‘Yes, sir.’
‘What was its name?’
‘The
Orestes.
’
Hassan surveyed the deserted quay. ‘And it was the only ship here. That’s strange.’
‘No, sir; there was a yacht. She left only five minutes ago.’ He pointed. ‘There she is.’
Hassan shaded his eyes against the sun and looked out to sea. ‘And you let her go? Was the owner here when the incident happened?’
‘Yes, sir. He said he did not hear or see anything. Nor did his crew.’
Hassan peered at the yacht. ‘Very convenient for him. Who is he?’
‘His name is Fuad, sir. He said he is to cruise in the Caribbean.’
‘By the Living God!’ said Hassan. ‘Did he? What is that at the stern?’
The officer strained his eyes. ‘A pile of canvas?’ he hazarded.
‘A sheet of canvas covering something,’ corrected Hassan. ‘I want a telephone.’
Two minutes later he was embroiled in an argument with a particularly stupid staff officer of Naval Headquarters, Beirut.
The
Orestes
plugged away on her new course and the loom of land astern had disappeared leaving only a cloudbank to indicate Mount Lebanon. Warren made himself useful by finding the galley and preparing a meal; corned beef from tins and flat loaves of Arab bread to be washed down with thin, acid wine.
As he worked he pondered on the relationship between Metcalfe and Tozier. They were both of the same stripe, both men of strong will, and they seemed to work in harmony, each instinctively knowing that the other would do the right thing when necessary. He wondered, if it ever came to a conflict between them, who would come out on top.
He finally decided he would lay his money on Metcalfe. Tozier was the more conservative and preferred his employment to have at least a veneer of legality. Metcalfe was more the amoral buccaneer, unscrupulous to a degree and adept in the department of dirty tricks. Warren thought that if it ever came to a showdown between them that Tozier might show a fatal flaw of hesitation where Metcalfe would not. He hoped his theory would never be put to the test.
He finished his preparations and took the food to the bridge. Metcalfe, because of his knowledge of ships and the sea, was now in command, while Tozier kept an eye on Eastman. Follet was in the engine-room, having released a couple of the engine-room staff who were tending the engines nervously under the threat of his gun. Parker and Abbot worked on the foredeck by the anchor winch, and Hellier stood guard over the hold.
Metcalfe called up Abbot to collect something to eat, and also brought Hellier up to the bridge. ‘All quiet?’ he asked.
‘No trouble,’ assured Hellier. ‘They’ve settled down.’
Metcalfe offered him a sandwich. As Hellier bit into it, he said with a wide grin, ‘You’ve now added piracy to your list of crimes, Sir Robert. That’s still a hanging matter in England.’
Hellier choked over the dry bread and spluttered crumbs. Warren said, ‘I don’t think Delorme will press charges, not with the evidence we have aboard.’ He cocked an eye at Metcalfe. ‘I wonder what she’s thinking now.’
‘Evil thoughts—that’s for sure,’ said Metcalfe. ‘But I’m more concerned about what she’ll be doing. She certainly won’t be sitting on her beautiful bottom. When Jeanette gets mad she becomes active.’ He nodded towards the foredeck. ‘How is Parker doing?’
‘He says he’ll need another hour,’ said Abbot.
Warren said, ‘I’ll take him some grub and see if he needs any help.’
Metcalfe steadied the wheel with one hand and held a sandwich with the other. ‘What a hooker this is. She might do nine knots if she could go down hill.’ He looked up. ‘What’s that gadget up there on the derrick?’
Abbot said, ‘It’s one of Dan’s tricks.’ He explained about the light ashore and the man in the crow’s nest.
‘Ingenious,’ commented Metcalfe. ‘Climb up there and see what you can see.’
Abbot went up the derrick and steadied himself at the top by holding on to the sighting telescope which was rigidly fixed. At that height, fifty feet above the water, he felt the breeze which stirred his fair hair, and the slow roll of the
Orestes
was magnified. ‘There are two more buttons up here,’ he shouted. ‘Eastman wanted two sets.’
‘Leave them alone. What do you see?’
Abbot looked over the bows. ‘There’s a ship ahead of us. I can see the smoke.’ He turned slowly, scanning the horizon. ‘There’s one behind us, too.’
Metcalfe clicked into alertness. ‘Overtaking us?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ shouted Abbot. He was silent for a while. ‘I think she is—I can see a bow wave.’
Metcalfe left the wheel, saying to Hellier, ‘Take it.’ Without breaking his stride he scooped up a pair of binoculars and went up the derrick like a monkey up a palm tree. At the top he steadied himself against the roll of the ship and focused the binoculars astern. ‘It’s Fuad’s yacht. She’s coming like a bat out of hell.’
‘How far?’
Metcalfe did a mental calculation. ‘Maybe six miles. And she has radar—she’ll have spotted us.’ He handed the binoculars to Abbot. ‘Stay here and keep an eye on her.’
He went down the derrick and back to the bridge where he picked up the bridge telephone and rang the engineroom. ‘Johnny, prod your chaps a bit—we want more speed…I know that, but Jeanette is on our tail.’
As he slammed down the telephone Hellier gave him a sideways glance. ‘How long have we got?’
‘This rust bucket might do a little over eight knots if she’s pushed. That yacht might do thirteen or fourteen. Say an hour.’ Metcalfe walked on to the wing of the bridge and looked astern. ‘Can’t see her from here; she’s still below the horizon.’ He turned and there was a grim smile on his face. ‘I was in a lark like this once before—over in the Western Mediterranean. Me and a guy called Krupke in a Fairmile. But we were doing the chasing that time.’
‘Who won?’ asked Hellier.
Metcalfe’s smile grew grimmer. ‘I did!’
‘What can she do if she catches up? She can’t board us.’
‘She can shoot hell out of us.’ Metcalfe looked at his watch. ‘This tub isn’t going to be too healthy an hour from now.’
Hellier said, ‘We have plenty of steel plate to hide behind.’
There was something of contempt in Metcalfe’s voice as he said in disgust, ‘Steel plate!’ He kicked against the side of the bridge and rust fell in large flakes. ‘Nickel-jacketed bullets will rip through this stuff like cardboard. You were in the artillery, so you ought to know. Tell me what a 40-millimetre cannon will do to this bridge?’
He left Hellier with that disconcerting thought and went up to the foredeck where Parker and Warren were working on the winch. ‘Put a jerk in it—we’re being followed. How long, for God’s sake?’
Parker did not pause in his steady movements as he screwed in a pipe. ‘I said an hour.’
‘An hour is all you’ve got,’ said Metcalfe. ‘After that keep your head down.’
Warren looked up. ‘Dan’s been telling me about what you think Delorme will do. Will she really shoot us up?’
That was enough to make Parker stop. ‘The first time I laid eyes on that cow I knew she was bad,’ he said. ‘I dunno how Mike could stand her. She’ll kill the lot of us an’ then
go back an’ dance all night without a second thought.’ He hauled on the pipe wrench again, and said, ‘That does it up here. The rest we do below decks.’
‘If there’s anything I can do to speed up the job just shout,’ said Metcalfe. ‘I’m going below to tell Andy the score.’ He checked with Tozier and with Follet in the engine-room, and when he arrived back in the open air he saw that the
Stella del Mare
was visible from the deck, low on the horizon. He went right to the stern and explored, then went up on to the bridge and said to Hellier, ‘This is going to be the prime target—anybody standing where you are is going to get the chop.’
‘Someone has to steer,’ said Hellier quietly.
‘Yes, but not from here. There’s an emergency steering position aft.’ Metcalfe looked up at the derrick. ‘Mike, come down from there and take the wheel.’
He and Hellier went aft where they dragged the emergency steering-wheel from the locker and fixed it in place directly above the rudder. Metcalfe surveyed it. ‘A bit exposed,’ he commented. ‘It needs some canvas round it. It won’t stop bullets but they might not shoot at the stern if they don’t see anyone here.’
They draped a canvas awning around the wheel. ‘Stay here a while,’ said Metcalfe. ‘I’ll take Abbot off the wheel on the bridge—I need him. You can con the ship from now on until I relieve you.’
He dashed forward again, thinking as he went that he was covering a fair mileage on his own flat feet. He took Abbot off the wheel and regarded the course of the
Orestes.
After a preliminary swerve she continued on her way, and the bridge wheel turned slowly and even back and forth as though controlled by an invisible man.
‘Nip into the officers’ quarters,’ he said to Abbot. ‘Bring some pillows, blankets, jackets, hats—I want to rig up some dummies.’
They draped coats over pillows and fastened the uniform caps on top with meat skewers from the galley. They made three dummies and suspended them from the top of the wheelhouse by ropes so that they looked unpleasantly like hanging men. But from a distance they would look real enough, and they swayed lightly to and fro most realistically giving an impression of natural movement.
Metcalfe went out on the wing of the bridge and looked aft. ‘She’s catching up fast. About a mile to go—say ten minutes. You’d better get the hell out of here, Mike. I’m going to see what Parker’s doing.’
‘There’s a ship over there,’ said Abbot, pointing to starboard. She was going the other way and was about two miles on the starboard beam. ‘Do you think there’s any chance of getting help?’
‘Not unless you want to make this a real massacre,’ said Metcalfe in a strained voice. ‘If we went over to that ship we’d just be adding to the list of the dead.’
‘You mean she’d kill the crew of that ship, too?’
‘A hundred million dollars has a lot of killing power. The ports around here are stuffed with men who’ll kill anyone you specify for five thousand dollars, and I’ll bet she has that yacht full of them.’ He shrugged irritably. ‘Let’s move.’
Parker and Warren were tired and grimy. ‘Five minutes,’ said Parker in answer to Metcalfe’s urgent question. ‘This is the last bit o’ pipe.’
‘Where do you turn on the steam?’
‘There’s a valve on deck near the winch,’ said Parker. ‘You can’t miss it.’
‘I’ll be up there,’ said Metcalfe. ‘Give me a shout when you want it turned on. And someone had better go and tell Andy what’s going on. He might need some backing up, too, but I doubt it.’
He climbed back on deck to find the
Stella del Mare
coming up on the port beam. She slackened speed to keep pace with
the
Orestes
and took station about two hundred yards away. He crouched behind the winch and looked across at her. Abbot said, from behind him, ‘Look at the stern. What’s that?’
‘Keep out of sight,’ said Metcalfe sharply. He looked at the unmistakable angles barely disguised beneath the canvas covering, and felt a little sick. ‘It’s a cannon. That thing can squirt shells like a hosepipe squirts water.’ He paused. ‘I think there’s a machine-gun mounted forrard up in the bows, and another amidships on top of the boatdeck. A floating packet of trouble.’
‘What are they waiting for?’ demanded Abbot almost petulantly.
‘For that other ship to get clear. Jeanette doesn’t want any witnesses. She’ll wait until it’s hull down before she tries anything.’ He judged the distance to the valve which was in the open. ‘I hope she does, anyway.’
He drummed his fingers against the metal of the winch and waited to be given the word and at last he heard Warren call, ‘All right, Tom; Dan says give it a three-minute squirt—that should be enough.’
Metcalfe came from behind the winch, stood over the valve, and gave it a twist. He was very conscious that he was in full view of the
Stella del Mare
and felt an uncomfortable prickling between his shoulder-blades. Steam hissed with violence out of a badly connected joint.
Far below him Tozier waited, the sub-machine-gun ready in his hands. Behind him Parker leaned stolidly against the wall waiting for something to happen. That something would happen he was certain. No man would stay for long in a steel box into which live steam at boiler pressure was being fed. He merely nodded as Tozier whispered, ‘The clamp is moving.’
Tozier might have given Eastman a chance out of pity, but Eastman slammed back the door amid a cloud of steam and came out shooting. Tozier squeezed the trigger and the
sub-machine-gun roared noisily in the confined space but could not drown the ear-splitting high-pitched whistle of escaping steam. Eastman was cut down before he had gone two steps and was thrown back to lie across the open threshold of the torpedo room.
The shriek of steam stopped. Parker said, ‘He stood it for two minutes, longer than I expected. Let’s see if he did any damage.’
Tozier lowered the gun. ‘Yes, let’s get rid of the damned stuff.’
Parker halted abruptly. ‘That be damned for a tale,’ he said violently. ‘Those are weapons we’ve got in there. We can use ‘em.’
Tozier’s jaw dropped. ‘By God, you’re right. I must be crazy not to have thought of it myself. Check the torpedoes, Dan; I must get this organized.’ He ran off down the corridor and climbed the vertical ladders to the forecastle. He was just about to step on deck when someone held his arm.
Take it easy,’ said Metcalfe. ‘Or you’ll run into a bullet. Look out there.’
Tozier cautiously looked past the door frame and saw the
Stella del Mare
very close. He ducked back, and said, ‘Hell’s teeth! She’s right alongside.’
‘There’s a ship not far away, but it’s getting further away every minute. Jeanette’s waiting for a clear horizon.’
‘Parker’s had a thought,’ said Tozier. ‘He wants to torpedo her.’ He grinned at Metcalfe’s expression. ‘Of course, he was a sailor—the idea came naturally to him.’
‘It should have come to me, too,’ said Metcalfe. There was a wicked glint in his eye. ‘I’d better relieve Hellier—this is going to take better ship handling than he’s capable of. Does Parker want help?’