The Glendower Legacy (35 page)

It took twenty minutes to travel the hundred yards to the top of the cliff. Standing still, they were only just able to hear the waves slipping across the rocky shingle below in the fog. The wind had picked up off the water and blew a fine stinging spray in their faces. The rickety stairway was slippery, the handrailing rotting, and the descent went slowly: as they dropped lower down the cliff face, they came out of the fog into a heavier mist which blew in sheets off the water.

The trawler sat darkly, enigmatically, deep in the water, the needle of light picking its way along the shoreline, slowly, erratically, lingering here and there, leaping onward, as if the man controlling it was having trouble staying awake. There were no markings on the ship, at least none visible in the moonlight, no way of identifying the vessel, by name or nationality: just a black shape with the piercing Cyclopean eye.

The beam of light played well short of the rock wall as they clambered to the bottom and stood leaning on one another. Chandler felt as if he’d been out of breath since birth. “Where are you taking me?” he asked, gulping air and rain. His lungs felt hot, like bursting. The backs of his legs pained him. He was so wet. He knew his back was bleeding from the broken glass. He was going to have a hell of a cold, assuming someone didn’t kill him first. Polly started off again and didn’t hear his question. He slogged on, cradling the gun in the crook of his arm. At least he wasn’t carrying the miserable duffel bag …

They reached the dock.

“Come on,” she said, “where there’s a boathouse there ought to be a boat.”

“Oh, wait a minute—I don’t know a damned thing about boats, I’m scared of boats—”

“You
don’t have to know anything about boats. We’re a team, y’know—now come on before the searchlight catches up with us.”

He followed her, struggling up onto the rotting, soggy planks where she had nimbly leaped. The fog was coming in again, another great rolling bank: he smelled it more than saw it, and when he glanced back at the ship he saw only the vaguest outline, and the searchlight was a blur as it swung in stately fashion toward them.

“Hurry,” Polly called from up ahead. “The light …”

In his haste, Chandler tripped over a warped, jutting plank and plunged headlong, the gun flying ahead of him as he fell heavily, skinning his knees and the palms of his outstretched hands. Looking up, panic-stricken, he found himself staring, blinded, into the searchlight, squinting as it reflected among a million particles of moisture and bounced from one to the other, from one gust of fog to another. Like an animal, hypnotized and doomed in the headlights of an oncoming truck, he lay on the wet, crumbling wood as the light swung slowly past, stopped, tracked back over him and moved slowly off down the beach.

“Come
on,
Colin,” she called. “The light couldn’t crack the fog, they didn’t see you.”

Reprieved, he struggled his seemingly endless length into an upright position, retrieved the gun, and lumbered off down the dock to the warped door of the boathouse where Polly hugged him. “Oh, God,” she sighed, swallowing, “I thought … are you all right?”

He nodded, sweating, feeling light-headed.
God, if You let me live, I’ll take up squash again, jog, do anything You say …
The door stuck: angrily he slammed his shoulder into it, dislodged it, and they stepped into the darkness. Slowly, standing still, they let their eyes grow accustomed to the dark. The place reeked of soaked wood, gasoline, oil. Gradually the open end took gray, rectangular shape. Moonlight slid dimly through a hole in the roof …

Polly fumbled along the wail, finally crowed: “I knew it—a light switch! Anybody with this kind of money is going to have lights everywhere, feeding off a central generator.” She flipped the switch and two bare hanging bulbs, dangling at the tips of frayed black cords, came to life, lighting the interior with a harsh glare. Knowing nothing about seagoing machinery, Chandler took stock of the device revealed before him and in his head pronounced it some sort of cabin cruiser, which sat in a trough of water, waves lapping sibilantly at the hull. Chandler took it in but understood none of it: he’d never been aboard a boat, had seen them only at a distance. Forty or fifty feet long maybe, lots of polished wood, an elegant look which made him think it had a good many years on it—he couldn’t imagine anyone making such boats anymore. The back end was open but the middle third was canopied like the one Humphrey Bogart found himself on at the climax of
Key Largo.

On the dock there were two large red gasoline cans beside a pile of rags, some carefully wrapped paintbrushes, coils of greasy rope, a scarred and dented toolbox. Polly climbed aboard, poked around mysteriously, lifted hatches, sniffed, took something from a wall bracket near the pilot’s chair. She knelt down on the stairway and pushed a door open revealing a pit which he concluded had to house the bunks and galley. She closed it and came back up, stood with hands on hips, looking at him, shrugging with a smile.

“Well, we’re in business. This little dandy is going to get us out of here …”

“Little dandy,” he repeated. “Who writes your stuff?”

“No time to be brittle, my darling. In the words of the poet, they’re after us even as we speak—”

“But don’t you need charts, maps, that stuff?”

“There’s a stack of that stuff up there.” She nodded toward a shelf above the wheel. “And if that huge gunboat got into the bay, then this little—”

“Dandy.”

“—can get us out.”

“Are you sure you know how to—gunboat, you say?”

“It’s no fishing trawler, take my word. I’d say it’s Russian, a spy ship full of electronic paraphernalia, and some armaments. They patrol the coastline all the time. Remember, this is my business—at least, knowing stuff like this.”

“I never know whether to believe you when you go all worldly on me …”

“Believe me,” she said, busying herself, presumably readying the boat for the getaway.

“I repeat, are you sure you know how—”

“Look, somebody up at the house is eventually going to win the battle and whoever it is is going to look around, discover that we are gone and the package, too, and they’re going to decide that two and two make four, and we’re on the spot again … both groups came by sea so there are two ships lurking out there in the fog … it’s tag, and we’re it. So we’d better get the hell gone and we’re better off at night than by day … and, look, it’s my neck as well as yours, right? So, of course I know how to run the damned boat … now hurry up and get settled.”

He heard a fan going on, then they waited in quiet as Polly puttered deliberately about, then he felt and heard the engine turning over: it seemed terribly loud and whining, but then what the hell did he know? Let it be loud: just let it get them the hell out of there: “Are you sure this can work? Doesn’t it seem awfully easy?” He was sitting across from her on a padded bench, his sore back angled against an edge of wood which hurt.

She nodded: “Well, I expect it to get harder fairly soon, if that makes you feel any better …” She settled in behind the wheel in the high swivel chair. “I don’t know where we are and I’m going to have to play it more or less by—don’t look at me that way—by ear …” He couldn’t hear any more. The engine in the enclosed space was hammering at them with a considerable vengeance. She pointed with her right hand, in the manner of a tiny John Wayne, that they were moving out, and he nodded, pressing the cold, heavy weight of the gun across his knees …

The boat quivered mightily, edged slowly out of its slip, pushed off into the fog. The two cans of gasoline rested on the floor next to his feet; he had no idea what kind of gun he was holding, nor how to use it; but Polly seemed to be giving a knowing impression of someone coping with what was going on. Suddenly, the fog was in the cockpit with them, blowing in stringy wisps between them and he couldn’t see a goddamn thing … He stood up and crossed to his side, squinted at the windshield.

“Can’t see,” he said.

“Scary, isn’t it?” Behind them the ghostly glow from the boathouse, filtering through the fog, looked like a flying saucer hovering curiously over the water.

“Do you remember where the rocks are? The teeth?”

“More or less.”

“More or less,” he repeated faintly.

“Well, what can I say? I think I know where they are …”

They nosed on through the fog for another minute, Polly straining to see ahead, Chandler with eyes pressed tight, offering up a prayer. When he clicked his eyes open—why at just that moment, he had no idea—he was looking to the left of their path, and he cried out involuntarily: “Jesus! Look out!”

A wall of fog had split, been shredded into flowing trailers by the mysterious ship which now loomed over them, larger than he’d have believed possible, sliding toward them like an avenger … He heard Polly swear and saw her spin the wheel, felt the small boat shudder and moan as it cranked sideways in the water. The engine throbbed underfoot as she opened it up.

The rocks, she’s going to hit the rocks …

There was no way she could keep her bearings with the trawler bearing down on them, the fog swirling, the boat spinning and veering off in a new direction.

“Get the gun ready,” she yelled.

“Ready? What the hell do you do to get a gun ready?”

The trawler slid past behind them and he fancied he saw the movement of men on deck. Somehow they had seen the light in the boathouse … or maybe they actually had seen him in the fire of the searchlight as he tripped and fell … or maybe someone from the attack force had radioed them from the house, had alerted them … or maybe they used the electronic listening device aboard the spy ship …

As it slithered past and beyond them, it was leaning to the left, turning, and consequently Polly was maneuvering back across its path again a few seconds later. Chandler had made his way to the back of the boat and was resting the gun on the brass handrailing, crouched, watching, and the trawler was coming at them again out of the fog.

And as it came, straight on, flame flickered at him like a match in the wind, and the fog muted the rattle of a machine gun floating like death at him as he heard, felt the slugs hit the hull of the ship beneath the railing, heard them rip away the back of a swivel chair three feet behind him. He felt as if he had somehow gotten into place at both ends of a shooting gallery, simultaneously.

All right, by God. He saw the bust of Washington floating to the floor, coming slowly apart in a million particles of dust and plaster.

He trained the machine gun at the searchlight picking its way through the fog toward them, squeezed the trigger: the weapon came alive in his hands, vibrating, chattering, as if it were fighting to get loose, free of his amateur’s grasp. Miraculously, the light exploded at once and they were surrounded by the moonlit fog again. He turned in time to see Polly give him the thumbs-up sign.

Another yelp of gunfire came from the trawler which had straightened out behind them and was pursuing as Polly swung to and fro in the water, weaving her way toward the freedom of movement which lay beyond the rocks …

He felt the little boat take the fire briefly before Polly moved it out of range: the swivel chair near him, backless and in splinters, rotated this way and that, back and forth, as the path she steered changed, adjusted. They had to be nearing the huge hag’s teeth which had seemed so close during the day … but where in the name of God were they? As they slowed, picking their way toward them, where they
had
to be, the trawler heaved to out of the fog again, coming blindly, riding them down …

Determined to get in the first barrage, having no idea in the world who the hell he was blazing away at, Chandler steadied the gun, prayed there was still some ammunition, and squeezed the trigger a second time. His fire drew a startled cry which hung in the nightfog, like a banner stained bloody with the battle, then a rush of jabbering return fire which broke some glass and sent Chandler to the deck, trying to squeeze into the crawl space beneath the bench.

“I see it,” Polly called. “The channel through—”

The engines throbbed wildly again and the boat leaped forward, rushing into what seemed to Chandler a blank wall of fog. Immediately the other ship was left behind and they were for the instant alone.

“Look out,” she cried, “here it comes!”

And then he saw the stones.

She took the spread between them at full tilt, the waves foaming around them, driving the suddenly frail craft like a twig toward the gray stone tower on the right. Chandler knew his eyes were frozen wide, staring, and then he knew it wasn’t going to work …

The side of their boat slammed against the stone, something ruptured and tore, gave way with a dismal tug, and they seemed to be suspended out of the water, poised, the waves on the rise holding them pinned against the great thrust of rock and he saw Polly holding firm, pulling with all of her strength and determination against the push of the waves … then, without warning, the boat dropped away from the hag’s tooth, plummeted down the side of a wave like something cut loose in an elevator shaft, and suddenly the engines seemed to do some good again. They churned forward out into the open and miraculously they were still afloat, struggling but moving onward, piercing the sea and the fog and the cold wind.

Polly turned, grinning broadly, lower lip quivering and he went to her, kissed her wet cheek, held her to him.

Behind them, a matter of fifteen seconds later, there was a most remarkable sound: a solid, wet smashing, like a wrecking ball smashing into soggy concrete, an enormous deadening thud followed by a series of cracks and rending noises: the trawler, or spy ship, or whatever the hell it was, had clearly run afoul of one of the teeth … silence, the only sound the hum and drive of their own engines … and then, just like in the movies, there came a rumbling explosion, darts of red and orange fire piercing the fog, reaching toward them, all of which was suddenly extinguished, leaving the silence once again and the pattering of bits of debris falling from out of the fog into the water all around them.