Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (25 page)

“Yes, yes,” Coby said. “I can hear. How deep? How long? Oh no!” She turned to the nurse. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” The nurse shook her head.

Then Jason was beside them. He knelt and lifted Hely’s head and shoulders limp in his arms. His fingers tenderly touched the soaking silver of her hair and wiped away the blood that crawled down her cheek. She struggled to raise her head and her eyes narrowed as though endeavoring to recognize dim shapes. When her gaze steadied on his face, her head flopped back, and she gave the ghost of a smile.

Her voice was a disembodied whisper. “Now you understand,” she said, one soft word at a time. “I could have been your angel.”

His bloodstained fingers rested on her cheek. “I know,” he said. “I do understand.”

Her eyes glazed with conclusive finality. Jason lowered his head, and when he raised it again his lips were scarlet. Coby spoke rapidly. “She swam right down to the bottom, and she says there’s a volcano coming up under the ship.”

The nurse spoke authoritatively to Jason. “It must have been the bends. Look, she’d thrown away her weight belt and inflated her lifejacket. She must have come up like a rocket.”

Jason was puzzled for a second. “You mean, she must have swum back without stopping at all to decompress?”

“That’s right,” the nurse answered. “Quite deliberately. Every diver knows you must decompress—and what happens if you don’t. It was calculated suicide.”

A terrible gaunt look settled on Jason’s features as he looked at the icy mask in his hands and Coby hardly recognized her own voice as she said, “It was true, Jason. She loved you enough to die for you. She was an angel after all.”

“WHO WANTS A DEAD COP?”

15

The scuffling and muttering had stopped. Sensing their advantage, the men from the
Komarevo
stepped up their systematic onslaught in a deafening storm of lead, but the cry of a man’s voice sounded loud above it. It was a roar of pain that thinned to a weak groan, and it came from behind the turbine. One of Bela’s men cackled in jubilation.

Bela smiled. They were making progress.

“Bela!”

He recognized Jason’s voice and answered immediately. “Yes, Captain Jason.”

“Can we talk business now?”

“Perhaps.” Bela was cautious. Twice the American had tricked him. On the other hand, one of Jason’s men had at least been badly wounded, and Bela was still conscious of his time-and-gold equation.

“The deal,” Jason punched out the words. “We leave, you keep the gold.”

Bela gave the order to stop shooting and stepped forward into the no-man’s-land between the two groups, rapidly thinking of all the possibilities of this new situation. “Why is it suddenly so attractive to you, Jason?”

Again, Jason sounded flatly unemotional. “You got the cop. He was the one who wanted to fight for the gold.”

So that was who had shouted. Bela gently rubbed his pistol alongside his jaw. “And what about your famous . . . parcel, I think you called it?”

“The contents are rather shopworn now. They were the rifles we were using.”

“Ah.” Another mystery unveiled for Bela. But still he hesitated. “And how can I be sure your clumsy policeman is dead?”

“Come and take a look.”

Bela toyed with the invitation. “And you shoot me perhaps?”

The reply was on its way before he had finished the sentence. “Come off it, Bela. I’m not you. You know you’re safe.”

A pleased smile lightened his slim features, and Captain Bela made his way across the room, vaulting the bigger chunks of machinery.

He turned the corner around the bullet-scarred bulk of the turbine, and in one glance took in the pathetic, ragged band of amateurs who had been standing in his way. It hardly seemed possible, he thought. Then he looked down at the figure of the policeman, lying face down.

“He’s dead.”

Jason nodded. “He’s dead, all right. One of your cutthroat bastards got lucky and hit him in the temple.”

Bela pushed the toe of his shoe under the slack, heavy figure. It flopped over, the thick arms spread with their palms up. Where the forehead met the receding hair, a gout of blood dribbled a crimson stream into his eye.

“He was dead before he hit the ground.” It was a woman talking. She was kneeling beside the body, still holding his wrist. “Poor Mr. Rogo.”

Bela had not seen her before. “Who are you?”

She looked up. “I’m the ship’s nurse. The last survivor. They found me.” Bela saw the torn remains of her once starched uniform and nodded. He was satisfied.

“You can always listen to his heart, you disbelieving bastard,” Jason said, but Bela was already stepping back.

“I am alive today because I am a careful man, Jason. But that won’t be necessary, thank you.”

He looked around and saw another body. It was the skin diver. “So she’s dead too, the pretty little grave robber,” he said.

Jason’s whole body stiffened and he seemed about to move forward when Coby wrapped herself round his arm and answered, “Yes. She came back, but she died soon after.” She added weakly, “As you can see.”

Again, Bela gave a perfunctory nod. He steepled his fingers and became businesslike. “Very well, I see no reason why you should stay.”

“One thing.” Jason was relaxed again. “I must take the girl.”

Bela shrugged. “And him?” His toe tapped the policeman’s bulky figure and he was watching Jason’s face.

Jason lifted Hely up easily in his arms and met Bela’s gaze full on. “Who wants a dead cop? He was a nice guy, but the fight’s over.”

“Please.” They both turned, in evidently equal surprise. It was the baby-faced man. He was balanced on one leg, his suspended foot bare, like a timid little bird. “Please, he was a friend of mine. We were on vacation together. We sat at the same table and everything, me and Mike.”

Boredom and contempt mingled on Bela’s face. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting that. But take him if that is your wish. Now I must ask you to leave quickly. I have business to complete.”

Jason led the evacuation on its tragic trail to Bela’s rope ladder. His head was held back and he did not look down at the soft figure in his arms and the long sash of silver hair swinging at his side. Klaas took Rogo under the arms, Martin lifted his legs and, hopping and wincing, followed the Dutchman with the body slung between them. The nurse walked beside them, weeping quietly. Coby backed out last, her rifle trained on Bela right across the room.

Bela was already giving orders to his men to put down their guns and start moving the gold. He viewed the girl with a glint of humor in his eye. “What is this?” he said, with ingenuous surprise. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Like I’d trust a mad dog,” she called out.

“Ah, so many heroes,
mademoiselle.”
Bela sighed dramatically. “And so many heroines. You should not let your feelings cloud your judgment. It is only business.”

He raised his glance to Jason, framed for a moment in the cutaway square. “It has been a pleasure dealing with you, Captain Jason,” he shouted. “Perhaps another day?”

Jason’s reply was faint. “I should be immensely surprised, Bela. Immensely surprised.”

The dapper captain laughed pleasantly as he watched them leave. Coby, still backing out, stumbled for a moment at the bottom of the ladder and then ran up it quickly and vanished over the top.

Bela strode over to the hold and switched on his torch. The slim gold bars were spilling out. He checked his watch and ordered his men to hurry.

Then he folded his arms and hummed an old-fashioned waltz to himself. It had after all been a good day. But then, Captain Bela thought, they would all be good days after this.

The eerie sound of a bosun’s whistle wailed in the peace of the Mediterranean morning. It was the Still, the sea’s traditional call to attention, and the one piercing note instantly brought the semicircle of survivors to a stiff-backed silence on the after deck of the
Magt.
The oaken-faced seaman who was blowing it removed the pipe from his lips, and Klaas, his solemn voice unwavering, began to read from a small prayer book. “I am the Resurrection and the Light . . .”

This was how it should be,
Jason thought. Behind them, sea and sky were the same featureless blue. The mad dash to safety had sustained them all through the first few minutes after they had returned to the
Magt.
The ancient engines had rumbled into uncertain life, and the gallant little freighter, shaking from bow to stern, had carved her way furiously through the ocean. Klaas had sensed Jason’s anxiety and agreed, and the rapidly organized service reflected the Dutchman’s meticulous nature. He produced the battered prayer book and found the correct service. He even found an old hand who still had his bosun’s whistle.

He had arranged it discreetly, as Jason stood on the deck and watched the scene of so much tragedy and death, and a few minutes violent happiness, fall behind. At first, Jason could see Bela’s men lowering the cases of gold into the pinnaces. Gradually the gap widened as the
Magt
rocked on her way. But now the engines were still. The only sound was Klaas’s voice.
Soon,
he thought,
it will be over.

Four deckhands standing behind the group moved up to the rail and knelt down. They were holding on their shoulders a hatch cover. On it was Hely, sewn into a clean white sheet. Klaas had apologized to Jason: he did not have a French flag on board. The two men at the back prepared to lift the inboard end of the cover, but Jason stepped forward. He looked at Klaas and saw the brief nod of the head, and slipped his arms under that lifeless form as he had when he had carried her off the
Poseidon.
“We therefore commit her body to the deep . . .” The weighted body entered the water with hardly a splash and sank instantly. Klaas continued, the soothing powerful words rolling out, and Jason saw that the waters were smooth again.
She belonged more to the water than to the land,
he thought. He did not want marble crosses and flowers. Now every wave would be a memorial to her. This was indeed how it should be: the healing words and the forgiving sea. “. . . and the love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all ever more, Amen.”

The bosun’s whistle began fluting again, first a high note, then a low note. It was the Carry On. Klaas closed the small book with a snap, the engines shook into life. It was over. Jason was turning to thank Klaas when he heard Coby’s cry, “Look! Oh no! Look!” They all rushed to the stern rail.

The
Poseidon
was rising. The spoon-back of the ship was lifting and trembling, like some great, dying beast struggling to stand. The sea around it seemed to boil agitatedly, jets of water spitting from the surface. Suddenly, the
Poseidon
was thrust clear into the air. They watched in silence.

A vast mass of black lava had thrust its way up from the seabed, and the eighty-one-thousand-ton liner lay like a stranded bath toy on top of it. An island was being born. The ancient and terrible forces deep within the earth that had caused the tidal wave were now driving millions of tons of lava up through the water. It was a volcano. The sea boiled and steamed around it, and the air was loud with violent rumblings and sharp cracks.

For long seconds they saw it clearly, despite the steam. Then, in a deafening uproar, the volcano blasted a pillar of flame and smoke high into the heavens. Rocks as big as houses leapt through the air. The sky darkened and the sun itself dimmed, with a rain of ash and cinders as the primeval, imprisoned powers of the earth burst forth.

Explosion followed explosion. The column of white and yellow and orange stabbed at the sky and huge clouds of steam gushed upwards. Then the flames sank back like a guttering firework, and they saw that the top of that priapic mountain was a huge cavern. It gaped open raw and glowing scarlet, like some dreadful wound, and slow streams of coruscating red pumped out and crawled down its black steeps.

The
Poseidon
had gone. It had vanished. Blasted to pieces by the forces of the fire, burned in the heat that melts rocks, sucked into the raging belly of the earth itself. The tragic ship with its ghostly crew of corpses, plunderers, and gold had been totally destroyed.

The air seemed to shimmer with the extravagance of heat and light, and the spellbound spectators on the
Magt
winced before it and shielded their eyes. “It’s terrible, terrible,” whispered Coby, and she shuddered in her father’s arms.

“Like looking into the mouth of hell,” Jason murmured.

So mesmerized were they by that spectacle that they did not realize until it was almost upon them. “Look out!” Klaas’s warning was only just in time. The twenty-foot-high wave was tearing across the sea. It hit the stern of the
Magt
and fermented madly over the ship’s topsides. They felt the decks slam their feet. They were gazing into the foam, then suddenly it was the sky, as the
Magt
pitched and rolled helplessly. For a moment it looked as though the vengeance of the seas that had claimed the
Poseidon
was hounding them too, as wave after wave flung the freighter back and forth. Then the thunderous ocean quieted and they clambered to their feet to look upon a newborn land.