed over them with the gentle, idyllic sounds of the wind in the long fronds and the tiny, tinkling waterfall. One by one they slept.

  With the dawn, the screaming of the birds on the cliffs became loud enough to wake them and the sky filled with the black shapes skimming, turning, riding the wind out to sea. Stone’s eyes flicked open as soon as he woke, and he lay for a moment watching the birds. There came a quiet movement beside him. He did not move his head. Rebecca Dark rose into his field of vision, looked around without noticing that he was awake and began to unbutton the shirt she was wearing. Stone reluctantly closed his eyes. He heard the rustle as she shrugged the shirt off and her almost silent footsteps retreating on the short grass: towards the water, he thought. Then there was silence except for the birds.

  And suddenly a terrible scream. Stone was up and halfway to the pool before anyone else moved. Then Gant was close behind him. And Wells. The shirt lay on the bank of the pool. Rebecca stood in the middle, almost up to her waist in water, her arms crossed over her breast. Stone had her trembling body pressed close and safe in his arms before he noticed that beside her, face down in the clear water, there was a body. He handed her to Eldridge Gant and gestured to Wells for help. Together they pulled the body to the far bank and turned it over.

  Only amateurs cut a throat from ear to ear, for even with a very sharp knife it requires more than one slash to chop through the hard gristle of the windpipe before the carotid artery can be severed. A professional uses the point of the knife - which does not even have to be particularly sharp - and pushes it between the epiglottis and the muscle supporting the neck on the left side. This opens the carotid artery and if a hand is kept firmly on the victim’s mouth for a very few seconds the desired effect may be attained with ease.

  This is exactly how Slattery had died. The knife, still wedged between two of the neck vertebrae was the one with which Stone had served out the roast corned beef.

  The two men sat back on their heels and looked at the corpse. It was totally colourless and only water oozed from the wound in Slattery’s neck. Stone looked at Wells, who would not meet his eye. Instead, the blond reporter leaned forward to grasp the knife. Stone held his arm. Wells looked up. “We can’t check for fingerprints here, you know,” he said bitterly, a world of accusation darkening his voice. Stone frowned. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. The muscles of his back tensed of their own accord. He knew the feeling: it was fear. “Leave it for the moment, anyway,” he said quietly.

  “It’s your knife,” said Wells with a shrug: he might have been saying it’s your life.

  Gant came over. “My God!” He sat down unsteadily, his wet shirt bulging unevenly over the belt beneath it. “What do we do?” He was asking Wells, not Stone: he too had recognized the knife. Wells shrugged. Stone said nothing. “Where’s the blood?” asked Gant. “He must have bled.” Wells pointed to the pool. Gant nodded and shuddered. “What’ll we do?” he asked.

  “Nothing to do,” said Wells. “We can’t be certain who did it, after all.”

  “But the knife…” Gant still hadn’t realized.

  “Where did you leave it, Stone?” asked Wells wearily.

  “In the ground by the fire.”

  “You see?” He turned to Gant once more. “It could have been any of us.”

  “If we ever get out of this,” swore Gant, “I’ll see the bastard fry.”

  “Perhaps,” said Wells. Gant shook his head, almost in control of himself again. “Is there a spade?” he asked.

  “God knows,” said Wells, starting to get up.

  “Take your knife, Stone,” suggested Gant. The accusation was still there in his voice, dying but not yet dead. Stone worked the blade of his knife free of Slattery’s cold neck, folded it and put it in his trousers’ pocket
. A shadow fell across them.

  “Oh my God!” said Laughton. “Who did it?”

  They all looked up at him. “Who knows?” said Wells. “Whoever it was used Stone’s knife. That’s all we know.”

  Laughton’s eyes rested on Stone. “He was a good shipmate,” he said. Stone looked up at him, eyes steady, saying nothing. Eventually Laughton looked away, and then turned away, his great square boxers’ fists clenched and swinging like heavy weights.

  Stone stood up unsteadily, legs stiff. The far side of the pool was empty. The shirt was gone. Rebecca must have gone back to the camp. Bates and Slobowski arrived and talked in low tones with Laughton. Then Stone read the message in their eyes also. The only way finally to prove his innocence would be to be murdered himself.

  “We’ll take care of him,” said Laughton. He was speaking of Slattery but he might just as well have been talking about Stone. The three crewmen stood watching the three passengers over the dead man. Suspicion hung in the clear morning air like the threat of a terrible storm. Then Wells turned away. “Come on, Alec,” he said. Stone followed him, and finally Gant followed Stone.

  They buried Slattery just before midday and everyone was there. No spade had been found in the boat, nor anything to dig with and so they had taken the sail, wrapped the stiff body in it, packed the shapeless canvas bundle with stones and boulders and tied it like a bizarre parcel with rope from the rigging.

  Behind the waterfall the island humped up quite steeply until it attained a small windswept plateau, perhaps 100 yards deep by 200 wide, bound on three sides by the cliff. At midday they all stood at the sheerest point of this plateau where the cliff fell more than 200 ft to the sea and to an untold depth beneath. Laughton said some words, but not many. His eyes kept straying to the passengers, wary and full of suspicion.