A Bridge Of Magpies (23 page)

ve checked and checked! Nothing at all!'

'It's too late now to bring that up with Emmermann and Kenryo. The
longer
you say that the longer they'll try to wring out of you what you didn't really know in the first place. And, judging from what I've seen of their party manners, it won't be a pretty operation. Where's the tape?'

'Aboard Ichabo

'Then we're going aboard to gel rid of it–now. The cutter will be a natural for them to search.'

'You can't dump it overboard, Struan!'

'I agree: it's too valuable. We'll stash it away. The best hiding-place is always under the light. Of course they'll search the huts once we're gone .

155

`Clone?'

'Once we've shed that tape we're high-tailing it out of here in
Ichabo.
Provided they don't get here first. We'll make a break for the inshore shoals beyond Elizabeth Point where we can still be within striking range, and can spot the frigate when she arrives. They can't pursue us there in a big vessel like
Sang A-
and their launches haven't the range.'

'But the tape, Struan?'

'Into a penguin rookery. Safe as the Bank of England. They'll never think to look there.

I took the oars and we streaked for
Ichabo.
It took Jutta only a moment to bring the tape from the cabin once I'd got aJongside. Then J pulled for the island jetty. I made good time because of the calm sea. That sea worried me. Possession weather should be sour, not sweet: something was brewing. There was a sultriness about that rasped the temper. The waves slopped like bath water against the piers of the jetty. Activily round
Sang A
was dying down. That in itself spurred me on.

We sprinted up the concrete path past the bunkhouse to the high ground near the cottage. Over the skyline we were out of
Sang A's
range of vision. When we veered off the path into the breeding-flats every bird and penguin seemed to join in resisting our invasion of their territory. I secreted the tape away under a big
rock,
while Jutta, using the rifle barrel, fended off the attackers when they tried to slash at our ankles. Their protests were deafening

That was the reason for our not hearing
Sang A's
launches. We spotted them, though, the moment we crossed the rimrock of the skyline. I pulled Jutta down beside me on the path. Took!'

One launch was almost up to
Ichabo;
the other
was
already alongside the jetty. Corning along it at the double, fanned out in attack order, were half-a-dozen of
Sang A's
crew, led by Kenryo.
Some
had
sub-machine-guns
slung at the hip; others, automatic rifles. One way and another,
Sang A
certainly packed a lot of fire-power.

I loosened the safety catch of the rifle with my thumb-and signalled Jutta to crawl towards the cottage for cover. I wasn't quick enough. Someone gave a shout: I caught a glimpse of fire-flashes lancing from muzzles and sunlight glancing off a cascade of spent brass hulls; and heard the 156

characteristic spat-spat of automatic fire. At the same time the birds' uproar doubled
as
bursts tore into them. I rolled sideways to join Jutta. 'Keep your head down!

Roll! Behind the cottage!'

I loosed off a shot at random as I dived away. There wasn't time to aim but I heard a ricochet and a yell of pain from one of Kenryo's men.

Then we were behind the cover of a stone wall encircling the cottage. I heard orders shouted, probably by Kenryo; and a concentrated burst of fire spattered and chipped the cottage's stone chimney.

I put my
arm
round Jutta's shoulders. 'They're not trying. Look where they're firing–high and wide.'

They want us–alive?' Jutta's voice was choky.

'Damn sure. We're no use to them dead.'

More bullets clattered and whined off the chimney and walls but I noticed they left the windows alone. Maybe they thought
we
were inside.

I eased myself into a better position to see what was going on. Jutta's fingers clamped on my arm. She gave a soft gurgle and the edges of her lips twitched. For a moment I thought she'd been hit until I followed her terror-stricken
eyes
to the rocky high-point we'd crossed.

Kenryo was standing there, holding on us one of those deadly snap-collapse weapons which street snipers love. It was a stubby-barrelled thing that could be stripped down to pocket-sized parts and reassembled in seconds. A thug's weapon for a thug. It wasn't the only thought of mine to beat the speed of light. J tossed my rifle from me. That weapon of Kenryo's could cut a man in half before he got to opening the breech for his second shot.

'Up!'

We got up. Kenryo shouted and we heard heavy feet thudding up the path. In a moment we were surrounded by men pointing either sub-machine-guns or automatic rifles at us. They were a mixture of PPSHs and AK-47s–all Russian.

I tried making my tone incredulous and outraged. `

What the hell are you playing at?'

'Leave it alone!' Kenryo snapped. `We want you. We've got you. Rather . . be leered at Jutla. 'You.'

Jutta imitated my line. 'You might have killed us!,'

'Not a chance. We know what we're doing. Forget it. What concerns you more is the future.
The
more you have to tell us the less you'll get hurt:

'A million in mercury!' I scoffed. 'How to win friends and influence people.'

`Shut up! You'll both tell everything before I've finished with you.'

I found my breath coming quickly and jerkily, and felt a bead of sweat run all the length of my spine from neck to coccyx. I was afraid for Jutta. Nervous compulsion made me speak.

`We've nothing to hide. I'll see you answer for this when the frigate arrives:

He banged me lightly on the chest with the barrel of his nasty little automatic.

That frigate is
as far away as she
ever was. Now–where's your kit?'

'In the bunkhouse mainly. Some in the cottage.'

He gave an other and a couple of men left the group and went off to search. I guessed
Ichabo
was being ransacked too. '

Get moving!'

We had no choice: we walked down to the jetty, Kenryo and the others covering us. He motioned us into the launch. I was glad to see Jutta looking more angry than scared. When we came close to
Sang A,
Kenryo slowed the launch-then stopped altogether. A diver was being lowered over the side. He stood for a moment, in his heavy helmet and spaceman-like suit, before giving the thumb's-up signal and disappearing into the water in a stream of air bubbles. Kenryo indicated the air lifeline. 'Compressed air.'

I eyed him speculatively. Kenryo wasn't the type to dwell on modem marine marvels.

know.'

`That's for him. There may be some for you.'

'What d'ye mean?'

He answered
as
conversationally as his rather stilted way of talking permitted: he gave the impression of transmitting mentally before committing himself to English. He might have been describing a diving technicality.

`He's going down about fifty feet. That means the water pressure on him will be aboul forty pounds to the square 158

inch. Of course, the compressor is designed to cope with that.

`So what?'

'J imagine the same thing inside a man.'

'I can't.'

'You'd be surprised to see how a little compression up the rectum will make a man talk,'

I'd been right about him that first time: a sod-a murder¬

ous
sod.

'Women talk sooner – they've got more inlet valves.'

He relished Jutta's silent shock reaction. I sized him up: he'd take some beating, I reckoned.
He
was stripped down to a towelling T-shirt because of the warmth-and his chest and arm muscles bulged. I knew what he was capable of in action.

When a derrick swung out one of the tube-like explosive charges and started to lower it into the water, Kenryo went on.'There goes your luck. Soon we will blow off
a piece
of plating from the wreck, for identification. Jf it's the U-boat, you're in the clear. If not . . : he shrugged.

The launch negotiated the complex of mooring cables and made fast. There was no sign of Emmernann. We were escorted below through the long mess-room, and past the sonar shack door, to two cells over the screws which faced each other across a narrow passageway.

Kenryo locked the grilled doors and left an armed guard behind. It wouldn't have been too bad except for the stifling heat. Perhaps this was the unusual weather which was part of Kaptein Denny's plan of operations. I'd written him off as a two-timer who'd run away to save his own skin and had no intention of getting my signal away.

We'd been brought aboard
Sang A
about mid-day and all afternoon the 'tween-decks grew more suffocating. They'd also screwed the portholes closed. We could see out, of course. We weren't sure whether the guard understood English-so we stuck to commonplaces.

We'd been in the cells about an hour when there was a sharp crack
as
if the hull had been tapped with an outsize hammer.

Ùnderwater bomb,' J reassured Jutta. 'They're working on the wreck:

159

Then it struck me -;what had happened to the small one I'

d filched from the pile on deck? I'd left it lying in our dinghy under one of the thwarts. Had the very obviousness of its position caused it to be overlooked? Kenryo had not mentioned it.

'There's nothing to see, Struan.'

Jutta, from her porthole, could watch what
was
going on, but I couldn't because I faced the mainland. After that the A never-ending afternoon was punctuated by sharp cracks and long silences, as fresh charges were lowered and manoeuvred into position, then detonated.

'Best weather in the world for salvage,' I said to Jutta. It didn't make any difference whether the sentry understood or not.'How long will
it go
on, Struan?'

'Not long. There's an upwell cell starting to build up . . I explained the phenomenon to
her.
'It always begins with this type of impossible hot weather: it brings the east wind
off
the desert. I've known it on occasion be a hundred degrees ten miles out to sea.'

'This place is a sweat box already.'

Ìt'll become worse. The fog gets thicker, too. Warm air on icy water. Tomorrow will be a humdinger.'

'It all sounds very complex.

'Not really. There's the build-up, then the actual process of the upwell cell lasts a few days. Once the desert wind gets . going, however, everything seems to take wing–sand, sea, the lot.'

`Struan!'

'What is it?'

'They're bringing something up out of the sea!'

I craned to try and see through her porthole but couldn't. The guard eyed me sourly.

`What-Jutta, what?'

'It's a chunk of metal ... ragged . ., covered in seaweed and stuff .

'Colour?'

`Black. Rusty.' She was very excited. 'Now it's gone. They've lifted it aboard.'

We both knew how much depended on that undistinguished
piece
of decaying metal. The thought killed my weather chat. There were no more underwater explosions. The after160 noon dragged on. The cells became hotter. Towards sunset little puffs of wind started nibbling at the crests of the dunes. An east wind. A desert wind.

It also became darker earlier than usual-because the fog was thicker. The guard switched on a naked light in the corridor. The glass of my porthole was opaque with heavy condensation. The ship began to tug a little at her moorings. Upwell cell symptoms were beginning to show.

It became still hotter. I stripped off my shirt and shoes; the guard's face glistened with sweat-the place was like a sauna bath. Food was brought in, but we felt too hot to eat it. The best part of the meal was some iced, slightly scented tea. Then Kenryo appeared with two more guards, and they took Jutta away. All their armament seemed absurd for one strained, wan girl.

I
tried to help her morale before she left. I said to Kenryo. '

You'll know what a cell's like in this heat tomorrow - a warship's cell.'

'Save your breath,'
he
retorted In his unpleasant voice. '

No warship is coming to rescue you.'

I was afraid he was right. He wouldn't have been so cocksure if they hadn't been keeping tabs on her movements. Jutta was away for over an hour.
I
forced myself lo lie on my bunk. I don't know if my nightmare of what
I
imagined they were doing to her would have been less if I'd chosen any other way to wait. I couldn't stop the pictures of the torture-cell - the same sort of shadeless bulb blazing in Jutta's eyes as hung above me; her sitting there naked at a table with her arms clamped and two copper claws fixed to each nipple and the electric current shooting her mouth gaping wide and screaming every time they fired the switch. And Kenryo was there and the compressor tube was between her legs probing like an obscene penis ...

I
was at the bars then, yelling obscenities and every foulness I knew at the guard and clawing at the steel. He crashed the stock of his gun over and over against my fingers to make me let go, but it wasn't until he worked the lock of his automatic into a firing position that I sobered up enough to stop it. Then it was all
over
because she was at the end
of the
passageway between Kenryo and the guards, coming back to her cell and smiling a little uncertainly at me; but still there

–alive and herself; not a naked torso taped with electrodes. Kenryo locked her in; and the guard told him about me. He said nothing, only scowled at me. It was a good thing the man hadn't understood what I'd called him. Then all of than went, leaving a new sentry.

Jutta said, 'You look as if you'd just seen Dracula: '

A roomful of them.

Poor love.' That made it right. All right. All the gnawing 1 doubts over the torch business, too. The light was too harsh for me to read the messages in her eyes.