A Bridge of Magpies

C H A P T E R T W E L V E

I rested on my oars. 'It's the chopper, Jutta.'

'I don't understand.'

'You've put a short fuse under us. Any moment the powder keg will explode. We couldn't be more vulnerable.' 'What I said back there?'

'What you said. You went up like that old mine yourself.' 'I couldn't stop myself: everything came bunting out when they brought up the subject of U-160:

'You're the best strike they've made since they hit the Bridge of Magpies. Don't imagine they won't be following it up.'

'J only said..

'You showed you were loaded with enough information to make a salvage man's tongue hang out. You didn't only hint-you positively shouted it-that there was a packet more where it came from.

'I can't see how a harmless tape recording..

'Harmless I Listen! Sound travels at five thousand feet a second in sea-water. All you have to do is put a stop-watch on that tape and it's a piece of cake lo plot exactly where, within a given radius, U-160 fired from. Then there's a Uboat coxswain's firing countdown – perfect check! Datum point. Listen to Captain Schlebusch's orders: course-speed, changes, the lot. Plot 'em. Allow for his D/A during the attacks – that's a firing angle lay-off – and mark it down. Our stop-watch man now has a chart full of points and intersecting lines-transits. Join 'em up and, voila, there you'll find U-160. Need I say more?'

'U-160 got away.' Her voice was small but emphatic. '

Maybe. Maybe not.'

It flashed through my mind, even as I said it, that, had she escaped, the C-in-C wouldn't have sent me to investigate; because the U-boat seemed to be the kingpin of the whole business.

'Our immediate problem-it's almost superfluous to say so – is that Emmermann and Kenryo will come after us:

'For what?'

'You. They don't know about the tape and I don't intend that they shall.'

'We could drive a bargain with the tape.)

'Be your age, Jutta. There's not only harassment in the Sang A plpeline. What they can't buy they'll beat out of you. That tape could sign your, our, death warrants if they got wind of it.'

'I still think..!

'You want to get your perspectives clear. Once they have it we become expendable, of no more use to them. They'll have got all the information they need. Emmermann and Kenryo are after something big. It's not a million in mercury – we have your assurance for that. And a million's big. They know U-160 wasn't carrying mercury. You don't launch a salvage project of Sang A's magnitude without first checking your target. There's nothing secret any longer about Class IXC U-boat plans. What they're after is big enough for two men to have been killed already. Another couple-you and I-wouldn't make any difference.'

And mounted machine-guns are capable of killing plenty more, I reminded myself.

'You've let Kaptein Denny off the hook, I see.'

No. My guess is that he's on to U-160, from a different angle. Somehow the winter weather governs his operations. Jf he's come fishing here for thirty years I'd say he's been busy netting enough lolly every time to sit for the rest of the year with his bum in butter. He knows, Jutta!'

'There wasn't anything aboard U-160- Struan -nothing! I' ve checked and checked! Nothing at all!'

'It's too late now to bring that up with Emmermann and Kenryo. The longer you say that the longer they'll try to wring out of you what you didn't really know in the first place. And, judging from what I've seen of their party manners, it won't be a pretty operation. Where's the tape?'

'Aboard Ichabo

'Then we're going aboard to gel rid of it-now. The cutter will be a natural for them to search.'

'You can't dump it overboard, Struan!'

'I agree: it's too valuable. We'll stash it away. The best hiding-place is always under the light. Of course they'll search the huts once we're gone.

`Clone?'

'Once we've shed that tape we're high-tailing it out of here in Ichabo. Provided they don't get here first. We'll make a break for the inshore shoals beyond Elizabeth Point where we can still be within striking range, and can spot the frigate when she arrives. They can't pursue us there in a big vessel like Sang A- and their launches haven't the range.'

'But the tape, Struan?'

'Into a penguin rookery. Safe as the Bank of England. They'll never think to look there.

I took the oars and we streaked for Ichabo. It took Jutta only a moment to bring the tape from the cabin once I'd got aJongside. Then J pulled for the island jetty. I made good time because of the calm sea. That sea worried me. Possession weather should be sour, not sweet: something was brewing. There was a sultriness about that rasped the temper. The waves slopped like bath water against the piers of the jetty. Activily round Sang A was dying down. That in itself spurred me on.

We sprinted up the concrete path past the bunkhouse to the high ground near the cottage. Over the skyline we were out of Sang A's range of vision. When we veered off the path into the breeding-flats every bird and penguin seemed to join in resisting our invasion of their territory. I secreted the tape away under a big rock, while Jutta, using the rifle barrel, fended off the attackers when they tried to slash at our ankles. Their protests were deafening

That was the reason for our not hearing Sang A's launches. We spotted them, though, the moment we crossed the rimrock of the skyline. I pulled Jutta down beside me on the path. Took!'

One launch was almost up to Ichabo; the other was already alongside the jetty. Corning along it at the double, fanned out in attack order, were half-a-dozen of Sang A's crew, led by Kenryo. Some had sub-machine-guns slung at the hip; others, automatic rifles. One way and another, Sang A certainly packed a lot of fire-power.

I loosened the safety catch of the rifle with my thumb-and signalled Jutta to crawl towards the cottage for cover. I wasn't quick enough. Someone gave a shout: I caught a glimpse of fire-flashes lancing from muzzles and sunlight glancing off a cascade of spent brass hulls; and heard the spat-spat of automatic fire. At the same time the birds' uproar doubled as bursts tore into them. I rolled sideways to join Jutta. 'Keep your head down!

Roll! Behind the cottage!'

I loosed off a shot at random as I dived away. There wasn't time to aim but I heard a ricochet and a yell of pain from one of Kenryo's men.

Then we were behind the cover of a stone wall encircling the cottage. I heard orders shouted, probably by Kenryo; and a concentrated burst of fire spattered and chipped the cottage's stone chimney.

I put my arm round Jutta's shoulders. 'They're not trying. Look where they're firing-high and wide.'

They want us-alive?' Jutta's voice was choky.

'Damn sure. We're no use to them dead.'

More bullets clattered and whined off the chimney and walls but I noticed they left the windows alone. Maybe they thought we were inside.

I eased myself into a better position to see what was going on. Jutta's fingers clamped on my arm. She gave a soft gurgle and the edges of her lips twitched. For a moment I thought she'd been hit until I followed her terror-stricken eyes to the rocky high-point we'd crossed.

Kenryo was standing there, holding on us one of those deadly snap-collapse weapons which street snipers love. It was a stubby-barrelled thing that could be stripped down to pocket-sized parts and reassembled in seconds. A thug's weapon for a thug. It wasn't the only thought of mine to beat the speed of light. J tossed my rifle from me. That weapon of Kenryo's could cut a man in half before he got to opening the breech for his second shot.

'Up!'

We got up. Kenryo shouted and we heard heavy feet thudding up the path. In a moment we were surrounded by men pointing either sub-machine-guns or automatic rifles at us. They were a mixture of PPSHs and AK-47s-all Russian.

I tried making my tone incredulous and outraged. `

What the hell are you playing at?'

'Leave it alone!' Kenryo snapped. `We want you. We've got you. Rather.. be leered at Jutla. 'You.'

Jutta imitated my line. 'You might have killed us!,'

'Not a chance. We know what we're doing. Forget it. What concerns you more is the future. The more you have to tell us the less you'll get hurt:

'A million in mercury!' I scoffed. 'How to win friends and influence people.'

`Shut up! You'll both tell everything before I've finished with you.'

I found my breath coming quickly and jerkily, and felt a bead of sweat run all the length of my spine from neck to coccyx. I was afraid for Jutta. Nervous compulsion made me speak.

`We've nothing to hide. I'll see you answer for this when the frigate arrives:

He banged me lightly on the chest with the barrel of his nasty little automatic.

That frigate is as far away as she ever was. Now-where's your kit?'

'In the bunkhouse mainly. Some in the cottage.'

He gave an other and a couple of men left the group and went off to search. I guessed Ichabo was being ransacked too. '

Get moving!'

We had no choice: we walked down to the jetty, Kenryo and the others covering us. He motioned us into the launch. I was glad to see Jutta looking more angry than scared. When we came close to Sang A, Kenryo slowed the launch-then stopped altogether. A diver was being lowered over the side. He stood for a moment, in his heavy helmet and spaceman-like suit, before giving the thumb's-up signal and disappearing into the water in a stream of air bubbles. Kenryo indicated the air lifeline. 'Compressed air.'

I eyed him speculatively. Kenryo wasn't the type to dwell on modem marine marvels. know.'

`That's for him. There may be some for you.'

'What d'ye mean?'

He answered as conversationally as his rather stilted way of talking permitted: he gave the impression of transmitting mentally before committing himself to English. He might have been describing a diving technicality.

`He's going down about fifty feet. That means the water pressure on him will be aboul forty pounds to the square 158 inch. Of course, the compressor is designed to cope with that.

`So what?'

'J imagine the same thing inside a man.'

'I can't.'

'You'd be surprised to see how a little compression up the rectum will make a man talk,'

I'd been right about him that first time: a sod-a murder¬ ous sod.

'Women talk sooner – they've got more inlet valves.'

He relished Jutta's silent shock reaction. I sized him up: he'd take some beating, I reckoned. He was stripped down to a towelling T-shirt because of the warmth-and his chest and arm muscles bulged. I knew what he was capable of in action.

When a derrick swung out one of the tube-like explosive charges and started to lower it into the water, Kenryo went on.'There goes your luck. Soon we will blow off a piece of plating from the wreck, for identification. Jf it's the U-boat, you're in the clear. If not. .: he shrugged.

The launch negotiated the complex of mooring cables and made fast. There was no sign of Emmernann. We were escorted below through the long mess-room, and past the sonar shack door, to two cells over the screws which faced each other across a narrow passageway.

Kenryo locked the grilled doors and left an armed guard behind. It wouldn't have been too bad except for the stifling heat. Perhaps this was the unusual weather which was part of Kaptein Denny's plan of operations. I'd written him off as a two-timer who'd run away to save his own skin and had no intention of getting my signal away.

We'd been brought aboard Sang A about mid-day and all afternoon the 'tween-decks grew more suffocating. They'd also screwed the portholes closed. We could see out, of course. We weren't sure whether the guard understood English-so we stuck to commonplaces.

We'd been in the cells about an hour when there was a sharp crack as if the hull had been tapped with an outsize hammer.

Underwater bomb,' J reassured Jutta. 'They're working on the wreck:

Then it struck me -; what had happened to the small one I' d filched from the pile on deck? I'd left it lying in our dinghy under one of the thwarts. Had the very obviousness of its position caused it to be overlooked? Kenryo had not mentioned it.

'There's nothing to see, Struan.'

Jutta, from her porthole, could watch what was going on, but I couldn't because I faced the mainland. After that the A never-ending afternoon was punctuated by sharp cracks and long silences, as fresh charges were lowered and manoeuvred into position, then detonated.

'Best weather in the world for salvage,' I said to Jutta. It didn't make any difference whether the sentry understood or not.'How long will it go on, Struan?'

'Not long. There's an upwell cell starting to build up.. I explained the phenomenon to her. 'It always begins with this type of impossible hot weather: it brings the east wind off the desert. I've known it on occasion be a hundred degrees ten miles out to sea.'

'This place is a sweat box already.'

It'll become worse. The fog gets thicker, too. Warm air on icy water. Tomorrow will be a humdinger.'

'It all sounds very complex.

'Not really. There's the build-up, then the actual process of the upwell cell lasts a few days. Once the desert wind gets. going, however, everything seems to take wing-sand, sea, the lot.'

`Struan!'

'What is it?'

'They're bringing something up out of the sea!'

I craned to try and see through her porthole but couldn't. The guard eyed me sourly.

`What-Jutta, what?'

'It's a chunk of metal… ragged.., covered in seaweed and stuff.

'Colour?'

`Black. Rusty.' She was very excited. 'Now it's gone. They've lifted it aboard.'

We both knew how much depended on that undistinguished piece of decaying metal. The thought killed my weather chat. There were no more underwater explosions. The after160 noon dragged on. The cells became hotter. Towards sunset little puffs of wind started nibbling at the crests of the dunes. An east wind. A desert wind.

It also became darker earlier than usual-because the fog was thicker. The guard switched on a naked light in the corridor. The glass of my porthole was opaque with heavy condensation. The ship began to tug a little at her moorings. Upwell cell symptoms were beginning to show.

It became still hotter. I stripped off my shirt and shoes; the guard's face glistened with sweat-the place was like a sauna bath. Food was brought in, but we felt too hot to eat it. The best part of the meal was some iced, slightly scented tea. Then Kenryo appeared with two more guards, and they took Jutta away. All their armament seemed absurd for one strained, wan girl.

I tried to help her morale before she left. I said to Kenryo. '

You'll know what a cell's like in this heat tomorrow – a warship's cell.'

'Save your breath,' he retorted In his unpleasant voice. '

No warship is coming to rescue you.'

I was afraid he was right. He wouldn't have been so cocksure if they hadn't been keeping tabs on her movements. Jutta was away for over an hour. I forced myself lo lie on my bunk. I don't know if my nightmare of what I imagined they were doing to her would have been less if I'd chosen any other way to wait. I couldn't stop the pictures of the torture-cell – the same sort of shadeless bulb blazing in Jutta's eyes as hung above me; her sitting there naked at a table with her arms clamped and two copper claws fixed to each nipple and the electric current shooting her mouth gaping wide and screaming every time they fired the switch. And Kenryo was there and the compressor tube was between her legs probing like an obscene penis…

I was at the bars then, yelling obscenities and every foulness I knew at the guard and clawing at the steel. He crashed the stock of his gun over and over against my fingers to make me let go, but it wasn't until he worked the lock of his automatic into a firing position that I sobered up enough to stop it. Then it was all over because she was at the end of the passageway between Kenryo and the guards, coming back to her cell and smiling a little uncertainly at me; but still there

– alive and herself; not a naked torso taped with electrodes. Kenryo locked her in; and the guard told him about me. He said nothing, only scowled at me. It was a good thing the man hadn't understood what I'd called him. Then all of than went, leaving a new sentry.

Jutta said, 'You look as if you'd just seen Dracula: '

A roomful of them.

Poor love.' That made it right. All right. All the gnawing 1 doubts over the torch business, too. The light was too harsh for me to read the messages in her eyes.

'Thank God V

Poor love.'

I got a grip on myself.

'Was it bad?'

'Not really. They called it an interview. In the chart-room. The same routine as before. Drinks. The iron fist in the velvet glove. More iron this time.'

All my muscles felt as though they'd been stretched and let go and were trying to find their way back to normal. I sat down. Jutta glanced inquiringly at the guard.

'His pal didn't react to my fo'c'sle language. I'll try some on him and see if he understands.'

I gave him a volley-brief because of Jutta-but he simply stared owlishly at me.

'Fine. Now tell me what happened.'

'First-of course, they pressed me about how I came to know so much about U-160. I said I'd been researching on behalf of a writer who was doing a book on U-boats which had disappeared without trace during the war.'

'Did they fall for that?'

'To begin with. Emmermann was persuaded when J came up with the answer to a question of his regarding the difference between German and British operating methods: a U-boat captain never stood at the periscope like his British counterpart but sat on a kind of saddle affair. I lost ground, though, when they demanded to know what I was doing alone in a place like Possession. How'd I got hare? Where was my author? I said he'd been delayed through illness in Britain but would be along shortly. I made up a name and address, They were even more insistent about you:

'Not the headman type?'

'Too right. I said you were an alcoholic who'd been kicked out of the Navy and were in the process of rehabilitating yourself.'

'It could have been true once.'

'That got by – just.'

'Not a hint about the tape?'

'No. They found nothing to implicate us, either at the bunkhouse or on board Ichabo:

'Good. Our prospects grow brighter every minute? 'Make no mistake-Struan, Emmermann is extremely clued up. He fumbles on the details of U-160's action but he has the general outline spot-on.'

'What about that section of plating they recovered?' ' Gousblom's. Hence the interview. They're pulling out from this area tomorrow and starting a fresh search in the channel.'

Emmermann's sold on the channel?' I asked.

'Absolutely.'

'But you're not.'

'No, Struan, never have been. I can't back up my hunch: I' m just not.'

'The tape would be worth its weight in gold to them.' '

Every question seemed like a trap. It was nerve racking. But I'll keep stringing them along!

Next morning, however, when Kenryo appeared, grimfaced-at the cell doors I thought she'd fallen into their trap. Until he explained.

'These cells are bugged, of course. We recorded your confidential chat last night. We deliberately put a man on guard who didn't understand English in the hope that you'd be lulled into feeling safe and open up. You did.'

He didn't wait for us to try and talk our way out of it. The tape-where is it?'

Neither of us replied. Then he tossed through the bars of my cell a garment he'd been carrying. It was made of leather like a pair of Tyrolean pants with braces.

'Put that on. Over your trousers. Take off your shirt.'

That was no hardship because it was warm already. All night the searing wind off the land had grown progressively stronger.

I was mystified and didn't carry out Kenryo's order. He barked at one of his plug-uglies and snapped at me, 'Put 163

'em on or he'll do it for you. Take your choice.'

I felt ridiculous standing there in the peasant pants when I' d done.

He said, 'You'll do. The crew will love this!

He addressed Jutta. 'The men need entertainment once in a while. They get bored with shipboard life. You'll be made to watch. You can stop the proceedings any time by telling us where you've hidden the tape and everything you know about the U-160.'

I gave her a reassuring glance because I thought I was being forced into one of their staves matches. I rather hoped so. I wanted to have Kenryo on the receiving end. But the purpose of the fancy pants was lost on me.

I found out soon enough, however, when we were marched out on deck. It was murky with fog and desert grit. The crew were gathered round the foremast. They'd lowered its heavy wooden boom parallel to the deck and a couple of feet above it. Three of them grabbed me at a word from Kenryo and frog-marched me to the spar. They compelled me to sit astride it and lashed my ankles underneath with rope. Then they fixed the legs of my pants to the boom with big flatheaded nails. My arms and hands were left free but I was immobilized from the waist downwards.

Kenryo supervised. Jutta was far back under guard and in the dimness I couldn't make out her face clearly. Emmer-m ann stood beneath the bridge overhang with Captain Mild. Mild had a pistol on his belt. His immobility was so marked that it made him stand out amongst the comings and goings on the deck. While I was being nailed down the crew made a ring, chattering and laughing.

When they'd finished the three who'd been doing the job broke away suddenly as if they were afraid I'd take a swipe at them.

Then there was a built of cheering from the crew. A tough emerged on deck and started walking towards me. He was clad only in the same Tyrolean pants as myself and slripped to the waist. The only difference between us was that he carried a ten-inch knife.

He sat himself down on the spar facing me. His eyes were dark and beady and his stare as impersonal as an abattoir hand's at an ox. He had a bruise on his forehead -Kenryo's staves opponent.

He put his knees to louch mine and they nailed down his pants.

'If you know how to fight with a knife it'll provide better sport,' said Kenryo. 'Otherwise you'll get carved up. The girl can save you, remember.'

I then saw that the crew were laying bets – on me. Jf there'd been a bookie he'd have rated me as the rankest outsider that ever ran in the Sang A stakes.

`You bastard!' I said to Kenryo. `Do you expect me to fight with my bare hands?'

He signalled a crewman who came up with what appeared to be two long fish gutting knives.

'Take your choice. The moment you do, the game's on? The purpose of the pants was clear. Winner or loser, you had to fight I

I flicked a glance at my opponent before I took a weapon, trying to sum him up. It's difficult to trigger hate in a minute or two for someone you've never seen before. But his knees were touching mine; he was ready to kill me. Make it a grudge fight, I told myself; that's Kenryo sitting there, nol a nameless thug. Go for Kenryo and that will be it. Right for me, right for Jutta. He did in point of fact resemble Kenryo – the same tough-as-teak, hairless, barrel chest and gorilla arms. His chest was dark with sweat and the brassy, dead-fag smell of his breath was in my face.

I reached out for a knife.

He switched his knife from his left hand to his right. There was dead silence.

I'd never fought with a knife. My one experience was once seeing two drunken gamats tear into one another in a street brawl. If I was to achieve anything it would have to be by surprise tactics.

I snatched the knife and lunged at his stomach.

My wrist felt as if I'd bashed a stone wall.

My knife was held fast by its pommel in an iron grip. It's tip was an inch or two from the man's navel.

The crowd roared.

He shoved my arm clear by brute force, deftly flicked his weapon clear and jabbed me in the shoulder above the heart.

It didn't hurt much but it brought a gush of blood. In reply I side-swiped wildly at him; he blocked me with165 out trouble. The crowd catcalled and booed me. Above their noise I heard an order from Kenryo.

My man acknowledged it with a slight nod and the next thing I had a gash the full width of my chest. He was simply playing with me, chopping me up expertly.

The crowd yelled at me to go for him. I started a thrust with my right hand and then switched the weapon to my left in mid-stroke. He hadn't expected that. It was meant for his throat and I nearly made it. There was so much impetus behind the blow that I jack-knifed forward and our jaws cracked together. He held off my knife-hand with his elbow crooked at shoulder level. J hadn't the strength to ram home the tip and we hung together with our muscles cracking while the crew screamed and stamped.

He pushed me clear and we were back to square one, panting in each other's face and pouring sweat. Perhaps his narrow escape or my crack on his jaw roughed up his temper, whatever it was, he'd give up playing now. The crowd sensed it. I thought I heard Jutta's voice in the background but I couldn't be sure.

He took the initiative for the next move-but was fool enough to telegraph it by a downward glance at his knife, which then thrust like lightning at my heart. Even a duffer like me could see it coming. I countered by striking hard against the back of his blade.

My knife stuck there,

Then he grinned.

He'd bluffed me with his stroke into doing just what I had done because the back of his knife was overlaid with a soft bronze ridge and my weapon was snagged fast in it. I was wide open to the coup de grace.

All at once his face went slack and he gave a soft little noise like a burp and his head fell forward against my chest. A knife stuck out up to its hilt between his shoulder-blades. Kaptein Denny stood on Sang A's rail. He had a pistol in his hand.

Watch out!' I yelled. 'There by Jutta!

But he'd already spotted the guards and their automatics and he'd fired before my words reached him. One of them fell dead and the other dropped his gun. Its clatter in the frozen silence was as loud as a grenade burst. Kaptein Denny shouted something at the mob in a language I didn't understand. They froze-with surprise, and fear too, judging by their faces.

'Miss Jutta! Here! Quick!'

She went to him and when she was close enough to be safe under his pistol he jumped off the rail and made for me. His movements had the same sort of deadly grace as I imagine a leopard has, going in for a kill. He used the body of my opponent for cover, keeping the pistol on the crew, and jerked him off me with a swift pull at his hair. He kneed the knlfe free out of his back and slashed my pants loose. My ankles were still hobbled, though.

'Use your knife-get free!'

I went for the rope.

Kaptein Denny went forward a couple of paces and faced Captain Mild. He placed his feet wide and deliberately on the planking as if he feared he would slip. His gun came up in a slow stilted motion to full stretch-a curious chesthigh way of aiming -untll it pointed at Mik i's head. In his other band was his knife, all bloody. If Mild had gone for the pistol in his belt he would have been a dead man. From that moment there was no one else on deck that mattered but those two. An invisible beam might have been stabbing between them, holding them locked together. Miki's earlier immobility was there still, accentuated by the mortal danger he was in; it reached right up into the inert face and sinister hooded eyes. They were fixed on Kaptein Denny, held in the trance of some association which lay between them. Kaptein Denny was almost as still as he, poised in that deadly trigger-man stance. Kenryo was to one side but Kaptein Denny didn't seem to be worrying about him. I was. I slashed myself free. No one paid any attention; all of them were transfixed at the silent exchange going on between Kaptein Denny and Mild. Any moment they'd all wake up and overwhelm us by sheer weight of numbers and fire-power. It couldn't last.

Jt didn't.

I moved, Kenryo moved, Jutta moved.

I to grab the dead guard's sub-machine-gun. Jutta to me. Kenryo at Denny.

Denny's concentration on Mild hadn't blunted a sixth sense of awareness of peril. Kenryo caught him only half off guard. But the shock attack knocked his pistol spinning. I went after it. Kaptein Denny was off balance so he didn't get in his knife thrust at Kenryo. But although the blade missed-the hilt of the weapon crashed him against Kenryo's jaw and he cartwheeled over and, still carried forward by his rush, crashed to the planks.

Todome!' yelled Kaptein Denny. 'Todome!' You didn't have to guess that the words meant the big chop-from the pole-axed figure jerking on the deck. `

Struan!' screamed Jutta. 'By the ladder!'

One of her guards-the man who had escaped unscathed-had retrieved his automatic. I had the pistol now. Kaptein Denny shouted, Watch the pull!'

I might have missed my man crouched in the fog if he hadn't warned me, because I'd loosed off three shots before I'd aimed properly, due to the unusual long sweet pull of the trigger which was unlike the customary on-off kick. 'The first did miss; the second screamed off the flashguard of the PPSH; and the third ripped into his chest.

There was still Mild and his gun.

J. raced to the guard, snatched up the sub-machine-gun and trained it from the hip round the deck, moving at the same time towards Miki.

°No one moves!'

I tossed the pistol to Kaptein Denny and got alongside Mild. Emmermann had moved away.

Miki's eyes were a couple of almond-shaped blurs in the fog. He'd already got his hand on the butt of his pistol when I jammed the stubby barrel of the PPSH into his ribs. Tay off! Don't move! I'll cut you in half with this if you do!'

His underslanding of English improved remarkably under the gun's tuition. He let his hand fall away. It was like an animated puppet's movement, however; not a muscle in the rest of his body seemed to take part in the action. Nor did his head. I might not have been there at all with a magazine full of instant death. His marionette-like stare remained on Kaptein Denny. All he did was to make a curious sucking noise, a short intake of breath. A strange reverse hiss, full of sinister menace.

`Tell 'em-quick -any games from anyone and you're a dead man.'

He didn't pass on my message because Kaptein Denny did so. The men were all round us, crouched in the fog. I was alert for the slightest sound or movement. Jutta and Kaptein Denny were with me now.

'Over the side!'

I threw an arm round Miki's throat and half-backed, halfdragged him to the rail, helped hlm along with the barrel of the automatic too.

We made the rail.

'Into the dinghy! See to him, Kaptein Denny. I'll hold 'em off.'Denny took over and I mounted the rail, swinging the submachine-gun in a slow arc from side to side.

`Struan I ' called Jutta from the boat. Her voice was hoarse and unnatural-sounding.

I paused a moment to see if the crew would attempt a lastminute rush. They didn't. I dropped over the rail and into the dinghy. Kaptein Denny already had the oars. Balanced over them he held his gun on Mild; and Jutta was making her shaky and largely ineffective contribution with Miki's own pistol.

'Beat it!'

At my words Denny gave a powerful tug at the oars and stroked clear. There was a shot from Sang A. I cradled the sub-machine-gun in my hands and knelt in the stern; and ' walked' my fire up Sang A's side and along her rail and upperworks-grimacing as the recoil tore at my slashed chest. There were yells, oaths, screams and a couple more isolated shots.

We vanished into the murk,