A Bridge Of Magpies (18 page)

Then you'll have to go aboard her again, Captain Weddell.' '

Not today. Let 'em cool off. Tomorrow. We've got two bodies to bury now.'

The burials went wrong right from the start.
I
would have 122

preferred to have buried them at sea but there would have had to be post-mortems when the law came into it; so that meant land burials. Possession was out, for the simple reason that there is no soil over the island rock in which to dig a grave. So we decided on the mainland, alongside the charred Land-Rover. Kaptein Denny and I couldn't manage to dig the graves more than a couple of feet deep because the sand kept pouring back. There wasn't a Bible or a prayer-book and I could only remember stray holy-sounding phrases like, dust to dust, and in the midst of life we are in death. So after a couple of false starts I said the Lord's Prayer while Jutta wept and kept looking back towards her mother's
grave,
away in the old cemetery. The only other sounds were the soft chording of the breeze and the faraway clatter of
Swig A's
winches
and the chug of her launches. They were watching us, of course.

I expected Kaptein Denny to do better in his own religion for Breekbout, but his contribution consisted of some rice balls and bright sticky sweets. It was probably reaction-but I wanted to laugh when a group of beetles emerged from the sand
and started rolling away
the rice balls and became entangled in the sticky sweets while Denny intoned in a language I didn't understand. I thought of the belly-laugh it would have given Koch. Then the whole thing backfired on me and all J wanted was to get my hands on the swine who had done it to him.

There was no decisive finale-and Denny stood around looking awkward when he'd stopped his half-chant We just grabbed the spades and shovelled the sand over the two canvas bundles and then I remembered, 'I am the resurrection and the life,' and something about the sea
giving
up its dead, so I said aJoud the parts I could recall, and slurred the rest. Then Kaptein Denny and I wired two boards, with their names and the date, on to the wrecked vehicle. When we'd finished, Jutta asked me to take her over to the official litlle graveyard. Kaptein Denny retreated-he sensed that Jutta wanted to be alone with me-but asked for the rifle and some spare shells, and went and stood guard by the shoulder of the big sandhill from which we'd first spotted him at the graveyard. The precaution seemed strange in that emptiness-until one thought of Koch.

Jutta had brought some smooth white stones from Passes123 sion in her handbag-Ind she laid them out on the mound in the form of a cross. She asked me to say some of the words
I
had said for Breekbout and Koch, but I tailed off because-being so disconnected, they sounded ridiculous. Suddenly Jutta came close and clung tightly to me, then turned and walked fast and straight, back across the sand to where Kaptein Denny stood guard.

I didn't follow immediately. I stood and stared after her–she'd changed for the ceremony, before we came ashore, into a pale green slack suit, which was her only decent outfit, and which offset her hair. I felt a sudden tide of emotion-
as
criss-cross as any on the Sperrgebiet's coastline. One thing I was sure of – Jutta wasn't just a sudden infatuation on my part. What I wasn't so sure of was Kaptein Denny. What J was least sure about was
Sang A.
Already my one-man assignment had ballooned into squad size:
a
murder squad. Nor had I even got to grips with whatever lay behind the thing whose deadly sharp edges had revealed themselves in the two killings. Should I leave things to simmer until someone put a foot wrong and enabled me to play the right card? Or act decisively on the plan which was starting to take shape in my rind?

I walked back to Jutta and Kaptein Denny.

'I intend presenting Emmerrnann and Kenryo with an ultimatum tomorrow-' I told them. 'I'm going to ask them to signal the fisheries frigate and report Koch and Breekbout's deaths, and at the same time request clearance for
Sang A
to be at Possesslon.'

'That isn't an ultimatum-' answered Jutta. 'It's simply an admission that you're without a radio and therefore cut off from outside help.'

Denny too was sceptical. 'Where will it get you?'

Ìf they refuse, which is likely, we needn't look any further for the murderers.'

'Of course they did it-' Jutta was emphatic.

'Furthermore, a refusal would prove that they haven't any right to be doing whatever they're doing at this moment.'

'And then?'

The rest of the plan was mine, and they were involved: it wouldn't do to reveal it yet. 'We'll play it by ear. I may get some clue tomorrow as to what all their hidden gear
is
for.'

124

But in
that
I was mistaken, because early next day, when Kaptein Denny took
Gaok
through the thick fog to where
Sang A
had anchored, she had disappeared. It was the right spot, too, because her stern mooring buoy was still there. Kaptein Denny cut
Gaok's engine.
The only sound, magnified by the fog, was the slap of waves against Possession's cliffs, and some other unidentifiable noises from the channel. None of us had slept well and Jutta's
eyes
were tired. She was wearing her favourite suede jacket and her shoulders and beret were beaded with moisture.

`Blast!' I exclaimed. 'But I'll bet
Sang A hasn't
thrown in the towel and pushed off altogether.'

`No,' Denny replied, 'she hasn't.' He stood listening a moment and then went to the bridge door. 'I don't see her. But I smell her. There!' He jerked his head in one direction but it didn't mean much to me: I'd lost all
sense
of direction
in
the fog.

`Go after her, Captain Weddell?'

'Naturally.'

`Wait!' Jutta came to me. 'Isn't there some other way ...?'

She indicated the loaded rifle which stood near the wheel.

`Sooner or later there's got to be a confrontation between us. Better sooner-Jutta. You're not involved-so don't worry.'

'Not involved! And if they clout you over the head with a sealing club you think I won't get hurt?'

I turned away from her eyes. I was on an emotional seesaw and my end was high in the alr.

'Think you'll locate her?' I was unjustifiably abrupt with Kaptein Denny.

`Yes. We'll stalk her. We use sail: good, silent sail'

That killed the moment with Jutta, of course. She went and stood by herself, looking out.

We made sail and slipped slowly and silently down-channel. Denny was everywhere: a sea-challenge always stirred him up. He knew
his way,
too,
and gave us–me, rather, because Jutta held herself apart–a running commentary on the wrecks we were passing by, or over. There was the
Nautilus,
a World War I coaster stuffed full of treasure-recovery gear, a sailer named the
Maridahl
which couldn't beat a Possession gale when she tried
to
claw her way out; close by her the
Lovely Amanda, a
Yankee whaler; and finally the
Black
Prince,
a
1915 mercy ship from Luderitz which had finished 125

up on the island's southern tip and had given her name to Black Prince Cove.

Some of the holiday air went out of Kaptein Denny when we left the island astern without sighting
Sang A.
He went to the side and took a sip of seawater and announced that
we were
over the spot where Bol Islet-once positioned on Admiralty charts-had suddenly vanished.

He made several fiddling alterations of course which kept
Gaok in
the fog curtain. He seemed to be getting uptight about something.

'Sang A
is around,' he said. smell her still. But I reckon she's over towards the mainland.'

'It makes no odds, Go after her.'

'There's a dangerous
skietrots
there .

skietrots -what
sort of
gamat
word is that?

`Shooting rock: it's untranslatable really. It's a rock on which the seas break and shoot high. It's called
Pikkewyn se
Draai -
Penguins Turning.'

Ì hope
Sang A is
turning too by now.'

'Ready then, Captain Weddell?'

Àny time.'

Something was eating him, though, and he still hesitated to break clear of the fog. Jnstead, he hung around on the wispy fringe of
the
bank for some time. Then he seemed to make up his mind and everything grew light all at once-and we were blinking in broad sunlight, with
a
long view of the Sperrgebiet's desolation ahead.

Sang A
was there aJl right.

She was moving southwards parallel to the coast, close in-shore. Her passage ahead was blocked by an irregular chain of islets. Two stood out at a glance from the rest. One of them was shaped like an outsize conical highway post and the sea clawed and foamed against it and gave it the name
skietrots;
the second-bigger-was almost a third of
a
mile
long and half a mile offshore.

Kaptein Denny indicated the latter. 'Albatross Rock.'

Jutta broke her silence.
'Sang A
isn't worried at seeing us.'

'Not yet.' I swung my glasses through a wide arc. There was something very determined about the way she was plugging along on a dead straight course. She might have been on rails, rather than negotiating as bad a patch of foul ground
as
I'd seen on the Sperrgebiet. She was changing course now, 126

coming about a little short of the dangerous fang.

'Engine,' I requested Kaptein Denny. 'We'll go alongside
now.'

'Is she aware of us at all, Struan? Look at the way she's behaving.' That was clear, even to Jutta's unnautical eyes. Instead of sheering clear of the rocks and reefs, as any normal vessel would have done,
Sang A
completed an inward U-turn which would bring her still closer inshore, and among them. She then steadied on a new course-still parallel to the coast but this time heading back towards the Bridge of Magpies and Possession. On rails, I thought, on bloody rails!

Kaptein Denny's eyes were slits. 'She's following a plot.'

It was clear that her new reverse up-coast course over lapped slightly on her previous down-coast one.

'And J'm going to find out what it is. That engine, please!'

He went to see to it.

'The lost city, Struan–is that what she's after?' '

On this pitch? . . . It's miles away.'

'Kaptein Denny's not happy either.'

'Why isn't he, do you think, Jutta–why? What gives?'

She
clenched one of the bridge window catches until her knuckles showed white.

'I'm scared, Struan.'

Of what?'

'I don't know! I don't know! Scared about your going aboard that ship. Scared about my staying. I want to run away, but I want, more, to stay:

I took her by the shoulders and pressed my thumbs into them.

'I'll sort it out. For us. That's a promise.'

'Promises are easy. This isn't.'

There was no time to say any more because just then Denny returned from the engine-room. The distance between the two
vessels
began to narrow.

'This isn't going to be easy.
Sang A
won't stop.'

Denny spoke almost mechanically. Ever since sighting
Sang A
he seemed to have faJlen into a mood of deep preoccupation. His earlier enthusiasm for the chase had evaporated.

'I'll jump when we come alongside. You hold station until I'

m ready to return, What I have to
say
won't take long.'

127

Gaok
bored in on an interception course;
Sang A held
hers, ruler-straight. She was doing about eight knots and could easily have got away from
Gaok
if she'd wanted to. But not if she
was
doing what I thought she was doing. Emmermann and Kenryo rushed out on to
Sang A's cat-
walk
when we drew level, and the
crew
began giving their vocabularies a work-out.

`What d'ye think you're playing at?' roared Emmermann. `

Keep clear! Keep clear!'

Gaok
was thrashing aJong right alongside
Sang A
and both vessels were bucking in one another's
wash.
Only a couple of feet separated them. I picked a gap between the threatening crewmen, and jumped.

Two toughies made at me. The nearer aimed
a
roundhouse swing at my head. I dodged and made a staggering lunge across the bucking deck-missed my footing, and fell on my knees. My man came on. I was a millisecond ahead of him; grabbed his foot and rode the kick aimed at my neck. Nevertheless, it caught me under the right armpit with the force of a car's bumper. I was tossed backwards and half under one of the tarpaulined objects. Only my peripheral vision registered what it was because my main attention was focused on the two men rushing at me, the first one having disengaged his foot. It wasn't a winch or a bollard I saw, or any of the other things you'd expect to find on the deck of a ship going about her lawful occasions. It was a twin-mount machine
gun.
I'd slipped into a crouch to meet the attack when the men stopped like dogs called to heel. Angry dogs, snarling dogs. Only then did I hear Kenryo shouting at them. I got up, brushed past them, and started to walk towards Emmermann and Kenryo on the cat-walk. That walk could have
been in
millimetres, not feet: it seemed to last for ever. Not because of the menacing crew but because of my racing thoughts. That machine-gun put the clincher on what I suspected about
Sang A.
It certainly didn't fit in with Emmermann's story about trawling. It also wrote the C-in-C's brief to me in much broader and more dangerous terms. Ships don't go around with high-powered electronics gear and mounted guns, searching for lost cities.
If
there was a lost city at all. I wondered whether there'd ever been one, in point of fact, and what really lay behind my assignment. Whatever it was 128