The Ravagers

XXIII

IT WAS a high bluff overlooking the ocean. The sun was down, but inshore you could still see wicked underwater rocks lurking beneath the innocent-looking surface. Farther out, the sea was dark and impenetrable. Way out there, a white boat was heading diagonally offshore, leaving a Vshaped wake.

"He's still holding on," said Commander Howland. "I guess he hasn't bothered to open the envelope. Or maybe he'd keep on anyway, to get away. So Mrs. Drilling switched papers on us?"

"So she says."

"It's a pity. We had some very pretty ones fixed up by some of the best scientific brains in the world. It would be ironic if a handful of old letters turned the trick just as well." Howland put his eye to the tripod-mounted telescope behind which he was lying. It was a massive glass, looking like an overgrown half-binocular, with an objective lens as big as two fists. Howland said, "As it seems to be doing. Course, approximately due north. Speed, about twenty knots. He's got the old bucket up to maximum hull speed now; look at the way she's squatting. You know he put a new engine in her last year, a big one. They all figure if they double the horsepower they'll double the speed, but it doesn't work like that. All those extra horses just gave him about three knots more than he had with the old mill. The tub wasn't built to go faster."

I said, "You seem to know quite a bit about Muir, Sir." In the business, we make a practice of siring all officers above the rank of major or lieutenant commander. It makes for good working relations with the service brass.

"We've been watching him for three years, just in case we might have need of him or the people he contacts from time to time. It was merely a question of getting him something big enough that he'd feel justified in arranging a rendezvous." Howland rose. "Take a look if you like. I'm going over to talk with our friends. Sorry I can't invite you. The less you learn about the technical end of this, the less you'll have to forget."

"Sure."

I watched him go over to a knot of uniformed men stationed farther down the bluff. They had some radio stuff set up, and I couldn't have cared less about the technical details. I was, however, just a bit curious about whom all the communications gear were supposed to talk to, but I didn't expect to be told and I never was. I got down behind the low telescope and put my eye to the ocular and got things focused. The boat came in sharp and clear as if in broad daylight. It was quite a glass.

I lay alone, watching Muir's little vessel buck the waves out there, smashing them into sheets of flying spray. Jenny was gone. This was all too highly classified for her to witness; besides, she wanted to be handy to learn what, if anything, was happening in a town called Greenwich, B.C. Besides, she probably wanted a bath and some clean clothes more than she wanted international secrets; she'd probably had enough of those. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

Far out there, the white boat changed position in the water. The stern rose, the bow settled, and spray ceased to fly. I was aware that Commander Howland had returned to stand over me.

"He's cut the power," I said. "He's stopping."

"Excuse me. May I look?"

I got up and brushed myself off. Instinctively I looked skyward, but I couldn't see any planes. There probably was at least one up there, however. Whatever kind of a trap it was they were setting, they wouldn't rely entirely on shore-based observation. I heard Howland draw a sharp breath, and looked down. He was beckoning me to the scope.

"Take a look," he whispered, as if he could be heard out there, miles at sea. "Take a good look, fella. There's a sight you won't see often. Not outside a top secret Soviet shipyard. One of their latest and best, and we've got her. We've got her in the bag!"

I lay down again, and got the white boat sharp in the powerful telescope. I saw that it wasn't alone in the gathering dark. Beyond it lay a great, low, black, wet, monstrous shape. It used to be that automobiles looked like carriages without horses, and submarines looked like real ships that might just duck under the surface occasionally, but this was no ship. It was obviously a creature of the deeps. It was bigger than any pig-boat I'd ever seen, and faster, too. It had been still only a moment; now it was shooting ahead and slipping back under the sea. A moment later it was gone.

"She's down," I reported. Then I said "Muir's boat seems to be sinking."

"Yes. He'd have opened the sea cocks before he abandoned her."

Howland's voice had a preoccupied sound. I looked up and he was watching, not the sea, but the fancy wrist-chronometer he was wearing. Muir's boat settled slowly and sank stern first. There was nothing left to see out there. I got up and stood beside the Commander. I saw his lips move.

"Now," he whispered. "Now!"

Nothing happened for a long breath of time. Then a white jet grew on the dark ocean far out there, and out of the middle rose a tremendous geyser of churned-up water. In this water were chunks of black debris. By the time the sound of the explosion reached us, everything was starting to settle back. Presently there was only a widening ring of oily, disturbed water out there. I head Howland make a funny little sound, and looked at him again. He swallowed oddly, and cleared his throat, and swallowed again.

He said, "Damn, I hate to see a ship die, even one of theirs. You haven't seen anything, of course."

"No, sir."

"If you did see something, it was an accident. A terrible, unexplained accident. Expressions of sympathy will be sent to Moscow, you may be sure, as soon as the local people establish just what it was that blew up in their front yard."

I said, "I don't suppose this has anything to do with the U.S. missile sub that went down on patrol a while back. It couldn't be that our friends tried a bluff of some kind way down in the ocean depths, and we've just given them the only kind of answer they understand?"

He looked at me for a moment. Then he said softly, "Let us hope it was a bluff, Mr. Helm. And let us hope and pray they understand the answer, and believe we mean it, as we do. And of course I have no idea what you are talking about, none at all."

Back in Washington, the consensus seemed to be that old Helm had lucked out as usual. At least that was the attitude I sensed in a certain office on the second floor of a certain old building, never mind where.

"Everyone seems quite satisfied with your performance, Eric," Mac said. "However-"

"Yes, sir," I said.

He hesitated. "Never mind. There is a gentleman named Johnston in town. You will see him tomorrow and tell him whatever seems advisable. Let us try to keep our colleagues happy."

"Happy," I said. "Yes, sir."

"And I have a message for you. A lady wants to see you at the bar at the Hotel Vance at five-thirty this evening."

"Any particular lady?" I asked.

"She said to tell you that Penelope was safe. I gather she wishes to express her gratitude."

I almost didn't recognize her. I don't suppose I was really expecting to find a disheveled young woman in a dirty blue jumper, after the days that had passed, but I wasn't prepared for the extent of the transformation. She was wearing something emerald-green and slinky and Chinese-looking, and the freckles were kind of subdued but the thick hair was a shade or two redder than I remembered, very soft and smooth and bright.

"Mrs. Drilling, ma'am," I said.

She turned from the bar and smiled. I'd forgotten what a pretty woman she really was. "And just what do I call you, Mr. Government Man," she asked. "What is your name today?"

I said, "Looking like that, you don't have to call any man by name, Irish. Just snap your fingers."

She laughed, and stopped laughing. "Penny's all right," she said seriously.

"I know. I got your message."

"She's with her father. I don't know how it's all going to work out, but in the meantime-" She hesitated. She seemed a little embarrassed. She said rather stiffly, "I pay my debts, Dave."

"Meaning what?"

"We had a… an arrangement, remember? But the payoff was kind of interrupted. Well, you were in my corner when I needed you. You were cruel and ruthless, but I guess you had to be. You accomplished something I couldn't have." She hesitated. "What I mean is, you did your part. I'll do mine. If you're still interested."

I looked at her for a moment. Then I signaled a bartender to bring me a martini. I looked back to Jenny, who was watching me, waiting.

I said, very carefully, "You had an arrangement with a shady private dick named Clevenger, who no longer exists."

A little frowning crease showed between her eyes. "In other words, you aren't interested."

"I didn't say that, Irish. I just mean that you're under no obligations because of what you may have promised a fictitious character in a moment of stress."

She said, rather coolly, "Aren't you being overly honorable?"

I said, "Hell, I'm just setting the record straight. Nobody owes nobody nothing."

After a moment she smiled slowly. "Yes. I see what you mean. It is better that way, isn't it?"

She was right. It was.