Operation Nassau (28 page)

Harry said, ‘What?’ and the bifocals turned coolly on him.

‘The R/T isn’t functioning, and neither are the radar nor echo sounder. It may be a simple connection, or it may all be tied up with the engine . . . Yes?’

Spry’s head, reappearing, said, ‘You won’t get through, sir. Someone’s crossed the leads on the alternator. When you pressed the starter button, you blew every wire on the ship.’

No engine. No SOS. No help, unless a ship appeared by a miracle from the outside, uncaring, luxurious world. Harry said in a high, scratchy voice, ‘What is this? Big business? Black Power? Politics? What’s it got to do with me?’

‘Nothing,’ said Sergeant Trotter harshly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me either, but I’m not wasting time yapping. Not yet. Not till I know if I’m going to survive. It’s all to do with that fellow Edgecombe. Someone’s trying to kill him. I suppose they got the
Haven
launched before they found out Edgecombe had gone off back home.’

‘Did you know that?’ said Harry to Johnson.

‘Yes,’ said Johnson. He was looking at the burgee.

‘And you allowed him to come here?’ said Harry. ‘Hell to Betsy . . . Come fishing, you tell us. Come and get your goddam gizzard fly-posted because the boat’s been evil-eyed by the Mafia . .

Harry wasn’t Trotter’s ideal officer. Trotter said, ‘He only made one mistake, didn’t he? He came right along with us all . . . Mr Johnson, what happens if the wind drops?’

A sail rattled. Spry, glancing at Johnson, ducked forward and tightened a sheet. From the blue sky, the sun shone naked as fire. Behind, the white boat had settled insensibly nearer. We were going fast, but
Haven
was slowly making up on us. Trotter began to repeat, ‘What happens . . ?’ and Johnson turned his dark glasses from the luff of the mainsail.

I said, ‘It is dropping. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Johnson. Another sail rattled. We were losing speed. The wind was all we had to propel us. If that failed, we should merely sail slower and slower until we finally sat there, like a piece of cracked driftwood, waiting for that long white boat full of explosives to drive up and hit us.

I said, ‘What now?’

‘What now?’ said Johnson; and turned from contemplation of his sails and the
Haven
, to the charts spread afresh on his knees. ‘We now employ strategy. Listen, my children.’

We listened as if he were God; Trotter tense, Harry frowning. They were trusting their lives, they believed, to a vague and unremarkable man with an ill-maintained boat. They obeyed him because there was no alternative. And also, I realized suddenly, because he knew rather well how to make himself obeyed.

We listened; and ran to our places; and Johnson threw the helm hard over to starboard and sent
Dolly
straight for the sandbanks.

You can find some of the best deep-sea fishing in the world in those islands, and soundings between the big groups can reach a thousand fathoms or more. But there are shoals on the west coast of the Berry Islands: a pattern of grass bars and shifting sandbanks which the settlement boats sometimes use, but which charter and freight boats keep clear of. If you drew over four feet, you couldn’t use some of the channels at all.

Dolly
drew 5.75 feet, and we were at the lowest point of the tide. We were going to reduce sail and enter the sandbanks, keeping to the thin winding canals of deep water as shown on the chart. We were going to do it abruptly, and as fast as we could, and we were going to enter a channel whose southern access was guarded by the largest sandbank in the shoal.

If we set the sails right, and if Johnson steered us correctly, we should scrape past that shoal as we tacked into the channel.

But
Haven
, radio-controlled, wouldn’t follow us blindly. A homing beacon drew its partner towards it by the shortest route possible. We should alter course and sail hard to starboard. The signals would change.
Haven
would receive them and transmit the changed course to her rudder. That, we knew, took thirty-five seconds to answer.

Dolly
would be on her way during that time, and, to reach her,
Haven
would have to cut corners. And if she cut corners she would land, inescapably, into that sandbank.

They say blue water sailing is easy, compared with inshore pilotage. I suppose canals are simple compared with sailing on rivers. I’m glad I didn’t fully realize what we were doing, taking a boat of
Dolly
’s size into that winding, river-like channel, with a crew of five, of whom two were casual amateurs and one was a tyro.

Johnson didn’t look worried; but then there seemed nothing of his face which wasn’t inset with lenses. He had pinned the chart to the bulkhead, a precaution for which I felt a gratitude encroaching on love. Then he started giving directions again, and we freed the sail, returning
Dolly
to port, and then brought her round again almost immediately, hardening up to the wind. I belayed and watched the water change from cerulean to almond to apricot off our right flank. Harry was watching it too, his face even greener. It was the bank at the entrance: a drifted pile-up of white coral sand so near in that clear water that there might have been inches between its long spine and the surface, or nothing at all. Spry said, ‘Port a little, sir,’ from the bowsprit, the jib sheet gripped in his hands, but Johnson smiled and said, ‘In a moment.’

Harry didn’t protest, and neither did I. It only needed a glance to the left. We had no sea room there either. The channel had silted. It was the precise width of
Dolly
at present: no less, and no more.

Then
Dolly
’s sides shaved the sand . . . No one spoke. There was a long hiss like compressed steam escaping, and we felt her slow, quicken and slow. Then Johnson said, ‘All right. Free her a little,’ and she eased a fraction into the left and someone gave a long sigh. I saw there was green water there now, and green water ahead, a narrow band of it, twisting out of our vision, like a soft, grassy canyon: a fairway between low limestone bluffs. I thought of Denise, and Great Harbour Cay, and all the small, violent events which had so shocked me, set in the everyday world with telephones and traffic and people and police.

Here there was nothing at all to rely on but ourselves. I had always been self-sufficient. I had despised indeed all those who were not. But now I wanted my fellow men. I wanted them very badly indeed.

I drew in sheets, and let them out, and watched
Haven
. Since the beginning, she had never gained on us as quickly as now, travelling over deep water with her engine evenly roaring, while we with our manoeuvring sail felt our way along that tortuous cut. Behind us the big sandbank showed now as a patch in the watered silk of the passage, with the deeper blue of the channel beside it.

From the coach roof, you could see
Haven’s
bows adjusting to reach us across the shoaled stretch of water. She had not yet reached the sandbank: the bunker; the trap in her fairway. A move of ours to the right, and her bows, it seemed, pointed straight for the shallows. A move to the left, and
Haven
swung back a little, safely headed for the deep seaworthy channel. Johnson glanced at the chart and said, ‘Damn. There’s a stretch to port coming.’

Trotter said, ‘Drop the mizzen? Anchor?’ Desperate counsel for desperate measures.

Johnson said, ‘No. We’d land in a sandbank if we lose much more way.’

Harry said, ‘Would it matter? Why not ram
Dolly
to starboard? Then she’d lead
Haven
straight through the sandbank.’

Johnson was steering one handed from the sidedeck watching the chart, the sails, and
Haven
behind us. ‘There are risks,’ he said. ‘She’s nearly got to the channel.’

‘What risks?’ said Harry hoarsely. ‘You don’t want to lose your bloody boat, that’s what.’

‘I don’t want to lose my bloody life, that’s what,’ said Johnson. ‘Free her. We’re going to port.’

‘No, we’re not,’ Harry said. He leaped forward to stop Johnson freeing the mizzen, but not soon enough. Johnson turned the wheel hard to the left and I freed the main and leaped like a hare to winch it in on the starboard: beside me Trotter worked like a fiend. The boom swung, catching Harry neatly behind his tanned ear, and flinging him into the cockpit where he landed on Johnson and pulled him with his weight to the floor. I grabbed the wheel.

Dolly,
wavering, turned to port in a few swaying motions, caught the wind and settled down on her side. I looked aft.
Haven
had got to the channel.

Johnson rose to his feet, followed by Harry, their eyes on the white boat astern. Johnson said, ‘Keep her there,’ to me, and got up on the coach roof: the others all followed. Over our wake the shoals were now hard to distinguish. Green water or biscuit: channel or sandbank: which was she entering?

‘Well?’ said Johnson.

Trotter had taken two steps up the shrouds. A little above us, shielding his eyes from the sun, he watched, and said nothing, and climbed higher and watched again. Harry said, ‘Well? Has she missed? Has she got into the channel?’

Trotter said, ‘No. She hasn’t missed. She’s got to the sandbank.’

‘Hell!’ said Johnson with feeling.

Trotter looked down on him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. She’s over the sandbank. She’s sailing over the sandbank and hasn’t bloody well stuck. That was the risk you took, wasn’t it? Why you wouldn’t jam
Dolly
? The tide’s making too fast and
Haven’s
draught is too shallow.
Haven
can cross them sandbanks. And we can’t.’

I saw Harry stop breathing. And for the first time I knew, really knew, what it is like to be advised of forthcoming death. Straight as a ruler death was coming towards us:
Haven
was beating towards us over deep water and shallows alike.

And idling here, trapped in our imprisoning channel, we had no means now left to avoid her.

Johnson said, ‘Beltanno, sail straight. Get a bearing and stay on it until I give the word. Spryl’

He was moving aft as he spoke. Trotter said, ‘What sail do you want, Doctor? Is she pulling the wheel?’ I told him, and he and Harry did what they could with the sheets. I watched the burgee and the wheel, and when I could, the racing blur of the white boat behind. You didn’t need to look. The engine noise was enough, and the sound of the spray. In fact, it was better not to look, and watch the wheel, moving magically, a fraction this way and that. Trotter said, ‘Doctor . . What are they doing?’

For a moment I couldn’t see it myself. And then I said, ‘They’ve got up a net.’

It was a heavy, coarse-meshed nylon affair, of the kind they use in fast-catamarans, and bright red in colour. I remember thinking how gay and incongruous it looked, lying on Johnson’s fine varnish. But then it was all out of key: the blue sky and hot beating sun, the marvellous shades of the water, the long white luxury yacht with her elegant cushions. And the workmanlike boat with its neat roped cargo, now devouring the short space between us.

Johnson said, raising his voice, ‘Right. If this doesn’t work, I want you to jump. There’s not a great deal of hope; we’ll be too near the collision. But dive: don’t stay on the surface a moment longer than you have to. And keep in deep water. No lifebelts. There’ll be plenty of wreckage . . .”

He didn’t mention the sharks. He said, ‘Now!’ and the red net flew over the stern and into the water, straight in the path of the oncoming
Haven
. He added gently, ‘Now, Beltanno.’ And I knew why I had to keep
Dolly
straight.

I was better off than the others, perhaps, because I had
Dolly
to think of. The others had nothing to do but to stare helplessly aft, watching the scarlet net float gently backwards, and
Haven
racing closer and closer towards it. Towards it and us.

It had seemed a tension past bearing, a moment ago on the sandbank. This time it was happening here, the crisis. If the net didn’t float towards
Haven
: if it didn’t stop her or slow her or hinder her, death would be upon us in seconds.

She got to the net in a gush of white spray. Harry said, ‘Oh Christ!’ on a gulp, and I could hear Trotter swear.
Haven’s
engine roared undiminished. Johnson’s voice said curtly, ‘Ready about!’ and he put the wheel hard down to the left while Spry jumped to the ropes: alter a second Trotter went to help him. I didn’t see that it mattered. In fact, if we were to jump to starboard, it merely meant that
Haven
would overtake
Dolly
beside us. Then Johnson said, ‘All right. Get ready to jump,’ and I guessed what he was doing, and saw by Spry’s face that I was right. He was going to off-load us and stay there on board, in order to sail
Dolly
clear.

I am used to making decisions. This is one which, thank God, I was saved from completing. Johnson drew breath to call, ‘Jump,’ when he saw me coming towards him. He said instead sharply, ‘Get back, Beltanno,’ and in that instant, one of
Haven’s
twin screws missed its beat.

Spry turned, and the two other faces showed from the weather rail, bloodless and taut. The engine grunted again.

We watched. We had reached the safe right-hand wall of the channel: Johnson turned the wheel gently and Spry without being told adjusted the sail for mid-channel. No one said anything. There was another splutter behind; a moment’s silence and then the rattling sound of
Haven’s
engine resuming on a new and wholly alien tone.

The spray at her bows had quite vanished. The boat was still moving; it was still following us; but her speed was now no more than our own. One of her propellers had taken the net.

One by one we left the side deck, our eyes on
Haven
, and stepped slowly into the cockpit where Johnson stood, his hand on the wheel, his lips under the dark glasses twitching. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘And how are your emboli doing?’