I looked at my watch. “What time was this?”
“Two hours ago. They’ve been trying to get me ever since, but the line was down with that damned wind. One of the guards unlocked the cell door to give him his evening meal, and both the men in the cell with him were stretched out on the floor with their necks broken. He says Histermann moved out past him like a bolt of greased lightning, and no one was able to stop him. He got clear away.”
“And they’re following him?”
“There’s a dragnet out.”
“Call it off.”
He rubbed a tired hand over his narrow, aristocratic face. “And we’re sitting here, listening to a fado...All right, I’ll see they don’t track him down to the Bocca, if that’s what you want. Not that they’re very likely to.” He hesitated. “I suppose that’s where he’ll head for?”
“Of course. Even when he thought he was all set for a very painful death, didn’t you notice? He was straining not to tell us exactly where the boat was hidden. Just the glimmer of hope that he might not be dying after all. They die hard, those men, and they never know they’re dead until they’re buried. Even then, I suspect, they are never really sure.”
Fenrek said again impatiently: “For God’s sake, I told them he’d try and make a break for it! I told them he was more trouble than they thought, and still...”
I said gently: “Hardly your fault, Fenrek. Two men in the cell with him, that’s more than reasonable precaution. How was the wind?”
“Huh?”
“The wind?”
Even under the stress of the moment, he’d remembered to check. He said: “Dying down and veering to the west now.”
I got up to go. I tossed Estrilla the keys to the little bug and said: “This is where we trade cars again. Hope you enjoyed the Jensen.”
She gave me my keys. I finished my drink and looked at Astrid. Her face was terribly lined and worried. I said: “It’s all right, Astrid, I’ll be back.” I turned to Fenrek and said: “I’ll be back by daylight.”
“And if you’re not?”
It was hard to tell him. But there was so much that could go wrong. I said slowly:
“If I’m not...it’s no good waiting for that whaler to come out of there tomorrow night. He’ll have the toxin on him, and God knows it it will be properly protected. So, if you sink his boat...you might have a major contamination on your hands, a seaborne infection that’ll spread along the coast until...For God’s sake, I don’t even want to think about it.”
“So?”
“There’s only one thing to be done. If I’m not out of there by daylight, get the Navy to lob a couple of shells into the Bocca. Like that we’ll know it’s buried a hundred feet underground, the only safe place for it.”
“And you, Cain?”
I said: “If I’m not back on time, I’ll be quite past caring. I’ll see you.”
I went out into the cool, still night and listened for the roar of the Bocca. It was gone now. There was only silence, and that was all to the good.
CHAPTER 10
I drove down and parked near the Bocca; no attempt this time to hide the car; I wanted it to be seen.
I purposely parked below the skyline so that I would have to cross it on my way to the cave’s entrance; a large sized man looms larger in the darkness, and I didn’t want to be mistaken for a casual passerby. Not that there was much chance of that; anyone with any sense leaves the treacherous Bocca alone at night. I vaulted over the fence, hummed quietly to myself, and kept my ears peeled for any suspicious sound, like the slight click of a safety catch going off; I heard nothing. I didn’t expect to, really.
Now the wind had swung round, and the whole character of the Bocca had changed. A matter of a few degrees was all that it needed to send those heavy seas funneling into the caves in Wagnerian fury; but now, it was a calm and silent place, as though the sea gods’ had exhausted themselves and were resting, waiting for the next time.
I climbed over the precautionary rail, took hold of the iron ladder that had given me such a bad time a while back, and went down quickly to the cavern at the bottom. It was strangely quiet there after the tempestuous fury of the last time. The gate at the bottom was unlocked; so he hadn’t had time to close it, even if he wanted to.
I switched on the big flashlight I’d taken from the Jensen, and went inside. The water was lower and quieter here, and the long and winding tunnel that led to the underground lake was easier of access, brightly lit now by the powerful beam of the light. It took me less than four minutes, walking quickly, to find the whaler. As I’d expected, he’d begun to strip the carburetor down; just the first step in the fault-finding process that would have gotten him nowhere anyway. I looked at it and sort of snorted loudly, and then there was a sudden bright light behind me, the beam of a very powerful searchlight, something like five hundred thousand candlepower, a quartz-iodine flood that turned the darkness of the cavern into brilliant day.
He said, quite quietly, very much in control and not even sounding worried: “Stand absolutely still, not a move of any sort, don’t even put your hands up.”
I froze correctly.
The light changed, and I knew that he’d flicked a reflector to give us overall illumination instead of a beam; a Richter Admiralty Light, then, the kind the British Navy uses; interesting.
He said: “All right, turn round very slowly, I just want to make sure.”
I turned and smiled, and said: “It’s me, Major Loveless. You must have heard the lobsters didn’t eat me.”
“I heard.” He was holding a flat black box in his left hand, a compact affair like a walkie-talkie with a receiver and a mouthpiece built into it, the S-phone that the British Army uses. His ever ready, sawed-off shotgun was in the other. Speaking very quietly into the receiver, he said:
“Yes, it’s him alright, let me know if anyone else comes along.” He hesitated a moment and corrected himself: “No, on second thought, get out from undercover and take a look around. You’ll probably find fifty of them scattered around the beach, waiting.”
I said: “There’s no one else, Major. Just me.”
He said into the walkie-talkie: “Correction, there’s probably a hundred of them.”
Strange how some people will never believe the truth. The easiest thing, sometimes, is to tell them the exact opposite of what you want them to believe.
He flicked off the receiver and said lightly: “So we’re in trouble, aren’t we? Take your jacket off.” I didn’t particularly want to argue, so I did as I was told, and he said, reminding me: “The cave’s only unstable at the entrance, don’t think I won’t fire this thing when I’m ready to, no danger of a fall in here.”
I said: “I know that. I just came down to see how you were getting along with the repair. You know you can’t get out tonight now, don’t you?”
