Angel's Ransom (30 page)

The chance had almost come while he was unlashing the power boat that now hung from outboard davits, ready to be
lowered away. Holtz had put him to the job after the
prisoners were locked up, standing watchful guard to make
certain he did nothing to cripple the launch or foul the falls.
A moment had come when a sudden pitch of the storm-tossed cruiser had thrown them both off balance. Blake,
recovering first, might have made his attempt in the time
Holtz could pull the trigger once, but the shot would have
brought Jules out of the pilot-house full on his back while he
was grappling for the gun. Afterwards Holtz was careful to
hold to a stanchion for support, and when the launch finally hung ready on its falls he herded Blake into the pilot-house
to take over the wheel again while he and Jules watched the
shore together. Blake could only pray for circumstances to
separate the two and bring him his opportunity before the
egomaniac mind accepted the realization that the signal
would never be received. Until his moment came, he marked
time and obeyed orders.

From the direction in which the binoculars were pointed, both men looked towards the tumbled rocks where Jules
had put Roche ashore near Monte Carlo beach. Once
Holtz asked the time. Jules lit a match, cupping the flame
in his big hands, and blew it quickly out again. ‘Nearly
two.’

‘How near?’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Run in closer, Captain. Slowly. I’ll tell you when to stop.’

Blake put way on the cruiser at half speed. A moment later Jules said nervously, ‘We’re inside the capes.’

‘What of it?’ Holtz snapped.

‘Running this close to a lee shore is dangerous. If anything happens to the motors, we’ll end up on the rocks.’

‘Nothing is going to happen to the motors.’ Holtz lowered his binoculars with a snarl of irritation at his inability to see
through the blurred windscreen. ‘That will do, Captain.
Hold us as we are.’

Rain and wind still defeated his attempts to see clearly. He sent Jules out on the pitching bridge wing to try for a better
sight shoreward. The sailor came back almost immediately,
cursing the moisture that filmed his binocular lenses as soon
as they were exposed in the open.

‘It
’s
like looking through a waterfall,’ he grumbled. ‘There
’s
no signal. Between the weather and the banker
’s
watchdogs he’ll have to slip, he won’t try to make it tonight.
We’d better lay out to sea until the storm breaks, and come
in tomorrow night.’

‘Go in closer, Captain,’ Holtz said.

‘Hold it!’
Jules
’s
increasing nervousness made the counter-command a bark. ‘You’re just asking for trouble! There
’s
no safe place to land a boat in this blow even if we do catch a
signal. Lay out to sea until tomorrow night!’

‘I said we were going in closer!’ Holtz
’s
voice snapped like a cold whip in the darkened pilot-house. ‘Don’t make me
repeat my orders, Captain!’

Blake reached for the throttles. He thought,
One bullet
, and felt a faint wonder that the thought did not particularly
disturb him. He was too weary to be afraid.

‘I think we may have something, Chief!’ Corsi
’s
oilskins dripped water in the doorway of the Bureau du Pilotage. He
was trying to keep excitement out of his voice, without
success. ‘You’d better come take a look at the radar!’

Neyrolle blinked and rubbed his eyes. He had been dozing fitfully in his chair since midnight. George was sound asleep,
snoring, and Cesar had been dismissed hours earlier.

Neyrolle hesitated to wake the reporter. He felt no
obligation
to live up to his barg
ain to share knowledge. The bar
gain had been broken by George
’s
lie, whether the lie was consequential or inconsequent
ial. But he still needed cooper
ation in the event that they were able to use the pilot boat,
and lives could depend on how readily the cooperation was
forthcoming. A man as headstrong as George required
careful handling.

Neyrolle shook him awake, telling him of Corsi
’s
news while they were putting on slickers. The time was a few
minutes after two o’clock, the storm still raged outside.
George
’s
head was foggy with sleep when he left the Bureau,
but the sharp whip of cold rain in his face cleared his brain
immediately. He was alert and expectant as he followed
Neyrolle and Corsi into the windy dark.

They dog-trotted, heads down, toward a large yacht moored at the Quai des
É
tats
Unis. George could not read
the name on her counter, but he guessed that she was of
British registry as soon as they were aboard. Someone with a
British accent met them at the head of the gangplank and
took them forward to the pilot-house. A second unm
istak
ably English voice welcomed them into warm darkness
where the luminescent green sweep of a radarscope rotated
and throbbed, painting its shadowy picture of what lay
around them in the night.

Orientation of the picture was not difficult. Although the pattern made by the obstructing hills and bluffs on three
sides of the
harbor
was meaningless, the shadow of the sea
wall, broken by the gap of the
harbor
entrance, threw a
recognizable vertical band
slightly
off the
center
of the
pulsing
scope. Beyond it, the storm filmed the screen with a
mistiness that did not hide a small, more solidly defined
shadow lying motionless well out toward the periphery of the
scanner
’s
circle.

Neyrolle lit a cigarette.
In the glow of the match his ex
pression betrayed nothing of what he felt. He said, ‘What
’s
her distance?’

The clipped British voice answered, ‘We’re ranging at two miles now, so she
’s
about a mile-and-three-quarters out.
Say, three kilo
meter
s.’

‘Miles will do. How long has she been there?’

‘We picked her up at ten miles around one o’clock. She came in as far as you see her in the next hour, then lay to.
Been about in the same spot for the last quarter of an hour.’

Corsi said,
‘s
he
’s
coming in! Look!’

They watched the shadow blur, elongate, and re-form again, a green caterpillar crawling. It moved by fractions of
an inch for minutes, then stopped.

The voice of their invisible host said curiously, ‘I know it
’s
all very hush-hush and all that, but could a chap ask what
you’re expecting of her? What
’s
she supposed to do?’

‘It will depend on whether she is what we think she is,’
Neyrolle
answered non-
committally
. ‘Is there any way to
identify a vessel by what is visible on your screen?’

‘You can guess at her dimensions. That
’s
about all.’

‘Please guess the dimensions of this one.’

‘Well, it
’s
not easy. She
’s
bigger than a speedboat, smaller than the
Q
u
een Mary
. I’d say perhaps between fifty
feet and two hundred, if it
’s
any help. Can’t do much better.
Sorry.’

‘Thank you. Could you also perhaps guess at the meaning of her
maneuvers
?’

‘If it were any other kind of
a night I’d say she was trying
to find an anchorage in water to
o deep for her. In this storm,
only a silly clot would even thin
k of anchoring on a lee shore.
She ought either to come into port or stand out to sea.’

‘Might she be looking for a signal from shore, or preparing to launch a small boat?’

‘
S
he might.’

‘If she did launch a boat, would we be able to see it?’

For a moment the silence was broken only by the throb and click of the scanner. The clipped voice said doubtfully,
‘
I shouldn’t want to say, at two miles. It would depend on
the size of the boat. Hold up a minute.’

There was movement in the
dark, a click. The picture on
the scope lost its luminescence, fading as another formed in larger dimensions. The band of the sea wall was wider now, farther from the center of the scope, and filled more of the screen. The caterpillar shadow had disappeared.

‘That’s a one-mile ranging. You could see anything larger than a dinghy, maybe even a dinghy, on that scale. And no
one who wasn’t completely crackers would try to row anything as small as a dinghy tonight, so the answer is yes, you
could probably spot a boat c
oming in. Unless you wanted to
keep an eye on the other craft at the same time, of course.’

‘For the moment, we wish to observe the behavior
of the
other craft,’ Neyrolle said. ‘If you would be so kind.’

The switch clicked again. The
first picture returned to the
screen. On it, the caterpillar shadow had begun to move once more.

They watched it for what seemed an interminable time. Except for his endless chain-sm
oking, Neyrolle gave no sign
of nerves. George did not reali
ze the pitch to which he him
self was strung until beads of sw
eat on his face and neck made
him reach for a handkerc
hief. They studied the pulsing
scope through a haze of smoke from
Neyrolle’s
Gauloises
while the caterpillar inched its slow way shoreward, stopped, inched again, then turned back. Reaching the position where it had been when they first saw it, it was motionless for almost an hour before it crept again toward the center of the screen, and the cycle of its withdrawal and return was repeated once more in the hour following. Afterwards it
crawled
toward the edge of the scope and disappeared. The
unseen operator of the radar picked it up again, smaller and
dimmer, on a five-mile ranging. Its course was steadily
seaward.

Neyrolle murmured politely formal thanks and stood up to leave without further comment. It was too much for
George. He said unbelievingly, ‘Are you going to let her go?
Just like that?’

‘I am doing what I think best.’ Neyrolle was holding himself under tight restraint. ‘Nothing has happened to frighten her, nothing shall happen to frighten her. We know from her
behavior that she expects a signal on the hour. It will be
daylight in another hour, so she leaves, but she will return
again for a signal on the hour. The next time she comes
within the capes, the net will be ready behind her. I dare not
move without it.’

‘How do you know that she’ll ever come back? How do you know that Holtz isn’t cutting their throats right now,
getting rid of the evidence because he knows the rendezvous
has failed? How do you know
anything
?’

‘I know that a man who plans as carefully as Holtz has planned does not pin his faith on a rendezvous that must
succeed or fail within the space of three hours. Thirty-five
million francs will bring him back.’ In the smoky dark, still
illuminated only by the throbbing screen on which a tiny
green caterpillar inched its way seaward, Neyrolle’s voice
suddenly lost its restraint. He said savagely, ‘When it does,
you shall have your story! I promise you that!’

Scud and clouds had hidden the land by daybreak. The sea was moderating as the force of the wind diminished, the
rain had stopped. Running seaward on the course Jules had
given him at four o’clock, Blake was grateful to be able to
open the windscreen and let brisk cold air blow into the
pilot-house. He could not have remained awake without it.