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  ‘Bloody fantastic!’ said Van Loon, smoothing his hand along the varnished wood.

  Pol had waddled into the upper wardroom and now sank down on one of the leather couches, breathing hard. The customs man came on board; Neil showed him the papers, and the man looked quickly through the boat, opening cupboards and peering under the hatch. In one locker he found a crate with a dozen bottles of vintage Epernay ’55. Neil lifted one out and fired the cork, hosing champagne into four glasses, with one for the customs man before he went ashore. They finished the bottle and Van Loon put his head under the engine-cover, checking the valves and pumps and oil valves.

  ‘Is she all right?’ said Neil.

  ‘Terrific! Beautiful! The tanks are almost full, too. We need perhaps another three hundred litres of oil.’ He switched on the ignition. The diesels spluttered and grunted and he eased down the ivory levers, allowing the engines to turn freely. The noise purred along the darkening jetty.

  The customs man had told them where the fuel bunker was, a couple of hundred yards along the dock past the sea-wall. Neil said, ‘You take her round and get her filled up, and I’ll buy some food for the trip.’

  ‘Don’t worry about drink,’ cried Van Loon, ‘we have champagne for dinner and champagne for breakfast and champagne for lunch!’

  Neil went into the wardroom and found Pol on his back along one of the leather couches. His eyes were closed and his face had gone an unhealthy mauve colour. ‘Hey, Charles!’ He shook him. Pol opened his eyes and groaned. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ said Neil.

  Pol sat up slowly, trying to get his breath: ‘Ça va? Ça va! Just a touch of acid.’

  ‘I should lay off the drink for a bit,’ said Neil, ‘now listen. Van Loon’s taking the boat round to refuel. Have you got some money to pay?’

  Pol handed him his wallet. ‘There’s enough there,’ he muttered, rolling back on to the couch.

  Neil took the wallet into the wheelhouse; judging by its thickness it must have held at least £150 in Greek currency. He gave it gingerly to Van Loon: ‘There’s a lot of money there — don’t spend it all on ouzo. I’ll meet you at the bunker.’

  He went ashore, along the jetty past the harbour police; and it was then that he began to have his first premonition of impending calamity. After all, he had only Van Loon’s word that the man could navigate a ship across several hundred miles of sea, at night, to a strange shore; and although they had maps and good engines, Neil knew that treacherous weather could blow up off the Peloponnese in a matter of minutes and smash even sixty-foot ships on to the rocks. And now there was Pol, architect of the whole trip, lying drunk and groaning with acid in his belly.

  Neil walked through the gates, past the immigration and customs buildings. Ahead there was a lot of shouting and blaring of jukeboxes from bars with names like Spitfire Club and The Captain’s Table. He came to a restaurant where he bought food for the two days’ crossing: a length of salami, ham, cured beef, olives and oranges and toadstool loaves of bread, a hunk of cheese and three dozen eggs.

  Outside, a grey-haired sailor sat in the street muttering to himself. The dusk was falling fast now, the city lights winking on across the bay. Neil was about fifty yards from the port gates when he saw the Renault Gordini. It stood in the shadow of the immigration offices. There was no-one inside it.

  He hurried past the gates, showing his passport as he began to run, clutching the bag of food, turning and sprinting down the quay towards the fuel bunkers. There had been lights inside the offices and he had heard several voices talking together.

  The ‘Serafina’ was tied up with a fat pipe screwed into her side like an umbilical cord. The two harbour police stood by watching. Neil leapt on board, almost dropping the food over the side, and yelled at Van Loon, ‘Get us out of here! Those two Frenchmen are down by the gates!’

  Van Loon nodded gravely. ‘Two minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Not two minutes — now!’

  The Dutchman went over and shouted something at the Greek mechanic tending the pipe. Neil glanced fearfully towards the immigration offices. He didn’t think anyone had seen him. Jadot was probably making a routine check of the port. Van Loon had counted out the money to the mechanic and the pipe was being unscrewed. ‘Come on, start her up!’ Neil yelled.

  ‘O.K., O.K.,’ said Van Loon calmly.

  Neil, watched him begin to untie the ropes. To spare himself the suspense he ducked into the galley with the parcel of food. There was a mild explosion and something hit him hard in the face just below the eye. He stepped backwards and heard a peal of laughter. A cork bounced against the galley wall. Pol came swaying through with the second bottle of champagne; his colour had improved and his eyes glittered. ‘Where’s your glass, Monsieur Ingleby?’

  ‘You damn fool!’ said Neil, rubbing his cheek. ‘That Captain Jadot — he’s down at the gates!’ Behind him the engines started up with a loud whine, as Van Loon let the throttles full out. Neil ran back to the wheelhouse.

  They were coming down the quay, about a hundred yards away. Jadot was in front with the thick-set man at his heels. ‘Let her go!’ Neil cried.

  The deck tilted and shuddered; there was a churning and splashing through blue smoke; and the jetty suddenly swung away, the bows heading into the open sea.

  Jadot had broken into a run. Neil remembered about him being able to hit a man in the head with a pistol from forty metres. The needle on the rev-counter jerked round the luminous dial. The boat would be out of range in a few moments now. Jadot reached the harbour police and stopped. He would hardly try to shoot it out with them around, Neil thought.

  Pol came into the wheelhouse with the bottle of champagne. ‘My old friend Jadot, eh?’ he said with a grin, handing Neil a glass. ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But they’ve certainly got our descriptions from the immigration people.’ Neil emptied the champagne in one gulp; he was pale and his hands shook.

  ‘They don’t know who we are,’ said Van Loon, ‘they think we are just tourists.’

  ‘Jadot and his friend will know who we are,’ said Neil grimly, ‘and they’ll know we’re not just going over to Crete for a dirty weekend.’

  Pol shrugged. ‘They’re left behind — they can’t do anything now. We’ll have other things to worry about after tomorrow,’ he added ominously, returning to the wardroom.

  Van Loon was marking one of the navigation charts, plotting a course due-south across the Saronic Gulf past Aegina and Hydra, down the Peloponnese coast between the isles of Milos and Cythera, then south-west of Crete into the Mediterranean. Neil stood beside him and watched the dipping lights of Athens drift away to the east.

  The sea was growing darker, the sky a luminous velvet with a large round moon corning up over the horizon. The swell began to smack against the sides of the boat; but there was no wind. Neil switched on the radio and tuned in to Europe Number One. There had been nineteen deaths during the day in clashes between the Secret Army and French security forces in the capital of the Protectorate. An hour ago nearly a quarter of a million people had gathered in the Place de la Nation in Paris to demand Government action to crush the revolt. The demonstrators were chanting: ‘Le Fascisme ne passera pas!’ It sounded to Neil as remote and nostalgic as a snatch of Christopher Isherwood read again after many years.

  Back in the wardroom Pol was peeling the foil off a third bottle of champagne. Neil sank down and drank with him, to the steady beat of the engines. Later they made a meal of the salami, bread and cheese, drank more champagne, and Pol talked about his wife. ‘The Germans killed her,’ he said, chewing quietly, ‘they shot her in Nancy in 1942. They caught her trying to contact some Canadian prisoners.’

  ‘You were both in the Resistance?’

  ‘Yes, we worked together.’ He paused: ‘I’m too old for women now. Too old, too ugly.’ His face had collapsed suddenly, utterly sad, staring at nothing. ‘She was something of a bitch,’ he went on, pouring more champagne, ‘
before the war she went off and lived with a man in Hungary. She came back to me after the attack on Poland, and we worked together against the Nazis, but we never slept with each other again.’

  There was another pause. Neil said, ‘What exactly are you going to do when you get to the Protectorate?’

  ‘Catch General Guérin.’ He said it as though he were talking about landing a fish.

  Neil nodded: ‘And how are you going to do that?’

  Pol leant back and looked at the ceiling. Ignoring the question he said, ‘When Guérin is gone, the Secret Army is gone! Snuff out Guérin — the movement is finished, it dies like a snake without a head!’

  ‘Snakes go on living when you cut their heads off,’ said Neil.

  ‘They go on moving, not living. Without Guérin, the Secret Army will move for a little, it will pretend to live, but it will be doomed and dead! And Fascism in France will be doomed and dead with it!’ He laughed and came stumbling over with the bottle, refilling Neil’s glass; and Neil lay back, suddenly very tired, drinking Epernay ’55 and thinking of the quarter of a million people now swelling across Paris in protest against Fascism.

  When the bottle was finished he went into the wardroom below and flopped out fully dressed on one of the canopied bunks.

  CHAPTER 6

  Neil woke suddenly. The cabin was dark and airless, throbbing to the rhythm of the diesels. He looked at his watch: he had been asleep for just under an hour. There was a shaft of light outside; a door opened and he heard a groan and a gush of water. He sat up, kicked on his shoes and went through to the passage. Pol was squeezed into the toilet, his huge frame crumpled over the lavatory, gasping, ‘Ah merde!’ between heaves and retches.

  Neil got some Alka-Seltzer out of his rucksack: ‘Come on, drink this!’

  Pol’s mighty head rose slowly, the skin a purplish-white streaked with sweat; the kiss curl had come unstuck and lay across his brow like a wet spider. His eyes tried to light up with a smile which the mouth resisted. ‘Too much to drink,’ he croaked, gulping the Alka-Seltzer.

  ‘Champagne on Greek whisky,’ said Neil, ‘you deserve to be ill!’ Pol turned miserably back to the lavatory. Neil left him there and went up on deck.

  Van Loon was at the wheel, solid as a statue, his eyes on the horizon. He turned as Neil came up: ‘The fat fellow is pretty sick with drink, huh?’ He laughed quietly and looked back to sea. ‘That is the island of Aegina out there,’ he added, pointing to a few pricks of light far off to starboard.

  The swell was rising and the bows beginning to dip giddily. Neil had always been a good sailor but he was worried about Pol: if the man were now to combine sea-sickness with the effects of whisky and champagne, he was going to be in poor shape to represent the French Republic in its showdown against Fascism.

  Van Loon took Neil’s arm: ‘Look there, a good fast ship!’

  Neil saw a sharp light moving swiftly behind them, about half a mile away. He guessed that it must be doing nearly thirty knots. He stood watching it grow closer, feeling the cool salt breeze on his face, and wondered what Caroline Tucker was doing at this moment. The thought was not a restful one. He tried to forget her at once, and went down to have another look at Pol. He was lying on one of the bunks, his breath hissing behind the velvet curtains. Neil was turning away when Van Loon shouted, ‘Hey, come quick!’

  Neil clattered up to the wheelhouse. The Dutchman was staring out to starboard, just as a light swept round and dazzled them both. The motor-launch was heading directly towards them. When it was no more than twenty yards away, still coming at full speed, he cut the diesels and pulled the ‘Serafina’ over so that she was riding alongside the launch.

  Neil hoped to see a Greek flag or police sign on the launch, but there was none. A man stood shadowed beside the spotlight, which was still trained on the wheelhouse. Van Loon waved, and the man waved back. The launch engines had died down and the two boats drifted towards each other.

  It was a two-seater, high-speed motorboat with a covered cabin. It bumped gently against the ‘Serafina’, then sprang away, rising dangerously on the swell. When it touched again, two men stepped into the blaze of the spotlight.

  Neil gripped the rail in front of him and a chill rippled over his skin. The man in front was Captain Jadot. He jumped nimbly across on to the ‘Serafina’s’ heaving deck, followed by the thick-set man with the black crewcut, who tied a rope from the launch to the deck rail.

  Jadot looked round the wheelhouse, then said to Neil, almost casually: ‘Where is he?’

  Neil stared at him, his mouth drying up.

  ‘Where is he?’ said Jadot again.

  The thick-set man had stepped round in front of the wheel-house door. From inside his short belted raincoat he pulled out a machine-pistol. Neil gaped at it: it had an air-cooled barrel, perforated like a flute.

  Van Loon had not moved.

  ‘Have you both lost your tongues?’ said Jadot. ‘You know who we want. Where is he? The fat man.’ He had taken off his dark glasses and his naked eyes were holes of black ice. He stood poised forward, fingers curled at his side like a professional fighter.

  Neil said feebly, ‘I’ve told you, he’s not here. He’s in Athens — he’s gone away.’

  Jadot pushed past him, through the wheelhouse into the galley. Neil whispered to Van Loon, ‘We’ve got to do something!’ The Dutchman nodded and said nothing.

  Jadot went into the wardroom, glanced round at the empty champagne bottles, then turned towards the steps below. ‘The fat bastard’s down here!’ he shouted, with sudden ferocity, and started below.

  Neil watched, feeling cold and weak; the muzzle of the machine-pistol was barely two feet away, covering them both. He looked again at Van Loon, who was staring at Jadot as though he did not fully grasp what was happening. Neil closed his eyes for a moment, and had an image of Pol waddling over to a white telephone with a triple whisky in his hand: now lying in the dark, sick as a dog under a velvet canopy, while Jadot went down to kill him, from less than one metre.

  The Frenchman’s head disappeared below. And then Van Loon moved. He moved faster than any human being Neil had ever seen. His long legs snapped apart like a pair of scissors, caught the thick-set man in the groin and lifted him a full inch off the deck. At the same moment he chopped down at the man’s neck with the ridges of his great square hands. The machine-pistol clattered on to the deck and he kicked it gently into the sea.

  The man sagged backwards over the rail, his rubbery face quite green. Van Loon hit him again, without effort, the man’s head jerked backwards with a crack and he went over the side. Part of the body hit the edge of the drifting motor-launch, then plopped into the water and vanished.

  The Dutchman whipped round, his big feet as fast as a dancer’s. He was halfway across the wheel-house when the shot came: a single blasting roar, then silence, and they could hear the sea lapping against the boat.

  Van Loon started down the steps; Neil followed, dazed. The light was on in the lower wardroom. Pol sat in his stockinged feet on the bunk. Captain Jadot was sitting on the floor; his head was sinking slowly and he was making a soft sucking noise. He had been shot through the throat.

  Pol had a small black gun in his hand, which he put away inside his coat when he saw Neil and Van Loon. ‘What happened to the other one?’ he asked.

  ‘I killed him,’ said Van Loon.

  Pol nodded: ‘Jadot was getting careless. He shouldn’t have shouted like that. He woke me up. Besides, he had to switch on the light first.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ said Neil.

  ‘Almost.’ Pol stood up and tottered across the floor: ‘We must get him out of here. I don’t want Biaggi’s carpets messed up.’

  Jadot’s head was resting on his knees now.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ said Pol. Van Loop took the man under the armpits and pulled him towards the steps. Thick dark blood was pumping out over his shirt and trousers. Neil felt sick. The man looked very small, as Van Loon began t
o haul him up the steps. His legs dangled like a puppet’s legs, the trousers rumpled up round the knees. Neil noticed he was wearing blue and white chequered socks.

  Van Loon dragged him out on to the deck, propped him against the rail and tipped him over. There was a splash, then the sea was empty, dimpled silver and shiny-black under the moon. ‘What about the bloody boat?’ he asked.

  ‘Sink her,’ said Pol, ‘if anyone finds her drifting out here we’ll have every patrol in the Mediterranean hunting for us.’

  ‘She will take perhaps one hour to go down,’ said Van Loon, jumping aboard the motor-launch.

  ‘We’ll have to take a chance on that.’

  Van Loon turned off the spotlight and began opening the seacocks: ‘Hey, what about the bodies?’

  ‘They won’t float up for at least three days,’ Pol chuckled, ‘then the current could carry them anywhere. They might even turn up on the beach at Cannes!’ He took Neil by the arm and began to lead him into the wardroom.

  ‘You know,’ said Neil, ‘I’ve never heard a shot fired in anger before.’

  ‘Ah, my dear Ingleby, you’ll hear plenty in the next few days!’ He shouted over his shoulder to Van Loon, ‘When you’ve finished, better start washing some of the blood off before it dries!’

  Neil said, ‘I think I could do with some more champagne.’

  PART 3: REVOLT

  CHAPTER 1

  The city came out of the sea-fog, tall and salt-white, rising in a great curve along the margin of the water, with the small square houses of the Casbah climbing on one another’s shoulders into the hills beyond.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon of the second day. Van Loon cut the throttle until they were almost drifting. There was no sound now except for the chugging of the diesels. ‘It is like a ghost city,’ he said, gazing at the sea-front less than a quarter of a mile away.