A Twist Of Sand

Stein was enjoying himself. "Say you are Lieutenant-Commander Peace, the famous war-time commander of Trout. Assume that it is so for the sake of my argument. What of it? What good would it do either me or Lieutenant-Commander Peace, alias Captain Macdonald, to noise it abroad from the housetops that he is now a trawlerman operating from Walvis Bay? Good luck to him, they'd say. To quote the newspapers, he would have rehabilitated himself. The English sense of fair play. He'd taken his rap and got kicked out, why throw it up again in his face, even if he's got a different name and says he's a South African — and even speaks like one? It would not serve any useful purpose whatsoever. Nor would a man in that position on the mere threat of throwing open his past agree to do a job which might involve him with the law once again and wash out any chance at all of leading a decent life in the future. You agreed far too suddenly, Lieutenant-Commander Peace."

I inwardly cursed my own bungling. What did he mean? His use of my own name and his veiled references left me uneasy, very uneasy.

"So what?" I still tried to bluff it out. "Say I am Lieutenant-Commander Peace. What should the Navy care about a man kicked out and treated like dirt after what I'd done for them and the way I risked my neck? I tell you I got a raw deal and a man who has gone through that doesn't sniff at the opportunity of making a little on the side."

"Nicely taken," sneered Stein. "But when I first saw this ship I asked myself, where does a man like that get the best part of Ј200,000 for a modern trawler like Etosha? Why the double-action diesels? Why the yacht-like lines when they should be tubby to hold fish? I hear rumours ashore that Captain Macdonald knows the Skeleton Coast better than any other skipper sailing out of Walvis. They say in the waterfront bars that he keeps to himself. Why? Is he running diamonds from the Skeleton Coast? Is that what those fine lines and fast diesels are for?"

"Ah, bulldust!" snarled Mac, drawn by the reference to his engines.

Stein turned to him with a cold smile.

"That is what I said to myself — bulldust," he remarked agreeably.

He let it sink in and gestured sociably with the Luger.

"Don't you think we should sit down? We have so much to discuss — details of the trip to the Skeleton Coast and so on?"

"There is nothing to discuss," I said flatly, knowing perfectly well that there was. "I won't take you to the Skeleton Coast — under any circumstances whatsoever. That's flat. Now get out — and if you come back again, I'll throw you overboard."

"Brave words, Captain Peace — or is it Lieutenant-Commander? I can never be quite sure in a situation like this," he sneered. He sighed theatrically. "You force me to use cards I don't want to. Macfadden," he said harshly, anticipating a move by Mac, "I swear before God that I will kill you on the slightest pretext."

Mac saw that he meant it, too.

"Now, Captain Peace," he went on. "To get back to this very fine ship. Could it be that this fast, well-found ship is a diamond smuggler? I don't think so."

"Thanks for damn all," I said sarcastically.

"The point is, looking at this ship, that the man who bought her must have made his money before, not after. If you can afford a ship like this, you don't need to smuggle diamonds, do you, Captain?"

I felt the sweat trickling down my shirt. The swine was playing with me.

"I don't know the purpose of this ship yet," he said quietly. "But I intend to find out."

So he hadn't heard of Curva dos Dunas. I'd see that he never did — or never came back to tell about it.

"I became very interested in Lieutenant-Commander Peace," he went on, "and so I asked an acquaintance in Cape Town if he could find out something more about this famous submarine commander. I discovered, in fact, that he was drowned at sea eventually — after the court martial."

The cold fear tingled across my heart.

Stein put the Luger back in his pocket. It was a gesture of victory.

"Lieutenant-Commander Peace took an old merchant ship to sea in — when was it? April, '45. You remember the old Phylira, Captain? Fancy Georgiadou calling an old wreck like that after an ocean nymph! But then the Greeks, even old Georgiadou, are a sentimental lot, are they not?"

Automatically I poured myself another drink. So the Phylira was calling from her grave — and the twenty-seven men of the crew with her! Icy fear gripped me. So Stein knew about the Phylira, and had found out that I was her captain. By all the rules I was dead — the Phylira sailed from Cape Town for Tangier and was never heard of again.

"The old Phylira's engines were as bad as they come, weren't they Macfadden?" taunted this evil incarnation of a past which I thought I had buried alongside NP I on the sand-bars of Curva dos Dunas.

Stein laughed.

"A brilliant submarine commander as the skipper of a rotten old merchantman, and a brilliant engineer to keep her old engines going — just as long as they needed to be kept going, eh?"