Terror's Cradle

CHAPTER TWENTY

'You made a copy of a transparency?' I said. To copy transparencies isn't easy. You need a good photo-lab and a deal of skill.

'We don't wear skins up here,' Anderson said.

'All right. Where?'

'there's a man processes my pictures. He's got a good lab. I used it.'

'I mean, where's the copy transparency now?'

His answer was to lengthen his stride. At the end of the alley he stopped, looked round the corner into the street. Satisfied, he walked quickly out. A hundred yards more, a quick turn down another alley, and he was knocking on the back door of a house. A man opened the door. Sixtyish, with a face seamed by long exposure to sun, wind and sea. He looked at Anderson, nodded, then stepped back to let us in. Anderson said, 'I have to get to my boat, Tom. But quietly.' He didn't introduce us. The man Tom nodded. 'She's in the harbour yet?' Àye.'

Àll right.' Then he noticed the way Anderson stood. `What's wrong with your shoulder?'

`Nothing. Come on Tom.'

Ì've seen a bullet hole before,' the man said quietly. Anderson sighed. 'Aye. It's not serious.'

`Maybe. A little look, that's all, Jim. Let me see.' `There isn't time!' Anderson said impatiently.

`Don't be a bloody fool !' Tom was already unfastening Anderson's blue donkey jacket. He took off the coat carefully, then peeled Anderson's sweater upward. Both the sweater and Anderson's back were bright with blood. Tom looked at the wound carefully, then moved to examine it again from the front. 'It'll no' kill you. Can you move it?'

Not much.'

`Collar bone's gone. Aside from that it's in and out and probably clean, unless fibres from your clothes were forced into a wound. Minute, Jim.'

He opened a drawer and took out a big first-aid box, applied penicillin powder liberally, then taped big wads of gauze in place, back and front. 'I heard they were looking for you. Anything I can do?'

Anderson shook his head. 'just hurry.'

Tom didn't hurry, but his broad, work-worn, spatulate fingers were remarkably deft as he worked. He pulled the sweater down again. 'You need a sling, man.' Then he buttoned the arm inside the coat. 'Can he sail?'

It was the first time Tom had shown he was even aware of me. Ìt'll be all right, Tom. Just hurry.'

A minute later, with Anderson's right arm slung and buttoned securely, his loose sleeve hanging, Tom nodded and opened a door. He led the way, Anderson followed. I brought up the rear, thinking we were going down into a cellar. Instead we entered a low corridor, a tunnel almost, with bare earth walls and roof shored up at intervals with curved staves. We went along it, crouching. At the end, Tom stood upright, slid back a bolt, eased open a trapdoor and climbed through. From outside I could hear the soft swish of water. Anderson climbed through next, then I followed. A small fishing boat was tied up hard against the wall. Tom was already bent over at the starting handle and Anderson lay on the bottom boards.

I climbed in, too, and Anderson said, Tie like this.'

I crawled down beside him and waited. The engine started, then Tom spread a tarpaulin over us and the light was blacked out.

`Where are we going?' I demanded.

Anderson said quietly, 'Tom will drop us at my boat. Maybe it's being watched. Maybe it isn't. When we reach it be ready to jump.'

`But where — ?'

He cut me off. 'Until we get there, only I know. When we get there . . .' he paused and added after a moment, 'you'll see.'

boat was moving off now. The engine puttered quietly, and water swished along the boards beside my ears. The trip took only three or four minutes. Then Tom lifted the end of the tarpaulin. 'Seems quiet,' he said softly, 'but I don't know. There's a Russian purseseine-setter half a cable away.'

`Can you see anybody on her?'Anderson asked.

`No. But . .

But there would be somebody. All three of us knew it. Anderson said, 'We'll have to try it. Go ahead, Tom.'

The engine's power increased for a few moments, then died back to a slow throb. '

Coming on her now,' Tom's voice said.

`Right.' Anderson flung back the tarpaulin and we sat up then stood, then jumped as the boat came neatly alongside Anderson's big Shetland model. Anderson put his foot on the thwart and stepped easily across. I followed a good deal less gracefully and a lot more noisily. But at least I was aboard.

`Get the anchor up!' Anderson ordered briskly, himself bending to the engine. Obediently I hauled on the chain, the metallic racket loud in the stillness as it fell through my hands into the little chain locker. Then the motor was going and we were off. I secured the anchor and went back to join Anderson and we both stared back at the lines of tied up vessels.

It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I thought savagely, that I'd been doing exactly this, trying to sneak unobserved out of Lerwick harbour. Apparent success; no success at all. I thought about the events that had followed, the ghastly cradle-ride, the desperate race over Noss, the final exhaustion from which only the helicopter had saved me. I remembered I hadn't thanked Elliot and Willingham for saving me; hadn't even asked where they'd got the helicopter or how they knew where I was. Nor, I realized then, had they ofiered to tell me! My eyes strayed involuntarily upward to search the night sky for lights, but it was dark and empty. The only lights were in the town. High on the hill I could see the glow of flaring torchlight from the Up-Helly-Aa procession. Or maybe it was the galley, already burning. Somehow in that moment it seemed a bad omen.

Tom's boat was already almost out of sight, and soon we were coming under the Bressay cliffs, leading south towards Bard Head. Anderson's face was pale and determined. He was fighting shock and fighting it well, but there would be a penalty to be paid. I said, thinking of the night before, Ìs there anything aboard. Tea? Whisky?'

`Both.'

Ì'll make some tea.' I went into the little cabind and put the kettle on. The whole thing was like some nightmare

re-run of the earlier trip. The kettle boiled, I made the tea, poured it into a mug, stirred in a lot of sugar as treatment for shock and handed it out to him. When he'd drunk half, I laced the remainder with Scotch, and watched him finish it.

`How do you feel?'

Ì'm all right.'

I said, 'I didn't lead them to you, you know. They must have had a lot of men in town tonight, watching for us.'

Ì know. Forget it.'

Somehow I found myself slightly in awe of Anderson, something I don't feel often for an yone. He had the solid confidence of a wholly self-contained man, a tangible authority that seemed to come from deep knowledge of his own world. Looking at him now, at the helm of his boat, it wasn't difficult to imagine other Andersons a thousand years ago, coming confidently to these shores in the same flimsy longboats that also explored Iceland and Greenland and may even have crossed to America. I almost hesitated to speak. Almost. I told myself sharply not to be a fool, and said, `Tell me where the bloody thing is. And why you copied it.'

He glanced at me. Àlsa's note said her life depended on that one thing. It wasn't much, that flimsy wee piece of film, for the girl's life to hang on. But Alsa wouldn't have said it, if it hadn't been true. You'd know that. I thought, what if I lose it, or maybe damage it. What then? So I made a copy.'

Òne copy.'

Àye, one. I'd not lose two'

`Where are we going? And when we get there, what then?'

`Later.'

`Now!' I said. 'You can't afford to be the rugged individualist. Not any more. You've only one arm, for a start. You're going to need me.'

`He looked at me dourly, the weighing eye of the islander

on the city slicker. But he told me. 'Noss,' he said. `The Holm? That bloody cradle !'

`There isn't a cradle any more. I cut the rope last night. But it's on the Holm, all the same.'

`Then how — ?'

He spoke one word then, and I shuddered, because the word meant a lot of things; it also flashed pictures on the screen of my mind. I didn't like what I saw. The word was, `

Climb.'

I made myself speak quietly, and reasonably, and listened to the tremble in my voice., '

You can't climb it.'

`No.'

Ànd I certainly can't.'

He turned to look at me and nodded. 'You can do it.'

I said, 'I wouldn't even try. I get vertigo on a long escalator. I've no climbing skill. For Christ's sake, man!'

`Take the wheel.' He went into the cabin and came out again a moment later carrying a big canvas bag with a drawstring neck. He fiddled one-handed with it for a moment, then handed it to me. I pulled the neck wide and he tipped the contents out: a pile of metal objects that rattled into the stern seat. He shone his torch on the little pile and picked out a shiny piece of metal a few inches long. 'See that? '

I nodded. 'What is it?'

`jumar clip,' he said. 'Sooner use Heiblers myself, but the Jumar's safe and efficient and I'

ve no Heiblers here. Now see,' he fumbled among the bits and pieces and selected three other items. The first was another identical clip. The other two were stirrups of some kind, with strong webbing through the eyelets.

`Now do you see?'

Ì bloody well don't see!' I thought of that dreadful cliff, all two hundred feet of it, sheer and impossible. And I thought about Alsa, too, and my stomach churned because I knew suddenly that I was going to try. I had to try! I'd fail; I knew that, too, with awful certainty, just as I'd failed all

along the line. But with Alsa still a prisoner .. .

I said soberly, through a dry, rasping throat, 'How does it work?'

Anderson said, 'In the night, before I cut the cable, I crossed to the Holm and let down a rope. It's secure, don't worry. Now, what you do is this . . I listened appalled. It was safe, he said. I couldn't fall, he said. He got the climbing belt from the cabin and demonstrated how safe it was and why I couldn't fall. He told me the breaking strain of the nylon line was God knows how many thousand pounds. He didn't convince me for a second.

We moved away from the eastern cliffs of Bressay, across open water towards the southern tip of Noss. When I could tear my eyes away from the sinister wedge silhouette of the island, I glanced across towards Bressay, wondering about Lincoln's boat. Was it wrecked, sunk, what? I should have felt guilty, but I didn't. Where I was going, sins were forgiven, though I doubted if Lincoln would forgive mine. The closer we came, the more impossible the whole crazy idea became. As distance narrowed, the cliffs reared higher. From above they'd seemed big, from below, as Anderson nosed the boat in beneath them, they looked stupendous, grim dark grey walls striped strangely across with dull white. Anderson looked up at them almost with affection. He could afford to; he didn't have to climb.

He said, 'Be glad it's winter.'

`Why?'

`Big breeding grounds, these cliffs. Everything's up there at nesting time : all the gulls, gannets, razor bills, guillemots. Fulmars too. Just be thankful there are no fulmars.'

`Why?'

`They spit at you if you disturb them. Oil from their throats. It stinks, enough to knock you down. You can never get the smell off your clothes. Be thankful, man.'

I dutifully tried to be thankful, but it was difficult. Lincoln's apt phrase, a hole into hell, kept coming back to me and the more my mind repeated it the truer it seemed. We came nosing into the black gap between the Holm and the island, engine slowed just a little, Anderson handling the boat with high skill where the water pounded between the huge walls.

I buckled the belt, then crept forward, boathook in one hand, torch in the other, looking for the rope.

`Just . . . a bit more . . .' Anderson was looking upward for the dangling rope. 'There!'

I hooked it in and passed the soaking end through my belt loop, then fastened the Jumar clips in position, one above the other. From each clip a stirrup dangled on its web strap. I put my foot in one stirrup and tried my weight on it experimentally, but there was a quick movement beneath me and the boat was gone, carried away on a swift surge of water!

Anderson shouted, 'Don't panic. Other foot!'

Scared daft, I clung to the rope tightly while I felt with my foot for the other stirrup. It seemed for long moments that I'd never find it, but then my toe slid into the swinging metal loop and at least I could get myself into some sort of balance. I stood for a moment then and looked up at the silhouette sixty feet above me where a massive overhang bellied out against the sky. The sea hissed and swirled beneath me, almost drowning Anderson's shouted instruction to get going.

I still didn't believe it would work. Two metal clips and a pair of stirrups to conquer this awesome combination of height and space? It was so patently absurd!

`Get on man!' Anderson shouted again.

I swallowed and took hold of the first Jumar and tried to slide it up the rope. It wouldn't budge. I pushed and sweated, beginning to panic, before the pressure of the stirrup under my instep told me what was wrong. I raised my foot and tried again. This time the Jumar clip slipped easily upward. But was it secure? Carefully I let my weight move from one stirrup to the other. The clip held, gripping tight as my weight forced its sprung jaws against the rope. All right, now the next,! I moved the second clip up until it touched the first, transferred my weight, and felt it grip. The two clips were one under the other; I couldn't move the second past the first. I moved the top clip again, pushed down hard on the stirrup, and went up another eighteen inches. Now again, left foot this time. Okay. At least it worked. As a system, it worked. I let out a deep breath of near relief that became a gasp as the rope pivoted suddenly. Vomit rose in my throat. I glanced down at the water. I'd climbed perhaps five feet; nothing against the task that remained. And I saw something else too. Anderson was leaving; already his boat was backing off at the entrance to the gorge. Why? I forced the question from my mind. He'd have a reason, even if I couldn't see it. I forced myself to climb. The strain on my legs was murderous and the pressure on my feet was just where it hurt most under the instep. It was probably correct technique to take the weight on the ball of the foot; I understood that, but couldn't make myself do it. The further my foot went through the stirrups, the safer I felt and to hell with the pain!

Slide the Jumar up, step after it, slide again. I was beginning to get the hang of it. But it remained difficult, each step upward an effort in concentration. Each movement of hand and leg must be co-ordinated, and it was impossible to achieve any kind of rhythm. So every step was a new operation, begun and considered and executed with desperate care. I fought my way slowly upward, nearing the overhang that seemed increasingly to press its weight down towards me. He shall not pass! I looked up at it, grimly. I bloody well had to pass.

, All the while the rope twirled slowly and I made myself concentrate on the rope itself, trying to ignore the cliffs as they swung past, first one way then the other. Up with Jumar and foot together. Check the clip. Transfer weight. Steady myself. Now the next clip, the next foot . . .

Then I was at the overhang. I slipped the top Jumar clip up until it actually scraped on rock, then raised myself and tried to work out how to get past. I could see only one way. I'd have to push myself and the rope clear of the rock by sheer strength, hand flat against the rock-face, then slip

the clip past. I brought up the under clip and secured it, balanced myself, and tried . . . A puff of wind ruined it. Just one puff that spun me out of control, trapped my fingers between rope and rock and cracked my head blindingly against the cliff face. For a moment I hung dazed, my weight on belt and stirrup, held upright only by my own trapped hand, now being ground agonizingly against the stone. I struggled frantically to release it, but only' succeeded in hurting myself more. With my teeth gritted against the pain I forced myself to think. But there was no other way. I'd have to repeat what I'd done before : push against the cliff to force the rope out a little, then pull my hand away. It meant I'd have no handgrip on the rope at all.

But there wasn't time to look for subtleties, even if they existed. The pressure of the rope on my trapped hand was crushing. I gave a sudden angry push, snatched my hand clear and, clouted my head again. I hung there dizzily, turning slowly in the air sixty feet above the swirling water. It was impossible. There must be another way. Elbows? What if I pushed with my elbows, still holding the rope? The first try failed, but the second worked and I slid the Jumar triumphantly over the rock edge. Now she other. Got it! I waited for a moment, nursing my hand, till the pain faded a little, before forcing myself up again. The going was, desperately difficult now, the rope taut against a long vertical section of the rock face. I had to strain my body away from it with the toe of one boot just to make space for the' Jumars to slide. But the system still worked. I fought for height and height was slowly being won. I was more than halfway, aching from the strain, but confident now in the equipment. And at least, pinned as I was to the face, that awful vertigo-inducing pivoting had stopped.

A few more feet and I gave myself a rest, equalizing the clips, letting my weight fall evenly on to the two stirrups. I counted slowly to sixty and started again. But by now it was grindingly hard going. My strength was diminishing; each upward thrust was a greater effort than the one

before. For a while I know I even ceased to think with any clarity; at any rate, I have no memory of the next part of the climb after that brief rest. I was within ten feet of the top when something thrust itself into my consciousness and for a moment I failed to recognize what it was. I think I must have been reliving what had happened here the night before, confusing one day with another, because at first the light meant nothing.

Suddenly, I was trembling awake again, staring in horror towards the entrance to the foaming channel beneath. A big fishing boat had appeared there. A boat with a searchlight. The nightmare was repeating itself! I was held in the bright beam like a fly on a wall!

Terrified now, I forced myself upward. Only half a dozen steps more. Only five. A bullet whanged off the rock close to ine and fizzed off into the darkness. I flattened myself as close as I could to the rock and managed another upward thrust. Then another. There was a shallow cleft in the rock to my left and I forced myself into its sparse shelter as below me somebody opened up with an automatic weapon and bullets smacked in dozens against the rock and sang away. Another step. Cautious as hell, trying to stay within the crack. The firing had stopped. Empty magazine? Pause to reload? I took a chance and made another two feet. The cliff edge was close above me now, less than three feet or so from my hands. Still no firing. I got foot and hand in position and thrust quickly and suddenly and was cowering in the cleft as the next bullets cracked against the rock. One more. Just one. One more thrust and a quick wriggle and I'd be in cover. The searchlight was unwavering, my shelter desperately inadequate. I waited . . . and realized they were waiting, too. When I moved they'd fire.

That was when the next act of the nightmare began. It was uncanny and for a moment I didn't believe it, but it was there, the sound was there: clear and unmistakable high above. A helicopter came clattering over the Noss cliffs!

I watched it in bewilderment. Elliot and Willingham? What were they . .? And then I knew suddenly, and realized

that the men on the fishing boat would be watching the helicopter, too. Briefly, perhaps but they'd watch it. With a last, long desperate thrust I reached the edge, gripped it, and hauled myself over. For a moment, breathless and exhausted, I lay flat on the top pf the Holm.

But that moment was all I could afford. I couldn't, daren't stay there. I stared up at the helicopter as it veered across the sky towards me. It had followed the boat ! That was how it had got there. Now the helicopter was going to land up here. I crawled away from the cliff edge, then tried to stand up and found I couldn't. I took a moment or two to untangle the reason from my own confusion. But it was simple enough. The Jumars and the belt still held me to the rope.

Desperately I fumbled with the belt buckle, released it and set off at a stumbling run across the surface. Above me the helicopter was slowing, beginning to hover in preparation for landing. What had Anderson said? Fifteen paces from his hide towards the point where he'd secured the rope. I got to the hide, turned back and started counting. Then a shot came from above, a single sharp crack amid the engine's roar. Christ, they were shooting at me, too ! Elliot and Willingham!

From nowhere a mammoth voice boomed, 'Stand still, Sellers.' But I didn't stand still. The helicopter must have some loudspeaker equipment. It boomed again. Twelve paces, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. I dropped to my knees, searching, and found it. A plastic bottle, just as Anderson had said. Tucked in a little depression. I shook it and heard the water gurgle. The transparency was in the water.

`Stand still or we fire!' the great voice boomed.

I ignored it, stood up and, clutching the bottle, sprinted for the cliff edge.