The Golden Rendezvous (24 page)

I gave the electric lantern to susan, after shining it on a vertical steel ladder tapering down into the depths of the hold.

"Down you go," I said. "For heaven's sake, hang on to that ladder.

There's a baffle about three feet high at the bottom of it. Get behind it. You should be safe there."

I watched her climb slowly down, manoeuvred two of the battens back into place over my head no easy job with one hand and left them like that. Maybe they would be jarred loose; they might even fall down into the hold. It was a chance I had to take; they could only be secured from above. And the covering tarpaulin could also only be secured from above. There was nothing I could do about that either. If anyone was crazy enough to be out on deck that night especially as carreras had no life lines rigged the chances were in that blinding storm they wouldn't even notice the flapping corner of the tarpaulin or, if they did, they would only either pass it by or, at the most, secure it. If someone was cunous enough to go to the length of pushing back a batten-well, there was no point in worrying about that.

I went down the hatch slowly, awkwardly, painfully-marston had a higher opinion of his anaesthetics than I had and joined susan on the floor behind the baffle. At this level the noise was redoubled, the sight of those head-high behemoths of crates charging across the hold more terrifying than ever. Susan said, "the coffins, where are they?"

all I had told her was that I wanted to examine some coffins. I couldn't bring myself to tell her what we might find in them.

"They're boxed. In wooden crates. On the other side of the hold."

"The other side!" she twisted her head, lined up the lantern, and looked at the sliding wreckage and crates screeching and tearing their way across the floor. "The other side! we would-we would be killed before we got halfway there."

"Like enough, but I don't see anything else for it. Hold on a minute, will you?"

"You! with your leg! you can't even hobble. Oh no!" before I could stop her, she was over the baffle and half running, half staggering across the hold, tripping and stumbling as the ship lurched and her feet caught on broken planks of wood, but always managing to regain balance, to stop suddenly or dodge nimbly as a crate slid her way. She was agile, I had to admit, and quick on her feet, but she was exhausted with seasickness, with bracing herself for the past hours against the constant violent lurching of the campari; she'd never make it.

but make it she did, and I could see her on the other side, flashing her torch round. My admiration for her spirit was equailed only by my exasperation at her actions. What was she going to do with those boxed coffins when she found them, carry them back across the floor, one under each arm?

but they weren't there, for after she had looked everywhere she shook her head. And then she was coming back and I was shouting out a warning, but the warning stuck in my throat and was only a whisper and she wouldn't have heard it anyway. A plunging, careening crate, propelled by a sudden vicious lurch as the campari plunged headlong into an exceptional trough, caught her back and shoulder and pitched her to the floor, pushing her along before its massive weight as if it were imbued with an almost human inhumanuality of evil and malignance and determined to crush the life out of her against the forward bulkhead.

And then, in the last second before she would have died, the campari straightened, the crate screeched to a halt less than a yard from the bulkhead, and susan was lying there between crate and bulkhead, very still. I must have been at least fifteen feet away from her, but I have no recollection of covering the distance from the baffle to where she lay and then back again, but I must have done; for suddenly we were there in a place of safety and she was clinging to me as if I were the last hope left in the world.

"Susan!" my voice was hoarse, a voice belonging to someone else altogether. "Susan, are you hurt?"

she clung even closer. By some miracle she still held the lantern clutched in her right hand. It was round the back of my neck somewhere,

but the reflected beam from the ship's side gave enough light to see by.

Her mask had been torn ff; her face was scratched and bleeding, her hair

a bedragled mess, her clothes soaked and her heart going like a captive bird's. For an incongruous moment an unbidden recolection touched my mind, a recollection of a very cool, very poised, sweetly mallcious, pseudo-solicitous young lady asking me about cocktails only two days ago in carracio, but the vision faded as soon as it had come; the incongruity was too much.

"Susan!" I said urgently. "Are you "i'm not hurt." she gave a long, tremulous sigh that was ore shudder than sigh. "I was just too scared to move." he eased her grip a trifle, looked at me with green eyes enormous in the pallor of her face, then buried her face my shoulder. I thought she was going to choke me. It didn't last long, fortunately. I felt the grip slowly easing, w the beam of the lantern shifting, and she was saying in n abnormally matter-of-fact voice: "there they are." I turned round and there, not ten feet away, they were deed. Three cotlins-carreras had already removed the cases-and securely stowed between baffle and bulkhead and added with tarpaulins, so that they could come to no harm.

tony carreras kept on repeating, his old man didn't miss much.

Dark, shiny coffins with black-braided ropes and brass handles. One of them had an inlet plaque on the lid, copper r brass, I couldn't be sure.

"That saves me some trouble." my voice was almost back normal. I took the hammer and chisel i'd borrowed from e bosun's store and let them drop. "This screw driver will all I need. We'll find two of those with what's normally side them. Give me the lantern and stay there. I'll be as quick as I can."

"You'll be quicker if I hold the lantern." her voice matched my own in steadiness, but the pulse in her throat was going like a trip hammer. "Hurry, please."

I was in no way to argue. I caught the foot of the nearest coffin and pulled it towards me so that I could have room to work. It was jammed. I slid my hand under the end to lift it and suddenly my finger found a hole in the bottom of the coffin. And then another. And a third. A lead-lined coffin with holes bored in the bottom of it. That was curious, to say the least.

when i'd moved it far enough out, I started on the screws. They were brass and very heavy, but so was the screw driver i'd taken from macdonald's store. And at the back of my mind was the thought that if the knockout drops dr. Marston had provided for the sentry were in any way as ineffective as the anaesthetic he had given me, then the sentry would be waking up any minute now. If he hadn't already come to. I had that coffin lid off in no time at all.

beneath the lid was not the satin shroud or silks I would have expected but a filthy old blanket. In the generalissimo's country, perhaps, their customs with coffins were different from ours. I pulled off the blanket and found I was right. Their customs were, on occasion, different. The corpse, in this case, consisted of blocks of amatolach block was clearly marked with the word, so there was no mistake about it-a primer, a small case of detonators, and a compact square box with wires leading from it, a timing device probably.

susan was peering over my shoulder. "What's amatol?"

"High explosive. Enough there to blow the campari apart." she asked nothing else. I replaced the blanket, screwed on the lid, and started on the next coffin. This, too, had holes in the underside, probably to prevent the explosives sweating. I removed the lid, looked at the contents, and replaced the lid. Number two was a duplicate of number one. And then I started on the third one. The one with the plaque. This would be the one. The plaque was heart-shaped and read with impressive simplicity: "richard hoskins, senator." just that.

Senator of what I didn't know. But impressive. Impressive enough to ensure its reverent transportation to the united states. I removed the lid with care, gentleness, and as much respectful reverence as if richard hoskins actually were inside, which I knew he wasn't.

whatever lay inside was covered with a rug. I lifted the rug gingerly; susan brought the lantern nearer, and there it lay, cushioned in blankets and cotton wool. A polished cylinder, seventy-five inches in length, eleven inches in diameter, with a whitish pyroceram nose cap.

Just lying there, there was something frightening about it, something unutterably evil; but perhaps that was just because of what was in my own mind.

"What is it?" susan's voice was so low th t she bad to come closer to repeat the words. "Oh, johnny, what in the world is it?"

"The twister."

"The-the what?"

"The twister."

"Oh, dear god!" she had it now. "This-this atomic device that was stolen in south carolina. The twister." she rose unsteadily to her feet and backed away. "The twister!"

"It won't bite you," I said. I didn't feel too sure about that either. "The equivalent of five thousand tons of t.n.t. Guaranteed to blast any ship on earth to smithereens, if not actually vaporise. And that's just what carreras intends to do."

"I-i don't understand." maybe she was referring to the actual hearing of the words-our talk was continually being punctuated by the screeching of metal and the sounds of wood being crushed and snapped to

the meaning of what I was saying. "You when he gets the gold from the ticonderoga and transships it to this vessel he has standing by, he's going to blow up the campari with-with this?"

"There is no ship standing by. There never was. When he's loaded the gold aboard, the kindhearted miguel carreras is going to free all the passengers and crew of the campari and let them off in the fort ticonderoga. As a further mark of his sentimentality and kindness he's going to ask that senator hoskins here and his two presumably illustrious companions be taken back for burial in their native land.

The captain of the ticonderoga would never dream of refusing-and, if it came to the bit, carreras would make certain that he damned well didn't refuse. See that?" I pointed to a panel near the tail of the twister.

"Don't touch it!" if you can imagine anyone screaming in a whisper, then that's what she did. "I wouldn't touch it for all the money in the ticonderoga,"

I assured her fervently. "I'm even scared to look at the damned thing. Anyway, that panel is almost certainly a timing device which will be preset before the coffin is transshipped. We sail merrily on our way, hell-bent for norfolk, the army, navy, air force, f.b.i., and what have you-for carreras' radio stooges aboard the ticonderoga will make good and certain that the radios will be smashed and we'll have no means of sending a message. Half an hour, an hour after leaving the campari-an hour, at least, I should think; even carreras wouldn't want to be within miles of an atomic device going up-well, it would be quite a bang."

"He'll never do it-never." the emphatic voice didn't carry the slightest shred of conviction. "The man must be a fiend."

"Grade one," I agreed. "And don't talk rubbish about his not doing it. Why do you think they stole the twister and made it appear as if dr. Slingsby caroline had lit out with it? from the very beginning it was with the one and only purpose of blowing the fort ticonderoga to kingdom come. So that there would be no possibility of any comeback, everything hinged on the total destruction of the ticonderoga and everyone aboard it, including passengers and crew of the campari. Maybe carreras' two fake radiomen could have smuggled some explosives aboard but it would be quite impossible to smuggle enough to ensure complete destruction. Hundreds of tons of high explosives in the magazines of a british battle cruiser blew up in the last war, but still there were survivors. He couldn't sink it by gunfire-a couple of shots from a moderately heavy gun and the campari's decks would be so buckled that the guns would be useless-and even then there would be bound to be survivors. But with the twister there will be no chances of survival.

None in the world."

"Carreras' men," she said slowly, "they killed the guards in this atomic research establishment?"

"What else? and then forced dr. Caroline to drive out through the gates with themselves and the twister in the back. The twister was probably en route to their island, by air, inside an hour, but someone drove the brake wagon down to savannah before abandoning it. No doubt to throw suspicion on the campari, which they knew was leaving savannah that morning. I'm not sure why, but I would take long odds it was because carreras, knowing the campari was bound for the caribbean, was reasonably sure that she would be searched at her first port of call, giving him the opportunity to introduce his bogus marconi man aboard."

while I had been talking i'd been studying two circular dials inset in the panel on the twister. Now I spread the rug back in position with all the loving care of a father smoothing out the bedcover over his youngest son and started to screw the coffin lid back in position. For a time susan watched me in silence, then said wonderingly, "mr. cerdan.

Dr. Caroline. The same person. It has to be the same person. I remember now. At the time of the disappearance of the twister it was mentioned that only one or two people so far know how to arm the twister."

"He was just as important to their plans as the twister. Without him, it was useless. Poor old doc caroline has had a rough passage, i'm afraid. Not only kidnapped and forced to do as ordered, but knocked about by us also, the only people who could have saved him. Under constant guard by those two thugs disguised as nurses. He bawled me out

of his cabin the first time I saw him, but only because he knew that his devoted nurse, sitting beside him with her dear little knitting bag on her lap, had a sawed-off shotgun inside it."

"But but why the wheel chair? was it necessary to take such elaborate"

"Of course it was. They couldn't have him mingling with the passengers, communicating with them. It helped conceal his unusual height. And it also gave them a perfect reason to keep a non-stop watch on incoming radio messages. He came to your father's cocktail party because he was told to -the coup was planned for that evening and it suited carreras to have his two armed nurses there to help in the takeover. Poor old caroline. That dive he tried to make from his wheel chair when I showed him the earphones wasn't made with the intention of