Split Code (26 page)

Or it might have been a leak. It was enough, at any rate, to induce one of the birthday party to shriek, hanging over the side, that the launch was stoved in and sinking. And for the rest of the birthday party to crush over to see, and by tilting the boat, to propel two of their number with a splash and a shriek into the dark Adriatic.

You could have heard the screaming this time in Split. Man overboard. Nothing more urgent; no greater priority; no emergency, save only fire, more arresting in its demand for quick action.

Don’t trust the doctor.

Perhaps not, but that boatload of drunken youngsters couldn’t all be his accomplices.

Don’t trust the doctor.

Lenny and Donovan were throwing lifebelts. The launch had righted. If they kept their heads, the swimmers would be picked up in five minutes. No one had asked to come aboard. So what was the point of the exercise?

No one was looking at me. Retreating softly, I sat on the coach roof. Beside me, upturned, was Johnson’s old dinghy, offering cover and shade. Drawing up my legs I lay flat on the roof and then very quietly slid forward, with the bulk of the rowing boat between me and everyone else. To my left was the dark open sea and the shining side deck of the
Dolly,
lit by the uncurtained windows of the saloon. And as I looked, across the nearest yellow lit square slid first one dark shadow, then a second.

We had visitors. Don’t trust the doctor indeed. We should have no fear of the launch. The launch was merely a diversion. While all our attention was to the port, the starboard side had acquired a neat rope ladder and a lashing, to which was attached, floating quietly below, a small and powerful speedboat with just enough room, one would judge, for four men, and a girl and a baby.

The second anchor was just where Lenny had placed it, but it seemed a pity to alarm anyone unnecessarily, and the rope ladder was nicely placed out of sight of the windows. I took off my shoes and slipped down it into the speedboat and with some regret, opened the sea cock. Then I came up and untied its painter. After that, keeping well clear of the windows, I put my shoes on and returned to my colleagues.

The two swimmers had been fished up and there was a short argument going on about whether or not they could come aboard to dry themselves. Noticeably, when Lenny refused, no effort was made to pursue the point. I remember remonstrating with him for the sake of appearances and because suddenly it seemed ridiculous that one couldn’t bring two soaked and shivering people into the warmth and comfort of
Dolly.

But that would ruin the plan. And on the success of the plan depended much more than the comfort of two over-hilarious party-goers. I got Lenny’s message pad and wrote on it ‘Visitors below. Sunk their boat’; showed it to both men and then obliterated it.

In between we all went on calling and gesticulating. The launch came up near for the last time and slung aboard our lifebelts, bumping the stern again as she did so. Then, like a guilty child, she scuttled off to calls of ‘Oprostite!’ and we could see the glint of the bottle repassing. Before they got half-way to the harbour they were all singing. A Eurovision song I had seen called ‘Look Woot You Dun’, to be accurate.

Donovan said, ‘The rain’s coming on again. Who’s for a last drink? Come on, Lenny: you deserve one. You can inspect the damage later.’

‘Well sir, thank you sir. I wouldn’t say no,’ Lenny said.

‘Although I must go round with a lamp right after. She’s not taking water but she had a couple of nasty shunts. You’d think they’d never been in a bloody boat before, begging your pardon.’

‘They were tight,’ I said. I led the way down to the cockpit. It was empty. ‘And I can’t help feeling it’s all my fault. What on earth will Johnson say?’

I opened the saloon door and went down the steps. It was empty, too.

‘I can’t imagine,’ Lenny said. ‘But we’ve had worse before. She’s not a pretty lady just for show, is the
Dolly.
She can take knocks if she has to.’ He shut the door on the wind and the rain, and came in doffing his cap, while Donovan opened the door of Johnson’s bar and began taking out glasses. The gin rummy cards lay on the table where we’d left them, with my winnings.

The owners of the speedboat were almost as well-rehearsed as we were. Two of them must have been in the master stateroom and two in the forward passage between Donovan’s room and the galley. Donovan had just removed the whisky when both doors to the saloon quietly opened.

Framed in each were two masked men, with cocked guns.

I screamed. In the forward stateroom Benedict suddenly wailed. One of the two men between his door and mine began speaking in distorted English, as if reciting by rote. ‘Put your hands up and stand still. We are taking the baby to ransom. The girl comes also to care for him. We wish no harm, only money.’ His mask, like that of the others, was only a black nylon stocking, inside which one could make nothing of his squeezed and distorted features.

‘What is this? How the hell did you come on board?’ said Donovan loudly, and without pausing, made a lunge for his jacket pocket.

They didn’t shoot him. The leader just swung his gun and clipped the side of his head; and despite his nice thick hair, which must have cushioned the blow quite a bit, Donovan went staggering into the mast and subsided with a crash on the saloon floor where someone, kneeling, began to tie his hands and feet together with great professionalism. ‘Anyone else,’ said the leader, ‘want to try anything?’

‘The child’s too young,’ I said. ‘You won’t get your money. I can’t look after a baby as young as this away from all the things he’s used to. You can’t expect me to.’

No one answered me. One of the two men from the stateroom had put a gun in Lenny’s back, and the other was preparing to tie him up also. They were all big men, and dressed alike in dark sweaters and trousers, with heavy jackets and sneakers. They smelt foreign and reminded me of none of the men we had met so far in the kidnap game: I thought it a pretty safe guess that they were all natives. Except perhaps the leader, the only one who had spoken, whose English was good, although stilted.

I said again, ‘You can’t take him. He’s too young. He can’t stand it.’

The mask moved to some change of expression. ‘Why,’ said the leader, ‘we’ve been waiting for him to grow. Pack. Take what food and bottles you have. Trifun will help you. The child will not starve. Unless no one will pay for him.’

I packed. Trifun helped me by standing masked at the door, playing with his revolver. I was still there when a spate of low, angry voices on deck told that someone was receiving, with disbelief, the tale of the vanished speedboat.

A moment later, the leader came into the cabin. ‘You. Where is the speed launch this yacht usually carries?’

My hands were shaking and I didn’t bother to hide it. I said, ‘In the boatyard somewhere, I think. There was something wrong with it.’

‘Then there is an outboard motor?’ said the mask.

I straightened again from my packing. ‘I don’t know. Ask Mr Milligan.’

He walked away without answering, and when I struggled out shortly with my cases, I saw the reason. Both Johnson’s skipper and Donovan had been manhandled up from the floor and each was now lying apparently sleeping on opposite benches. On the table between them was a syringe.

I dropped the cases and said, ‘What have you done to them?’

In the cabin behind me Benedict, awakened again, started crying. The mask tilted, listening. The voice behind it, irritated, said, ‘They will sleep for twelve hours, that is all.’

Somewhere on deck a voice shouted, ‘Zorzi?’ and added a number of words in Serbo-Croat which Donovan, if conscious, could no doubt have translated with ease.

The leader, it appeared, was Zorzi. He shouted something back, and then turned again to me. ‘Take the child into the big cabin. Mihovil will be with you, with his gun. We sail.’

The mask told me nothing. ‘Where?’ I said. And when he didn’t answer, ‘But the baby -’

He cut me off. ‘The baby is nothing. You know it.’

He turned away, leaving me standing. The baby is nothing. Vindication at last, after all these ambiguous weeks, of what the Department had said, and my father, and Johnson. The baby is nothing. It is you, Joanna, they are after.

All that Johnson had planned was coming to pass. With no boat, they were trapped on the yacht. To go anywhere, they must use
Dolly,
conspicuous
Dolly
with all her cunning microphones. Except that these four men didn’t look much like seamen. And if they were not, they must be at least as anxious as I was. For Lenny and Donovan, who might have sailed
Dolly,
had been stupidly put out of action.

Mihovil was the third masked kidnapper, and one of the obvious land-lubbers. While the other three tramped back and forth over our heads Mihovil sat with his gun in my back in the master bedroom. He showed no interest when I lifted Ben up for some orange juice and no relief when the crying stopped, I finally tucked him up in his carrycot again. I didn’t say anything either because I was listening. But despite the temptation, no one tried to send for a launch through the R/T.

Radio telephone calls could be traced. Instead of a launch, Zorzi and his friends were going to have to sail fifty-four tons of gaff-rigged ketch to our destination and return before daylight. And it must be at least ten o’clock, maybe later.

Dinner on the
Glycera
would be over, but the night’s programme hardly begun. I wondered, if we were sailing south, how soon we would begin to bump into champagne bottles. I had another thought and turned to my taciturn friend with the gun. ‘I’ve just remembered. We were badly bumped by another boat. If your friend Zorzi is going to sail, he ought to check out the damage.’

The only answer I got was a wave of the gun and a grunted word or two in Serbo-Croat. Mihovil didn’t speak English. Then the boat suddenly drummed to the sound of the engine, followed almost at once by the grind of the anchor cable being wound up. I thought of all the receivers tuned in along the coast through which our voices were speaking, and I looked down at the sleeping face of Benedict, and I thought of my father. Then I saw the lights of the coast rocking past the porthole and knew that we were travelling south, in the wake of the
Glycera,
over a short, steep sea with a strengthening wind over our port quarter. We pitched suddenly and Mihovil swallowed. I raised my voice and shouted, ‘Zorzi!’

He came at once, the grotesque flattened face lodged in the doorway. I said, ‘Your friend here is going to be sick. And I need to lash the baby, too, if it’s going to be rough. Do I really have to have a gun in my back? There are four of you. And surely I can’t do much harm now we’re sailing.’

I finished up in the cockpit, with Ben lashed safely once more in our own forward stateroom. Also Petar, the fourth man, had been dispatched to look for damage with a hand torch. He returned with news of some surface splintering and little else. From the look of him, he had been in no trim for a vigorous examination, even had there been decent light, but Zorzi had a torch beam thrown into the bilges, and it was quite plain that we were tight and dry so far. The noise of the wind in the rigging jumped another tone or two, dropped and rose again and with an imprecation, Zorzi changed hands on the tiller and as I watched him, peeled off his mask. Then, leaning forward, he switched on the chart light and pulled the chart towards him.

His face, despite the stubble of beard, looked the thick, dark texture of the peasant’s but carried lines that hinted at city articulacy. An educated man, a professional perhaps, with the city man’s superficial experience of pleasure craft. He could have run a launch successfully into its landing-place, but instead he was sailing the Adriatic with
Dotty,
standing off from the shore to avoid the resorts with their bright, busy lighting.

The wind whined. I said, ‘I suppose I’m going to meet your chief anyway, wherever we’re going. Are you allowed to tell me who he is?’

He didn’t reply that time either. I told myself it was better than over-friendliness, the other thing I’d been afraid of. I found it hard to convince myself.

A spatter of rain hit the deck and then, like a pail of cold water, a sudden sharp wind that cut through my green English serge and sent
Dolly
heeling to starboard, so that I fell headlong against Zorzi.

From the impatient violence with which he thrust me out of his way, I might have been a shelf-ful of books. He was swearing, his fists cramped on the wheel and his eyes lifted up to the rigging. It had been a powerful squall, to catch our bare poles so sharply. And from the north-east, as the others had been. I said, ‘Zorzi. Do you know what to do in a Bora?’

As before, he made no reply. But I knew by his face that he didn’t.

The thunder began at eleven.

There being nothing in the Margaret Beaseford College rules about wearing your uniform when caring for your employer’s kidnapped child or children, I had changed into pants and sneakers and sweater, with a thick quilted jacket on top. Mihovil, who was occupying Donovan’s bunk with a basin, was uninterested in my activities. Then back in the cockpit with Zorzi and Petar and Trifun I heard above the noise of the big Mercedes-Benz engines an explosion of sound which seemed to come out of the sky all about us. A moment later there was another loud crack, and then the peaks to our left were outlined twice in a blue sudden glimmer which might have been a major explosion, but was more likely, I thought, to be lightning. A rolling peal, and then another proved me right. Thunder. Another of the first signs of the Bora.

By that time I knew exactly where we were, although not yet where we were heading for. I had learned my lesson well, from the books Johnson had supplied me with. I had watched the Rat Porporela diminish on the southern mole of Dubrovnik and the breakwater light open up from Mlini in the bay of Zupski to the south with Strebeno beside it. Then the village of Plat, and the lights marking the shoals and harbour at Cavtat. The current here was strongly to the north-west and the resulting jopple against the increasing gusts of north wind had been the coping stone of Mihovil’s misery. Petar, I guessed from his face, was beginning to suffer the same sort of uneasiness. Zorzi at the wheel and Trifun his lieutenant appeared so far quite unaffected. They had all, by now, taken off their stocking masks and the three other faces, quite unremarkable, were as unknown and unrevealing as that of Zorzi.