Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 23: SING

'Will this do you?'

'Yes.'

It stank of rotten eggs or something, and sea-water was lapping at the side as the swell moved against the harbour wall. Flotsam made a multicoloured scum on the surface beyond the rail. 'It's not for long,' Kim said. 'Is that right?'

'Twenty-four hours. Did the hurricane do all this?'

'Most of it.' She ducked her head under the shattered boom and crouched beside me in her frayed sunbleached shorts. It was almost dark here, in contrast to the glare of the morning sun across the water outside. 'The harbour's becoming abandoned, pretty well. Other storms began wrecking it, and people began bringing their boats here, those that were still afloat. Their idea is to do them up, given enough time, but the thing is they haven't got enough money. They're allowed to leave them here; they don't pay dues or anything.'

She pulled a loose timber and shoved it into the flooded hold behind us, then moved away to work at the jammed door of the cabin. Two of the berths were still intact, and she'd brought oil lamps and a keg of water.

She'd been asleep when I'd telephoned the tug just before five this morning from Parks' place, but she'd said straight away that she'd pick me up at the Exxon station three blocks from the harbour and find me shelter. I'd telephoned Avis and told them where I'd left their van.

I would go down in signals as missing.

All instructions to the executive in the field will be followed except where extenuating circumstances are seen to exist, as determined by Administration at the time or at a later date.

Failure to report to a rendezvous was technically a breach of contract and if I ever managed to get back to London I would face a board of enquiry. I hadn't telephoned Ferris from the Exxon station to tell him I was going to ground because that would have put him in an invidious position: technically he would have been expected to inform Croder but he wouldn't have done that; he would simply have accepted the fact that his executive had become a rogue agent and reported to Croder only that I had missed the rendezvous. He would first, of course, have done everything he could to persuade me to change my mind and follow instructions, but there would have been no point in letting him go through an exercise in predetermined futility.

And if I'd told him what I planned to do he would have tried everything to stop me.'

Soon after 06:00 hours today the executive in the field for Barracuda would be posted on the signals board in London as missing. Soon afterwards his name would be removed from the board and replaced by Purdom's.

In the meantime there would be a man holed up in the stinking cabin of a wrecked schooner on the Florida coast, awaiting the coming night with the patience of a saint and the conscience of a sinner, while hour by hour the terror would grow in him until at the long day's end he would surely come to know that he was mad.

'I can't borrow a boat,' Kim said when she came over to me again. 'It'd involve other people, and we don't want that. So what I'll do is take the tug out to deep water and hang around and see if anyone's followed me. If I'm clear I'll head back to the coast where there's not much shipping, and come into the harbour here as soon as it's dark.' She sat next to me on the splintered bunk, touching, her bare arms folded across her knees. 'Does that sound all right?'

'It sounds very good.'

I offered her a couple of hundred dollars to defray expenses, the diesel oil and the three diving lessons she'd had to postpone, but she said she often went out deep-sea 'just to be there', and the lessons were no big deal. 'This ride's on me,' she said, 'and that's the only way you can get it.'

During the heat of the day I slept, woke and slept again. Voices came sometimes, but not close. This place was a graveyard, and there was no sea-borne traffic.

In the evening I opened a can of sardines and had them with a piece of bread, and drank some tea from the thermos Kim had left for me. The blood-red remnants of the sun were paling to a grey wash and then darkening as night came down across the littered sea, and I heard the straining of rowlocks not far off, then the bump of timbers.

She came aboard quickly and on bare feet, without a sound. The moon, in its third quarter, cast an ashen light across the harbour, and reflections pooled on the planks above our heads. I hadn't lit the lamp.

'There was no one,' she said, coming beside me, 'absolutely no one.' Her hands smelled of oil and rope and seaweed; the pale light frosted the salt along her arms. 'Being not quite certain isn't a risk I'd take. I mean -'

'I know what you mean.'

Her breath was coming a little fast, and she tried to slow it, talking about the tides for a moment and the state of the sea, until she finally said, and had not been willing to say, 'All right, when you're ready.'

By the brass chronometer in the cabin of the tug it was eight in the evening when we anchored over deep water, a few minutes after eight, though time had lost its meaning now, and there was no hurry.

'How far are we?' I asked her.

'Two sea miles, give or take a bit. That's what you said you wanted.'

'Are we under their radar?'

'Yes. But we're only a blob. They don't know what vessel she is.'

The sea was dead calm, and the lights between here and the coast were motionless. The moon hung among hazy stars, and you would have said it was a night for magic to be made across this vast unfathomable stage, a night for sorcery, its reaches peopled by warlocks, witches and diabolists, casting their spells and conjuring phantoms from the very air. I told you, my good friend, that by nightfall I would come to know that I was mad, and here was the night, and here this madman's tale.

Here too of course the appalling urgency to turn back and gain the shore and find a telephone and offer myself to be led like a lamb to London.

'Did you eat anything?' she asked me.

'Yes.'

'Not too much.'

'No. Some sardines.'

Time to go to the loo.'

When I came back she helped me on with the wet-suit, and I asked her, 'All right, what am I up against?'

I heard her take a breath. 'Bad news first. They feed by night, and actively. There are a lot more rods than cones in the retinae, so they can see quite well in dim light. The moon isn't a help, though you'll need it to see what you're doing.'

I pulled the front zip and began strapping the ankles. She helped me, crouching at my feet, her hands quick and deft. 'The things that attract them are light, noise and rapid movement. I suppose that's true for most creatures, it's nothing special. But watch out if you see garbage being thrown overboard, and keep well away from it. They sometimes move about in packs, as you saw yesterday, but ninety per cent of attacks are made by a single shark. The attack's usually direct, straight on, without any close passes beforehand.' She straightened up and began helping me with the gear and the floats. 'Statistically, which is really all I'm talking about, only a third of the vie – of the people attacked have reported seeing the shark. It's usually what we call a blind hit, before you can see anything.' She stopped talking for a minute; I suppose she was having trouble with a buckle or something.

That's all I need to know,' I said. 'You've -'

They're also attracted to fish moving in a shoal. If you see a shoal, steer clear of it or try to swim towards it to turn it away. Most of the strikes are made at the extended arms and legs; try to remember to swim with your flippers almost together; just paddling slowly, with your arms close to your sides.

I wish to God -' she said and broke off and for the rest of the time she managed to sound almost normal, with her voice no more than subdued.

'What's the best weapon?'

'I'll come to that,' she said. 'These things have got large olfactory sacs, and their sense of smell is acute. A test they made at Lerner's showed that a shark can detect one part of tuna juice in twenty-five million parts of sea-water. When they smell anything that interests them, they turn upstream and home in on it. So if you feel any current running and you see a shark upstream of you, you're in better shape as far as your scent is concerned. I know you probably won't have to use any of this but if you do run into problems it's going to give you an edge.' She was standing in front of me now, fastening the last strap of the scuba harness, her eyes watching me in the light from the binnacle, the green pupils iridescent, darker than I'd seen them before, more concentrated, and I had the passing thought that she was looking at me for what might be the last time, but if that kind of thing was in her mind she would be wrong, she would of course be wrong.

'Does everything feel okay?'

I shrugged the harness a bit higher and she took up the slack on the buckles. 'Okay now?'

'Fine.'

She turned away and got a metal cylinder from the cabin, black-painted with a fire-extinguisher type lever. That was all the bad news, as I said. This is the only good news we've got. It's a concentrate from the Moses sole fish, gives out a milky fluid, but the toxicity's only potent enough if it's released into the shark's mouth.' She buckled it to the left side of the harness at the hip. 'Don't forget you've got it, for God's sake. Everything comfy?'

I said yes and walked to the rail and she held the gear steady while I climbed over and turned my back to the sea and looked up at her as she offered me the unexpected miracle of a quick, flashing smile and I let go and the cylinders hit the surface and spread bubbles around me like a veil of white lace as I turned over and began swimming.

It was huge, a long shadow lying under the surface.

I'd heard someone say it was two thousand tons, the size of a destroyer. It looked even bigger than that, its outlines etched by the play of moonlight through the water, broken by a shoal of fish swarming near the twin screws aft, flashing as they turned, darkening and flashing, their quickness mesmerising.

There were sounds here, muffled but not distant, the sound of generators and voices and music, so faint sometimes that I believed that silence had come, then getting louder as the current swirled and I rose through the water, breaking the surface under the dark slope of the keel. There was no music now; it hadn't been a party on deck or anything; I think it had come from radios in the crew's quarters, aft, where I'd approached the target, the motor-yacht Contessa.

I began work straight away, and fixed the first one a foot above the surface on the starboard side. The magnet was strong, and made a sudden ringing sound as its field pulled it to the hull with the force of a hammer blow.

I hadn't been ready for that. I didn't like it. A fish, even a big fish, moving at speed and turning, hitting the hull obliquely, wouldn't make a sound like that. I think it would have been heard, inboard, I think it would have been heard by people in the well of the ship.

I used the flippers to drive me below again so that I could take sightings. I didn't feel comfortable with the lower half of my body dangling below-surface. Looking down the length of the hull I could see the shoal again, a swarm of two or three hundred small fish, flashing silver as they turned and turned again with a speed that gave them the semblance of an illusion.

They're also attracted to fish moving in a shoal. If you see a shoal, steer clear of it or try and swim towards it to turn it away.

I was all right here: they were as distant as the length of the ship. There was no other movement anywhere, except for bubbles rising from vegetation on the sea bed. The anchor chain hung in the water not far off, under the bows, a rope of black pearls in the filtered light of the moon. In the other direction the twin screws bloomed like dark flowers, their rounded petals silvered at the tips. The moon was above the port beam, so that one half of the hull was dark, the other barely visible, lit from the surface as brightly as the sea itself and merging with it.

I moved slowly to the other beam, and spread one hand against the painted metal, palm towards me, and laid the next unit over it; but the magnet was stronger than I'd thought and it was a job to pull my hand free, and when I did there was still a slight hammering sound as the unit met the ship's plate. I would have to do better than that.

In the next half-hour or so I fixed four more of them, using a fabric strap as a buffer to deaden the sound, and then duck-dived to take another sighting below, and saw the shark.

It was half the ship's length away and looked motionless, a ten or twelve foot grey cylinder, flattened a little horizontally. It was just below the surface, its profile silvered by the moon and not easy to see, except for its size. Then it began moving, at first across the beam of the ship and then turning to stand off again, nearer me but not close yet. It was pointed now towards the stern, and did nothing for a while; then the long tail-fin moved suddenly and it was streaking the length of the hull and hit the centre of the shoal before the fish had time to scatter. It looked like a big window being smashed, with the bits of glass exploding from the centre.

I was about midship, and needed to move aft. The shark had turned and was facing towards me, but at a fair distance. What was left of the shoal had regrouped and was shimmering in the water near the hull again, apparently unable to learn.

Itching on the skin, the nerves shaken and sweat springing, not unexpected. I'd done most of the work down here in comfort, free of any concern except for the noise of the magnets jamming home, but now things had changed.

I know you probably won't have to use any of this but if you do run into problems it's going to give you an edge.

It was time to remember the other things she'd told me, and I kept my arms close to my sides and my legs together, drifting closer to the hull. There was so little movement of the water against my hands that I wasn't sure there was a current at all; but if there was, I was downstream of that bloody thing and it couldn't smell me. But of course it could see me: she'd said they could see well enough in dim light, and the moon was bright enough through the clear water to define the shark's dorsal fin even at this distance. It could see me very easily.

You've placed six of those things. Now get out.

We need eight. That man Parks recommended eight.

Six are good enough. For God's sake get out while you can.

Panic will get us nowhere. I shall stay exactly where I am.

But it wasn't easy. It was not easy, my good friend, to stare at that hideous two-ton killing machine while it stared me back. It had kept still like this, just like this, before it had suddenly shot forward and hit that shoal like a missile.

For the sake of Jesus Christ get out, get out, get out.

Sweat crawling on the skin under the wet-suit, itching, making me want to move, to pinch the flesh through the rubber, the only way to scratch. But let us be reasonable; nothing much has changed, when you stop and think. I knew this was dangerous, and I knew Ferris would have tried to stop me if I'd told him what I meant to do, and I knew that by the end of this long day I would come to realise that I was mad, and that when she had given me that wonderful smile, when she had mustered all the courage she had needed just to do it, to give me that flashing beatific smile, I knew that she hadn't thought much of my chances, that she was in all likelihood looking upon this vain and ambitious madman for the last time, and had managed to bring herself to offering him everything of life she could, the gentle valedictum, the grace of her womanhood. I knew those things.

But somewhere along the line, as they say, I'd been lulled into thinking it was going to be cushy down here after all, because they wouldn't come, the sharks, wouldn't seek me out, wouldn't decide to make of this impudent clown a snatched meal, the jaws coming open as the great body turned with the tail driving it towards the kill, the jaws locking shut on impact and the flesh becoming shreds, the bones -

Out, get out for Christ's -

Yes, I'm afraid I got carried away a little, didn't I, and if you weren't quite so shit-scared I wouldn't have to suffer your pusillanimous bloody whining, I'd have a better chance to think.

Think.

Move very slowly, paddle with your flippers, arms to the sides, move towards the stern, towards that great grey fish with its tiny eyes, keep close to the hull, just underneath it, part of the ship, just a piece of equipment, nothing alive, nothing of flesh and blood, the jaws coming wide open as it – steady, lad, we came here to do this and we are going to do it, the sweat crawling, ignore it, ignore the itching, driving me crazy, ignore.

Then it moved and grew enormous as it drove past me and hit the shoal again and the fragments scattered and I held still with the breath blocked in my throat and my senses numbed, held still, a piece of equipment, nothing alive like the little fish over there, some of them crushed but slipping out of that cavernous mouth again, floating to the surface, awkward-looking, their blood trailing in the light of the moon.

Door banged somewhere, some kind of door, the clang of metal, and then the light was dappled with movement as things began drifting down, touched with silver and sending out small bubbles, some kind of things I didn't know what, my mind was too occupied with the shark over there, nosing through the water while the things went on drifting down, surrounding me, an apple-core moving against the face-mask, an apple-core, mother of God, the things that attract them are light, noise and rapid movement, but watch out if you see garbage being thrown overboard and keep well away from it.

Egg-shells, a chicken carcass, potato peelings, drifting around me and I started moving forwards, keeping horizontal and just below the hull but too close and the air-bottles banged against the plates and I froze and waited for the shock to pass and then put my head down and went lower, fanning with the flippers, not looking to see where the shark was because it would mean turning and I didn't want to turn, to move more than I had to. It was somewhere behind me now, the big grey fish, but I didn't know how far away. Only a third of the people attacked have reported seeing the shark. It's usually what we call a blind hit.

But suddenly it was in front of me, small in the distance, and I hadn't seen it go by. It must -

Two. Two sharks now.

A vessel of this size, I suppose, would attract attention at night, at feeding time. The memory cells inside those tiny brains would automatically steer them towards garbage. With this amount of light -

Three. Four.

They were zeroing in from the featureless expanse of water wherever I looked, and the big one behind me went past at a distance of a dozen feet as I floated just beneath the hull, a part of the equipment. The thing hadn't accelerated this time; it knew that garbage doesn't scatter when attacked. Two others -three others came in much faster, competitively, and went for the debris, brushing one another, making tight turns with their jaws wide, taking in what they could get.

The metal door clanged again and more garbage mottled the surface, dark at first and then catching the light as it sank, and the four sharks – five – became excited, dog-fighting their way through the debris, and one of them broke off and brushed against the propellers, jaws open, ready to attack anything, any shape at all, then it turned very fast and came for me head-on and I held still for as long as I could and then I was looking directly into the gape of the jaws and brought the cylinder up and squeezed the lever and felt the coarse hide graze past my shoulder as the toxic fluid clouded the water like milk and the tail fin hit me and the air-bottles rang against the hull.

Sake of Jesus Christ get out, get away.

Things not good, a degree of concussion, it had been a blow to the head, but I was aware of what was going on, though not terribly interested, blood in the water now ahead of me, 'a blossoming of crimson, perhaps one of them had gone for another, becoming frenzied, I didn't actually care whether -

God's sake get out, get out -

Yes, the voice of reason, moved my head down and turned with the flippers fanning, clear water now in front of the mask, fast as we can now, yes, usually call a blind hit, keep a cool head, so forth, blood again and the whole scene flashing and swirling in the moonlight as they circled just aft of the ship, the drift of milky toxin still hanging in a cloud, the blood worse now, a mist of crimson, you've turned, you shouldn't see them any more, you're not going straight, this was true, yes, I was wallowing, I think, not able to steer too well -

God's sake turn again, turn and go straight -

Using one arm, paddling, turning and seeing clear water ahead, moving faster now, feeling a little brighter, thing hit me like a train and I blacked out -

Blacked out, the music, the music of the spheres, a blind hit, that was what had happened, and the organism was trying to run on its own now, autonomically, the eyes still open and watching for clear water, the balance mechanism of the inner ear correcting, adjusting, but there was redness in the water and my feet were not moving, the blind hit had ripped the wet-suit away at the shoulder and broken the skin, the feet not moving, we need to move, my feet just lying in the water, move them, it is necessary.

Life is necessary, we are moving ahead again, fanning slowly, and the truth is that one of two things will happen, I will continue to move, to leave behind me the frenzied dance of the big grey bloodied fish, or one of them will come for me again and this time use its jaws to better effect and close on my body and shake me, crush me, with my arms and legs obscenely sticking out from that great shape like the legs of a frog I had once seen in the mouth of a golden carp, and then shall it be written, finis, finito, on the final pages of this man's life -

Move your feet, keep moving -

Philosophy, a rush of cheap philosophy through this semi-conscious mind, I agree, will get us nowhere.

The water was still clear ahead of me through the mask, and I rose a little and broke the surface and let the full light of the moon strike down against my eyes. The Coral Rock, she had said, would be my marker to the east, and there it was, a red winking eye in the night, and behind me, as I turned my head, the lights of the motor-yacht afloat on the sea, quite a distance from me already – I'd come farther than I would have thought. I went down again, to swim below the surface for a time, the legs feeling stronger now and the head clearing.

Six of them. I had set only six of them, not eight, but the fish had come and there'd been no choice. It might be enough, six. let us hope so.

Fat lady sing, now.

Fat lady sing.