By the time I reached the north tip of the island, and climbed high enough up the slope to look out over the deep-water channel, the crash boat was a mile away, heading resolutely for the distant mainland of Africa, a small white shape against the shaded greens of the sea, and the higher harsher blue of the sky.
I tucked the FN under my arm and found a seat from where I could watch her further progress. My wrist.w.a.tch showed seven minutes past ten o"clock, and I began to wonder if the case of gelignite below the crash boat"s stern had, after all, been torn loose by the drag of the water and the wash of the propellers.
The crash boat was now pa.s.sing between the submerged outer reefs before entering the open insh.o.r.e waters. The reefs blew regularly, breathing white foam at each surge of the sea as though a monster lay beneath the surface.
The small white speck of the crash boat seemed ethereal and insubstantial in that wilderness of sea and sky, soon she would merge with the wind-flecked and current-chopped waters of the open sea.
The explosion when it came was without pa.s.sion, its violence muted by distance and its sound toned by the wind. There was a sudden soft waterspout that enveloped the tiny white boat. It looked like an ostrich feather, soft and blowing on the wind, bending when it reached its full height and then losing its shape and smearing away across the choppy surface.
The sound reached me many seconds later, a single unwar-like thud against my still-tender eardrums, and I thought I felt the flap of the blast like the puff of the wind against my face.
When the spray had blown into nothingness the channel was empty, no sign remained of the tiny vessel and there was no mark of her going upon the wind-blown waters.
I knew that with the tide the big evil-looking albacore sharks hunted insh.o.r.e upon the flood. They would be quick to the taint of blood and torn flesh in the water, and I doubted that any of those aboard the crash boat who had survived the blast would long avoid the attentions of those single-minded and voracious killers. Those that found Commander Suleiman Dada would fare well, I thought, unless they recognized a kindred spirit and accorded him professional privilege. It was a grim little joke, and it gave me only fleeting amus.e.m.e.nt. I stood up and walked down to the caves.
found my medical kit had been broken open and scattered during the previous day"s looting, but I retrieved sufficient material to clean and dress Sherry"s mutilated fingers. Three of the nails had been torn out. I feared that the roots had been destroyed, and that they would never grow again - but when Sherry expressed the same fears, I denied them stoutly.
Once her injuries were taken care of I made her swallow a couple of codeine for the pain and made a bed for her in the darkness of the back of the cave.
"Rest," I told her, kneeling to kiss her tenderly. "Try and sleep. I will fetch you when we are ready to leave."
Chubby was already busy with the necessary tasks. He had checked the whaleboat and, apart from a few shrapnel holes, found her in good condition.
We filled the holes with Pratleys putty from the toolchest, and left her on the beach.
The hole in which the chest had been buried served as a communal grave for the dead men and the woman lying about it. We laid them in it like sardines, and covered them with the soft sand.
We exhumed the golden head from its own grave with its glittering eye still in the broad forehead, and staggering under its weight we carried it down to the whaleboat and padded it with the polythene cushions in the bottom of the boat. The plastic packets of sapphires and emeralds I packed into my haversack and laid it beside the head.
Then we returned to the caves and salvaged all the undamaged stores and equipment - the jerrycans of water and petrol, the scuba bottles and the compressor. It was late afternoon before we had packed it all into the whaleboat and I was tired. I laid the FN rifle on top of the load and stood back.
"Okay, Chubby?" I asked, as I lit our cheroots and we took our first break. "Reckon we can take off now."
Chubby drew on the cheroot and blew a long flag of blue smoke before he spat on the sand. "I just want to go up and fetch Angelo," he muttered, and when I stared at him he went on, "I"m not going to leave the kid up there. It"s too lonely here, he"ll want to be with his own people in a Christian grave."
So while I went back to the caves to fetch Sherry, Chubby selected a bolt of canvas and went off into the gathering darkness.
I woke Sherry and made sure she was warmly dressed in one of my jerseys, then I gave her two more codeine and took her down towards the beach. It was dark now, and I held the flashlight in one hand and helped Sherry with the other. We reached the beach and I paused uncertainly. There was something wrong, I knew, and I played the torch over the loaded vessel.
Then I realized what it was, and I felt a sick little jolt in my belly.
The FN rifle was no longer where I had left it in the whaleboat.
"Sherry," I whispered urgently, "get down and stay there until I tell you."
She sank swiftly to the sand beside the beached hull, and I looked around frantically for a weapon. I thought of the spear-gun, but it was under the jerrycans, my bait-knife was still pegged into a palm tree in the grove - I had forgotten about it until this moment. A spanner from the toolbox, perhaps - but the thought was as far as I got.
"All right, Harry, I"ve got the gun." The deep throaty voice spoke out of the darkness close behind me. "Don"t turn around or do anything stupid."
He must have been lying up in the grove after he had taken the rifle, and now he had come up silently behind me. I froze.
"Without turning around - just toss that flashlight back here.
Over your shoulder."
I did as he ordered and I heard the sand crunch under his feet as he stooped to pick it up.
"All right, turn around - slowly." As I turned, he shone the powerful beam into my eyes, dazzling me. However, I could still vaguely make out the huge hulking shape of the man beyond the beam.
"Have a good swim, Suleimanr I asked. I could see that he wore only a pair of short white underpants, and his enormous belly and thick shapeless legs gleamed wetly in the reflected torchlight.
"I am beginning to develop an allergy to your jokes, Harry," he spoke again in that deep beautifully modulated voice, and I remembered too late how a grossly overweight man becomes light and strong in the supporting salt water of the sea. However, even with the turn of the tide to help him, Suleiman Dada had performed a formidable feat in surviving the explosion and swimming back through almost two miles of choppy water. I doubted any of his men had done as well.
"I think it should be in the belly first," he spoke again, and I saw that he held the stock of the rifle across his left elbow. With the same hand he aimed the torch beam into my face. "They tell me that is the most painful place to get it."
We were silent for moments then, Suleiman Dada. breathing with his deep asthmatic wheeze and I trying desperately to think of some way in which to distract him long enough to give me a chance to grab the barrel of the FN.
"I don"t suppose you"d like to go down on your knees and plead with me?"he asked.
"Go screw, Suleiman," I answered.
"No, I didn"t really think you would. A pity, I would have enjoyed that. But what about the girl, Harry, surely it would be worth a little of your pride " We both heard Chubby. He had known there was no way he could cross the open beach undetected, even in the dark. He had tried to rush Suleiman Dada, but I am sure he knew that he would not make it. What he was really doing was giving me the distraction I so desperately needed.
He came fast out of the darkness, running in silently with only the squeak of the treacherous sand beneath his feet to betray him. Even when Suleiman Dada turned the rifle on to him, he did not falter in his charge.
There was the crack of the shot and the long lightning flash of the muzzle blast, but even before that, I was halfway across the distance that separated me from the huge black man. From the corner of my eye I saw Chubby fall, and then Suleiman Dada began to swing the rifle back towards me.
I brushed past the barrel of the FN and crashed shoulder first into his chest. It should have staved his ribs in like the victim of a car smash - instead I found the power of my rush absorbed in the thick padding of dark flesh. It was like running into a feather mattress, and although he reeled back a few paces and lost the rifle, Suleiman Dada remained upright on those two thick tree-trunks of his legs, and before I could recover my own balance I was enfolded in a vast bear hug.
He picked me up off my feet, and pulled me to his mountainously soft chest, trapping both my arms and lifting me so that I could not brace my legs to resist his weight and strength. I experienced a chill of disbelief when I felt the strength of the man, not a hard brutal strength - but something so ma.s.sive and weighty that there seemed no end to it, almost like the irresistible push and surge of the sea.
I tried with my elbows and knees, kicking and striking to break his hold, but the blows found nothing solid and made no impression upon the man. Instead, the enfolding grip of his arms began to tighten with the slow pulsing power of a giant python. I realized instantly that he was quite capable of literally crushing me to death - and I experienced a sense of panic. I twisted and struggled frantically and unavailingly in his arms, but as he brought more of his immense power to bear upon me, so his breathing wheezed more harshly and he leaned, forward, hunching his great shoulders over me and forcing my back into an arc that must soon snap my spine.
I bent back my head, reached up with an open mouth and I locked my teeth into the broad flattened nose. I bit in hard, with all my desperation, and quite clearly I felt my teeth slice through the flesh and gristle of his nose and instantly my mouth filled with the warm salty metallic flood of his blood. Like a dog at a bull-baiting, I worried and tugged at his nose.
The man bellowed a roar of agony and anger and he released his crushing grip from around my body to try and tear my teeth from his face. The instant my arms were free I twisted convulsively and got a purchase with both feet in the firm wet sand, so I could put my hip into him for the throw. He was so busy attempting to dislodge the grip of my teeth from his nose that he could not resist the throw and as he went over backwards my teeth tore loose, cutting away a lump of his living flesh.
I spat out the horrid mouthful but the warm blood streamed down my chin and I resisted the temptation to pause and wipe it clean.
Suleiman Dada was down on his back, stranded like some ma.s.sive crippled black frog, but he would not remain helpless much longer, I had to take him out cleanly now and there was only one place where he might be vulnerable.
I jumped up high over him and came down to knee-drop into his throat, to drive my one knee with the full weight and momentum of my body into his larynx and crush it.
He was swift as a cobra, throwing up both arms to shield his throat and to catch me as I descended on to him. Once again, I was enmeshed by those thick black arms, and we rolled down the beach, locked chest to chest into the warm shallow water of the lagoon.
In a direct contrast of weight for weight like this, I was outmatched, and he came up over me with blood streaming from his injured nose, still bellowing with anger, and he pinned me into the shallows forcing my head below the surface and bearing down upon my chest and lungs with all his vast weight.
I began to drown. My lungs caught fire, and the need to breathe laced my vision with sparks and whorls of fire. I could feel the strength going out of me and my consciousness receding into blackness.
The shot when it sounded was muted and dull. I did not recognize it for what it was, until I felt Suleiman Dada jerk and stiffen, felt the strength go out of him and his weight slip and fall from me.
I sat up coughing and gasping for air, with water cascading from my hair and streaming into my eyes. In the light of the fallen torch I saw Sherry North kneeling on the sand at the edge of the water. She had the rifle still clutched in her bandaged hand and her face was pale and frightened.
Beside me, Suleiman Dada floated face down in the shallow water, his half-naked body glistening blackly like a stranded porpoise. I stood up slowly, water pouring from my clothing and she stared at me, horrified with what she had done.
"Oh G.o.d,"she whispered, "I"ve killed him. Oh G.o.d!"
"Baby," I gasped. "That was the best day"s work you"ve ever done," and I staggered past her to where Chubby lay.
He was trying to sit up, struggling feebly.
"Take it easy, Chubby," I snapped at him, and picked up the torch.
There was fresh blood on his shirt and I unb.u.t.toned it and pulled it open around the broad brown chest.
It was low and left, but it was a lung hit. I saw the bubbles frothing from the dark hole at each breath. I have seen enough gunshot wounds to be something of an authority and I knew that this was a bad one.
He watched my face. "How does it look?" he grunted. "It"s not sore."
"Lovely," I answered grimly. "Every time you drink a beer it will run out of the hole! He grinned crookedly, and I helped him to sit up. The exit hole was clean and neat, the FN had been loaded with solid ammunition, and it was only slightly larger than the entry hole. The bullet had not mushroomed against bone.
I found a pair of field dressings in the medical chest and bound up the wounds before I helped him into the boat. Sherry had prepared one of the mattresses and we covered him with blankets.
"Don"t forget Angelo," he whispered. I found the long heartbreaking canvas bundle where Chubby had dropped it, and I carried Angelo down and laid him in the bows.
I shoved the whaleboat out until I was waist-deep, then I scrambled over the side and started the engines. My one concern now was to get proper medical attention for Chubby, but it was a long cold run down the islands to St. Mary"s.
Sherry sat beside, Chubby on the floorboards, doing what little she could for his comfort - while I stood in the stern between the motors and negotiated the deep-water channel before turning southwards under a sky full of cold white stars, bearing my cargo of wounded, and dying and dead.
We had been going for almost five hours when Sherry stood up from beside the blanketed form in the bottom of the boat and made her way back to me.
"Chubby wants to talk to you," she said quietly, and then impulsively she leaned forward and touched my cheek with the cold fingers of her uninjured hand. "I think he is going, Harry." And I heard the desolation in her voice.
I pa.s.sed the con to her. "You see those two bright stars," I showed her the pointers of the Southern Cross, "steer straight for them," and I went forward to where Chubby lay.
For a while he did not seem to know me, and I knelt beside him and listened to the soft liquid sound of his breathing. Then at last he became aware. I saw the starlight catch his eyes and he looked up at me, and I leaned closer so that our faces were only inches apart.
"We took some good fish together, Harry," he whispered. "We are going to take a lot more," I answered. "With what we"ve got aboard now we will be able to buy a really good boat. You and I will be going for billfish again next season - that"s for sure."
Then we were silent for a long time, until at last I felt his hand grope for mine and I took it and held it hard. I could feel the callouses and the ancient line burns from handling heavy fish.
"Harry," his voice was so faint I could just hear it over the sound of the motors when I laid my ear to his lips, "Harry, I"m going to tell you something I never told you before. I love you, man," he whispered. "I love you better than my own brother."
"I love you too, Chubby," I said, and for a little longer his grip was strong again, and then it relaxed. I sat on beside him while slowly that big h.o.r.n.y paw turned cold in my hands, and dawn began to pale the sky above the dark and brooding sea.
During the next three weeks, Sherry and I seldom left the sanctuary of Turtle Bay. We went together to stand awkwardly in the graveyard while they buried our friends, and once I drove alone to the fort and spent two hours with President G.o.dfrey Biddle and Inspector Wally Andrews but the rest of that time we were alone while the wounds healed.
Our bodies healed more quickly than did our minds. One morning as I dressed Sherry"s hand, I noticed the pearly white seeds in the healing flesh of her fingertips and I realized that they were the nail roots regrowing. She would have fingernails once more to grace those long narrow hands - I was thankful for that.
They were not happy days, the memories were too fresh and the days were dark with mourrning for Chubby and Angelo and both of us knew that the crisis of our relationship was at hand. I guessed what agonies of decision she must be facing, and I forgave her the quick flares of temper, the long silences - and her sudden disappearances from the shack when for hours at a time she walked the long deserted beaches or made a remote and lonely figure sitting out on the headland of the bay.
At last I knew that she was strong enough to face what lay ahead for both of us. One evening I raised the subject of the treasure for the first time since our return to St. Mary"s.
It lay now buried beneath the raised foundations of the shack.
Sherry listened quietly as we sat together upon the veranda, drinking whisky and listening to the sound of the night surf upon the beach.
"I want you to go ahead to make the arrangements for the arrival of the coffin. Hire a car in Zarich and drive down to Basie. I have arranged a room for you at the Red Ox Hotel there. I have picked that hotel because they have an underground parking garage and I know the head porter there. His name is Max." I explained my plans to her. "He will arrange a hea.r.s.e to meet the plane. You will play the part of the bereaved widow and bring the coffin down to Basie. We will make the exchange in the garage, and you will arranged for my banker to have an armoured car to take the tiger"s head to his own premises from there."
"You"ve got it all worked out, haven"t you?"
"I hope so." I poured another whisky. "My bank is Falle et Fils and the man to ask for is M. Challon. When you meet him you will give him my name and the number of my account - ten sixty-six, the same as the battle of Hastings. You must arrange with M. Challon for a private room to which we can invite dealers to view the head-" I went on explaining in detail the arrangements I had made, and she listened intently. Now and then she asked a question but mostly she was silent, and at last I produced the air ticket and a thin sheaf of traveller"s cheques to carry her through.
"You have made the reservations already? she looked startled, and when I nodded she thumbed open the booklet of the air ticket. "When do I leave?"
"On the noon plane tomorrow."
"And when will you follow?"
"In the same plane as the coffin, three days later - on Friday. I will come in on the BOAC flight at 1.30 p.m. That will give you time to make the arrangements and be there to meet me."
That night was as tender and loving as it had ever been, but even so I sensed a deeper mood of melancholia in Sherry - as at the time of leave-taking and farewell.
In the dawn, the dolphins met us at the entrance of the bay, and we romped with them for half the morning and then swam in slowly to the beach.
I drove her out to the airport in the old pick-up. For most of the ride she was silent and then she tried to tell me something, but she was confused and she did not make sense. She ended lamely, "--if anything ever happens to us, well, I mean nothing lasts for-ever, does it-" "Go on," I said.
"No, its nothing. just that we should try to forgive each other - if anything does happen." That was all she would say, and at the airport barrier she kissed me briefly and clung for a second with both arms about my neck then she turned and walked quickly to the waiting aircraft She did not look back or wave as she climbed the boarding ladder.
I watched the aircraft climb swiftly and head out across the insh.o.r.e channel for the mainland, then I drove slowly back to Turtle Bay.
It was a lonely place without her, and that night as I lay alone under the mosquito net on the wide bed, I knew that the risk I was about to take was necessary. Highly dangerous, but necessary. I knew I must have her back here. Without her, it would all be tasteless. I must gamble on the pull I would be able to exert over her outweighing the other forces that governed her. I must let her make the choice herself, but I must try to influence it with every play in my power.
In the morning I drove into St. Mary"s and after Fred c.o.ker and I had argued and consulted and pa.s.sed money and promises back and forth, he opened the double doors to his warehouse and I drove the pick-up in beside the hea.r.s.e. We loaded one of his best coffins, teak with silvergilt handles, and red velvet-lined interior, into the back of the truck. I covered it with a sheet of canvas and drove back to Turtle Bay. When I had packed the coffin and screwed down the lid it weighed almost five hundred pounds.
When it was dark, I drove back into town and it was almost closing time at the Lord Nelson before I had completed my arrangements. I had just time for a quick drink and then I drove back to Turtle Bay to pack my battered old canvas campaign bag.
At the noon of the next day, twenty-four hours earlier than I had arranged with Sherry North, I boarded the aircraft for the mainland and that evening caught the BOAC connection onwards from Nairobi.
There was no one to meet me at Zarich airport, for I was a full day early, and I pa.s.sed quickly through customs and immigration and went out into the vast arrivals hall.
I checked my luggage before I went about tidying up the final loose threads of my plan. I found a flight outwards leaving at 1.20 the following day which suited my timing admirably. I made a single reservation, then I drifted over to the inquiries desk and waited until the pretty little blonde girl in the Swissair uniform was not busy, before engaging her in a long explanation. At first she was adamant, but I gave her the old crinkled eyes and smiled that way, until at last she became intrigued with it all - and giggled in antic.i.p.ation.
"You sure you"ll be on duty tomorrow?" I asked anxiously. "Yes, Monsieur, don"t worry, I will be here."
We parted as friends and I retrieved my bag and caught a cab to the Zorich Holiday Inn just down the road. The same hotel where I had sweated out the survival of the Dutch policeman so long ago. I ordered a drink, took a bath and then settled down in front of the television set. It brought back memories.
A little before noon the following day I sat at the airport cafe pretending to read a copy of the Frmilqarw AUgmiene Zeitung and watching the arrivals hall over the top of the page. I had already checked my baggage and my ticket. All I had to do was to go through into the final departure lounge.