The Golden Rendezvous (34 page)

He can't and won't try to get away."

he stared at me without seeing me, then gave a small nod. "I suppose it's out of the question to persuade you to become my-ah-lieutenant, carter?"

"Just see me safe aboard the ticonderoga, carreras. That's all the thanks I want."

"That shall be done." he glanced at his watch. "In under three hours six of your crew will be here with stretchers to transfer captain bullen, the bo'sun, and yourself to the ticonderoga."

he left. I looked round the sick bay; they were all there, bullen and macdonald in their beds, susan and marston by the dispensary door, both shawled in blankets. They were all looking at me and the expressions on their faces were very peculiar indeed, to say the least of it.

the silence went on and on for what seemed like a quite unnecessarily long time, then bullen spoke, his voice slow and hard.

"Carreras has committed one act of piracy; he is about to commit another. By doing so he declares himself an enemy of queen and country.

You will be charged with giving aid and comfort to the enemy, with being directly responsible for the loss of a hundred and fifty million dollars in gold bullion. I shall take statements from witnesses present as soon as we get aboard the ticonderoga." I couldn't blame the old man; he still believed in carreras' promise as to our future safety. In his eyes I was just making things too damned easy for carreras. But now wasn't the time to enlighten him.

"Oh, here," I said, "that's a bit hard, isn't it? aiding, abetting, accessorying, if you like, but all this treason stuff

"Why did you do it?" susan beresford shook her head wonderingly.

"Oh, why did you do it, helping him like that just to save your own neck?" and now wasn't the time to enlighten her either: neither she nor bullen were actor enough to carry off their parts in the morning if they knew the whole truth.

"That's a bit hard, too," I protested. "Only a few hours go there was no one keener than yourself to get away from he campari. And now that

"I didn't want it done this way! I didn't know until now hat there was a chance that the ticonderoga could escape."

"I wouldn't have believed it, john," dr. Marston said eavily. "I just wouldn't have believed it."

"It's all right for you to talk," I said. "You've all got families. I've only got myself. Can you blame me for wanting o look after all I have?" no one took me up on this masterpiece of logical reasoning. Looked round them one by one, and they turned away one y one, susan, marston, and bullen, not bothering to hide heir expressions.

And then macdonald, too, turned away, but not before his left eyelid had dropped in a long, slow wink.

I eased myself down in bed and made up my mind for sleep. No one asked me how I got on that night.

chapter 12

[saturday 6 a. m. -7 a.m.]

when I awoke I was stiff and sore and still shivering. But it wasn't the pain or the cold or the fever that had brought me up from the murky depths of that troubled sleep. It was noise, a series of grinding, creaking metallic crashes that echoed and shuddered throughout

the entire length of the campari as if she were smashing into an iceberg with every roll she took. I could tell from the slow, sluggish, lifeless roll that the stabilisers weren't working: the campari was stopped, dead in the water.

"Well, mister." bullen's voice was a harsh grate. "Your plan worked, damn you. Congratulations. The ticonderoga's alongside."

"Alongside?"

"Right alongside," macdonald confirmed. "Lashed alongside."

"In this weather?" I winced as the two ships rolled heavily together in the trough of a deep swell, and I heard the harsh tearing scream of sound as topsides metal buckled and rended under the staggering weight of the impact. "It'll ruin the paint work. The man's mad."

"He's in a hurry," macdonald said. "I can hear the jumbo winch aft. He's started transshipping cargo already."

"Aft?" I couldn't keep the note of excitement out of my voice, and everybody suddenly looked at me, curiosity in their eyes. "Aft? are you sure?"

"I'm sure, sir."

"Are we tied bow to bow and stern to stern, or are we facing in opposite directions?"

"No idea." both he and bullen were giving me very close looks, but there was a difference in the quality of the closeness. "Does it matter, mr. carter?" he knew damned well it did.

"It doesn't matter," I said indifferently. Not much it didn't matter: only 150 million dollars, that was all it mattered.

"Where's miss beresford?" I asked marston. "With her folks," he said shortly. "Packing clothes. Your kind friend carreras is allowing the passengers to take one suitcase apiece with them. He says they'll get the rest of their stuff back in due course-if anyone manages to pick up the campari after he has abandoned it, that is."

it was typical, I thought, of the man's extraordinary thoroughness in all he did: by letting them pack some clothes and promising the eventual safe return of the remainder, he would eliminate from even the most suspicious minds the unworthy thought that perhaps his intentions towards the crew and passengers weren't of the highest and the noblest.

the phone rang. Marston picked it up, listened briefly, then hung up.

"Stretcher party in five minutes," he announced.

"Help me dress, please," I said. "My white uniform shorts and white shirt."

"You you're not getting up?" marston was aghast. "What if"

"I'm getting up, dressing, and getting back to bed again,"

I said shortly. "Do you think i'm daft? what's carreras going to think if he sees a man with a compound fracture of the thigh hopping briskly over the rail of the ticonderoga?"

I dressed, stuck the screw driver under the splints on my left leg, and got back to bed again. I was no sooner there than the stretcher party appeared and all three of us, still blanket-wrapped, were lowered gently on to the stretchers. The six bearers stooped, caught the handles, and we were on our way.

we were carried straight aft along the main deck passage to the afterdeck. I saw the end of the passage approaching, the grey, cold dawn light replacing the warm electric glow of the passageway, and I could feel my muscles tense involuntarily. The ticonderoga would be in sight in a few seconds along our starboard side, and I wondered if I would dare to look. Would we be tied bow to bow or bow to stern? would I have won or lost? we came out on the afterdeck.

I forced myself to look.

i'd won. Bow to bow and stern to stern. From my low elevation on the stretcher I couldn't see much, but that I could see-bow to bow, stern to stern. That meant that the campari's after jumbo was unloading

from the ticonderoga's afterdeck. I looked again and checked again and there was no mistake. Bow to bow, stern to stern. I felt like a million dollars. A hundred million dollars.

the ticonderoga, a big cargo vessel, dark blue with a red funnel, was almost the same size as the campari. More important, their afterdecks were almost the same height above the water, which made for

ease of transfer of both cargo and human beings. I could count eight crates already aboard the afterdeck of the campari: a dozen still to come.

the transfer of human livestock had gone even further: all of the passengers, as far as I could judge, and at least half of the campari's crew were already standing on the afterdeck of the ticonderoga, making no move, except to brace themselves against the rolling of the ship; their stillness was encouraged by a couple of hard-faced characters in green jungle uniform, each with a machine pistol cocked. A third gunman covered two ticonderoga seamen who were stationed at lowered guardrails

to catch and steady men as they stepped or jumped from the afterdeck of

the campari to that of the ticonderoga as the two ships rolled together.

Two more supervised ticonderoga crew members fitting slings to the crates still to be transferred. From where I lay I could see four other armed men-there were probably many more patrolling the decks of the ticonderoga and four others on the afterdeck of the campari. Despite the fact that most of them were dressed in a quasi uniform of jungle green, they didn't look like soldiers to me: they just looked like what they were, hardened criminals with guns in their hands, cold eyed men with their history written in their faces by the lines of brutality and depravity. Although he was maybe a bit short on the side of aesthetic appreciation, there was no doubt but that carreras picked his killers well.

the sky was low with grey tattered cloud stretching away to the grey indistinctness of a tumbled horizon; the wind, westerly now, was still strong, but the rain had almost stopped, no more than a cold drizzle, felt rather than seen. Visibility was poor, but it would be good enough to let carreras see that there were no other ships in the vicinity, and the radarscope, of course, would be working all the time.

But apparently the visibility hadn't been good enough to let carreras see three ropes still attached to the base of the guardrail stanchion on the port side. From where I lay I could see them clearly. To me they looked about the size of the cables supporting the brooklyn bridge. I hastily averted my eyes.

but carreras, I could now see, had no time to look round him anyway. He himself had taken charge of the transshipment of the crates,

hurrying on both his own men and the crew of the ticonderoga, shouting at them, encouraging them, driving them on with an unflagging, unrelenting energy and urgency which seemed strangely at variance with his normally calm, dispassionate bearing. He would, of course, be understandably anxious to have the transfer completed before any curious

third ship might heave in sight over the horizon, but even so... And then I knew what accounted for all the nearly desperate haste: I looked at my watch.

it was already ten minutes past six. Ten past six! from what i'd gathered of carreras' proposed schedule for the transfer and from the lack of light in the sky i'd have put the time at no more than half-past five. I checked again, but no mistake. Six-ten. Carreras would want to be over the horizon when the twister went up he would be safe enough from blast and radioactive fallout, but heaven alone knew what kind of tidal wave would be pushed up by the explosion of such an underwater nuclear device-and the twister was due to go up in fifty minutes. His haste was understandable. I wondered what had held him up. Perhaps the

late arrival of the ticonderoga or the lapse of a longer period of time than he had expected in luring it alongside. Not that it mattered now.

a signal from carreras and it was time for the stretcher cases to be transferred. I was the first to go. I didn't much fancy the prospect of the brief trip; i'd just be a reddish stain spread over a couple of hundred square feet of metal if one of the bearers slipped as the two big ships rolled together, but the nimble-footed seamen probably

had the same thought in mind for themselves, for they made no mistake a

minute later and both other stretchers had been brought across.

we were set down near the forward break of the afterdeck, beside our passengers and crew. In a group slightly to one side, with a guard all to themselves, stood a few officers and maybe a dozen men of the ticonderoga's crew. One of them, a tall, lean, angry-eyed man in his early fifties with the four gold rings of a captain on his sleeves and carrying a telegraph form in his hand, was talking to mcllroy, our chief engineer, and cummings. Mcllroy, ignoring the sudden lift of the guard's gun, brought him across to where we'd been set down.

"Thank god you all survived," mcllroy said quietly. "Last time I saw you three I wouldn't have given a bent penny for any of your chances. This is captain brace of the ticonderoga. Captain brace, captain bullen, chief officer carter."

"Glad to make your acquaintance, sir," bullen whispered huskily.

"But not in these damnable circumstances." no question about it, the old man was on the way to recovery. "We'll leave mr. carter out of it, mr. mcllroy. I intend to prefer charges against him for giving undue and unwarranted aid to that damned monster carreras." considering i'd saved his life by refusing to let doc marston operate on him, I did think he might have shown a little more gratitude.

"Johnny carter?" mcllroy looked his open disbelief. "It's impossible!"

"You'll have your proof," bullen said grimly. He looked up at captain brace. "Knowing that you knew what cargo you were carrying, I should have expected you to make a run for it when intercepted, naval guns or no naval guns. But you didn't, did you? you answered an sos, isn't that it? distress rockets, claims that plates had been sprung in the hurricane, sinking, come and take us off? right, captain?"

"I could have outrun or out manuvered him," brace said tightly.

Then, in sudden curiosity, "how did you know that?"

"Because I heard our first mate here advising him that it was the best way to do it. Part of your answer already, eh, mcLlroy?" he looked at me without admiration, then back at mcllroy. "Have a couple of men move me nearer that bulkhead. I don't feel too comfortable here."

I gave him an injured glance but it bounced right off him. His stretcher was shifted and I was left more or less alone in front of the group. I lay there for about three minutes, watching the cargo transfer. A crate a minute, and this despite the fact that the manilla holding the after ends of the two vessels together snapped and had to be

replaced. Ten minutes at the most and he should be all through.

a hand touched my shoulder and I looked round. Julius beresford was squatting by my side.

"Never thought i'd see you again, mr. carter," he said candidly.

"How do you feel?"

"Better than I look," I said untruthfully. "And why left all alone here?" he asked curiously. "This," I explained, "is what is known as being sent to coventry. Captain bullen is convinced that I gave unwarranted help or aid, or some such legal phrase, to carreras. He's not pleased with me."

"Rubbish!" he snorted. "He heard me doing it."

"Don't care what he heard," beresford said flatly. "Whatever he heard, he didn't hear what he thought he did. I make as many mistakes as the next man, maybe more than most, but I never make a mistake about