As if on cue, the recording cut out.
I opened my eyes. The girl was kneeling on the rock platform above, holding my rifle. She handled it as though it might bite her. Her hands were all in the wrong places and the muzzle pointed at the sky: at least it wasn't trained on me. Our eyes met across the blue-black line of the barrel. She eyed me with the intense fascinated compulsion you reserve for a dangerous snake emerging from its hole, when you don't know whether it or the weapon in your hand is worse.
I took all this in as I got to my feet. 'The iron gun in the iron hand,' I mocked.
She seemed to find it hard to speak properly because her lip muscles were out of control.
'What do you want? Why are you spying on me?' '
Not spying; just investigating.'
Her face closed up in blankness. 'I didn't say that. I…' '
Yes?'
'I spotted you in the compass mirror, peering over the edge of the rock-' she jerked out. 'Your hair was blowing all over the place..'
'I must remember to have my barber fix it before I set out on my next spying mission:
'I'm serious,'
The barrier of tension between us was as real as an elec. tric fence. I felt it was time I got my gun out of those inexpert hands. It was loaded, but the safety catch was on. I was quite sure she didn't mean to threaten me with it: she'd only grabbed it because it was there. Anyway-the time for finesse was past.
I vaulted up alongside her and took the weapon away. She didn't resist. I think she was glad to be rid of it.
'It's always better to be the shooter than the shootee,' I quipped.
'Who are you?'
°That can wait. The question is, who are you? What sort of sound-track is that you've got there – radio? Television?'
She stared back, uncomprehending. She was operating on quite another wavelength from me. She blinked rapidly. Her right eye seemed to have some grains of sand in one corner and there were traces of face-powder stuck in her polo-neck sweater. After her hair her eyes were her best feature, seagreen with flecks of light in them. She seemed younger than I. about thirty.
`This place is off limits? I said. 'Diamond territory. Ver- boten. That coven stunt recorders as well. I asserted it emphatically but in my own mind that didn't quite include the maps and other things I'd seen. She wasn't with me yet: she was still living with something in the recording.
`Stunt? That's when I was born: she replied,
If that's so, all I can say is that the language of maternity wards has caught up with the permissive age.'
She made a stagey, throwaway gesture at the tape-recorder that underlined the first conclusion I'd jumped to, 'I mean – born. When the liner was hit.'
'You artistes live out your scripts, don't you? But don't get too carried away. When you come back to earth you'll discover that the bit of Sperrgebiet you're standing on is very expensive. It could cost you a thousand-dollar fine or a year in jail.'
She remained tense and uptight. 'My name's Jutta Walsh. I was born thirty-one years ago today in a boat which rescued the liner's passengers. Here, at the Bridge of Magpies. No one ever found out who the rescuer was because he disappeared next day. My mother died. That liner's a part of me! Nothing's going to stop me going aboard het That Includes you!'
'My name's Santa Claus-alias Struan Weddell. I'm headman of that island over there. It's Christmas Day today.'
The touch of colour that came into her cheeks wasn't from windburn. My sarcasm, however, didn't break down her defiant attitude. She regarded me in silence, with coal hostility.
'I know how you got here: Kaptein Denny? I went on. '
There's no debate about this territory. It's Sperrgebiet, and on the Sperrgebiet you're guilty until you can prove yourself innocent What I'm trying to say is that I don't have to listen to your reasons in order to clobber you. Being here is enough in itself, but I realize show-biz is a hen of a razzmatazz and you've got to have local colour to pay off. The sound effects on your tape are good-very good.'
'Listen to me clearly! I tell you I way born here! The City of Baroda was carrying women and children to the Cape. My mother was pregnant. „'
'Babies are born that way.'
`The shock of the U-boat attack brought on labour. I was a month premature.'
'Congratulations on your script. That sort of soap opera should be a wow over the air. But here you've no audience to cry over it. Even the birds have gone. You'll have to get out.'
She remained strained and intent. 'You've got it all wrong. Believe me-what you overheard on the tape happened in real life, a long time back. What you call sound effects are actual battle noises radioed from inside a Uboat which was in action and fighting for its life. Those men-all of them-died later, '
'And I'm U-boat Admiral Donitz in person.'
'You stupid thick-headed dot!' she blazed. 'You're plain bloody-minded and stubborn.'
'Cops usually are,'
'You're a cop?'
'Sort of.'
'Blinded by your job.'
'I'm new. Now get your things together and march! Back to my boat! I'll see you aboard Gaok;
'First I'm going aboard that liner.'
'Says who?'
'I've come a long way, and I've waited a long time, I'm going aboard.'
'The hell you are!'
She tried to push past but I grabbed her. The force of her rush took us among her books and maps. I knocked over the compass and trod on a chart.
The damn-you expression went from her eyes in a split second; just as Sperrgebiet fog changes the colour of the light. In it's place was genuine appeal and a touch of des, peration that wasn't play-acting. I knew then that I'd misjudged her: I found myself believing her story.
'Please!' she burst cut 'Please-those are priceless!'
She didn't put her hands above her head to signal surrender but the way she picked up one of the books and held it out to me said the same thing. It was titled Nuremberg Trials, Vol. XIII. There were a couple of other similar ones. She also handed me a paper with neat hand-written columns of figures, dates and names. It was headed, U-boats which operated in South African waters 1939-1945'. There was another. 'U-boat types, class, tonnage, speed, armament, range'-and a sheaf of other papers, including photocopies and official-looking letters. The map I'd trodden on turned out to be a naval chart of the Possession channel, annotated in German.
We became intensely conscious of one another. '
Your work?'
'Yes.'
'The illusion of war.'
'You could call it that'
It's more than that, though.'
'It's more than that.'
I made a sweeping gesture which took in the collection and tape recorder. 'In old cathedrals people listen to tape ' explaining the architecture and art they're looking at-but I wouldn't have thought the Sperrgebiet qualified for the same treatment.'
She stayed silent for a few moments. Maybe, I thought, she was weighing my remark as a good let-out However, I discounted my suspicions about that the moment she replied. Her voice was warm, and revealed how grateful she was I'd accepted her story as 24-carat
'I hadn't thought of it in those terms but mine's the same sort of idea-if you put the site of a naval battle in place of a cathedral. The lecture was going fine-until you showed up.''I was-am-trying to head you away from trouble.' '
Thanks. There wasn't anyone around. I thought I'd get away with it?
'You have?
'What do you mean?
'If I accompany you it's okay. This shoreline's part of my pad. Possession's my ship: I'm a sort of re-tread captain. Let's go and look at the wreck together.'
'I can't begin to thank you..
'Call me Struan: that'll be thanks enough.'
'Struan.'
'Is this a pilgrimage or a picnic, Jutta?'
'Something of both, I guess.'
She didn't go into that. Nor did she explain further her sight-and-sound set-up when we collected the documents and books and put heavy stones on top of them to keep them from blowing while we were away at the wreck. They made a formidable, and interesting, pile of documentation,
'You've done a lot of homework, Jutta.'
'Yes. It took years?
Again, no more. She smiled, though, and I was pleased to see the pinched look go from her face. I left the explanations for later.
We traversed the dome of rock which comprises Doodenstadt, winding and back-tracking through the 'streets' to get to our objective. The strange geological formation projected into the sea on one hand and into the desert on the other. At shoe-leather distance the lost city impressed me still less. We couldn't board the liner from the landward side. You could have driven a train through the torpedo holes in her. It was a miracle she'd stayed afloat long enough to be beached. Also-it must have been a spring tide that put her high up where she was.
We stood and looked at her rusty plating. Jutta's interest took the chill off the sense of static disaster which the years hadn't softened.
She said unexpectedly, 'Sorry I was like that back there, •
Struan.'
'Forget it. We're here now.'
'It's just that it meant – means – so much.'
I was on the point of asking for the explanation which I felt was becoming overdue; but I decided to play it gently for the moment.
'You a historian, Jutta?'
'Sort of;
She didn't seem inclined to elaborate. It was faith, not fact, which had made me trust her in the first place. But patience isn't one of my strong suits. She intrigued me.
I said, 'The South African sun didn't give you that complexion.'
She flushed, which made it better still. `No. London. I flew here, only a couple of days ago.'
'That's a very long way to come for a view of a rotting old hulk. Especially one that's out of bounds.'
'I told you, you could almost call it my cradle.'
'A small reason for a big journey.'
'Maybe. Don't come the cop again, Struan. You're nicer without.'
'Let's try the other side of the wreck.'
We caught the force of the wind there because the hulk had acted as a windbreak before. Now the spray came in jets when the breakers burst against the rocks. I found the wreck's air of desolation total and depressing. The weather side was red with rust. Crabs scuffled up and down the rotting plates and there was a population of tide-things a man's height up from the keel. Some smashed remains of lifeboats hung from perished falls.
`Jut means davit in Danish,' Jutta
'You're aJl sea.'
'Maybe too much so, Struan.'
I waited for the follow-up to this cryptic remark but it didn't come. Instead, she occupied herself with studying the ship's side, trying to find a way in. Finally we located one and slipped and scrambled up on to the deck. It was a grim spectacle. Looters and strippers had picked the place clean. Green slime clung to a lot of the metal 'tween-decks and the stairways were dangerous.
'What are you searching for, Junta?'
'My mother's cabin.'
`Number?'
'I don't know. The most I could discover was that it was among the single accommodation on the starboard side.' `
Single? How's that?'
'She wasn't married.'
'I see.'
'You don't. But you're too polite to pry.'
It was wartime.'
`Wartime: Her voice took on an edge. 'If you only knew how that fogs everything I That simple question you asked about her cabin-you can't begin to guess the involvements it took to get the simple answer:
'Jutta, what do you hope to find in your mother's cabin?'
She side-stepped my question. Instead she said, 'here's a passageway. It might lead to the cabins.'
It did, but it was wet and half-dark. The liner had taken the torpedoes on her port side and probably all the passengers on the opposite side, where we now were, had got away safely. If they'd left anything behind in their flight, the looters had taken it. Every cabin was a bare steel shell. Coffin seemed a better description.
I sniffed. 'Seals! Whew!'
We explored until it was impossible to go farther because the 'tween-decks had collapsed. Jutta was very withdrawn when we found nothing.
We retraced our steps to the bridge. It had shared the fate of the cabins. All the instruments, even the wheel, were missing. We had a wonderful view of the Bridge of Magpies, which seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The pillars on which the twin legs of the arch rested were striated by the weather-like the engine of a giant motor-cycle. At its highest point the structure narrowed to a mere couple of feet thick, which gave the whole thing an airy lightness. We shared the scene and the silence. It was companionable and felt good. Maybe what we were sharing was something more indefinable, more basic,
'Why magpies?' I asked.
'Not a clue. The name bad the American code-breakers stumped, too.'
'Please, teacher!'
We laughed at and with one another.
'Do I sound as bad as that?'
'Professor!'
'It's all back there amongst my things: everything about U-160's mission.'
'Mission?'
'You heard the tape. It wasn't an operational cruise,' '
There was enough shooting.'
'Nevertheless, it wasn't. The first buzz of it emerged when Pearl Harbour intercepted a Japanese Fleet message to U-boat Headquarters. Those code-breaker boys were hot stuff, real super-stars at their job, but the name Bridge of Magpies had them beat. As a result the signal got shelved. It should have been passed on to the British because these waters were in the Royal Navy's sphere of operations; but it never was.'
`What's at the back of all this sleuthing of yours-Jutta?'
You could almost hear the barrier clang down between us! I wasn't so far along with her as I'd imagined.
She said shortly, `To do with-my mother.'
`Whom you never knew. That's a load of filial piety, Jutta.'
`Please don't needle me, Struan. You've been very sweet and considerate bringing me here. Don't spoil it now.'
'Would it spoil it to tell you I've suddenly thought of something?'
'About my mother?'
'It's what you want, isn't it?'
'Yes… no.' Her eyes-sea-green as deep water -had been on my face, but now she looked away. 'Tell me. The moment's gone, anyway.'
I put my hand on her shoulder. Irrelevantly, I thought: Gigi must just be about opening the jetty bar now. That careless bit of breast that aJways showed. I wondered what Jutta's breasts were like. There was almost no shape to her because of' the suede jacket
'Breekbout-that's my Man Friday-told me yesterday that there's an old graveyard back of the beach in the sandhills. Maybe your mother's buried there.'
Her reaction wasn't what I'd expected. She certainly wasn't suffering from an overdose of mother-fixation. She put her hand on mine and said coolly, matter-of-factly, 'Let's go and look.'
We left the wreck, collected her paraphernalia, and hiked away into the wind-carved sandhills, which followed the coast's indentation like a half-cupped hand. Farther inland was a plain with shifting, smaller sandhills and beyond them showed the dark line of a range of fretted-rocky outcrops. We made brand new footsteps in the wind-scoured surface. The dusty smell of the desert was still damped by a sprinkling of dew. The sun shone but the wind was cold.
We stopped for a breather. Her gear was more cumbersome than heavy.
'What was "the sound of guns" mentioned on the tape, Jutta?'
I was watching her closely, waiting for the shut-down in her eyes that had followed my earlier questioning and had made them seem to be looking at me from another place. 64
But it didn't happen this time.
'I don't know what, you're talking about'
Nor did she: but she was fascinated by what I had to tell her about Convoy WV. 5BX and why Gousblom had broken away from it into the channel. I left the C-in-C out of it, of course.
When I'd finished she said speculatively, 'Seems I'm not the only one who's done homework. You're pretty well informed for a headman.'
'It was Possession's main event for a century. The story gets passed on from mouth to mouth.'
'I wonder.'
I kept wondering, too-about her. I decided to risk my sixtyfour dollar question.
'I'd like to go over all this material of yours about Possession.'
Her eyes disappeared into another time-track.
'It's copyright. Mine.'
'Does that mean no?'
'I said, it's mine?
'Let's get on,' I snapped.
The anger lay between us and soured the rest of the hike. Her brush-off burned me up because now I reckoned she'd turned on the charm to get her way with me about the wreck and play me for a sucker. I swore to myself that once we'd seen over the graveyard I'd have an ironclad reason out of her for being on the Sperrgebiet. Or else.
We negotiated the corner of the last dune blocking off the graveyard. I was in the lead.
I caught sight of a cluster of mounds and some derelict crosses. 1 also spotted something else.
I pulled Jutta back into the angle of the dune; then unslung my binoculars and brought the graves into sharp definition.
A man was kneeling at one of them, his hands busy in the sand.
'Was your mother's name Joyce?' I whispered.
She nodded.
'Then Kaptein Denny is either robbing her grave or caching something in it?
'Is that it?'
'The cross is pretty crude-looks like a piece of wreckage.'
I read, ' "Joyce Walsh…" Come back, you little idiot!'
She'd jumped up and sprinted towards the kneeling figure. I snicked back the rifle bolt, made sure it was loaded-and ran after her. Because of the wind, Kaptein Denny didn't hear her coming until she was very close. When he did, he threw us a startled glance, leapt up and scuffed the mound with his foot so that a scatter of things-some of them bright seashells-went flying.
I was up to him in a moment. I slipped the rifle's safety catch. He had a knife in one hand and in the other some rings and jewellery-and what appeared to be a rather timeworn passport. Jutta was confronting him as if she couldn't believe her eyes.
'You bastard!' I exclaimed. 'Fishing… balls! You bloody grave-robbing bastard!'
His face was a mask; he didn't retaliate; just came towards me holding out the battered passport. I wasn't dumb enough to fall for that one.
I kept the gun steady on him. `The knife-drop it 1 At my feet!'
He hesitated-unflappable and therefore dangerous. But he saw I'd blast him if he tried any tricks. He gave a slight shrug and threw it open.
'Now the passport!'
It joined the knife.
'Hold out your hand!'
There were a couple of rings and some trinkets in his palm.
I risked a glance at the things he'd kicked away: a tiny coloured porcelain figurine and some smashed painted shells which had been stuck together to imitate flowers.
'Now get off that grave!' I ordered. 'You're under arrest. Where'd you get that loot from?'
He indicated the mount The wind had long ago blown the shabby cross askew-by contrast, most of the other graves were unmarked-and the sand had filed away the lettering, which appeared to have been burned in with a hot iron. It read, 'Joyce Walsh. Died in childbirth, July 1943. R.I.P.'
Jutta's thoughts were a millisecond ahead of mine. She snatched up the passport, flicked it open, paged through it rapidly, concentrating on the wording and franking-stamps. Before she'd reached the last page her eagerness seemed to 66 have evaporated.
Her voice was dry and level as if she'd experienced some big let-down.
'My mother's.'
'Yes,' said Kaptein Denny. 'The rings-I took them from her fingers myself.'
'Christ, you're a cool one!' I exploded.
Jutta said in the same level-unemotional voice, 'If that's true, you didn't do it just now. That grave's not been disturbed.'
She was right. It certainly hadn't been dug up and unless the body lay six inches deep he couldn't have got at it. Kaptein Denny left me out of what he had to say next. 'I made that cross. The liner captain gave me your mother's passport so I'd get the name right. I took the jewellery. I've kept them all… it's a long time now.'
'You were there!'
'I was there. These things belong to you now, Miss Jutta.' `
Jutta! ' I echoed. 'You're mighty quick off the mark for a charter skipper.'
'I've known Miss Jutta a long time. From the moment of birth, in fact.'
'Rescuer Jutta exclaimed. 'It was you! Kaptein Denny!' He remained unruffled. 'I rescued a lot of people that night. Your mother among them. You were born in my boat.'
'Don't play the fool with me,' I snapped at him. I put up the gun but kept my foot on the knife. 'Let's have your story straight-and quick.'
'I was in the Possession channel that night U-160 sank the City of Baroda…:
'Doing what?'
'Fishing.'
It was too pat. Fishing nets a multitude of sins.
'In wartime? With enemy subs around?'
'I was fishing.'
I let it go.
'I saw the liner beached. It was a wild, stormy night. The passengers wouldn't have stood a chance in the seas that were breaking over the rocks. I took off a lot of them – including Miss Jutta's mother, as I said.'
Jutta fiddled with the rings. She was clearly lining up on his 67 side. Maybe she'd never left it. Maybe that's why both of them were ashore the same day..
`You must have known all along who I was when I came to you in Luderitz for a boat-why didn't you say?' `
The time wasn't then.'
`You vanished before the survivors from the City of Baroda could even say thank you. No one was ever able to identify their rescuer.'
'It's the way I'm made.'
I said, 'It takes a power of modesty to dodge a couple of warships out hunting a U-boat. Yet you succeeded.'
`They concentrated on the mouth of the channel near the Kreuz shoals where the oil slick was. I took my boat round the other way.'
Okay,' I said. 'You were super-modest. It's all in the past and it doesn't matter a damn to me whether you wanted modesty or a medal. What concerns me is the present..
'It's Miss Jutta's birthday,' he interrupted. 'It's also a deathday. I'm a Malay. That was a rite for her mother's spirit you interrupted.'
Jutta gathered up the figurine and the broken seashells. Fine,' I said to Denny. 'You've done your stuff, both temporally and spiritually. I couldn't care less. What I care about is that both of you are defying the law. This is Sperr- gebiet! Get going I'
'You can't – not now! Jutta was incredulous.
'Now's just the time.'
'Not when everything's going my way
`What way is that?'
She didn't answer. What had been brewing inside me, ever since our breather-stop, lashed back at me. I went on, 'You had a lot of show-me wishes. I obliged. The party's over.'
`Struan I '
There was more than disappointment and anger in that one word-it could have been hurt. I bulldozed it aside.
'This shore isn't a free-for-all. You both seem to have forgotten that. Now let's get moving to the boat? And then?' All feeling had left her voice.
`Luderitz. Kaptein Denny will take you back?
'That "will" sounds exactly like a re-tread captain's order.' '
Re-tread or not, it's an order. I'm also confiscating all 68 this stuff until I can go through it'
'I'm staying That's flat!'
'What have you got to say-Kaptein Denny?'
'I agree to return to Gaok. There's no law against a man sitting in his boat in the channel. Merely sitting.'
He was right, of course, Essentially he was saying the same thing as Jutta, but more cleverly.
I was saved by the bell from further argument I heard Koch's Land-Rover before they did, because I was expecting him. It was grinding through an outcrop barrier behind the sandhills, and trailing a long plume of dust.
I pointed it out to them; and tried bluffing, because I didn't want Koch to come and find me unable to shift a girl and a fisherman from the beach.
'That's probably a diamond patrol. You're in a hot seat. You can save yourselves trouble by coming to the boat right away.'
'I'll give you my word not to come ashore,' said Kaptein Denny.
'And you, Jutta?'
'No.'
There was a tight silence. Then she exclaimed. 'You don't.. can't
… understand! It would take hours to explain. You' ve been wonderful-and beastly-today.'
'The boat'
'Oh, damn and blast you!'
Kaptein Denny said, 'That's not a police patrol. Their vehicles are painted bright orange so they can be spotted from their air if they're in trouble.'
Koch broke it up by coming round the sandhills in a tearaway slide. He'd clearly sighted our group. There wasn't much of his Austrian charisma in evidence when he finally pulled up hard and covered us in dust.
'What the devil goes on here-Struan? Showing tourists around?'
'Keep your cool. We were just sorting things out.' '
A woman tool'
He'd had a rough ride over the desert, judging from his red, hollow eyes and dust-covered face. His cheeks were stubble-shadowed; and dust made a tracery in the lines about his 'nose, making him look angry and older. A roof tar69 paulin covering his gear and extra jerricans of petrol had blown loose and flapped in the wind, drawing attention to the load.
Koch saw that Kaptein Denny was eyeing it and snapped, '
Get in. I want a word with you.'
`To the boat,' I ordered the other two; but they just went on standing there. Koch slammed in the gears and we drove up a dune-out of earshot,
I got in first. 'Now.. I gave him a quick rundown of the situation and why Jutta was there.
'Be your age, man!' he retorted. 'Women in these days don't dare deserts simply in order to brood over sites of minor naval actions and placate ancestral spirits! Lady Hester Stanhope's dead!'
'Maybe she's different.'
'They all are-to start with. To the birds today the male is simply a gun loaded with chauvinism and sperm. Get that straight and you'll be a happy man.'
`Her story sounded okay-at least part of it.'
Wive la difference! Nor did I like the look of that bugger with her.'
'Maybe he's at the bottom of it all. I don't know yet.'
'Letting her down lightly again, Struan? You were given a job to do here-remember? The Sperrgebiet isn't Santorin-all lesbians and love-ins.'
'I like your language when you're drunk. It's even better when you're mad. What do you want me to do?' '
Arrest them both. Throw them out.'
'Kaptein Denny's given his parole – well, sort of. Isn't interested in coming ashore. This once was an exception.' 'And she?'
'Refuses to budge.'
'You've got a lock-up on Possession.'
'You can't throw a woman into a place like that,'
'I can. You will.'
'Let's see if we can't talk some sense into her.'
But we couldn't, and she even held out her wrists and mocked me to clap handcuffs on her. Without a boat Possession is as good as a prison anyway. Those two or three miles of white-capped channel water between the island and the mainland would, if a man were stuck there, lengthen to two thousand. The island looked like a nicked knife 70 blade lying in the sea, one of those curved things that have a thick back. The craggy bits, where the zombies hadn't managed to clear the guano, were still white, and the rest was grey where they had. Parts of the island were so low against the water that they looked like three or four islets loosely linked together.
Finally, under pressure and protest, Jutta agreed to accom- pany us. She remained adamant in her refusal to return to Luderitz
The four of us, plus Breekbout, piled into the two boats and we crossed to the island.