The Hunter From the Woods (12 page)

“
Oui
, and what do
they
get to see?” Beauchene glared into Michael’s eyes. “That we have a few rifles and pistols to use against their fucking
cannons
? Well, they already know that, don’t they?
Merde
, what a mess!”

“We might get some idea how to clean it up by meeting Konnig.”

“
You
say.”

“Yes,” Michael answered calmly. “I do say.”

Beauchene held Michael’s gaze a few seconds longer. Then he shook his head and ran a hand through his rain-soaked hair. With a weary sigh, he said, “Come in and get a drink.”

Michael followed him through a door on the other side of the hallway. Beauchene’s cabin had a porthole and would have a nice view of the sea when the weather wasn’t so closed-in. That was the best that could be said for it. There was a bunk, a desk, two chairs in need of reupholstering, a tatty green throwrug, a floorlamp with a crooked shade that had a cartoon of marching tin soldiers upon it like something taken from a child’s playroom, and another lamp on the desk. Newspapers and magazines were piled around. There was a shelf of a few sad-looking books. It was obvious the captain ate alone and sometimes didn’t finish his meals, because the plates and leftovers were in plain sight. The cabin had the musty dirty-socks smell of a cheap hotel room, uncleaned for many a night. There were no pictures on the pine-panelled walls. No excuse was made. Beauchene closed the door and rested his Thompson gun in a corner. He sat behind the desk, opened a lower drawer and brought out a half-full bottle of brandy and a single glass. The glass, Michael noted, had a brown crust of dried brandy sticking to its bottom and was mottled with greasy fingerprints. Beauchene poured liquor into the nasty glass and offered it to Michael, who took it without hesitation because it was not the worst thing he’d ever drunk from.

Beauchene swigged from the bottle. “Five men wounded and two dead,” he said as the fire descended. “We were lucky there. Next time not so much. Some electrical cable damage aft. The engineers are working on it. No hull damage, thank God. No rudder or engine damage.” He drank again. “A shell caused some havoc in one of the staterooms. Not theirs or the children’s. My worst problem is figuring out how to feed my crew. Most of the crockery in the galley broke when we started slinging ourself all around like a maniac with an ass-itch. Got a cook with a broken arm, too. The doctor doesn’t need his heroin today, he’ll patch everyone up. Aren’t you drinking?”

Michael took a sip and managed his initial reaction. It was not exactly France’s finest.

“Sit while you can,” Beauchene suggested, and Michael took the better of the two bad chairs. “There you go.” Beauchene was speaking not to Michael but to the bottle. It was a croon of appreciation, or perhaps dependency. Michael thought that one man’s heroin was another man’s brandy. “Ah,
oui
!” Beauchene took another drink and closed his eyes. He leaned back in his chair. “
Le moment mûr
,” he said.

Michael knew what that meant: The mellow moment.

“Haven’t had many of those?” Michael asked. “Except from a bottle?”

“Not many, thank you for asking.” The captain’s eyes remained shut. Then they suddenly opened and the red glare had returned. “Who the fuck
are
you? Or, rather…who the fuck do you
think
you are? Receiving my radio messages and giving orders? I could shoot you for either one of those!”

“And then,” Michael said easily, as he sipped the mixture of pinesap and hot glue, “you’d have one less gunman.”

“One less pain in my ass, you mean. I ought to forget about the shooting and knock your brains out.” That statement caused him to frown and stare again into the bottle. His swig this time was a long swallow of needful thirst. “Damn, what a day,” he said.

Michael had to ask the question. “Why do you hate him?”

“Him? Him
who
?”

“You know.”

Beauchene grunted. “I told you. He’s a black nigger and he’s a college boy. They put him here to ride my back. Imagine that! After all these years, a nigger on my back! And not just any one, but a college boy! Oh, they’ve got big plans for him, you can count on that.” He leaned forward and planted his elbows on the desktop. “They put him on me to get
experience
. That’s what they said. To get the actual experience of
seamanship
. But you know…you
know
…that’s not all of it.
Non
! They want him watching me. Taking notes.
Judging
me, for any error. Because of my past mistakes, you see. A few errors. A few scraped hulls and mishandled cargo. Always the captain’s fault,
oui
? And now look what you’ve gotten me into! If we get out of this, how will I have a job?” Another swig of deadly brandy went down his pipe. “Two men are never going home. Do you get that? And how many more will never be going home? Eh? So how will Captain Gustave Beauchene ever have a job after this?” He abruptly slammed the bottom of the bottle down on the desk. “
Answer me
!” he shouted, his face contorted with pure rage.

Michael was very careful in his reply. “When we get out of this, the British Secret Service will arrange a job for you with any British merchant line you please to approach. I can promise that.”

“Oh, can you? Promise me a job sailing a desk through a sea of papers? Or perhaps you can get me a job in a bakery? Making crumpets and little tea-cakes for fags with umbrellas?”

It struck Michael then. Gustave Beauchene bore a hatred not only for Eman Kpanga, but for the entire world.

Beauchene was very intelligent. Michael knew the man must have seen some realization in his face, because the captain smiled grimly and said, “You think you
know
me, is that it? From your little histories and spy papers? Did you know, then, that I was the third generation of my family’s bakery in Paris? That this was to be my continuation of the very profitable Beauchene family business? Oh, yes! When I wasn’t sailing on the Seine, I was busy doing my part to carry forth the tradition. The great Beauchene
tradition
!” He said it as if it were something dangerous.

He picked up his bottle and stood up and peered out the porthole at the gray banners of rain. The sea had flattened, the waves beaten down by falling water.

“Then,” he said, “I met a woman.” Something in his voice changed; it deepened, and went dry. “A very beautiful and gracious woman. A woman far above
my
league. Yet she called to me. And I answered, yes I did. This woman…what can I say?” He put the bottle to his lips but did not drink, and so lowered it again. A sigh came out of him that might have been a whirlwind made small and private. “We were married,” he went on. “And she wanted things.
Needed
things. Those beautiful and expensive things a beautiful woman needs. Well…I had to make more money for her, didn’t I? I had to give her those things. To
keep
her, you see? Because a woman like that…if you lose her…you will hate yourself every day as long as you shall live. So I began gambling. More and more. It became a need of my own. I won some,
oui
, but in the end…you know, the house always wins.”

Beauchene was quiet for awhile. Quiet also was Michael Gallatin.

“The house,” Beauchene said, “took my family’s business. And then…I learned about all the other men. Just by accident, the first one. Then…I began watching, and following her. There were so many others. It must have been a thrilling thing for her.

“And I thought…of course a beautiful woman such as she would never be satisfied just with one man. Certainly not just with me. Well,
look
at me! And I was better then, but I was on the downward slide. Without money…how could you keep a woman like that?

“And then…and then…I followed her to a hotel. I followed her upstairs. To a room. I let her go in. She walked as a woman does to meet a favored lover. As she used to walk toward me. And then I waited for awhile, and I kicked the door in.”

Again the bottle went to his lips. Again it was lowered. Strong drink was not strong enough.

“There she was,” said Beauchene, as he peered out the porthole at the rainy gray world. “In the bed. Held in those black arms. And both of them looked at me, as if I was
nothing
. She had no shame. I think she must have known I was following her, because she’d been expecting me. Maybe that was part of the thrill, too. She smiled, just a little bit. Have you ever realized,
Monsieur
Gallatin, how deadly a smile can be?”

The question cut like a terrible blade.

“Oh,” Beauchene said softly, “I loved her more than life.”

Michael couldn’t see the man’s face. He didn’t want to see it.

“And furthermore,” Beauchene said in a voice strained with old agony still raw, “what would the fates decree, but to someday make me the master of a ship that bears
her
name?”

He turned toward Michael. Something of the rainy gray world was in his eyes. “You’re thinking now how much hate is in me. Yes, you’re right. I hate Caucasians, Orientals, Africans, Brits, Poles, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Russians and all the rest of them. I hate Frenchmen and I hate French women. I hate the tall, the short, the plain and the beautiful. I hate those who frown and those who smile. I hate the lucky in love and the unlucky in life. And most of all,
Monsieur
Gallatin, most of all…I hate—”

There was a knock at the door. “Captain?” It was the young African.

“Most of all, I hate men with green eyes,” Beauchene said, finishing his litany. He aimed his mouth at the door. “What do you
want
?”

“Sir…a motor launch is approaching on the port beam. Its signal lamp is asking us to hold our fire.”

Beauchene tilted the bottle to his lips and killed it. “Lower the ladder. One man should come aboard, and one man only. When he gets on deck, frisk him for weapons and blindfold him. Take him to the mess hall. And tell everyone my order is: no firing upon the launch or the man. Understand that?”

“Yes sir.” Kpanga went away.

“All right, then.” Beauchene came around the desk and picked up his Thompson.

He reloaded it with a fresh clip. “Don’t worry,” he told Michael, who had begun to worry. “I’ll be as sweet as cream cheese. You ready?”

Michael was.

They left the cabin to go meet their visitor.

Nine

The Javelin’s Master

The man standing in the mess hall had been blindfolded with a piece of black cloth. Enam Kpanga, Olaf Thorgrimsen and Billy Bowers were with him when Michael and Beauchene arrived. Olaf, brandishing his pistol, was walking around and around the
Javelin
’s captain, as if to examine him from all angles. Billy stood at the door, his eyes dark from lack of sleep.

“May I remove my blindfold?” Manson Konnig asked in English with a crisp German accent. His voice betrayed no emotion, and not a half-quaver of fear.

“
Oui
,” said Beauchene.

Konnig reached up long-fingered hands, removed his perfectly-white captain’s cap with its high top and spread-winged eagle insignia above the Nazi symbol, and then took off the blindfold. He had reddish-blonde hair, trimmed short on the sides but thick on top, and a neat mustache and goatee more on the red side. He was wearing a long black raincoat over his uniform. His boots looked to have been recently painted with glossy ebony. He put the blindfold in a pocket of his coat and returned the cap to his head. Then he adjusted it at a slight, jaunty angle.

The man’s cautious dark brown eyes regarded first Beauchene and then Michael.

“Captain?” he asked, and offered his hand to the lycanthrope.

“
I’m
the master of this ship,” said Beauchene, his eyelids at half-mast.

“Ah! Yes!” Konnig moved his hand toward Beauchene, but it was not accepted.

“Well,” said the
Javelin
’s master, as he closed his hand and dropped it to his side, “pardon me. I was expecting a
captain
, not a garbageman.”

 Beauchene smiled thinly. He kept his eyes on the Nazi. “You two men can leave. Wait outside. Kpanga, you stay.”

“Oh, dear,” said Konnig. “Must we have
that
in the room?”

“He stays.”

Billy and Olaf left. Michael pulled a chair over and sat down, interested to watch this encounter play out and also to examine Konnig. The man was tall and slender, very fit-looking, and about thirty-five years old. He had a long aristocratic nose with the required pinched nostrils. His chin was square, his teeth well-polished, his demeanor that of German royalty slumming with the fieldhands. His smile was a little oily.

“Would you please not wave that weapon around?” Konnig was referring to the Thompson. “I believe you’ve already committed an act of war with it, by destroying my searchlight.”

“Your searchlight hurt my eyes.”