The Keys Of Hell

FIFTEEN

IT WAS WARM IN THE CABIN. CHAVASSE vigorously rubbed himself down and dressed quickly in a spare pair of denim working pants and a heavy sweater of Carlo’s.

There was a knock on the door and Liri Kupi called, “Are you dressed?”

She came in carrying a mug of coffee and he took it gratefully. It was scalding hot and the fragrance seemed to put new life into him. “Best I ever tasted. Where’s Guilio?”

“He went up to the wheelhouse. Said something about charting the course.”

She opened the little box, gave him one of her Macedonian cigarettes and struck a match for him, holding it in her cupped hands like a man.

Chavasse blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at her shrewdly. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Guilio? Who wouldn’t?”

“He’s got twenty years on you, you know that?”

She shrugged and said calmly, “You know what they say about good wine.”

Chavasse slipped an arm about her shoulders. “You’re quite a girl, Liri. I’d say he was a lucky man.”

He swallowed the rest of his coffee, handed her the jug and went up the companionway. It started to rain as he went out on deck and the mist draped itself across everything in a gray shroud. Orsini and Carlo were leaning over the charts when he went into the wheelhouse.

“What’s the score?” he said.

Orsini shrugged. “I think we should try the main channel out. It’s quicker and we could stand a good chance of getting away with it. It’s Yugoslavian territory on the other side and Albanian boats don’t like going in too close. If we can get into the open, nothing they’ve got stands a chance of catching us.”

“I should have thought Kapo would count on us doing just that.”

“He very probably has. I say we go and find out.”

Chavasse shrugged. “That’s all right by me, but I think it might be an idea to break out a little hardware, just in case.”

“You and Carlo can handle that end. I’ll get things moving up here.”

Chavasse and the young Italian went below, opened the box seat and unpacked the weapons. There was still a submachine gun left, a dozen grenades and the old Bren. They went back on deck and laid the weapons out on the floor of the wheelhouse under the chart table, ready for action.

It was just after five A.M. when the engines shuddered into life and Orsini took the Buona Esperanza into the mist. Chavasse stood in the prow beside Liri and rain kicked into his face and the wind, blowing in from the sea, lifted the mist into strange shapes.

The girl stared into the grayness eagerly, lips parted, a touch of color in each cheek. “Are you glad to be going?” he said.

She shrugged briefly. “I’m leaving nothing behind.”

As the light grew stronger, the dark silver lances of the rain became visible, stabbing down through the mist, and somewhere a curlew called eerily. Once, twice, and he waited with bated breath, trapped by a childhood memory. Once for joy, two for sorrow, three for a death.

There was no third call, which left them with a little sorrow, but that he could bear. He turned and went back to the wheelhouse.

FOR HALF AN HOUR THEY MOVED SLOWLY along the broad channel, crossing from one lagoon into the other, changing direction only once. Visibility was down to twenty yards, but the reeds were falling away now and the channel was widening.

The water began to kick against the hull in long swelling ripples and Orsini grinned tightly. “The Buene. We’re about half a mile from the sea.”

The launch crept forward, the engines a low rumble that was almost drowned in the splashing of the heavy rain. Chavasse examined the chart. The estuary was a mass of sandbanks, and the main channel, the one that they had used on the way in, was no more than thirty yards. If Kapo was anywhere, it would be there.

A few moments later, Orsini cut the engines and they drifted with the current. He opened the side window and leaned out.

“We’re almost there. If they’re patroling, we’ll hear the engines.”

Chavasse went on deck and stood in the prow listening. Carlo and Liri joined him. At first there was nothing, only the wind and the sizzle of rain, then Carlo held up a hand.

“I think I hear something.”

Chavasse turned, signaling Orsini down, and the Italian swung the wheel, taking the boat in to where a low hog’s back of sand lifted from the sea. They grounded with a slight shudder and Chavasse ran back to the wheelhouse.

“Carlo thinks he heard something. No sense in running into anything we can avoid. We’ll take a look on foot.”

He stood on the rail and jumped, landing in a couple of inches of water. Carlo tossed the submachine gun to him, then followed, and they moved into the mist along the sandbank.

It stretched for several hundred yards, in some places water slopping across it so that they had to wade. The noise of an engine was by now quite unmistakable. At times it faded, then a minute or two later grew louder again.

“They must be patrolling the mouth of the channel,” Chavasse said.

Carlo pulled him down into the sand. The motor boat floated out of the mist no more than twenty yards away. They had a quick glimpse of a soldier crouching on the roof of the wheelhouse, a machine pistol in his hands, and then the mist swallowed it again.

They ran back along the sandbank and the sound of the motor boat faded behind them. The mist seemed to be a little thicker and the water was rising, flooding in across the dark spine of sand, tugging at their boots, and the Buona Esperanza loomed out of the gloom.

Chavasse waded into the water and Orsini reached down to give him a hand over the rail. “Are they there?”

Chavasse nodded and explained briefly what they had seen. “What happens now?”

They went back into the wheelhouse and Orsini leaned over the chart. “We could return to the marshes. There is a way through, certainly, but it would take many hours with a boat of this size and there is no guarantee. By that time, Kapo could have called in the Albanian navy, such as it is. They could give us trouble if we ran into them with no way round.”

“Have we any choice?”

Orsini traced a finger across the chart. “There’s a channel here. It runs a mile to the southwest, emerging at Cat Island. See where I mean?”

“What’s the snag? It looks good to me.”

“As I said earlier, the river isn’t used much these days because of the border dispute, and the channels, such as they are, have been allowed to silt up. There’s no knowing just how much water there is anymore. Probably shoaled up.”

“Are you willing to try?”

“If the rest of you are.”

There was really no question. Chavasse knew that as he glanced at Liri, and Orsini pressed the starter and reversed off the sandbank. The launch turned in a long sweeping curve and started back up the river.

Orsini leaned out of the side window, eyes narrowed into the mist, and after a while he gave a quick grunt and swung the wheel, taking them between low, humped sandbanks. He reduced speed to dead slow and the boat moved forward as cautiously as an old lady finding her way across a busy street.

Waves slapped hollowly against the bottom, a sure sign of shallow water, and once or twice there was a slight protesting jar and a scraping as they grazed a shoulder of sand. It was perhaps five minutes later that they ploughed to a halt.

Orsini reversed quickly. At first the launch refused to budge and then it parted the sand with an ugly sucking noise. Carlo vaulted over the side without a word to anyone. The water rose to his chest, and as he waded forward, it dropped to waist level.

He changed direction to the left and a moment later it lifted to his armpits again. He waved quickly and Orsini swung the wheel, taking the boat after him.

The young Italian swam forward into the shoals, sounding the bottom every few yards, and behind him the Buona Esperanza carefully followed his circuitous trail. And then a wave lifted out of the mist, swamping him, and he went under.

He surfaced and swam back to the launch, and when Chavasse pulled him in, there was a wide grin on his face. “Deep water. I couldn’t touch bottom. We’re through.”

Orsini waved from the wheelhouse and gave the engines more power, swinging the wheel to take them out of the estuary to sea. Fifty yards beyond the entrance, the dark bulk of Cat Island lifted out of the mist and he turned to port. As they rounded the point, the current pushing against them, engines roared into life and a gray naval patrol boat surged out of the rock inlet where she had been waiting.

As she swept across their bows, a heavy machine gun started to fire, bullets sweeping across the deck, shattering glass in the wheelhouse. Chavasse had a quick glimpse of Kapo at the rail, still wearing his hunting jacket with the fur collar, mouth open as he cried his men on.

Carlo appeared in the doorway of the wheelhouse, the submachine gun at his hip, firing as he crossed the deck to the rail. On the patrol boat, someone screamed and Kapo ducked out of sight.

Already Orsini was taking his engines to full power, and from the forward deck of the patrol boat another machine gun started to fire, tracer and cannon hammering into the hull of the Buona Esperanza, great shudders rushing through her entire frame as she reeled at the impact.

And then they were through, prow lifting over the waves as the patrol boat faded into the mist behind them. Chavasse picked himself up from the deck and gave a hand to Liri. There was blood on her face and she wiped it away quickly.

“Are you all right?” he said.

She nodded. “A flying splinter, that’s all.”

Carlo turned, the submachine gun hugged to his breast. For the first time since Chavasse had known him there was a smile on his face.

“I gave the bastards something to remember me by.”

Chavasse moved to the door of the wheelhouse. The windows were shattered, glass scattered across the floor, but Orsini seemed to be all in one piece.

“I got down quick,” he called above the roar of the engine. “Did you see Kapo?”

“For a moment there I thought he’d put one over on us. We should have reckoned on the possibility of him having both exits watched.”

“I hope the swine’s head rolls for this.”

As Orsini grinned savagely, the engines missed a couple of times, faltered, tried to pick up, then stopped completely.

The Buona Esperanza ploughed forward, her prow biting into a wave, slowed and started to drift with the current.