The Prisoner's Dilemma (11 page)

‘Why not?' said Hume, breathing more easily now that a degree of calmness had returned to Dunbeath's voice.

‘Because there is no clock in the world, now or ever will be, that could remain precise enough. God knows it strains the clock-maker's art to be accurate on land but the crashing of a ship's movement, the wet atmosphere and particularly the changes to metal that take place from the tropics to the cold regions – all these things make it impossible at sea. There are also variations in gravity at different latitudes – to say nothing of rust and the changes to the viscosity of oil in a watch over time.'

Dunbeath turned away and walked back to the telescope.

‘No,' he said with renewed fierceness, more to himself than to Hume, ‘it's impossible.'

Hume looked at him as he bent over the instrument once
more, wondering at the anger that he'd seen erupt in the man. It betrayed his inner thoughts. He had no idea whether the clock idea was possible – how could he – but it was quite obvious that the earl was deeply concerned by the threat.

Dunbeath seemed to have recovered a little of his self-possession after the outburst and with it had come the recognition that Hume was in the castle on other business. He now rose again and tried to remember that he was there at his own invitation.

‘Yes, I am close, Mr Hume,' he said with greater courtesy in his manner now, ‘very close. But I'm afraid you must bear with me for a few more days while I complete my readings and observe the Transit. Then, I promise you, I shall show you the Prisoner's Dilemma.'

* * * 

High on the dunes, overlooking the beach, Zweig scrutinised Dunbeath and Hume through the beautiful telescope. He turned the eyepiece as he focused again and saw Sophie behind them, evidently listening intently to the two men's conversation. He stood for a minute or two as if thinking through what he'd seen and then closed the instrument and wrapped it in its oilcloth. His mouth tightened as he turned and set off for the walk back to Dunbeaton.

* * * 

The following day Zweig huddled alongside the McLeish family around the table in their tiny cottage, a simple supper laid out in front of them. But all was not well. For some weeks now it had become increasingly plain to everyone that James was withdrawing further and further into a sullen darkness, apparently grieving for his dead brother. Little could anyone have
guessed, however, that it was not grief that was working its corrosive mischief in him but, instead, the overpowering sense of guilt he felt about that terrible night at the castle. With each passing day the weight of his unshared secret had grown within him, and with it had come an unrealised, but longed-for need for release.

The small group ate in silence, the tension in the air obvious to each of them. Now, with a sudden spasm, James leant forward and aggressively forked another potato onto his small wooden plate. His other arm was draped on the table's surface, meaningfully wrapped around his place and the set of his hunched shoulders showed only too clearly the smouldering ill temper and hostility that radiated from him. But although the confusion in his mind was increasingly driving him to confront the group's attention, Zweig ignored the boy's anger and smiled placidly as he gently pushed dishes closer to him.

He now looked over towards Mona.

‘I must thank you for yet another delicious supper, madam. I am even more in your debt,' he said, in a tone that only added to the obvious difference in manner between himself and James. Mona smiled in acceptance as she rose to clear the table.

‘I thank you, Captain Zweig. It is good to cook for someone who shows a little gratitude for my poor efforts.'

This was the final straw for James. As his mother finished speaking he flung his chair violently backwards and leapt to his feet. Turning to face Zweig he seemed to have found the focus of his unhappiness. Rigid with anger and reddened with frustration, he now lost control and leant threateningly over Zweig, balling his hands into fists. Then he jammed his face into the captain's contented smile.

‘Damn you, Zweig and damn your smooth tongue. How dare you speak to my mother like that? You have more oil in you than a whaler's hold. You may sit in Alistair's place. You may even think to wear his clothes. But don't you ever, ever dare to grease
your way into my mother affections in that way! How I wish I had never gone into the sea for you that night; how I wish you had drowned along with your ship.'

Zweig said nothing but continued to look up at James, nodding quietly as if in agreement. Andrew McLeish raised an arm in a half-hearted attempt to calm the boy, although he continued to chew stolidly on his stew. Mona was less indulgent. She ran around the table and grabbed James by the shoulder, then pushed him round towards the door.

‘Go out! Go out, now. I'll not have this, do you hear? Alexis is our guest and he is welcome to rest here as long as he wishes. Go out of here I say.'

James needed no second bidding and the cottage door slammed behind him. There was a deep silence for a few seconds but then Zweig lifted a conciliatory hand.

‘Let me speak with him, Mona. I understand his anger. He has much to be angry about with the world. Let me make my peace with him at least.'

Zweig left the cottage and looked around for the boy in the evening twilight. He saw him sitting higher up on the dunes, hunched over and staring out to sea with a glazed expression of loathing on his face. The captain strolled easily over and found a flat spot to sit on a short distance away and silently waited for James's furious tension to subside. After some minutes he saw his rigid shoulders slacken and he called out softly to him.

‘I understand, James. I understand. You have taken the death of your brother very hard. But that is as it should be.'

The dam that was James's fury broke. It had found an outlet.

‘Understand?' he spat at Zweig. ‘How could you understand? What do you know of it?'

Zweig realised that James had unknowingly invited a conversation and he quietly rose and walked over to sit next to him.

‘You may be right that I do not understand your mind, James,' he said gently, ‘but I do know something of your distress. I have
my grief too. I saw my crew die. They were my friends, my family. I have lost everyone and everything.'

Zweig dropped his voice, allowing the conversation to lapse. The two men sat in silence, each apparently distracted by his thoughts. But, like a great musician, Zweig was timing his moment. Now he entered exactly on the beat.

‘You know, I have found the telescope, James. I discovered it when I was cleaning out the sty yesterday.'

In spite of the gathering darkness he could see the boy recoil in shock.

‘Have no fear,' Zweig continued quickly, ‘I have moved it to a safe place. No-one would ever find it now.'

He turned to glance at James and was pleased to see how off balance he was. It was time to press his advantage.

‘There's only one place you could have come upon a telescope like that, James. So you did go into the castle that night. You said you hadn't.'

James tried pathetically to fight back.

‘No, no. I …I found the telescope on the dunes. Someone must have dropped it,' he stammered.

‘No, you didn't,' said Zweig emphatically, ‘I know the truth, James. It is Lord Dunbeath's telescope.'

Zweig paused in his recital but didn't put his instrument down. James's silence told him that he had won.

‘Then when did Alistair die, James?' Zweig continued, conscious that it was now the time to raise the tempo. ‘On the way in? You told your mother that he went ahead of you into the cave and that he never came out. But we both know that if he'd drowned in there you would never have gone on into the castle. You wouldn't have passed his dead body and continued on with your mischief. So, you must have gone first, he must have come after you.'

By now Zweig was scanning James's stunned face, seeing where his blows were landing, sucking the truth out of him. He
moved closer to the boy, his palpable determination and huge physical presence increasing the suffocating pressure. James shrank back into the darkness, overwhelmed by the attack and the weight of Zweig's intense personality.

‘So, why did you tell your mother and father that Alistair had died on the way in, James? Why did you lie?'

Zweig had gone as far as he could with his logic. Now he would need to take more risks. He'd push and see the story as it arose on the boy's face.

‘Something happened in there, didn't it James? Something that made you want to say that you'd never been in. What was it? You must have been discovered – otherwise you'd have taken more than just the telescope.'

The boy twitched and Zweig knew he'd scored a hit. Once more he raised his tone.

‘Of course, you were discovered. Who found you, James? There are only two people that live in the castle. The old housekeeper would have been no trouble to a pair of strong young men. So, it was Lord Dunbeath wasn't it? What happened then, James? Did Lord Dunbeath kill Alistair? No, how could he have? No, your mother told me that there were no wounds on his body. Certainly nothing to show a pistol shot. And there were two of you - two against his one. And, why would you have lied if he had killed Alistair? Quite the opposite, in fact. But if Dunbeath didn't use a pistol then the two of you would have overpowered him.'

Zweig saw the signs – there was something in James's haunted, crumpling face that told him that the truth was about to emerge. He extended an arm and waited two bars, then pulled James towards him in a gentle embrace. The release of tension and the weight of guilt were too much for the boy to bear. James started to sob.

‘I'll hang,' he wept, ‘I'll hang.'

* * * 

At the very back of the dunes, where they met the flat of the unrewarding Caithness farmland, Major Sharrocks focused his telescope yet again. At last, there seemed to be something interesting. And not before time – the colonel was asking for results and he'd had precious little to report. Worse then that, the men's morale was suffering, watching for days on end in this unending cold with nothing to excite them.

The boy was crying now, he saw that, the big man was comforting him. And they had seemed to be such enemies not three minutes ago.

‘What's going on here?' he muttered to the trooper he had with him. ‘I don't think they're talking about the price of fish.'

* * * 

Zweig knew well when to substitute battering with sympathy. He had spent a lifetime handling boys like this, hearing of their drunken sailors' foolishness, the broken hearts, the broken promises and, always, their stupid, threadbare excuses. It usually wasn't hard to get to the truth from this stage. ‘Let them run like hooked fish,' he'd often said to Hartmann in the past, ‘give them lots of line but always keep the tension on. They just want to unburden themselves.'

He now brought the weight of his huge personality to bear and added to it his most unnerving weapon – the ability to suggest that he already knew what was going to be said. He smiled gently, nodding in encouragement as the story of the night unfolded. At last, James reached the end.

‘I understand,' Zweig murmured. ‘You were pulling Alistair's arm to get him to attack Lord Dunbeath.'

‘Yes, that's right. He wouldn't do anything, you see. He just stood there as if he was frozen. I had to get him to move.'

‘Of course you did James,' encouraged Zweig. ‘And Lord Dunbeath was laying a trap for you, wasn't he? Offering you your freedom if Alistair fell.'

James felt a surge of gratitude. Zweig understood. He was a man of the world, a ship's captain, yet he understood. Yes, that was right, it was a trap, he had done nothing wrong. He suddenly felt better, stronger than he had for weeks. Now he saw that he had been forced to kill his brother by that monster Dunbeath, making him take such a risk as to pull his arm. It wasn't his fault that Alistair had fallen, it was Dunbeath's. He looked up and saw Zweig's smiling encouragement.

But it was a step too far. In an instant, fear gripped his heart as never before.

Panic broke over him as he realised that Zweig knew his secret now. He couldn't believe that he had told him so much. How he had been led on by his show of friendship. And yet how could Zweig truly be his friend when he must know how much he hated him?

At the realisation of the fresh damage he had brought on himself James gave into despair and broke down once more. His thin body shook.

‘You may say you understand,' he stammered between sobs, ‘but you will talk about this to others that will not. How could my mother ever see things as you do?'

Zweig turned to face James. He put his hands on his shoulders and dropped his head slightly to look up at him. He spoke softly, but with a fierce intensity to his tone.

‘James, your secret is safe with me. I would never do anything to hurt your mother. You must know that. She brought me back from the dead. And you saved my life when I was on the rocks that awful night; I could never betray you.'

He looked towards the sea as if reliving his ordeal.

‘But, more than that,' he continued in a whisper, ‘you know my secret too. You know that I was bringing gunpowder for the
uprising. If you report me I would also hang. You see, we both have to be silent. We have to co-operate. We have to trust each other.'

James began to breath a little easier and Zweig looked back out to sea – but only for the theatrical effect of swinging his gaze back again to wrong foot the boy.

‘But, James,' he continued, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, ‘you'll understand that I must keep the telescope for the present. Without it you have more evidence than I do. You may deny that you ever went into the castle – and it would be difficult to ever prove you did – Lord Dunbeath would deny it of course. But I can't deny that I came from Königsberg. So I'm sure you understand, I must keep it for the present time at any rate - to even up our bargain of silence.'