The German Numbers Woman (44 page)

Richard came outside with his breakfast plate. ‘I'm surprised you could tell.'

The extra noise and lurching power of the engines, as if one of the shafts led through him, had been unmistakable. ‘Things seemed different.'

‘By midnight we'll be there, or pretty close, all being well. I haven't seen that pigeon lately. What did you call it?'

‘Jehu. He took off again. Maybe he smelt land and, as you say, had a plump little Portuguese sweetheart in São Miguel' – unless, as he hoped, it was flying on a Darwinian beam back to a plumper girlfriend in England, with the neat piece of cigarette paper folded into its container, on which he had written their course and ETA at the island. Trouble was, even if it was picked up, their boat would get there sooner, and be away before anyone could intercept them.

He had done his best, a long shot, stupid to think a pigeon could fly all that way. If, too exhausted for the journey, it landed in France, there might be a chance of someone finding the clue and following it up. A telephone call to the Azores needed only the time it took to dial.

Weather prospects came in morse from CUG, Punta Delgada, louder by the hour, pleasing Richard and everyone because conditions were good: light winds, calm seas, almost clear sky. ‘In one way, better than we might want.'

Howard lifted his hand, and typed out that Tempo promised a slight deterioration around midnight, maybe somewhat worse for tomorrow.

‘Stick at it.' Richard took the paper. ‘See what else you can get.'

‘I'll try VHF soon.'

Radio silence meant not even breathing near the microphone, hands away from switches. But he listened, lulled by static, took a traffic list from Chatham, Massachusetts, then swung onto Judy's old frequency but heard nothing, as expected, since she would be already waiting for their boat to arrive at the Azores. After loading, supposing it took place (despite his efforts, however futile, to put the authorities on the alert) she would get back onto the
Daedalus
, and out of the danger zone by following a track to the Straits of Gibraltar.

If the powers that be – bigger than any of them – were clever, they would allow Waistcoat's boat to be loaded, and apprehend it with the incriminating material on board before they were beyond the exclusion zone. By then the
Daedalus
would be safely away, and Judy out of peril. He didn't want her to be in trouble with customs or police, only to hear the sound of her voice while the stuff was being put on board. Perhaps in the future, at a less risky meeting, they would reminisce about past adventures.

She was the reason for him being on a trip that would have been unimaginable a few months ago. But the second purpose which had entered the equation filled him with anxiety, had come in without him being aware, a mistake demanded as payment for the luxury of becoming himself again. One or the other purpose should have been kept in mind, and rigidly followed, because passion and the laws of morality could never join to advantage. Both were now in train, and he had a glimmer as to how it would end, though afraid and full of doubt.

In his weakness – as he saw it – he thought of Laura, and the picture was wistful, even tragic, a face left behind in another world. Her features were indistinct, hard to recollect, as if under the sea and corroded by salt spray. Even when together the memory of her face had been an effort of the imagination. And now the face was wiped clean and replaced by the supposed one of Judy's, longish and competent features belonging to someone who was easily hurt and vulnerable, making her liable to sudden actions which overwhelmed her before she could try to control them, or take account of the consequences.

Woe betide anyone who gets close to her, he thought, yet whoever did wouldn't find life dull, and once out of her orbit would have plenty to remember her by. He was sure that her relationship with Carla couldn't go on forever. He had picked up nuances in both voices indicating that the affair was coming to an end, the passion diminishing beyond what such natures were able to accept. Their final parting made him both sad and happy, unsure which was uppermost, only aware that they, like he, were controlled by a force impossible to resist.

The boat chopped into the swell, ever forward with lift and crash, as if to eat all water in its way. A strong northeasterly encouraged them along, no other vessel seen for days, Waistcoat saying it was a good thing too.

His stomach none too settled, he went on deck for air, feeling every good reason for tumbling overboard. In like a bomb, and down he would go, pressure building up to burst his lungs, suddenly warmer, and then dead.

A hand gripped his elbow. ‘Put this on,' Richard shouted.

‘What for?'

‘You'd know why, if you went over.' The life jacket was pulled tight. ‘We won't want to lose you, though even with this it would be touch and go if you went in.'

‘I never think about it.'

‘You wouldn't have climbed aboard one of your trundling old aeroplanes without a parachute, would you?'

He looked, as he supposed, along the wake, his favourite stance. ‘What clouds do we have?'

‘Fair-weather cumulus, or some such stuff.'

He saw the photographic plates clearly, from the folders given out at training sessions: archipelagoes of vari-sized fluffballs, others coming up behind like slow-moving cavalry across the sky, elongated and flat, plenty of blue for them to float in. What else might be coming up was hard to say, which may have been why Richard added: ‘You never know what to make of clouds like that.'

Two sheerwaters, battered by heady showers, took refuge on the upper deck. Richard was sorry Howard couldn't see them. ‘We pick up passengers all the time,' he told him. ‘Tens of thousands of square miles of water around us, and these pathetic bits of living flotsam cling to anything that promises a bit of rest. They feel the closeness of our warm blood, I suppose, as if they can pick up directional beams from it, so subtle only they can detect it. We probably send a Loran grid of rays in all directions, which they know how to use, and home in on us. They find it a comfort before they fly off and die, their last touch of life. By getting close I expect they renew the ability to live, pick up a few scraps from the wake as well. That sort of rest can bring enough survivor's strength to reach land, or another boat halfway to it. Sea birds are a perfect balance of fragility and endurance. We've picked up some who feed and strut about as if they've taken command and will live forever, but a day or two later we find them dead under the davits. That body we thought so nice and plump and full of life turned out to be hollow, its skin like a drum, so that when you press it there's nothing in between. Then again, you get a scraggly pathetic specimen half dead on the boards, looking at you with its button eyes as if to say goodbye, and a few days later it'll go winging away towards land hundreds of miles off. I think they use such an intricate navigation system that they can always get to the exact point aimed for. I don't suppose that pigeon called Jehu had any difficulty finding a place it wanted to go to.'

Howard appreciated the lecture. ‘You think not?'

‘The chief wondered if you hadn't sent it off on its travels for some reason or other. He mentioned it to me on the bridge last night when he was wandering around in his dressing gown because he couldn't sleep. At such times he's crippled with a persecution mania. I said I thought it a funny idea. I told him you kept the pigeon as a mascot, for good luck. But he's got a bee in his bonnet that you wanted to use it for communication. Well, I thought, at such a barmy idea, how are the mighty – and not so mighty – fallen. I laughed, and said if so you'd only wanted to send a loving message to your wife, though you'd be more sure of one reaching her if you put it in a hooch bottle and dropped it overboard. It might even get there in ten years. And you could get more writing in it than on those micro-dot pieces you'd have to use in a pigeon leg capsule. In any case, I said to him, how can a blind man write, especially on a bit of sparrow's arse paper?'

‘It just flew away.' Howard aimed a look at him. ‘I was sorry to lose it.'

‘I expect it only went fly-around. It'll be back.'

‘I'd like to think so. What does the sheerwater look like?'

‘It's a Manx, I suppose. Slate-black, with a mottled neck, bit white underneath. There are two, man and wife maybe. I always like a bit of bird life on board. The place doesn't seem so desolate.' He lit a cigarette, cupping the match flame from the wind, and passed it across before making one for himself. ‘It's no good hoping they'll take your thoughts or longings away. They've got business of their own, and can't consider us at all. The best thing for you is to get below, out of the rain. Stick to the radio. Try to hear something that'll stop us from sliding into the big hole we might be digging for ourselves.'

Richard had come as close as possible to warning him, without knowing for certain there was anything to warn him about. What better friend could a man have? Friendship was a priceless bond, yet everyone on board was already betrayed, though perhaps more in thought than reality. So much hung in the balance, but who in the scales of villainy would weigh more precious than anyone else? ‘You can be sure I'll do my best.'

‘You're one of us,' Richard said, as if to cauterise Howard's wound, ‘and don't forget it.'

‘I won't.'

‘There'll be a bit of ready cash when this is over, maybe even more than you expect. Waistcoat can be generous when the pressure's off, and he coughs up the gratitude.'

‘I'm not in it for the money.'

‘That could be why he doesn't trust you. Try seeing it as if you are for a change. Or at least let him think so.'

‘I thought it best not to appear mercenary, being as I'm such a useless lump on the boat.'

‘Never a good policy.' Richard let his cigarette go into the scuppers. ‘Everybody has a value, and that includes you, so when the sea chops up be sure to wear your Mae West. The low's still moving north, and it'll take a while yet – though we should be clear in a few hours, according to the gen you got from Punto Delgado. Nice bit of interception, that. Waistcoat was pleased to know we'd have a calm sea when we got there.'

So he was one of the crew, no matter how he had set up the machinery of getting caught. He was in it for the money, and there was no reason for them not to succeed if his warning hadn't taken. In gloomier moments, he felt there was little chance that it had, and if all went well, and he landed back in England with more money in his pocket than had ever been there before (how would he explain it to Laura?) there would be little he could do to compromise them.

Crossing the Azores Current meant they were only a hundred and fifty miles from the island, and no regular watches were set or, rather, everyone was on watch. Waistcoat put himself beside Richard at the wheel, Cleaver stood upright like a soldier, and fiddled with his sextant, while Howard kept out of their way at the radio, and Ted Killisick in the galley provided nonstop food and drink. Paul Cinnakle tended his precious engines, and Cannister and Scuddilaw were posted on deck as lookouts fore and aft. The booze had been locked up by Waistcoat, and he would keep the key in his pocket for forty-eight hours.

The sheerwaters did a graceful flyover – part of their ceremonial before departure – and headed south as if the boat was too slow, outlined against the clearing sky. Far to starboard, an escarpment of cloud, like the long trunk of a giant tree, stretched as far north and south as could be seen, stationary, waiting for a wind to rush it towards them.

Richard didn't like the look of it, but it was fruitless to worry about what might never happen. If it did happen no amount of worry would have stopped it, and if it didn't happen you had worried for nothing. Such phenomenon often melted before it got to you, so what the hell? If everything goes all right tonight, he thought, I'll be too happy to worry from then on.

Howard could get nothing intelligible from the waveband he needed to hear from, as if the world roundabout was drawing them into radio emptiness, or to extinction in the earth's biggest hole. Higher up the frequency there were weather reports, and a few ships working messages from the coast, tankers mostly.

On one frequency he heard a forlorn low-note squawking, like the sound Jehu made after an excursion around the boat before flopping hungry and exhausted back on deck. It was as if he was tuned into its body moving north under the menacing cloud base, picking up the faltering rhythm of its wing beats straining to keep up the rate and stay airborne, but losing heart at the distance still to go. Its throat was making the noise, and by some technological quirk the bird had assumed the properties of a radio, so that he could hear its discouragement and the valiant beating of its wings not many feet above the clawing wave tops, hoping for a boat or plank of wood to rest and maybe feed on.

He flipped the needle away from a breaking heart, feeling more blighted by his state of blindness than at any other time. Why now was impossible to say, but the depression had to be climbed out of, so he turned back to the radio, into his all-enveloping home, no different now – except for the motion of the boat – to when he had been in his room on land. Locked in the darkwarm cloth of the ionosphere and all its noises, he was himself wherever he might be. No need to seek a reason for existence, even though too far off to hear Moscow or the German Numbers Woman since, more than anything, he had become part of the
Flying Dutchman
, that ever-travelling phantom hulk of the marine void forging along to who knew where.

Ted put a mug of coffee and a saucer of biscuits in front of him, clicks and rattles of comfort, almost the way Laura had so often done when he had been numbing his mind with too many wasted hours at the radio. Care for each other stopped people sliding uselessly into a state of living death. Talk and action bound them, and a blind man must find a role for himself, so he called thanks as Ted walked out, marvelling that he was again part of a crew whose survival depended on their concern for each other, but this time the mission was to pick up something deadly. The effect would be little better than unloading bombs onto cities, a high explosive powder to destroy the minds instead of bodies.