Medusa

CHAPTER ONE

The weather, in fact, did not hold. Carp had the boat ready for sea well before noon, he and Luis motoring her across to the commercial quay where they took on fuel and water, cleared customs and immigration, and loaded the fresh stores Soo had ordered, also the last-minute purchases. They were away by 14.30. By then it was blowing force four from just north of east, the wind funnelling up the harbour so that they were motor-sailing with jib and main hard in.

I was there to see them off. I had spent most of the morning talking to people on the phone, chiefly the foreign element, those who had established themselves in business and were permanently resident. Some of them, of course, like myself, had not involved themselves in the political life of the island. But even they were beginning to get worried. Those with Spanish connections were more deeply concerned and Fuxa's name constantly cropped up. Others were mentioned, of course — one of the leading PSOE figures, in particular but it was Ismail Fuxa who really scared them. Most regarded his separatist, anti-foreign movement as having grown alarmingly in recent months, some even thought he might have enough support m council to get himself elected as the new alcalde.

Only one of them was willing to talk about it openly and at length. That was Freddie McManus, a retired property developer who had once stood as Conservative candidate for some Scottish constituency. He pointed out to me that however the 1978 constitution might try to safeguard the powers of the central government, the establishment of the Balearics as one of the seventeen independent provinces meant in practice that the potential power of the locally elected alcaldes was greatly increased. 'It's a charter for the emergence of little Gauleiters. All that's required is a dominant personality. And if the man has a cause, then he's even more dangerous.' And he had gone on to point out to me that to islanders stuck out on the eastern fringe of a small group in the Western Mediterranean, Madrid was a long way away. Also, and he had emphasised this very strongly, the power of the alcalde was rooted in the history of Spain, when in 1485 Queen Isabella struck at the nobility through the Ordenancas Realeswith a court of two alcaldes to administer justice in every town of thirty or more inhabitants. 'Given a weak governor in Palma,' he said, 'anything could happen if that man Fuxa became Jorge Martinez's successor.'

None of the others I talked to were as forthcoming as that and quite a few were unwilling to discuss the political situation with me at all, some making it clear in the nicest possible way that they wanted to distance themselves from me, others quite blunt about it. There was, of course, an element of guilt involved. An island the size of Malta with a third of its wildest rock coast blanketed by villa and hotel development is not a pretty sight and most of us were getting our living from the urbanizationsin one form or another. It wasn't as bad as Benidorm or Tenerife, but to those with a conservationist conscience it still left a nasty taste in the mouth, bearing in mind how unspoilt Menorca had been before.

I must have contacted between twenty and thirty people that morning, all men who had as much to lose as I had if the political stability of the island was destroyed, and by the time I drove round to the commercial quay to check that Carp was cleared and ready to sail, my mind was made up. Tongues were wagging, and if I stayed, I might well find myself the scapegoat for what had happened. I was lucky to be free at the moment. If I hadn't got up at first light the previous day and searched the ship I would undoubtedly be under interrogation at Guardiaheadquarters, perhaps even flown off to mainland Spain. I had talked it over with Carp late that night. He knew what to do and the deterioration in the weather would make it all the more convincing that he had to put back into the nearest shelter to clear a warp wrapped round one of the prop shafts or deal with some water in the fuel tank. The probability was that nobody would bother to report the cat in Addaia, but if they did, then he had any number of good excuses.

The Policia Municipalbuilding looks right down on to the commercial quay, so that I was not surprised when a police car with two officers in it drew up on the quayside. We were just taking the last of the fresh stores on board and they parked there, watching us. If I had not come ashore when Luis uncleated the stern warp preparatory to letting go, they would have been on the radio immediately for a harbour launch, which would have stopped us before we had even reached Bloody Island.

I watched from the quay as Luis coiled down the stern warp, then ran for'ard to hoist the jib. The mains'l was already set and flapping on a loose sheet as the engines took her out into the open waters of the harbour and Carp turned her into the wind, heading east to clear the old grassed-over fort on Figuera Point at the entrance to the harbour proper. She looked a lovely sight once the sails had been hauled in tight, a rather hazy sun glinting on the new paint of the hull and transforming the twin bow waves into silver glitters of spray.

I turned then, thinking as I walked back to my car that I might catch up with them before they cleared the point. But then the police car cruised up alongside. 'You are not going with them?' It was Inspector Molina, and he was smiling at me. 'Such a nice boat. It must be very tempting. And Malta. Your wife comes from Malta.'

He was still smiling as I said, 'Yes, I would have enjoyed the trip. But you have my passport.'

'Ah si, and you are a law-abiding citizen of our island.' And he added, 'They can see your boat is preparing to sail from up there.' He nodded in the direction of the citadel with the slip road snaking up like a staircase with two hairpin bends in it. 'I just come to make sure.'

It was on the tip of my tongue then to tell him he would have been better employed searching the Santa Mariaand the villa on Punta Codolar, but I checked myself. Sooner or later it was surely inevitable they would find the gun where I had hidden it. 'Adios.'They drove off and I went back to the office to ring Lopescado at the Taberna Felipe in Ciudadela. The Santa Mariahad left.

'When?'

But he didn't know. Sometime during the night, he said, for it had been there the previous evening. In fact, all three of them had come ashore about eight o'clock. They had sat around outside and had a few drinks, then they had gone into the fish bar for a meal. They had left about ten-thirty and gone straight back to the ship.

'All of them?' I asked.

'Yes, all of them, and the boat is still there when I go to bed, with a light shining in the wheelhouse aft as well as a riding light at the forestay.'

'Did you gather where they were going? Did they clear customs, anything like that?'

'No, I never saw any official go on board, not then, nor any time earlier during the evening. But then I was very busy last night, a beeg party from Banyos, a German party…' He hesitated, then said, 'Once, when I am serving the next table, I hear your name mentioned. It was something about the policia.They were arguing about why some information had not been acted on. The last I hear they think you will try to leave Mahon sometime today. No, you will haveto leave. Those were his words 'Whose words?' I asked. 'Was it Evans who said that?'

'Si. The boss man with the Guevara moustache. Pa: Eevanz.'

He couldn't tell me anything more and when I put the phone down I sat there at the desk for a moment, gazing out towards La Mola and the Mahon entrance four miles away and wondering where the Santa Mariawas now, what Evans was up to. I could just see Thunderflash,her white hulls and sails outlined against the hazy shape of Lazareto Island. Once they were clear of Punta del Espero, the easternmost tip of La Mola, they would have a beam wind and a fast run to Cape Favaritx, then only five miles and all downhill to Macaret at the entrance to Port d'Addaia. Perhaps I should have arranged for them to put into Es Grau, but the entrance was very narrow and overlooked by almost every house in the little fishing village. In any case, I hadn't known then that Evans had sailed, and even if he did intend to spend the night at the villa on Punta Codolar he would probably anchor the Santa Mariain Arenal d'en Castell. It would be very sheltered there in an easterly blow. A picture flashed through my mind then of him opening a can of beer, or sitting down to a quick meal, at the table in that kitchen with the gun he thought was still on board the catamaran right there under the floorboards at his feet.

Soo came in then with the news that the council had been in session at the ayuntamientomost of the day. Nothing had been decided and there was talk of a local election.

I finished my packing and took her to the Atlante, the restaurant a few doors away, for an early meal. Sitting there, drinking vino verdeas an aperitif, we discussed the possible choices that a newly elected council would have. But even we, whose interests were identical, could not agree I favoured Gonzalez Renato, while Soo wanted Antonio Alvarez to be the next alcalde, chiefly I think because he would support a progressive building and development policy.

It was just as the waiter was serving our marinated sardines that the door opened and a small man in a brightly coloured short-sleeved shirt, and wearing a red floppy hat pulled down over his ears, looked in. He said something to Manuel, the patron, glanced quickly across at us, nodded and then left. 'Who was that?' I asked the waiter, conscious suddenly that I had seen the man lounging against one of the bollards when I'd come back from seeing Carp and Luis off in Thunderflash.The waiter hesitated, looking at Manuel and repeating the question. Manuel in his turn looked uneasy, as though reluctant to be drawn into giving me any information about the man. 'Vigilancia!' Iasked him, and after a moment's hesitation, he nodded. The Cuerpo de Vigilanciawere plain-clothes security police and like the Guardia Civilthey were paramilitary and came under the direct control of the Provincial Governor. The fact that they had me under surveillance was confirmation, if I needed any, that I should get out while the going was good. Also it suggested that the killing of Martinez was regarded by the authorities as something more than just an isolated terrorist incident.

I suppose I had fallen silent after the door had closed on the man and Manuel had confirmed he was one of the Vigilancia.Certainly my mind was concentrated on the future, on what life held in store for me — for both of us. 'Eat up,' Soo said, 'these sardines are delicious.' And then, almost in the same breath, 'What will you do when you get there? How long will you stay? Have you decided yet?'

It was a strange meal, both of us trying to look ahead, and at one stage, when we were sitting over our coffee and a large Soberano, I had the distinct impression that she was flying something close to a flag of seduction. Soo was odd that way, always had been. I think it was the Maltese in her. She was so volatile in her emotions, one minute cold as ice, the next minute… I remember we sat there like a couple of lovers, gazing into each other's eyes and actually holding hands across the table, clinking our brandy glasses.

God almighty! Why can't people be more sensible, more consistent? And why the hell was I so set on a son? What would a son do for me? You change its nappies, see it through all those infantile diseases, watch it teething and grow up, and the next thing it's borrowing the parental bed to poke a girl or getting high on drugs, or worse still, standing for cap'n in place of Dad, waiting for the old sod to drop dead.

I ordered more coffee, and another brandy for us both, and we sat there, not saying anything, each alone with our own thoughts. I touched her hand again, the ringers answering to the pressure of mine, her grip almost urgent. Did she want me to stay? Was that the message she was trying to convey? And the slight flutter of her nerves. Was she scared? I hadn't thought about it until that moment, my mind so concentrated on my own predicament. Now I tried to see it from her point of view, alone here, her husband slipping away on a yacht bound for Malta and the police suspecting him of complicity in a political murder.

Political? It had to be political. Martinez had no other interests. He hadn't been in business, he hadn't fiddled his taxes. He hadn't slept with other men's wives. No breath of scandal had ever touched him. But political enemies — he had those all right, and of course decisions had been made that did affect the business community. 'It'll be all right,' I said, holding her hand tight. 'Once I'm away they'll forget all about me and concentrate on other leads. A week and they'll know for sure that I had nothing to do with it. They'll get the date when I took Thunderflashover and then they will begin to enquire into Evans's movements.'

Her hand tightened on mine as she slowly nodded her head. 'But suppose ' she hesitated 'suppose the police are in on it? Suppose it's political and they're covering up.'

Then there'd be a single name emerging as the new alcalde.'

She sat there for a moment, her head still bent and not saying anything, the almost black hair gleaming in the lights, which had just been switched on. 'Fuxa,' she murmured. 'I keep hearing the name Fuxa. Ismail Fuxa.'

'He makes a lot of noise,' I said. 'But the separatist element is only a small minority. The people know very well an island like this could never make it on its own.'

We talked about it for a moment, then I paid the bill and we left, hand-in-hand, and the man in the red floppy hat watched us from his post by the bollard just a few yards from the Atlante. Maybe it was the brandy, but I felt warm and very close to Soo at that moment, and my mind, dreaming in the softness of the evening, the faint lap of wavelets the only sound, turned to thoughts of a menage a trois, wondering whether I was macho enough to keep both a wife and mistress satisfied. Petra with child! Petra on Bloody Island, a kid running around the dig, our son, Soo here in the house with her basenji, running the office. She and Petra, they liked each other. They were so different it might work. Soo cared about marriage. The Navy and Malta, she'd been very conventionally brought up. But Petra — I had never discussed it with her, of course, but I was quite sure she didn't give a damn.

It might work, but as I climbed the stairs my mind returned to normal and I knew it was only a dream.

I got my holdall and my oilskins and dumped them in the boot of the car. 'What about your minder?' Soo said. The guy in the floppy hat.'

'You drive,' I said, still buoyed by the drink. 'I'll ride in the boot till we're clear of the town.' I crawled in, holding the lid of it slightly open. I had done it more or less as a lark, and Soo, who was always very quick to respond to a mood, was giggling as she said, 'You look like something out of Alicecrouched in there.' She was still giggling to herself as she got in and started the engine.

We went about a hundred yards and then she slowed to a stop and I heard her say, 'Am I permitted to drive out to see my friends? I'm supposed to be playing bridge tonight.'

And a male voice answered her in Spanish, 'Of course, senora. You do not take your husband?'

'No. He's looking after Benjie.'

'Benjie? I do not understand.'

'The dog — el perro.'

'Ah si, el peno.'And then they were both laughing as though Soo was out on a cuckolding run. I nearly burst out laughing myself, thinking of Gareth Lloyd Jones safely tucked away in a frigate under the massive bulk of the Rock.

She drove fast after that, following the curves of the waterfront, and I watched the road astern through the slit under the boot lid. Nothing followed us, the cars along the Levante all parked, their owners still occupied with whatever it was they had come to the harbour for. By the Aduana I glimpsed the lights of a vehicle snaking down the Abundancia from the centre of town, but when it reached the Customs House it turned away from us.

By then we had reached the point where the Anden de Poniente runs into the Passo de la Alameda and the road to Fornells. I banged on the lid and after a while Soo stopped. 'I thought perhaps you'd gone to sleep.' She was still in a giggly mood. 'You could have got out back by the Maritime. There was nobody following us. I was watching in the mirror.' And she added, 'Are you sure you haven't got delusions of grandeur? I'm beginning to wonder if it's all an excuse to go for a sail in that damned cat.'

I didn't answer that, simply got in beside her and we drove on. Now that I was on my way and committed to leaving Spanish soil without clearance, I was in a more sombre mood.

'You're sure this journey of yours is absolutely necessary?' She said it lightly, still joking, but there was an undercurrent of concern in it that matched my own mood. I said nothing and we drove on in silence.

It was 22.57 when we turned north on to the Macaret road, 23.07 when we started down into Port d'Addaia. Soon we could see the water of the inlet, the islands at the entrance dark shapes, no moon, no stars. Thunderflashwas already there, riding to her anchor just off the new quay, the semi-inflatable ready alongside. I flashed our lights, then switched them off and got my gear out of the boot.

The tender was on its way almost immediately, so there was only a brief moment of privacy to say goodbye. Perhaps that was as well. I don't know what Soo was thinking as I kissed her, but my own thoughts were already on the voyage ahead and what it would be like to be back in Malta, this time without a passport. She didn't cling to me. In fact, she showed remarkably little emotion. Perhaps she was thinking of Lloyd Jones, wondering if his frigate would put into Mahon while I was away.

It was Luis driving the tender and he cut the engine just right, sliding in to the concrete edge of the quay and throwing the painter to me as the little launch floated to a stop. 'Good trip?' I asked.

'Si, bueno.We take five hours, speed reach sixteen knots. No motor.' A flash of teeth in the dark face grinning up at me. He had enjoyed himself and I was glad. 'Beeg sea, but everything very steady.'

'What's the forecast?' I asked him.

'Do' know. Carp attending it now. But we have nearly twenty knots, a levanter from Mahon to this place.'

I tossed my gear into the stern, gave Soo a final hug and jumped in. It might be blowing force five outside, but here, at the upper end of the long Macaret inlet, all was quiet, the water barely ruffled. By the time I got myself and my gear on board, Soo was already climbing the hill out of Addaia, the beam of the car's headlights altering as she took the sharp bends.

Carp came up out of the saloon. He looked pleased with himself. The ship had behaved itself — he called it a ship — and there had been no problems, the helm very easy on all points of sailing. 'We have a fast run to Malta — with luck.' He gave a gap-toothed smile. 'Wind twenty to twenty-five knots, backing north-east, possibly north, viz good.'

'A tramontana then?'

He nodded. 'But no rain. There's a high to the west of us moving south. Seas two to three metres, so it could be bouncy.'

I glanced back at the quay and the loom of the land behind it. It was quite dark now, no sign of Soo. So this was it — the moment of departure. We hauled the tender up on to the stem, fixed the lashings, then went below. 'Had any sleep on the way over?' It was unlikely for they would have been too busy in the rising wind and sea.

Carp shook his head. 'Would you like some coffee?' he asked. 'Something to eat?'

'No thanks. We'll get our heads down for a couple of hours. We need to be away about two, then we'll be well clear of the island and in international waters by first light.'

I had the double bed in the port hull and had just drifted off when I felt a shake of the shoulder and opened my eyes to see Carp's face leaning over me. 'We got company.'

'Coastal patrol?' I had come fully awake in a flash, the duvet thrown back and my feet already feeling for the locker top beside the bunk.

'No. Nothing official.'

'Who then?' I was thrusting my bare feet into my sea-boots.

But Carp was already climbing the steps that led up to the saloon. 'Come and see for yourself.'

He was standing in the open, beside the helmsman's seat, looking aft when I joined him, the rattle of a chain sounding loud in the quiet of the anchorage. No lights anywhere now, the houses all asleep, clouds low overhead. And there, a dim shape and barely fifty metres astern of us, was a fishing boat. 'The Santa Maria]'I asked him.

He nodded. 'Thought you'd want to know.' And he added, 'I was asleep on the settee just inside the saloon door when I was woken by the thump of a diesel close alongside. You reck'n they've come in for shelter?'

I didn't say anything and we stood there watching as the chain was stopped with a clunk and they began to lower the dinghy, the Santa Mariagradually swinging bows-to-wind so that we lost sight of all that side of the vessel. Luis started to come up just as the dinghy came out from under the Santa Maria'sstern and I told him to go back. 'Two of us,' I said. 'They must only see two of us.' Carp nodded, the night glasses trained on the dinghy, which had swung towards us, one man in the stern handling the outboard, the other amidships, his head tucked into his shoulders as the spray began to fly. 'Who is it?' I asked.

'The gaffer, I reck'n.' He passed me the glasses. 'You have a look. I only seen the fellow once.'

It was Evans all right. I recognised the strong, column-like neck, the way it held his head. 'I'll be in the port hull, right for'ard in the loo.' And I added, 'If he wants to know where I am, as far as you know I'm at home.'

Carp nodded. 'I'll see he doesn't bother you.' He gave me that gap-toothed smile. 'Reminds me of the days when we used to slip over to Holland and come back into the Deben, crossing the bar at night and dumping a couple of bags full of de Kuyper's Geneva bottles with a float attached like we were laying lobster pots.'

I nodded and ducked below, sending Luis up on deck while I went to the double bunk I'd been using on the port side to make certain there was nothing lying around to indicate I was on board. Soon I caught the sound of the outboard approaching, then a voice hailing us. The engine died with a splutter and after a moment I heard the sound of Evans's voice — 'Wrapped around the prop, eh? Which one?' Then feet on the steps down into the saloon and a voice much nearer: 'Well, it's fortunate I found you. When we swapped boats I discovered I was missing a packet containing a spare aerial and masthead bracket picked up with other radio gear duty-free in Gib on the way out. Stuffed it all in the bilges and conveniently forgot about it. You know how it is.'

I heard a non-committal grunt from Carp and Evans's voice went on, 'Tell me, did customs, police, anybody search the ship before you left yesterday?'

'No, not yesterday,' Carp replied. 'Day before we had an Inspector Mallyno on board with 'is sidekick. The Heffy too.'

The Heffy?'

'Ah. The Chief Inspector of police. Inspector Heffy.' Carp invariably got awkward names or words slightly wrong. He'd call a transistor a transactor or a tachometer a taxmaster, and always that slight sibilance as the breath whistled through those two broken teeth of his. 'They was on board quite a while talking with the boss.'

'Mike Steele?'

'Ah, the boss.'

'What were they talking about?'

'Oh, this and that, I reck'n.'

A pause then. Finally Evans came right out with it. 'Well, did they search the ship or not?'

'How would I know?'

'You said you were there.'

'I was up the mast, wasn't I?'

'How the hell would I know you were up the mast? I wasn't there.' Evans's tone was one of exasperation at Carp's odd turn of phrase. I couldn't hear anything after that. He must have turned away. Then a moment later, his voice sounding much louder, as though he had moved to the entrance to the starb'd hull, 'And what about the starb'd engine compartment? Did they look in there, too?'

They may have done. That where you hid it?' I heard the steps being folded back. 'Well, there you are, mate. You can see for yourself. There's nothing there.'

'Right at the back.'

There was the sound of movement, then Carp's voice again, much sharper. 'No you don't. You're not pushing in among those pipes an' leads.'

Evans started to argue, then the stepped lid slammed down and Carp said, 'You lost anything, you talk to the boss. I don't want that engine conking out again. Not halfway to Malta I don't. And anyways, if we find it, we'll know whose it is and see you get it back.'

A pause, then Evans said, 'Okay, so long as you don't show it to anybody. I don't want it to get around that I slipped anything in under the noses of the customs people, not when we're trying to set ourselves up in the fishing here. All right?' And then, his voice fading as he turned away, 'Where's your boss now? Do you know?'

I didn't hear the answer, the murmur of their voices lost as they went back into the saloon. I came out of the loo then and moved aft as far as the turn of the steps over the engine. I could hear Evans's voice then, sharp and hard as he said, 'Felixstowe Ferry! What the hell are you talking about?' And Carp answering, 'Well, ever since you came down to the Navy quay to take over the Santa MariaI bin wondering. Thort I recognised you, see. But red hair — that's wot fixed me.'

'Red hair? What do you mean?'

'Moira. That's wot I mean. Red Moira.' And Carp went on, his accent broader and talking fast: 'Just before you get to the Ferryboat there's a dyke runs off to the left alongside a little tidal creek full of old clung-bungs used as houseboats. There was one, I remember, belonged to some bit actor feller — was on TV once in a while, then he'd be full of drink an' happy as a lark for a week. After that, broke again and morose as if he'd had sight of Black Shuck himself. Used to wander alone along towards the King's Fleet. Same name as yours.'

'So what?' Evans's voice was harsh. 'It's a common enough name.'

'Well, he's dead now. Shacked up with this Irish broad. Red Moira she was known as all along the beach. Lived in an old boat called the Betty-Annthat lay there in the mud, with a rickety old bit of flotsam planking the only way of getting on board. They had a son. Used to call 'im Pat.'

'You've got me mixed up with somebody else.'

'Mebbe. But then this Navy fellow came looking for you, and the odd thing is that when he was a kid he was sent to stay with the Evanses. I'd see the two of you out swimming together, larking about, all over the place you were until you broke into a cabin cruiser, downed some drink and got pissed as farts. It was the other one fell into the 'oggin, I remember, and Billie had to go after 'im with the pilot boat, the tide fair sluicing and the poor little bugger carried right out towards the shingle banks.'

Evans said something about it being time they were in bed and the sound of their voices faded as the two of them went out into the night. Shortly afterwards the outboard started up, the sound of it gradually dying away as Carp called down to me that I could come out now. He was grinning. 'Couldn't get away fast enough, could he? I reck'n it was him all right.'

The boy you knew as a kid?' He nodded, and I said, 'I thought you said he had red hair.'

That's right. Real Tishan. But you can dye it, can't you? Dye it black and it alters the whole look of a man. And that funny moustache. That's why I couldn't be sure, not at first. But the way he said it was 'is bedtime.. You know there was a moment when I thort he was going to call up his mate and have a go at searching that engine compartment without permission. That's why I started telling him about Felixstowe Ferry. Pat Evans. That was the boy's name. Same name, you see. And both of them sent off to Ganges.It was the nearest place, outside of the Borstal over by Hollesley, to instil some discipline into the young rascals.'

He rubbed his hands on his denims. 'Quite a dag up on deck, real wet, like a mist had come down. Care for some coffee?' And before I could reply, he went on, 'Had the nerve to ask me if we'd got any liquor on board. He'd run out, he said. What he was after, of course, was to start a drinking session, so as he'd get my tongue loosened up and mebbe learn something I wouldn't have told him otherwise. I said we needed what little we'd got on board for the voyage over.' He shook his head, rubbing his hands over the greying bristles of his chin. 'Don't ever change their spots, do they? Well, wot about you? Shall I brew some coffee?'

He didn't feel like turning in and nor did I. We'd lost a precious half hour's sleep and already it was 01.37. 'Coffee and a small glass of something warming,' I said. 'Then we'll get under way.'

'Didn't like my reminding him he'd been at Felixstowe Ferry when he was a kid, did he?' He grinned as he turned away towards the galley at the after end of the port hull. 'It'll be instant, I'm afraid.' I heard the clink of metal, the sound of water running, then the plop of the butane burner igniting. 'Funny about that hair of his,' he called out. 'Makes you wonder what goes on in a man's mind, don't it?'

'How d'you mean?' I asked.

'Well, how long's he had it dyed, that's what I mean. Can't be just to conceal his identity, otherwise he'd've changed his name, wouldn't he? You see, we didn't reck'n they were married Tim Evans and Red Moira. She was just a living-in girlfriend on a houseboat, that was our reck'ning. Partic'ly as she was pretty free with her favours. Well, not free if you know wot I mean. She charged — when she felt like it, or when she was short of cash.'

The kettle began whistling, and when he returned with the coffee, he said, 'They claimed they was married. Mr and Mrs Evans.' He laughed. 'But if they wasn't, then that makes son Patrick a bastard. Reck'n that's why he dyed his hair — not wanting to be tarred with his mother's red brush?' He was opening a locker beside the table. 'Soberano or a real genuine malt that Lennie scrounged from one of the yacht skippers at the Maritime.'

He pulled out the bottle and poured two stubby glasses full of the golden liquor. It was Macallan twelve-year-old, a mellow dream after the sweeter, more fiery taste of Spanish brandy. 'Little better than a whore,' he went on. 'And a tongue on her that could lash an East Coast barge skipper into silence. An' she used it, too, whenever she was drunk, which was pretty often. No wonder the poor devil committed suicide. To be shacked up with a whore who's been sleeping around with other men is one thing, but a red-headed Irish bitch with a tongue as coarse as a barge-load of grit…' He shrugged. 'Ah well, he's dead now, so who cares?'

Knowing the area, even the little mud creek back of the Ferryboat Inn with the dyke-top path running north to join the Deben riverbank, remembering the old houseboats I had seen there that cold, bleak spring day, their slimy bottoms sunk deep in the tide-exposed mud, I could picture what it must have been like for a boy to grow up in a home and a family atmosphere like that. And the father committing suicide. 'How did he do it?' I asked.

'Drowned 'isself,' Carp answered. 'Wot else? It's easy enough to do at the Ferry with the shingle beach dropping almost sheer and a sluicing ebb tide that runs over five knots at springs. He was missing two days before anybody took Moira's whimpers seriously. He'd done it before, gone off on 'is own without her knowing where. Very unpredictable man. Once he slept out at Minsmere in the woods there two whole days. Bird-watching at the Reserve there is wot he said, but we all reck'ned it was because he'd 'ad enough of it. They found 'is body out by the Haven buoy… That's right, the same buoy that young lieutenant was found clinging to. It was a yacht outward bound for Dutchland wot found 'im. Helluva way to start a cruise, fishing a body out of the water that's been dead — well, it must have been close on a week by then.'

A horn blared from the direction of the quay and I poked my head out of the saloon door, thinking perhaps Soo had come back for some reason. There was a car parked there, its headlights at high beam and directed straight at the Santa Maria.The wheelhouse light came on and a moment later the dinghy slid away from her side, the outboard sounding as harsh as a chainsaw in the stillness.

We watched from the doorway as the dinghy swung alongside the quay where the driver was waiting to receive the box or large carton that was handed up to him. The car drove off and the dinghy returned to the Santa Maria.The lights went out, everything still again, only the wind moaning in the trees and undergrowth of the protecting peninsula to the east of us.

'Some more coffee?' Luis had emerged and was holding the pot up in invitation. We had it with the rest of our Macallan at the chart table, checking the position at which we would finally turn on to our course for Malta. It was a straight run on a course of 155° that passed some thirty miles south of Sardinia. 'Six hundred miles,' Carp said. 'We should make it without motoring in a little over three days.'

'If the wind holds,' I said. 'Which it seldom does.'

It took us only a few minutes to get ready for sea, then we hoisted the main, holding the cat head-to-wind and pulling the anchor warp in by hand until it was up and down. I didn't start the engines, not even one of them, sailing the anchor out and hauling in on the main sheet until, with the wind abeam, we were headed to pass east of the island that lay across the inlet's narrows like a cork in a bottle and separated Macaret harbour from the upper reaches of the inlet, which was Port d'Addaia. We passed within less thai; a cable's length of the Santa Maria, slipping through the water quite silently, only a slight chuckle at the bows. Nobody stirred, no lights came on, and in a moment the bulk of the island hid her from view.

Carp and Luis hoisted the jib, and as we hardened in on the sheet, Thunderflashpicked up her skirts and began to move. Off Macaret itself we began to feel the weight of the wind, the speed indicator moving towards seven knots. There was movement, too, as we got the wind coming in through the entrance. 'Everything stowed?' I asked Luis, and when he nodded I told him to go below and check again. 'It will be rough when we come out of the lee of Ilia Gran.'

Carp suddenly hailed me from for'ard. 'There's a boat coming in.'

'Where?'

But he was already pointing, his arm indicating a position straight over the bows. By then the speed indicator was flickering on ten and a second later I saw it, a dark shape, with no lights. It was only the white of her bow wave that had enabled Carp to pick it out. 'Bloody fool!' he said as he landed on the teak grid beside my swivel chair.

'What is it?' I asked him. 'Coastal patrol?'

'Don't reck'n so. Bugger's coming in without a single light showing. Could be Navy. An exercise. Otherwise…'

I was thinking of the Santa Maria,lying at the head of the inlet, and the car that had met Evans on the quay. I was certain it was Evans who had taken that box or case ashore. 'We'll know soon enough,' I said. Already we could hear the thump of her diesel, and at that moment she was picked out for an instant by the headlights of a car on a bend ashore. There were barely a dozen metres between us as she went thundering past, and caught like that in the sweep of the car's lights, the dark silhouette of three men showed in the wheelhouse. She was a motor yacht of the fifties vintage or even earlier. 'Saving her batteries,' Carp said. 'Either that or she's bringing in a nice little present for somebody on the quiet.'

I didn't say anything, certain now that this clandestine arrival had something to do with the presence of the Santa Mariain the inner anchorage. But I had no time to dwell on that, for almost immediately we opened up the gap between the promontory of Macar Real and Ilia Gran, the starb'd hull beginning to lift as the wind, funnelling through the gap, hit us. I had my work cut out then to keep her on course for the entrance.

A few minutes more and we were out into the open, the sea short and very steep with a lot of white water. I was steering 040°, the speed risen to almost eighteen knots, and every wave that broke sent the spray flying, droplets of water that were hard as shotgun pellets driven against my face by an apparent windspeed that must have been well over forty knots. I called to Carp to get his oilskins on and take the helm while I went below to get a fix on the Favaritx light.

It took us only twenty minutes or so to run our distance off Menorca, the bows smashing through the waves, spray bursting almost as high as the radar scanner at the cross-trees and the twin hulls slamming their way through the water at a speed that made it seem hard as concrete, the shocks of impact jarring every bone in our bodies. At 02.27 we went about on to the port tack, setting course for Malta, and with the wind tending to back in the gusts, the motion was easier, though we were still close-hauled. We changed down to the number two jib, took a couple of rolls in the main and went into two-hour watches.

From my bunk I had periodic glimpses of the moon through the perspex hatch and when dawn broke I went up into the saloon on the chance of getting a last sight of Menorca and so fix our position. But there was no sign of any land, the catamaran now on a broad reach, driving fast and comfortably across a wilderness of broken water.

It was a long day merging into night, intermittent sun and cloud. I was able to get a noon fix that was close to the sat-nav position and showed we had been clocking up an average of nine and a half miles per hour over the ground during the ten hours we had been at sea. The movement was very different to anything I had known before. A monohull does not bash into the seas, it accommodates itself to the rise and swoop of the waves. A multihull is much more uncompromising, and with no let-up in the wind, we were all of us very tired by the time night fell, the sun going down in a ball of fire and an odd-looking rainbow curling across a black rain cloud to the south.

We had two days of force five to seven from between NNE and NNW and there were times when I thought for a moment she was going to start flying a hull. On the third day, the wind backed into the west so that we were able to shake out our reefs and for almost four and a half hours we had a spinnaker run. After that the wind fell light and we started to motor. From white, breaking waves the sea smoothed out till it took on an oily, almost viscous surface, only the low swell from the north to remind us of the hard weather that had been pushing us south-eastward down the Med at such a spanking speed. A pod of dolphins joined us and we spent over two hours watching them as they cavorted round the bows. Carp tried to take a picture of their underwater shapes, lying flat on the safety net that stretched between the twin hulls at the bows. He came back aft soaking wet, one of the dolphins having slapped its tail on the surface and showered him with spray. 'I swear he did it o'purpose, because he rolled over on his side and looked me straight in the face, an' he was grinning! Not sure 'e didn't wink 'is eye at me. Talk about a sense of fun…'

As suddenly as they had arrived, the dolphins disappeared. The sun was shining out of a blue sky as they left us, the spray thrown up by their speed and the arching curve of their sleek bodies glittered silver in the bright light. A noon sight put us within fifty miles of Sicily and by evening we could see the mountains standing pale in the sunset, wisps of cloud clinging to their tops.

It had been a lazy day, hot and sleepy-making, a welcome contrast. I had spent part of it trying to explain to Carp how to calculate his position from sights taken with the sextant. He was a good inshore pilot, but he had never had occasion to learn navigation, had never handled a sextant before. We had sat-nav and Decca on board, everything as automatic as could be, which is fine so long as your batteries hold out and no electrical faults develop in the hardware. The joy of a sextant is that there's virtually nothing to go wrong, unless you're fool enough to drop the thing overboard or forget to bring your azimuth tables with you.

That day I also began to think about our landfall. If we went straight into Grand Harbour, then it was unlikely I'd get ashore without being observed. The alternative, which was to slip into one of the smaller bolt holes like Marsaxlokk in the south of the island, or even drop off at the smaller island of Gozo, involved a risk that Carp could be in real trouble with the authorities if I were picked up by the police for having no papers and entering Malta illegally. In any case, when it came to leaving the island, I would have to do it secretly.

I didn't discuss the matter with Carp. It was something I had to make up my own mind about and in the end I decided to brazen it out and tell the authorities I had inadvertently lost my passport overboard, a very easy thing to do at night if one was stupid enough to leave it in one's anorak.

By late afternoon a heat haze was developing and we took in the clothes and bedding we had hung out to air. At six Luis relieved Carp at the helm and for the first time in three days the two of us were able to relax over an evening drink before putting the stew back on the stove. Two questions had clarified in my mind during the night watches, both concerning Gareth Lloyd Jones. First and foremost was the exact relationship between him and Evans, but all Carp said was, 'If he's bringing his ship into Mahon, then you'll be able to ask 'im yourself.'

"How long were the two boys together on that houseboat?' I asked.

'Not more'n three weeks, a month or so. If it'd been longer reck'n they'd've bin in real trouble, they was getting that wild. And Tim Evans accusing that Moira of all sorts of unnatural practices, accusing her publicly, right in front of everybody in the Ferryboat.' He knocked back the rest of his whisky and poured himself another, staring down at his glass, lost in his recollections.

What do you mean — unnatural practices?' I was intrigued by his extraordinary choice of words.

'Well, can't say I know exactly wot the women were clacking about, but the fact is that the boy Gareth was just about the age for it and he was there on the boat with Moira an' nobody else for — oh, I forget now, but Tim Evans was away quite a while. Filming was wot Moira said. But I heard later he was so desperate for money he shipped as cook on a deep-sea trawler sailing out of Yarmouth for that Russian place, Novy Zembla.'

'And he accused her of taking the boy into her bed — is that what you're saying?'

'Well, I was in the pub there, wasn't I? Heard 'im say it myself. Shoutin' at 'er, he was.'

'So what was the boy's position? Why was it unnatural?'

Carp shrugged. 'There was rumours, you see.'

I waited, and when he didn't say anything further, I asked him what sort of rumours.

That they was half-brothers. That's wot some people said.' He gave a little shrug. 'Place like the Ferry, tongues wag, partic'larly over people as strange as Tim and Moira.'

'Which of them was supposed to be the common parent?' I asked.

'Oh, the bloke of course. Moira was much too fly to get caught more than once. Least that's my reck'ning. But that boy, he had hair as red as hers, an' freckles, too. He was her kid, no doubt o'that. An' older than Gareth. A year at least. The local paper gave their ages as thirteen and fourteen.' And he went on to say that as he remembered it Gareth was the son of a couple named Lloyd Jones who ran a newsagent's somewhere in the East End of London. Seems it happened when Tim Evans was working at a municipal theatre in the Mile End Road. It was then, at the theatre, that he met up with Moira. She was barmaid there, so rumour had it.

'You mean Tim Evans was having it off with both women at the same time?'

'Oh, I don't know about that. Story was that this Lloyd Jones fellow had to go into hospital for an operation and his wife was left running the newsagent's on her own. By then Tim Evans was out of a job, so she got him into the shop to help her. That's how he paid for 'is lodgings.'

'By giving her a son?'

He grinned. 'All I said was he helped her in the shop. As far as we was concerned it was the red-haired lad as was illegit.'

Luis called down to us that he had just picked up the loom of a light almost dead over the bows. After about a quarter of an hour, when the white beam of it finally lifted above the horizon, we were able to identify it positively as the lighthouse on the highest point of the island of Gozo, which is 595 feet above sea level and has a range of twenty-four miles.

With no vessel in sight, I stopped both engines and we lay to, so that for the first time in three days we could have our drinks and our evening meal together in the saloon. By then I had finally made up my mind to go straight in at first light and clear health, customs and immigration in the normal way. Grand Harbour was no more than forty miles away, five hours' motoring at an economical eight knots, which meant three-hour watches for each of us, starting with Luis at 21.00.

It seemed an awful long time that I lay awake thinking about Malta. So much history, and the pale, honey-coloured limestone seeming to sprout churches, barracks, ramparts and fortresses everywhere, with hotels and every other type and period of building in such profusion that it hardly seemed possible there were farms scattered all over the island, secreted behind the endless stone walls. I had spent just over a year there, first training, then training others. Later I had gone back to stay with a Maltese family, one of those that are descended from the Knights, proud people whose forebears fought the Turks in the Great Siege at 15 6 5. That was when I met Soo.

Now, with all the vast stone familiarity of the place a short night's sleep away, my mind kept going over and over the future and its problems, recollections merging with thoughts of Gareth Lloyd Jones, wondering whether his ship would be there, how much the island would have changed, what the attitude of Soo's relatives would be. Her mother's father was still alive I knew, and the younger brother, who had gone into the Church, was vicar of the big church in Birzebbuga when last heard from — the elder brother had emigrated to Australia and was running a cattle station up north in Queensland. Soo herself had a cousin, Victoria, who was married to a lawyer and living in Sliema; the male cousins had both got themselves jobs in the States. I had met the lawyer once, a man of about my own age, very conservative in outlook, but a good underwater swimmer and he liked sailing.

I heard the watch change and the muffled beat of the engines starting up, felt the change of movement. We were under way again and after that I slept until Carp gave me a shake just after 03.00. 'Gozo just coming abeam,' he reported, 'and I can now see the light on the St Elmo breakwater.'

It was a bright, starlit morning, the dark sprawl of Gozo clearly visible under the swinging beam of the lighthouse high up in the centre of the island. I was alone at the wheel then, virtually no wind and the engines purring us along at eight knots, dawn gradually filling in the details of the landscape on our starb'd hand. I could make out the hotel I had once stayed in at St Paul's Bay, which is the spot where the disciple is supposed to have been shipwrecked. So many places I remember, and when the sun came up in a ball of fire the honey-coloured buildings of Sliema and Valetta took on a rosy glow, the whole urban complex that surrounds the great harbour inlets of Marsamxett and Grand Harbour looking fresh as the phoenix still engulfed in flames.

I steered close under the old fortress of St Elmo, heading for Gallows Point, and when I turned into Grand Harbour itself, I called Luis and Carp to come up and see it, neither of them having been to Malta before. To come in like this, from the sea, is to see it as the Turks saw it in May 1565, as all one hundred and ninety of their ships passed slowly across the entrance to bring the greatest fighting force then in existence to attack the Knights of St John in the stronghold they had retired to after being driven out of Rhodes.

We hoisted the yellow Q flag, and heading up the harbour, there on the port hand was Kalkara Creek and the massive ramparts of St Angelo and Senglea either side of Dockyard Creek. And right in front of us, bang in the middle of Grand Harbour and looking as though it owned the place, was the solid grey armour of a cruiser flying a red ensign with hammer and sickle on it. How many British admirals, I wondered, had turned in their graves at the thought of all the other nations that now used thenharbour? There was a Libyan freighter at the quay further in, a small Cuban warship moored off, and a gaggle of coastal patrol vessels among the ferryboats in the creek And then I caught sight of a pale grey shape, awkwardly placed right behind the Libyan freighter and tucked in against the dockyard quay right under one of the cranes It looked like a Royal Navy ship. A gaily painted dghajsawas being rowed across our bows, the man at the oars calling to ask us if we wished to be taken ashore. But by then one of the harbour launches was coming out to meet us.

CHAPTER TWO

Things had been difficult enough during the Mintoff era, which is why we had only been back twice since our marriage, but now the bureaucracy, as represented by the puffed-up little immigration officer who came out to us, seemed to have become even more rigid and uncooperative. No doubt he had his orders, for as soon as I said my name he demanded to see my passport, and when I told him I had lost it overboard, he nodded, smiling, as though that was what he had expected.

I had been hoping, of course, that by now Martin Lopez would have had time to straighten things out, but when he ordered us to move nearer the dockyard area, presumably so that they could keep a closer watch on us, and said that nobody was to land, it was obvious the Menorcan authorities had been in touch with them. I pointed out to him that we had been at sea for almost four days and must send somebody ashore for fresh food, but the brown eyes in the smooth dark face stared at me uncomprehendingly In the end he told us to arrange with one of the dghajsasto supply our needs. 'If you go ashore before you have clearance,' he said, 'you will be arrested.'

I was too tired to argue with him and shortly after he had left a Harbour Police launch appearedand under their direction we shifted to the industrial part of the harbour, anchoring just north of the largest of the dry docks, which was occupied by a Panamanian-registered cruise ship. Our new anchorage was noisy and smelt strongly of oil and sewage, the water thick and dark, the viscidity of its surface gleaming with a bluebottle iridescence in the bright sunlight.

The RN ship was a frigate; we could see her quite clearly now, but not her name, only the number on her side prefixed F. She was berthed alongside a quay on the Senglea shore of French Creek at about the spot where the Turks had tried so desperately to tear down the improvised palisade the Knights had erected to protect their southern flank. Maltese swimmers, armed with knives and short swords, had driven them off, and then on July 15, in the full heat of summer, Mustapha Pasha had launched what was intended as a final crushing blow against the Knights of St John. I remember the date because it was the day Soo and I had been married. The Janissaries, the Spahis, the layalars, the Levies were all thrown in, the galleys as well that had been dragged overland from Marsamxett. Three thousand fanatical Muslims died that day.

How much had changed! Yet over the long gap of four centuries, the forts, ramparts and ravelins of the Knights still stood massive in the sunshine — Senglea and St Michael, Birgu and St Angelo, and Fort St Elmo away to my left on the Valetta side of Grand Harbour. I had been reading up on the Great Siege when I first met Soo and it was she who had taken me to all sorts of places I would otherwise have missed. It was, in fact, the Great Siege that had brought us together, the beginning of our love, and seeing it again all bright on that cloudless morning brought a lump to my throat.

A sudden flurry of activity on the deck of the frigate brought my mind back from the past. The gangway staff had been alerted by the approach of a launch speeding across from Valetta, I watched as it came alongside the accommodation ladder, sailors with boathooks fore and aft and a naval officer stepping out and climbing quickly to the deck above. There was a twitter of bo's'n's pipes and I wondered if it was the Captain returning from a courtesy visit. Was it Lloyd Jones? Would he know about the Great Siege? Would that spark I had seen explode between them compensate for all the things Soo and I had shared? And then, more practically, I was looking at the frigate's superstructure, the tangle of radio and radar equipment. There, if the worst came to the worst, was the means of communicating with the outside world, if he would play.

That thought stayed in my mind all day. I needed to know what was happening back in Mahon, what my position was. I had been so convinced I would be in the clear by the time we reached Malta, and Evans?… surely they would have searched the villa by now? Lying in the broad double bunk in the port hull my mind went over and over the stupidity of it all. To fall into such a heavily baited trap — me, with all the experience I had of sailing close to the wind Christ! It was unbelievable.

And then, when I finally got off to sleep, there was the jar of a launch alongside, Maltese voices and the thump of feet on deck. It was the customs back again, this time with orders to search the boat, which they did from end to end, peering into all the bilges, prodding cushions and bedding and searching every locker, the engine compartments, too. Periodically I asked them what they were looking for, but each time the senior officer replied, 'A routine search. Nothing more. Just routine.'

They were on board the better part of two hours. When they left I was advised once again not to go ashore. 'And don't send any bags, laundry, anything like that ashore. You wait here until you are cleared, okay?'

Nothing is more demoralising than being confined on board a sailing boat in port and at anchor, nothing to do hut wait, and so many things I could have been doing ashore. Carp retired philosophically to his bunk, but though I followed his example, I couldn't sleep. After lunch I got the inflatable into the water and the outboard fixed to its bracket in readiness. If I had been on my own I think I would have risked it, but I had Carp to consider and so I sat there in the helmsman's chair watching the world go by, the sun hot on my bare shoulders, a drink in my hand and the sounds of Malta at work all about me.

Nobody else came out to us and time passed slowly. The flamboyantly painted dghajsasand ferries full of tourists scurried to and fro across the water between Valetta and Kalkara or Vittoriosa, and there were launches and service craft constantly moving among the vessels at anchor. lust before five the launch lying alongside the frigate's gangway was manned again and an officer appeared on the deck above. I got the glasses, but I couldn't be sure it was Lloyd Jones, the peak of his cap casting a shadow across his face. He was taken across the harbour to land by the Customs House where a car was waiting for him. Inside of an hour he was back on board. By then the sun was sinking over the Marsa township and the honey-coloured limestone of the older buildings ashore began to glow with a warmth that turned rapidly from gold to a fiery red.

By then the shipyard noises had been briefly swamped by the engines and horns of the rush-hour traffic. Lights appeared in the streets and on the wharfs, the windows of buildings blazed like a myriad fireflies, and suddenly the frigate was lit from end to end, a circlet of electric light bulbs. I think it was this that finally made up my mind for me. I went below, changed into a decent pair of trousers, put on a shirt and tie, then asked Carp to run me over to the frigate.

He looked at me hard for a moment, then he nodded. 'Okay, if that's what you want. You can always say it doesn't count — as going ashore, I mean.'

It took us less than five minutes to cross the flat calm strip of water that separated us from the frigate. The launch had been hoisted into its davits so that, once I had checked that Lloyd Jones was the frigate's captain and the Quartermaster had satisfied himself I really did know him, we were able to go straight alongside the accommodation ladder. 'Want me to wait for you?' Carp asked as I seized one of the stanchions and swung myself up on to the grating.

'No.' I didn't want it made that easy for them to get rid of me. 'Either they'll bring me back or I'll have them flash you up on their signal lamp.'

By the time I reached the frigate's deck Carp was already on his way back to the boat and a very young-looking officer was waiting for me. He confirmed that Lloyd Jones was the Captain and when I told him I was a friend, he asked me to wait while he phoned. He came back almost immediately with Gareth Lloyd Jones. He looked very smart in an open-necked shirt, immaculately white, black trousers and cummerbund, and the gold of his new rank bright on his shoulder boards, a smile on that pleasant open face of his. 'Mike. It's good to see you.' He held out his hand, seeming genuinely pleased. 'John, take Mr Steele up to my cabin,' he told the young officer, 'and have Petty Officer Jarvis get him a drink.' Then to me he said, 'You'll excuse me for a moment. There's a party going ashore for supper at the invitation of a Maltese wine company and I want to have a word with them before they leave.'

He left me then, climbing the ladder to the helicopter flight deck ahead of me and disappearing round the hangar on the port side. John Kent, a dark-haired, dark-browed young man, who proved to be one of the seamen officers, led the way for me, up to the flight deck, for'ard past the illuminated funnel and in through a watertight door to a passageway that led across to the curtained entrance to the Commanding Officer's day cabin. 'Make yourself at home, sir, while I find the Captain's steward.'

The cabin was a roomy one with a desk, two armchairs and a couch with a coffee table in front of it, and there was a small dining table by one of the two portholes with utilitarian upright chairs. The portholes, which had grips for steel shuttering, gave me a view of the concrete wall at the back of the quay and the lit buildings behind it rising to the back of the Senglea peninsula. There was nobody on the wharf or at the end of the shore-side gangway, which I could just see a short distance aft of where I was standing. The only sounds that penetrated the cabin were shipboard sounds of whining machinery and air-conditioning.

On the wall by the desk there was a telephone communications system, also a microphone and loudspeaker, and on the desk itself there was a naval manual of some sort, a Folio Society edition of Fitzroy's Voyage of HMS Beagle,a paperback copy of one of Patrick O'Brian's sea stories, also a framed photograph of Soo sunbathing on a rock. It looked like a picture I had taken myself, at Gala d'Alcaufar when we had first come to Menorca. It was a shock to have this visual evidence of how much my wife now meant to this man living a monastic existence on one of Her Majesty's ships.

'What would you care to drink, sir?'

I turned with a start to find a round-faced young man in dark blue, almost black, Navy trousers, and white shirt gazing at me curiously from the doorway. I ordered a gin and tonic and moved back to the porthole. There was movement now, a steady stream of sailors, all in civvies, looking clean and smart with their hair well brushed, moving down the gangway on to the wharf. I counted twenty-seven of them as they walked briskly across the wharf, separating into little groups as they disappeared from view round the corner of a storage shed. A moment later Gareth Lloyd Jones came in. 'Nobody offered you a drink?'

'Yes, it's coming,' I said.

Now that I had a chance to examine him more closely I thought he looked tired and edgy, as though his new command was getting him down.

The steward came in with two large gins on ice and a bottle of tonic. 'Fifty-fifty, plenty of tonic?' Gareth gave me a quick grin, poured the tonic, then took a long pull at his own drink before subsiding on to the couch. 'Well, what brings you here? That's your catamaran over by the dry dock, is it?' He must have caught sight of Soo's photograph then, for he suddenly bounced up, went over to the desk, and under the pretext of looking at some papers, turned the picture face down.

Briefly I explained what had happened, finally asking him whether there was any way he could find out what the attitude of the authorities in Menorca was to me now. 'Have you anyone there you can contact by radio?'

He hesitated. 'Yes, but…' He got to his feet and went back to the desk, lifted the mike off its rest and press-buttoned a number. 'Captain. Is the Yeoman of Signals there? Ask him to have a word with me.' He put the mike back on its rest. 'Funny ship, this,' he said. 'It's an antique really, but after being mothballed for several years and threatened with the knacker's yard twice, their lordships suddenly hauled it back into service, gave it a quick facelift, and then fitted it out with the latest in communications systems so that to that extent we must be the envy of the Fleet. We also have sonar equipment that's on its last legs and an Ops Room that belongs to the Ark and is on the blink…' There was a tap at the door and he said, 'Come in, Yeo.' He turned to his desk, reached for a message pad and began to write as a thin man with a dark pointed beard pushed aside the curtain. When he had finished, he said, 'Have that sent and make it immediate. And they're to stand by for a reply. This is Mr Steele, incidentally. Petty Officer Gordon, my Yeoman of Signals.'

The beard and I smiled at each other, and as he left Gareth said, 'It may be a little time before we get a reply to that. Meanwhile, perhaps you'd join me for my evening meal.' And when I demurred, he said, 'No, of course not — no trouble at all. I'll be glad of your company anyway. Occasionally I mess in the wardroom, and I have messed with the Senior Rates once, but mostly I feed alone. It's the custom, you know. So as I say, I'll be glad of your company.' He called to the steward to bring us another drink. 'I never drink at sea, of course ' He spoke as though he had been in command for years — 'but now that we're tied up alongside…' He gave a little shrug, as though the fact of being tied up to a quay absolved him of some of the responsibility of command.

But as time passed I began to realise that his position weighed heavily on him, more heavily than it should, even tor a man newly appointed to the command of a ship. It was as though he had something on his mind, and the only clue he gave as to what it might be was when he suddenly said, apropos of nothing, 'You know, it's a strange thing, here I am flying the White Ensign, but tucked away against this filthy little quay, as though the Maltese didn't want to recognise the flag that's flown here for so many years. I'm out on a limb. Nobody wants to know us. Officially, that is. We're sort of pariahs. I've been here four days and not a day has passed but the authorities have dropped hints it's time we left. We have in fact flashed up the boilers so that we are ready to sail at short notice if we have to.'

He paused then, but two gins had loosened his tongue and he went on, talking fast: They don't want to make a thing of it, tell us outright to go, but they've made it very clear they don't want us here. You see, wherever we are, in this ship — any RN ship — we're a bit of the UK. That's what the Union flag is telling them, and they don't like it — not now, not any more. Politically, here in Grand Harbour, we stick out like a sore thumb.' And he added with a wry smile, 'Our visit isn't a bit like it was for the last frigate that showed the flag here.'

That was the first courtesy visit in seven years if I remember rightly,' I said.

'Well, not quite. The Brazenwas the first ship to visit Malta after the British Forces finally left the island in 1979. She had the C-in-C Fleet embarked. Prince Charles came later with ninety thousand Maltese cheering and waving flags.' He made a face, shrugging his shoulders. That's what the papers said anyway. And look at us, tucked away in a corner where nobody can see us, and that bloody great Russian cruiser lording it in the centre of the harbour. That's why I had the lights rigged.'

'I don't think La Valette would have approved of their presence here,' I said.

He smiled, 'Ah, so you know what happened. More than four centuries ago and we still talk of St Elmo's fire.' He had read Ernie Bradford's book, knew the whole incredible story, the astonishing bravery of the Maltese when led by men like the Knights and motivated by religious faith and the fear of being captured and sent to the Turkish galleys. 'And now they are under the hand of another Muslim ruler.'

There was a knock at the door and a thickset, bull-headed Lieutenant Commander with greying hair entered, cap under his left arm, some papers gripped in his hand. He was a good deal older than his newly-appointed captain. His name was Robin Makewate. 'MEO,' Gareth said, explaining that it meant Marine Engineer Officer. It was a state-of-the-engines routine visit, and when he had gone, Gareth said, 'He's forty-three, started as a stoker at the age of nineteen after studying engineering at night school Volunteered for the job here, even though he knew he'd be serving under a much younger man.' He finished his drink, saying as he did so that it was odd being in command of a ship that was filled partly by volunteers, partly by throw-outs from the rest of the Fleet.

That wry smile again, his eyes not looking at me, not seeing anything but what was in his mind as he went on speaking so quietly I could hardly hear him: 'I've a total complement of well over two hundred, and of those, fifty seven are volunteers. Why? I don't know, and I'm the Captain. They don't know, and they're the ones who volunteered. Something dangerous, that's all some of them have been told. There's one or two I picked myself The Appointers were generous in that respect — my Navigating Officer, Peter Craig. Also the SCO — that's my Communications Officer, Lieutenant Woburn and Tom Draycott, my Weapons Engineer Officer. I've also got a CPO who was at Gangeswhen I was there. Most of the key people, they're volunteers, but there's others, fifty or sixty at least, who've been quietly wished on me by other ships' captains as though word had been put around that Medusawas a sort of personnel dustbin and I was a sucker on whom they could foist all the yobbos and troublemakers they wanted to be rid of. Oh, well…' Again the wry smile, the slight shrug. 'Let's have some food. I'm hungry. You must be, too, listening to me.'

He called for the steward, and over the avocado and shrimp cocktail we talked of Libya and the PLO, Beirut and the effect of the Gulf War. A daily signal from Fleet Headquarters at Northwood near London plus the World News of the BBC kept him very well informed. He needed to be, I thought, tied up here like a sitting duck in a little independent country that was set in the very centre of the Mediterranean like a stepping stone to the most volatile and unreliable country in Africa. And even as I was thinking about that, full of curiosity and wondering whether I could ask him about his plans, what orders he had received, and if he was headed for Menorca next, he was called on the intercom loudspeaker. It was the Officer of the Day reporting a little crowd beginning to gather on the quay.

I got to my feet then and looked out of the nearest porthole. It was almost dark on the concrete apron, only one small light still showing at the corner of the storage shed opposite. A dozen or so figures stood silent against the corrugated metal sheeting of the shed. It was like a stage set with others drifting in from the wings in ones and twos.

'Have you informed the First Lieutenant? They could be dockers waiting to unload. Is there a ship coming in?'

'Not that I can see, sir, and the First Lieutenant's trying to contact the port authorities to see if they can tell him what it's all about.'

'All right, tell him to report anything he finds out. And keep an eye on them. Let me know if their numbers noticeably increase.' He switched off, had a quick look through the other porthole, then returned to the table, muttering to himself, 'I don't like it.'

He didn't talk much after that. The main course was roast lamb and he ate it quickly, jumping up every few minutes to glance out of the porthole. Coffee came and we both stood at the window to drink it. The numbers had grown. It looked as though there were at least forty or fifty men down there lounging in the shadows. 'What the hell are they waiting for?' He turned at a knock on the entrance bulkhead. 'Well, what's the form?'

His First Lieutenant was a thin gangling man with what I suspected was a permanently worried expression. He had to duck his sharp-nosed halberd of a head to enter. He looked forty-fiveish, but perhaps he was less. His name was Randolph Mault, and his rank was the same as Gareth's. 'I don't know,' he said slowly. 'Looks like they're waiting for something to happen.'

Trouble?'

'Could be a demonstration.'

'Against us?'

The executive officer hesitated. 'We know there's an anti-British — anti-West at any rate — element in Malta. We've been briefed on that. And it's supposed to be quite deliberately fostered and well organised.'

Gareth Lloyd Jones turned back to the porthole. 'Yes,' he said. 'That's probably why our people advised us to anchor out in the middle of the harbour. I thought at first it was because we'd be more conspicuous there, something to counteract the presence of that Russian cruiser, but it did cross my mind, when the Maltese authorities insisted on our lying alongside in this God-forsaken spot, that besides making.us as inconspicuous as possible, it also made us more vulnerable to some shore-based whipped-up anti-Western feeling. Pity we didn't rig the lights right round the ship.' He stood for a moment, gazing out at the darkened quay and the figures grouped in the shadows.

The First Lieutenant had moved nearer so that he could also see down on to the quay. 'What time is the shore party due back, do you know?' he asked.

Gareth shook his head. 'No time was specified on the invite.' He glanced at his watch. 'Soon, I would think. And I told them to be sure they remained sober. Do you think they'll be sober when they return?'

'It's not just a wine company, you know. It's also a distillery. They produce a local brandy, also a sort of gin. I found one of their brochures in the wardroom bar. Apparently we've shipped some cases of their wine, or maybe it was a present — I'm not sure.'

Gareth turned abruptly from the window. 'Very well.' His voice was suddenly different, sharp and incisive. 'Have young Kent go over to the company's office my apologies to the Director, but something has cropped up and the shore party is to return to the ship immediately.' He produced a key from his pocket and passed it across. 'Tell him to take the car we hired yesterday. It's parked behind the shed there. And he'd better take somebody with him.' He glanced out of the window. 'And tell him to get a hustle on. I have a feeling all they're waiting for now is someone to give them a lead.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' The First Lieutenant turned and ducked quickly out.

I'd better leave,' I said, but Gareth didn't seem to hear me, standing very still at the porthole, watching. 'If you'd be good enough to have one of your people signal to Thunderflash…'

He turned then. 'No, no. You wait here till we get an answer from Menorca. Shouldn't be long now.' And he added, 'I'm going up to the bridge — care to join me?'

We went up a flight of steps just outside his cabin. The bridge was dark and empty, only the glow of various instruments and a solitary figure, a senior petty officer, who came in from the head of the ladder leading down to the sidedeck. 'Lieutenant Kent's just leaving now, sir.'

'Who's he taking with him?'

''Fraid I don't know, sir.'

'Hastings.' It was the First Lieutenant. He had just come on to the bridge. I recognised the rather high voice.

'Good choice.' Gareth Lloyd Jones nodded and turned to me with a quick smile. 'He's our PT instructor. Keeps us on our toes and the flab under control. That's the theory of it, anyway.'

He went out through the bridge wing door on the port side and I followed him. From the head of the ladder we watched as the officer who had met me on arrival went quickly down the gangway, followed by a broad-shouldered, powerful-looking seaman. As they reached the quay there was movement among the shadows, voices sounding in the night, Maltese voices plainly audible above the continuous thrum of the ship. Suddenly a solitary voice was raised above the rest and the movement became purposeful, the shadowy figures coalescing into two groups and moving to block the way round the end of the storage shed.

'Have the ten-inch signal lamp manned and put out a call for the photographer.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' But before the petty officer could move Mault had reached for the bridge phone. He had been followed now by several other officers. 'I've closed the duty watch up, sir,' one of them reported.

'Good.' The acknowledgement was barely audible and Gareth didn't turn his head, his hands gripped on the rail, his body leaning intently forward as he watched the two figures advancing in step and without hesitation towards the group that now stood in a huddle blocking the exit at the eastern end of the shed. For a moment everything seemed to go quiet, the Maltese all standing very still, so that the only movement was the two uniformed figures advancing across the quay. I thought I could hear the sound of their marching feet, and then they had reached the group blocking the exit and were forced to stop. The young lieutenant might have made it. He was standing there, talking to them quietly, but whatever it was he was saying could not be heard by the group at the other end of the shed. They were starting to move, a little uncertainly, but their intention was clear. They were headed for the foot of the gangway to cut the two Navy men off.

'Shall I recall them?' It was the First Lieutenant and he had a microphone for the upper-deck broadcast system ready in his hand.

Lloyd Jones's hesitation was only fractional, but then one of the Maltese shouted something and in the instant the whole quay was in an uproar, the figures moving like a shadowy tide to engulf the dark blue uniforms. 'Lieutenant Kent to report back to the ship.' Mault's metallic, magnified voice seemed to fill the night. 'Both of you at the double.'

Lloyd Jones suddenly came to life, seizing the microphone from the First Lieutenant's hand, his voice booming out of it as he countermanded the order for the men to double and called for the signal lamp to be switched on to the quay. Instantly the whole concrete apron was flooded in a harsh light, the figures no longer shadowy, but leaping into focus, a sea of faces. They checked, and while they were held there, like a crowd scene under the glare of a film-set spotlight, Kent and the burly PO marched smartly back to the gangway. 'Where's the photographer?' Lloyd Jones's voice was crisp.

'Here, sir.' A man in a crumpled sweater with his equipment slung round his neck stepped out on to the wing of the bridge.

'I want pictures. Clear enough to identify individuals.' He raised the mike to his lips again. This is the Captain speaking. I don't know why you have gathered on the quay in front of my ship, but I would ask you all to disperse now and allow my officer to proceed. I should add that my photographer is now taking pictures so that if he is impeded going about his duty each of you will be identifiable when I raise the matter personally with the authorities here in Malta.'

I think he would have succeeded in getting them to disperse, for some of them, particularly those nearest the ship, had turned away their heads as soon as the signal lamp had been switched on and quite a number of them began to drift away at the threat of being photographed. But then a motor bike appeared round the corner of the shed and a man in black leather, like a Hell's Angel, thrust it on to its stand and began haranguing them in a voice that was almost as powerful as Gareth's had been with the use of the loudhailer.

It checked the backward flow, but by then Kent had reached the bottom of the gangway and was standing there staring up at us, white-faced in the hard light, waiting for orders. 'What do you think, Number One — can he make it?' Lloyd Jones was still leaning on the rail, still looking down on the scene, the bullroarer gripped tight in his right hand. 'Take a party to the foot of the gangway,' he ordered. 'See what a show of strength does.' He leaned over the rail, his voice quite calm as he ordered Kent to proceed. 'But you'll have to move fast when you get to the roadway, before that man whips them up into a mood of violence.'

Kent and the Leading Hand moved smartly back across the quay, the Maltese watching them and the motor cyclist shouting at the top of his voice. They reached the corner of the shed, and then, as they disappeared from view, the crowd began to move, Gareth yelling at them through the megaphone to hold fast while men from the ship tumbled down the gangway to form up at the foot of it. The mob took no notice, all of them streaming out towards the roadway, to come to a sudden halt as the lights of a car went blazing past, the engine revving in low gear.

Standing as I was, right next to Gareth, I heard his breath come out in a sigh, saw him relax momentarily. But then he braced himself, turning slowly as he gave orders for the men on the searchlight to be ready. The quay was almost empty.

'You think they'll be back, sir?'

''Fraid so. This has been planned. It was planned before ever they allocated us a berth alongside this bloody quay.' He spoke quietly, more to himself than to his First Lieutenant. 'And have a full Damage Control Party closed up, fire hoses ready to be run out and full pressure on the pumps when we need it.'

Internal Security platoon, sir?'

Gareth hesitated.

'A show of strength, as you said,' Mault added. 'It might do the trick.'

Gareth didn't answer, staring down at the quay. Already the crowd was drifting back, a group of them gathering round the motor cyclist. He was a barrel-chested, tough-looking man, his face almost square with a thick nose, and he had black curly hair that covered his head like a helmet. 'All right, have the arms issued. Say twenty men under the command of that Marine sergeant.'

'Simmonds?'

'Yes. Perhaps it's for this sort of thing he was posted to the ship.' Gareth's face creased in a grin. 'I did wonder.' And he added, 'But keep them out of sight. A parade of arms is the last thing we want.' And then, half to himself, he said, 'About time I sent a signal to CINCFLEET telling them what's going on.' He went back into the bridge to telephone, and after that it was a long wait. Finally we returned to his day cabin. 'No good my hanging around the bridge, looking anxious. They'd begin to get the litters.'

'What about you?' I asked.

He laughed. 'Oh, I've got the jitters, of course I have.' His steward appeared and he ordered some more coffee. 'Care for a brandy with it? Or would you prefer Armagnac? The wardroom shipped some Armagnac at Gib, really first-rate stuff.' But he wasn't drinking now so I thanked him and said I was all right. We drank our coffee in silence, listening to the reports that began to come in over the loudspeakers: damage control first, then MEO confirming there would be full pressure on the hydrants, WEO to say the searchlight was manned. Finally the First Lieutenant's voice announcing that the IS platoon was at readiness and fully armed. 'God! I hope we don't have to resort to that.'

'You think it might come to that?' I asked him.

He shrugged and went to the window, standing there, looking out, his coffee gripped in his hand. 'That bunch isn't gathered out there for nothing.' There was a knock on the bulkhead by the curtained doorway and the Yeoman of Signals poked his bearded face in. 'Signal from CINCFLEET passing a telex from Menorca, sir.'

Gareth took it, read it through, then handed it on to me. 'Sorry about that. It looks as though you're still suspect.'

The telex was short and to the point: Ref your query Michael Steele, his sudden departure confirmed authorities in their suspicions. Legal proceedings now being initiated for extradition Malta. For your information weapon used by Barriago still not found.There was no signature, and when I asked him who had sent it, he shook his head. 'Everything on this ship that's connected with Communications is classified. But as far as I know the source is absolutely reliable.' He held out his hand for the signal. 'Too bad. I wish I could have provided you with better news.'

I thanked him and got to my feet. 'I'd best be going,' I said.

He shook his head. 'Not now.' He glanced at the clock on the bulkhead above the desk. 'Five minutes to get them off the company's premises, ten more for them to reach the quay here.' He finished his coffee and reached for his cap. 'Time to go up to the bridge. Coming?'

I followed him into the passage and up the ladder to the bridge. The scene had changed very little, except that the crowd seemed to have grown larger. We went out on to die wing. A big searchlight was mounted now and manned, and the damage control people were lowering hoses on to the quay. No sign of the boarding party, but a Marine sergeant was standing by the davits on the deck below. Gareth called him up to the bridge wing. 'I'll give you the order, Sergeant, when I want your men paraded on the quay. Once there you'll have to act as the situation demands. Your job is to see that all the ship's personnel get back on board unhurt. But just remember this, any action you take will have political repercussions and will ultimately be exposed to the full glare of publicity.'

The sergeant stared at him impassively. 'Aye, aye, sir.'

Silence then, just the thrumming of the ship's machinery, a slight trembling of the deck plates underfoot, and men everywhere around the deck waiting and watching, while down on the quay the excited, nervous babble of Maltese voices came up to us as an audible complement to the constantly shifting pattern of the waiting crowd. I could see the motor cyclist in his black leather talking and gesticulating to the little group gathered round him, and there were others, shadowy figures, among the various groups.

The Marine sergeant was back with his men on the deck below and Gareth was glancing at his watch for the third or fourth time. The brass nozzle of a fire hose hit the ship's side with a clang, then a sudden shout and a flurry of movement on the quay, the crowd pouring through the gap between the east wall of the shed and the neighbouring building. A horn blared, shouts and yells, and a small red car appeared in the gap, almost totally submerged in a flood of people. The noise increased, the sound of fists pounding on roof and bonnet, the horn now blaring continuously.

Gareth raised the megaphone. 'Searchlight.' The white glare of it was so brilliant and so sudden that all movement ceased abruptly. For an instant there was silence. Then the car's engine revved, nosing into the crowd, spearheading i path for the men following in its wake.

There was a shout, one word, not a Maltese word, but French — Attaquez,and on the instant the scene changed, a rush of movement, the car was picked up bodily from one side, the engine screaming as it was pitched on to its side and the wheels came free of the ground. Screams and shouts, and the two fire hoses, run out now across half the width of the quay, bulged, their nozzles hissing like snakes, water bursting out in a broad arc. But the car and the crowd were too far away. The jets of water barely reached them. I heard Mault's voice, but before he had even given the order, the Marine sergeant and his men, all in uniform and with bayonets fixed to their self-loading rifles, came thundering down the gangway.

If they had moved in before the shore party had reached the quay, if they had broken up the crowd, grabbed the ringleaders and the other agitators… But that would have meant taking the initiative with the Navy blamed for everything that followed. As it was, the men forming up in a compact body at the foot of the gangway and then advancing might still have been sufficient intimidation to get the sailors back on board. Instead, the sergeant ordered them to charge, and that was just the catalyst needed to turn an ugly little incident into a political bombshell.

The crowd round the car were already opening out. In a moment they would have run. But then it happened, a spurt of flame, the sound of a shot, and Lieutenant Kent, climbing out of the car, all of his torso reared up in the open window on the driver's side, threw up his hands and began to scream. And as he lost consciousness, his body sagging to lie crumpled across the side of the vehicle, I saw the man who had fired the shot drop his pistol, turn and slide away to the rear of the crowd.

I saw him, but I don't think the others did, for their attention had switched to the armed party. They had suddenly stopped, the sergeant's voice ringing out as he gave the order to fire over the heads of the crowd. The volley was ragged, but the noise of it and the sight of those men in blue with their rifles raised and the bayonets glinting in the glare of the searchlight was enough. The crowd broke and ran, melting away so quickly that for an instant the only figure left on the scene was the motor cyclist trying to kick-start his bike into life. Finally he threw it down and ran.

I think the enormity of what had happened was immediately apparent to Gareth, for he stood there on the bridge wing, his face white with shock, too stunned, it seemed, to take command. It was Mault who ordered the armed party back on board, sent for the medical orderly and a stretcher party to get the young lieutenant to the sick bay, and had the shore party drawn up at the foot of the gangway and checked against a list of names to make certain nobody was missing. They were coming back on board and the damage control men were rolling up their hoses before Gareth finally came out of his state of shock. 'Lieutenant Commander Mault.'

Mault turned, an interrogatory lift of his straight, very black eyebrows., Time we got out of here. Come to immediate notice for sea and go to harbour stations as soon as you're ready. We'll move out into the open harbour and anchor seaward of that Russian cruiser. After that we'll see.' He turned abruptly, going back into the bridge housing. 'Find Chief Petty Officer Gordon and tell him to have a word with me,' he said to one of the seamen. 'I'll be in my cabin.' And he disappeared hurriedly through the door at the back.

I realised then that he had understood more than any of the officers around him, including his First Lieutenant, the full implications of what had happened — an armed party had landed from a Royal Navy ship and had opened fire on a crowd of Maltese. Never mind that they had fired in the air, that their action had been provoked and an officer had been shot, it had been done on Maltese soil. An invasive and hostile act, that's how it would be presented, to the Maltese and throughout the Third World and the non-aligned states. He had forgotten all about my presence on the ship, and I couldn't blame him.

The main broadcast suddenly blared out, Mault's voice ordering the crew to harbour stations. I waited until he had finished his announcement, then suggested he signal Thunderflashto come and collect me, but he shook his head. 'Sorry. You'll have to wait until we're anchored.' He had hung up the mike and now had glasses trained on the main dock area where a crowd had gathered at the slip by Somerset Wharf. 'The whole place will soon be in an uproar.' He turned to the chart table, shaking his head. 'Bad business.'

He shouldn't have said that, not in front of me, and certainly not with the Navigating Officer standing beside him. And the way he said it, as though it were nothing to do with him — I knew then that he was trying to distance himself from his captain. At the time, of course, I put it down to the fact that he was older, a resentment at being passed over. Later I was to discover his grandfather had been an admiral in the First World War, his father killed at sea in the Second, and he himself had come up through the traditional officer education of the Navy, Pangbourne, Dartmouth, then service at sea. What had damaged his career was volunteering for submarines and then, when he was posted to HMS Dolphinfor a submariners' course, finding he was subject to claustrophobia and unable to concentrate when submerged.

In the circumstances it was a bit hard to find himself serving under a man who had joined the Navy as a boy seaman at Gangesand been commissioned out of the lower deck, was several years his junior and newly promoted to Lieutenant Commander, a rank he had held more years than he cared to remember. Added to which, he had never had command of a ship in his life, and now this raw young Welshman was plunging him straight into a first-class Mediterranean balls-up. That was his choice of words, and he went on: 'There's Chinese in the dockyard here, one of the latest Russian cruisers anchored in Grand Harbour, and the Libyans barely two hundred miles away. We should never have come to the wharf here. We should never have agreed to tie up alongside.' He turned away, muttering something that sounded like, 'He should have had more sense.' Then he was giving orders for singling op and sailors were letting go all but the head and stern ropes and the springs.

The bridge had now filled up with the special sea duty men, the Navigator standing in the middle by the pelorus. Mault, watching from the bridge wing, finally told him to inform the Captain the ship was singled up and ready to proceed.

I was watching the quay, so I didn't see Mault's face as the Pilot put the phone down and told him the Captain was in the main communications office and he was to take the ship out to the new anchorage himself, but I did notice the sharpness in his tone as he gave the order to let go aft and, picking up the mike to the wheelhouse below, said, 'Port thirty, slow ahead port, slow astern starb'd.'

I could feel the beat of the engines under my feet, saw the stern swing clear of the quay, then we were backing out past the rust-patched freighter moored at the Parlatorio Wharf. 'Harbour launch, sir, coming away from Gun Wharf, heading towards us.'

Mault nodded his acknowledgement of the lookout's report, the ship still going astern and turning. As soon as we were clear of the freighter and had sea room to complete the 180° turn, he went ahead, the long arm of the harbour opening up in front of us as we turned the end of Senglea Point with the massive fortress of St Angelo showing beyond it. The harbour was a broad lane of flat water ablaze with lights on either side and at the end of it the swinging beam of the St Elmo light flashing three every fifteen seconds, with the small light on the end of the breakwater winking steadily.

Mault moved to the chart table, calling to the Pilot to join him. 'Plan to anchor about there,' he said, pointing his ringer to a position roughly south-west of what used to be Gallows Point but was now shown on the chart in Maltese as Il-Ponta Ta'Ricasoli.

'Right in the fairway?'

'Well no, a little in towards Bighi Bay.'

The Navigating Officer nodded. 'Nine Fathoms Bank. You'll have eighteen to nineteen metres. That do you?' He had the plot going and there was a PO on the radar. Through the sloping windows I could see the Russian cruiser looming large and brilliantly lit. 'Harbour launch on the port quarter, sir. About one hundred metres off. He's signalling us to stop.'

'Thank you, Stevens.'

There was a little group closed up around the capstan on the fo'c's'le and I could see men on the deck of the cruiser. She looked enormous as we ran close down her starb'd side and it crossed my mind that if the Russians became involved in any way it really would be an international incident. And then I saw a man with a rag in his hand waving from the open door of the helicopter hangar aft and the thought was suddenly absurd.

'Matey, isn't he?' The Pilot smiled at me. The way they behave sometimes you'd think they were our comrades-in-arms. And that's one of their Krestaclass — very lethal!' He was a short man with a round face, a puggy blob of a nose and a twinkle in his eyes. 'My name's Craig, by the way. Peter Craig. I'm supposed to see my lords and masters here don't scrape their bottom along the seabed or hit a headland.' He waved at the chart. 'That's where we'll be anchoring.' He indicated a little cross he had pencilled in. Then we'll start explaining ourselves to the harbour master.' He glanced at his watch. Twenty-two minutes to go till the next news. Think they'll have it on the World Service?'

A sub-lieutenant, standing beside the chart table with his back to the bulkhead, said quietly, 'If the BBC includes it in the news, then the PM will be tearing the guts out of the C-in-C and we'll be in the shit good and deep. Thank your lucky stars, Pilot, you're just a common navigator. I wouldn't be in Taffy's shoes right now…' He stopped then, glancing at me apologetically. 'Sorry, sir, no disrespect, but all Welshmen are Taffy to the boys, just as anybody called Brown is Buster and anybody with a name like Randolph, our Chief, becomes Randy. No disrespect, you see.' Like the Pilot, he was a Scot, a Glaswegian by the sound of his voice. His name was Robinson and he was a seaman officer-under-training, one step up from midshipman. I thought he was probably not more than nineteen or twenty years old.

The Pilot was concentrating now on the approach to the anchorage and it was an older officer standing by the radar who answered him. 'You shoot your mouth off like that and it's you who'll be in the shit.' And he added, 'Right now nobody wants to be reminded what could happen following that little incident, so forget your old man's on the ITN news desk and keep your trap shut. Okay?'

There was a juddering under my feet and I turned to see the ship was slowing: 'Harbour launch close abeam, still signalling Stop.' Mault ignored the report. He came back to the chart table, took a quick glance at the position the Navigating Officer had pencilled in, then asked him to report how far before letting go the anchor as he moved to the port bridge wing and took up one of the microphones. Everyone was silent now, waiting, the ship slowing, small alterations of helm, the shore lights barely changing position. 'Let go!' I felt, rather than heard, the rumble of the chain, then the voice of the officer on the fo'c's'le was reporting how many shackles of cable had gone out.

'Well, that's that.' Craig checked the time, entered it on the chart against the fix he had taken as the anchor was let go. Behind him, the bridge began to empty. 'Care to join me for a drink in the wardroom, sir?'

I hesitated, then nodded. Lloyd Jones would be as anxious to get rid of me as I was to go, so no point in making a nuisance of myself. Besides, I was interested to know what his officers thought of it all.

The wardroom was two decks down on the starb'd side. Half a dozen officers were already there and all of them silent, listening for Big Ben on the loudspeaker set high in the corner. It came just as Peter Craig handed me the horse's neck I had asked for, the solemn tones of the hour striking, then the announcer's voice giving the headlines. It was the third item and followed bomb blasts in Belfast and Lyons — 'A frigate of the Royal Navy on a courtesy visit to Malta was involved this evening in an incident in which a shore party had to be given protection. Shots were fired and one officer was injured.' That was all.

'Playing it down,' Craig said, sucking eagerly at his drink and turning to look around him. 'Where's young Robbie? Hey, Robinson — tell yer dad he'll have to do better than that. The people at home should know what really happened.' His words about summed up the view of the others. A put-up job, that was their verdict, and then Mault came in. 'Mr Steele. The Captain would like a word with you. He's in his cabin.'

I nodded, finishing my drink, but waiting for the news broadcaster to come to the end of the Lyons outrage and move on to the Malta incident. It was padded out, of course, nothing new, and nothing to upset the Maltese, no indication that it was they who had fired the first shot, or that the ship had been deliberately moored alongside Hamilton Wharf so that an anti-British mob could move in from the nearby Malta Dry Docks and threaten the lives of British sailors returning from a wine party that had almost certainly been organised solely for the purpose of luring them ashore.

I thanked Craig for the drink, excused myself and went up to the Captain's cabin. It was empty, a cup of black coffee untouched on the desk. I went to one of the portholes. We had swung to our anchor and were now bows-on to the harbour entrance so that I was looking straight across to the cathedral and the domes of Valetta with the signal flagstaff towering above them. The harbour launch had been joined by two police launches, all three of them keeping station opposite to the bridge on the port side. An officer on the leading police launch had a loudhailer to his mouth, the words coming muffled as they reached me through the shatterproof glass: 'You will plees to lower your gangway. I wish to come on to your ship and spik with the Captain.' And the reply, from somewhere above me — 'When you bring the British High Commissioner out we can discuss things. Okay?'

The steward put his head round the pantry door. 'Captain's apologies, sir, but he's been called to the MCO. Can I get you a drink?'

I shook my head. 'Another cup of coffee would be nice though.'

He nodded, retrieved the untouched cup from the desk and, as he was taking it back into the pantry, he hesitated. 'Excuse me asking, sir, but do you know the Captain well? I mean, you're a friend of his, aren't you?'

I didn't know how to answer that, so I just gave a bit of a nod and waited.

The steward stood there with the cup in his hand as though trying to make up his mind. Finally he said, 'I can't tell him, sir, but perhaps you can. There's a lot of rumours going round the ship. In the seamen's messes, I mean. They say the Captain's — ' again the hesitation — 'well, bad luck, if you get me. A sort of Jonah. And it's not just the Captain. It's the ship.'

'Any particular reason?' I asked.

He stood there awkwardly, feeling no doubt he had said too much already. 'There's quite a few — misfits on board, sir.'

'Troublemakers, do you mean?' I asked.

He gave a little shrug, shaking his head. 'Hard to say, sir. Toughies certainly. Real toughies. Some of the lads feel they've been landed with a load of shit — if you'll excuse me — men that other ships wanted to be rid of.' And he added, 'These are the comments of lads that volunteered, you understand, specialists most of them, real good lads who thought Medusawas intended for some sort of special service. That's why they volunteered.'

I took him up then on the use of that word 'specialists' and he said they had been on courses, some of them, that weren't the usual run of courses sailors got sent on demolition, assault, urban guerrilla warfare. 'There's even men on board here who've been trained by the SAS.' And he added, 'They volunteered for something out of the ordinary. At least, that's what they thought, something that sounded to them like it was as near to active service as you could get in peacetime. Instead, they find themselves on a ship that's got a hardcore of throw-outs in the crew. Tell him, will you, sir? Privately. He should know the feeling.' He said that quickly, almost in a whisper, and as he turned to go into the pantry, the entrance curtain was swept aside and Gareth entered, his face white, his lips a hard, tight line, and he was scowling. 'Get me some coffee, Jarvis.' He had a sheet of paper in his hand and he went straight to his. desk and sat there, staring at it. He seemed completely oblivious of my presence. The main broadcast began to sound through the ship, Mault's voice ordering special sea duty men and the cable party to close up. 'All action stations to be manned and gun crews closed up.'

I couldn't believe it. I stared at Lloyd Jones. He'd heard it, but he made no move to counteract the order. 'Can you drop me off now?' I asked him. 'The harbour launch…'

He was staring at me, his eyes wide, that shocked look on his face as though suddenly aware that he had a civilian witness to what was happening on board. He shook his head. 'Sorry.' He held up the sheet of paper. 'Orders. No contact with the shore and put to sea immediately. Resist any attempt to prevent departure. Ministry of Defence. Whitehall's orders.' He put his hand to his head, leaning forward. 'Downing Street by the sound of it. Christ!' And then he suddenly seemed to get a grip of himself. He smiled. 'Glad to have you aboard. My God I am!' The steward brought him his coffee and he gulped it down, then reached for his cap and jumped to his feet. 'Make yourself at home. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with us for some time now.' He stopped in the doorway, his face grim as he said very quietly, so that only I could hear him, Medusais to leave now — immediately.' He hesitated, then added, 'It's Menorca. Port Mahon. I'm sorry, but those are my orders.' He turned then, putting his hat on and dropping the curtain behind him. There were feet pounding the deck, the throb of engines again and a clanking for'ard, the chain coming in.

I went up to the bridge. Everyone was back at their stations and the officer on the fo'c's'le reporting the anchor up and down, the shorelights beginning to move as the ship got under way, The harbour and police launches were maintaining station on the port side and one of their officers shouting through a loudhailer, his amplified voice clearly audible and nobody paying attention, the beat of the engines increasing, the ship gathering speed. Port Mahon! Why Mahon? Why was Medusaordered to Menorca immediately? Regardless of the Maltese.

'Vessel putting out from Kalkara, sir. Looks like a patrol boat.'

It was Mault who acknowledged the lookout's report, the Captain merely raising his glasses to look at it.

'They're signalling, sir. An order to stop.'

Gareth nodded. 'Maximum revs as soon as you're clear of that ferry.'

I had tucked myself as inconspicuously as possible against the rear bulkhead, between the chart table and the echo-sounder, which was clicking away over my left shoulder. I saw the ferry emerge virtually from under our bows as we sliced into its wake, the rising hum of the, engines almost swamped by the surge of the bow wave as Gareth pulled open the port-side door to look back at the launches.

'That's not a patrol boat.' Mault's voice sounded high and a little tense. 'It's that big customs launch.' He strode across the bridge to Gareth. 'What happens if they open fire?'

'They won't.' Gareth's voice was firm and absolutely calm.

'You mean they won't dare. Then what about that cruiser?'

Gareth spun round. 'Our orders are specific. Leave Malta immediately. Are you seriously suggesting the Russians would risk an international incident of such magnitude? To open fire on a British warship in a friendly harbour would amount to something very close to a declaration of war- against us, against Nato.' He had spoken with sudden heat, an outburst almost. It indicated the pressure he was now under, the nervous strain. I also realised that his words were spoken for the benefit of everybody on the bridge, and thus for the ship as a whole.

He turned to the open doorway again, his back and the raising of his glasses indicating that the subject was closed. Nobody spoke after that, except for essential orders and reports, the hum of machinery, the sound of water, the shuddering and clattering of loose items, everything building to a crescendo as the two double reduction geared turbines piled on full power and the ship's twin props reached maximum revs. We were out past Gallows Point, the end of the breakwater approaching fast and the light at the end of it swinging across us so that every five seconds we were caught in its beam. Nobody fired at us, nobody followed as we pounded past it and out to sea, where we turned to port and set course to clear Gozo and leave the volcanic island of Pantelleria to port.

Craig pulled out Chart 165, and looking over his shoulder as he pencilled in our final course past the southern tip of Sardinia, I saw on the extreme left of it the eastern half of Menorca. Six hundred miles, say thirty to thirty-four hours at full speed. Why the hurry? And what would my position be when we got there? Customs, health and immigration would come on board in the usual way when we arrived and it was very unlikely Gareth would attempt to conceal my presence.

'If you care to come with me, sir, I'll show you to your cabin.' It was Petty Officer Jarvis and he had a bag in his hand. 'I've looked out some clothes of the Captain's — shirt, sweater, pyjamas, socks, that sort of thing. He thought they'd fit all right, you being about his size.'

The cabin was two decks down, just aft of the room housing the gyro compass machinery. It had two berths, both unoccupied, and when I finally turned in, lying there, conscious of the movement of the ship and unable to sleep, I couldn't help thinking how odd it was to be wearing the pyjamas of a man who would probably cuckold me within the week, may indeed have already done so. But that hardly seemed so important now as I stared into the darkness, my mind going over and over the events of the day. I thought of Wade, that telephone conversation, the trouble he had taken to trace my background, that bastard Evans trying to implicate me, and now this ship, sent to Malta, then, just after a nasty little shooting incident, sent off on a wild dash to Mahon. Why? And we had actually left Grand Harbour at action stations with gun crews closed up. Turning it over in my mind it seemed so incredible that at length I couldn't think of anything else.