The Action Read online

  “No!” cried Rebecca Dark.

  Nobody seemed to hear her. Nobody moved. Stone lay on his back in the sand watching the smoking oar. Slobowski swung it at Stone’s head: it brushed his shoulder. He drove it at Stone’s belly: it whispered past his thigh. While it was part buried in the sand, Stone sprang easily to his feet. Slobowski tore it free and swung it at Stone’s knees: it missed. Stone seemingly stood stock still and yet the oar could not touch him. Then Bates rejoined the attack.

  They came from each side. Stone almost avoided them both but Slobowski caught his shoulder with the makeshift club and he fell in a cloud of sparks. Bates swung a boot at the fallen man’s belly and seemed to take off. Slobowski drove the oar at Stone’s face but it was smashed away with the edge of a hand. Slobowski staggered back and Stone was on his feet. He stood easily, seemingly relaxed, breathing slowly through his nose. Bates came in with a knife, weaving like an expert. Stone rose onto the balls of his feet and stood with his arms at his sides, waiting.

  “Do something! Please!” screamed Rebecca, but Gant just stood without moving.

  Bates came in with the knife held wide and low, edge up, moving stiff-legged like a cat. He had all the confidence of a master and where at first he had been hot and wild he was now cold, precise and very deadly. Slobowski began to work his way quietly round behind Stone’s back. Bates made a couple of quick passes, striking like a cobra, and Stone stepped back. Bates closed in again immediately, hissing, eyes narrow. Slobowski took another step forward, oar forgotten, arms wide. Bates struck once more. Stone swivelled from the hips but a 3 in gash opened in his shirtfront.

  Rebecca screamed.

  Slobowski dived forward and his arms closed around Stone’s upper arms and chest. Bates ran forward, arm straight, the gleaming knife pointed unerringly at Stone’s unprotected belly. His hiss of battle became a roar of victory.

  And three things happened almost at once: Gant shot the knife from his hand; Slobowski gave a strangled scream and slumped back away from Stone; Stone caught Bates’ still outstretched arm and hurled the stocky Radio Operator ten yards over the sand.

  Then there was silence and stillness for a while. The wind picked up dry sand and carried grains of it onto their glistening skins. The grasses bowed and curtsied. Black smoke bellowed without noise away over the sea. Bates and Slobowski and Laughton lay where they had fallen. Miss Buhl clutched at Mrs Gash who looked lost and confused. Rebecca stood with her hands clutched into tight fists. Gant remained in police standard two-handed firing position - legs spread, back crouched, arms straight, gun ready at eye level still smoking. Stone stood gulping down great draughts of air, his face glistening, but calm and still as deadly as Bates’ shattered knife-blade. Then he relaxed.

  “Thanks,” he said to Gant: but he was looking at Rebecca.

  “Thanks for nothing,” said Gant and put his gun away. Mrs Gash sagged silently to the sand.

  “No, no! It’s all right, really. Really,” said Miss Buhl, crouching protectively over her employer and speaking over her shoulder to Rebecca. Rebecca shrugged and turned back to Stone. There was no accusation in her eyes, none at all. A tiny frown crossed Stone’s face, too fast for her to see; but the frown remained as a question in his mind: Why doesn’t she suspect me? He came up with four possible answers as she crossed the couple of yards of sand towards him.

  First - she did it. Second - she knows who did it. Third - she likes me too much to admit the possibility that I did it. Fourth - she thinks I did it but still wants to side with me. He smiled at her.

  “Did he cut you?” she asked, her finger on the slit in his shirt front.

  “Yes.” Her hair was oily, her face sprinkled with sand and freckles. She was peeling and she smelt strongly of sweat. She was utterly attractive to him.

  “Oh!” she said. “Can I do anything for it? I did some training as a nurse.” He had never noticed before how velvet was her voice.

  “It’s not too bad. Just a scratch, as they say.”

  Her hands were warm and soft, “So it is. It’s stopped bleeding already.” She turned away. “Where did you learn to fight like that?” she asked.

  “Me? I was not fighting.”

  “Well, where did you learn to not fight like that?”

  He didn’t answer because Bates and Slobowski were coming back, still bristling with suspicion. He wouldn’t have told her about the farm near Stoke d’Abemon anyway.

  “We want to get that murderous bastard out of the way,” said Bates. Slobowski nodded. Gant shrugged: What could he do? “We have no proof,” he said.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Slobowski. “The old broad said she seen him. What more do you want?”

  “I think that Mrs Gash,” said Miss Buhl carefully, “was not quite herself when she accused Mr Stone.”

  “You know damn well she wasn’t,” said Rebecca, “She was out of her mind. And even if she had been okay, what right did that give the two of you, armed, to attack an unarmed man?”

  “It is the most sensible way to do it,” said Stone, mildly amused. “If you must attack someone, then do so with the minimum of risk.”

  “And that’s what you were doing, I suppose, running like a buck-rabbit over that dune,” said Slobowski, “Minimising risks!”

  “Certainly,” said Stone.

  “Well you listen here, mother, that cuts no ice with me. I got you tagged for at least two homicides, and I am going to see you fry. If I don’t get to you first.”

  “And me,” said Bates. “There’s another blade in that knife, so you’d better be bloody careful you don’t wake up one morning with it stuck in your throat like yours was in Slattery’s.”

  “That’s enough of that sort of talk, Bates,” snapped Gant. The Radio Operator swung round, his face twisted with fury.

  “And as for you, mister sharpshooting superstar, I don’t take no orders from you. I don’t trust you no farther than I can see you. I don’t trust any of you.” He turned and stalked angrily away, pausing only to pick up his broken knife. Slobowski looked around them with suspicious, narrowed eyes. “Yeah,” he said, and followed Bates up the grassy slope.

  “We’d better bury poor Laughton,” said Gant wearily as the two figures began to labour up the steeper slopes in the distance.

  “Hadn’t we better see if there’s anything we can salvage from the boat first?” asked Stone. But the fire was still burning too fiercely for them to go near it, so they buried Laughton first after all, digging in a sand dune with their hands. It was little enough, but it was all they could manage.

  When the boat was cool enough for them to sift through the wreckage, there was precious little there. The diesel can was rounded and burst open. The Very pistol was twisted and burned. Apart from the blackened ribs of the boat still sticking out of the fire-blackened sand, all that remained relatively untouched were a few cans thrown yards away by the power of the explosion.

  Miss Buhl wouldn’t let any of them near Mrs Gash. She had covered the older woman’s head and supported her over the 100 yards or so to the shady pool. Here she had laid her down by the water and had started to bathe her face while the others were burying Laughton. Mindlessly, she was still doing so when they came back with their pitiful store of tins from the wreckage. “Is there anything…” asked Rebecca solicitously.

  “No. No, really. She’ll be all right if she can just rest. She’s very strong, you know, but the last few days…They’ve…Well, they’ve been a bit of a strain. It’s the heat, I expect; that, and...” She made a vague gesture with her hand towards the distant boat.

  “I’d better say a few words for poor Wells, too,” said Gant in a low voice to Stone. “No hope of finding his body now, of course. Not that there would be all that much to find.” Stone nodded, saying nothing.

  “God damn! What a business!” exploded Gant after a second. “It’s no wonder Mrs Gash has collapsed. Nor that those other two don’t trust us. I don’t know who to trust myself. I certai
nly don’t trust you.”

  Stone grinned mirthlessly: “Nor I you.”

  They looked sombrely down at the three women. “Still,” continued Gant. “We’re both actors…”

  “Of one sort or another,” agreed Stone. And they went down to the beach together.

  The tropical night came suddenly and the four of them had corned beef from their diminishing supply, saving Mrs Gash’s share until she should recover. The two sailors had taken a little. There was enough for perhaps two more days. Gant and Stone thought about setting watch but ultimately decided that it would be useless. They lit a fire and all agreed that should anyone waken for whatever reason during the night, he or she should add a few more branches to keep it going. Then they all went to sleep. It had been a long day and they slept soundly.

  A little after midnight Miss Buhl woke slowly. She tossed and turned a little, then stood up. She dutifully piled some more sticks on the fire and Stone woke up as the embers blazed. Miss Buhl nodded cheerfully at him, checked that Mrs Gash was all right and crept silently into the brush.

  Stone watched her go, thinking, “I’d better stay awake until she comes back.” But his mind became involved in the mechanics of making an extremely powerful little bomb out of the odds and ends they had left in the boat. The process of making this bomb drew out tediously and infinitely until Stone was sound asleep.

  The day arrived as abruptly as had the night. Alec Stone rolled over, his mind still full of bombs and booby traps. He looked at the distant blue of the sky still with its traces of dawn-grey like fine smoke. The palms rustled high, moved by a wind which only came fitfully to the ground. A little dust-devil danced out of a shadow and died almost immediately by Miss Buhl’s bed. Stone watched it idly. It spread a fine patina of sand over the coat Miss Buhl slept on, covering the bright Burberry-pattern lining with minute grains of dust. Another breath of wind came. The coat stirred and flapped a little, clearing the dust away. Stone turned over, wriggling hips and shoulder into the springy earth. The waterfall curved over the hard edge of the little cliff, its tinkling murmur calling him back to sleep.

  And then he realized Miss Buhl was not there.

  Sleep vanished from his mind like the grey from the sky. He rolled onto his feet with one fluid motion. He looked swiftly around the camp, his eyes flicking over the sleeping forms: Mrs Gash, Rebecca, Gant. His head turned from side to side. He had seen her leave. Where had she gone? Where? Into the brush. He went over to her bed and looked for something to show him which way she had gone: some sort of a trail. There was none.

  He returned to his own resting-place and looked towards the fire trying to reconstruct last night’s scene now in his memory. There! he thought. She had gone through there.

  Stone followed. A small sandy clearing in the low scrub which was their improvised latrine. Beyond that only a small rise and a slope down to the sea. There was nothing here: nothing and nobody. He looked for tracks in the sand of the clearing, on the dunes, on the beach. Nothing. He returned to the latrine and stood there with his mind racing. The wind whispered knowingly. The waterfall sang. The slow surf rumbled like an earthquake on the beach. Seagulls screamed incessantly as though horrified. He knew it would do no good but he called out, “Miss Buhl?” No answer.

  Skin like ice, he turned and went back to camp. Twice on the way he stopped suddenly and swung round as though he expected someone to be stealing along silently just behind him.

  They were all still asleep. He hated to wake them. From his very soul he hated the idea of their confusion, anger and pain. He collapsed onto the ground glowering. The black lines of his eyebrows joined above his nose. “You were born to be hanged with eyebrows like those,” his grandmother used to tell him as a child. “You may become a sailor and go to sea for you will never drown you know. You were born to be hanged, young man.” He sat straight-backed with knees apart and calves crossed like a red Indian at a pow-wow. His big hands joined, the right grasping the left, forearms resting on kneecaps. His face became utterly still. The deadly stillness of the knife blade settled on his features. His mind broke free.

  Who?

  Why?

  God damn Nash: God damn you Nash. I am an executive and you are expecting me to work like an administrator.

  You know how I work: I get an assignment, I am provided with cover and some sort of a plan. I prepare, I run, I execute.

  I have a Control: I need a Control.

  I need someone who can think logically and clearly no matter what is going on. Someone who can weigh alternatives and dismiss improbabilities. Someone to take the decisions and carry the can. Who can tell me what to do and look after the grieving relatives. God! Look at me! Hands and arms trembling. My knees will be knocking next. What sort of an Action is this anyway? God, Dear God but I hate you Nash!

  “Hate me all you want to, Stone, but hate those bastards more.” That was Nash, London, years ago. He had been a good Control. They say he’s an Administrator now. A non-active Administrator.

  Executive: Control: Administrator.

  That was the ladder Nash had climbed, the ladder Stone had been climbing all those years ago. Hate me all you want but hate those bastards more. Good old Soldier. The perfect motto for the perfect Control. You were right, Nash. You were right. Executives hate where they need to, love where they need to, manufacture any emotion they need to get the job done. Controls have no emotion: they have thought, logic, psychology, reason. Administrators have information.

  An Administrator knows a certain Cabinet Minister is selling secrets where he shouldn’t: he says to a Control: “Minister X needs to be terminated.” Control says to an Executive: “You will go to Westminster, tomorrow at ten, in a black car with CD number plates. When you see the man in this photograph crossing the road, you will run him down and kill him.” And that is what the Executive does. A theoretical case. An illustration. Administrator, Control, Executive: Information, Thought, Action. That is what makes each what he is: their being and their reason for being.

  Stone continued to stare at nothing, but his hands had come to rest. He got up slowly but without hesitation and went over to Gant. “Mr Gant, wake up.” He shook the American actor’s shoulder gently and Gant woke up.

  “Miss Buhl is gone,” he said. Gant sat up. Stone rocked back on his heels and watched Gant begin to assimilate the fact. All the panic was gone from his mind. He stopped thinking for a moment and simply observed - as though he were trying to get inside the role of Sherlock Holmes or Poirot for the stage. Even when he got up and went to help Gant look in places he had already looked he kept his mind utterly quiet until, almost unbidden, memories, observations, old and new of the island, the boat, the ship came into his mind and instead of begetting emotions they begat reasoned patterns.

  And Stone had become his own Control.

  “…the sailors. It must be those two sailors,” said Gant. There was a silence and then he said, “She’s just not here, Alec.”

  “No.”

  “God damn! I don’t understand any of this. It’s the work of some kind of maniac. It has to be.” I’ve been this kind of maniac, thought Stone, and I think you have too, at one time or another. He shrugged.

  “We’d better organize a proper search party and check with Slobowski and Bates.” Stone nodded his agreement, mind elsewhere. Who? The question nagged. He had no answer, of course, so he reluctantly put it out of his mind for the time being. The question served no purpose at the moment: its time would come. And its answer.

  They went back to the camp. The two women were still sleeping. Gant stood helpless, so Stone woke them. “Miss Buhl’s gone,” he said.

  “Oh God!” said Rebecca, understanding immediately.

  “Gone where?” enquired Mrs Gash vaguely. “I do hope she’ll be back soon. I’m lost without her, you know. Gone where?”

  “Gone: vanished,” said Stone. “Gone: disappeared. Most likely dead.”

  His eyes rested on her narrowly. Her face slowly
sagged.

  It became blurred, doughy, fat, old. Her chin clenched and became pitted. Her bottom lip trembled. Her eyes filled. She turned her head away like a hurt child.

  “You BASTARD!” screeched Rebecca.

  Stone got up. No one was more aware than he how completely emotions could be represented by a competent actor, but it seemed that Mrs Gash’s reaction to his measured cruelty had been just too perfect not to be real. His voice became deep, soothing and very gentle. “We still need to look,” he told her, “just in case she’s wandered off after all.”

  “Oh yes,” said Mrs Gash, “she might have done that. We must go and look.” Her face brightened as she climbed to her feet and she walked away calling, “Letty? Letty!” quite cheerfully. Rebecca followed her. She did not look at Stone. After a moment, the two men followed.

  They began their search at the narrow end of the island and, as well as they were able, covered all the ground between that narrow sandbar and the bird-loud cliffs at the other end. Here they found Slobowski and Bates crouched by a small fire roasting the inevitable corned beef.

  “What do you want?” demanded Slobowski in a surly voice. Bates drew closer to his shoulder, they both protected their little cache of food with their bodies like animals.

  “We’ve lost Miss Buhl,” Gant explained.

  Mrs Gash began to babble, “You have seen her, haven’t you? Sometime during the night. You have. I know. Oh do say you have! Please.” She was verging on the incoherent again. The fruitless search up the length of the island had crushed her spirit even more than the initial discovery had. Slobowski shook his head.

  “Sorry, lady,” he said. He even looked sorry. There was a silence. “Look, lady,” said the big American after a while, “I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll help you look. She was a nice little broad; full of spunk. It’d be a right shame if anything had happened to her. Who saw her last?”

  “I did,” Stone said, and watched the suspicion deepen in their eyes. Slobowski nodded as though he had expected nothing less, but all he said was, “Where?”