The Dark Crusader (22 page)

My feet touched bottom and I staggered upright in less than three feet of water: I swayed and would have fallen had not Marie caught my arm, she was in far better shape than I " was. Side by side we waded slowly ashore and the way I felt no one ever looked less like Venus emerging from the deeps than I did right then. Together we stumbled on to the shore, then, two minds with but one thought, we sat down heavily on the damp sand.

"God, at last!" I gasped. The breath was wheezing in and out of my lungs like air through the sides of a moth-eaten bellows. "I thought we'd never make it."

"Neither did we," a clipped drawling voice agreed. We swung round only to be blinded by the bright white glare from a pair of torches. "You certainly took your time. Please don't try-Good Lord! A female!"

Although biologically accurate enough it struck me as a singularly inept term to describe Marie Hopeman, but I let it pass. Instead I scrambled painfully to my feet and said: "You saw us coming?"

"For the past twenty minutes," he drawled. "We have radar and infra-red that would pick up the head of a shrimp if it stuck itself above water. My word, a woman! What's your name? Are you armed?" The grasshopper mind, a clear cut case for Pelmanism.

"I have a knife," I said tiredly. "Right now I couldn't cut asparagus with it. You can have it if you want." The light was no longer directly in our eyes and I could make out the shape of three figures clad in white, two of them with the vague blurs of guns cradled in their arms. "My name is Bentall. You are a naval officer?"

"Anderson. Sub-Lieutenant Anderson. Where in all the world have you two come from. What is your reason-"

"Look," I interrupted. "Those things can wait. Please take me to your commanding officer, now. It's very important. At once."

"Now just a minute, my friend." The drawl was more pronounced than ever. "You don't seem to realise-"

"At once," I said. "Look, Anderson, you sound like a naval officer who might have a very promising career in front of him but I can promise you that a career stops today, violently, if you don't cooperate fast. Don't be a fool, man. Do you think I'd turn up like this unless there was something most desperately wrong? I'm a British Intelligence agent and so is Miss Hopeman here. How far to your C.O.'s place?"

Maybe he was no fool, or maybe it was the urgency in my voice because, after a moment's hesitation, he said: "The better part of a couple of miles. But there's a telephone at a radar post quarter a mile along that way." He pointed in the direction of the twin barbed wire fences. "If it's really urgent-"

"Send one of your men there, please. Tell your C.O.- what's his name by the way?"

"Captain Griffiths."

'Tell Captain Griffiths that an attempt will almost certainly be made to overpower you and seize your installation very shortly, perhaps in only an hour or two," I said quickly. "Professor Witherspoon and his assistants who worked on the archaeological excavations on the other side of the island have been murdered by criminals who have driven-"

"Murdered!" He came close to me. "Did you say murdered?"

"Let me finish. They've driven this tunnel clear through the island and need breach only a few more feet of limestone to emerge on this side of the island. Where, I don't know, probably about a hundred feet above sea-level. You'll need patrols, patrols to listen for their picks and shovels. They're unlikely to blast their way out."

"Good God."

"I know. How many men have you here?"

"Eighteen civilian, the rest Navy. About fifty all told."

"Armed?"

"Rifles, tommy-guns, about a dozen altogether. Look here, Mr.-ah-Bentall, are you absolutely sure about-I mean, how am I to know?"

"I'm sure. For heaven's sake, man, hurry up."

Another momentary hesitation, then he turned to one of the half-seen men by his side. "Did you get that, Johnston?"

"Yes, sir. Witherspoon and the others dead. Attack expected through tunnel, very soon. Patrols, listening. Yes, sir."

"Right. Off you go." Johnston disappeared at a dead run, and Anderson turned to me. "I suggest we go straight to the Captain. You will forgive me if Leading Seaman Allison walks behind us. You have made an illegal entry into an officially protected area and I can't take chances. Not till I have clear proof of your bona fides."

"Just so long as he keeps his safety catch on I don't care what he does," I said wearily. '1 haven't come all this length just to be shot in the back if your man trips over his own ankles."

We went off in single file, not talking, Anderson with a torch leading the way and Allison with another bringing up the rear. I was feeling dizzy and unwell. The first greyish streaks of dawn were beginning to finger their way upwards from the eastern horizon. After we had gone perhaps three hundred yards, following an ill-defined track that ran first through a scrubby belt of palms and then low bush, I heard an exclamation from the sailor behind me.

He came up close to my back, then called out "Sir!" Anderson stopped, turned. "What is it Allison."

"This man's hurt, sir. Badly hurt, I should say. Look at his left arm."

We all looked at my left arm, no one with more interest than myself. Despite my attempts to favour it as we had been swimming, the exertion seemed to have opened up the major wounds again and my left hand was completely covered with blood that had dripped down my arm. The spreading effect of the intermingled salt water made it seem worse than it actually was, but even so it was more than enough to account for the way I felt.

Sub-Lieutenant Anderson went far up in my estimation. He spent no time on exclamations or sympathies, but said: "Mind if I rip this sleeve off?"

"Go ahead," I said. "But mind you don't rip off the arm at the same time. I don't think there's a great deal holding it in place."

They cut off the sleeve with the aid of Allison's knife and I could see the tightening of Anderson's thin brown intelligent face as he studied the wounds.

"Your friends across at the phosphate camp?"

"That's it. They had a dog."

"This is either infected or gangrenous or both. Either way it's pretty nasty. Lucky for you we have a naval surgeon here. Hold this, miss, will you?" He handed his torch to Marie, pulled off his shirt and tore it into several wide strips, using them to bandage my arm tightly. "Won't do the infection any good, but it should cut down the bleeding. The civilian quonset huts aren't any more than half a mile from here. Think you can make it?" The reserved tone in the voice had vanished. The sight of that left arm had been as good as a character reference from the First Sea Lord.

"I can make it. It's not all that bad." Ten minutes later a long low building with a Nissen type roof loomed up out of the greying dark. Anderson knocked at a door, walked in and touched a switch that lit up a couple of overhead lights.

It was a long bare barn-like structure of a place, with the first third of it given over to a kind of communal living venture while beyond that a narrow central passage bisected two rows of eight by eight cubicles, each with its own door, all of them open to the main roof. In the foreground, brown corticene on the floor, a couple of small tables with writing materials, seven or eight rattan and canvas chairs and that was it. No home from home, but good enough for something that would only be left there to rust and flake away when the Navy was finished with it.

Anderson nodded to a chair and I didn't need any second invitation. He crossed to a small alcove, picked up a phone I hadn't noticed and cranked a naval-type generator. He listened for a few minutes, then hung it back on its rest.

"Damn thing's gone dead," he said irritably. "Always when you need it most. Sorry, Allison, more walking for you. My apologies to Surgeon Lieutenant Brookman. Ask him to bring his kit. Tell him why. And tell the captain we'll be over as soon as possible."

Allison left. I looked at Marie, seated across the table from me, and I smiled back. The first impression of Anderson had been a wrong one, if only they were all as efficient as he was. The temptation to relax, to let go and close the eyes, was temptation indeed: but I'd only to think of those still prisoners in the hands of Witherspoon and Hewell and I didn't feel sleepy any more.

The door of the nearest cubicle on the left opened and a tall skinny youngish man, with prematurely grey hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, clad only in a pair of under-shorts, came out into the passage, glasses raised half way up his forehead as he rubbed the sleep out of myopic eyes. He caught sight of Anderson, opened his mouth to speak, caught sight of Marie, dropped his jaw in astonishment, gave a peculiar kind of yelp and hurriedly retreated.

He wasn't the only one who was astonished, compared to my own reactions he was a selling-plater in the jaw-dropping field. I rose slowly to my feet, propping myself up on the table, Bentall giving his incomparable impression of a man who has seen a ghost. I was still giving the impression when the man appeared a few minutes later, dressing-gown flapping about his lanky ankles, and this time the first person he saw was me. He stopped short, peered at me with his head outthrust at the end of a long thin neck, then walked slowly to where I was standing.

"Johnny Bentall?" He reached out to touch my right shoulder, maybe to make sure I was real. "Johnny Bentall!"

I got my jaw closed far enough to speak.

"No other. Bentall it is. I didn't exactly look to find you here, Dr. Hargreaves." The last time I'd seen him had been ' over a year previously, when he'd been the chief of hypersonics in the Hepworth Ordnance establishment.

"And the young lady?" Even in moments of stress Hargreaves had always been the most punctilious of men. "Your wife, Bentall?"

"Off and on," I said. "Marie Hopeman, ex-Mrs. Bentall. I'D explain later. What are you-"

"Your shoulder!" he said sharply. "Your arm. You've hurt it"

I refrained from telling him that I knew all about my arm.

"A dog bit me," I said patiently. It didn't sound right, somehow. "I'll tell you all you want, but, first, one or two things. Quickly, please. It's important. Are you working here, Dr. Hargreaves?"

"Of course I am." He answered the question as if he considered it mildly half-witted and from his point of view I suppose it was. He would be unlikely to be taking a holiday in a naval camp in the South Pacific.

"Doing what?"

"Doing what?" He paused and peered at me through his pebbles. "I'm not quite sure whether I-"

"Mr. Bentall says he is a Government Intelligence officer," Anderson put in quietly. "I believe him."

"Government? Intelligence?" Dr. Hargreaves was in a repetitive mood tonight. He looked at me suspiciously. "You must forgive me if I'm a bit confused, Bentall. What happened to that machine import-export business you inherited from your uncle a year or so ago?"

"Nothing. It never existed. There had to be some cover-up story to account for my departure. I'm betraying official secrets but not really doing any harm in telling you that I was seconded to a Government agency to investigate the leakage of information about the new solid fuels we were working on at the time."

"Um." He thought a bit, then made up his mind. "Solid fuel, eh? That's why we're out here. Testing the stuff. Very secret and all that, you know."

"A new type rocket?"

"Precisely."

"It had to be that. You don't have to take off to the middle of nowhere to carry out experiments on new stuff unless it's either explosives or rockets. And Heaven knows we've reached the limit in explosives without blowing ourselves into space."

By this time other cubicle doors had opened and a variety of sleepy men, in a variety of clothes and underclothes, were peering out to see what the matter was. Anderson went and spoke softly to them, knocked on a couple of other doors, then came back and smiled apologetically.

"Might as well have them all here, Mr. Bentall. If your facts are right it's time they were up anyway: and it'll save you having to tell the same story over again."

"Thanks, Lieutenant." I sat down again and closed grateful fingers over a large glass of whisky that had mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Two or three tentative sips and the room seemed to be floating around me: neither my thoughts nor my eyes were any too keen to be focussed on anything, but after another few sips my vision seemed to clear again and the pain in my arm began to recede. I supposed I was getting lightheaded.

"Well, come on, Bentall," Hargreaves said impatiently. "We're waiting."

I looked up. They were waiting. Seven of them altogether, not counting Anderson-and the late Dr. Fairfield was the missing eighth.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Ill keep it short. But, first, I wonder if any of you gentlemen have any spare clothes. Miss Hopeman here has just recovered from a rather bad chill and fever and I'm afraid-"

This gave me another minute's grace and time for the glass to be emptied and refilled by Anderson. The competition to supply Marie with clothes was brisk. When she'd given me a grateful and rather tired smile and disappeared into one of the cubicles, I told them the story in two minutes, quickly, concisely, missing out nothing but the fact that I'd heard women singing in the abandoned mine. When I'd finished, one of the scientists, a tall florid-faced old bird who looked like an elderly retired butcher and was, in fact, as I later discovered, the country's leading expert in inertial and infrared guidance systems, looked at me coldly and snapped:

"Fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Imminent danger of attack. Bah! I don't believe a word of it."

"What's your theory of what happened to Dr. Fairfield?" I asked.

"My theory?" the retired butcher snapped. "We all know how poor old Fairfield met his dreadful end. No theory. We heard from Witherspoon-Fairfield used to visit him regularly, they were great friends-that they'd been out trolling for trevally-"

"And he'd fallen overboard and the sharks got him, I suppose? The more intelligent the mind the more easily it falls for any old rubbish. I'd sooner rely on the babes in the wood than a scientist outside the four walls of his lab." Dale Carnegie wouldn't have approved of any part of this. "I can prove it, gentlemen, but only by giving you bad news. Your wives «re being held prisoner in the mine on the other side of the island."