The Golden Rendezvous (35 page)

men.... Which reminds me, my boy, which reminds me. I can't tell you how pleased I am-and how delighted. Hardly the time and place for it, but nevertheless my very heartiest congratulations. My wife feels exactly the same way about it, I assure you."

it was taking me all my time to pay attention to him. One of the crates was swinging dangerously in its slings, and if one of those crates dropped, fell on the deck, and burst open to reveal its contents, I didn't see that there was going to be much future for any of us. It wasn't a thought I liked to dwell on; it would be better to turn my mind to something else, like concentrating on what julius beresford was saying.

"I beg your pardon," I said.

"The job at my scottish oil port." he was half impatient, half smiling. "You know. Delighted that you are going to accept. But not half as delighted as we are about you and susan. All her life she's been pursued, as you can guess, by hordes of gold-digging dead beats, but I always told her that when the day came that she met a man who didn't give a damn for her money, even though he was a hobo, I wouldn't stand in her way. Well, she's found him. And you're no hobo.'

"The oil port? susan and me?" I blinked at him. "Look, sir

"I might have known it, I might have known it!" the laugh was pretty close to a guffaw. "That's my daughter. Never even got round to telling you yet. Wait till my wife hears this!"

"When did she tell you?" I asked politely. When i'd last seen her about two-fifteen that morning I would have thought it the last thing in her mind. "Yesterday afternoon." that was even before she had made the

job proposal to me. "But she'll get round to it, my boy, she'll get round to it."

"I won't get round to it!" I didn't know how long she had been standing there, but she was there now, a stormy voice to match stormy eyes. "I'll never get round to it. I must have been mad. I'm ashamed of myself for even thinking. I heard him, daddy. I was there last night with the others in the sick bay when he was telling carreras that the best way of stopping the ticonderoga was a long piercing blast on a whistle brought the tale of carter's cowardice to a merciful end.

Immediately green shirted armed men began to appear from other parts of

the ticonderoga, from the bridge and engine room where they'd been on guard during the transshipment, which was now finished except for one last crate. Two of the men with guns, I noticed, were dressed in blue merchant navy uniforms: those would be the radio officers carreras had introduced aboard the ticonderoga. I looked at my watch. Six twenty five. Carreras was cutting it fine enough.

and now carreras himself had jumped across to the afterdeck of the ticonderoga. He said something to captain brace. I couldn't hear what it was, but I could see brace, his face hard and grim, nodding reluctantly. Carreras arranging for the transfer of the coffins. On his way back to the rail he stopped beside me.

"You see that miguel carteras keeps his words. Everybody safely transferred." he glanced at his watch. "I still need a lieutenant."

"Good-bye, carreras."

he nodded, turned on his heel and left as his men brought the coffins on to the afterdeck of the ticonderoga. They handled them very reverently indeed, with a tender delicacy that showed they were only too aware of their contents. The coffins were not immediately recognisable as such: in the final gesture of the consummate actor paying the minutest attention to the last detail in his role, he had draped them with three stars and stripes. Knowing carreras, I was pretty sure that he'd brought them all the way from the caribbean.

captain brace stooped, lifted a corner of the flag on the coffin nearest to him, and looked down at the brass plaque with the name of senator hoskins on it. I heard a quick indrawing of breath, saw that susan beresford, hand to her parted lips, was staring down wide-eyed at it, too, remembered that she must be still under the impression that the twister was inside, reached out, and grabbed her ankle. I grabbed it hard.

"Be quiet!" I muttered fiercely. "For heaven's sake shut up!"

she heard me. She kept quiet. Her old man heard me, but he kept quiet also, which must have taken quite a bit of doing on his part when he saw me with my hand round his daughter's ankle. But the ability to keep expressions and emotions buttoned up must be among the most elementary training for an aspiring multimillionaire.

the last of carreras' men were gone, carreras with them. He didn't waste any time wishing us "bon voyage" or anything of the kind; he just ordered ropes cast off and disappeared at speed for the bridge. A minute later the campari was under way and, her afterdeck haphazardly packed with crates, was slewing round and heading away towards the east.

"Well," bullen said into the heavy silence, "there he goes, the murderer. With my ship, damn his soul!"

"He won't have it for long," I said. "Not even half an hour.

Captain brace, I advise you

"We'll dispense with your advice, mister." captain bullen's voice was a series of rattraps snapping shut, the blue eyes very frosty indeed.

"This is urgent, sir. It's imperative that captain brace-"

"I gave you a direct order, mr. carter. You will obey "will you please be quiet, captain bullen?" respectful exasperation, but more exasperation than respect.

"I still think you'd better be listening to him, sir," the bo'sun put in, gravely unhappy. "Mr. carter was not idle last right, unless i'm much mistaken."

"Thanks, bo'sun." I turned to captain brace again. "Phone the officer of the watch. Due west 180 degrees from the campari and full speed. No, emergency power. Now, captain brace."

the urgency in my voice got through. For a person who had just lost one hundred and fifty million dollars in gold brace reacted surprisingly quickly and well to the man who had just caused him to lose it. He gave a few quick words of instruction to a junior officer, then turned a coldly speculative gaze on me.

"Your reasons, sir?"

"In number four hold of the campari carreras is carrying an armed atomic bomb with the time fuse running out, the twister, the new missile stolen from the americans a week or so ago." a glance round the strained, incredulous faces of the listeners showed that they knew what I was talking about all right; it showed clearly that they couldn't believe it. "The twister "atomic bomb?" brace's voice was harsh and too loud. "What damned rubbish

"Will you listen? miss beresford, am I telling the truth?"

"You're telling the truth." her voice was unsteady, her green eyes jumpy and still on that coffin. "I saw it, captain. But

"So," I said. "The bomb. Armed. Due to go off in"-i glanced at my watch-"less than twenty-five minutes. Carreras knows it's due to go off then. That's why he's in such a tearing hurry to get away: he imagines the twister is aboard here. And that's why i'm in such a tearing hurry to go in the opposite direction: I know it's not."

"But it is here," said susan violently. "It is, you know it is! that coffin! there!"

"You're wrong, miss beresford." the ticonderoga was picking up speed now, the rumbling thrust of her propellor shaft vibrating through the deck plates. I wouldn't have put it past carreras to have had his glasses trained on our afterdeck as long as he possibly could, so I lay quietly where I was for the next ten or fifteen seconds while about forty pairs of frankly terrified eyes stared at the flag-shrouded coffins. Then the poop of the ticonderoga had swung round to the east, the campari was blocked from sight, and I was out of my blankets, ripping off the outside blankets and splints and fishing out the concealed screw driver before getting stiffly to my feet. The effect upon passengers and crew, who had believed implicitly that chief officer carter had a compound fracture of the thigh, was startling, to say the least. But I had no time to consider effects. I hobbled to the nearest coffin and pulled the flag clear.

"Mr. carter"-captain brace was by my side-"what on earth are you doing? criminal though carreras may be, he told me senator hoskins

"Ha." I said. With the handle of the screw driver I rapped out three sharp double knocks on the lid of the coffin: three knocks came in reply. I glanced round the ever-closing ring of watchers; a cameraman should have been there, recording those expressions for posterity.

"Remarkable recuperative powers, those american senators," I said to captain brace. "You just can't keep them down. You'll see."

i'd the lid off that coffin in two minutes flat: in coffin-lid removing, as in everything else, practice makes perfect.

dr. Slingsby caroline was as pale as any corpse i'd ever seen. He looked as if he had been frightened to death. I didn't blame him: there must be lots of harrowing experiences calculated to drive a man round the bend, but I think being screwed down in a coffin for about five hours must beat the lot. Dr. Caroline wasn't yet round the bend, but he'd been approaching it pretty fast, with the throttle wide open, by the time I got to him. He was shaking like a broken bedspring, his eyes wide with fear, and he could hardly speak; that knock of mine must have been the sweetest music he'd ever heard.

I left the ministrations to other hands and headed for the next coffin. The lid on this one was either pretty stiff or I was pretty weak, and I wasn't making much progress when a burly seaman from the ticonderoga's crew took the driver from my hand. I wasn't sorry to let it go. I looked at my watch. Seventeen minutes to seven.

"And this time, mr. carter?" it was captain brace once more at my elbow, a man whose expression clearly showed that his mind had given up trying to cope. It was understandable enough.

"Conventional explosive with a time setting. I think it's meant to blow up the twister in sympathetic detonation if the twister's own time mechanism doesn't work. Frankly, I don't know. The thing is that even this could sink the ticonderoga."

"Couldn't we couldn't we just heave it over the side?"

he asked nervously. "Not safe, sir. About due to go off and the jar of its hitting the water might be just enough to trigger off the clock. It would blow a hole the size of a barn through the side of your ship.... You might get someone to unscrew the third lid too."

I looked at my watch again. Fifteen minutes to seven. The campari was already hardly more than a dark smudge far down on the lightening horizon to the east, six, perhaps seven miles away. A fair distance off, but not far enough.

the lid was clear of the second coffin. I pulled back the covering blankets, located the primer and the two slender leads to the inset detonator, and gingerly sliced through these, one at a time, with a knife. Just to be on the safe side, I threw detonator and primer over the side. Two minutes later i'd rendered the time bomb in the third coffin equally harmless. I looked round the afterdeck; if those people had any sense, the place should have been deserted by now. No one seemed to have stirred an inch.

"Mr. carter," bullen said slowly. He'd stopped glaring at me. "I think perhaps you owe us a little explanation. This business of dr.

Caroline, the coffins, the-the substitutions.

so I gave it to him, highly condensed, while everybody crowded round, and at the end he said, "and I think maybe I might owe you a small apology." contrite, but not going overboard about it. "But I can't get the thought of the twister out of my head-the twister and the campari. She was a good ship, mister. Damn it, I know carreras is a villain, a monster, a man surrounded by cutthroats. But did you have to do it this way? to condemn them all to death? forty lives on your hands?"

"Better than a hundred and fifty lives on carreras' hands," julius beresford said sombrely. "Which is what it would have been but for our friend here."

"Couldn't be done, sir," I said to bullen. "The twister was armed and locked in position. Carreras has the key. The only way to render that bomb safe would be to tell carreras and let him unlock it. If we'd told him before he'd left here, sure, he'd have disarmed it, then he would have killed every man and woman on the ticonderoga. You can bet what you like that the generalissimo's last instruction was: 'no one must live to talk about this.'"

"It's still not too late," bullen said insistently. He wasn't giving a damn about carreras, but he loved the campari.

"Once we're under way there's no chance of his being able to board us again and kill us, even assuming he comes after us. We can dodge whatever shells"

"One moment, sir," I interrupted. "How do we warn him?"

"By radio, man, by radio! there's still six minutes. Get a message"

"The ticonderoga's transmitters are useless," I said wearily.

"They're smashed beyond repair."

"What?" brace caught my arm. "What? smashed? how do you know?"

"Use your head," I said irritably. "Those two bogus wireless operators were under orders to wreck the transmitters before they left.

Do you think carreras wanted you sending out soss all over the atlantic the moment he took off?"

"The thought hadn't even occurred to me." brace shook his head and spoke to a young officer. "On the phone. You heard. Cheek."

he checked and was back in thirty seconds, his face grave. "He's right, sir. Completely smashed."

"Our friend carreras," I murmured. "His own executioner."

two seconds later and five minutes ahead of schedule the campari blew itself out of existence. She must have been at least thirteen miles away; she was well hull-down over the horizon, and the high square bulk of the ticonderoga's raised poop lay in our direct line of sight, but, for all that, the searing blue-white glare that was the heart of the exploding bomb struck at our cringing wounded eyes with all the strength of a dozen noonday suns while it momentarily highlit the ticonderoga in blinding white and shadows blacker than night, as if some giant searchlight had been switched on only yards away. The intense whiteness, the murderous dazzlement, lasted no more than the fraction of

a second though its imprint on the eye's retina lasted many times longer and was replaced by a single bar-straight column of glowing red fire that streaked up into the dawn until it pierced the cloud above; and, following that, a great column of boiling seething-white water surged up slowly from the surface of the sea, incredibly slowly, seemed to reach halfway up to the clouds, then as slowly began to fall again. What little was left of the shattered and vaporised campari would have been in that gigantic waterspout. The campari and carreras.