Medusa

CHAPTER ONE

I must have slept, for the next thing I knew was the shrill note of the bo's'n's pipe echoing over the main broadcast followed by a metallic voice declaring the start of another day: 'Call the hands, call the hands, call the hands.' It was 06.30 and since the movement had become a jerky roll and an occasional shivering crash for'ard, I guessed we had now cleared the western tip of Sicily with the full fetch of the Tyrrhenian Sea on our starb'd beam. The cabin door lurched back and Petty Officer Jarvis entered balancing a cup with a saucer on top of it. 'Captain's compliments, sir, and would you join him for breakfast as soon as you're ready.'

The tea was dark, strong and very sweet. I drank it quickly, then staggered along the passageway to the heads. It took me some time to shave and dress because of the unpredictability of the ship's movement, so that by the time I reached the Captain's day cabin he had finished his meal and was seated at the desk reading through a clipboard of signals with the Yeoman standing by. 'Sleep well?' It was a perfunctory query, his mind concentrated on the sheets in his hand, his face drawn and tense, dark shadows under his eyes. After a while he said, 'Very good, Yeo. Better send it now. They'll need to have all the details.' And then he turned to me. The BBC had it on the six o'clock news and it was also referred to in the round-up of the day's papers. The Timescalled it The Malta Incident and one of the tabloids had the headline: NAVY SCUTTLES OUT OF GRAND HARBOUR.' He smiled, but without humour, and he didn't refer to it again, the routine of a ship taking over as the Marine Engineer Officer came in to report engine and fuel states, followed by other officers with reports and queries.

I had finished breakfast and was having a final cup of coffee when he suddenly stood up and reached for his cap. 'Care to come round the ship with me?'

I followed him out into the passageway and down the ladder. For that moment we were alone, the first opportunity I had to ask him if he knew why he'd been despatched to Mahon in such haste.

He looked at me, tight-lipped. 'I seem to remember I told you, last night. I shouldn't have done, but I did.' And he added, 'I wasn't quite myself, a bit tensed-up.'

'You told me you'd had orders to leave, and you mentioned 10 Downing Street. But nothing else.'

'That's it — orders.'

'But why?'

He stopped then. This is the Navy, Mike. Politicians make the decisions, we carry out the orders.'

'But you must have some idea of the reasons for those orders.'

'Some idea, yes.' He said it slowly, hesitantly. 'The rest I'm having to guess at.' He started down the next ladder to the deck below. It was then that I passed on to him what Jarvis had said about the mood on the mess decks. He turned on me. 'I know about that. It can't be helped.' And when I persisted, suggesting that some hint of the reason for the orders he had received would make his men, and myself, a good deal happier, he gripped hold of my arm and said angrily, 'Leave it at that, will you. I'm pleased to have you on board, but don't ask questions.'

He went on ahead then, down a long passageway to the sick bay, where we found Kent pale but cheerful, sitting up bare-chested and heavily bandaged. 'Pity we've no helicopter,' Gareth told him. 'But another twenty-four hours and we'll either have a Spanish surgeon here on board to get that bullet out or we'll fly you home.'

'I'd rather have it out on board, sir.' But as we left him there were beads of perspiration forming on his forehead, his skin very white. Gareth said to me quietly, 'Good man, that. He'll leave a gap I'll have great difficulty in filling.' And he added, 'If we'd had a helicopter, we could have, flown him ashore from here.'

The tour of inspection took in three decks and lasted just over half an hour, and all the time Gareth was making an effort to imprint his personality on the officers and men he talked to and play down what had happened at the wharf in Malta. Finally we reached the flight deck, going through the hangar to look down on to the quarterdeck below where the white of our seething wake and the roar of water boiling up from the twin screws made it almost impossible to talk. 'What's wrong with the helicopter — out of service?' I shouted to him.

He shook his head. 'I haven't been allocated one.'

'So what do you keep in the hangar?' I was curious because the shut steel doors had seals on the locks.

He didn't answer that, looking at me sharply, then turning away. Later, talking to the Pilot on the bridge, I learned that those seals were inspected by the Captain or WHO personally mornings and evenings, that they each held a key to the doors and it required both of them present in person to unlock them.

But by then I was less interested in the sealed hangar than in the political repercussions of the Malta affair. It was, in fact, the main topic of conversation, not just on the bridge or among the officers, but throughout the ship. At first it was no more than a small item at the end of the early morning news. By 09.00 the BBC had slotted it in as a major news item immediately following the latest exchange of notes between the Kremlin and the White House, and it was clear from the way in which the incident was being presented that it was being blown up into a major political row. Later the World Service of the. BBC announced that the British High Commissioner had been summoned to the office of the Maltese premier where he had been handed a note of protest to the British Government for the 'high-handed, irresponsible and internationally outrageous behaviour of one of HM ships in opening fire on innocent people when on a courtesy visit'. Almost simultaneously the Maltese High Commissioner in London had been called to the Foreign Office. The Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs had put down a question for the Prime Minister to answer at Question Time in the House that afternoon and there was even some talk of an emergency cabinet meeting later in the day.

The repercussions of all this bore heavily on Gareth, who spent most of the day at his desk replying to the stream of signals that came in, one of them from 10 Downing Street itself demanding an immediate personal report of the affair direct to the Prime Minister's Office.

And on top of this, in the late afternoon, there was a sudden flurry on the bridge, messages flying around the ship and the Captain himself finally being called. We were then approaching Cape Spartivento at the southern end of Sardinia with the wind increasing from the north-east, the surface of the sea flecked with whitecaps and the sky so overcast it looked as though night was about to fall.

It was the Communications Officer who first alerted the officer of the watch. He was a flamboyant, cocky lieutenant with a round, smiling face. His name was Woburn, so everybody referred to him as The Smiler. But he wasn't smiling when he appeared on the bridge in the late afternoon, his face set as he and the Pilot searched the murk through the bridge glasses. We were on collision course apparently with a section of the Sixth Fleet, which had left the Bay of Naples the previous day and was now spread out over quite a large area of sea.

Night had fallen before we sighted the aircraft carrier. It came up over the horizon like the gas flare of an oil rig, so bright and red was the masthead light, and then, as we where he had been handed a note of protest to the British Government for the 'high-handed, irresponsible and internationally outrageous behaviour of one of HM ships in opening fire on innocent people when on a courtesy visit'. Almost simultaneously the Maltese High Commissioner in London had been called to the Foreign Office. The Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs had put down a question for the Prime Minister to answer at Question Time in the House that afternoon and there was even some talk of an emergency cabinet meeting later in the day.

The repercussions of all this bore heavily on Gareth, who spent most of the day at his desk replying to the stream of signals that came in, one of them from 10 Downing Street itself demanding an immediate personal report of the affair direct to the Prime Minister's Office.

And on top of this, in the late afternoon, there was a sudden flurry on the bridge, messages flying around the ship and the Captain himself finally being called. We were then approaching Cape Spartivento at the southern end of Sardinia with the wind increasing from the north-east, the surface of the sea flecked with whitecaps and the sky so overcast it looked as though night was about to fall.

It was the Communications Officer who first alerted the officer of the watch. He was a flamboyant, cocky lieutenant with a round, smiling face. His name was Woburn, so everybody referred to him as The Smiler. But he wasn't smiling when he appeared on the bridge in the late afternoon, his face set as he and the Pilot searched the murk through the bridge glasses. We were on collision course apparently with a section of the Sixth Fleet, which had left the Bay of Naples the previous day and was now spread out over quite a large area of sea.

Night had fallen before we sighted the aircraft carrier. It came up over the horizon like the gas flare of an oil rig, so bright and red was the masthead light, and then, as we closed it, two American destroyers powered towards us at full speed, swirling round and stationing themselves between us and the carrier like protecting sheepdogs. When we passed it we were so close that the side of it was like the blurred outline of a harbour wall, and always the destroyers tracking alongside us, close enough at one point for Gareth to slide open the starb'd bridge door and exchange greetings with one of their captains over loud-hailers. Then they peeled away and for the next half-hour we were threading through a litter of radar blips that only occasionally resolved themselves into fleeting glimpses of actual ships.

As a result our evening meal was later than usual. It was also a rather hurried one with Gareth hardly saying a word, his mind concentrated on the problems facing him. One of those problems was, of course, my presence on the ship. Due to the decrease in speed while crossing the track of the US ships, and the fact that we had to alter course to starb'd, our ETA at Mahon the next day had been delayed by about two hours to 08.45. It was hardly likely he would risk putting me ashore in daylight, and once we were tied up at the Naval Base…'

'What are you going to do about me?' I asked him.

He looked at me vaguely. Then his eyes focused as though suddenly recalling my presence in the cabin. 'I haven't decided yet.' He got suddenly to his feet, hesitated, then crossed to his desk. 'This came in just after we cleared that carrier.'Time of receipt of the message he passed to me was 21.13. It read: Weapon that killed forge Martinez found in home of Michael Steele. Police statement just issued indicates Steele arrived Malta on twin-hulled yacht Thunderflash then disappeared. Recent owner of yacht name of Evans also wanted for questioning; thought to be on fishing expedition. Political situation here still tense. In view of what happened Malta suggest you anchor off Villa Carlos well clear of Mahon port area.I was still in a state of shock, reading again the first lines of that message, when he said, 'You understand, I hope — the sooner you're off my ship the better.' I began to protest that I had had nothing to do with the Martinez killing, but he stopped me. 'Whether you were involved or not is immaterial. The gun was apparently found in your house and I've got troubles enough — '

'It wasn't in my house. It was in the port engine compartment — '

'I don't care where it was,' he cut in. 'I want you off the ship and the sooner-'

'For God's sake, listen will you…'

'No, you listen.' His hand was up, an abrupt, imperative gesture. 'I'm sorry, but you must understand. You're dynamite in my present circumstances.' He took the paper from me, staring down at it and muttering something about 'he was bound to be mixed up in it somewhere', then folding it and slipping it into his pocket with a bitter little laugh as he told me I was probably the least of his worries, everybody blaming him for the Malta Incident. 'And the PM insisting I act with more circumspection in Menorca. Circumspection! That'll be the Foreign Office putting their oar in.' The boyish smile flashed out, but it was only a glimmer, then he banged his cap on his head and was gone, hurrying down the ladder to the Communications Office.

I finished my coffee, my mind in turmoil. Finally I went back up to the bridge, preferring contact with the outside world to the confines of the cabin, where I had nothing to do but think about Soo and what the hell had been going on for that gun to have been found in the house.

The watch was just changing, and shortly afterwards young Davison, a fresh-faced, tow-headed officer-under-training appeared at my elbow to say the Captain had phoned to enquire if I would join him for a drink.

I found him sitting hunched over his desk, the reading light pulled down to spotlight the pad on which he had been making notes, his face, his whole body set rigid, and a cigarette smouldering in a scallop-shell ashtray. He looked up, his eyes blank.

'What is it?' I asked. And when he didn't reply, I said, 'You asked me down for a drink.'

'Oh yes.' His eyes blinked quickly and he seemed to pull himself together, jumping to his feet and waving me to a seat at the low table. He picked up the bottle standing there. 'Real cognac, or would you prefer brandy and ginger ale?' I opted for the cognac, and as he poured it the neck of the bottle rattled against the rim of the glass. That, and the awkward silence as he helped himself to a Coke and sat down opposite me, was an indication of how tensed-up he was.

'You're thinking about tomorrow,' I said.

He nodded, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette, lighting another, then leaning back, drawing the smoke into his lungs as though he were at high altitude sucking in oxygen. In the silence that followed I was conscious of the engines, the far-off sound of the bow wave surging along the frigate's side, the rattle of crockery in the steward's pantry., 'I was wondering…' But it's not easy to ask a favour of a man who's in love with your wife. 'Why don't you drop me off on one of the islands as you go into Mahon?' I asked him finally, very conscious of the hesitancy in my voice. He was the Captain of a Royal Navy ship on an official visit and my suggestion was tantamount to smuggling a wanted man back into Spain. And when he didn't say anything, I made the point that I hadn't asked to stay on his ship. 'You virtually kidnapped me.' And I added, 'Drop me off. Forget I was ever on board.'

'Yes, I've thought of that.' He nodded. 'But there's over two hundred men on this ship and most of them know you're here.' He got up, pacing back and forth behind me so nervously that I began to think it must be a more personal matter he wanted to discuss. He and Soo had Felixstowe Ferry, and then Pat arriving?' He nodded. 'He would know, of course — all the gossip, all the things they said. Felixstowe Ferry! My God!' He was smiling and shaking his head. 'Lost my innocence there, found a no-good bastard of a half-brother — then, years later… But you know about that.'

'The Haven buoy?'

He nodded. 'That Haven buoy episode hangs round my neck like a millstone. It's the cause…' He put his head in his hands, rubbing the palms of them over his eyes. 'He crucified me. He didn't know it at the time. He thought he was saving my life, but he crucified me — and now the agony begins.'

'What agony?' I asked. His face had gone very pale, his eyes half-closed. 'You all right?' He looked as though he might pass out. His eyes flicked open then, his mind on something else. I asked him about his use of the word bastard. 'Did you mean that literally? Is Evans your father's illegitimate son?'

He didn't answer for a moment, then suddenly he burst out laughing. 'Is that what Carpenter told you, man? If so, he's got it the wrong way round. Whatever else Pat is, he's legitimate.' And then, his mood changing again, he put his elbows on the table, his head thrust forward. 'Look now, I'm going to tell you something I haven't told anyone else. In confidence, mind you. You'll see why. You've heard part of it, so you may as well know it all. Especially as it's my belief you've now got the boat they brought the stuff ashore in.' He nodded towards the bottle. 'Help yourself. This may take a little time.' He leaned back, drawing on his cigarette. 'The King's Fleet mean anything to you?'

'By the entrance to the Deben River, isn't it?'

He nodded. 'I heard you visited Woodbridge and Felixstowe Ferry a while back when you were searching for a boat. The Fleet was used by the Vikings, and the Romans before them. Now it's cut off from the river by a high flood bank. But there's still a few stretches of water left. When I was about fourteen and living for a time at the Ferry, Pat and I used to bird-watch there. It was a great place for nesting swans, some of the rarer water birds, too.' And he added, 'It was only later I discovered Pat's real interest — he liked to smash the eggs with steel balls fired from a catapult, or try and put out a swan's eye with it.'.

'Charming!' I murmured, but he picked me up on that.

'It wasn't viciousness, you understand. It was a question of marksmanship. Later he acquired an airgun. It was the challenge, you understand. He didn't think about the cruelty of it. He hasn't that sort of imagination.' He shook his head, staring vacantly at his empty glass, his mind back in the past. 'Perhaps he doesn't have any imagination at all. I'm not sure.'

'What happened?' I asked. 'You were going to tell me what happened there.'

'Oh yes.' He nodded. 'Over four years ago now. I was on leave, the first since my wife and I split up. I thought it would be fun to go back to Suffolk, stay at the Ferry, particularly as it was November, a good time for bird-watching.' He leaned back, his eyes half-closed again. 'The second night I was there, after the evening meal, I took some chocolate biscuits and a Thermos of coffee and rum and walked along the Deben bank to the King's Fleet. Halt a mile or so in from the river there's a series of little Broads-type lakes. The farmer had parked a trailer there part-loaded with bags of fertiliser. It made an ideal hide and I hadn't been propped up there, my back against the bags, more than half an hour before I heard the beat of wings. They passed almost directly over my head, five dark shapes against the Milky Way, the beat fading, then strengthening again as the birds circled. Suddenly I had them in the glasses, coming in low, the wet glimmer of the Fleet shattered, a flurry of water as they breasted it then only ripples and the five shapes gliding ghostly white Five Brent, and if nothing else happened that night it would have been worth it just to see the way they touched down. It was magic.'

Recalling the pleasure of that night was, I think, a sort of displacement activity for him. It helped to relieve some of the tension, his eyes half-closed, his mind totally concentrated and the Welsh lilt in his voice suddenly quite pronounced, the words with a poetic touch: '… a slow, heavy beat, a single bird this time and quite invisible until the splash of its touchdown showed white on the black pewter surface of the Fleet. It was a swan, but it carried its neck stiff like a column, with none of the graceful curve of the ubiquitous mute. It looked like a Bewick, a juvenile, the feathers drab instead of white. And then I thought it might possibly be a whooper. It would be unusual, but by then it was past midnight and I felt anything could happen, having already had a very good night with the sighting of a goosander as well as three grebes among the coots.'

He was smiling to himself, reliving a night that was indelibly etched on his mind. 'I drank the last of my coffee and rum with the buildings of Felixstowe Ferry sharp-etched against the light of the rising moon, the dark line of the sea's horizon just visible. When the moon finally rose above the sea the patches of water close by me were full of shadow shapes, coots bobbing their white-blazed heads, mallard and pochards motionless, the swans gliding slowly; no zephyr of a breeze, everything frozen still, a light winking far away in the approaches to Harwich. I remember I started thinking about another night, when I had come out to the Fleet with Pat and his father; then suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine.'

His eyes flicked open, dark pupils with the glazed look of jet. 'It came from beyond the hill where an old farmhouse stood among some trees, a low hill that marked the limit of what had once been the great marsh that was part of the vanished port of Goseford. I waited for the sound of it to fade away towards Kirton village and the main Felixstowe-Ipswich road, but instead it gradually increased, no lights and a shadow moving on the road down from the farm.'

Through his glasses he had seen it was a van, the engine quieter as it coasted without lights down the slope to the Fleet. Duck shooters was his first thought — poachers. There were two of them in the van and they had driven straight on, finally parking against the high grass bank that shut the Fleet off from its entrance into the Deben. 'I didn't worry about them after that, presuming they were fishermen. Now that the moon was clear of cloud I could see that what I had thought was a goosander, the pinkish breast showing pale and the down-turned bill just visible, was in fact a red-breasted merganser, a much more likely bird to see close by an East Coast estuary. I watched for another half-hour, and then a breeze sprang up, blowing in little gusts off the North Sea and bitterly cold. There was a dampness in the air, too, so that a rime of frost formed on my anorak. My fingers were numb by then and I got to my feet, climbing down off the trailer, and after picking up my knapsack with the Thermos flask in it, I headed down the track towards the Deben. Several times I stopped to watch the Fleet, my breath smoking and the birds mostly hidden now among the reeds, or still shadows fast asleep. It was just after one when I reached the grass-grown bank of the river.' He paused. 'That was when I heard the sound of voices and the clink of metal on metal, the clatter of a halyard trapping.'

He was staring straight at me, his eyes blacker than ever in the glare of the wall light. 'It was a little unnerving really. I was alone, you see, and yet I couldn't help it. I had to know what it was all about. So I clambered up the bank, and as soon as my head cleared the top of it, I stopped.' He paused again, and it was almost as though he did it for effect. Then he went on, his voice very quiet: 'Tide was at the full, and it was a spring tide, the river and the inlet of the King's Fleet almost brimming over with water, otherwise they would never have got it in there. I just stood there, gaping at the thing, it was such an incredible sight — a large catamaran, black-hulled, its single aluminium mast gleaming like silver in the moonlight. It was moored stern-on to the bank with an anchor out in the middle of the Fleet, and there were men passing cases up through a hatch in the starb'd hull to others on the bank.'

His hand was gripped on the edge of the table, the stub of his cigarette burning unheeded in the ashtray.'

'The quick furtiveness of their movements, their faces covered by stocking masks, gave a weirdness to the scene, the moon bright now and everything very clear and sharp in the frost. I snuggled down in the whitened grasses. Smugglers! I wasn't sure, but clearly something was being run ashore at dead of night, and that meant contraband of some sort.' His eyes flicked up at me. 'What the hell do you do in a situation like that?' And he went on, softly as though talking to himself. 'I was alone, you see. I trained my glasses on them. There were three on deck, two ashore, and another passing the cases up. Six altogether, and one of them standing with his hand on his hip… I focused the glasses on the case being passed up over the stern, searched the growing pile on the bank. That's when I began to be really scared.'

He was silent for a moment, staring into space. 'It wasn't drink, you see, nor drugs. It was arms! I wasn't in any doubt. There were long cases that could only contain hand-held rocket-launchers, others that looked more like rifles, but it was the ammunition boxes — I'd seen too many of those not to recognise them instantly.'

He stopped then, stubbing out his cigarette, and in the silence I was conscious again of the ship's sounds, and of the movement, too. 'Maybe he caught the glint of my binocular lenses in the moonlight,' he went on slowly. 'Whatever it was, he was suddenly looking straight at me.

Then he said something to the others and they froze, their stockinged faces all turned towards me.' He shook his head. It was unbelievable. The coincidence of it. The two of us…' His voice faded into silence.

'You mean it was Evans?'

'Yes. Pat.' He nodded. 'And now — again. Out here. It's as though some devilish fate…' He left the sentence unfinished, and when I asked him what had happened, he shrugged. 'What you'd expect, considering the cargo they were running. They had a man in the outfield, hidden in the tall grasses by the sluice. I ran straight into him. Big fellow. Rose up right in front of me and knocked me out, cold. Next thing I knew I was lying on the wooden grating of the catamaran's steering platform with Pat bending over me.' And after a moment he said, 'Lucky for me. They'd have killed me if he hadn't been there.' He lit another cigarette, his eyes closed, his mind far away so that I had to get the rest of it out of him by question and answer.

When he had come round the catamaran was already under way. He could hear the winches clicking as the sails were hoisted and hardened in. Then the engines were cut and Evans whispered urgently to him to lie still. 'I could hear voices on the deck for'ard, Irish voices, and Pat with his mouth right against my ear telling me he'd slip me into the water as close to Woodbridge Haven buoy as possible. He told me they'd tied up to it on the way in, waiting for the tide to make over the bar. The warp hadn't been double-ended, so instead of slipping it, they had cut it.'

He stopped there, apparently lost in the memory of that night and what had happened after they'd crossed the bar.

'And that was the rope you used to lash yourself to the buoy,' I prompted.

He nodded slowly. 'He had me flung overboard up-tide of the buoy so that I pretty well drifted down on to it. They were Irish on board, not East Coasters, and they didn't understand. They wanted me dead, but not with a bullet Then he said something to the others and they froze, their stockinged faces all turned towards me.' He shook his head. 'It was unbelievable. The coincidence of it. The two of us…' His voice faded into silence.

'You mean it was Evans?'

'Yes. Pat.' He nodded. 'And now — again. Out here. It's as though some devilish fate…' He left the sentence unfinished, and when I asked him what had happened, he shrugged. 'What you'd expect, considering the cargo they were running. They had a man in the outfield, hidden in the tall grasses by the sluice. I ran straight into him. Big fellow. Rose up right in front of me and knocked me out, cold. Next thing I knew I was lying on the wooden grating of the catamaran's steering platform with Pat bending over me.' And after a moment he said, 'Lucky for me. They'd have killed me if he hadn't been there.' He lit another cigarette, his eyes closed, his mind far away so that I had to get the rest of it out of him by question and answer.

When he had come round the catamaran was already under way. He could hear the winches clicking as the sails were hoisted and hardened in. Then the engines were cut and Evans whispered urgently to him to lie still. 'I could hear voices on the deck for'ard, Irish voices, and Pat with his mouth right against my ear telling me he'd slip me into the water as close to Woodbridge Haven buoy as possible. He told me they'd tied up to it on the way in, waiting for the tide to make over the bar. The warp hadn't been double-ended, so instead of slipping it, they had cut it.'

He stopped there, apparently lost in the memory of that night and what had happened after they'd crossed the bar.

'And that was the rope you used to lash yourself to the buoy,' I prompted.

He nodded slowly. 'He had me flung overboard up-tide of the buoy so that I pretty well drifted down on to it. They were Irish on board, not East Coasters, and they didn't understand. They wanted me dead, but not with a bullet m my guts. Found drowned — ' He smiled wryly. 'Nobody can ever be accused of murder if you're picked up out of the sea with your lungs full of water.'

'But why did he do it?' I asked. The blood relationship was all very well, but the man was running arms to the IRA in England..

'There was a condition, of course.' I hardly heard the words, they were spoken so softly.

'But you couldn't possibly keep quiet about it,' I said. Anyway, he hadn't attempted to conceal the fact that he had seen them landing arms at the King's Fleet. 'Or was it just his identity you promised not to reveal?'

He nodded. 'I swore I'd never tell anyone I'd recognised him. I wouldn't have done, anyway,' he murmured. 'He knew that. But he made me swear it all the same.'

Then why have you told me?' I asked him.

He got up suddenly and began pacing back and forth again, his shoulders hunched, the new cigarette burning unheeded in his hand. When I repeated the question, he said, 'I'm not sure really.' He stopped just behind my chair. To show you the sort of man Pat is. That's one reason. A warning. And at the same time…' He went over to his desk and sat down, pulling the message slip out of his pocket and going through it again. 'God in heaven!' he murmured. 'Why doesn't he get the hell out? Now, while nobody knows he's involved.'

And then he turned to me. 'He's not all bad, you see. And to end up in prison. A life sentence. He's not the sort of man who could bear imprisonment. Freedom is everything to him. That's why he deserted from the Navy, why he couldn't stand any ordinary sort of job. It's against his nature, you understand.' He was pleading with me, trying to persuade me to keep quiet about where I had found that Russian gun. I remembered Soo's words then, wondering what exactly the relationship had been between this man, who was now the Captain of a Royal Navy frigate, and his half-brother, who was a gun-runner, what they had felt for each other when they were both youngsters at Gangesand Pat Evans had got.him down from the top of that mast.

He looked up at me suddenly. 'How old's that catamaran you sailed to Malta?'

'It was built six years ago,' I said.

He nodded perfunctorily as though it was what he had expected. 'The hulls are painted white now, but underneath — any sign of black paint?'

'You'd have to ask Carp,' I told him. But neither of us were in any doubt it was the same boat.

He didn't say anything after that, sitting hunched at the desk the way he had been when I had come down from the bridge to have a drink with him, his mind closed to everything else but the signals lying there under his hands.

The loudspeaker burst into life, a muffled announcement about the deadline for posting letters home. He listened to it briefly, then returned to the papers.

'About tomorrow?' I reminded him.

He looked up, frowning. 'I'll think about it. Meanwhile, if you've finished your drink…' He returned to the papers, his withdrawn manner making it clear the period of intimacy was over. 'See you in the morning.' But then, as I was going out, he stopped me. 'Ever done any board-sailing?' And when I told him I had run sailboard courses when I first came to Menorca, he nodded. 'That might help.' And he added, 'I'll think about it. Let you know in the morning.'

I went up to the bridge then, standing inconspicuously by the radar, watching the knife-like bows rise and fall beyond the twin barrels of the 4.5-inch guns, the white glimmer of the bow wave either side, my body adapting to the pitch and roll as we drove north-westwards through breaking seas. The wind had backed into the north and was blowing about force five. Standing in the dark like that, conscious of the engines vibrating under my feet, the sound of them overlaid by the noise of the sea, and the watch on duty still like shadows all about me, there was an extraordinary sense of isolation, of time standing still. I was thinking of Thunderflashand the voyage to Malta, all the other occasions when I had been alone at the helm, just the sea and my thoughts for company. But now it was different. Now I had the feeling I had reached some sort of watershed.

Tomorrow! And my life slipping through my mind. Nothing achieved, never anything solid, all I had built in Menorca breaking in my hands, Soo, the business, everything, and now that bloody catamaran… 'Care for some coffee, sir? Or there's kai if you prefer it.' One of the leading seamen was standing at my elbow with a tin tray full of mugs. I chose the chocolate and took it over to the chart table, where the Navigating Officer was now checking our position against the plot. 'Do you know where we'll be anchoring?' I asked him as he completed the log entry.

For answer he pulled open the topmost drawer and extracted the chart that gave plans of Marion and Fornells harbours, as well as two in Ibiza. 'About there, we reckon.' He indicated the Mahon plan, where he had pencilled a cross just south of Gala Llonga right opposite Villa Carlos. 'ETA is now 09.30 approx.' He looked at me curiously. 'You staying on board or is the Captain arranging to put you ashore?'

'I'm not certain,' I said.

He nodded, smiling at me. He understood the problem. It might interest you to know he's just rung me to say he wants one sailboard with wet suit and goggles ready on the flight deck by 09.00. I'm in charge of sailing, you see.' And he added, 'Sorry about the board, but it's the best we can do. No dinghies, I'm afraid.'

It was probably nervous exhaustion that finally got me off to sleep that night for I was dead to the world when Petty Officer Jarvis shook me into consciousness. He was earlier than usual. 'Lieutenant Craig would like you to select whichever one fits best.' He dumped three wet suits on the foot of the bunk. 'They're the only sizes we have on board.' And as he went out, he asked me to leave the two I didn't want and any borrowed clothing on the rack above my bunk.

By then the bo's'n's mate was rousing the ship, and shortly afterwards Gareth's voice announced: 'This, is the Captain. Just to bring you up to date. We are now approaching Port Mahon, the main harbour and capital of Menorca, one of the Spanish Balearic islands. For obvious reasons we shall not be tying up alongside. Instead, I propose to anchor well clear of the town in the approaches opposite Villa Carlos. In the circumstances, I do not see any possibility of shore leave. I will let you know how long this courtesy visit is to last as soon as I can. That is all.'His cabin was empty by the time I arrived for breakfast. 'Captain's on the bridge,' Petty Officer Jarvis told me. 'And there's no choice this morning.' He placed a heaped plateful of bacon, sausages, eggs and fried bread in front of me. 'He thought you might appreciate it. Later in the day, that is.'

I was still working through it when Gareth appeared. 'We shall be abreast of St Carlos Point and La Mola in approximately fifteen minutes. Things will begin to hot up then. As soon as you've finished, I'd be glad if you'd return to your cabin and wait there until Petty Officer Jarvis comes to take you down to the quarterdeck. Chief Petty Officer Clark will meet you there. He will have…' The Sinbad loudspeaker interrupted him, a voice from the bridge reporting that revs were now being reduced. 'Also, there's a small vessel lying off Lazareto. Spanish Navy by the look of her, sir. Could be coastal patrol, or one of those small minesweepers, can't tell yet.'

Gareth reached for the mike. 'Very good, Simon. I'll be up.' He turned to me again. 'That could complicate matters. I didn't expect an escort.'

'You've decided have you — to get me off the ship by sailboard?'

'Yes, didn't Peter Craig warn you last night?'

'All he told me was that you'd ordered him to have a board ready on the flight deck by 09.00. I didn't know you'd made up your mind till your steward brought me a choice of wet suits with my tea this morning.' I hesitated, but this looked like my last chance to question him. 'Has Wade been in touch with you?' I asked him.

'Commander Wade?'

I nodded, watching him closely as he said he couldn't discuss official contacts with me.

'Particularly Wade I suppose?'

He didn't answer. I think he had intended having a cup of coffee with me, but now he put his hat back on his head. 'I'll try and arrange it so that Medusais between you and the escort when we drop you off. The engines will be stopped for that moment and I'll get as much of the way off the ship as I can. You've got a good breeze, so with luck you'll be on the board and sailing fast enough to remain hidden from the escort vessel as we gather way again. Okay?' He smiled then and held out his hand. 'Good luck, Mike!' And as we shook hands he had the gall to add, 'If you make it to Bloody Island you'll be able to hide up with that archaeological Amazon of yours.'

There is something about a Navy ship that instils a sense of something akin to discipline even in a civilian visitor like myself. I could have turned left, gone up to the bridge and watched our approach to Mahon. Nobody would have stopped me. I could have got my things, found my way aft down to the flight deck and waited there. Instead, I did what Gareth had told me and went straight to my cabin. I wished I hadn't. Sitting on the bunk, staring at nothing except the opposite berth and the cabin fittings, rime passed slowly. There was no porthole and even if I had had something to read, the ceiling light was too dim, so that I would have had to stretch out on the bunk with the little bulkhead light on.

Shortly after 08.401 felt the engines slow, then Mault's voice called for the watch on deck to muster and put fenders out on the starb'd side. Somebody was coming aboard, presumably from the patrol boat. The engines stopped, feet pounding on the deck and orders shouted, then a slight bump as the other vessel came alongside. This was the moment they should have dropped me over the side, but nobody came and the beat of the engines started up again.

It was 08.55 when Petty Officer Jarvis knocked at the cabin door. 'Everything's ready, sir, if you'll bring the wet suit with you. And the Captain asked me to give you this.'

'What is it?' I asked as he handed me a nasty-looking bit of black fur in a plastic bag.

'A beard, sir. Compliments of our entertainments officer. The Captain thought it might help if somebody had their glasses on you.'

There was a CPO waiting for us on the flight deck. The sailboard was propped against the hangar doors, mast and sail rigged, and a thin line attached to the bows was coiled ready. To starb'd the cliffs of La Mola and the brown of the military casements came into view. 'We'll be approaching the narrows at the southern end of Lazareto Island in a few minutes,' the CPO said. 'Lieutenant Craig estimates the distance from the buoys marking the narrows to the spot where we'll be anchoring as roughly nine cables. He'll stop engines when we come abreast of the little island immediately beyond Lazareto. That will be the signal for you to go.'

I stripped off my clothes and he helped me into the wet suit, zipping me up and slipping a bum-bolster round my buttocks. ''Fraid the harness isn't exactly a speed seat You'll have to adjust it as you go. And the board's just an ordinary production job for funboard sailing, so if you want air, you won't find it.' Looking at it, I could see it was no jump board, more a beginner's board, which suited me in the circumstances. 'Got any goggles?' I asked.

He reached into his pocket and produced a narrow, almost slit-eyed pair with black surround. I put them on and adjusted them to fit my head. 'Don't forget the beard, sir.' He was grinning. 'You look like you could play Mephistopheles in that. Nobody could possibly recognise you.'

By then the conical buoy with its flashing light marking the channel on the starb'd side was already bobbing in our wash, the sharp southern point of Lazareto, Punta de San Felipet, appearing at the same instant. The engines were slowing now, the speed dropping off. 'How long do you reckon?' I asked the CPO.

'Seven, eight minutes.'

The beard was close-fitting and warm, the sea goggles on the tight side. They wrapped up my clothes and taped them into a plastic bag, which they tied firmly to the base of the sailboard's mast in such a way that it did not restrict its pintle fitting. Petty Officer Jarvis excused himself. He had to attend to the needs of the Captain and his visitor, who was the Spanish Navy's Jefe,Capitan Perez. The long brown line of Lazareto went slowly by. Peering out to port, I could see the buildings of Villa Carlos coming closer. Soon now, and I was wondering whether Petra would be back from burying her father, whether she would be on the island, and how the hell I was going to live with the police watching for me and no money. All I had in the pocket of my trousers, now screwed up in a plastic ball, was 5 in traveller's cheques which I couldn't cash because it meant going to a bank or a hotel.

Cala Pedrera. Punta de Medio. I could see Punta de Gala Fonts coming up, and beyond the point, the Villa Carlos promenade with its hotels and restaurants and the Cafayas light. 'Stand by, sir.' The engines were slowing, the sound of water slipping past the plates dying away. I caught a glimpse to starb'd of the Plana de Mahon light. 'Ready?' The CPO took one end of the sailboard, I took the other.

A few steps, a heave, and it was overboard, the slim board surfing alongside as he held it by the line. 'Away you go, sir, and whatever you do, hang on to the beard. Entertainments want it back.' He was grinning as he clapped me on the shoulder. Not quite a shove, but it reminded me of the one occasion I had parachuted under instruction. I jumped, my head in my arms, my knees up in a foetal position. Wham! I hit the water, the ship still moving, its displacement dragging me under. And then I was up, the grey stern moving past, the board within yards, anchored by the sail which was lying flat on the surface.

It was over two years since I had been on a sailboard. The technique doesn't leave one, but, like skiing, the muscles lose their sharpness. I flipped on to it all right, but instead of getting myself and the sail up in virtually the same movement, it was all a bit of a scramble. The wind was funnelling down the harbour, a good breeze that had me away on the starb'd tack and going fast before I was visible to the escort vessel, which was on the far side of Medusaand lying a little ahead of her, one of the old minesweepers by the look of it.

There was a moment, of course, when I felt naked and unsure of myself, but as my arms and knees began to respond to the drive of the sail, confidence returned, and after I had snapped the harness on I began to enjoy myself, steering close to the wind, my weight a little further aft and the speed increasing, my exhilaration, too. I found I went better if I railed it down to leeward. Gradually, as I became more relaxed and let the harness take some of the strain off my arms, I was able to glance over my shoulder at the pale grey shape of the frigate with its bristling antennae. I was paralleling her course and going faster, so that I was soon abreast of her for'ard guns. There was a little group of men gathered on the fo'c's'le ready for anchoring and the four international code flags flying from the yardarm. Ahead of me, and beyond Villa Carlos, I could now see Bloody Island, with the old hospital buildings looking even more like a stranded steamer.

I swung round, passing the sail across as I went through the wind on to the other tack. I was heading directly towards the patrol boat now and there were other boats about — a launch, two motor cruisers and a sailing yacht, several rowing boats and a tug moving across to Gala Figuera to perform its regular job of taking the small supply tanker in tow. Without thinking I put my hand to my chin. I knew the beard was still there. I could feel it. But I still had to touch it, to. be sure nobody could recognise me. By then I had worked the board up to about twelve knots and it was really skimming across the flat surface of the water. The tug hooted, and as though that were a signal, Medusa'sanchor splashed down, the clatter of the chain running out echoing back from the rocky shore, a cloud of seabirds rising from the small boat gut in the middle of Villa Carlos.

I turned again, driving the board hard on the wind through the gap between Bloody Island and the shore, heading straight for the north side of Cala Figuera until I could see the quay I'd built and the chandlery and my home tucked tight in against the cliffs. There were two boats moored stern-to by the quay, figures moving about their decks and the chandlery door wide open. So the business was still operating. I passed within two hundred metres of it. No sign of Soo, but the office balcony window was open. I was then heading straight for the Club Maritime, and seeing a big inflatable coming out from the huddle of yachts moored at the pontoon, I swung away towards the other shore.

If I hadn't been distracted by a small freighter coming out of Mahon itself, I would have recognised that inflatable sooner. Or would I? The fact was that I was thoroughly enjoying myself now, the water and the sailboard having temporarily divorced me from reality, so that perhaps I had no desire to recognise it, subconsciously aware that reality and all the problems of the future were at the helm. I ploughed my way into the freighter's wake, swinging down-wind and surfing in the turbulence. And then, when I was almost back at Bloody Island and could see the inflatable heading straight for it, I knew, and in the instant I couldn't resist the joke of heading straight for it, just to see what she'd do, a bearded stranger sailboarding alongside.

It was Petra all right. She smiled and waved, her features half-hidden by that ridiculous sombrero she sometimes wore. She held up the tail end of a rope, offering me a tow, and I felt a pang of jealousy, seeing her suddenly as a girl on her own making overtures to an unattached male. Or did she guess who it was? I swept round and chased her all the way to Bloody Island, running the sailboard in right behind her and flopping into the water alongside the inflatable. 'I thought we might have dinner together,' I suggested.

She was out on the rock that did service as a quay, leaning down, her shirt gaping. Her eyes lit up. 'Where?' She was smiling that big-mouthed smile of hers, the lips open so that her strong features looked all teeth.

'Here,' I said. 'On the island. I'm told you have a tent..'

That beard of yours.' She was squatting down on her hunkers, her eyes very wide and bright in her tanned face. 'It's crooked.' She began to giggle uncontrollably.

Reality closed in on me before I had even hauled the sailboard out of the water, words pouring out of her, a rush of information as she moored the inflatable and began unloading her stores. There had been several quite large political demonstrations ahead of next week's election and during the night a bomb had gone off in the little square in the centre of Villa Carlos. Two soldiers on sentry duty outside the military HQ and one of the Guardiahad been injured, and it had affected the telephone exchange, all lines between Villa Carlos and St Felip being cut. 'Two-thirty in the morning. It woke me up. I thought one of the big guns on La Mola had gone off. And now I've just heard there was another bomb went off in that big new hotel at Santa Galdana and fires started at several of the most congested urbanizations — St Tomas in particular and St Jaime. None of your properties are involved. At least, Lennie doesn't think so.' She asked me what I had been up to. 'You've been in Malta, I gather. Were you mixed up in that disturbance? I was picking up newsflashes about it as I waited at Gatwick for my plane.'

I told her a bit of what had happened as I helped her hump her shopping up to the camp, which was in the lee of one of the hospital's standing walls, close by the old burial ground and the dig. There was just the one big tent. Now that the hypostile was fully excavated she was using that as an office-cum-storeroom, the big stone roofing slabs covered with vegetation providing protection from sun as well as wind and rain.

Her father was dead and she had only been back a few days, having stayed on after the funeral to help her mother move up to her sister's in Nottingham. I've traded in my car, by the way. The little CV2, had just about had it and that old rogue Florez offered me a Beetle — very cheap!' I asked her if she had had time to see Soo since she had arrived back in Mahon and she said she had been talking to her only a few hours before.

'How is she?' I asked.

'Oh, she's fine, and very full of what her Lieutenant Commander has been up to, and now that he's right here..' She was grinning at me and I told her not to be bitchy, but she only laughed. 'You can't blame her when every time she looks out of the window now she can see his ship anchored there.' And then she switched to her work. 'You remember the drawing on the cave roof I took you to see?'

'The night of the Red Cross barbecue?' I stared at her angrily. 'I'm hardly likely to forget it.'

She ignored that, telling me how she had checked on it while she was in England. 'They don't think it can be anything important, probably done with a burnt stick in roughly the same period as the megalithic remains. Certainly no older, which is a pity because Lennie knows of some more drawings — drawings that are fully exposed, human figures as well as animals — in a passageway leading back into the headland above that big underwater cave Bill Tanner told me about at Arenal d'en Castell.'

By then she had disposed of the stores she had brought out and, still talking, she began to help me off with my wet suit. I asked her for more details about the night's bombings, whether she had picked up any gossip about the reaction of the authorities, but she had no official information, only what she had heard from Lennie when she had met him coming out of the chandlery. 'He said it's been panic stations since the early hours with the policiaand the Guardiarushing around all the major foreign developments.' The violence had been directed exclusively against foreign-owned property. 'Except for the Villa Carlos bomb. It was in a parked car and they think it may have gone off by accident. There's talk, too, of disturbances in Alayor and Ciudadela, but nothing serious — just demonstrations, no bombs.'

'Well, that's something,' I murmured and asked her for the loan of a towel as she pulled the wet suit clear of my feet. But instead of handing it to me she insisted on towelling me down with the inevitable result that we finished up in each other's arms arguing hilariously as to how we should proceed, her camp bed being designed strictly for one person and the floor being bare earth and rock. We had just settled for a sleeping bag opened out and spread on the floor when we were interrupted by the sound of an outboard coming steadily nearer. 'Oh hell! I forgot.' Petra "pulled herself away from me and glanced at her watch, which by then was the only thing she had on. 'Lennie! I told him to be here by ten.'

'Why?' I was annoyed and frustrated, suddenly sus picious. 'Lennie should be painting a villa over by Gala en Porter.'

'Well, he's not painting it today,' she said, struggling into her trousers. 'Or any other day.' God! She was a big, powerful girl. I watched her button up her shirt, no bra and her breasts big and round as melons, and suddenly a picture flashed into my mind of her wrestling with Lennie on that narrow bed of hers, the morning sun heating the canvas of the tent above them. And then she said, 'Lennie's old-fashioned, you know. Shot his mouth off to Soo about her playing around with a Navy officer when her husband was in trouble. Said it wasn't fair on you and she shouldn't have had Gareth up to the house when you were busy with that catamaran and under suspicion of being implicated in a political murder. 'For e her off quite a strip. She didn't like it, so she fired him.' The engine note died. 'I told him he could come and work for me. This whole complex is opening out. Just before Daddy had that crash I found what I thought was the base of a fallen taula.'

She slipped her big feet into a pair of flip-flops, tied her scarf round her neck, and standing there, looking down at me, she said with that endearing giggle of hers, 'It's a foine upstanding figure of a man you are, Mike, lying there on the floor of my tent without a stitch on. But I think you'd better get dressed.' And then she was gone, and as I reached for my bundle of clothes, I heard her calling a welcome to Lennie, her voice powerful as a bullroarer.

Lennie was one of those men who seem to wear the same clothes year in, year out, who will doss down anywhere and have no interest in the ownership of anything. He had no car, not even a motor bike, and would go to endless pains to cadge a lift or avoid paying for a drink. He was one of the meanest men I had ever met, except where scuba diving was concerned. For that he treated himself to the very latest equipment, his diving boat a replica of one of those big inshore lifeboats that have an alloy hull with inflatable surround, the power of the outboard such that the sound of it was unmistakable and the boat packed with all the latest gadgets for locating objects on the seabed.

While he was fussing over the mooring of it, the battered remains of an Aussie-type hat jammed on his head and the tails of his khaki shirt flapping in the breeze, I walked over to the dig, which was on the north side of the island about fifty metres from the flashing beacon and facing across the narrows to the shore just west of Cala Llonga. The exposure of a flat stone surface about eight feet long was the only change since I had last seen the site over six weeks ago, except that it was now a riot of wild flowers, even the rock steps leading down into the hypostile half-hidden by a tangle of some blue rock creeper. The hypostile itself was an extraordinary place, a large chamber with walls of up-ended stone slabs and a stone slab roof supported by stone columns. There were rock couches, or perhaps sacrificial altars, around the walls, and the human bones that showed here and there between the roofing slabs were a grisly reminder of the wars that had filled the island's hospital. It was the result of reading a letter from a soldier to his girlfriend in England after he had had his arm amputated at the hospital that had started Petra digging on the burial site, and looking down into the stone chamber she had uncovered in the shadow of the hospital ruins, it was difficult to disassociate the two and see it as a megalithic religious complex.

I remember that moment very well, the hospital ruins dark against the sun, the entrance to the hypostile yawning open at my feet like some ancient burial vault, and my mind on what Petra had told me. The political implications of what had happened in the night were disturbing enough, particularly if the army were unable to stop a recurrence of the violence, but I was thinking of the haste with which we had left Malta. Remembering Gareth's tenseness, I wondered what information he had received that had despatched him so abruptly to Mahon. And now, I

in the sunlit morning, everything appeared so deceptively peaceful, the town white above the waterfront, the surface of the great harbour inlet barely ruffled by the breeze and the only sound the murmur of traffic moving between Villa Carlos and Mahon.

The rattle of tools made me turn. It was Lennie wheeling a barrow with an assortment of picks, spades and shovels. 'Looks like the prospect of two of us on the island with nothing better to do has gone to the lady's head.' He parked the barrow and shook my hand. 'Glad to see the Navy delivered you safe and sound. And the beard kinda suits you.' He looked me over, a gap-toothed grin lighting his craggy features. 'Stable door's wide open, mate. Better zip up before I jump to any conclusions.' He took a pick from the barrow and approached the exposed slab of pale stone, standing there waiting for me to fix my trousers. 'Petra says to work round it with care, like it was a piece of Ming porcelain. She's making some coffee for us.' He hesitated, looking across to where Medusa'ssuperstructure showed above the back of the island. 'Chris'sakes, that's an old frigate. I was in the Navy once, so whether they're Aussie or Pom, I don't much go for Navy ships, but by God I'm glad to see that one here. You heard what went on last night?'

I nodded. 'Petra told me.'

'Okay. Well, while we're trying to clear a little more of the rubble round this stone she thinks is a taula, I'll tell you what happened to me last night. It concerns you in a way since it was your boat until a few weeks back.' He cocked his head at me sideways. 'I haven't told her this, so keep it to yourself. She thinks we're going to have a look at rock drawings.' He began picking gently away at the weed growth along one side of the exposed stone as he told me how Miguel had taken him over to Arenal d'en Castell one evening to show him some plastering work he wanted done in one of the hotels. They had then driven back by way of the villa he had been building on Punta Codolar. 'Up there, you know, you look across to that cave and the villa above it where I did a bit of work on the side.'

He grinned at me, leaning on his pick, waiting I think for me to complain that he had been working for two people at the same time. 'It was a funny sort of night, no wind and black as hell with the clouds hanging right on top of us. I wouldn't have seen it except that Miguel had to turn the car and on the slope there the beam of the headlights swept across it. Your boat.' He nodded. 'The old Santa Maria.No doubt about it. I had Miguel turn back and hold the headlights right on her for a moment.'

Apparently she had been lying close in, right opposite the mouth of the cave. He couldn't see whether she was anchored or not. What he did see was that there were men on deck lowering a case into the water. He paused there and I asked him what he thought they were up to. 'Well, I tell you this, mate, they weren't fishing.'

'So what did you do?'

'Had Miguel turn the car and drive off, double quick. You see something like that, you don't hang around.'

'No.' I was thinking of Gareth Lloyd Jones and the King's Fleet. 'So what are you planning to do tonight?'

'Go and look at rock drawings.' He gave that funny grin of his and turned back to picking at the weed growth round the stone slab. 'You want to come?' And he added, 'But don't let on to Petra what I've told you. She'd be thinking of what happened that night at Gales Coves.'

The paths leading one deeper and deeper into trouble can be very tenuous. If Lennie hadn't shot his mouth off to Soo on my behalf, if Petra hadn't heard he was out of a job and asked him to help out on Bloody Island, if his arrival there hadn't coincided… But there are so many its in life, and the threads that weave the pattern of our existence seem so haphazard that we are inclined to attribute to accident what older races of men put down to fate. At that moment, on Bloody Island, I thought I couldn't be more deeply involved than I was. And yet, standing there in the sunshine, with all of Mahon and Villa Carlos spread out before me, the Golden Farm of Nelson fame red-roofed across the water on the long peninsula that ran out to the military casements and the big gun positions of La Mola, and the stone of the hospital ruins dark in shadow, I was on the threshold of something that would make my present circumstances seem totally irrelevant.

But I wasn't thinking about that. I was watching the Spanish patrol boat steaming back to the naval quay and passing through the narrows so close I could have thrown a stone on to its deck if I'd been standing by the beacon. And there was movement on Medusanow, a launch manned by bluejackets coming out from under her stern and pointing its bows to pass the other side of Bloody Island. There was an officer standing in the stern and somehow I knew it was Gareth, knew where he was going. I climbed to a vantage point at the south end of the hospital ruins and watched as the launch powered past me, cutting an arrowhead wake that pointed straight at Cala Figuera. A few minutes and it was alongside the quay we had built, Gareth clambering out and going straight across the road and in through the open door of the chandlery.

He was only there a short time. No reason for me to feel hurt, but I did, and when I returned to the dig, neither Lennie nor Petra made any reference to my absence. They were drinking coffee, and when we had finished, the three of us got to work.

All through the day we were hard at it, picking and shovelling with care and carting the rubble away. At one point we were involved in the awkward removal of a complete skeleton, and then, after only a short break for lunch, we hit what I thought at first was the island's bedrock. Petra was back by then, and as we uncovered more of it, she became very excited, her conviction growing that what she was unearthing really was a fallen taula. She had reason to be excited, for if it was a taula it would confirm the site as a megahthic religious complex. The centrepiece of such sites was always a huge stone monument of two rectangular slabs, one slotted into the top of the other in the form of a T, the upper slab like a lofty table raised sometimes as much as twelve to fourteen feet above the ground. Occasionally two slabs supported the top.

Petra's excitement was infectious and my mind gradually became concentrated on the dig. Before her father's death she had been working largely on her own. Now in one day the three of us had exposed all one side of a fallen upright, also part of the jointing of the capping slab, which unfortunately was broken into three pieces. I knew of at least eight taulas in Menorca, some of them either raised up or still standing, but this was the first I had ever seen on one of the subsidiary islands.

We went on until just after sunset, when we went back to the tent, lit the pressure lamp and had a celebratory drink. There was no doubt then about what it was we had uncovered. 'A taula here on Bloody Island — ' Her eyes were bright in the sizzling light. 'If only the professor I saw at the V and A about that cave drawing had been a little more enthusiastic, then with what I have discovered here I could have developed my theory on the growth of the Mediterranean culture to the point where I could have written a paper on it.'

CHAPTER TWO

We had a quick meal and left shortly after dark. Petra wasn't all that keen. I think she had accepted that any cave drawing she discovered on Menorca would be what she would call recent. It was Lennie who insisted on our taking a look at the water-worn passageway he had discovered by accident below the villa where he had been moonlighting. He was very determined I should see it. It was all open country, he said, and even if we were stopped the chances of my being recognised were slight. Anyway, I wanted to know what Evans had been doing with the Santa Mariamoored above that cave entrance.

Petra had a bag full of archaeological papers to justify her journey in the unlikely event that we ran into a roadblock, also she had fastened the beard more securely to my chin with some adhesive tape. Having forced myself to wear it all day, I had become quite used to it and she assured me it was a great improvement in my appearance. 'Very macho,' she whispered to me with a grin as she finally stuck it in place.

It was a clear night, no wind, and the stars very bright. We only passed two cars between the turn-off to the little fishing port of Es Grau and the crossroads where we turned right for Macaret and Punta Codolar. The warm air coming in through Petra's open window was full of the resin scent of pines and the more pungent smell of the maquis growth that blanketed much of the gravel country we were passing through.

The villa to which Lennie directed her was only a short distance from the half-completed one I had traded for Thunderflash,and as we swung down the western slope of the headland, I caught a glimpse of it, still with the scaffold up and what looked like a big removal van parked outside it, the box-like shape momentarily in silhouette against a naked light bulb shining from one of the downstair windows. I wondered if it was Evans and how he would react if Petra dropped me off there and I walked in on him. But then we were on the eastern arm of Arenal d'en Castell's little horseshoe cove and Lennie was telling her to drive on past what he called the cave villa. 'We'll park down by one of the hotels.'

The villa was in darkness, one of those architect-designed summer homes built into the rocky slope on several layers, its garden stepped in terraces. The owner was apparently — a German bank executive, and Miguel, who looked after it for him, had told Lennie he was not expected until the middle of June. We left the car at the first hotel, parked among a covey of hired Fiats, and climbed back up the hill, Petra with her bag of archaeological stuff slung over her shoulder, Lennie and I with the torches, pressure lamp, a bottle of wine and a coil of rope taken from his boat. The driveway swung off direct to the garage, which was built into the hillside at the bottom of the garden. 'We had to blast that out of solid rock.' Lennie had done the blasting. That was what he wanted me for.' He had worked at one time in one of the Kalgoorlie mines. He had been a prospector, too. 'It's limestone here, nice easy stuff. That's why there's caves and blowholes.' We climbed up the terraces and let ourselves in through the garden door, the house very dark inside and smelling faintly of paint and sea damp. 'Better not show a light.' Lennie closed the door and pocketed the key. 'Had it copied,' he said with a wink. 'You never know.' And he added, 'You two wait here while I locate the cellar door.'

The cellar itself was reached by a curving flight of half a dozen concrete steps. It had been blasted out of the solid rock, an area of about thirty square metres lined with wine racks. He swung his torch over the array of bottles that hid the naked rock of the walls. 'Got some good stuff here, certainly has. Haven't been in the cellar since he got it fully stocked.' He went over to the far corner where there was an olive-wood table and two seats made out of oak-staved barrels standing on a sheet of corrugated iron. When we had shifted the furniture and pulled the tin sheet aside, there was a jagged-edged hole dropping away into what looked like nothingness with the slop and gurgle of water faintly audible.

'Well, there it is,' he said to Petra. 'Down you go. Turn right at the bottom and you'll find the drawings on the roof about twenty yards away. If you get to the rock fall where I blasted out the blowhole to make the garage you've gone past it, okay?' He was fastening one end of the rope to the base of one of the bottle racks, then he put a couple of foot loops into it before passing the end of it down the hole. ''Bout ten feet, that's all, then you're into the blowhole.' He passed Petra one of the torches and held her while she got her foot into the first loop. She looked very strange, her body disappearing into the floor, shadows flickering on the walls and the bottles watching with a dusty glint.

We lit the pressure lamp and passed it down to her. Then we lowered ourselves into the cave-like passageway beside her. It was wider than I had expected, the walls very irregular, and quite different to the cellar, for the rock here had not been blasted, but was carved out by centuries of pressurised sea water as the waves of the tramontana crashed against the coast.

'We'll leave you for a moment,' Lennie told her.

'Why? Where are you going?'

Lennie nodded in the opposite direction. 'We'll head down the slope. I want Mike to see how the blowhole drops into the cave. Won't be long.' We left her then, moving quickly down the irregular passageway. At times we were almost crawling, then suddenly the passage would open out into an expansion chamber so that we could walk virtually upright. Here and there Lennie paused, the beam of his torch directed at the scuffed dust of the floor, and all the time the sound of the sea increasing as it slopped and gurgled in the cavern ahead. Round the first bend he paused. 'I wasn't telling Petra this. She's hooked on cave drawings and such. But this is what I came to check on.' His hand was on my arm, a tight grip as he pulled me down to take a closer look at the floor. 'A lot of stuff has been dragged along here. Heavy stuff in cases, I'd say. And here and there the imprint of a shoe. Look!' And he let go my arm, tracing a blurred imprint in the dust.

'Smuggling?' I was thinking of Gareth, all the questions he had asked over that lunch at Fornells — and that story of his about Evans in the King's Fleet. 'You say you saw the Santa Marialying off here?'

'Sure did.' Lennie straightened up. 'Come on. And be careful now. It gets steeper. Then I'll show you how it's done.'

We continued on, another expansion chamber opening up, the sound of the sea suddenly very loud. At the far end the blowhole tunnel fell right away, an almost vertical drop, the nearside of which had been heavily scored as though by a large shovel or scraper. Rigged across the hole was a lattice of small scaffolding poles bolted together to hold a heavy metal pulley. We slithered down till we could clutch the scaffolding, then, leaning out over the abyss and probing downwards with our torches, we could see the surge of the waves in the cave mouth, the water in the cavern itself rising and falling against a steep little beach of dark sand and round, water-rolled stones that gleamed wetly.

There was also something else, a heavy old anchor, brown with rust and half-buried in the beach. A heavy-duty purchase of the type used in large yachts before the switch to winches was shackled to the eye of the stock, and nylon sheets or warps ran through the pulleys and out into the sea. That's what I came here for.' Lennie's voice was a whisper as though at any moment he expected one of the smugglers to rise like a genie out of the blowhole. 'To see how they did it.'

'So what do you think they were bringing ashore?' I asked him.

'Dunno, mate. I thought it would be just ordinary household things, TV sets, electric cookers, glassware, jewellery, anything that was taxable. But after last night…'

'What are you suggesting- arms?'

'Well, it certainly ain't drugs. The Menorquins haven't gone for that so far and the villa people..' He stopped abruptly as Petra slithered down to join us, the pressure lamp casting her shadow behind her, lighting up the latticework of steel tubing on which we leaned.

She was panting, her eyes wide and a little wild. 'Some silly bugger's been playing around with candles. They're not cave drawings at all.' She gulped for air. 'But it's not that. I thought I heard voices, the sound of an engine.'

'Where?' Lennie asked.

'Beyond the garage.' She took a deep breath, pulling herself together. 'There's no cave-in there, no rock fall. It's all been cleared away.'

'You mean you went inside the garage?'

'No.' She shook her head, the dust stirring in her shoulder-length hair. 'No, it was boarded up. A jagged hole stopped up with what looked like fresh matchboarding.'

Lennie didn't wait to hear any more. He pushed past her and started back up the slope, clawing his way up on all fours. I followed, dragging Petra after me. We were all together in a bunch as we ducked past the rope we had rigged from the cellar and came to the boarded-up hole into the garage. 'Look at it!' Petra held the pressure lamp up and her voice was an angry whisper as she rubbed at the blurred black outline of some four-legged animals on the roof. 'Candle-black.' She showed me the palm of her hand. It looked as though she had been handling a badly printed newspaper, and the head of the beast was smudged. 'The sort of thing a schoolboy would do, and I was fool enough to hope…'

Lennie's hand clamped suddenly over her mouth. 'Listen!' He opened the valve of the pressure lamp, his torch switched off, the hiss of the gas mantle dying away and in the darkness the scrape of a door sounding muffled and a voice, very faint from beyond the boarding, instructing somebody to back right up to the door. An engine revved, more directions, then a babble of whispering voices barely audible as the engine noise died away and was suddenly cut. A tailboard slammed and somebody said, 'Quiet! Keep everything quiet.' There was no more talking after that, only the sound of heavy boxes or crates being loaded.

The cellar/ Lennie breathed. 'Follow me and keep hold.'

We felt our way back down the blowhole till we came to the rope again. Lennie went first, then Petra. My foot was in the first loop, ready to follow her, when the crash of breaking wood sounded hollow along the passageway. I froze, thinking for a moment they had heard us and were breaking through from the garage. Somebody swore, a muffled voice — 'That was my fucking foot, you bastard.' An answering voice, then the two of them arguing until somebody shouted at them to cool it. By then I was on to the second loop and reaching up to clutch hold of Lennie's hand. As soon as I was out of the hole he unhitched the end of the rope, coiling it and slinging it over his shoulder, then he swung the torch to show us the steps leading up to the cellar door. 'Just follow me.' Black darkness as he switched off the torch again and we felt our way up to the room above.

Back at the garden door we waited, listening. No sound now, only the door squeaking as he pulled it gently open. The garden was in three terraces, dropping away steeply to the garage driveway. Two cars were parked there, and where the garage itself disappeared into the hillside, the protruding section was merged with the body of a truck that looked like the one we had seen parked outside the Punta Codolar villa. A figure appeared out of the garage, heading for the nearest car, then turning towards us and slowing. Finally, beside the thin pencil point of a cypress, he stood quite still, feet apart, head thrown back, staring straight at us.

Could he see us in the starlight? Could he see that the door we were peering out of was half-open? We stood there, the three of us, absolutely still, waiting. The man bent his head, both hands to his front, as though holding a weapon. Then he turned and went back to the garage. 'Pissing.' Lennie breathed a sigh of relief, and Petra giggled under her breath as he added, 'It was his cock, not a gun. He was just relieving himself.' He closed the door and led us up through the villa's three levels, up into a large room that faced both ways.

From a circular porthole window we looked out on to the hilltop where barely twenty metres of shrubland separated us from the road. Here a low stone wall marked the limit of the property and a brick arch framed an elaborate wrought-iron gate. A gravel path flanked by stone urns planted with cacti led to the heavy cedarwood door beside us. Lennie eased the catch and pushed it gently open, leaning his head out through the gap. The stars were very bright. 'Looks clear enough.' His scrawny neck, the lined, leathery features, the way he cocked his eyes over the landscape — I had the sudden impression of a turkey checking that nobody was going to grab him for their Christmas dinner. My mind also registered a picture of Gareth being grabbed as he ran from the King's Fleet towards Felixstowe Ferry.

'Shut the door,' I hissed.

He turned, eyeing me curiously. 'Wot's up? Nobody there.'

'If it's Evans loading that truck, he'll have somebody hidden up this side of the villa, just in case.'

'Okay. So we wait.'

He was just shutting the window when we saw lights approaching, and heard the sound of an engine. It was a car, moving fast, and as it passed the villa's gate Lennie sucked in his breath. 'Jesus Christ!' he muttered and half leant out of the window as though to call to the driver. 'Why the hell does he come out here now?'

'Who?' I had only caught a glimpse of the car, a battered estate. I hadn't seen who was driving it.

'Miguel,' he said, still peering out of the window as the car slowed on the dip and turned into the villa's driveway. 'The poor stupid bloody bastard — to come here now, just when they're loading up.' The car's lights flickered through the shrubbery, then they were gone, snuffed out by the comer of the building. The engine note died abruptly.

We listened, but there was no sound — no shouts, no outcry or altercation. Just nothing.

We felt our way across to the other side of the room, standing at the window there, looking down across the flat-topped roofs of the villa's lower levels to the truck, the whole shadowy shape of it now visible as a sort of elongated extension of the garage. And beyond it, on the sweep of the drive, as well as the two cars they had come in, there was the estate car standing black and seemingly empty.

A hand gripped mine, Petra's voice in my ear whispering, 'What is it?' Her fingers tightened convulsively, but it wasn't fear. It was excitement. Her breath was warm on my cheek, her hair touched my ear. 'Is it to do with what happened last night?'

I couldn't answer that. I didn't know. In any case, I was wondering about Miguel. Was he one of them? Was that why he was here? Or had he walked right into it, unarmed and unprepared?

'It's arms, isn't it? It's an arms cache.' And when I still didn't say anything, she whispered urgently, 'If it's arms, then we have to notify somebody, warn the authorities.'

'Not yet — when they've gone..' And I added, 'Maybe we can follow them.'

She had moved her head slightly so that it was outlined against the window. I saw the shape of it nod against the stars, her hand still in mine, still the grip of excitement, so that I was reminded that between school and college she had done a VSO stint in the Andes, trekking alone on the borders of Chile, Peru and Bolivia looking for old Inca remains. I don't think she knew what fear was, otherwise she would never have been able to go it alone at such high altitude with only the Quechua Indians for company. 'What's the time?'

Lennie glanced at the luminous dial of his diving watch. Twenty after midnight.'

'Do you think it's arms?' she asked him.

'Yes, I do.'

Then if they're going to use them tonight they'll have to get a move on.'

At that moment, as though the hoarse whisper of her voice had carried to the garage below, the dark shadow of a man came hurrying up through the garden, leaping the steps between the terraces and angling away to the right. Abreast of the upper part of the villa he put his hand to his mouth and gave a piercing whistle on two notes like the call of a bird. A figure rose out of a dark mass of shrubbery beside the road some two hundred yards away, glanced quickly round, then hurried to join the man below. The two of them went back down the terraces to the garage where half a dozen men were now heading for the parked cars. The slam of a door came to us faintly, then the truck's engine started up. The men got into the cars, all three of them, including Miguel's estate, and the little convoy moved off, slowly and without lights, then swung left at the driveway end and from the front of the villa we watched them pass along the road, dark shapes in silhouette against the stars heading for Punta Codolar.

'What do we do now — get the car and follow them?'

'Depends how good you are at driving without lights/ I told her.

She laughed. 'Won't be the first time.'

Lennie had the door open and we were out into the night, slamming it behind us and running to the road. It was all downhill to where Petra had parked the Beetle and took us barely two minutes. 'Where now?' she asked breathlessly as she started the engine. I hesitated. There was only one road out until the crossroads junction with the main Mahon-Fornells road, unless they were heading for the ports of either Macaret or Addaia. 'Back up the hill,' I said. 'It's just possible they'll stop at the Punta Codolar villa.' If Evans was involved and they were operating to an exact timetable, then I thought they might be using it as a rendezvous.

She drove fast, a lot faster than I would have cared to drive in that dim light, up past the villa where they had been loading the truck, over the shoulder of the cove's sheltering arm and out on to the bleak empty heathland beyond. There was more light here, cliffs all round us dropping to the sea which reflected the starlight, and against that milky glimmer the Punta Codolar villa stood out solitary and square like a concrete pillbox, and beside it, also outlined against the stars, was the black rectangular shape of the truck.

Petra slammed on the brakes and we rolled to a stop. 'Where now?'

We had just passed a service road under construction and some two hundred yards away to the right there was a road roller hull-down in the heathland. I told her to back up and park beside it. Close against the road roller, our front wheels hard into the rubble of an open trench where an electricity cable was being laid, the Beetle was almost indistinguishable from the heavy mass of the roller's iron.

For almost the first time since I'd known her Petra's obsession with the island's megalithic past was overlaid by more immediate concerns as we speculated about what they planned to do and when, the villa hull-down and indistinct on the heathland's horizon. I asked her whether she had any glasses in the car. She reached over to the back seat, grabbed the bag that contained her archaeological gear, and after rummaging around in it, produced a pair of those very small, high-magnification binoculars. I rolled the window down and with some difficulty managed to focus them on the villa. The field of vision was very small. 'I was only once involved in a political upheaval.' Petra's voice was low and intense as though she were afraid of being overheard. 'I was in the Cordillera Real just north of La Paz and a ragged bunch of them passed through my camp. Defeated revolutionaries are very unpredictable. South American revolutionaries, anyway, and I had found an Inca tamba that nobody had discovered before. All very exciting, worked stone blocks jigsawed together so that they wouldn't be toppled by earthquakes, and these exhausted men in fear of their lives flopping down in the undergrowth I'd cleared. There was a thick cloud mist, everything very damp and cold. They lit a fire, huddling round it.', It was strange to be watching the villa through glasses. Last time I had seen it I had been breaking in by the garage window and there had been nobody there. Now it was just as dark, but the cars and the truck were clear proof that there were men inside it. They must be sitting there, waiting.

'What is it? Can you see something?'

I shook my head. All the glasses showed me was the Moorish front with its arched colonnade, the low wall that separated it from the road and the blockhouse shape of it against the night sky with the cars tucked in against the garage and the truck left out in the road.

'Go on, Petra.' Lennie leaned forward, his head between us. 'What happened? Did they mess you about?'

'If you mean what I think you mean, the answer is no, they were too bloody tired. But they did something worse They ate up everything I had, all my stores, then went off with my tent, even my sleeping bag. I think they'd have had the clothes off my back if I'd been a man, they were that ragged and desperate. Only their guns looked in good condition.'

I thought I saw the glow of a cigarette. It was there for a second, then Lennie knocked against me and I lost it. It had come from the last arch of the villa's colonnaded front, and focusing on it, I thought I could just make out the darker outline of a figure standing there. I heard Petra say something about trekking more than twenty miles through snow and ice and a blazing midday sun before she managed to hitch a ride with some geologists into La Paz.

'And what happened to the men who pillaged your camp?' Lennie asked.

'Oh, the Army caught up with them in the end. About a dozen of them were gunned down from a helicopter, the rest were tracked down, tortured and hanged. The usual thing. There's no mercy in the Andes.'

'I never experienced anything like that,' Lennie said quietly. 'And I've been around. But nothing like that.' And he added, leaning his head further forward between us, 'You think there's going to be a revolution here?'

She didn't tell him not to be ridiculous. She didn't comment. She just sat there, not saying a word, and at that moment a bright star shot up from the sea to our right, blazing a vertical trail that burst into a blob of white so bright that even at that distance it lit up our faces. 'Bloody hell!' Lennie pushed his nose almost against the windscreen. 'What is it?'

'Pyrotechnic.' The pop of its burst came to us faintly as I jumped out of the car, steadying my elbow on the top of it and searching with the glasses for the ship that had fired it. A second stream of sparks flew up, a second burst, but this time green. I still couldn't pick out the shape of the vessel, so it was presumably close in below the line of the cliffs.

'That a distress signal?' Petra asked, but I think she knew it wasn't, because her head was turned towards the villa. Through the glasses I saw shadows moving, followed almost immediately by the sound of a car engine starting up. Doors slammed, the cars emerging on to the road. Then the truck's diesel roared into life and it began to move, one car in front, the other behind. The time was 01.32. Miguel's estate stayed parked against the wall.

'What now?' Petra had already started the engine.

'Go back,' I told her. 'Back down towards Arenal, then take the main development road and we'll wait for them lust short of where it joins the Alayor highway.' Either they were meeting up with a ship at Macaret or else somewhere further up the long inlet that finished at the new quay just beyond Addaia.

'I don't get it, mate,' Lennie muttered in my ear as Petra felt her way along the dark strip of the road without lights. What do they want with a ship when their truck's already loaded? They can't be picking up more.' But I was thinking about Wade then, that first visit of Gareth's to Menorca, the questions he had asked me over that lunch. And on board Medusa,the suddenness with which we had left Malta, the way he had looked that evening when I went back down to his cabin from the bridge, his sudden decision to tell me about Evans.

We reached the crossroads and Petra pulled in to the verge. We sat there for perhaps five minutes, but there was no sound and nothing passed. I told her to drive straight across and head for the high point above the entrance to the Addaia inlet. From there we would have a clear view of Macaret itself and the seaward entrance to the harbour. We would also be able to look southwards down the length of the inlet to the two small islands that protected the final anchorage.

When we got there we were just in time to catch a glimpse of a small vessel heading down the pale ribbon of the inlet. 'Fishing boat by the look of it/ Lennie muttered.

Out of the car again, I was able to fix the glasses on it. No doubt about it. The boat was the Santa Maria.I jumped back into the passenger seat and told Petra to turn the car, go back to the main road, then take the cut-off down the steep little hill to Port d'Addaia itself. 'But go carefully,' I warned her as she swung the Beetle round. 'They may have dropped somebody off to keep watch. And stop near the top so that we can check if they're there or not.'

When we reached Addaia she tucked herself into a little parking bay where we had a clear view of the quay across pantile roofs and the steep overgrown slope of the hillside, and it wasn't just the truck from Codolar that was waiting there. I counted no less than five trucks, all parked in line along the concrete edge of the quay and facing towards us. There were more than a dozen cars, too, and a lot of men, most of them gathered round the back of the last truck, where crates were being dumped on the quay, prised open and the weapons they contained handed out.

'Christ! See that, mate. They got rocket-launchers. The hand-held type. What do the bastards want with them?' Lennie had followed me out of the car and across the road. From there we had a clear view of the anchorage where I had joined Carp for the voyage to Malta. And there, as though I were seeing it all again, like on video but from a different angle, was the Santa Mariamotoring in through the narrows that separated the humpbacked outline of the second island from the muddy foreshore and the huddle of fishermen's dwellings. The boat was headed straight for the quay, and as she slowed and swung her stern to lie alongside, I saw she had a stem light showing.

That was when we heard the rumble of engines coming from seaward, and a moment later we saw the dim shape of a flat box of a vessel. There were two of them, old LCTs dating from the days before they called them logistic landing craft. I recognised them immediately, one of them having dropped me off at Loch Boisdale on its way to St Kilda some years back. The Santa Mariahad clearly been leading them in. Now she was alongside and a man had jumped ashore. I watched him through the glasses as the men on the quay gathered round him. Even in that dim light I was certain it was Evans. He was head and shoulders taller than most of them, standing there, hands on hips, issuing orders. He wore a kepi-like forage cap and camouflage jacket and trousers, and the way he stood, the arrogance and the air of command, I was suddenly reminded of early pictures of Castro.

A splash, and the first of the logistic vessels had dropped its stern anchor, the big drum winch on the afterdeck reeling out the hawser as the ship nosed into the quay. The bow doors opened, then with a clank and a crash, the ramp dropped on to the quay. By then the second vessel was coming in alongside it and a moment later the vehicles inside the two slab-sided hulls, their engines already running, began to trundle out. They were half-tracks, each of them mounting what looked like a heavy Bofors gun, and as they came off the ramps they were joined by small detachments of the men on shore.

Behind the half-tracks came men, dozens of them, dressed in some drab uniform and loaded down with equipment, each of them pausing for a moment as they stepped on to the terra firma of the quay's concrete edge. It was as though they needed to find their feet. Some, as they stood there, arched their backs and stretched. A babble of human voices reached up to us. It was the natural reaction of men who had been cooped up in a confined space for some considerable time and for a moment the scene below us was one of disorder, almost chaos. Then somebody shouted. I think it was Evans, and the men standing around the parked trucks began splitting up and moving to join the new arrivals, the melee gradually.sorting itself out as they formed up into units and marched off to embark in the waiting trucks or climb on to the backs of the half-tracks.

It was less than ten minutes from the time the LCTs had put their ramps down to the moment when the local vehicles were all loaded and the whole convoy beginning to move off, and by then I was convinced that what we were witnessing was the start of an armed usurpation of the political power in the island. Who the men were that had landed from the two LCTs, where they had come from — that was of no importance for the moment. What was important was to alert somebody in Mahon to the danger. I saw it all in a mental flash, dissident elements, gathered from the various towns, meeting here to be given arms and then to be distributed amongst the newly arrived mercenaries, or whatever they were, to guide them to objectives that had already been decided on.

It seemed ridiculous on 'the face of it. There couldn't be more than a hundred and fifty to two hundred men down there on the quay and the military garrison of the island I knew to be somewhere around 15,000. But if what Petra had told me was correct, the effect of the previous night's violence had been a redeployment of the available forces, so that the towns, and particularly the uzbanizacionsinhabited by foreign visitors, were fully protected. As a result, the men below me had not only the advantage of surprise — essential in an operation of this sort — but also the certainty that the island's defences were thinly spread and the targets they would be aiming at that much more vulnerable. In such circumstances anything was possible.

All this passed through my mind in a flash as the vehicles moved out on to the steep road up from the port and Lennie and I flung ourselves back across the road and into the car. 'Mahon,' I told Petra. 'Lights on and drive like hell.'

She didn't hesitate. She had seen the ships, the mustering men. She swung out on to the Alayor road, her foot hard down and the elderly Beetle shaking and swaying at the rear. 'Who are they?' She was taking a bend fast, pines rushing at us. 'What are you going to do?' And when I said I had to get to the frigate, she started to argue, asking why I didn't stop off somewhere and phone the nearest Guardia Civilpost or Military Headquarters in Mahon.

'For God's sake! Who would believe me?' I started to remind her then that I was suspected of complicity in the Martinez murder. 'Anyway,' I added, 'they'll almost certainly have cut the telephone wires.'

'Alayor then. Alayor is nearer than Mahon.'

'No, Mahon,' I told her. It was Gareth I needed. He had all the means of communication there on board, the whole world at call. And then I was briefing her what to tell Soo after she had dropped us off at the Maritime pontoon, who to telephone, very conscious that it would be the early hours of the morning, everybody asleep and in no mood to believe that danger was imminent.

'You'll have to come with me,' she argued. 'Even if I can get through to somebody in authority…'

'No/ I said. 'I've got to make contact with Gareth.'

But the frigate was something too remote for her to grasp, and anyway she did not want the responsibility of alerting people locally. 'You know what they are. They won't believe a woman. I'll never get it across to them.' And even when I told her she was one of the few people outside of government they would believe, that as an English archaeologist she had the standing of a scientist and therefore would be regarded as a reliable witness, she went on arguing until the crossroads came up in the headlights and I put my hand on her knee and told her to turn left for Mahon or I'd switch the engine off, drive the car myself and leave her at the side of the road.

An angry silence filled the car after she had made the turn, the road snaking through a forest of pine, with the scent of resin all-pervading, then straightening out with no sign of lights anywhere. Something flapped across the beam of our headlights, a kite probably. We reached the turn-off to Favaritx, and still nothing on the road. In fact, we did not see another vehicle until we were running into the outskirts of Mahon. Where the road curved down the hill from the main Ciudadela highway we had to wait for a small convoy of three army trucks which swung into the road in front of us, then turned off to the left, almost certainly bound for the Zona Militar barracks out on La Mola.

'Why not try the Naval Base?' Petra said. 'Fernando likes you. He would believe what you told him.'

I had already thought of that. It was very tempting, the Naval Base so close we were almost at the entrance to it. But how long would it take me to get through to Perez? 'No,' I said. 'Gareth is a safer bet.' I was watching the tail-lights of the convoy climbing up the hill beside the Base, the white beam of their heads shining on the heath-land scrub with its pillboxes and old stone fortifications built to stand against Napoleon. Another ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour, and other vehicles would be rolling up that road on to the long peninsula that formed the northern arm of the finest deep-water natural port in the Western Mediterranean, and at the end of that peninsula was La Mola with its barracks and casements and those huge guns. I had absolutely no doubt that this would be one of the main objectives, La Mola being little more than an island, the neck joining it to the main arm of the land so narrow it could readily be sealed with mines, the whole garrison then cut off. 'Keep going/ I told her. 'I haven't time to argue with the Navy guard at the entrance. Ariel Perez might be in Ciudadela, anywhere.'

We passed the turning to the Base and over my left shoulder there were lights on a freighter lying alongside the new quay, and beyond it, lights flashing green on the naval jetty. Then we were under the mass of Mahon itself, hammering along the waterfront past the commercial quay. There was a ferry lying there and out beyond Bloody Island I could see the dim shape of Medusalying broadside to the town. A minute later we had rounded Punta Maritime and Petra was bringing the car to a halt at the pontoon. I remember telling her to say something nice to Soo for me as I flung open the door and leapt out, the black, limpid water of the harbour washing lazily at the concrete of the roadway, the wooden boards of the pontoon moving under my feet. 'You reck'n they'll go for La Mola?' Lennie asked as he cord-whipped the outboard into life and we nosed out past the mooring lines of a big French sloop, the bows lifting as he increased the revs, heading to pass just north of Bloody Island where the frigate's bows were pointing towards Nelson's Golden Farm.

I nodded, the noise too great for conversation.

'They could just concentrate on the town, you know/ he yelled in my ear. 'Seize the town hall, take a crack at Military HQ and occupy the radio station. Wouldn't that be enough?'

I shrugged, unable to answer him, thinking ahead to my meeting with Gareth. I could imagine him asking me just those questions and what the hell would I say? We passed the quick-flashing red beacon close to the dig, Lennie cutting it so fine I could see the wheelbarrows still full of the rubble we had been shifting, and then the businesslike outline of Medusawas looming nearer. 'Which side?' he shouted in my ear.

'Starb'd,' I said, and he swung in a tight arc, passing so close under the bows I thought he would smash into the anchor cable. The engine slowed, then died with a cough as he brought the inflatable alongside where the accommodation ladder had been lifted clear of the water. By then I had Petra's big torch beamed on the bridge, flicking the switch on and off — three dots, three dashes, three dots — hoping that whoever was on watch would realise the SOS was to signify urgency, not just some drunk from the shore playing silly buggers. I could hear the hum of the ship's machinery now, sense the power of the organisation that was in her. 'Ahoy there, Medusa!'I was shouting for the Officer of the Day, the Captain, anyone, my voice raised high, desperate with the need to be got on board quickly.

A face under a sailor's hat leaned out above me. 'Wot you want?'

'The Captain,' I shouted up to him. 'Tell the Captain it's Mike Steele and it's urgent. Every minute counts.' A door slammed and a beam of light was directed straight at me, my eyes blinded, and a voice said, 'Good evening, sir. You come to return that beard we lent you?' It was young Davison, the officer-under-training, and he was grinning. The Captain!' I yelled at him again.

'The Captain's asleep, sir.'

'Well, wake him up. And get me on board. I have information for him that must be transmitted to London immediately.'

He stood there for a moment, mouth agape, gazing down at me. I could see his brain working, trying to decide whether this was a joke or something deadly serious. Fortunately the beard was in my pocket, where it had been for some time now, otherwise he might have thought I was fooling. 'Hurry, man! For God's sake hurry!' He nodded, suddenly seeming to pull himself together as he ordered a sailor to lower the ladder, then turned and ran to the bridge. He was back by the time I had scrambled up to the deck. 'This way, sir. Captain says to take you to his cabin.'

Gareth was in his dressing gown as I was shown in, his face pale, his hair tousled. Thank you, Davison. That'll do.' He turned to me. 'Now, what's this all about?'

I made it as short as possible, but before I had finished he had reached for the phone, flicking a switch. 'Captain. Call all hands. Lieutenant Commander Mault to my cabin immediately.' He had pulled out a notebook and was flicking through the pages. 'Anchored out here we're not on a land line, so we have to slot in to the telephone system through ship-to-shore. However, I can contact the Naval Base op UHF.' He was reaching for the phone again when Davison's voice broke in on the loudspeaker — 'Captain, sir. This is the bridge.' He sounded a bit nervous, very excited. 'There's what sounds like shots coming from the direction of La Mola — and, sir, we're just picking up bursts of machine-gun fire from the town now.'

'Very good, I'll be up.' Gareth turned to glance at the wall clock, picking up a comb and smoothing his hair. The second hand flicked to the vertical. It was exactly 03.31. 'From what you've told me, looks like the time of attack on all objectives was zero-three-thirty.' And he added, 'I've been expecting something like this.' He slipped out of his dressing gown and began pulling on trousers and white polo-necked sweater over his pyjamas. 'But not those logistic craft.' He had me describe in detail the scene on the quay at Addaia. 'You're certain it was Pat? He was on that fishing boat of yours and led them in?'

'Yes/ I said. 'And he was organising them ashore.'

'The whole thing — I mean, the men who came ashore from those LCTs as well as the locals? You're sure?'

'I think so.' It was obvious he didn't want to believe that the man was totally involved, but when I told him it was bright starlight and I had ten-magnification glasses on him, he sighed and said, 'I suppose I should have expected that.' He was buttoning up his jacket. 'Well, no good trying to alert Capitan Perez now. His boys can hear the shooting just as well as we can here. Let's go up to the bridge.' — Outside the cabin all was bustle as the ship came to readiness, men in various stages of dress hurrying to their posts, the bridge itself beginning to fill up. As soon as we reached it, we could hear the firing out on La Mola, for they had both wing doors open. We went out on to the starb'd wing and stood there looking at the black outline of the.peninsula sprawled against the stars. 'When do you reckon first light, Pilot?'

'With the sky as clear as this, sir, there should be a glimmer in the east within the hour.'

'An hour's darkness.' Gareth nodded, then turned to me. 'Nice timing, the whole thing highly organised.' And he added, 'That will be Pat. He's had a lot of experience Angola chiefly, Mozambique, with the Polisario, and Wade says they thought he had done a spell with the Contras, so he's had the benefit of American as well as South African training.'

Mault appeared at his elbow. 'I was ordered to report to your cabin, but you weren't there.'

'No, I'm here.' Gareth's voice was sharp. 'Have the launch brought alongside and go across to the Base. Try and see Capitan Perez personally. Offer him any assistance he needs. Oh, and tell him the entire force at the disposal of the insurgents at this moment in time is not more than two hundred. They are supported by professional troops landed from two small logistics craft at Addaia. I have an eye-witness of the landing here on board Medusa.'Mault hesitated, glancing at me. 'Wouldn't it be better if I took Mr Steele with me?'

'No.' Gareth's voice was even sharper. 'Tell the Jefehe can interview him here on board if he wants to.' And he added, 'Now hurry, man. Things are happening, and happening fast. Perez needs to know that the whole thing can be controlled and suppressed if he acts quickly enough.' He turned to Davison. 'Is somebody looking after that inflatable and the man who was with Mr Steele?'

'Yes, sir. He's been taken to the petty officers' mess for some coffee.'

'Good.' He turned back into the body of the bridge as the Yeoman of Signals appeared at his side with a piece of paper in his hand. 'A sit-rep, sir. The Communications Office were alerting the radar unit on top of the 'For o rock when the radio contact suddenly went dead, there's a small foreign outfit in Alayor, nobody knows yet what nationality but Arab by the look of them, and there's a ham of sorts broadcasting Independence Day messages from Ciudadela.'

Gareth glanced through the paper, nodded, dealt with the little queue of officers waiting to be briefed, then went over to the nearest mike, his voice stilling all conversation as it blared out over the ship's main broadcast: 'This is the Captain speaking. We have a situation ashore that was not wholly unexpected and is to some extent our reason for being here in Port Mahon..'And then he was outlining briefly what the firing was all about. He also indicated that there had been outside intervention… 'Whether by political sympathisers, mercenaries or some foreign power is not yet clear. I will keep you informed.'Just as he said that there was a flash, followed immediately by the rumble of a heavy explosion, the rumbling muffled as though it were underground, and suddenly the highest point of La Mola was lit by a pyrotechnic display that was so colourful and went on for so long it was more like fireworks than the destruction of a military target. 'Looks like they've got the garrison's ammunition dump.' Gareth had a pair of the bridge binoculars fixed on La Mola. Davison said something to him and he lowered the glasses, frowning. 'Funny! I should have thought he would have been glad of a coffee, even a drink…' He turned to me. 'That Australian of yours. Seems he was worried about something, so he's pushed off. Said he'd be at the dig when you wanted him. Yes, Yeo?'

The Yeoman of Signals was at his elbow again. 'Looks as though they've taken the radio station, sir. They're playing local music interspersed with announcements of this sort.' He handed Gareth a slip of paper.

'Ismail Fuxa — ' Gareth was reading it aloud — 'I imagine you pronounce it Fusha, the X is sh, isn't it? He's described here as leader of the Independent Movement and it says he'll be broadcasting an Independence Day message to the Menorquin people at 06.00. Apparently the speech will be repeated every hour on the hour throughout the rest of the day. What do you think?' He glanced up at me. 'The speech taped in advance?' And he added, 'Must have been. Which suggests a degree of organisation…'

The Navigating Officer interrupted him. 'Message from the Naval Base, sir. No answer from the garrison command post on La Mola. And the Jefewould like a word with you on UHF.'

The ultra high frequency set used by Nato service unit? was on the far side of the bridge. He picked up the headset with its boom-mike and though I couldn't hear what was said I saw the lines of strain on his face ease. He was talking for barely a minute and then he said, 'Well, thank God for that. They haven't got the Naval Base.' He said it loud enough for all on the bridge to hear, knowing I suppose that it would spread from there right through the ship.

'Launch coming back now, sir.'

He nodded, watching it come out from behind Bloody Island, making an arrowed arc as it swung to pass under the bows and come alongside the ladder. To seaward the first glimmer of the dawn was etching black the outline of Lazareto Island with the bulk of La Mola reared up behind it.

Mault, when he reached the bridge, reported that he had been received very formally. He had the impression that his visit was not welcomed and that the Spanish Navy Jefewas wanting to distance himself from the British naval presence in the harbour.

'You saw Perez himself, did you?' Gareth asked him.

'In the end, yes.'

'Would you say his coolness was dictated by higher authority?'

'Yes. He asked me to thank you for your offer of assistarice, but to tell you it would not be necessary.'

'He's in touch with Madrid then?'

Mault nodded. 'I think so. But locally I had the feeling he was cut off. I was with him when the explosion occurred on La Mola. That was when he told me his Communications people could no longer talk to the garrison there. He seemed very dejected. In the circumstances the sensible thing would seem to be for us to withdraw to Gibraltar.'

Gareth looked at him, gave a short bark of a laugh and said, 'The sensible thing!' His voice was full of irony. 'Oh yes, Lieutenant Commander that would undoubtedly be the sensible thing. Unfortunately, our orders are quite the opposite. We stay here.' And he turned on his heel, striding quickly up and down the bridge several times, his face tight-drawn, an expression almost of anguish on his face. He seemed to be struggling to make up his mind about something. Finally, he turned to me. 'Wait for me in my cabin.' He was moving towards the door and when I started to say something about it being time I was off his ship he turned on me angrily. 'Just do as I tell you. Wait in my cabin. I may need you if I manage to contact any of Soo's friends.'

He went below then and shortly afterwards the Navigator advised me to do as he said. His hand was on my arm, steering me to the door. On the stairs outside he suddenly stopped. 'He needs you, sir. You know the island and the people here, and you're not a part of the ship. That's important.' And he added, speaking quite urgently now, There's one or two of the officers here trying to dismiss him as a jumped-up little Welshman from the lower deck promoted too quickly and not big enough for the job. They don't know what the job is, of course, and nor do I, but I can tell you this — he's carrying a burden hardly anybody on board yet realises, a burden I can only guess at from hints dropped by Phil Woburn, our Communications Officer. I admire him.' He gave a quick embarrassed grin. 'So do as he says, will you? He needs you.'

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to keep the man away from my wife. But instead I nodded and went down to his cabin, wondering again why he had been given this particular command and what the hell the ship was supposed to do here.

I was there on my own for a good half-hour and for most of that time I was standing by the porthole which looked out past Bloody Island to the port and the Naval Base. Once one of the naval patrol boats put out heading for Cala Figuera, but a few minutes after disappearing behind Bloody Island it emerged again and returned to base. Otherwise, there was virtually nothing moving in that section of the harbour and the waterfront was too far away for me to identify the few vehicles that were on the road.

To pass the time I had a look at the books on the shelf above the desk. They were most of them reference books, including the Admiralty Pilot for the Mediterranean Volumes I and II, also, surprisingly, Kemp's encyclopaedic work, Ships and the Sea,and beside that was Conrad's The Secret Agentand a rather battered copy of a collection of Kipling's verse. Opening it at a marker, I found he had underlined a passage from 'How Fear Came' — 'When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war.'And earlier there was a ticket to the Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, marking The English Flag'. 'And what should they know of England who only England know.' Ifelt the wrench of that second line, thinking of spring and blossom, chestnuts bursting. Then Petty Officer Jarvis came in to say he would be serving breakfast as soon as the Captain arrived, meanwhile could he offer me a cup of coffee? By then it was 06.09 and I wondered what Ismail Fuxa had said in his Independence Day message.

Gareth had listened to it on the radio, of course. But when he came in some ten minutes later he couldn't tell me what the man had said, apart from the fact that it was a declaration of the island's independence, but he seemed to have got a very vivid impression of Fuxa himself. 'A little like listening to a re-run of the German Fuhrer speaking at one of the big Nazi rallies in the thirties — very emotional, the voice rising in pitch to the point of screaming, then suddenly falling away so that it seemed to be whispering in one's ear.' He slumped down on the settle, passing a hand over his eyes as though to rub out the weariness that showed there. 'Quite an exercise. Very compelling, almost hypnotic. I think we're in trouble.' He said it so softly I could hardly catch the words. 'They seem to have taken all the key points except the Naval Base, which suggests there were sympathisers among some of the military.'

He had contacted several of our English-speaking friends, but none of them, not even the Renatos, were willing to talk about what was happening ashore. 'In the absence of any effective opposition they're not prepared to stick their necks out.' Jarvis had brought him a tray of coffee and he sat drinking it and staring vacantly at the clock on the wall. 'It's up to the politicians now. Everybody's been informed — Madrid, London, Washington, and Moscow, of course. They'll have a finger in it somewhere, I suppose. That cruiser we saw in Grand Harbour sailed yesterday evening and a flotilla of Soviet ships has just passed through the Straits of Bonifacio. Elements of the Sixth Fleet, the ships we passed through yesterday evening, have put about and are headed back into the Western Mediterranean at full speed.' He poured himself some more coffee, drank it quickly and went out. 'Won't be long, then we'll have breakfast.'

This time he was gone the better part of an hour, and when he came back his face looked grim. 'The BBC News led off with it at seven o'clock. There was a short statement from Madrid to the effect that the Spanish Government was greatly concerned and would be watching events closely.' He was standing at the window looking out towards the town, the white of the buildings touched with gold as the sun rose above the northern arm of the harbour. It was one of those still mornings, the water glassy calm, a molten look that was a sure sign of heat to come. 'In other words, they're not sure of themselves and are waiting upon developments locally. No suggestion at the moment that they are prepared to take any positive and determined action.'- He turned to me. 'How left is this man Fuxa, would you say?'

'We always thought of him as more of an anarchist than a communist,' I said.

'My information is that he has spent some time in the Soviet Union and is probably Russian trained.' He gave a little shrug, went over to his desk and sat down, staring vacantly at the litter of signals that covered it. 'Oh well, we'll know soon enough. If that's correct, then he'll almost certainly request recognition from Moscow, even perhaps some assistance if the going gets rough.'

He seemed to be using me as a sounding board, for he went on talking about how the situation might develop, the political repercussions outside of Menorca. At the back of his mind, of course, was the American bombing of Libya. 'Do you think they're involved?' He was staring at me, but I don't think he was seeing me at all, only what was in his mind, the question purely rhetorical. 'Russian warships, the American Sixth Fleet, and those big guns out on La Mola. If they know how to fire them, somebody's got to take them out before any naval ships hostile to this new regime can enter Port Mahon. There are Spanish Navy ships in Barcelona, but they haven't moved. Perhaps that's why.'

'Surely they could knock them out,' I suggested. 'An air strike…'

But he was shaking his head. 'The situation is too confused for them to do that. They don't know who they'd be attacking. Their own people perhaps.'

'What does Palma say?' I asked him.

The Civil Governor has called for calm throughout the Province and appealed for the maintenance of democratic government. Usual sort of thing.'

'And the Military Governor?'

'Nothing so far from him. Not that we've been able to pick up, and nothing on the BBC News or even the World Service. Madrid seems to be keeping a low profile.' He banged his fist against the arm of his chair. 'Time is passing, and every minute counts. They don't seem to realise — '

'Nor do you/ I said.

He stared at me. 'How do you mean?'

'It's obvious, isn't it — they're afraid of aggravating the situation. If you'd lived in the islands you'd understand something of their history and how recent and how delicate is the matter of provincial autonomy.'

'I know that. But they're dithering and they haven't time for that.' His voice had risen almost to a note of shrillness. They haven't time,' he repeated more quietly, gazing into space. 'God almighty!' It was an invocation that seemed forced out of him by his lone position at the centre of events that were beyond his control. 'Better get some breakfast now.' He got up from the desk and led me over to the table under the portholes, calling for Petty Officer Jarvis.

'Your people knew something like this was going to happen/ I said as we sat down. That's why you were ordered out of Malta in such haste.' He didn't answer, his mind locked in on itself. 'Well, wasn't it? And wasn't that why you came to Menorca in the first place, before you took command of this ship?'

That got through to him, his eyes coming into focus and staring at me across the table. 'I suppose so.' Jarvis appeared with two plates loaded with bacon, sausage and fried egg.

'So what are you supposed to do? A British Navy ship, you can't take any part in a coup d'etat like this.'

'No, of course not.'

'So, what's the point?'

Toast?' He pushed the rack towards me, concentrating now on his food.

'You can't do any good here,' I told him.;He nodded, the broad forehead under the black curly hair creased in a frown. 'Jesus! Do you think I don't know that?'

'So why were you sent here?' I asked him.

'Why?' He looked surprised. 'For the same reason Nelson was here. And poor Byng — executed because he wouldn't face the French.' And he added, 'These people, they have this one priceless asset — the finest deep-water harbour in the Western Med. That's what it's all about. That's why I'm here.' He gave a hollow laugh. 'If there had been any opposition, if Madrid had reacted to the situation…' He stopped there, the loudspeaker breaking in on his thoughts: 'Bridge here, sir. There's a launch approaching. Harbour launch by the look of it.'

Gareth finished his breakfast quickly and a few minutes later the same voice announced that it was the harbour master himself wanting to speak to the Captain. Gareth asked for the man's name, then turned to me. 'Francisco Romacho. Is that right?'

'No,' I said. 'It should be Juan Terron.'

He nodded. 'They haven't wasted any time. A key appointment and he's in position already.' Then into the intercom: 'Does he speak English? No, well get hold of Sykes, then send the two of them up.' He suggested I conceal myself in the steward's pantry. 'See if you recognise him.'

The man who entered was short and very dark with an aquiline face. I had never seen him before. He was dressed in khaki trousers and camouflage tunic. He came straight to the point. 'Senor Fuxa — el Piesidente — feels that, in the circumstances, he cannot accept the presence of a foreign warship in the port of Mahon.' Watching through a crack in the serving hatch, Victor Sykes came into my line of Vision. He was another of the young officers-under-training, probably posted to the ship for his knowledge of Spanish. He looked a little scared, his voice low as he interpreted. The three of them were seated at the coffee table, Gareth pointing out that what went on ashore was not his concern, he was simply in Mahon on a courtesy visit and if there had been some change in the government of the island, he was sure the new regime would extend the same welcome to one of Her Majesty's ships as the old.

The interview went on like that for some time, Romacho insisting that Medusaleave Mahon, Gareth pointing out that his orders came from London and he had no authority to leave without new instructions. At one point he said, 'This is a matter for the Spanish and British governments.' And Romacho answered quickly, 'I don't think so. We are now an independent state.'

'Then I suggest your president takes the question up directly with the Foreign Office in London.'

'He cannot do that until we have recognition. In the meantime, he insists that you leave Mahon.'

'I have explained that my orders — '

'Your orders are to leave. Immediately.' Romacho had jumped tohis feet. 'This is our water. Our port. You have no right to be here when we don't invite you. You will leave immediately please.'

Gareth had risen to his feet. 'Unfortunately we have a problem.' And he went on to explain that the high-pressure boilers delivering steam to the turbines had sprung some leaks and his Marine Engineer Officer had taken the opportunity to close the boilers down for maintenance work on the condenser pipes.

It was obvious that Romacho didn't believe him, but he couldn't very well demand to inspect the engine room. Instead, he said, 'In that case, we will have to arrange a tow for you. Fortunately the tanker that keeps the Cala Figuera depot supplied has just finished off-loading and we have our own harbour tug. I will arrange for the two of them to tow you to Palma in Mallorca.'

'That will not be necessary,' Gareth said.

'You will leave then under your own steam?'

''When I have orders to leave I will leave. Not before.'

'So! You are not going to leave?'

'No.'

'Very well, Capitan. Ialso have orders. El Presidenteinstructs me to say that you have until noon. If you are not away from Mahon by midday he will be forced to regard your continued presence here as a hostile act. You understand?' He gave a formal little bow, and without waiting for Gareth's reply, turned quickly and made for the door. His last words as he went out were, 'You have until midday.'