Split Code (29 page)

If I had been there, trying to hand the sail, I should have been swept overboard. As it was, it beat for a few moments longer and then, as the snap shackles gave way, freed itself from the sheets altogether. For a while it flew like a handkerchief, but with a strain like that, even the strongest cringle must rip. The last I saw of the storm jib was when it flew undulating into the white-surfing black upon black which was the shore. We were under trysail alone, and better for it. Then Trifun shouted
‘Gospoda!’
and I looked, but it was too late.

The wind and sea came together, and the first wave was twenty- five feet high and almost on us when I saw it. We went through the edge like a corkscrew, the sail throwing water backwards and forwards and a solid weight of green sea crashing down on the saloon roof and side deck and pouring full-throated into the cockpit.

Zorzi and Trifun were both swept off their seats to the floor of the cockpit. I fared better, braced with the tiller. I could see nothing and hear nothing but the water pouring over my head and shoulders but I could feel the boat slide into the trough and her bows buck and tremble and falter in their swing round to the next wave and the wind.

The tiller was running with water but I gripped it and pulled the whole weight of the ship up towards me as the next wave appeared and grew bigger. The bows began to respond. I was shouting to Trifun to ease off the sheets when the wind, outracing the wave, pushed the
Dotty
as with the flat of a hand and held her, shuddering, as the thing towering over us grew and advanced.

It struck us on the starboard quarter so that the port rail went under and the two men huddled on the floor of the cockpit received the first over-spill, coughing and choking, from the lee side. Because I was more exposed on the weather side, the water took me this time with a force that nothing at all could resist. I was spooned from my seat and flung upwards and outwards over the near-vertical cockpit. The force, had I landed on the deck or the rail or the cabin roof, would have smashed my ribs and very likely my spine, but the violence was of a greater order even than that. It threw me clear of the boat altogether, and into the sea.

It seemed reasonable to suppose that was the end. Zorzi and Trifun had no reason to help me. Profit no longer mattered, only surviving. Then my head came above water and I found that I was still clipped on to my harness, and that my harness was still attached to the backstay, and that the toe rail of the boat was just under my nose. Against which, the piece of wood I was clutching with both hands was the broken tiller.

Trifun had already struggled up to the pump and Zorzi was baling when I heaved myself on board and took the wheel, helping the yacht to come round into the wind as slowly she lifted her mast to the sky again. They glanced at me and then away again, that was all.

I waited for the mast to crack with the strain, but it didn’t, although the gusts pushed and swung it and the seas threw the keel this way and that. Nor did another wave of like dimension fall upon us, although from moment to moment I was awaiting it. With no way on the boat, there was nothing I could have done to counter it. And the only reason I could see for its absence was the surfing line of the shore, and its configurations. Somewhere here there must be cross currents and eddies which had deformed the regular pattern. Two waves had been thrown up, which had all but capsized us. But there were no more.

Slowly, we realized it. As the water went down and the ship lightened, she began to answer again to the wheel and I had to take the next risk: to go about before the shore rocks could hole us. And to lay on sheets, stays and sail, a strain there was not all that much hope of their taking.

I had to shout this time before the men would listen to me, or even look for themselves to see how near the shore we now were. They wanted to lie in the yacht and be taken to safety. So did I. But there is no such thing in life as lying down and relying on someone else’s goodwill, or strength, to get you out of a hole. I nagged them until they returned to their posts, the water still slapping about our ankles and pouring off through the scuppers as
Dolly
nudged through the jostling sea. Then I filled the sail and went about while she was running, and she swung round this time and landed fairsquare on the opposite board, the trysail filling again. The rigging had held, and the mast, and the precious stormsail with its double sheets. Trifun said something in Serbo- Croat and after a moment, Zorzi threw it at me, in English, ‘The wind is dying.’

The squall had ceased. The sea remained, something to reckon with even after both men had taken turns again at pumping and baling. We had to go about again very soon after that, and again, and again. But each time it became easier, and more automatic; the men knew what they had to do, the helm was lighter. It was just as well. I had no strength left now to call on, whatever the emergency.

We sailed out of the mouth of the Verige at four o’clock on Thursday morning.

The seas, joppling over the race, became easier as we turned to the north, over the broad lagoon which swept to left and to right of us. Ahead, the pin between the wings of the butterfly, lay two black patches, denser than the rest. The island of Sveti Djorje and the island of Gospa od škrpjela, on which Benedict and I were to be landed.

One had to hunt for them, because the eye was caught by something far beyond them, also lying on the water in the northeastern basin, about where stood the town of Risan. A floating palace of light, long and low and brilliant, with coloured lamps swagged and flickering still in a geometric canopy over her. The
Glycera
in shelter, her portholes and windows ablaze, her beautiful people still celebrating the fiftieth year of the Warr Beckenstaff cosmetic empire.

I said to Zorzi, ‘You can sail her now,’ and left the wheel so that, after standing a moment, he had to move quickly to right it. I wondered as I turned for the saloon steps if he would pull me back, but he didn’t. If he and Trifun couldn’t manage her now, they were worse fools even than I thought them.

Below, the carpet was soaked and the door of the washroom had broken, showing Petar wedged within, his eyes shut, his breathing stertorous. The table had shifted off Donovan’s legs and he lay as he had done all along, breathing quietly. Lenny also seemed quite unharmed. They were, one supposed, the lucky ones.

I didn’t stay to examine any of them, only looked as I made my way over the rubble as quickly as the heaving of the boat would allow.

Mihovil lay on the floor beside Donovan’s bunk among the glistening crumbs of the whisky bottle. He had been sick: not a pretty sight. But he was alive. Then I opened the door of the forward stateroom, behind which there was no sound at all.

Because I had snibbed and stowed away everything, nothing had fallen. And because Benedict’s carrycot had been lashed by each of its handles, it stood still on the floor where I had placed it. And inside, lying half on the side and half on the bottom but enclosed still in his quilted coat with its neat, furry sleeping bag was Benedict asleep, his fine skin blubbered with crying. Across his cheek, thickening where it had bled a little, was a long scratch and a red bruise where he had been thrown against something, perhaps the side of the locker. But that was all. His breathing, almost inaudible, was just as it should be.

I wondered when he had been hurt, and hoped it was lately, during the squall at the narrows. It was the first time since I had come to care for him that he had been injured or frightened without someone to comfort him. It would have been a comfort for me to waken and lift him, but that would have been selfish. He was best where he was.

I watched him for quite some time, and then moving slowly got together again the things we should need, he and I, for our stay on the island, however long it was going to be. I did what I could, too, to make Lenny and Donovan a little more comfortable. The other two men I left alone. After a bit, I heard my name called and went out to find the island quite close. There was nothing on it really but a church. I could just make out a huddle of roofs, and a cupola, and a belfry. A man standing on the quayside was waving a lantern and shouting. After a moment he put it down and caught the rope Trifun threw him: I helped them winch
Dolly
in, and hung tenders over, and sheeted in. Then Zorzi and Trifun stepped ashore, and signed me to wait in the cockpit.

I must have closed my eyes, for the next thing I knew my cases were at my feet and Trifun was emerging from below, Benedict’s carrycot in his hands. The man from the quayside, my torch in his fist, was walking round
Dolly’s
deck, inspecting her: as I looked, he bent and tested a shackle. Someone who knew boats at last. Someone, of course who was going to sail
Dolly
away from the Gulf of Kotor, and back to an anchorage less revealing. With, it seemed, Petar and Mihovil still on board.

Ben was waking in the cold air. I took the carrycot over from Trifun, and left him to carry the cases ashore. The newcomer left
Dolly
also and followed. Instead of walking round to the church they both advanced to where Zorzi stood, on the far side of the quay. I walked behind, smiling at Benedict. Then I reached them and looked up.

At the foot of the quay steps lay a motor launch. ‘We go,’ said Zorzi.

Through the wan, turgid lens of exhaustion, I stared at him. ‘We were to stay on the island?’ In less than an hour it would be light. Wherever he landed, he would face the police and the road barriers. To leave the island surely was madness.

And disaster from my point of view. This was the island whose name had been spoken last night for the benefit of all those unseen watchers. Now, away from the microphones of the
Dolly,
our hiding place was to be altered.

They pushed me when I hesitated, and I picked up the carrycot and climbed down to the launch.

The ride to the shore was a short one. My knees gave way, stepping on to the shingle, and I put down the carrycot and sat on a rock while the launch was pushed off, and then the newcomer switched on his engine to pilot her back to the
Dolly.
Trifun picked up the cases and I stood up and climbed the beach between them both to a clearing in the scrub overhanging the roadway.

Standing parked with its lights out was an ambulance. The only vehicle, of course, which could drive anywhere at all without being questioned.

I was put in the back. I couldn’t see who the driver was, but heard the sound of a harsh voice barking in Serbo-Croat at Zorzi. From Zorzi’s tone he was being conciliatory. I was glad someone was chewing him out. but beyond caring too much over what. Ben had started to snuffle. I talked to him, and as he came more awake, lifted him out and had a good look, while I rocked him and talked.

He was all right. But a crying match wasn’t too far in the future. I couldn’t heat him a bottle but I did have some orange juice made up for this kind of occasion. I rescued it from my bag, and let him see it, and then inserted the teat between his gums. What it is to have all your troubles settled by food. I could remember being hungry. At that precise moment my stomach felt it never wanted to eat again.

The ambulance doors opened and Zorzi and Trifun climbed in carrying something. Zorzi said, ‘Americans like to use bugs. Tell me where they are.’

To think, to answer, to keep alert was almost impossible. Behind the stubble of his beard Zorzi looked as bad as I felt, and angry. This was not his idea. I said, ‘None. We don’t need bugs with a bodyguard.’

That didn’t even raise a sneer. He simply signed to Trifun, and Trifun stepped forward with a bug-alert.

Benedict resented being separated from his bottle, and anyone passing on that road would have heard it. No one passed. They found nothing on Benedict, nothing in the bags or my clothes, down to my shoes. I let them hold my arms and I didn’t struggle. The door to the ambulance was locked, and there was a third man in the driver’s seat. I had nowhere to run to. And I wasn’t supposed to run anywhere anyway.

Johnson had told me that a bug-alert would blow it, and it did. They found my small, expensive dental operation and held my jaws open in their dirty hands while they picked at my teeth.

The bug was in a capped tooth, but it had been planted firmly enough not to come out while I was chewing, and by the time they dragged it out my head was ringing with pain. Nor was my jaw much improved when Zorzi hit it. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Bug on you: no bug on the baby?’

I didn’t know what they knew. I had to pretend I didn’t know they knew anything. I said, ‘My father is nervous.’

‘What?’ said Zorzi.

I tried again. ‘When I go abroad, my father wants me to be safe.’

They looked at me. Then from the frosted panel in front came a rapping. The driver spoke, and Zorzi, leaving me, opened the door and climbed out of the ambulance. He took the bug with him.

He came back five minutes later, and smiling. ‘Your tooth,’ he said. ‘It goes on a journey.’

Damn.

The ambulance started up.

The coast road to Kotor is spectacular. As the sky paled I saw it fitfully above Benedict’s head as he sucked, his eyes fixed on mine, and brought up the air he had swallowed, scented with orange, and then lay, smiling and semaphoring with his arms, while going through his repertoire of noises after each of my sentences. I got an impression of red-roofed villages, and date palms, and vines and magenta judas trees and orange blossom, and porches and balconies covered with windblown creeper and geraniums. The lower hills were green and yellow with scrub and gorse, with chrome-grey scars of rock in between, and cypresses set upright here and there like runes among the bushes. Higher up, as the light strengthened, the mountains looked as artificial as peaks out of papier mâché: wild and serrated and surging, with snow on the top.

When one is being kidnapped one should pay the greatest attention to the route one is taking. When one is in charge of a baby, one should never . . . never . . . never allow oneself to fall asleep.