58
“Bugger!”
Bobby Faulkner stood helplessly in the cockpit of the 36-foot yacht the Tamarisk, his hand on the starter button of its Yanmar diesel engine, listening to the spluttering cough of a motor that didn’t want to start. A mocking jeer came from his crewman, Samuel Carver, standing at the bow of the boat, a line in his hand, waiting to cast off.
“Don’t tell me you forgot to fill her up!”
It felt like old times to Carver, going off on a mission with Bobby and QT. He’d spent all day with nothing to drag his mind away from Alix, driving himself crazy trying to work out what had happened to her, trying not to dwell too long on what her captors might be doing to her.
Along the way, he’d called Thor Larsson, received a one- word progress report on the computer decryption—“Slow”—and asked for a final piece of technical assistance. “I want to ruin their day,” he’d said. Now he was back in that familiar routine, using banter and mockery to push fear to one side, finding comfort in the unspoken affection that underpins male friendships.
Faulkner called back, “Piss off! The tank’s full, there’s just a bit of sludge in the fuel line. Should clear all right. It always does.”
Another, older voice spoke up from the stern of the boat, three or four feet behind Faulkner: “Fear not. It was just as feeble when we left Poole. But we got underway eventually.”
Carver grinned at the sound of his old commanding officer’s voice, feeling reassured by his presence, happy that for once someone else was looking out for him. The old man must be in his late fifties by now, but he still looked pretty much as Carver remembered him: quite short, stockily built, but brimming with bullish energy. There were probably a few more pounds around Trench’s waist, and the lines on his ruddy face were etched a bit deeper, but time would do that to any man. There were dark smudges around his eyes too, but Trench had explained them away soon enough.
“I was off shooting in Scotland over the weekend with some old chums. We swore we wouldn’t stay up drinking and talking all night. Told one another we were getting too old to go to bed at three and be out on the moor by eight. And then we did it all over again. Typical!”
Faulkner disappeared into the bowels of the boat to fiddle about with the engine. The other two men returned to the boat’s open cockpit. They sat down opposite each other on the cushioned benches that curled around its sides, interrupted only by the hatch on the forward side that opened onto a ladder down into the boat’s cabin.
Trench leaned forward, his elbows resting on his thighs. “So,” he began, with the look of an affectionate uncle amused by his nephew’s latest scrapes, “Bobby tells me you’ve got yourself a sexy new mail-order bride.”
Carver gave a puzzled frown. “Sorry?”
Trench chuckled. “Forgive me, dear boy. Inappropriate comment. You must be under terrible pressure, with this Russian girl of yours going missing. I was just trying to bring a touch of levity to the situation, a little joke about the way most ladies from her neck of the woods find a chap in the West. Wrong move, obviously.” He cleared his throat, then tried again. “So, tell me about this girl. I gather she’s the real thing.”
Carver grimaced. He didn’t feel in the mood for a heart- to-heart conversation.
“Maybe . . . but you never know, do you?”
“I should have thought that was the whole point. You know instantly. I did, when I met Pamela. Took one look at her and thought, ‘Bloody hell, she’s a cracker.’ ”
“Okay, yeah, that’s part of it. But it’s not that simple. You feel a certain way, but you can’t necessarily trust that feeling. You can’t be sure what she’s thinking. You don’t know what she wants, or what’s going to happen between you. Can’t be sure of anything, basically.”
The older man sighed. “Goodness me, that’s not the dashing young officer I used to know. You were always decisive, confident, absolutely sure of yourself and your men. You didn’t sit around worrying all day. You just got on with the job at hand.”
“That’s because I knew what the job was. I had orders, I knew my targets, and there was a specific definition of success. That stuff was easy. This stuff isn’t.”
Trench nodded. “Then let’s stick to specifics. What’s this female’s name? Age? Description?”
“Alexandra Petrova; just about to turn thirty; maybe five foot eight; weighs around a hundred and thirty pounds; blond hair, blue eyes.”
“Bloody hell,” repeated Trench, “she is a cracker.”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”
“How do you mean?”
“She just gets it. And I think I get her. I don’t know. . . .” Carver didn’t want to say any more.
Trench raised his eyebrows, just as Faulkner emerged through the hatch with a determined look on his face. He glanced at the two other men.
“It’s fine,” said Carver. “We’re done. So, is this boat any closer to moving?”
“Absolutely,” said Faulkner with a triumphant smile. “Like a rocket. Gentlemen, return to your positions, if you please.”
He waited while the two men went to either end of the boat and picked up their lines, then pressed the starter again. The engine coughed, spluttered, gave a couple of encouraging chugs, then died away again.
“Damn!” muttered Faulkner. He pressed again, and again. On the fourth attempt, the engine finally sprang to life. The lines were cast off, Carver and Trench returned to the cockpit, and the boat moved away from the finger pontoon to which it had been tied.
Slowly, Faulkner picked his way down a narrow channel between the bobbing hulls and gently swaying masts of the other yachts moored at the thousand berths of Port Chantereyne, Cherbourg’s yacht marina, the largest on the entire French coastline. Within a few minutes they’d reached the relatively open water of the Petite Rade, Cherbourg’s inner harbor.
Faulkner pointed back toward the shore. “See over there, near that bloody huge ferry? That’s the ocean-liner quay. The Titanic tied up there, just before she set off to meet that iceberg.”
He pushed open the throttle and took the engine up to full speed as they passed a huge circular fortification and moved into the outer harbor, the Grande Rade. The harbors were enclosed by giant sea walls, and another castle guarded the final opening into the English Channel.
“Get to work, chaps,” said Faulkner. “Time to get our sails rigged.”
Soon the two great white triangles of the mainsail and the jib were outlined against the darkening sky, and for a few moments Carver was lost in the glorious freedom of a yacht meeting the open sea, heeling away from the breeze. Faulkner turned off the engine, and now the only noise came from the flapping of the sails, the gentle creaking of lines under pressure, and the rush of water and air. Away to the north, black clouds were massing on the horizon. Carver tapped Faulkner on the shoulder and pointed to them.
“That doesn’t look too friendly,” he said.
“Cold front coming down from the Arctic,” Faulkner replied. “It’s due to hit us sometime in the next two or three hours. The wind’s westerly now, force four. It’s going to veer to the north and freshen to five or six, maybe seven at times. Pretty windy, but don’t worry, the Rustler can handle it and the tides are in our favor most of the way. Still, there’s rain forecast too, so it won’t be pleasant. I’ve got a spare set of rain gear stowed under the bed in the bow cabin. You can use those. Might as well get them on now, while you’ve got the chance.”
Carver went below. He made his way through the Rustler’s cramped main cabin, squeezing past the galley and on between a wooden table and a seating area till he came to a plain wooden door. It opened into an even tighter space, most of which was occupied by a sleeping area shaped like a mutilated triangle, squeezed into the bow of the boat. The mattresses were hinged by the hull of the boat and lifted up to reveal storage spaces below. Carver rummaged around until he found a pair of orangey red waterproof trousers and a matching Windbreaker. The jacket was built to keep out a hurricane, with a collar that zipped all the way to Carver’s chin and wristbands that fastened with Velcro.
As he tightened them, he thought about the two other men on the boat, how the apparently casual, even amateurish appearance both presented to the world hid huge reserves of courage, competence, and, when necessary, ruthlessness. He thought back to all the times they had given, taken, and passed on instructions, about the precision with which they were trained to recall and repeat what was said to them. They all knew the devastating effect that even tiny misunderstandings could create in times of war.
Carver went back over all that had been said and he knew that he had been betrayed. He wondered whether both of his old comrades had been in this together. One of them he knew now was an enemy; the other might yet be an innocent dupe. So what did that make him? A dupe, certainly, but hardly innocent. The pieces of a puzzle that had been jumbled in his mind began to fall into place and a picture emerged. It was a portrait of himself, but it was hardly flattering. It showed a man who had been fooled, not once but repeatedly, a man who had extended his trust to a tiny handful of people and chosen the wrong ones every time. One of these days, if he lived that long, he would go back over it all in his mind and work out, not where he had gone wrong—that was now obvious—but why. These men had been his friends, his brothers-in-arms. Once they had been willing to risk their lives for him. What had he done since then to make them want to betray him? Perhaps you didn’t have to do anything. His mother had given him up just for being born.
He’d dealt with that. He could deal with this.
So where would the battle take place? A yacht in a storm was a lousy place for a fight. It was cramped, it was constantly pitching and rolling, and everyone onboard was wearing wet, bulky clothing. Sticking a gun in a set of waterproof pants was no problem. Getting it out in a hurry was a lot trickier. And standing steady enough to take an accurate shot would be damn near impossible.
The key point was the hatch and the ladder between the cockpit up on deck and the cabin down below. Anyone caught there would be a sitting duck. The next few hours would consist of an unacknowledged jockeying for position in which two, maybe all three of the men onboard would silently compete to be in the right place when the moment finally came for one of them to show his hand. Meanwhile, Carver intended to stack the odds in his favor.
Stashed away in the same storage space as the weatherproof clothing, Carver found what he’d need later. For now, though, he was going to keep things nice and civil, as if he still thought they were all good friends. Them against the world, just like the good old days.
He walked back to the cockpit hatch and stuck his head through.
“Anyone fancy a cup of coffee?”
He took the orders and put the kettle on the galley’s gas stove. He filled three mugs, added milk and sugar, and went back up on deck. Now there was one last task.
The yacht’s mast was supported by ropes, or shrouds, that stretched up to its top from the side of the hull. They were kept taut, away from the side of the mast, by two horizontal spars, or spreaders. A white plastic pot, about eighteen inches high, had been hoisted up to the port-side spreader. The pot was a radar reflector, designed to ensure that the yacht’s position was known to passing vessels. It was secured by a line tied to a cleat at the bottom of the mast.
Carver made his way over to the cleat. He loosened the line, held it in his hand, and called back to the cockpit, “Sorry, Bobby, this has got to go.”
“What are you talking about?” shouted Faulkner.
“I can’t be on anyone’s radar screen.”
“Have you gone totally mad? We’re about to do a night crossing of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Five hundred ships sail along or across the Channel every day, and if any one of them so much as touches us, it’ll be like an elephant stepping on a matchbox. We’ll sink. And then you’ll never enter the bloody country at all. Nor will the rest of us.”
Carver gave an affable, who-cares grin. “Then we’ll just have to keep our eyes open, won’t we?”