Medusa

Evans was hurrying now as he skirted the dig, took the path to the landing place, then turned off on the track that circled the old hospital building. It was brighter here, the frigate outlined against the lights of Villa Carlos. Water swirled at her stern, small waves rushing against the rocks. Evans had stopped. I think, like me, he was too astonished to do anything but stare at the dark shape coming closer, the bows swinging clear, but the low flat stern, with its flight deck and hangar, closing the rocks just south of our boat landing. She was coming towards us with no check, the hum of the one engine, the suck of the prop, the waves beating at the shore, all getting louder.

The grinding crunch of her grounding on the rocks was a rising cacophony of sound that seemed to go on and on, the stern rising till it was so close it looked from where I stood as though Evans could step across on to the deck itself. Then suddenly everything was still, a quietness gradually descending over the scene, the propeller bedded against rock, the water subsiding to the stillness of a balmy Mediterranean night. The silly bloody idiot!’ The anger of Evans’s voice was tinged with something else. Resignation? I wasn’t sure. And there were other voices now, from on board the frigate. Men tumbling up from below, out on to the deck to see what had happened, and Gareth standing there in the open wing door of the bridge on the port side, standing still as stone as though shocked into immobility.

It was like that for a moment, a blurred picture of disaster recorded by the eye’s retina and made strange by the darkness and the lights beyond, the ruined hospital standing over it all like the mirror image of the stranding. Then Gareth moved, the upper-deck broadcast system blaring orders. The lights came on again, the ship’s outline illuminated for all the world to see that she was ashore, her stern smashed into the rocks. God! What he must be feeling!

I knew who it was running up from the landing point before she reached me. I heard her panting and at the same time Evans had whipped out his radiophone and was talking into it, passing the word that the frigate was aground.

‘He did it on purpose.’ She caught hold of my arm. ‘I saw it, Mike. I was right there in the boat. Christ! I thought he was going to drive her straight over me.’ Her mouth was wide, her teeth white in the frigate’s lights and those big eyes of hers almost starting out of her head. ‘Why? Why did he do it?’

‘Where have you been?’ I asked her.

‘Looking for Soo. But why for God’s sake?’ She was staring at me. ‘I didn’t find her. I don’t know where they’ve taken her. Nobody seems to know.’ And she said urgently, ‘What will happen to him? It’s a court martial, isn’t it — running your ship aground? The Navy won’t stand for that.’

‘Probably not,’ I said. The ship’s decks were alive with men now and Gareth was down at the hangar doors, Mault with him. The sense of activity and purpose was fascinating to watch as the hangar door was slid back to reveal the dark interior of it stacked with wooden cases and all sorts of weapons, some that looked like rocket-launchers.

That was when he grabbed her. Fool that I was, I hadn’t registered the fact that he should have been standing in dark silhouette against the light. But instead of being in full view, he suddenly appeared out of the shadows to my right. I heard Petra gasp, and as I turned and flashed my torch, the blade of a knife flicked in the beam, a steely glint pointing straight at her throat, his face, hard as rock, right beside hers as she opened her mouth wide and began to scream, her left arm twisted up behind her as he frog-marched her slowly backwards.

He didn’t bother to tell me to drop the gun. He knew I wouldn’t shoot as long as he was holding her as a shield. ‘Don’t move.’ The order was hissed at me through those big teeth. ‘Stay where you are and she’ll be all right.’ He was backing on to the path leading to the landing. ‘And tell your wife’s lover, he’s just signed his death warrant. Hers too.’

He kept Petra between himself and me all the way back to the track that ran past the tent and down to the landing place. I didn’t dare move. I had a feeling he was a desperate man now and capable of anything, even cold-blooded murder if it served his purpose. And then the incredible happened. The flap of the tent was pushed aside and Lennie appeared.

He stood there, stretching and yawning. I don’t know whether he was still drunk, or just half asleep, but it took a moment for the scene to register with him. Then his eyes were suddenly wide with shock as he saw, first the ship, then Petra in the grip of Evans as he backed down the path.