"Wrath of the Lion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Higgins Jack)

CHAPTER FIVE

“Foxhunter! Ahoy! Ahoy! Foxhunter!”

The boat lay at anchor fifty yards out from the beach, her cream and yellow hull a vivid splash of colour against the white cliffs of the cove. A small wind moved in from the sea, lifting the water across the shingle, and darkness was falling fast.

Anne Grant shivered slightly as a light drizzle drifted across her face. She was tired and hungry and her ankle had started to ache again. She opened her mouth to hail the boat a second time and Neil Mallory appeared on deck. He dropped over the stern into the dinghy and rowed towards her.

He was wearing knee-length rubber boots and when the prow of the fibre-glass dinghy ground on the wet shingle he stepped into the shallows and swung it round so that the stern was beached.

He held out his hand for the girl’s suitcase and smiled. “How do you feel?”

“All the better for being here,” she said. “It’s been a long day. I had a lot of running around to do.”

She was wearing a tweed suit with a narrow skirt and a sheepskin coat. He helped her into the stern seat, pushed off and rowed for the boat.

Anne took in the flared, raking bow and long, sloping deckhouse of Foxhunter with a conscious pleasure. As she breathed deeply of the good sea air she smiled at Mallory.

“What do you think of her?”

“Foxhunter?” He nodded. “She’s a thoroughbred all right, but that’s still an awful lot of boat for two women to handle as a regular thing. How old is your sister-in-law?”

“Fiona is eighteen, whatever that proves. I think you underrate us.”

“What about the engines?” he said. “They’ll need looking after.”

“We’ve no worries there. Owen Morgan, who runs the hotel on the island, is a retired ship’s engineer. He’ll give us any help we need and there’s always Jagbir.”

“Who’s he?” Mallory said quickly, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to know.

“The General’s orderly. He was a naik in a Gurkha regiment. They’ve been together since the early days of the war. He hasn’t had what you would call a formal education, but he’s still the best cook I’ve ever come across, and he has an astonishing aptitude for anything mechanical.”

“Sounds like a good man to have around the house,” Mallory said.

They bumped against the side of Foxhunter and he handed her up the short ladder and followed with her suitcase. “What time would you like to leave?”

She took the case from him. “As soon as you like. Have you eaten?”

“Not since noon.”

Til change and make some supper. We can leave afterwards.”

“When she had gone Mallory pulled the dinghy round to the stern and hoisted it over the rail. By now darkness was falling fast and he turned on the red and green navigation lights and went below.

He found her working at the stove in the galley, wearing old denims and a polo-necked sweater that somehow made her look more feminine than ever. She looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“Bacon and eggs all right?”

“Suits me,” he said.

“When it was ready they sat opposite each other at the saloon table and ate in companionable silence As she poured coffee a sudden flurry of rain drummed against the roof.

She looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “That doesn’t sound too good. What’s the forecast?”

“Three-to-four wind – rain squalls. Nothing to get worked up about. Are you worried?”

“Not in the slightest.” She smiled slightly. “I always like to know what I’m getting into, that’s all.”

“Don’t we all, Mrs. Grant?” He got to his feet. “I think we ought to get started.”

When he went on deck the wind Tiad increased, scattering the drizzle in silver cobwebs through the navigation lights. He went into the wheelhouse, pulled on his reefer jacket and spent a couple of minutes looking at the chart.

The door swung open, a flurry of wind lifting the chart like a sail, and Anne Grant appeared at his elbow. She was wearing her sheepskin coat and a scarf was tied around her head, peasant-fashion.

“All set?” he said.

She nodded, her eyes gleaming with excitement in the light from the chart table. He pressed the starter. The engines coughed once asthmatically, then roared into life. He took Foxhunter round in a long, sweeping curve and out through the entrance of the cove into the Channel.

The masthead light swung rhythmically from side to side as the swell started to roll beneath them and spray scattered against the window. A couple of points to starboard the red and green navigation lights of a steamer were clearly visible a mile out to sea. Mallory reduced speed to ten knots and they ploughed forward into the darkness, the sound of the engines a muted throbbing on the night air.

He grinned at her. “Nothing much wrong there. With any kind of luck we should have a clear run.”

“When do you want me to take over?”

He shrugged. “No rush. Get some sleep. I’ll call you when I feel tired.”

The door banged behind her and a small trapped wind whistled round the wheelhouse and died in a corner. He pulled the hinged seat down from the wall, lit a cigarette and settled back comfortably, watching the foam curl along the prow.

This was the sort of thing he looked forward to on a voyage. To be alone with the sea and the night. The world outside retreated steadily as Foxhunter moved into the darkness and he started to work his way methodically through his briefing from beginning to end, considering each point carefully before moving on to another.

It was in recalling that de Beaumont had been in Indo-China that he remembered that Raoul Guyon had been there also. Mallory frowned and lit another cigarette. There might be a connection, although Adams hadn’t said anything about such a possibility. On the other hand, Guyon hadn’t been a Viet prisoner, which made a difference. One hell of a difference.

He checked the course, altering it a point to starboard, and settled back again in the seat, turning the collar of his reefer jacket up around his face. Gradually his mind wandered away on old forgotten paths and he thought of people he had known, incidents which had happened, good and bad, with a sort of measured sadness. His life seemed to be like a dark sea rolling towards the edge of the world, hurrying him to nowhere.

He checked his watch, and found, with a sense of surprise that it was after midnight. The door opened softly, coinciding with a spatter of rain on the window, and Anne Grant came in carrying a tray.

“You promised to call me,” she said reproachfully. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I wakened and saw the time. You’ve been up here a good four hours.”

“I feel fine,” he said. “Could go on all night.”

She placed the tray on the chart table and filled two mugs from a covered pot. “I’ve made tea. You didn’t seem to care for the coffee at supper.”

“Is there anything you don’t notice?” he demanded.

She handed him a mug and smiled in the dim light. “The soldier’s drink.”

“What are you after?” he said. “The gory details?”

She pulled down the other seat and handed him a sandwich. “Only what you want to tell me.”

He considered the point and knew that, as always, a partial truth was better than a direct lie. “I was kicked out in 1954.”

“Go on,” she said.

“My pay didn’t stretch far enough.” He shrugged. “You know how it is. I was in charge of a messing account and borrowed some cash to tide me over. Unfortunately the auditors arrived early that month. They usually do in cases like mine.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said deliberately.

“Suit yourself.” He got to his feet and stretched. “She’s on automatic pilot, so you’ll be all right for a while. I’ll be up at quarter to four to change course.”

She sat there looking at him without speaking, her eyes very large in the half-light, and he turned, opened the door and left her there.

He went down to the cabin and flopped on his bunk, staring up at the bulkhead through the darkness. There had been women before, there always were, but only to satisfy a need, never to get close to. That had been the way for a long time and he had been content. Now this strange, quiet girl with her cropped hair had come into his life and quietly refused to be pushed aside. His last conscious thought was of her face glowing in the darkness, and she was smiling at him.

He was not aware of having slept, only of being awake and looking at his watch and realising with a sense of shock that it was half-three. He pulled on his jacket and went on deck.

There was quite a sea running and cold rain stung his face as he walked along the heaving deck and opened the glass-panelled door of the wheelhouse. Anne Grant was standing at the wheel, her face disembodied in the compass light.

“How are things going?” he asked.

“I’m enjoying myself. There’s been a sea running for about half an hour now.”

He glanced out of the window. “Likely to get worse before it gets better. I’ll take over.”

She made way for him, her soft body pressing against his as they squeezed past each other. “I don’t think I could sleep now even if I wanted to.”

He grinned. “Make some more tea, then, and come back. Things might get interesting.”

He increased speed a little, racing the heavy weather that threatened from the east, and after a while she returned with the tea. The wheel kicked like a living thing in his hands and he strained his eyes into the grey waste of the morning.

The sea grew rougher, waves rocking Foxhunter from side to side, and again Mallory increased speed until the prow seemed to lift clean out of the water each time a wave rolled beneath them.

Half an hour later they raised Alderney and he became aware of that great tidal surge that drives in through the Channel Islands, raising the level of the water in the Golfe de St. Malo by as much as thirty feet.

He altered course for Guernsey and asked Anne to get the forecast on the radio in the saloon. She took her time over it and when she came back she carried more tea and sandwiches on a tray.

“It’s pretty hopeful,” she said. “Wind moderating, rain squalls dying away.”

“Anything else?”

“Some fog patches in the islands, but nothing to worry about.”

Gradually the wind died, the sea calmed and they ran into a clear September morning with a slight mist rising from the water Mallory opened a window and inhaled the freshness. When he turned she was smiling at him.

“You can handle a boat, Mr. Mallory. I’ll say that for you.”

"Don”t forget to. mention the fact in my reference.”

She smiled, picked up the tray and went out again. He leaned over the chart and checked the course. Foxhunter rounded Les Hanois lighthouse on the western tip of Guernsey an hour and a half later and seagulls and cormorants cried harshly in the sky, sweeping in across the deck from the great cliffs.

Already visibility was becoming worse, fog drifting in patches across the open sea as Guernsey dropped behind the horizon. He set the automatic pilot, leaned over the chart and Anne Grant came in.

“How are we doing?”

“With any kind of luck we should reach lie de Roc in an hour to an hour and a half. Depends on the fog. If we run into any really bad patches things could get tricky.”

“There’s a large-scale Admiralty chart of the island and its approaches in the top drawer,” she said. “I bought it specially.”

He took it out and they leaned over it together. He de Roc was perhaps two miles long and three across, the only anchorage a bay at the southern end. The entire area was encircled by a network of sunken reefs with only two deep-water channels giving anything like a safe passage through.

Til take her if you like,” Anne said. “I know these waters like the back of my hand and you need to.”

“The damned place looks like a death-trap.” Mallory shook his head. “I wouldn’t like to be drifting in on those shores on a dirty night.”

“A lot of good ships have done just that. You see St. Pierre a mile to the north? In the old days whenever a gale was blowing in from the Atlantic ships were often swept between the two islands to founder on the great sunken reef which links them. At low tide the water-level drops as much as thirty-feet and you can see some of those old wrecks.”

“Dangerous waters to go swimming in.”

She nodded. “Especially at the wrong time. As a matter of fact, the barman from Owen Morgan’s hotel was drowned only the other day. His body drifted in the evening before I left.”

“Not so good.” Mallory moved on quickly. “I see there’s a castle marked on St. Pierre.”

“A Gothic mausoleum. It’s out on a twenty-year lease to a French count, Philippe de Beaumont.”

“The place is going to be busier than I thought.”

She shook her head. “We don’t see much of him. He stays pretty close to home and we don’t get many visitors on the island. The hotel only has six bedrooms. They’re booked right through the summer, of course, but Owen usually ends the season at the beginning of September. He likes to enjoy the last of the good weather himself.”

“He won’t need much staff, then?”

“Only during the season and then he uses Guernsey girls. He’s had a French cook living in full-time for nearly a year now. She should have left at the end of the season, but stayed on.”

“Sounds a rather obvious set-up.”

She shrugged. “It’s their own affair and she’s a nice girl. I hope he marries her.”

The fog lifted a little and on either hand the sea broke in a white foam over great reefs. Mallory smiled grimly. “I think this is where you start doing your stuff.”

She took over the wheel and altered course half a point. A moment later, through a sudden break in the fog, the towering cliffs of the island loomed into view and then the grey curtain dropped into place again.

Mallory reduced speed and Anne Grant took the cruiser forward into the fog. She seemed completely unperturbed and he shrugged fatalistically, pulled down the other seat and took out a cigarette.

At that moment the whole boat rocked violently and Mallory and the girl were thrown across to the other side of the wheelhouse. Foxhunter yawed alarmingly and Mallory shoved the girl away and scrambled across to the spinning wheel.

As he pulled the boat back on course, Anne Grant moved beside him and they peered out into the fog. Perhaps a hundred feet to starboard he caught a glimpse of something solid moving through the water and a sizable wave rolled back to rock Foxhunter again.

“And what in the hell was that?” he said.

“Probably a basking shark. They’re common enough in these waters, but it must have been a big one to leave a wake like that.”

Mallory stared out into the fog, a frown on his face, remembering the force of that wave. Could a shark, however big it was, have set up such a disturbance? He was still thinking about it when they emerged from the last patch of fog and lie de Roc reared out of the sea a quarter of a mile away.

To the west was St. Pierre, much smaller, a little blurred because visibility at that distance still wasn’t good. Between the two islands the sea frothed and roared over the great underwater bridge.

“We’re in the clear now,” Anne Grant said, and he gave Foxhunter everything she had as they roared through the water towards the great round cove which opened to meet them.

The water was a deep translucent blue, reminding him strangely of the Mediterranean. A stone jetty jutted fifty feet out from the shore and above it was the hotel, a two-storeyed, white-painted building sheltering in a hollow from the winter gales.

A fifteen-foot launch was moored on the far side of the cove. A young, dark-haired man in sun-glasses was sitting in the stern looking over the side. As he turned towards them a swimmer surfaced and Mallory caught a flash of blonde hair.

When they were a hundred feet from the jetty he cut the engines and Foxhunter settled back into the water, drifting in on her own momentum. Anne Grant was already getting the fenders over the side and Mallory ran out to help her. The moment they touched he jumped for the jetty with a line and ran it twice around an iron bollard. Foxhunter jerked once, bumped against the jetty and was still.

As he moved to fasten the other line, an engine roared into life, the sound echoing harshly from the cliffs, and the launch came towards the jetty. The swimmer was already almost there. Anne Grant moved to the port rail and Mallory joined her.

“Fiona,” she said simply.

As the girl arrived Mallory leaned down and hauled her up and over the rail. She crouched on deck for a moment, laughing and shaking herself like a young puppy.

“But it’s marvellous, Anne. Simply marvellous.”

She didn’t even look eighteen, long blonde hair trailing damply to her shoulders. She wore a pair of bathing pants and the upper half of a rubber diving suit in bright yellow that fitted her slim figure like a second skin.

She examined Mallory with interest and her eyes widened in approval. “And where did you find him?”

Anne laughed and kissed her affectionately. “Now, don’t start, Fiona. This is Neil Mallory. He’s going to run the boat for us for a month or two till we get the hang of things.”

Fiona Grant pushed a tendril of wet hair out of her eyes and held out her hand. “I don’t know about Anne, but speaking for myself I’ll try not to learn too fast.”

The launch was no more than twenty or thirty feet away now and its occupant cut the engine and it drifted in towards Foxhunter.

“Who’s this, for goodness” sake?” Anne demanded.

Fiona slipped a wet arm in hers. “A simply marvellous man, Anne. He’s French. Staying here for a week or two to paint and do a little skin-diving.”

“But I thought Owen closed the hotel last week?”

“He did, but luckily I was on the jetty when he came in. I persuaded Owen to change his mind.”

The launch bumped against the side and Mallory caught the thrown line. As he looped it round the rail, the Frenchman vaulted on to the deck. He wore a slim-fitting jersey that left his sunburnt arms bare, and the dark glasses gave him the same slightly sinister and anonymous look the peaked military cap had done in the photo in his file.

Fiona took his arm and turned to face them. “Anne, I’d like you to meet Raoul Guyon,” she said.